[
  {
    "title": "Alastor: Or, The Spirit Of Solitude.",
    "body": "[Composed at Bishopsgate Heath, near Windsor Park, 1815 (autumn);\npublished, as the title-piece of a slender volume containing other\npoems (see “Biographical List”, by Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, London,\n1816 (March). Reprinted—the first edition being sold out—amongst the\n“Posthumous Poems”, 1824. Sources of the text are (1) the editio\nprinceps, 1816; (2) “Posthumous Poems”, 1824; (3) “Poetical Works”,\n1839, editions 1st and 2nd. For (2) and (3) Mrs. Shelley is\nresponsible.]\n\n\nThe poem entitled “Alastor” may be considered as allegorical of one of\nthe most interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a\nyouth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an\nimagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is\nexcellent and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He\ndrinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The\nmagnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into\nthe frame of his conceptions, and affords to their modifications at\nvariety not to be exhausted. so long as it is possible for his desires\nto point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous,\nand tranquil, and self-possessed. But the period arrives when these\nobjects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened and\nthirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He\nimages to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant with\nspeculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in\nwhich he embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or\nwise, or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover\ncould depicture. The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the\nfunctions of sense, have their respective requisitions on the sympathy\nof corresponding powers in other human beings. The Poet is represented\nas uniting these requisitions, and attaching them to a single image.\nHe seeks in vain for a prototype of his conception. Blasted by his\ndisappointment, he descends to an untimely grave.\n\nThe picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The Poet’s\nself-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible\npassion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Power which strikes the\nluminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by\nawakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influences, dooms\nto a slow and poisonous decay those manner spirits that dare to abjure\nits dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorious as their\ndelinquency is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by\nno generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful\nknowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on\nthis earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from\nsympathies with their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy nor\nmourning with human grief; these, and such as they, have their\napportioned curse. They languish, because none feel with them their\ncommon nature. They are morally dead. They are neither friends, nor\nlovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of\ntheir country. Among those who attempt to exist without human\nsympathy, the pure and tender-hearted perish through the intensity and\npassion of their search after its communities, when the vacancy of\ntheir spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and\ntorpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who constitute, together\nwith their own, the lasting misery and loneliness of the world. Those\nwho love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives, and prepare\nfor their old age a miserable grave.\n\n‘The good die first,\nAnd those whose hearts are dry as summer dust,\nBurn to the socket!’\n\nDecember 14, 1815.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Alastor: Or, The Spirit Of Solitude.",
    "body": "Earth, Ocean, Air, beloved brotherhood!\nIf our great Mother has imbued my soul\nWith aught of natural piety to feel\nYour love, and recompense the boon with mine;\nIf dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,                            _5\nWith sunset and its gorgeous ministers,\nAnd solemn midnight’s tingling silentness;\nIf autumn’s hollow sighs in the sere wood,\nAnd winter robing with pure snow and crowns\nOf starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs;                        _10\nIf spring’s voluptuous pantings when she breathes\nHer first sweet kisses, have been dear to me;\nIf no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast\nI consciously have injured, but still loved\nAnd cherished these my kindred; then forgive                         _15\nThis boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw\nNo portion of your wonted favour now!\n\nMother of this unfathomable world!\nFavour my solemn song, for I have loved\nThee ever, and thee only; I have watched                             _20\nThy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,\nAnd my heart ever gazes on the depth\nOf thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed\nIn charnels and on coffins, where black death\nKeeps record of the trophies won from thee,                          _25\nHoping to still these obstinate questionings\nOf thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost,\nThy messenger, to render up the tale\nOf what we are. In lone and silent hours,\nWhen night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,                 _30\nLike an inspired and desperate alchymist\nStaking his very life on some dark hope,\nHave I mixed awful talk and asking looks\nWith my most innocent love, until strange tears,\nUniting with those breathless kisses, made                           _35\nSuch magic as compels the charmed night\nTo render up thy charge:...and, though ne’er yet\nThou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,\nEnough from incommunicable dream,\nAnd twilight phantasms, and deep noon-day thought,                   _40\nHas shone within me, that serenely now\nAnd moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre\nSuspended in the solitary dome\nOf some mysterious and deserted fane,\nI wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain                      _45\nMay modulate with murmurs of the air,\nAnd motions of the forests and the sea,\nAnd voice of living beings, and woven hymns\nOf night and day, and the deep heart of man.\n\nThere was a Poet whose untimely tomb                                 _50\nNo human hands with pious reverence reared,\nBut the charmed eddies of autumnal winds\nBuilt o’er his mouldering bones a pyramid\nOf mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness:—\nA lovely youth,—no mourning maiden decked                           _55\nWith weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath,\nThe lone couch of his everlasting sleep:—\nGentle, and brave, and generous,—no lorn bard\nBreathed o’er his dark fate one melodious sigh:\nHe lived, he died, he sung in solitude.                              _60\nStrangers have wept to hear his passionate notes,\nAnd virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined\nAnd wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.\nThe fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn,\nAnd Silence, too enamoured of that voice,                            _65\nLocks its mute music in her rugged cell.\n\nBy solemn vision, and bright silver dream\nHis infancy was nurtured. Every sight\nAnd sound from the vast earth and ambient air,\nSent to his heart its choicest impulses.                             _70\nThe fountains of divine philosophy\nFled not his thirsting lips, and all of great,\nOr good, or lovely, which the sacred past\nIn truth or fable consecrates, he felt\nAnd knew. When early youth had passed, he left                       _75\nHis cold fireside and alienated home\nTo seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.\nMany a wide waste and tangled wilderness\nHas lured his fearless steps; and he has bought\nWith his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,                      _80\nHis rest and food. Nature’s most secret steps\nHe like her shadow has pursued, where’er\nThe red volcano overcanopies\nIts fields of snow and pinnacles of ice\nWith burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes                           _85\nOn black bare pointed islets ever beat\nWith sluggish surge, or where the secret caves,\nRugged and dark, winding among the springs\nOf fire and poison, inaccessible\nTo avarice or pride, their starry domes                              _90\nOf diamond and of gold expand above\nNumberless and immeasurable halls,\nFrequent with crystal column, and clear shrines\nOf pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.\nNor had that scene of ampler majesty                                 _95\nThan gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven\nAnd the green earth lost in his heart its claims\nTo love and wonder; he would linger long\nIn lonesome vales, making the wild his home,\nUntil the doves and squirrels would partake                          _100\nFrom his innocuous hand his bloodless food,\nLured by the gentle meaning of his looks,\nAnd the wild antelope, that starts whene’er\nThe dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend\nHer timid steps, to gaze upon a form\nMore graceful than her own.                                          _105\nHis wandering step,\nObedient to high thoughts, has visited\nThe awful ruins of the days of old:\nAthens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste\nWhere stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers                             _110\nOf Babylon, the eternal pyramids,\nMemphis and Thebes, and whatsoe’er of strange,\nSculptured on alabaster obelisk,\nOr jasper tomb, or mutilated sphynx,\nDark Aethiopia in her desert hills                                   _115\nConceals. Among the ruined temples there,\nStupendous columns, and wild images\nOf more than man, where marble daemons watch\nThe Zodiac’s brazen mystery, and dead men\nHang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,                   _120\nHe lingered, poring on memorials\nOf the world’s youth: through the long burning day\nGazed on those speechless shapes; nor, when the moon\nFilled the mysterious halls with floating shades\nSuspended he that task, but ever gazed                               _125\nAnd gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind\nFlashed like strong inspiration, and he saw\nThe thrilling secrets of the birth of time.\n\nMeanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food,\nHer daily portion, from her father’s tent,                           _130\nAnd spread her matting for his couch, and stole\nFrom duties and repose to tend his steps,\nEnamoured, yet not daring for deep awe\nTo speak her love:—and watched his nightly sleep,\nSleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips                             _135\nParted in slumber, whence the regular breath\nOf innocent dreams arose; then, when red morn\nMade paler the pale moon, to her cold home\nWildered, and wan, and panting, she returned.\n\nThe Poet, wandering on, through Arabie,                              _140\nAnd Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,\nAnd o’er the aerial mountains which pour down\nIndus and Oxus from their icy caves,\nIn joy and exultation held his way;\nTill in the vale of Cashmire, far within                             _145\nIts loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine\nBeneath the hollow rocks a natural bower,\nBeside a sparkling rivulet he stretched\nHis languid limbs. A vision on his sleep\nThere came, a dream of hopes that never yet                          _150\nHad flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid\nSate near him, talking in low solemn tones.\nHer voice was like the voice of his own soul\nHeard in the calm of thought; its music long,\nLike woven sounds of streams and breezes, held                       _155\nHis inmost sense suspended in its web\nOf many-coloured woof and shifting hues.\nKnowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,\nAnd lofty hopes of divine liberty,\nThoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,                            _160\nHerself a poet. Soon the solemn mood\nOf her pure mind kindled through all her frame\nA permeating fire; wild numbers then\nShe raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs\nSubdued by its own pathos; her fair hands                            _165\nWere bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp\nStrange symphony, and in their branching veins\nThe eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.\nThe beating of her heart was heard to fill\nThe pauses of her music, and her breath                              _170\nTumultuously accorded with those fits\nOf intermitted song. Sudden she rose,\nAs if her heart impatiently endured\nIts bursting burthen: at the sound he turned,\nAnd saw by the warm light of their own life                          _175\nHer glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil\nOf woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,\nHer dark locks floating in the breath of night,\nHer beamy bending eyes, her parted lips\nOutstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly.                       _180\nHis strong heart sunk and sickened with excess\nOf love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled\nHis gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet\nHer panting bosom:...she drew back a while,\nThen, yielding to the irresistible joy,                              _185\nWith frantic gesture and short breathless cry\nFolded his frame in her dissolving arms.\nNow blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night\nInvolved and swallowed up the vision; sleep,\nLike a dark flood suspended in its course,                           _190\nRolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.\n\nRoused by the shock he started from his trance—\nThe cold white light of morning, the blue moon\nLow in the west, the clear and garish hills,\nThe distinct valley and the vacant woods,                            _195\nSpread round him where he stood. Whither have fled\nThe hues of heaven that canopied his bower\nOf yesternight? The sounds that soothed his sleep,\nThe mystery and the majesty of Earth,\nThe joy, the exultation? His wan eyes                                _200\nGaze on the empty scene as vacantly\nAs ocean’s moon looks on the moon in heaven.\nThe spirit of sweet human love has sent\nA vision to the sleep of him who spurned\nHer choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues                               _205\nBeyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade;\nHe overleaps the bounds. Alas! Alas!\nWere limbs, and breath, and being intertwined\nThus treacherously? Lost, lost, for ever lost\nIn the wide pathless desert of dim sleep,                            _210\nThat beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death\nConduct to thy mysterious paradise,\nO Sleep? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds\nAnd pendent mountains seen in the calm lake,\nLead only to a black and watery depth,                               _215\nWhile death’s blue vault, with loathliest vapours hung,\nWhere every shade which the foul grave exhales\nHides its dead eye from the detested day,\nConducts, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms?\nThis doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart;                     _220\nThe insatiate hope which it awakened, stung\nHis brain even like despair.\nWhile daylight held\nThe sky, the Poet kept mute conference\nWith his still soul. At night the passion came,\nLike the fierce fiend of a distempered dream,                        _225\nAnd shook him from his rest, and led him forth\nInto the darkness.—As an eagle, grasped\nIn folds of the green serpent, feels her breast\nBurn with the poison, and precipitates\nThrough night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud,                 _230\nFrantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight\nO’er the wide aery wilderness: thus driven\nBy the bright shadow of that lovely dream,\nBeneath the cold glare of the desolate night,\nThrough tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells,                   _235\nStartling with careless step the moonlight snake,\nHe fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight,\nShedding the mockery of its vital hues\nUpon his cheek of death. He wandered on\nTill vast Aornos seen from Petra’s steep                             _240\nHung o’er the low horizon like a cloud;\nThrough Balk, and where the desolated tombs\nOf Parthian kings scatter to every wind\nTheir wasting dust, wildly he wandered on,\nDay after day a weary waste of hours,                                _245\nBearing within his life the brooding care\nThat ever fed on its decaying flame.\nAnd now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair,\nSered by the autumn of strange suffering\nSung dirges in the wind; his listless hand                           _250\nHung like dead bone within its withered skin;\nLife, and the lustre that consumed it, shone\nAs in a furnace burning secretly\nFrom his dark eyes alone. The cottagers,\nWho ministered with human charity                                    _255\nHis human wants, beheld with wondering awe\nTheir fleeting visitant. The mountaineer,\nEncountering on some dizzy precipice\nThat spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind\nWith lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet                      _260\nDisturbing not the drifted snow, had paused\nIn its career: the infant would conceal\nHis troubled visage in his mother’s robe\nIn terror at the glare of those wild eyes,\nTo remember their strange light in many a dream                      _265\nOf after-times; but youthful maidens, taught\nBy nature, would interpret half the woe\nThat wasted him, would call him with false names\nBrother and friend, would press his pallid hand\nAt parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path                   _270\nOf his departure from their father’s door.\n\nAt length upon the lone Chorasmian shore\nHe paused, a wide and melancholy waste\nOf putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged\nHis steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there,                        _275\nBeside a sluggish stream among the reeds.\nIt rose as he approached, and, with strong wings\nScaling the upward sky, bent its bright course\nHigh over the immeasurable main.\nHis eyes pursued its flight:—‘Thou hast a home,                     _280\nBeautiful bird; thou voyagest to thine home,\nWhere thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck\nWith thine, and welcome thy return with eyes\nBright in the lustre of their own fond joy.\nAnd what am I that I should linger here,                             _285\nWith voice far sweeter than thy dying notes,\nSpirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned\nTo beauty, wasting these surpassing powers\nIn the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven\nThat echoes not my thoughts?’ A gloomy smile                         _290\nOf desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips.\nFor sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly\nIts precious charge, and silent death exposed,\nFaithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure,\nWith doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.                  _295\n\nStartled by his own thoughts he looked around.\nThere was no fair fiend near him, not a sight\nOr sound of awe but in his own deep mind.\nA little shallop floating near the shore\nCaught the impatient wandering of his gaze.                          _300\nIt had been long abandoned, for its sides\nGaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints\nSwayed with the undulations of the tide.\nA restless impulse urged him to embark\nAnd meet lone Death on the drear ocean’s waste;                      _305\nFor well he knew that mighty Shadow loves\nThe slimy caverns of the populous deep.\n\nThe day was fair and sunny; sea and sky\nDrank its inspiring radiance, and the wind\nSwept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves.                 _310\nFollowing his eager soul, the wanderer\nLeaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloft\nOn the bare mast, and took his lonely seat,\nAnd felt the boat speed o’er the tranquil sea\nLike a torn cloud before the hurricane.                              _315\n\nAs one that in a silver vision floats\nObedient to the sweep of odorous winds\nUpon resplendent clouds, so rapidly\nAlong the dark and ruffled waters fled\nThe straining boat.—A whirlwind swept it on,                        _320\nWith fierce gusts and precipitating force,\nThrough the white ridges of the chafed sea.\nThe waves arose. Higher and higher still\nTheir fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest’s scourge\nLike serpents struggling in a vulture’s grasp.                       _325\nCalm and rejoicing in the fearful war\nOf wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast\nDescending, and black flood on whirlpool driven\nWith dark obliterating course, he sate:\nAs if their genii were the ministers                                 _330\nAppointed to conduct him to the light\nOf those beloved eyes, the Poet sate,\nHolding the steady helm. Evening came on,\nThe beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues\nHigh ‘mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray                        _335\nThat canopied his path o’er the waste deep;\nTwilight, ascending slowly from the east,\nEntwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks\nO’er the fair front and radiant eyes of day;\nNight followed, clad with stars. On every side                       _340\nMore horribly the multitudinous streams\nOf ocean’s mountainous waste to mutual war\nRushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock\nThe calm and spangled sky. The little boat\nStill fled before the storm; still fled, like foam                   _345\nDown the steep cataract of a wintry river;\nNow pausing on the edge of the riven wave;\nNow leaving far behind the bursting mass\nThat fell, convulsing ocean: safely fled—\nAs if that frail and wasted human form,                              _350\nHad been an elemental god.\n\nAt midnight\nThe moon arose; and lo! the ethereal cliffs\nOf Caucasus, whose icy summits shone\nAmong the stars like sunlight, and around\nWhose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves                     _355\nBursting and eddying irresistibly\nRage and resound forever.—Who shall save?—\nThe boat fled on,—the boiling torrent drove,—\nThe crags closed round with black and jagged arms,\nThe shattered mountain overhung the sea,                             _360\nAnd faster still, beyond all human speed,\nSuspended on the sweep of the smooth wave,\nThe little boat was driven. A cavern there\nYawned, and amid its slant and winding depths\nIngulfed the rushing sea. The boat fled on                           _365\nWith unrelaxing speed.—‘Vision and Love!’\nThe Poet cried aloud, ‘I have beheld\nThe path of thy departure. Sleep and death\nShall not divide us long.’\n\nThe boat pursued\nThe windings of the cavern. Daylight shone                           _370\nAt length upon that gloomy river’s flow;\nNow, where the fiercest war among the waves\nIs calm, on the unfathomable stream\nThe boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, riven,\nExposed those black depths to the azure sky,                         _375\nEre yet the flood’s enormous volume fell\nEven to the base of Caucasus, with sound\nThat shook the everlasting rocks, the mass\nFilled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm:\nStair above stair the eddying waters rose,                           _380\nCircling immeasurably fast, and laved\nWith alternating dash the gnarled roots\nOf mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms\nIn darkness over it. I’ the midst was left,\nReflecting, yet distorting every cloud,                              _385\nA pool of treacherous and tremendous calm.\nSeized by the sway of the ascending stream,\nWith dizzy swiftness, round, and round, and round,\nRidge after ridge the straining boat arose,\nTill on the verge of the extremest curve,                            _390\nWhere, through an opening of the rocky bank,\nThe waters overflow, and a smooth spot\nOf glassy quiet mid those battling tides\nIs left, the boat paused shuddering.—Shall it sink\nDown the abyss? Shall the reverting stress                           _395\nOf that resistless gulf embosom it?\nNow shall it fall?—A wandering stream of wind,\nBreathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail,\nAnd, lo! with gentle motion, between banks\nOf mossy slope, and on a placid stream,                              _400\nBeneath a woven grove it sails, and, hark!\nThe ghastly torrent mingles its far roar,\nWith the breeze murmuring in the musical woods.\nWhere the embowering trees recede, and leave\nA little space of green expanse, the cove                            _405\nIs closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers\nFor ever gaze on their own drooping eyes,\nReflected in the crystal calm. The wave\nOf the boat’s motion marred their pensive task,\nWhich naught but vagrant bird, or wanton wind,                       _410\nOr falling spear-grass, or their own decay\nHad e’er disturbed before. The Poet longed\nTo deck with their bright hues his withered hair,\nBut on his heart its solitude returned,\nAnd he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid                           _415\nIn those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frame\nHad yet performed its ministry: it hung\nUpon his life, as lightning in a cloud\nGleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods\nOf night close over it.\nThe noonday sun                                                      _420\nNow shone upon the forest, one vast mass\nOf mingling shade, whose brown magnificence\nA narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves,\nScooped in the dark base of their aery rocks,\nMocking its moans, respond and roar for ever.                        _425\nThe meeting boughs and implicated leaves\nWove twilight o’er the Poet’s path, as led\nBy love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death,\nHe sought in Nature’s dearest haunt some bank,\nHer cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark                             _430\nAnd dark the shades accumulate. The oak,\nExpanding its immense and knotty arms,\nEmbraces the light beech. The pyramids\nOf the tall cedar overarching frame\nMost solemn domes within, and far below,                             _435\nLike clouds suspended in an emerald sky,\nThe ash and the acacia floating hang\nTremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed\nIn rainbow and in fire, the parasites,\nStarred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around                      _440\nThe grey trunks, and, as gamesome infants’ eyes,\nWith gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles,\nFold their beams round the hearts of those that love,\nThese twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs\nUniting their close union; the woven leaves                          _445\nMake net-work of the dark blue light of day,\nAnd the night’s noontide clearness, mutable\nAs shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns\nBeneath these canopies extend their swells,\nFragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms                   _450\nMinute yet beautiful. One darkest glen\nSends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with jasmine,\nA soul-dissolving odour to invite\nTo some more lovely mystery. Through the dell,\nSilence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep                        _455\nTheir noonday watch, and sail among the shades,\nLike vaporous shapes half-seen; beyond, a well,\nDark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave,\nImages all the woven boughs above,\nAnd each depending leaf, and every speck                             _460\nOf azure sky, darting between their chasms;\nNor aught else in the liquid mirror laves\nIts portraiture, but some inconstant star\nBetween one foliaged lattice twinkling fair,\nOr painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon,                          _465\nOr gorgeous insect floating motionless,\nUnconscious of the day, ere yet his wings\nHave spread their glories to the gaze of noon.\n\nHither the Poet came. His eyes beheld\nTheir own wan light through the reflected lines                      _470\nOf his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth\nOf that still fountain; as the human heart,\nGazing in dreams over the gloomy grave,\nSees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard\nThe motion of the leaves, the grass that sprung                      _475\nStartled and glanced and trembled even to feel\nAn unaccustomed presence, and the sound\nOf the sweet brook that from the secret springs\nOf that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed\nTo stand beside him—clothed in no bright robes                      _480\nOf shadowy silver or enshrining light,\nBorrowed from aught the visible world affords\nOf grace, or majesty, or mystery;—\nBut, undulating woods, and silent well,\nAnd leaping rivulet, and evening gloom                               _485\nNow deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming,\nHeld commune with him, as if he and it\nWere all that was,—only...when his regard\nWas raised by intense pensiveness,...two eyes,\nTwo starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought,                       _490\nAnd seemed with their serene and azure smiles\nTo beckon him.\n\nObedient to the light\nThat shone within his soul, he went, pursuing\nThe windings of the dell.—The rivulet,\nWanton and wild, through many a green ravine                         _495\nBeneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell\nAmong the moss with hollow harmony\nDark and profound. Now on the polished stones\nIt danced; like childhood laughing as it went:\nThen, through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept,                _500\nReflecting every herb and drooping bud\nThat overhung its quietness.—‘O stream!\nWhose source is inaccessibly profound,\nWhither do thy mysterious waters tend?\nThou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness,                        _505\nThy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulfs,\nThy searchless fountain, and invisible course\nHave each their type in me; and the wide sky.\nAnd measureless ocean may declare as soon\nWhat oozy cavern or what wandering cloud                             _510\nContains thy waters, as the universe\nTell where these living thoughts reside, when stretched\nUpon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste\nI’ the passing wind!’\n\nBeside the grassy shore\nOf the small stream he went; he did impress                          _515\nOn the green moss his tremulous step, that caught\nStrong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one\nRoused by some joyous madness from the couch\nOf fever, he did move; yet, not like him,\nForgetful of the grave, where, when the flame                        _520\nOf his frail exultation shall be spent,\nHe must descend. With rapid steps he went\nBeneath the shade of trees, beside the flow\nOf the wild babbling rivulet; and now\nThe forest’s solemn canopies were changed                            _525\nFor the uniform and lightsome evening sky.\nGrey rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed\nThe struggling brook; tall spires of windlestrae\nThrew their thin shadows down the rugged slope,\nAnd nought but gnarled roots of ancient pines                        _530\nBranchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots\nThe unwilling soil. A gradual change was here,\nYet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away,\nThe smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin\nAnd white, and where irradiate dewy eyes                             _535\nHad shone, gleam stony orbs:—so from his steps\nBright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade\nOf the green groves, with all their odorous winds\nAnd musical motions. Calm, he still pursued\nThe stream, that with a larger volume now                            _540\nRolled through the labyrinthine dell; and there\nFretted a path through its descending curves\nWith its wintry speed. On every side now rose\nRocks, which, in unimaginable forms,\nLifted their black and barren pinnacles                              _545\nIn the light of evening, and its precipice\nObscuring the ravine, disclosed above,\nMid toppling stones, black gulfs and yawning caves,\nWhose windings gave ten thousand various tongues\nTo the loud stream. Lo! where the pass expands                       _550\nIts stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks,\nAnd seems, with its accumulated crags,\nTo overhang the world: for wide expand\nBeneath the wan stars and descending moon\nIslanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams,                       _555\nDim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom\nOf leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills\nMingling their flames with twilight, on the verge\nOf the remote horizon. The near scene,\nIn naked and severe simplicity,                                      _560\nMade contrast with the universe. A pine,\nRock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy\nIts swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast\nYielding one only response, at each pause\nIn most familiar cadence, with the howl                              _565\nThe thunder and the hiss of homeless streams\nMingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river\nFoaming and hurrying o’er its rugged path,\nFell into that immeasurable void\nScattering its waters to the passing winds.                          _570\n\nYet the grey precipice and solemn pine\nAnd torrent were not all;—one silent nook\nWas there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain,\nUpheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks,\nIt overlooked in its serenity                                        _575\nThe dark earth, and the bending vault of stars.\nIt was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile\nEven in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped\nThe fissured stones with its entwining arms,\nAnd did embower with leaves for ever green,                          _580\nAnd berries dark, the smooth and even space\nOf its inviolated floor, and here\nThe children of the autumnal whirlwind bore,\nIn wanton sport, those bright leaves, whose decay,\nRed, yellow, or ethereally pale,                                     _585\nRivals the pride of summer. ’Tis the haunt\nOf every gentle wind, whose breath can teach\nThe wilds to love tranquillity. One step,\nOne human step alone, has ever broken\nThe stillness of its solitude:—one voice                            _590\nAlone inspired its echoes;—even that voice\nWhich hither came, floating among the winds,\nAnd led the loveliest among human forms\nTo make their wild haunts the depository\nOf all the grace and beauty that endued                              _595\nIts motions, render up its majesty,\nScatter its music on the unfeeling storm,\nAnd to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould,\nNurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss,\nCommit the colours of that varying cheek,                            _600\nThat snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.\n\nThe dim and horned moon hung low, and poured\nA sea of lustre on the horizon’s verge\nThat overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist\nFilled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank                           _605\nWan moonlight even to fulness; not a star\nShone, not a sound was heard; the very winds,\nDanger’s grim playmates, on that precipice\nSlept, clasped in his embrace.—O, storm of death!\nWhose sightless speed divides this sullen night: 610\nAnd thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still\nGuiding its irresistible career\nIn thy devastating omnipotence,\nArt king of this frail world, from the red field\nOf slaughter, from the reeking hospital,                             _615\nThe patriot’s sacred couch, the snowy bed\nOf innocence, the scaffold and the throne,\nA mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls\nHis brother Death. A rare and regal prey\nHe hath prepared, prowling around the world;                         _620\nGlutted with which thou mayst repose, and men\nGo to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,\nNor ever more offer at thy dark shrine\nThe unheeded tribute of a broken heart.\n\nWhen on the threshold of the green recess                            _625\nThe wanderer’s footsteps fell, he knew that death\nWas on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,\nDid he resign his high and holy soul\nTo images of the majestic past,\nThat paused within his passive being now,                            _630\nLike winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe\nThrough some dim latticed chamber. He did place\nHis pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk\nOf the old pine. Upon an ivied stone\nReclined his languid head, his limbs did rest,                       _635\nDiffused and motionless, on the smooth brink\nOf that obscurest chasm;—and thus he lay,\nSurrendering to their final impulses\nThe hovering powers of life. Hope and despair,\nThe torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear                         _640\nMarred his repose; the influxes of sense,\nAnd his own being unalloyed by pain,\nYet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed\nThe stream of thought, till he lay breathing there\nAt peace, and faintly smiling:—his last sight                       _645\nWas the great moon, which o’er the western line\nOf the wide world her mighty horn suspended,\nWith whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed\nTo mingle. Now upon the jagged hills\nIt rests; and still as the divided frame                             _650\nOf the vast meteor sunk, the Poet’s blood,\nThat ever beat in mystic sympathy\nWith nature’s ebb and flow, grew feebler still:\nAnd when two lessening points of light alone\nGleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp                     _655\nOf his faint respiration scarce did stir\nThe stagnate night:—till the minutest ray\nWas quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.\nIt paused—it fluttered. But when heaven remained\nUtterly black, the murky shades involved                             _660\nAn image, silent, cold, and motionless,\nAs their own voiceless earth and vacant air.\nEven as a vapour fed with golden beams\nThat ministered on sunlight, ere the west\nEclipses it, was now that wondrous frame—                           _665\nNo sense, no motion, no divinity—\nA fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings\nThe breath of heaven did wander—a bright stream\nOnce fed with many-voiced waves—a dream\nOf youth, which night and time have quenched for ever,               _670\nStill, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.\n\nOh, for Medea’s wondrous alchemy,\nWhich wheresoe’er it fell made the earth gleam\nWith bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale\nFrom vernal blooms fresh fragrance! O, that God,                     _675\nProfuse of poisons, would concede the chalice\nWhich but one living man has drained, who now,\nVessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels\nNo proud exemption in the blighting curse\nHe bears, over the world wanders for ever,                           _680\nLone as incarnate death! O, that the dream\nOf dark magician in his visioned cave,\nRaking the cinders of a crucible\nFor life and power, even when his feeble hand\nShakes in its last decay, were the true law                          _685\nOf this so lovely world! But thou art fled,\nLike some frail exhalation; which the dawn\nRobes in its golden beams,—ah! thou hast fled!\nThe brave, the gentle and the beautiful,\nThe child of grace and genius. Heartless things                      _690\nAre done and said i’ the world, and many worms\nAnd beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth\nFrom sea and mountain, city and wilderness,\nIn vesper low or joyous orison,\nLifts still its solemn voice:—but thou art fled—                   _695\nThou canst no longer know or love the shapes\nOf this phantasmal scene, who have to thee\nBeen purest ministers, who are, alas!\nNow thou art not. Upon those pallid lips\nSo sweet even in their silence, on those eyes                        _700\nThat image sleep in death, upon that form\nYet safe from the worm’s outrage, let no tear\nBe shed—not even in thought. Nor, when those hues\nAre gone, and those divinest lineaments,\nWorn by the senseless wind, shall live alone                         _705\nIn the frail pauses of this simple strain,\nLet not high verse, mourning the memory\nOf that which is no more, or painting’s woe\nOr sculpture, speak in feeble imagery\nTheir own cold powers. Art and eloquence,                            _710\nAnd all the shows o’ the world are frail and vain\nTo weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.\nIt is a woe “too deep for tears,” when all\nIs reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,\nWhose light adorned the world around it, leaves                      _715\nThose who remain behind, not sobs or groans,\nThe passionate tumult of a clinging hope;\nBut pale despair and cold tranquillity,\nNature’s vast frame, the web of human things,\nBirth and the grave, that are not as they were.                      _720\n\n\nNotes:\n_219 Conduct edition 1816. See “Editor’s Notes”.\n_530 roots edition 1816: query stumps or trunks. See “Editor’s Notes”.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On Alastor, By Mrs. Shelley.",
    "body": "“Alastor” is written in a very different tone from “Queen Mab”. In the\nlatter, Shelley poured out all the cherished speculations of his\nyouth—all the irrepressible emotions of sympathy, censure, and hope,\nto which the present suffering, and what he considers the proper\ndestiny of his fellow-creatures, gave birth. “Alastor”, on the\ncontrary, contains an individual interest only. A very few years, with\ntheir attendant events, had checked the ardour of Shelley’s hopes,\nthough he still thought them well-grounded, and that to advance their\nfulfilment was the noblest task man could achieve.\n\nThis is neither the time nor place to speak of the misfortunes that\nchequered his life. It will be sufficient to say that, in all he did,\nhe at the time of doing it believed himself justified to his own\nconscience; while the various ills of poverty and loss of friends\nbrought home to him the sad realities of life. Physical suffering had\nalso considerable influence in causing him to turn his eyes inward;\ninclining him rather to brood over the thoughts and emotions of his\nown soul than to glance abroad, and to make, as in “Queen Mab”, the\nwhole universe the object and subject of his song. In the Spring of\n1815, an eminent physician pronounced that he was dying rapidly of a\nconsumption; abscesses were formed on his lungs, and he suffered acute\nspasms. Suddenly a complete change took place; and though through life\nhe was a martyr to pain and debility, every symptom of pulmonary\ndisease vanished. His nerves, which nature had formed sensitive to an\nunexampled degree, were rendered still more susceptible by the state\nof his health.\n\nAs soon as the peace of 1814 had opened the Continent, he went abroad.\nHe visited some of the more magnificent scenes of Switzerland, and\nreturned to England from Lucerne, by the Reuss and the Rhine. This\nriver-navigation enchanted him. In his favourite poem of “Thalaba”,\nhis imagination had been excited by a description of such a voyage. In\nthe summer of 1815, after a tour along the southern coast of\nDevonshire and a visit to Clifton, he rented a house on Bishopgate\nHeath, on the borders of Windsor Forest, where he enjoyed several\nmonths of comparative health and tranquil happiness. The later summer\nmonths were warm and dry. Accompanied by a few friends, he visited the\nsource of the Thames, making a voyage in a wherry from Windsor to\nCrichlade. His beautiful stanzas in the churchyard of Lechlade were\nwritten on that occasion. “Alastor” was composed on his return. He\nspent his days under the oak-shades of Windsor Great Park; and the\nmagnificent woodland was a fitting study to inspire the various\ndescriptions of forest scenery we find in the poem.\n\nNone of Shelley’s poems is more characteristic than this. The solemn\nspirit that reigns throughout, the worship of the majesty of nature,\nthe broodings of a poet’s heart in solitude—the mingling of the\nexulting joy which the various aspects of the visible universe\ninspires with the sad and struggling pangs which human passion\nimparts—give a touching interest to the whole. The death which he had\noften contemplated during the last months as certain and near he here\nrepresented in such colours as had, in his lonely musings, soothed his\nsoul to peace. The versification sustains the solemn spirit which\nbreathes throughout: it is peculiarly melodious. The poem ought rather\nto be considered didactic than narrative: it was the outpouring of his\nown emotions, embodied in the purest form he could conceive, painted\nin the ideal hues which his brilliant imagination inspired, and\nsoftened by the recent anticipation of death.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Poem In Twelve Cantos.",
    "body": "Osais de Broton ethnos aglaiais aptomestha\nperainei pros eschaton\nploon nausi d oute pezos ion an eurois\nes Uperboreon agona thaumatan odon.\n\nPind. Pyth. x.\n\n[Composed in the neighbourhood of Bisham Wood, near Great Marlow,\nBucks, 1817 (April-September 23); printed, with title (dated 1818),\n“Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of\nthe Nineteenth Century”, October, November, 1817, but suppressed,\npending revision, by the publishers, C & J. Ollier. (A few copies had\ngot out, but these were recalled, and some recovered.) Published, with\na fresh title-page and twenty-seven cancel-leaves, as “The Revolt of\nIslam”, January 10, 1818. Sources of the text are (1) “Laon and\nCythna”, 1818; (2) “The Revolt of Islam”, 1818; (3) “Poetical Works”,\n1839, editions 1st and 2nd—both edited by Mrs. Shelley. A copy, with\nseveral pages missing, of the “Preface”, the Dedication”, and “Canto\n1” of “Laon and Cythna” is amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the\nBodleian. For a full collation of this manuscript see Mr. C.D.\nLocock’s “Examination of the Shelley Manuscripts at the Bodleian\nLibrary”. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903. Two manuscript fragments from\nthe Hunt papers are also extant: one (twenty-four lines) in the\npossession of Mr. W.M. Rossetti, another (9 23 9 to 29 6) in that of\nMr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B. See “The Shelley Library”, pages 83-86, for\nan account of the copy of “Laon” upon which Shelley worked in revising\nfor publication.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Author’S Preface.",
    "body": "The Poem which I now present to the world is an attempt from which I\nscarcely dare to expect success, and in which a writer of established\nfame might fail without disgrace. It is an experiment on the temper of\nthe public mind, as to how far a thirst for a happier condition of\nmoral and political society survives, among the enlightened and\nrefined, the tempests which have shaken the age in which we live. I\nhave sought to enlist the harmony of metrical language, the ethereal\ncombinations of the fancy, the rapid and subtle transitions of human\npassion, all those elements which essentially compose a Poem, in the\ncause of a liberal and comprehensive morality; and in the view of\nkindling within the bosoms of my readers a virtuous enthusiasm for\nthose doctrines of liberty and justice, that faith and hope in\nsomething good, which neither violence nor misrepresentation nor\nprejudice can ever totally extinguish among mankind.\n\nFor this purpose I have chosen a story of human passion in its most\nuniversal character, diversified with moving and romantic adventures,\nand appealing, in contempt of all artificial opinions or institutions,\nto the common sympathies of every human breast. I have made no attempt\nto recommend the motives which I would substitute for those at present\ngoverning mankind, by methodical and systematic argument. I would only\nawaken the feelings, so that the reader should see the beauty of true\nvirtue, and be incited to those inquiries which have led to my moral\nand political creed, and that of some of the sublimest intellects in\nthe world. The Poem therefore (with the exception of the first canto,\nwhich is purely introductory) is narrative, not didactic. It is a\nsuccession of pictures illustrating the growth and progress of\nindividual mind aspiring after excellence, and devoted to the love of\nmankind; its influence in refining and making pure the most daring and\nuncommon impulses of the imagination, the understanding, and the\nsenses; its impatience at ‘all the oppressions which are done under\nthe sun;’ its tendency to awaken public hope, and to enlighten and\nimprove mankind; the rapid effects of the application of that\ntendency; the awakening of an immense nation from their slavery and\ndegradation to a true sense of moral dignity and freedom; the\nbloodless dethronement of their oppressors, and the unveiling of the\nreligious frauds by which they had been deluded into submission; the\ntranquillity of successful patriotism, and the universal toleration\nand benevolence of true philanthropy; the treachery and barbarity of\nhired soldiers; vice not the object of punishment and hatred, but\nkindness and pity; the faithlessness of tyrants; the confederacy of\nthe Rulers of the World and the restoration of the expelled Dynasty by\nforeign arms; the massacre and extermination of the Patriots, and the\nvictory of established power; the consequences of legitimate\ndespotism,—civil war, famine, plague, superstition, and an utter\nextinction of the domestic affections; the judicial murder of the\nadvocates of Liberty; the temporary triumph of oppression, that secure\nearnest of its final and inevitable fall; the transient nature of\nignorance and error and the eternity of genius and virtue. Such is the\nseries of delineations of which the Poem consists. And, if the lofty\npassions with which it has been my scope to distinguish this story\nshall not excite in the reader a generous impulse, an ardent thirst\nfor excellence, an interest profound and strong such as belongs to no\nmeaner desires, let not the failure be imputed to a natural unfitness\nfor human sympathy in these sublime and animating themes. It is the\nbusiness of the Poet to communicate to others the pleasure and the\nenthusiasm arising out of those images and feelings in the vivid\npresence of which within his own mind consists at once his inspiration\nand his reward.\n\nThe panic which, like an epidemic transport, seized upon all classes\nof men during the excesses consequent upon the French Revolution, is\ngradually giving place to sanity. It has ceased to be believed that\nwhole generations of mankind ought to consign themselves to a hopeless\ninheritance of ignorance and misery, because a nation of men who had\nbeen dupes and slaves for centuries were incapable of conducting\nthemselves with the wisdom and tranquillity of freemen so soon as some\nof their fetters were partially loosened. That their conduct could not\nhave been marked by any other characters than ferocity and\nthoughtlessness is the historical fact from which liberty derives all\nits recommendations, and falsehood the worst features of its\ndeformity. There is a reflux in the tide of human things which bears\nthe shipwrecked hopes of men into a secure haven after the storms are\npast. Methinks, those who now live have survived an age of despair.\n\nThe French Revolution may be considered as one of those manifestations\nof a general state of feeling among civilised mankind produced by a\ndefect of correspondence between the knowledge existing in society and\nthe improvement or gradual abolition of political institutions. The\nyear 1788 may be assumed as the epoch of one of the most important\ncrises produced by this feeling. The sympathies connected with that\nevent extended to every bosom. The most generous and amiable natures\nwere those which participated the most extensively in these\nsympathies. But such a degree of unmingled good was expected as it was\nimpossible to realise. If the Revolution had been in every respect\nprosperous, then misrule and superstition would lose half their claims\nto our abhorrence, as fetters which the captive can unlock with the\nslightest motion of his fingers, and which do not eat with poisonous\nrust into the soul. The revulsion occasioned by the atrocities of the\ndemagogues, and the re-establishment of successive tyrannies in\nFrance, was terrible, and felt in the remotest corner of the civilised\nworld. Could they listen to the plea of reason who had groaned under\nthe calamities of a social state according to the provisions of which\none man riots in luxury whilst another famishes for want of bread? Can\nhe who the day before was a trampled slave suddenly become\nliberal-minded, forbearing, and independent? This is the consequence\nof the habits of a state of society to be produced by resolute\nperseverance and indefatigable hope, and long-suffering and\nlong-believing courage, and the systematic efforts of generations of\nmen of intellect and virtue. Such is the lesson which experience\nteaches now. But, on the first reverses of hope in the progress of\nFrench liberty, the sanguine eagerness for good overleaped the\nsolution of these questions, and for a time extinguished itself in the\nunexpectedness of their result. Thus, many of the most ardent and\ntender-hearted of the worshippers of public good have been morally\nruined by what a partial glimpse of the events they deplored appeared\nto show as the melancholy desolation of all their cherished hopes.\nHence gloom and misanthropy have become the characteristics of the age\nin which we live, the solace of a disappointment that unconsciously\nfinds relief only in the wilful exaggeration of its own despair. This\ninfluence has tainted the literature of the age with the hopelessness\nof the minds from which it flows. Metaphysics (I ought to except sir\nW. Drummond’s “Academical Questions”; a volume of very acute and\npowerful metaphysical criticism.), and inquiries into moral and\npolitical science, have become little else than vain attempts to\nrevive exploded superstitions, or sophisms like those of Mr. Malthus\n(It is remarkable, as a symptom of the revival of public hope, that\nMr. Malthus has assigned, in the later editions of his work, an\nindefinite dominion to moral restraint over the principle of\npopulation. This concession answers all the inferences from his\ndoctrine unfavourable to human improvement, and reduces the “Essay on\nPopulation” to a commentary illustrative of the unanswerableness of\n“Political Justice”.), calculated to lull the oppressors of mankind\ninto a security of everlasting triumph. Our works of fiction and\npoetry have been overshadowed by the same infectious gloom. But\nmankind appear to me to be emerging from their trance. I am aware,\nmethinks, of a slow, gradual, silent change. In that belief I have\ncomposed the following Poem.\n\nI do not presume to enter into competition with our greatest\ncontemporary Poets. Yet I am unwilling to tread in the footsteps of\nany who have preceded me. I have sought to avoid the imitation of any\nstyle of language or versification peculiar to the original minds of\nwhich it is the character; designing that, even if what I have\nproduced be worthless, it should still be properly my own. Nor have I\npermitted any system relating to mere words to divert the attention of\nthe reader, from whatever interest I may have succeeded in creating,\nto my own ingenuity in contriving to disgust them according to the\nrules of criticism. I have simply clothed my thoughts in what appeared\nto me the most obvious and appropriate language. A person familiar\nwith nature, and with the most celebrated productions of the human\nmind, can scarcely err in following the instinct, with respect to\nselection of language, produced by that familiarity.\n\nThere is an education peculiarly fitted for a Poet, without which\ngenius and sensibility can hardly fill the circle of their capacities.\nNo education, indeed, can entitle to this appellation a dull and\nunobservant mind, or one, though neither dull nor unobservant, in\nwhich the channels of communication between thought and expression\nhave been obstructed or closed. How far it is my fortune to belong to\neither of the latter classes I cannot know. I aspire to be something\nbetter. The circumstances of my accidental education have been\nfavourable to this ambition. I have been familiar from boyhood with\nmountains and lakes and the sea, and the solitude of forests: Danger,\nwhich sports upon the brink of precipices, has been my playmate. I\nhave trodden the glaciers of the Alps, and lived under the eye of Mont\nBlanc. I have been a wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down\nmighty rivers, and seen the sun rise and set, and the stars come\nforth, whilst I have sailed night and day down a rapid stream among\nmountains. I have seen populous cities, and have watched the passions\nwhich rise and spread, and sink and change, amongst assembled\nmultitudes of men. I have seen the theatre of the more visible ravages\nof tyranny and war, cities and villages reduced to scattered groups of\nblack and roofless houses, and the naked inhabitants sitting famished\nupon their desolated thresholds. I have conversed with living men of\ngenius. The poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, and modern Italy, and\nour own country, has been to me, like external nature, a passion and\nan enjoyment. Such are the sources from which the materials for the\nimagery of my Poem have been drawn. I have considered Poetry in its\nmost comprehensive sense; and have read the Poets and the Historians\nand the Metaphysicians (In this sense there may be such a thing as\nperfectibility in works of fiction, notwithstanding the concession\noften made by the advocates of human improvement, that perfectibility\nis a term applicable only to science.) whose writings have been\naccessible to me, and have looked upon the beautiful and majestic\nscenery of the earth, as common sources of those elements which it is\nthe province of the Poet to embody and combine. Yet the experience and\nthe feelings to which I refer do not in themselves constitute men\nPoets, but only prepares them to be the auditors of those who are. How\nfar I shall be found to possess that more essential attribute of\nPoetry, the power of awakening in others sensations like those which\nanimate my own bosom, is that which, to speak sincerely, I know not;\nand which, with an acquiescent and contented spirit, I expect to be\ntaught by the effect which I shall produce upon those whom I now\naddress.\n\nI have avoided, as I have said before, the imitation of any\ncontemporary style. But there must be a resemblance, which does not\ndepend upon their own will, between all the writers of any particular\nage. They cannot escape from subjection to a common influence which\narises out of an infinite combination of circumstances belonging to\nthe times in which they live; though each is in a degree the author of\nthe very influence by which his being is thus pervaded. Thus, the\ntragic poets of the age of Pericles; the Italian revivers of ancient\nlearning; those mighty intellects of our own country that succeeded\nthe Reformation, the translators of the Bible, Shakespeare, Spenser,\nthe Dramatists of the reign of Elizabeth, and Lord Bacon (Milton\nstands alone in the age which he illumined.); the colder spirits of\nthe interval that succeeded;—all resemble each other, and differ from\nevery other in their several classes. In this view of things, Ford can\nno more be called the imitator of Shakespeare than Shakespeare the\nimitator of Ford. There were perhaps few other points of resemblance\nbetween these two men than that which the universal and inevitable\ninfluence of their age produced. And this is an influence which\nneither the meanest scribbler nor the sublimest genius of any era can\nescape; and which I have not attempted to escape.\n\nI have adopted the stanza of Spenser (a measure inexpressibly\nbeautiful), not because I consider it a finer model of poetical\nharmony than the blank verse of Shakespeare and Milton, but because in\nthe latter there is no shelter for mediocrity; you must either succeed\nor fail. This perhaps an aspiring spirit should desire. But I was\nenticed also by the brilliancy and magnificence of sound which a mind\nthat has been nourished upon musical thoughts can produce by a just\nand harmonious arrangement of the pauses of this measure. Yet there\nwill be found some instances where I have completely failed in this\nattempt, and one, which I here request the reader to consider as an\nerratum, where there is left, most inadvertently, an alexandrine in\nthe middle of a stanza.\n\nBut in this, as in every other respect, I have written fearlessly. It\nis the misfortune of this age that its Writers, too thoughtless of\nimmortality, are exquisitely sensible to temporary praise or blame.\nThey write with the fear of Reviews before their eyes. This system of\ncriticism sprang up in that torpid interval when Poetry was not.\nPoetry, and the art which professes to regulate and limit its powers,\ncannot subsist together. Longinus could not have been the contemporary\nof Homer, nor Boileau of Horace. Yet this species of criticism never\npresumed to assert an understanding of its own; it has always, unlike\ntrue science, followed, not preceded, the opinion of mankind, and\nwould even now bribe with worthless adulation some of our greatest\nPoets to impose gratuitous fetters on their own imaginations, and\nbecome unconscious accomplices in the daily murder of all genius\neither not so aspiring or not so fortunate as their own. I have sought\ntherefore to write, as I believe that Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton\nwrote, with an utter disregard of anonymous censure. I am certain that\ncalumny and misrepresentation, though it may move me to compassion,\ncannot disturb my peace. I shall understand the expressive silence of\nthose sagacious enemies who dare not trust themselves to speak. I\nshall endeavour to extract, from the midst of insult and contempt and\nmaledictions, those admonitions which may tend to correct whatever\nimperfections such censurers may discover in this my first serious\nappeal to the Public. If certain Critics were as clear-sighted as they\nare malignant, how great would be the benefit to be derived from their\nvirulent writings! As it is, I fear I shall be malicious enough to be\namused with their paltry tricks and lame invectives. Should the Public\njudge that my composition is worthless, I shall indeed bow before the\ntribunal from which Milton received his crown of immortality, and\nshall seek to gather, if I live, strength from that defeat, which may\nnerve me to some new enterprise of thought which may not be worthless.\nI cannot conceive that Lucretius, when he meditated that poem whose\ndoctrines are yet the basis of our metaphysical knowledge, and whose\neloquence has been the wonder of mankind, wrote in awe of such censure\nas the hired sophists of the impure and superstitious noblemen of Rome\nmight affix to what he should produce. It was at the period when\nGreece was led captive and Asia made tributary to the Republic, fast\nverging itself to slavery and ruin, that a multitude of Syrian\ncaptives, bigoted to the worship of their obscene Ashtaroth, and the\nunworthy successors of Socrates and Zeno, found there a precarious\nsubsistence by administering, under the name of freedmen, to the vices\nand vanities of the great. These wretched men were skilled to plead,\nwith a superficial but plausible set of sophisms, in favour of that\ncontempt for virtue which is the portion of slaves, and that faith in\nportents, the most fatal substitute for benevolence in the\nimaginations of men, which, arising from the enslaved communities of\nthe East, then first began to overwhelm the western nations in its\nstream. Were these the kind of men whose disapprobation the wise and\nlofty-minded Lucretius should have regarded with a salutary awe? The\nlatest and perhaps the meanest of those who follow in his footsteps\nwould disdain to hold life on such conditions.\n\nThe Poem now presented to the Public occupied little more than six\nmonths in the composition. That period has been devoted to the task\nwith unremitting ardour and enthusiasm. I have exercised a watchful\nand earnest criticism on my work as it grew under my hands. I would\nwillingly have sent it forth to the world with that perfection which\nlong labour and revision is said to bestow. But I found that, if I\nshould gain something in exactness by this method, I might lose much\nof the newness and energy of imagery and language as it flowed fresh\nfrom my mind. And, although the mere composition occupied no more than\nsix months, the thoughts thus arranged were slowly gathered in as many\nyears.\n\nI trust that the reader will carefully distinguish between those\nopinions which have a dramatic propriety in reference to the\ncharacters which they are designed to elucidate, and such as are\nproperly my own. The erroneous and degrading idea which men have\nconceived of a Supreme Being, for instance, is spoken against, but not\nthe Supreme Being itself. The belief which some superstitious persons\nwhom I have brought upon the stage entertain of the Deity, as\ninjurious to the character of his benevolence, is widely different\nfrom my own. In recommending also a great and important change in the\nspirit which animates the social institutions of mankind, I have\navoided all flattery to those violent and malignant passions of our\nnature which are ever on the watch to mingle with and to alloy the\nmost beneficial innovations. There is no quarter given to Revenge, or\nEnvy, or Prejudice. Love is celebrated everywhere as the sole law\nwhich should govern the moral world.\n\n\n\nThere is no danger to a man that knows\nWhat life and death is: there’s not any law\nExceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful\nThat he should stoop to any other law.—CHAPMAN.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 1.",
    "body": "1.\nWhen the last hope of trampled France had failed\nLike a brief dream of unremaining glory,\nFrom visions of despair I rose, and scaled\nThe peak of an aerial promontory,                                    _130\nWhose caverned base with the vexed surge was hoary;\nAnd saw the golden dawn break forth, and waken\nEach cloud, and every wave:—but transitory\nThe calm; for sudden, the firm earth was shaken,\nAs if by the last wreck its frame were overtaken.                    _135\n\n2.\nSo as I stood, one blast of muttering thunder\nBurst in far peals along the waveless deep,\nWhen, gathering fast, around, above, and under,\nLong trains of tremulous mist began to creep,\nUntil their complicating lines did steep                             _140\nThe orient sun in shadow:—not a sound\nWas heard; one horrible repose did keep\nThe forests and the floods, and all around\nDarkness more dread than night was poured upon the ground.\n\n3.\nHark! ’tis the rushing of a wind that sweeps                         _145\nEarth and the ocean. See! the lightnings yawn\nDeluging Heaven with fire, and the lashed deeps\nGlitter and boil beneath: it rages on,\nOne mighty stream, whirlwind and waves upthrown,\nLightning, and hail, and darkness eddying by.                        _150\nThere is a pause—the sea-birds, that were gone\nInto their caves to shriek, come forth, to spy\nWhat calm has fall’n on earth, what light is in the sky.\n\n4.\nFor, where the irresistible storm had cloven\nThat fearful darkness, the blue sky was seen                         _155\nFretted with many a fair cloud interwoven\nMost delicately, and the ocean green,\nBeneath that opening spot of blue serene,\nQuivered like burning emerald; calm was spread\nOn all below; but far on high, between                               _160\nEarth and the upper air, the vast clouds fled,\nCountless and swift as leaves on autumn’s tempest shed.\n\n5.\nFor ever, as the war became more fierce\nBetween the whirlwinds and the rack on high,\nThat spot grew more serene; blue light did pierce                    _165\nThe woof of those white clouds, which seem to lie\nFar, deep, and motionless; while through the sky\nThe pallid semicircle of the moon\nPassed on, in slow and moving majesty;\nIts upper horn arrayed in mists, which soon                          _170\nBut slowly fled, like dew beneath the beams of noon.\n\n6.\nI could not choose but gaze; a fascination\nDwelt in that moon, and sky, and clouds, which drew\nMy fancy thither, and in expectation\nOf what I knew not, I remained:—the hue                             _175\nOf the white moon, amid that heaven so blue,\nSuddenly stained with shadow did appear;\nA speck, a cloud, a shape, approaching grew,\nLike a great ship in the sun’s sinking sphere\nBeheld afar at sea, and swift it came anear.                         _180\n\n7.\nEven like a bark, which from a chasm of mountains,\nDark, vast and overhanging, on a river\nWhich there collects the strength of all its fountains,\nComes forth, whilst with the speed its frame doth quiver,\nSails, oars and stream, tending to one endeavour;                    _185\nSo, from that chasm of light a winged Form\nOn all the winds of heaven approaching ever\nFloated, dilating as it came; the storm\nPursued it with fierce blasts, and lightnings swift and warm.\n\n8.\nA course precipitous, of dizzy speed,                                _190\nSuspending thought and breath; a monstrous sight!\nFor in the air do I behold indeed\nAn Eagle and a Serpent wreathed in fight:—\nAnd now, relaxing its impetuous flight,\nBefore the aerial rock on which I stood,                             _195\nThe Eagle, hovering, wheeled to left and right,\nAnd hung with lingering wings over the flood,\nAnd startled with its yells the wide air’s solitude.\n\n9.\nA shaft of light upon its wings descended,\nAnd every golden feather gleamed therein—                           _200\nFeather and scale, inextricably blended.\nThe Serpent’s mailed and many-coloured skin\nShone through the plumes its coils were twined within\nBy many a swoln and knotted fold, and high\nAnd far, the neck, receding lithe and thin,                          _205\nSustained a crested head, which warily\nShifted and glanced before the Eagle’s steadfast eye.\n\n10.\nAround, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling\nWith clang of wings and scream, the Eagle sailed\nIncessantly—sometimes on high concealing                            _210\nIts lessening orbs, sometimes as if it failed,\nDrooped through the air; and still it shrieked and wailed,\nAnd casting back its eager head, with beak\nAnd talon unremittingly assailed\nThe wreathed Serpent, who did ever seek                              _215\nUpon his enemy’s heart a mortal wound to wreak.\n\n11.\nWhat life, what power, was kindled and arose\nWithin the sphere of that appalling fray!\nFor, from the encounter of those wondrous foes,\nA vapour like the sea’s suspended spray                              _220\nHung gathered; in the void air, far away,\nFloated the shattered plumes; bright scales did leap,\nWhere’er the Eagle’s talons made their way,\nLike sparks into the darkness;—as they sweep,\nBlood stains the snowy foam of the tumultuous deep.                  _225\n\n12.\nSwift chances in that combat—many a check,\nAnd many a change, a dark and wild turmoil;\nSometimes the Snake around his enemy’s neck\nLocked in stiff rings his adamantine coil,\nUntil the Eagle, faint with pain and toil,                           _230\nRemitted his strong flight, and near the sea\nLanguidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil\nHis adversary, who then reared on high\nHis red and burning crest, radiant with victory.\n\n13.\nThen on the white edge of the bursting surge,                        _235\nWhere they had sunk together, would the Snake\nRelax his suffocating grasp, and scourge\nThe wind with his wild writhings; for to break\nThat chain of torment, the vast bird would shake\nThe strength of his unconquerable wings                              _240\nAs in despair, and with his sinewy neck,\nDissolve in sudden shock those linked rings—\nThen soar, as swift as smoke from a volcano springs.\n\n14.\nWile baffled wile, and strength encountered strength,\nThus long, but unprevailing:—the event                              _245\nOf that portentous fight appeared at length:\nUntil the lamp of day was almost spent\nIt had endured, when lifeless, stark, and rent,\nHung high that mighty Serpent, and at last\nFell to the sea, while o’er the continent                            _250\nWith clang of wings and scream the Eagle passed,\nHeavily borne away on the exhausted blast.\n\n15.\nAnd with it fled the tempest, so that ocean\nAnd earth and sky shone through the atmosphere—\nOnly, ’twas strange to see the red commotion                         _255\nOf waves like mountains o’er the sinking sphere\nOf sunset sweep, and their fierce roar to hear\nAmid the calm: down the steep path I wound\nTo the sea-shore—the evening was most clear\nAnd beautiful, and there the sea I found                             _260\nCalm as a cradled child in dreamless slumber bound.\n\n16.\nThere was a Woman, beautiful as morning,\nSitting beneath the rocks, upon the sand\nOf the waste sea—fair as one flower adorning\nAn icy wilderness; each delicate hand                                _265\nLay crossed upon her bosom, and the band\nOf her dark hair had fall’n, and so she sate\nLooking upon the waves; on the bare strand\nUpon the sea-mark a small boat did wait,\nFair as herself, like Love by Hope left desolate.                    _270\n\n17.\nIt seemed that this fair Shape had looked upon\nThat unimaginable fight, and now\nThat her sweet eyes were weary of the sun,\nAs brightly it illustrated her woe;\nFor in the tears which silently to flow                              _275\nPaused not, its lustre hung: she watching aye\nThe foam-wreaths which the faint tide wove below\nUpon the spangled sands, groaned heavily,\nAnd after every groan looked up over the sea.\n\n18.\nAnd when she saw the wounded Serpent make                            _280\nHis path between the waves, her lips grew pale,\nParted, and quivered; the tears ceased to break\nFrom her immovable eyes; no voice of wail\nEscaped her; but she rose, and on the gale\nLoosening her star-bright robe and shadowy hair                      _285\nPoured forth her voice; the caverns of the vale\nThat opened to the ocean, caught it there,\nAnd filled with silver sounds the overflowing air.\n\n19.\nShe spake in language whose strange melody\nMight not belong to earth. I heard alone,                            _290\nWhat made its music more melodious be,\nThe pity and the love of every tone;\nBut to the Snake those accents sweet were known\nHis native tongue and hers; nor did he beat\nThe hoar spray idly then, but winding on                             _295\nThrough the green shadows of the waves that meet\nNear to the shore, did pause beside her snowy feet.\n\n20.\nThen on the sands the Woman sate again,\nAnd wept and clasped her hands, and all between,\nRenewed the unintelligible strain                                    _300\nOf her melodious voice and eloquent mien;\nAnd she unveiled her bosom, and the green\nAnd glancing shadows of the sea did play\nO’er its marmoreal depth:—one moment seen,\nFor ere the next, the Serpent did obey                               _305\nHer voice, and, coiled in rest in her embrace it lay.\n\n21.\nThen she arose, and smiled on me with eyes\nSerene yet sorrowing, like that planet fair,\nWhile yet the daylight lingereth in the skies\nWhich cleaves with arrowy beams the dark-red air,                    _310\nAnd said: ‘To grieve is wise, but the despair\nWas weak and vain which led thee here from sleep:\nThis shalt thou know, and more, if thou dost dare\nWith me and with this Serpent, o’er the deep,\nA voyage divine and strange, companionship to keep.’                 _315\n\n22.\nHer voice was like the wildest, saddest tone,\nYet sweet, of some loved voice heard long ago.\nI wept. ‘Shall this fair woman all alone,\nOver the sea with that fierce Serpent go?\nHis head is on her heart, and who can know                           _320\nHow soon he may devour his feeble prey?’—\nSuch were my thoughts, when the tide gan to flow;\nAnd that strange boat like the moon’s shade did sway\nAmid reflected stars that in the waters lay:—\n\n23.\nA boat of rare device, which had no sail                             _325\nBut its own curved prow of thin moonstone,\nWrought like a web of texture fine and frail,\nTo catch those gentlest winds which are not known\nTo breathe, but by the steady speed alone\nWith which it cleaves the sparkling sea; and now                     _330\nWe are embarked—the mountains hang and frown\nOver the starry deep that gleams below,\nA vast and dim expanse, as o’er the waves we go.\n\n24.\nAnd as we sailed, a strange and awful tale\nThat Woman told, like such mysterious dream                          _335\nAs makes the slumberer’s cheek with wonder pale!\n’Twas midnight, and around, a shoreless stream,\nWide ocean rolled, when that majestic theme\nShrined in her heart found utterance, and she bent\nHer looks on mine; those eyes a kindling beam                        _340\nOf love divine into my spirit sent,\nAnd ere her lips could move, made the air eloquent.\n\n25.\n‘Speak not to me, but hear! Much shalt thou learn,\nMuch must remain unthought, and more untold,\nIn the dark Future’s ever-flowing urn:                               _345\nKnow then, that from the depth of ages old\nTwo Powers o’er mortal things dominion hold,\nRuling the world with a divided lot,\nImmortal, all-pervading, manifold,\nTwin Genii, equal Gods—when life and thought                        _350\nSprang forth, they burst the womb of inessential Nought.\n\n26.\n‘The earliest dweller of the world, alone,\nStood on the verge of chaos. Lo! afar\nO’er the wide wild abyss two meteors shone,\nSprung from the depth of its tempestuous jar:                        _355\nA blood-red Comet and the Morning Star\nMingling their beams in combat—as he stood,\nAll thoughts within his mind waged mutual war,\nIn dreadful sympathy—when to the flood\nThat fair Star fell, he turned and shed his brother’s blood.         _360\n\n27.\n‘Thus evil triumphed, and the Spirit of evil,\nOne Power of many shapes which none may know,\nOne Shape of many names; the Fiend did revel\nIn victory, reigning o’er a world of woe,\nFor the new race of man went to and fro,                             _365\nFamished and homeless, loathed and loathing, wild,\nAnd hating good—for his immortal foe,\nHe changed from starry shape, beauteous and mild,\nTo a dire Snake, with man and beast unreconciled.\n\n28.\n‘The darkness lingering o’er the dawn of things,                     _370\nWas Evil’s breath and life; this made him strong\nTo soar aloft with overshadowing wings;\nAnd the great Spirit of Good did creep among\nThe nations of mankind, and every tongue\nCursed and blasphemed him as he passed; for none                     _375\nKnew good from evil, though their names were hung\nIn mockery o’er the fane where many a groan,\nAs King, and Lord, and God, the conquering Fiend did own,—\n\n29.\n‘The Fiend, whose name was Legion: Death, Decay,\nEarthquake and Blight, and Want, and Madness pale,                   _380\nWinged and wan diseases, an array\nNumerous as leaves that strew the autumnal gale;\nPoison, a snake in flowers, beneath the veil\nOf food and mirth, hiding his mortal head;\nAnd, without whom all these might nought avail,                      _385\nFear, Hatred, Faith, and Tyranny, who spread\nThose subtle nets which snare the living and the dead.\n\n30.\n‘His spirit is their power, and they his slaves\nIn air, and light, and thought, and language, dwell;\nAnd keep their state from palaces to graves,                         _390\nIn all resorts of men—invisible,\nBut when, in ebon mirror, Nightmare fell\nTo tyrant or impostor bids them rise,\nBlack winged demon forms—whom, from the hell,\nHis reign and dwelling beneath nether skies,                         _395\nHe loosens to their dark and blasting ministries.\n\n31.\n‘In the world’s youth his empire was as firm\nAs its foundations...Soon the Spirit of Good,\nThough in the likeness of a loathsome worm,\nSprang from the billows of the formless flood,                       _400\nWhich shrank and fled; and with that Fiend of blood\nRenewed the doubtful war...Thrones then first shook,\nAnd earth’s immense and trampled multitude\nIn hope on their own powers began to look,\nAnd Fear, the demon pale, his sanguine shrine forsook.               _405\n\n32.\n‘Then Greece arose, and to its bards and sages,\nIn dream, the golden-pinioned Genii came,\nEven where they slept amid the night of ages,\nSteeping their hearts in the divinest flame\nWhich thy breath kindled, Power of holiest name!                     _410\nAnd oft in cycles since, when darkness gave\nNew weapons to thy foe, their sunlike fame\nUpon the combat shone—a light to save,\nLike Paradise spread forth beyond the shadowy grave.\n\n33.\n‘Such is this conflict—when mankind doth strive                     _415\nWith its oppressors in a strife of blood,\nOr when free thoughts, like lightnings, are alive,\nAnd in each bosom of the multitude\nJustice and truth with Custom’s hydra brood\nWage silent war; when Priests and Kings dissemble                    _420\nIn smiles or frowns their fierce disquietude,\nWhen round pure hearts a host of hopes assemble,\nThe Snake and Eagle meet—the world’s foundations tremble!\n\n34.\n‘Thou hast beheld that fight—when to thy home\nThou dost return, steep not its hearth in tears;                     _425\nThough thou may’st hear that earth is now become\nThe tyrant’s garbage, which to his compeers,\nThe vile reward of their dishonoured years,\nHe will dividing give.—The victor Fiend,\nOmnipotent of yore, now quails, and fears                            _430\nHis triumph dearly won, which soon will lend\nAn impulse swift and sure to his approaching end.\n\n35.\n‘List, stranger, list, mine is an human form,\nLike that thou wearest—touch me—shrink not now!\nMy hand thou feel’st is not a ghost’s, but warm                      _435\nWith human blood.—’Twas many years ago,\nSince first my thirsting soul aspired to know\nThe secrets of this wondrous world, when deep\nMy heart was pierced with sympathy, for woe\nWhich could not be mine own, and thought did keep,                   _440\nIn dream, unnatural watch beside an infant’s sleep.\n\n36.\n‘Woe could not be mine own, since far from men\nI dwelt, a free and happy orphan child,\nBy the sea-shore, in a deep mountain glen;\nAnd near the waves, and through the forests wild,                    _445\nI roamed, to storm and darkness reconciled:\nFor I was calm while tempest shook the sky:\nBut when the breathless heavens in beauty smiled,\nI wept, sweet tears, yet too tumultuously\nFor peace, and clasped my hands aloft in ecstasy.                    _450\n\n37.\n‘These were forebodings of my fate—before\nA woman’s heart beat in my virgin breast,\nIt had been nurtured in divinest lore:\nA dying poet gave me books, and blessed\nWith wild but holy talk the sweet unrest                             _455\nIn which I watched him as he died away—\nA youth with hoary hair—a fleeting guest\nOf our lone mountains: and this lore did sway\nMy spirit like a storm, contending there alway.\n\n38.\n‘Thus the dark tale which history doth unfold                        _460\nI knew, but not, methinks, as others know,\nFor they weep not; and Wisdom had unrolled\nThe clouds which hide the gulf of mortal woe,—\nTo few can she that warning vision show—\nFor I loved all things with intense devotion;                        _465\nSo that when Hope’s deep source in fullest flow,\nLike earthquake did uplift the stagnant ocean\nOf human thoughts—mine shook beneath the wide emotion.\n\n39.\n‘When first the living blood through all these veins\nKindled a thought in sense, great France sprang forth,               _470\nAnd seized, as if to break, the ponderous chains\nWhich bind in woe the nations of the earth.\nI saw, and started from my cottage-hearth;\nAnd to the clouds and waves in tameless gladness\nShrieked, till they caught immeasurable mirth—                      _475\nAnd laughed in light and music: soon, sweet madness\nWas poured upon my heart, a soft and thrilling sadness.\n\n40.\n‘Deep slumber fell on me:—my dreams were fire—\nSoft and delightful thoughts did rest and hover\nLike shadows o’er my brain; and strange desire,                      _480\nThe tempest of a passion, raging over\nMy tranquil soul, its depths with light did cover,\nWhich passed; and calm, and darkness, sweeter far,\nCame—then I loved; but not a human lover!\nFor when I rose from sleep, the Morning Star                         _485\nShone through the woodbine-wreaths which round my casement were.\n\n41.\n‘’Twas like an eye which seemed to smile on me.\nI watched, till by the sun made pale, it sank\nUnder the billows of the heaving sea;\nBut from its beams deep love my spirit drank,                        _490\nAnd to my brain the boundless world now shrank\nInto one thought—one image—yes, for ever!\nEven like the dayspring, poured on vapours dank,\nThe beams of that one Star did shoot and quiver\nThrough my benighted mind—and were extinguished never.              _495\n\n42.\n‘The day passed thus: at night, methought, in dream\nA shape of speechless beauty did appear:\nIt stood like light on a careering stream\nOf golden clouds which shook the atmosphere;\nA winged youth, his radiant brow did wear                            _500\nThe Morning Star: a wild dissolving bliss\nOver my frame he breathed, approaching near,\nAnd bent his eyes of kindling tenderness\nNear mine, and on my lips impressed a lingering kiss,—\n\n43.\n‘And said: “A Spirit loves thee, mortal maiden,                      _505\nHow wilt thou prove thy worth?” Then joy and sleep\nTogether fled; my soul was deeply laden,\nAnd to the shore I went to muse and weep;\nBut as I moved, over my heart did creep\nA joy less soft, but more profound and strong                        _510\nThan my sweet dream; and it forbade to keep\nThe path of the sea-shore: that Spirit’s tongue\nSeemed whispering in my heart, and bore my steps along.\n\n44.\n‘How, to that vast and peopled city led,\nWhich was a field of holy warfare then,                              _515\nI walked among the dying and the dead,\nAnd shared in fearless deeds with evil men,\nCalm as an angel in the dragon’s den—\nHow I braved death for liberty and truth,\nAnd spurned at peace, and power, and fame—and when                  _520\nThose hopes had lost the glory of their youth,\nHow sadly I returned—might move the hearer’s ruth:\n\n45.\n‘Warm tears throng fast! the tale may not be said—\nKnow then, that when this grief had been subdued,\nI was not left, like others, cold and dead;                          _525\nThe Spirit whom I loved, in solitude\nSustained his child: the tempest-shaken wood,\nThe waves, the fountains, and the hush of night—\nThese were his voice, and well I understood\nHis smile divine, when the calm sea was bright                       _530\nWith silent stars, and Heaven was breathless with delight.\n\n46.\n‘In lonely glens, amid the roar of rivers,\nWhen the dim nights were moonless, have I known\nJoys which no tongue can tell; my pale lip quivers\nWhen thought revisits them:—know thou alone,                        _535\nThat after many wondrous years were flown,\nI was awakened by a shriek of woe;\nAnd over me a mystic robe was thrown,\nBy viewless hands, and a bright Star did glow\nBefore my steps—the Snake then met his mortal foe.’                 _540\n\n47.\n‘Thou fearest not then the Serpent on thy heart?’\n‘Fear it!’ she said, with brief and passionate cry,\nAnd spake no more: that silence made me start—\nI looked, and we were sailing pleasantly,\nSwift as a cloud between the sea and sky;                            _545\nBeneath the rising moon seen far away,\nMountains of ice, like sapphire, piled on high,\nHemming the horizon round, in silence lay\nOn the still waters—these we did approach alway.\n\n48.\nAnd swift and swifter grew the vessel’s motion,                      _550\nSo that a dizzy trance fell on my brain—\nWild music woke me; we had passed the ocean\nWhich girds the pole, Nature’s remotest reign—\nAnd we glode fast o’er a pellucid plain\nOf waters, azure with the noontide day.                              _555\nEthereal mountains shone around—a Fane\nStood in the midst, girt by green isles which lay\nOn the blue sunny deep, resplendent far away.\n\n49.\nIt was a Temple, such as mortal hand\nHas never built, nor ecstasy, nor dream                              _560\nReared in the cities of enchanted land:\n’Twas likest Heaven, ere yet day’s purple stream\nEbbs o’er the western forest, while the gleam\nOf the unrisen moon among the clouds\nIs gathering—when with many a golden beam                           _565\nThe thronging constellations rush in crowds,\nPaving with fire the sky and the marmoreal floods.\n\n50.\nLike what may be conceived of this vast dome,\nWhen from the depths which thought can seldom pierce\nGenius beholds it rise, his native home,                             _570\nGirt by the deserts of the Universe;\nYet, nor in painting’s light, or mightier verse,\nOr sculpture’s marble language, can invest\nThat shape to mortal sense—such glooms immerse\nThat incommunicable sight, and rest                                  _575\nUpon the labouring brain and overburdened breast.\n\n51.\nWinding among the lawny islands fair,\nWhose blosmy forests starred the shadowy deep,\nThe wingless boat paused where an ivory stair\nIts fretwork in the crystal sea did steep,                           _580\nEncircling that vast Fane’s aerial heap:\nWe disembarked, and through a portal wide\nWe passed—whose roof of moonstone carved, did keep\nA glimmering o’er the forms on every side,\nSculptures like life and thought, immovable, deep-eyed.              _585\n\n52.\nWe came to a vast hall, whose glorious roof\nWas diamond, which had drunk the lightning’s sheen\nIn darkness, and now poured it through the woof\nOf spell-inwoven clouds hung there to screen\nIts blinding splendour—through such veil was seen                   _590\nThat work of subtlest power, divine and rare;\nOrb above orb, with starry shapes between,\nAnd horned moons, and meteors strange and fair,\nOn night-black columns poised—one hollow hemisphere!\n\n53.\nTen thousand columns in that quivering light                         _595\nDistinct—between whose shafts wound far away\nThe long and labyrinthine aisles—more bright\nWith their own radiance than the Heaven of Day;\nAnd on the jasper walls around, there lay\nPaintings, the poesy of mightiest thought,                           _600\nWhich did the Spirit’s history display;\nA tale of passionate change, divinely taught,\nWhich, in their winged dance, unconscious Genii wrought.\n\n54.\nBeneath, there sate on many a sapphire throne,\nThe Great, who had departed from mankind,                            _605\nA mighty Senate;—some, whose white hair shone\nLike mountain snow, mild, beautiful, and blind;\nSome, female forms, whose gestures beamed with mind;\nAnd ardent youths, and children bright and fair;\nAnd some had lyres whose strings were intertwined                    _610\nWith pale and clinging flames, which ever there\nWaked faint yet thrilling sounds that pierced the crystal air.\n\n55.\nOne seat was vacant in the midst, a throne,\nReared on a pyramid like sculptured flame,\nDistinct with circling steps which rested on                         _615\nTheir own deep fire—soon as the Woman came\nInto that hall, she shrieked the Spirit’s name\nAnd fell; and vanished slowly from the sight.\nDarkness arose from her dissolving frame,\nWhich gathering, filled that dome of woven light,                    _620\nBlotting its sphered stars with supernatural night.\n\n56.\nThen first, two glittering lights were seen to glide\nIn circles on the amethystine floor,\nSmall serpent eyes trailing from side to side,\nLike meteors on a river’s grassy shore,                              _625\nThey round each other rolled, dilating more\nAnd more—then rose, commingling into one,\nOne clear and mighty planet hanging o’er\nA cloud of deepest shadow, which was thrown\nAthwart the glowing steps and the crystalline throne.                _630\n\n57.\nThe cloud which rested on that cone of flame\nWas cloven; beneath the planet sate a Form,\nFairer than tongue can speak or thought may frame,\nThe radiance of whose limbs rose-like and warm\nFlowed forth, and did with softest light inform                      _635\nThe shadowy dome, the sculptures, and the state\nOf those assembled shapes—with clinging charm\nSinking upon their hearts and mine. He sate\nMajestic, yet most mild—calm, yet compassionate.\n\n58.\nWonder and joy a passing faintness threw                             _640\nOver my brow—a hand supported me,\nWhose touch was magic strength; an eye of blue\nLooked into mine, like moonlight, soothingly;\nAnd a voice said:—‘Thou must a listener be\nThis day—two mighty Spirits now return,                             _645\nLike birds of calm, from the world’s raging sea,\nThey pour fresh light from Hope’s immortal urn;\nA tale of human power—despair not—list and learn!\n\n59.\nI looked, and lo! one stood forth eloquently.\nHis eyes were dark and deep, and the clear brow                      _650\nWhich shadowed them was like the morning sky,\nThe cloudless Heaven of Spring, when in their flow\nThrough the bright air, the soft winds as they blow\nWake the green world—his gestures did obey\nThe oracular mind that made his features glow,                       _655\nAnd where his curved lips half-open lay,\nPassion’s divinest stream had made impetuous way.\n\n60.\nBeneath the darkness of his outspread hair\nHe stood thus beautiful; but there was One\nWho sate beside him like his shadow there,                           _660\nAnd held his hand—far lovelier; she was known\nTo be thus fair, by the few lines alone\nWhich through her floating locks and gathered cloak,\nGlances of soul-dissolving glory, shone:—\nNone else beheld her eyes—in him they woke                          _665\nMemories which found a tongue as thus he silence broke.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 2.",
    "body": "1.\nThe starlight smile of children, the sweet looks\nOf women, the fair breast from which I fed,\nThe murmur of the unreposing brooks,\nAnd the green light which, shifting overhead,                        _670\nSome tangled bower of vines around me shed,\nThe shells on the sea-sand, and the wild flowers,\nThe lamp-light through the rafters cheerly spread,\nAnd on the twining flax—in life’s young hours\nThese sights and sounds did nurse my spirit’s folded powers.         _675\n\n2.\nIn Argolis, beside the echoing sea,\nSuch impulses within my mortal frame\nArose, and they were dear to memory,\nLike tokens of the dead:—but others came\nSoon, in another shape: the wondrous fame                            _680\nOf the past world, the vital words and deeds\nOf minds whom neither time nor change can tame,\nTraditions dark and old, whence evil creeds\nStart forth, and whose dim shade a stream of poison feeds.\n\n3.\nI heard, as all have heard, the various story                        _685\nOf human life, and wept unwilling tears.\nFeeble historians of its shame and glory,\nFalse disputants on all its hopes and fears,\nVictims who worshipped ruin, chroniclers\nOf daily scorn, and slaves who loathed their state                   _690\nYet, flattering power, had given its ministers\nA throne of judgement in the grave:—’twas fate,\nThat among such as these my youth should seek its mate.\n\n4.\nThe land in which I lived, by a fell bane\nWas withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side,                         _695\nAnd stabled in our homes,—until the chain\nStifled the captive’s cry, and to abide\nThat blasting curse men had no shame—all vied\nIn evil, slave and despot; fear with lust\nStrange fellowship through mutual hate had tied,                     _700\nLike two dark serpents tangled in the dust,\nWhich on the paths of men their mingling poison thrust.\n\n5.\nEarth, our bright home, its mountains and its waters,\nAnd the ethereal shapes which are suspended\nOver its green expanse, and those fair daughters,                    _705\nThe clouds, of Sun and Ocean, who have blended\nThe colours of the air since first extended\nIt cradled the young world, none wandered forth\nTo see or feel; a darkness had descended\nOn every heart; the light which shows its worth,                     _710\nMust among gentle thoughts and fearless take its birth.\n\n6.\nThis vital world, this home of happy spirits,\nWas as a dungeon to my blasted kind;\nAll that despair from murdered hope inherits\nThey sought, and in their helpless misery blind,                     _715\nA deeper prison and heavier chains did find,\nAnd stronger tyrants:—a dark gulf before,\nThe realm of a stern Ruler, yawned; behind,\nTerror and Time conflicting drove, and bore\nOn their tempestuous flood the shrieking wretch from shore.          _720\n\n7.\nOut of that Ocean’s wrecks had Guilt and Woe\nFramed a dark dwelling for their homeless thought,\nAnd, starting at the ghosts which to and fro\nGlide o’er its dim and gloomy strand, had brought\nThe worship thence which they each other taught.                     _725\nWell might men loathe their life, well might they turn\nEven to the ills again from which they sought\nSuch refuge after death!—well might they learn\nTo gaze on this fair world with hopeless unconcern!\n\n8.\nFor they all pined in bondage; body and soul,                        _730\nTyrant and slave, victim and torturer, bent\nBefore one Power, to which supreme control\nOver their will by their own weakness lent,\nMade all its many names omnipotent;\nAll symbols of things evil, all divine;                              _735\nAnd hymns of blood or mockery, which rent\nThe air from all its fanes, did intertwine\nImposture’s impious toils round each discordant shrine.\n\n9.\nI heard, as all have heard, life’s various story,\nAnd in no careless heart transcribed the tale;                       _740\nBut, from the sneers of men who had grown hoary\nIn shame and scorn, from groans of crowds made pale\nBy famine, from a mother’s desolate wail\nO’er her polluted child, from innocent blood\nPoured on the earth, and brows anxious and pale                      _745\nWith the heart’s warfare, did I gather food\nTo feed my many thoughts—a tameless multitude!\n\n10.\nI wandered through the wrecks of days departed\nFar by the desolated shore, when even\nO’er the still sea and jagged islets darted                          _750\nThe light of moonrise; in the northern Heaven,\nAmong the clouds near the horizon driven,\nThe mountains lay beneath one planet pale;\nAround me, broken tombs and columns riven\nLooked vast in twilight, and the sorrowing gale                      _755\nWaked in those ruins gray its everlasting wail!\n\n11.\nI knew not who had framed these wonders then,\nNor had I heard the story of their deeds;\nBut dwellings of a race of mightier men,\nAnd monuments of less ungentle creeds                                _760\nTell their own tale to him who wisely heeds\nThe language which they speak; and now, to me\nThe moonlight making pale the blooming weeds,\nThe bright stars shining in the breathless sea,\nInterpreted those scrolls of mortal mystery.                         _765\n\n12.\nSuch man has been, and such may yet become!\nAy, wiser, greater, gentler even than they\nWho on the fragments of yon shattered dome\nHave stamped the sign of power—I felt the sway\nOf the vast stream of ages bear away                                 _770\nMy floating thoughts—my heart beat loud and fast—\nEven as a storm let loose beneath the ray\nOf the still moon, my spirit onward passed\nBeneath truth’s steady beams upon its tumult cast.\n\n13.\nIt shall be thus no more! too long, too long,                        _775\nSons of the glorious dead, have ye lain bound\nIn darkness and in ruin!—Hope is strong,\nJustice and Truth their winged child have found—\nAwake! arise! until the mighty sound\nOf your career shall scatter in its gust                             _780\nThe thrones of the oppressor, and the ground\nHide the last altar’s unregarded dust,\nWhose Idol has so long betrayed your impious trust!\n\n14.\nIt must be so—I will arise and waken\nThe multitude, and like a sulphurous hill,                           _785\nWhich on a sudden from its snows has shaken\nThe swoon of ages, it shall burst and fill\nThe world with cleansing fire; it must, it will—\nIt may not be restrained!—and who shall stand\nAmid the rocking earthquake steadfast still,                         _790\nBut Laon? on high Freedom’s desert land\nA tower whose marble walls the leagued storms withstand!\n\n15.\nOne summer night, in commune with the hope\nThus deeply fed, amid those ruins gray\nI watched, beneath the dark sky’s starry cope;                       _795\nAnd ever from that hour upon me lay\nThe burden of this hope, and night or day,\nIn vision or in dream, clove to my breast:\nAmong mankind, or when gone far away\nTo the lone shores and mountains, ’twas a guest                      _800\nWhich followed where I fled, and watched when I did rest.\n\n16.\nThese hopes found words through which my spirit sought\nTo weave a bondage of such sympathy,\nAs might create some response to the thought\nWhich ruled me now—and as the vapours lie                           _805\nBright in the outspread morning’s radiancy,\nSo were these thoughts invested with the light\nOf language: and all bosoms made reply\nOn which its lustre streamed, whene’er it might\nThrough darkness wide and deep those tranced spirits smite.          _810\n\n17.\nYes, many an eye with dizzy tears was dim,\nAnd oft I thought to clasp my own heart’s brother,\nWhen I could feel the listener’s senses swim,\nAnd hear his breath its own swift gaspings smother\nEven as my words evoked them—and another,                           _815\nAnd yet another, I did fondly deem,\nFelt that we all were sons of one great mother;\nAnd the cold truth such sad reverse did seem\nAs to awake in grief from some delightful dream.\n\n18.\nYes, oft beside the ruined labyrinth                                 _820\nWhich skirts the hoary caves of the green deep,\nDid Laon and his friend, on one gray plinth,\nRound whose worn base the wild waves hiss and leap,\nResting at eve, a lofty converse keep:\nAnd that this friend was false, may now be said                      _825\nCalmly—that he like other men could weep\nTears which are lies, and could betray and spread\nSnares for that guileless heart which for his own had bled.\n\n19.\nThen, had no great aim recompensed my sorrow,\nI must have sought dark respite from its stress                      _830\nIn dreamless rest, in sleep that sees no morrow—\nFor to tread life’s dismaying wilderness\nWithout one smile to cheer, one voice to bless,\nAmid the snares and scoffs of human kind,\nIs hard—but I betrayed it not, nor less                             _835\nWith love that scorned return sought to unbind\nThe interwoven clouds which make its wisdom blind.\n\n20.\nWith deathless minds which leave where they have passed\nA path of light, my soul communion knew;\nTill from that glorious intercourse, at last,                        _840\nAs from a mine of magic store, I drew\nWords which were weapons;—round my heart there grew\nThe adamantine armour of their power;\nAnd from my fancy wings of golden hue\nSprang forth—yet not alone from wisdom’s tower,                     _845\nA minister of truth, these plumes young Laon bore.\n\n21.\nAn orphan with my parents lived, whose eyes\nWere lodestars of delight, which drew me home\nWhen I might wander forth; nor did I prize\nAught human thing beneath Heaven’s mighty dome                       _850\nBeyond this child; so when sad hours were come,\nAnd baffled hope like ice still clung to me,\nSince kin were cold, and friends had now become\nHeartless and false, I turned from all, to be,\nCythna, the only source of tears and smiles to thee.                 _855\n\n22.\nWhat wert thou then? A child most infantine,\nYet wandering far beyond that innocent age\nIn all but its sweet looks and mien divine;\nEven then, methought, with the world’s tyrant rage\nA patient warfare thy young heart did wage,                          _860\nWhen those soft eyes of scarcely conscious thought\nSome tale, or thine own fancies, would engage\nTo overflow with tears, or converse fraught\nWith passion, o’er their depths its fleeting light had wrought.\n\n23.\nShe moved upon this earth a shape of brightness,                     _865\nA power, that from its objects scarcely drew\nOne impulse of her being—in her lightness\nMost like some radiant cloud of morning dew,\nWhich wanders through the waste air’s pathless blue,\nTo nourish some far desert; she did seem                             _870\nBeside me, gathering beauty as she grew,\nLike the bright shade of some immortal dream\nWhich walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life’s dark stream.\n\n24.\nAs mine own shadow was this child to me,\nA second self, far dearer and more fair;                             _875\nWhich clothed in undissolving radiancy\nAll those steep paths which languor and despair\nOf human things, had made so dark and bare,\nBut which I trod alone—nor, till bereft\nOf friends, and overcome by lonely care,                             _880\nKnew I what solace for that loss was left,\nThough by a bitter wound my trusting heart was cleft.\n\n25.\nOnce she was dear, now she was all I had\nTo love in human life—this playmate sweet,\nThis child of twelve years old—so she was made                      _885\nMy sole associate, and her willing feet\nWandered with mine where earth and ocean meet,\nBeyond the aereal mountains whose vast cells\nThe unreposing billows ever beat,\nThrough forests wild and old, and lawny dells                        _890\nWhere boughs of incense droop over the emerald wells.\n\n26.\nAnd warm and light I felt her clasping hand\nWhen twined in mine; she followed where I went,\nThrough the lone paths of our immortal land.\nIt had no waste but some memorial lent                               _895\nWhich strung me to my toil—some monument\nVital with mind; then Cythna by my side,\nUntil the bright and beaming day were spent,\nWould rest, with looks entreating to abide,\nToo earnest and too sweet ever to be denied.                         _900\n\n27.\nAnd soon I could not have refused her—thus\nFor ever, day and night, we two were ne’er\nParted, but when brief sleep divided us:\nAnd when the pauses of the lulling air\nOf noon beside the sea had made a lair                               _905\nFor her soothed senses, in my arms she slept,\nAnd I kept watch over her slumbers there,\nWhile, as the shifting visions over her swept,\nAmid her innocent rest by turns she smiled and wept.\n\n28.\nAnd, in the murmur of her dreams was heard                           _910\nSometimes the name of Laon:—suddenly\nShe would arise, and, like the secret bird\nWhom sunset wakens, fill the shore and sky\nWith her sweet accents, a wild melody!\nHymns which my soul had woven to Freedom, strong                     _915\nThe source of passion, whence they rose, to be;\nTriumphant strains, which, like a spirit’s tongue,\nTo the enchanted waves that child of glory sung—\n\n29.\nHer white arms lifted through the shadowy stream\nOf her loose hair. Oh, excellently great                             _920\nSeemed to me then my purpose, the vast theme\nOf those impassioned songs, when Cythna sate\nAmid the calm which rapture doth create\nAfter its tumult, her heart vibrating,\nHer spirit o’er the Ocean’s floating state                           _925\nFrom her deep eyes far wandering, on the wing\nOf visions that were mine, beyond its utmost spring!\n\n30.\nFor, before Cythna loved it, had my song\nPeopled with thoughts the boundless universe,\nA mighty congregation, which were strong                             _930\nWhere’er they trod the darkness to disperse\nThe cloud of that unutterable curse\nWhich clings upon mankind:—all things became\nSlaves to my holy and heroic verse,\nEarth, sea and sky, the planets, life and fame                       _935\nAnd fate, or whate’er else binds the world’s wondrous frame.\n\n31.\nAnd this beloved child thus felt the sway\nOf my conceptions, gathering like a cloud\nThe very wind on which it rolls away:\nHers too were all my thoughts, ere yet, endowed                      _940\nWith music and with light, their fountains flowed\nIn poesy; and her still and earnest face,\nPallid with feelings which intensely glowed\nWithin, was turned on mine with speechless grace,\nWatching the hopes which there her heart had learned to trace.       _945\n\n32.\nIn me, communion with this purest being\nKindled intenser zeal, and made me wise\nIn knowledge, which, in hers mine own mind seeing,\nLeft in the human world few mysteries:\nHow without fear of evil or disguise                                 _950\nWas Cythna!—what a spirit strong and mild,\nWhich death, or pain or peril could despise,\nYet melt in tenderness! what genius wild\nYet mighty, was enclosed within one simple child!\n\n33.\nNew lore was this—old age with its gray hair,                       _955\nAnd wrinkled legends of unworthy things,\nAnd icy sneers, is nought: it cannot dare\nTo burst the chains which life for ever flings\nOn the entangled soul’s aspiring wings,\nSo is it cold and cruel, and is made                                 _960\nThe careless slave of that dark power which brings\nEvil, like blight, on man, who, still betrayed,\nLaughs o’er the grave in which his living hopes are laid.\n\n34.\nNor are the strong and the severe to keep\nThe empire of the world: thus Cythna taught                          _965\nEven in the visions of her eloquent sleep,\nUnconscious of the power through which she wrought\nThe woof of such intelligible thought,\nAs from the tranquil strength which cradled lay\nIn her smile-peopled rest, my spirit sought                          _970\nWhy the deceiver and the slave has sway\nO’er heralds so divine of truth’s arising day.\n\n35.\nWithin that fairest form, the female mind,\nUntainted by the poison clouds which rest\nOn the dark world, a sacred home did find:                           _975\nBut else, from the wide earth’s maternal breast,\nVictorious Evil, which had dispossessed\nAll native power, had those fair children torn,\nAnd made them slaves to soothe his vile unrest,\nAnd minister to lust its joys forlorn,                               _980\nTill they had learned to breathe the atmosphere of scorn.\n\n36.\nThis misery was but coldly felt, till she\nBecame my only friend, who had endued\nMy purpose with a wider sympathy;\nThus, Cythna mourned with me the servitude                           _985\nIn which the half of humankind were mewed\nVictims of lust and hate, the slaves of slaves,\nShe mourned that grace and power were thrown as food\nTo the hyena lust, who, among graves,\nOver his loathed meal, laughing in agony, raves.                     _990\n\n37.\nAnd I, still gazing on that glorious child,\nEven as these thoughts flushed o’er her:—‘Cythna sweet,\nWell with the world art thou unreconciled;\nNever will peace and human nature meet\nTill free and equal man and woman greet                              _995\nDomestic peace; and ere this power can make\nIn human hearts its calm and holy seat,\nThis slavery must be broken’—as I spake,\nFrom Cythna’s eyes a light of exultation brake.\n\n38.\nShe replied earnestly:—‘It shall be mine,                           _1000\nThis task,—mine, Laon!—thou hast much to gain;\nNor wilt thou at poor Cythna’s pride repine,\nIf she should lead a happy female train\nTo meet thee over the rejoicing plain,\nWhen myriads at thy call shall throng around                         _1005\nThe Golden City.’—Then the child did strain\nMy arm upon her tremulous heart, and wound\nHer own about my neck, till some reply she found.\n\n39.\nI smiled, and spake not.—‘Wherefore dost thou smile\nAt what I say? Laon, I am not weak,                                  _1010\nAnd, though my cheek might become pale the while,\nWith thee, if thou desirest, will I seek\nThrough their array of banded slaves to wreak\nRuin upon the tyrants. I had thought\nIt was more hard to turn my unpractised cheek                        _1015\nTo scorn and shame, and this beloved spot\nAnd thee, O dearest friend, to leave and murmur not.\n\n40.\n‘Whence came I what I am? Thou, Laon, knowest\nHow a young child should thus undaunted be;\nMethinks, it is a power which thou bestowest,                        _1020\nThrough which I seek, by most resembling thee,\nSo to become most good and great and free;\nYet far beyond this Ocean’s utmost roar,\nIn towers and huts are many like to me,\nWho, could they see thine eyes, or feel such lore                    _1025\nAs I have learnt from them, like me would fear no more.\n\n41.\n‘Think’st thou that I shall speak unskilfully,\nAnd none will heed me? I remember now,\nHow once, a slave in tortures doomed to die,\nWas saved, because in accents sweet and low                          _1030\nHe sung a song his Judge loved long ago,\nAs he was led to death.—All shall relent\nWho hear me—tears, as mine have flowed, shall flow,\nHearts beat as mine now beats, with such intent\nAs renovates the world; a will omnipotent!                           _1035\n\n42.\n‘Yes, I will tread Pride’s golden palaces,\nThrough Penury’s roofless huts and squalid cells\nWill I descend, where’er in abjectness\nWoman with some vile slave her tyrant dwells,\nThere with the music of thine own sweet spells                       _1040\nWill disenchant the captives, and will pour\nFor the despairing, from the crystal wells\nOf thy deep spirit, reason’s mighty lore,\nAnd power shall then abound, and hope arise once more.\n\n43.\n‘Can man be free if woman be a slave?                                _1045\nChain one who lives, and breathes this boundless air,\nTo the corruption of a closed grave!\nCan they whose mates are beasts, condemned to bear\nScorn, heavier far than toil or anguish, dare\nTo trample their oppressors? in their home                           _1050\nAmong their babes, thou knowest a curse would wear\nThe shape of woman—hoary Crime would come\nBehind, and Fraud rebuild religion’s tottering dome.\n\n44.\n‘I am a child:—I would not yet depart.\nWhen I go forth alone, bearing the lamp                              _1055\nAloft which thou hast kindled in my heart,\nMillions of slaves from many a dungeon damp\nShall leap in joy, as the benumbing cramp\nOf ages leaves their limbs—no ill may harm\nThy Cythna ever—truth its radiant stamp                             _1060\nHas fixed, as an invulnerable charm,\nUpon her children’s brow, dark Falsehood to disarm.\n\n45.\n‘Wait yet awhile for the appointed day—\nThou wilt depart, and I with tears shall stand\nWatching thy dim sail skirt the ocean gray;                          _1065\nAmid the dwellers of this lonely land\nI shall remain alone—and thy command\nShall then dissolve the world’s unquiet trance,\nAnd, multitudinous as the desert sand\nBorne on the storm, its millions shall advance,                      _1070\nThronging round thee, the light of their deliverance.\n\n46.\n‘Then, like the forests of some pathless mountain,\nWhich from remotest glens two warring winds\nInvolve in fire which not the loosened fountain\nOf broadest floods might quench, shall all the kinds                 _1075\nOf evil, catch from our uniting minds\nThe spark which must consume them;—Cythna then\nWill have cast off the impotence that binds\nHer childhood now, and through the paths of men\nWill pass, as the charmed bird that haunts the serpent’s den.        _1080\n\n47.\n‘We part!—O Laon, I must dare nor tremble,\nTo meet those looks no more!—Oh, heavy stroke!\nSweet brother of my soul! can I dissemble\nThe agony of this thought?’—As thus she spoke\nThe gathered sobs her quivering accents broke,                       _1085\nAnd in my arms she hid her beating breast.\nI remained still for tears—sudden she woke\nAs one awakes from sleep, and wildly pressed\nMy bosom, her whole frame impetuously possessed.\n\n48.\n‘We part to meet again—but yon blue waste,                          _1090\nYon desert wide and deep, holds no recess,\nWithin whose happy silence, thus embraced\nWe might survive all ills in one caress:\nNor doth the grave—I fear ’tis passionless—\nNor yon cold vacant Heaven:—we meet again                           _1095\nWithin the minds of men, whose lips shall bless\nOur memory, and whose hopes its light retain\nWhen these dissevered bones are trodden in the plain.’\n\n49.\nI could not speak, though she had ceased, for now\nThe fountains of her feeling, swift and deep,                        _1100\nSeemed to suspend the tumult of their flow;\nSo we arose, and by the starlight steep\nWent homeward—neither did we speak nor weep,\nBut, pale, were calm with passion—thus subdued\nLike evening shades that o’er the mountains creep,                   _1105\nWe moved towards our home; where, in this mood,\nEach from the other sought refuge in solitude.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 3.",
    "body": "1.\nWhat thoughts had sway o’er Cythna’s lonely slumber\nThat night, I know not; but my own did seem\nAs if they might ten thousand years outnumber                        _1110\nOf waking life, the visions of a dream\nWhich hid in one dim gulf the troubled stream\nOf mind; a boundless chaos wild and vast,\nWhose limits yet were never memory’s theme:\nAnd I lay struggling as its whirlwinds passed,                       _1115\nSometimes for rapture sick, sometimes for pain aghast.\n\n2.\nTwo hours, whose mighty circle did embrace\nMore time than might make gray the infant world,\nRolled thus, a weary and tumultuous space:\nWhen the third came, like mist on breezes curled,                    _1120\nFrom my dim sleep a shadow was unfurled:\nMethought, upon the threshold of a cave\nI sate with Cythna; drooping briony, pearled\nWith dew from the wild streamlet’s shattered wave,\nHung, where we sate to taste the joys which Nature gave.             _1125\n\n3.\nWe lived a day as we were wont to live,\nBut Nature had a robe of glory on,\nAnd the bright air o’er every shape did weave\nIntenser hues, so that the herbless stone,\nThe leafless bough among the leaves alone,                           _1130\nHad being clearer than its own could be,\nAnd Cythna’s pure and radiant self was shown,\nIn this strange vision, so divine to me,\nThat if I loved before, now love was agony.\n\n4.\nMorn fled, noon came, evening, then night descended,                 _1135\nAnd we prolonged calm talk beneath the sphere\nOf the calm moon—when suddenly was blended\nWith our repose a nameless sense of fear;\nAnd from the cave behind I seemed to hear\nSounds gathering upwards!—accents incomplete,                       _1140\nAnd stifled shrieks,—and now, more near and near,\nA tumult and a rush of thronging feet\nThe cavern’s secret depths beneath the earth did beat.\n\n5.\nThe scene was changed, and away, away, away!\nThrough the air and over the sea we sped,                            _1145\nAnd Cythna in my sheltering bosom lay,\nAnd the winds bore me—through the darkness spread\nAround, the gaping earth then vomited\nLegions of foul and ghastly shapes, which hung\nUpon my flight; and ever, as we fled,                                _1150\nThey plucked at Cythna—soon to me then clung\nA sense of actual things those monstrous dreams among.\n\n6.\nAnd I lay struggling in the impotence\nOf sleep, while outward life had burst its bound,\nThough, still deluded, strove the tortured sense                     _1155\nTo its dire wanderings to adapt the sound\nWhich in the light of morn was poured around\nOur dwelling; breathless, pale and unaware\nI rose, and all the cottage crowded found\nWith armed men, whose glittering swords were bare,                   _1160\nAnd whose degraded limbs the tyrant’s garb did wear.\n\n7.\nAnd, ere with rapid lips and gathered brow\nI could demand the cause—a feeble shriek—\nIt was a feeble shriek, faint, far and low,\nArrested me—my mien grew calm and meek,                             _1165\nAnd grasping a small knife, I went to seek\nThat voice among the crowd—’twas Cythna’s cry!\nBeneath most calm resolve did agony wreak\nIts whirlwind rage:—so I passed quietly\nTill I beheld, where bound, that dearest child did lie.              _1170\n\n8.\nI started to behold her, for delight\nAnd exultation, and a joyance free,\nSolemn, serene and lofty, filled the light\nOf the calm smile with which she looked on me:\nSo that I feared some brainless ecstasy,                             _1175\nWrought from that bitter woe, had wildered her—\n‘Farewell! farewell!’ she said, as I drew nigh;\n‘At first my peace was marred by this strange stir,\nNow I am calm as truth—its chosen minister.\n\n9.\n‘Look not so, Laon—say farewell in hope,                            _1180\nThese bloody men are but the slaves who bear\nTheir mistress to her task—it was my scope\nThe slavery where they drag me now, to share,\nAnd among captives willing chains to wear\nAwhile—the rest thou knowest—return, dear friend!                  _1185\nLet our first triumph trample the despair\nWhich would ensnare us now, for in the end,\nIn victory or in death our hopes and fears must blend.’\n\n10.\nThese words had fallen on my unheeding ear,\nWhilst I had watched the motions of the crew                         _1190\nWith seeming-careless glance; not many were\nAround her, for their comrades just withdrew\nTo guard some other victim—so I drew\nMy knife, and with one impulse, suddenly\nAll unaware three of their number slew,                              _1195\nAnd grasped a fourth by the throat, and with loud cry\nMy countrymen invoked to death or liberty!\n\n11.\nWhat followed then, I know not—for a stroke\nOn my raised arm and naked head, came down,\nFilling my eyes with blood.—When I awoke,                           _1200\nI felt that they had bound me in my swoon,\nAnd up a rock which overhangs the town,\nBy the steep path were bearing me; below,\nThe plain was filled with slaughter,—overthrown\nThe vineyards and the harvests, and the glow                         _1205\nOf blazing roofs shone far o’er the white Ocean’s flow.\n\n12.\nUpon that rock a mighty column stood,\nWhose capital seemed sculptured in the sky,\nWhich to the wanderers o’er the solitude\nOf distant seas, from ages long gone by,                             _1210\nHad made a landmark; o’er its height to fly\nScarcely the cloud, the vulture, or the blast,\nHas power—and when the shades of evening lie\nOn Earth and Ocean, its carved summits cast\nThe sunken daylight far through the aerial waste.                    _1215\n\n13.\nThey bore me to a cavern in the hill\nBeneath that column, and unbound me there;\nAnd one did strip me stark; and one did fill\nA vessel from the putrid pool; one bare\nA lighted torch, and four with friendless care                       _1220\nGuided my steps the cavern-paths along,\nThen up a steep and dark and narrow stair\nWe wound, until the torch’s fiery tongue\nAmid the gushing day beamless and pallid hung.\n\n14.\nThey raised me to the platform of the pile,                          _1225\nThat column’s dizzy height:—the grate of brass\nThrough which they thrust me, open stood the while,\nAs to its ponderous and suspended mass,\nWith chains which eat into the flesh, alas!\nWith brazen links, my naked limbs they bound:                        _1230\nThe grate, as they departed to repass,\nWith horrid clangour fell, and the far sound\nOf their retiring steps in the dense gloom was drowned.\n\n15.\nThe noon was calm and bright:—around that column\nThe overhanging sky and circling sea                                 _1235\nSpread forth in silentness profound and solemn\nThe darkness of brief frenzy cast on me,\nSo that I knew not my own misery:\nThe islands and the mountains in the day\nLike clouds reposed afar; and I could see                            _1240\nThe town among the woods below that lay,\nAnd the dark rocks which bound the bright and glassy bay.\n\n16.\nIt was so calm, that scarce the feathery weed\nSown by some eagle on the topmost stone\nSwayed in the air:—so bright, that noon did breed                   _1245\nNo shadow in the sky beside mine own—\nMine, and the shadow of my chain alone.\nBelow, the smoke of roofs involved in flame\nRested like night, all else was clearly shown\nIn that broad glare; yet sound to me none came,                      _1250\nBut of the living blood that ran within my frame.\n\n17.\nThe peace of madness fled, and ah, too soon!\nA ship was lying on the sunny main,\nIts sails were flagging in the breathless noon—\nIts shadow lay beyond—that sight again                              _1255\nWaked, with its presence, in my tranced brain\nThe stings of a known sorrow, keen and cold:\nI knew that ship bore Cythna o’er the plain\nOf waters, to her blighting slavery sold,\nAnd watched it with such thoughts as must remain untold.             _1260\n\n18.\nI watched until the shades of evening wrapped\nEarth like an exhalation—then the bark\nMoved, for that calm was by the sunset snapped.\nIt moved a speck upon the Ocean dark:\nSoon the wan stars came forth, and I could mark                      _1265\nIts path no more!—I sought to close mine eyes,\nBut like the balls, their lids were stiff and stark;\nI would have risen, but ere that I could rise,\nMy parched skin was split with piercing agonies.\n\n19.\nI gnawed my brazen chain, and sought to sever                        _1270\nIts adamantine links, that I might die:\nO Liberty! forgive the base endeavour,\nForgive me, if, reserved for victory,\nThe Champion of thy faith e’er sought to fly.—\nThat starry night, with its clear silence, sent                      _1275\nTameless resolve which laughed at misery\nInto my soul—linked remembrance lent\nTo that such power, to me such a severe content.\n\n20.\nTo breathe, to be, to hope, or to despair\nAnd die, I questioned not; nor, though the Sun                       _1280\nIts shafts of agony kindling through the air\nMoved over me, nor though in evening dun,\nOr when the stars their visible courses run,\nOr morning, the wide universe was spread\nIn dreary calmness round me, did I shun                              _1285\nIts presence, nor seek refuge with the dead\nFrom one faint hope whose flower a dropping poison shed.\n\n21.\nTwo days thus passed—I neither raved nor died—\nThirst raged within me, like a scorpion’s nest\nBuilt in mine entrails; I had spurned aside                          _1290\nThe water-vessel, while despair possessed\nMy thoughts, and now no drop remained! The uprest\nOf the third sun brought hunger—but the crust\nWhich had been left, was to my craving breast\nFuel, not food. I chewed the bitter dust,                            _1295\nAnd bit my bloodless arm, and licked the brazen rust.\n\n22.\nMy brain began to fail when the fourth morn\nBurst o’er the golden isles—a fearful sleep,\nWhich through the caverns dreary and forlorn\nOf the riven soul, sent its foul dreams to sweep                     _1300\nWith whirlwind swiftness—a fall far and deep,—\nA gulf, a void, a sense of senselessness—\nThese things dwelt in me, even as shadows keep\nTheir watch in some dim charnel’s loneliness,\nA shoreless sea, a sky sunless and planetless!                       _1305\n\n23.\nThe forms which peopled this terrific trance\nI well remember—like a choir of devils,\nAround me they involved a giddy dance;\nLegions seemed gathering from the misty levels\nOf Ocean, to supply those ceaseless revels,                          _1310\nFoul, ceaseless shadows:—thought could not divide\nThe actual world from these entangling evils,\nWhich so bemocked themselves, that I descried\nAll shapes like mine own self, hideously multiplied.\n\n24.\nThe sense of day and night, of false and true,                       _1315\nWas dead within me. Yet two visions burst\nThat darkness—one, as since that hour I knew,\nWas not a phantom of the realms accursed,\nWhere then my spirit dwelt—but of the first\nI know not yet, was it a dream or no.                                _1320\nBut both, though not distincter, were immersed\nIn hues which, when through memory’s waste they flow,\nMake their divided streams more bright and rapid now.\n\n25.\nMethought that grate was lifted, and the seven\nWho brought me thither four stiff corpses bare,                      _1325\nAnd from the frieze to the four winds of Heaven\nHung them on high by the entangled hair;\nSwarthy were three—the fourth was very fair;\nAs they retired, the golden moon upsprung,\nAnd eagerly, out in the giddy air,                                   _1330\nLeaning that I might eat, I stretched and clung\nOver the shapeless depth in which those corpses hung.\n\n26.\nA woman’s shape, now lank and cold and blue,\nThe dwelling of the many-coloured worm,\nHung there; the white and hollow cheek I drew                        _1335\nTo my dry lips—what radiance did inform\nThose horny eyes? whose was that withered form?\nAlas, alas! it seemed that Cythna’s ghost\nLaughed in those looks, and that the flesh was warm\nWithin my teeth!—a whirlwind keen as frost                          _1340\nThen in its sinking gulfs my sickening spirit tossed.\n\n27.\nThen seemed it that a tameless hurricane\nArose, and bore me in its dark career\nBeyond the sun, beyond the stars that wane\nOn the verge of formless space—it languished there,                 _1345\nAnd dying, left a silence lone and drear,\nMore horrible than famine:—in the deep\nThe shape of an old man did then appear,\nStately and beautiful; that dreadful sleep\nHis heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake and weep.            _1350\n\n28.\nAnd, when the blinding tears had fallen, I saw\nThat column, and those corpses, and the moon,\nAnd felt the poisonous tooth of hunger gnaw\nMy vitals, I rejoiced, as if the boon\nOf senseless death would be accorded soon;—                         _1355\nWhen from that stony gloom a voice arose,\nSolemn and sweet as when low winds attune\nThe midnight pines; the grate did then unclose,\nAnd on that reverend form the moonlight did repose.\n\n29.\nHe struck my chains, and gently spake and smiled;                    _1360\nAs they were loosened by that Hermit old,\nMine eyes were of their madness half beguiled,\nTo answer those kind looks; he did enfold\nHis giant arms around me, to uphold\nMy wretched frame; my scorched limbs he wound                        _1365\nIn linen moist and balmy, and as cold\nAs dew to drooping leaves;—the chain, with sound\nLike earthquake, through the chasm of that steep stair did bound,\n\n30.\nAs, lifting me, it fell!—What next I heard,\nWere billows leaping on the harbour-bar,                             _1370\nAnd the shrill sea-wind, whose breath idly stirred\nMy hair;—I looked abroad, and saw a star\nShining beside a sail, and distant far\nThat mountain and its column, the known mark\nOf those who in the wide deep wandering are,                         _1375\nSo that I feared some Spirit, fell and dark,\nIn trance had lain me thus within a fiendish bark.\n\n31.\nFor now indeed, over the salt sea-billow\nI sailed: yet dared not look upon the shape\nOf him who ruled the helm, although the pillow                       _1380\nFor my light head was hollowed in his lap,\nAnd my bare limbs his mantle did enwrap,\nFearing it was a fiend: at last, he bent\nO’er me his aged face; as if to snap\nThose dreadful thoughts the gentle grandsire bent,                   _1385\nAnd to my inmost soul his soothing looks he sent.\n\n32.\nA soft and healing potion to my lips\nAt intervals he raised—now looked on high,\nTo mark if yet the starry giant dips\nHis zone in the dim sea—now cheeringly,                             _1390\nThough he said little, did he speak to me.\n‘It is a friend beside thee—take good cheer,\nPoor victim, thou art now at liberty!’\nI joyed as those a human tone to hear,\nWho in cells deep and lone have languished many a year.              _1395\n\n33.\nA dim and feeble joy, whose glimpses oft\nWere quenched in a relapse of wildering dreams;\nYet still methought we sailed, until aloft\nThe stars of night grew pallid, and the beams\nOf morn descended on the ocean-streams,                              _1400\nAnd still that aged man, so grand and mild,\nTended me, even as some sick mother seems\nTo hang in hope over a dying child,\nTill in the azure East darkness again was piled.\n\n34.\nAnd then the night-wind steaming from the shore,                     _1405\nSent odours dying sweet across the sea,\nAnd the swift boat the little waves which bore,\nWere cut by its keen keel, though slantingly;\nSoon I could hear the leaves sigh, and could see\nThe myrtle-blossoms starring the dim grove,                          _1410\nAs past the pebbly beach the boat did flee\nOn sidelong wing, into a silent cove,\nWhere ebon pines a shade under the starlight wove.\n\n\n_1223 torches’ editions 1818, 1839.\n_1385 bent]meant cj. J. Nettleship.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 4.",
    "body": "1.\nThe old man took the oars, and soon the bark\nSmote on the beach beside a tower of stone;                          _1415\nIt was a crumbling heap, whose portal dark\nWith blooming ivy-trails was overgrown;\nUpon whose floor the spangling sands were strown,\nAnd rarest sea-shells, which the eternal flood,\nSlave to the mother of the months, had thrown                        _1420\nWithin the walls of that gray tower, which stood\nA changeling of man’s art nursed amid Nature’s brood.\n\n2.\nWhen the old man his boat had anchored,\nHe wound me in his arms with tender care,\nAnd very few, but kindly words he said,                              _1425\nAnd bore me through the tower adown a stair,\nWhose smooth descent some ceaseless step to wear\nFor many a year had fallen.—We came at last\nTo a small chamber, which with mosses rare\nWas tapestried, where me his soft hands placed                       _1430\nUpon a couch of grass and oak-leaves interlaced.\n\n3.\nThe moon was darting through the lattices\nIts yellow light, warm as the beams of day—\nSo warm, that to admit the dewy breeze,\nThe old man opened them; the moonlight lay                           _1435\nUpon a lake whose waters wove their play\nEven to the threshold of that lonely home:\nWithin was seen in the dim wavering ray\nThe antique sculptured roof, and many a tome\nWhose lore had made that sage all that he had become.                _1440\n\n4.\nThe rock-built barrier of the sea was past,—\nAnd I was on the margin of a lake,\nA lonely lake, amid the forests vast\nAnd snowy mountains:—did my spirit wake\nFrom sleep as many-coloured as the snake                             _1445\nThat girds eternity? in life and truth,\nMight not my heart its cravings ever slake?\nWas Cythna then a dream, and all my youth,\nAnd all its hopes and fears, and all its joy and ruth?\n\n5.\nThus madness came again,—a milder madness,                          _1450\nWhich darkened nought but time’s unquiet flow\nWith supernatural shades of clinging sadness;\nThat gentle Hermit, in my helpless woe,\nBy my sick couch was busy to and fro,\nLike a strong spirit ministrant of good:                             _1455\nWhen I was healed, he led me forth to show\nThe wonders of his sylvan solitude,\nAnd we together sate by that isle-fretted flood.\n\n6.\nHe knew his soothing words to weave with skill\nFrom all my madness told; like mine own heart,                       _1460\nOf Cythna would he question me, until\nThat thrilling name had ceased to make me start,\nFrom his familiar lips—it was not art,\nOf wisdom and of justice when he spoke—\nWhen mid soft looks of pity, there would dart                        _1465\nA glance as keen as is the lightning’s stroke\nWhen it doth rive the knots of some ancestral oak.\n\n7.\nThus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled,\nMy thoughts their due array did re-assume\nThrough the enchantments of that Hermit old;                         _1470\nThen I bethought me of the glorious doom\nOf those who sternly struggle to relume\nThe lamp of Hope o’er man’s bewildered lot,\nAnd, sitting by the waters, in the gloom\nOf eve, to that friend’s heart I told my thought—                   _1475\nThat heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not.\n\n8.\nThat hoary man had spent his livelong age\nIn converse with the dead, who leave the stamp\nOf ever-burning thoughts on many a page,\nWhen they are gone into the senseless damp                           _1480\nOf graves;—his spirit thus became a lamp\nOf splendour, like to those on which it fed;\nThrough peopled haunts, the City and the Camp,\nDeep thirst for knowledge had his footsteps led,\nAnd all the ways of men among mankind he read.                       _1485\n\n9.\nBut custom maketh blind and obdurate\nThe loftiest hearts;—he had beheld the woe\nIn which mankind was bound, but deemed that fate\nWhich made them abject, would preserve them so;\nAnd in such faith, some steadfast joy to know,                       _1490\nHe sought this cell: but when fame went abroad\nThat one in Argolis did undergo\nTorture for liberty, and that the crowd\nHigh truths from gifted lips had heard and understood;\n\n10.\nAnd that the multitude was gathering wide,—                         _1495\nHis spirit leaped within his aged frame;\nIn lonely peace he could no more abide,\nBut to the land on which the victor’s flame\nHad fed, my native land, the Hermit came:\nEach heart was there a shield, and every tongue                      _1500\nWas as a sword of truth—young Laon’s name\nRallied their secret hopes, though tyrants sung\nHymns of triumphant joy our scattered tribes among.\n\n11.\nHe came to the lone column on the rock,\nAnd with his sweet and mighty eloquence                              _1505\nThe hearts of those who watched it did unlock,\nAnd made them melt in tears of penitence.\nThey gave him entrance free to bear me thence.\n‘Since this,’ the old man said, ‘seven years are spent,\nWhile slowly truth on thy benighted sense                            _1510\nHas crept; the hope which wildered it has lent\nMeanwhile, to me the power of a sublime intent.\n\n12.\n‘Yes, from the records of my youthful state,\nAnd from the lore of bards and sages old,\nFrom whatsoe’er my wakened thoughts create                           _1515\nOut of the hopes of thine aspirings bold,\nHave I collected language to unfold\nTruth to my countrymen; from shore to shore\nDoctrines of human power my words have told,\nThey have been heard, and men aspire to more                         _1520\nThan they have ever gained or ever lost of yore.\n\n13.\n‘In secret chambers parents read, and weep,\nMy writings to their babes, no longer blind;\nAnd young men gather when their tyrants sleep,\nAnd vows of faith each to the other bind;                            _1525\nAnd marriageable maidens, who have pined\nWith love, till life seemed melting through their look,\nA warmer zeal, a nobler hope, now find;\nAnd every bosom thus is rapt and shook,\nLike autumn’s myriad leaves in one swoln mountain-brook.             _1530\n\n14.\n‘The tyrants of the Golden City tremble\nAt voices which are heard about the streets;\nThe ministers of fraud can scarce dissemble\nThe lies of their own heart, but when one meets\nAnother at the shrine, he inly weets,                                _1535\nThough he says nothing, that the truth is known;\nMurderers are pale upon the judgement-seats,\nAnd gold grows vile even to the wealthy crone,\nAnd laughter fills the Fane, and curses shake the Throne.\n\n15.\n‘Kind thoughts, and mighty hopes, and gentle deeds                   _1540\nAbound, for fearless love, and the pure law\nOf mild equality and peace, succeeds\nTo faiths which long have held the world in awe,\nBloody and false, and cold:—as whirlpools draw\nAll wrecks of Ocean to their chasm, the sway                         _1545\nOf thy strong genius, Laon, which foresaw\nThis hope, compels all spirits to obey,\nWhich round thy secret strength now throng in wide array.\n\n16.\n‘For I have been thy passive instrument’—\n(As thus the old man spake, his countenance                          _1550\nGleamed on me like a spirit’s)—‘thou hast lent\nTo me, to all, the power to advance\nTowards this unforeseen deliverance\nFrom our ancestral chains—ay, thou didst rear\nThat lamp of hope on high, which time nor chance                     _1555\nNor change may not extinguish, and my share\nOf good, was o’er the world its gathered beams to bear.\n\n17.\n‘But I, alas! am both unknown and old,\nAnd though the woof of wisdom I know well\nTo dye in hues of language, I am cold                                _1560\nIn seeming, and the hopes which inly dwell,\nMy manners note that I did long repel;\nBut Laon’s name to the tumultuous throng\nWere like the star whose beams the waves compel\nAnd tempests, and his soul-subduing tongue                           _1565\nWere as a lance to quell the mailed crest of wrong.\n\n18.\n‘Perchance blood need not flow, if thou at length\nWouldst rise, perchance the very slaves would spare\nTheir brethren and themselves; great is the strength\nOf words—for lately did a maiden fair,                              _1570\nWho from her childhood has been taught to bear\nThe Tyrant’s heaviest yoke, arise, and make\nHer sex the law of truth and freedom hear,\nAnd with these quiet words—“for thine own sake\nI prithee spare me;”—did with ruth so take                          _1575\n\n19.\n‘All hearts, that even the torturer who had bound\nHer meek calm frame, ere it was yet impaled,\nLoosened her, weeping then; nor could be found\nOne human hand to harm her—unassailed\nTherefore she walks through the great City, veiled                   _1580\nIn virtue’s adamantine eloquence,\n’Gainst scorn, and death and pain thus trebly mailed,\nAnd blending, in the smiles of that defence,\nThe Serpent and the Dove, Wisdom and Innocence.\n\n20.\n‘The wild-eyed women throng around her path:                         _1585\nFrom their luxurious dungeons, from the dust\nOf meaner thralls, from the oppressor’s wrath,\nOr the caresses of his sated lust\nThey congregate:—in her they put their trust;\nThe tyrants send their armed slaves to quell                         _1590\nHer power;—they, even like a thunder-gust\nCaught by some forest, bend beneath the spell\nOf that young maiden’s speech, and to their chiefs rebel.\n\n21.\n‘Thus she doth equal laws and justice teach\nTo woman, outraged and polluted long;                                _1595\nGathering the sweetest fruit in human reach\nFor those fair hands now free, while armed wrong\nTrembles before her look, though it be strong;\nThousands thus dwell beside her, virgins bright,\nAnd matrons with their babes, a stately throng!                      _1600\nLovers renew the vows which they did plight\nIn early faith, and hearts long parted now unite,\n\n22.\n‘And homeless orphans find a home near her,\nAnd those poor victims of the proud, no less,\nFair wrecks, on whom the smiling world with stir,                    _1605\nThrusts the redemption of its wickedness:—\nIn squalid huts, and in its palaces\nSits Lust alone, while o’er the land is borne\nHer voice, whose awful sweetness doth repress\nAll evil, and her foes relenting turn,                               _1610\nAnd cast the vote of love in hope’s abandoned urn.\n\n23.\n‘So in the populous City, a young maiden\nHas baffled Havoc of the prey which he\nMarks as his own, whene’er with chains o’erladen\nMen make them arms to hurl down tyranny,—                           _1615\nFalse arbiter between the bound and free;\nAnd o’er the land, in hamlets and in towns\nThe multitudes collect tumultuously,\nAnd throng in arms; but tyranny disowns\nTheir claim, and gathers strength around its trembling thrones.      _1620\n\n24.\n‘Blood soon, although unwillingly, to shed\nThe free cannot forbear—the Queen of Slaves,\nThe hoodwinked Angel of the blind and dead,\nCustom, with iron mace points to the graves\nWhere her own standard desolately waves                              _1625\nOver the dust of Prophets and of Kings.\nMany yet stand in her array—“she paves\nHer path with human hearts,” and o’er it flings\nThe wildering gloom of her immeasurable wings.\n\n25.\n‘There is a plain beneath the City’s wall,                           _1630\nBounded by misty mountains, wide and vast,\nMillions there lift at Freedom’s thrilling call\nTen thousand standards wide, they load the blast\nWhich bears one sound of many voices past,\nAnd startles on his throne their sceptred foe:                       _1635\nHe sits amid his idle pomp aghast,\nAnd that his power hath passed away, doth know—\nWhy pause the victor swords to seal his overthrow?\n\n26.\n‘The tyrant’s guards resistance yet maintain:\nFearless, and fierce, and hard as beasts of blood,                   _1640\nThey stand a speck amid the peopled plain;\nCarnage and ruin have been made their food\nFrom infancy—ill has become their good,\nAnd for its hateful sake their will has wove\nThe chains which eat their hearts. The multitude                     _1645\nSurrounding them, with words of human love,\nSeek from their own decay their stubborn minds to move.\n\n27.\n‘Over the land is felt a sudden pause,\nAs night and day those ruthless bands around,\nThe watch of love is kept:—a trance which awes                      _1650\nThe thoughts of men with hope; as when the sound\nOf whirlwind, whose fierce blasts the waves and clouds confound,\nDies suddenly, the mariner in fear\nFeels silence sink upon his heart—thus bound,\nThe conquerors pause, and oh! may freemen ne’er                      _1655\nClasp the relentless knees of Dread, the murderer!\n\n28.\n‘If blood be shed, ’tis but a change and choice\nOf bonds,—from slavery to cowardice\nA wretched fall!—Uplift thy charmed voice!\nPour on those evil men the love that lies                            _1660\nHovering within those spirit-soothing eyes—\nArise, my friend, farewell!’—As thus he spake,\nFrom the green earth lightly I did arise,\nAs one out of dim dreams that doth awake,\nAnd looked upon the depth of that reposing lake.                     _1665\n\n29.\nI saw my countenance reflected there;—\nAnd then my youth fell on me like a wind\nDescending on still waters—my thin hair\nWas prematurely gray, my face was lined\nWith channels, such as suffering leaves behind,                      _1670\nNot age; my brow was pale, but in my cheek\nAnd lips a flush of gnawing fire did find\nTheir food and dwelling; though mine eyes might speak\nA subtle mind and strong within a frame thus weak.\n\n30.\nAnd though their lustre now was spent and faded,                     _1675\nYet in my hollow looks and withered mien\nThe likeness of a shape for which was braided\nThe brightest woof of genius, still was seen—\nOne who, methought, had gone from the world’s scene,\nAnd left it vacant—’twas her lover’s face—                         _1680\nIt might resemble her—it once had been\nThe mirror of her thoughts, and still the grace\nWhich her mind’s shadow cast, left there a lingering trace.\n\n31.\nWhat then was I? She slumbered with the dead.\nGlory and joy and peace, had come and gone.                          _1685\nDoth the cloud perish, when the beams are fled\nWhich steeped its skirts in gold? or, dark and lone,\nDoth it not through the paths of night unknown,\nOn outspread wings of its own wind upborne\nPour rain upon the earth? The stars are shown,                       _1690\nWhen the cold moon sharpens her silver horn\nUnder the sea, and make the wide night not forlorn.\n\n32.\nStrengthened in heart, yet sad, that aged man\nI left, with interchange of looks and tears,\nAnd lingering speech, and to the Camp began                          _1695\nMy war. O’er many a mountain-chain which rears\nIts hundred crests aloft, my spirit bears\nMy frame; o’er many a dale and many a moor,\nAnd gaily now meseems serene earth wears\nThe blosmy spring’s star-bright investiture,                         _1700\nA vision which aught sad from sadness might allure.\n\n33.\nMy powers revived within me, and I went,\nAs one whom winds waft o’er the bending grass,\nThrough many a vale of that broad continent.\nAt night when I reposed, fair dreams did pass                        _1705\nBefore my pillow;—my own Cythna was,\nNot like a child of death, among them ever;\nWhen I arose from rest, a woful mass\nThat gentlest sleep seemed from my life to sever,\nAs if the light of youth were not withdrawn for ever.                _1710\n\n34.\nAye as I went, that maiden who had reared\nThe torch of Truth afar, of whose high deeds\nThe Hermit in his pilgrimage had heard,\nHaunted my thoughts.—Ah, Hope its sickness feeds\nWith whatsoe’er it finds, or flowers or weeds!                       _1715\nCould she be Cythna?—Was that corpse a shade\nSuch as self-torturing thought from madness breeds?\nWhy was this hope not torture? Yet it made\nA light around my steps which would not ever fade.\n\n\n_1625 Where]When edition 1818.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 5.",
    "body": "1.\nOver the utmost hill at length I sped,                               _1720\nA snowy steep:—the moon was hanging low\nOver the Asian mountains, and outspread\nThe plain, the City, and the Camp below,\nSkirted the midnight Ocean’s glimmering flow;\nThe City’s moonlit spires and myriad lamps,                          _1725\nLike stars in a sublunar sky did glow,\nAnd fires blazed far amid the scattered camps,\nLike springs of flame, which burst where’er swift Earthquake stamps.\n\n2.\nAll slept but those in watchful arms who stood,\nAnd those who sate tending the beacon’s light,                       _1730\nAnd the few sounds from that vast multitude\nMade silence more profound.—Oh, what a might\nOf human thought was cradled in that night!\nHow many hearts impenetrably veiled\nBeat underneath its shade, what secret fight                         _1735\nEvil and good, in woven passions mailed,\nWaged through that silent throng—a war that never failed!\n\n3.\nAnd now the Power of Good held victory.\nSo, through the labyrinth of many a tent,\nAmong the silent millions who did lie                                _1740\nIn innocent sleep, exultingly I went;\nThe moon had left Heaven desert now, but lent\nFrom eastern morn the first faint lustre showed\nAn armed youth—over his spear he bent\nHis downward face.—‘A friend!’ I cried aloud,                       _1745\nAnd quickly common hopes made freemen understood.\n\n4.\nI sate beside him while the morning beam\nCrept slowly over Heaven, and talked with him\nOf those immortal hopes, a glorious theme!\nWhich led us forth, until the stars grew dim:                        _1750\nAnd all the while, methought, his voice did swim\nAs if it drowned in remembrance were\nOf thoughts which make the moist eyes overbrim:\nAt last, when daylight ‘gan to fill the air,\nHe looked on me, and cried in wonder—‘Thou art here!’               _1755\n\n5.\nThen, suddenly, I knew it was the youth\nIn whom its earliest hopes my spirit found;\nBut envious tongues had stained his spotless truth,\nAnd thoughtless pride his love in silence bound,\nAnd shame and sorrow mine in toils had wound,                        _1760\nWhilst he was innocent, and I deluded;\nThe truth now came upon me, on the ground\nTears of repenting joy, which fast intruded,\nFell fast, and o’er its peace our mingling spirits brooded.\n\n6.\nThus, while with rapid lips and earnest eyes                         _1765\nWe talked, a sound of sweeping conflict spread\nAs from the earth did suddenly arise;\nFrom every tent roused by that clamour dread,\nOur bands outsprung and seized their arms—we sped\nTowards the sound: our tribes were gathering far.                    _1770\nThose sanguine slaves amid ten thousand dead\nStabbed in their sleep, trampled in treacherous war\nThe gentle hearts whose power their lives had sought to spare.\n\n7.\nLike rabid snakes, that sting some gentle child\nWho brings them food, when winter false and fair                     _1775\nAllures them forth with its cold smiles, so wild\nThey rage among the camp;—they overbear\nThe patriot hosts—confusion, then despair,\nDescends like night—when ‘Laon!’ one did cry;\nLike a bright ghost from Heaven that shout did scare                 _1780\nThe slaves, and widening through the vaulted sky,\nSeemed sent from Earth to Heaven in sign of victory.\n\n8.\nIn sudden panic those false murderers fled,\nLike insect tribes before the northern gale:\nBut swifter still, our hosts encompassed                             _1785\nTheir shattered ranks, and in a craggy vale,\nWhere even their fierce despair might nought avail,\nHemmed them around!—and then revenge and fear\nMade the high virtue of the patriots fail:\nOne pointed on his foe the mortal spear—                            _1790\nI rushed before its point, and cried ‘Forbear, forbear!’\n\n9.\nThe spear transfixed my arm that was uplifted\nIn swift expostulation, and the blood\nGushed round its point: I smiled, and—‘Oh! thou gifted\nWith eloquence which shall not be withstood,                         _1795\nFlow thus!’ I cried in joy, ‘thou vital flood,\nUntil my heart be dry, ere thus the cause\nFor which thou wert aught worthy be subdued—\nAh, ye are pale,—ye weep,—your passions pause,—\n’Tis well! ye feel the truth of love’s benignant laws.               _1800\n\n10.\n‘Soldiers, our brethren and our friends are slain.\nYe murdered them, I think, as they did sleep!\nAlas, what have ye done? the slightest pain\nWhich ye might suffer, there were eyes to weep,\nBut ye have quenched them—there were smiles to steep                _1805\nYour hearts in balm, but they are lost in woe;\nAnd those whom love did set his watch to keep\nAround your tents, truth’s freedom to bestow,\nYe stabbed as they did sleep—but they forgive ye now.\n\n11.\n‘Oh wherefore should ill ever flow from ill,                         _1810\nAnd pain still keener pain for ever breed?\nWe all are brethren—even the slaves who kill\nFor hire, are men; and to avenge misdeed\nOn the misdoer, doth but Misery feed\nWith her own broken heart! O Earth, O Heaven!                        _1815\nAnd thou, dread Nature, which to every deed\nAnd all that lives, or is, to be hath given,\nEven as to thee have these done ill, and are forgiven!\n\n12.\n‘Join then your hands and hearts, and let the past\nBe as a grave which gives not up its dead                            _1820\nTo evil thoughts.’—A film then overcast\nMy sense with dimness, for the wound, which bled\nFreshly, swift shadows o’er mine eyes had shed.\nWhen I awoke, I lay mid friends and foes,\nAnd earnest countenances on me shed                                  _1825\nThe light of questioning looks, whilst one did close\nMy wound with balmiest herbs, and soothed me to repose;\n\n13.\nAnd one whose spear had pierced me, leaned beside\nWith quivering lips and humid eyes;—and all\nSeemed like some brothers on a journey wide                          _1830\nGone forth, whom now strange meeting did befall\nIn a strange land, round one whom they might call\nTheir friend, their chief, their father, for assay\nOf peril, which had saved them from the thrall\nOf death, now suffering. Thus the vast array                         _1835\nOf those fraternal bands were reconciled that day.\n\n14.\nLifting the thunder of their acclamation,\nTowards the City then the multitude,\nAnd I among them, went in joy—a nation\nMade free by love;—a mighty brotherhood                             _1840\nLinked by a jealous interchange of good;\nA glorious pageant, more magnificent\nThan kingly slaves arrayed in gold and blood,\nWhen they return from carnage, and are sent\nIn triumph bright beneath the populous battlement.                   _1845\n\n15.\nAfar, the city-walls were thronged on high,\nAnd myriads on each giddy turret clung,\nAnd to each spire far lessening in the sky\nBright pennons on the idle winds were hung;\nAs we approached, a shout of joyance sprung                          _1850\nAt once from all the crowd, as if the vast\nAnd peopled Earth its boundless skies among\nThe sudden clamour of delight had cast,\nWhen from before its face some general wreck had passed.\n\n16.\nOur armies through the City’s hundred gates                          _1855\nWere poured, like brooks which to the rocky lair\nOf some deep lake, whose silence them awaits,\nThrong from the mountains when the storms are there\nAnd, as we passed through the calm sunny air\nA thousand flower-inwoven crowns were shed,                          _1860\nThe token flowers of truth and freedom fair,\nAnd fairest hands bound them on many a head,\nThose angels of love’s heaven that over all was spread.\n\n17.\nI trod as one tranced in some rapturous vision:\nThose bloody bands so lately reconciled,                             _1865\nWere, ever as they went, by the contrition\nOf anger turned to love, from ill beguiled,\nAnd every one on them more gently smiled,\nBecause they had done evil:—the sweet awe\nOf such mild looks made their own hearts grow mild,                  _1870\nAnd did with soft attraction ever draw\nTheir spirits to the love of freedom’s equal law.\n\n18.\nAnd they, and all, in one loud symphony\nMy name with Liberty commingling, lifted,\n‘The friend and the preserver of the free!                           _1875\nThe parent of this joy!’ and fair eyes gifted\nWith feelings, caught from one who had uplifted\nThe light of a great spirit, round me shone;\nAnd all the shapes of this grand scenery shifted\nLike restless clouds before the steadfast sun,—                     _1880\nWhere was that Maid? I asked, but it was known of none.\n\n19.\nLaone was the name her love had chosen,\nFor she was nameless, and her birth none knew:\nWhere was Laone now?—The words were frozen\nWithin my lips with fear; but to subdue                              _1885\nSuch dreadful hope, to my great task was due,\nAnd when at length one brought reply, that she\nTo-morrow would appear, I then withdrew\nTo judge what need for that great throng might be,\nFor now the stars came thick over the twilight sea.                  _1890\n\n20.\nYet need was none for rest or food to care,\nEven though that multitude was passing great,\nSince each one for the other did prepare\nAll kindly succour—Therefore to the gate\nOf the Imperial House, now desolate,                                 _1895\nI passed, and there was found aghast, alone,\nThe fallen Tyrant!—Silently he sate\nUpon the footstool of his golden throne,\nWhich, starred with sunny gems, in its own lustre shone.\n\n21.\nAlone, but for one child, who led before him                         _1900\nA graceful dance: the only living thing\nOf all the crowd, which thither to adore him\nFlocked yesterday, who solace sought to bring\nIn his abandonment!—She knew the King\nHad praised her dance of yore, and now she wove                      _1905\nIts circles, aye weeping and murmuring\nMid her sad task of unregarded love,\nThat to no smiles it might his speechless sadness move.\n\n22.\nShe fled to him, and wildly clasped his feet\nWhen human steps were heard:—he moved nor spoke,                    _1910\nNor changed his hue, nor raised his looks to meet\nThe gaze of strangers—our loud entrance woke\nThe echoes of the hall, which circling broke\nThe calm of its recesses,—like a tomb\nIts sculptured walls vacantly to the stroke                          _1915\nOf footfalls answered, and the twilight’s gloom\nLay like a charnel’s mist within the radiant dome.\n\n23.\nThe little child stood up when we came nigh;\nHer lips and cheeks seemed very pale and wan,\nBut on her forehead, and within her eye                              _1920\nLay beauty, which makes hearts that feed thereon\nSick with excess of sweetness; on the throne\nShe leaned;—the King, with gathered brow, and lips\nWreathed by long scorn, did inly sneer and frown\nWith hue like that when some great painter dips                      _1925\nHis pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.\n\n24.\nShe stood beside him like a rainbow braided\nWithin some storm, when scarce its shadows vast\nFrom the blue paths of the swift sun have faded;\nA sweet and solemn smile, like Cythna’s, cast                        _1930\nOne moment’s light, which made my heart beat fast,\nO’er that child’s parted lips—a gleam of bliss,\nA shade of vanished days,—as the tears passed\nWhich wrapped it, even as with a father’s kiss\nI pressed those softest eyes in trembling tenderness.                _1935\n\n25.\nThe sceptred wretch then from that solitude\nI drew, and, of his change compassionate,\nWith words of sadness soothed his rugged mood.\nBut he, while pride and fear held deep debate,\nWith sullen guile of ill-dissembled hate                             _1940\nGlared on me as a toothless snake might glare:\nPity, not scorn I felt, though desolate\nThe desolator now, and unaware\nThe curses which he mocked had caught him by the hair.\n\n26.\nI led him forth from that which now might seem                       _1945\nA gorgeous grave: through portals sculptured deep\nWith imagery beautiful as dream\nWe went, and left the shades which tend on sleep\nOver its unregarded gold to keep\nTheir silent watch.—The child trod faintingly,                      _1950\nAnd as she went, the tears which she did weep\nGlanced in the starlight; wildered seemed she,\nAnd, when I spake, for sobs she could not answer me.\n\n27.\nAt last the tyrant cried, ‘She hungers, slave!\nStab her, or give her bread!’—It was a tone                         _1955\nSuch as sick fancies in a new-made grave\nMight hear. I trembled, for the truth was known;\nHe with this child had thus been left alone,\nAnd neither had gone forth for food,—but he\nIn mingled pride and awe cowered near his throne,                    _1960\nAnd she a nursling of captivity\nKnew nought beyond those walls, nor what such change might be.\n\n28.\nAnd he was troubled at a charm withdrawn\nThus suddenly; that sceptres ruled no more—\nThat even from gold the dreadful strength was gone,                  _1965\nWhich once made all things subject to its power—\nSuch wonder seized him, as if hour by hour\nThe past had come again; and the swift fall\nOf one so great and terrible of yore,\nTo desolateness, in the hearts of all                                _1970\nLike wonder stirred, who saw such awful change befall.\n\n29.\nA mighty crowd, such as the wide land pours\nOnce in a thousand years, now gathered round\nThe fallen tyrant;—like the rush of showers\nOf hail in spring, pattering along the ground,                       _1975\nTheir many footsteps fell, else came no sound\nFrom the wide multitude: that lonely man\nThen knew the burden of his change, and found,\nConcealing in the dust his visage wan,\nRefuge from the keen looks which through his bosom ran.              _1980\n\n30.\nAnd he was faint withal: I sate beside him\nUpon the earth, and took that child so fair\nFrom his weak arms, that ill might none betide him\nOr her;—when food was brought to them, her share\nTo his averted lips the child did bear,                              _1985\nBut, when she saw he had enough, she ate\nAnd wept the while;—the lonely man’s despair\nHunger then overcame, and of his state\nForgetful, on the dust as in a trance he sate.\n\n31.\nSlowly the silence of the multitudes                                 _1990\nPassed, as when far is heard in some lone dell\nThe gathering of a wind among the woods—\n‘And he is fallen!’ they cry, ‘he who did dwell\nLike famine or the plague, or aught more fell\nAmong our homes, is fallen! the murderer                             _1995\nWho slaked his thirsting soul as from a well\nOf blood and tears with ruin! he is here!\nSunk in a gulf of scorn from which none may him rear!’\n\n32.\nThen was heard—‘He who judged let him be brought\nTo judgement! blood for blood cries from the soil                    _2000\nOn which his crimes have deep pollution wrought!\nShall Othman only unavenged despoil?\nShall they who by the stress of grinding toil\nWrest from the unwilling earth his luxuries,\nPerish for crime, while his foul blood may boil,                     _2005\nOr creep within his veins at will?—Arise!\nAnd to high justice make her chosen sacrifice!’\n\n33.\n‘What do ye seek? what fear ye,’ then I cried,\nSuddenly starting forth, ‘that ye should shed\nThe blood of Othman?—if your hearts are tried                       _2010\nIn the true love of freedom, cease to dread\nThis one poor lonely man—beneath Heaven spread\nIn purest light above us all, through earth—\nMaternal earth, who doth her sweet smiles shed\nFor all, let him go free; until the worth                            _2015\nOf human nature win from these a second birth.\n\n34.\n‘What call ye “justice”? Is there one who ne’er\nIn secret thought has wished another’s ill?—\nAre ye all pure? Let those stand forth who hear\nAnd tremble not. Shall they insult and kill,                         _2020\nIf such they be? their mild eyes can they fill\nWith the false anger of the hypocrite?\nAlas, such were not pure!—the chastened will\nOf virtue sees that justice is the light\nOf love, and not revenge, and terror and despite.’                   _2025\n\n35.\nThe murmur of the people, slowly dying,\nPaused as I spake, then those who near me were,\nCast gentle looks where the lone man was lying\nShrouding his head, which now that infant fair\nClasped on her lap in silence;—through the air                      _2030\nSobs were then heard, and many kissed my feet\nIn pity’s madness, and to the despair\nOf him whom late they cursed, a solace sweet\nHis very victims brought—soft looks and speeches meet.\n\n36.\nThen to a home for his repose assigned,                              _2035\nAccompanied by the still throng, he went\nIn silence, where, to soothe his rankling mind,\nSome likeness of his ancient state was lent;\nAnd if his heart could have been innocent\nAs those who pardoned him, he might have ended                       _2040\nHis days in peace; but his straight lips were bent,\nMen said, into a smile which guile portended,\nA sight with which that child like hope with fear was blended.\n\n37.\n’Twas midnight now, the eve of that great day\nWhereon the many nations at whose call                               _2045\nThe chains of earth like mist melted away,\nDecreed to hold a sacred Festival,\nA rite to attest the equality of all\nWho live. So to their homes, to dream or wake\nAll went. The sleepless silence did recall                           _2050\nLaone to my thoughts, with hopes that make\nThe flood recede from which their thirst they seek to slake.\n\n38.\nThe dawn flowed forth, and from its purple fountains\nI drank those hopes which make the spirit quail,\nAs to the plain between the misty mountains                          _2055\nAnd the great City, with a countenance pale,\nI went:—it was a sight which might avail\nTo make men weep exulting tears, for whom\nNow first from human power the reverend veil\nWas torn, to see Earth from her general womb                         _2060\nPour forth her swarming sons to a fraternal doom:\n\n39.\nTo see, far glancing in the misty morning,\nThe signs of that innumerable host;\nTo hear one sound of many made, the warning\nOf Earth to Heaven from its free children tossed,                    _2065\nWhile the eternal hills, and the sea lost\nIn wavering light, and, starring the blue sky\nThe city’s myriad spires of gold, almost\nWith human joy made mute society—\nIts witnesses with men who must hereafter be.                        _2070\n\n40.\nTo see, like some vast island from the Ocean,\nThe Altar of the Federation rear\nIts pile i’ the midst; a work, which the devotion\nOf millions in one night created there,\nSudden as when the moonrise makes appear                             _2075\nStrange clouds in the east; a marble pyramid\nDistinct with steps: that mighty shape did wear\nThe light of genius; its still shadow hid\nFar ships: to know its height the morning mists forbid!\n\n41.\nTo hear the restless multitudes for ever                             _2080\nAround the base of that great Altar flow,\nAs on some mountain-islet burst and shiver\nAtlantic waves; and solemnly and slow\nAs the wind bore that tumult to and fro,\nTo feel the dreamlike music, which did swim                          _2085\nLike beams through floating clouds on waves below\nFalling in pauses, from that Altar dim,\nAs silver-sounding tongues breathed an aerial hymn.\n\n42.\nTo hear, to see, to live, was on that morn\nLethean joy! so that all those assembled                             _2090\nCast off their memories of the past outworn;\nTwo only bosoms with their own life trembled,\nAnd mine was one,—and we had both dissembled;\nSo with a beating heart I went, and one,\nWho having much, covets yet more, resembled;                         _2095\nA lost and dear possession, which not won,\nHe walks in lonely gloom beneath the noonday sun.\n\n43.\nTo the great Pyramid I came: its stair\nWith female choirs was thronged: the loveliest\nAmong the free, grouped with its sculptures rare;                    _2100\nAs I approached, the morning’s golden mist,\nWhich now the wonder-stricken breezes kissed\nWith their cold lips, fled, and the summit shone\nLike Athos seen from Samothracia, dressed\nIn earliest light, by vintagers, and one                             _2105\nSate there, a female Shape upon an ivory throne:\n\n44.\nA Form most like the imagined habitant\nOf silver exhalations sprung from dawn,\nBy winds which feed on sunrise woven, to enchant\nThe faiths of men: all mortal eyes were drawn,                       _2110\nAs famished mariners through strange seas gone\nGaze on a burning watch-tower, by the light\nOf those divinest lineaments—alone\nWith thoughts which none could share, from that fair sight\nI turned in sickness, for a veil shrouded her countenance bright.    _2115\n\n45.\nAnd neither did I hear the acclamations,\nWhich from brief silence bursting, filled the air\nWith her strange name and mine, from all the nations\nWhich we, they said, in strength had gathered there\nFrom the sleep of bondage; nor the vision fair                       _2120\nOf that bright pageantry beheld,—but blind\nAnd silent, as a breathing corpse did fare,\nLeaning upon my friend, till like a wind\nTo fevered cheeks, a voice flowed o’er my troubled mind.\n\n46.\nLike music of some minstrel heavenly gifted,                         _2125\nTo one whom fiends enthral, this voice to me;\nScarce did I wish her veil to be uplifted,\nI was so calm and joyous.—I could see\nThe platform where we stood, the statues three\nWhich kept their marble watch on that high shrine,                   _2130\nThe multitudes, the mountains, and the sea;\nAs when eclipse hath passed, things sudden shine\nTo men’s astonished eyes most clear and crystalline.\n\n47.\nAt first Laone spoke most tremulously:\nBut soon her voice the calmness which it shed                        _2135\nGathered, and—‘Thou art whom I sought to see,\nAnd thou art our first votary here,’ she said:\n‘I had a dear friend once, but he is dead!—\nAnd of all those on the wide earth who breathe,\nThou dost resemble him alone—I spread                               _2140\nThis veil between us two that thou beneath\nShouldst image one who may have been long lost in death.\n\n48.\n‘For this wilt thou not henceforth pardon me?\nYes, but those joys which silence well requite\nForbid reply;—why men have chosen me                                _2145\nTo be the Priestess of this holiest rite\nI scarcely know, but that the floods of light\nWhich flow over the world, have borne me hither\nTo meet thee, long most dear; and now unite\nThine hand with mine, and may all comfort wither                     _2150\nFrom both the hearts whose pulse in joy now beat together,\n\n49.\n‘If our own will as others’ law we bind,\nIf the foul worship trampled here we fear;\nIf as ourselves we cease to love our kind!’—\nShe paused, and pointed upwards—sculptured there                    _2155\nThree shapes around her ivory throne appear;\nOne was a Giant, like a child asleep\nOn a loose rock, whose grasp crushed, as it were\nIn dream, sceptres and crowns; and one did keep\nIts watchful eyes in doubt whether to smile or weep;                 _2160\n\n50.\nA Woman sitting on the sculptured disk\nOf the broad earth, and feeding from one breast\nA human babe and a young basilisk;\nHer looks were sweet as Heaven’s when loveliest\nIn Autumn eves. The third Image was dressed                          _2165\nIn white wings swift as clouds in winter skies;\nBeneath his feet, ‘mongst ghastliest forms, repressed\nLay Faith, an obscene worm, who sought to rise,\nWhile calmly on the Sun he turned his diamond eyes.\n\n51.\nBeside that Image then I sate, while she                             _2170\nStood, mid the throngs which ever ebbed and flowed,\nLike light amid the shadows of the sea\nCast from one cloudless star, and on the crowd\nThat touch which none who feels forgets, bestowed;\nAnd whilst the sun returned the steadfast gaze                       _2175\nOf the great Image, as o’er Heaven it glode,\nThat rite had place; it ceased when sunset’s blaze\nBurned o’er the isles. All stood in joy and deep amaze—\n—When in the silence of all spirits there\nLaone’s voice was felt, and through the air                          _2180\nHer thrilling gestures spoke, most eloquently fair:—\n\n51.1.\n‘Calm art thou as yon sunset! swift and strong\nAs new-fledged Eagles, beautiful and young,\nThat float among the blinding beams of morning;\nAnd underneath thy feet writhe Faith, and Folly,                     _2185\nCustom, and Hell, and mortal Melancholy—\nHark! the Earth starts to hear the mighty warning\nOf thy voice sublime and holy;\nIts free spirits here assembled\nSee thee, feel thee, know thee now,—                                _2190\nTo thy voice their hearts have trembled\nLike ten thousand clouds which flow\nWith one wide wind as it flies!—\nWisdom! thy irresistible children rise\nTo hail thee, and the elements they chain                            _2195\nAnd their own will, to swell the glory of thy train.\n\n51.2.\n‘O Spirit vast and deep as Night and Heaven!\nMother and soul of all to which is given\nThe light of life, the loveliness of being,\nLo! thou dost re-ascend the human heart,                             _2200\nThy throne of power, almighty as thou wert\nIn dreams of Poets old grown pale by seeing\nThe shade of thee;—now, millions start\nTo feel thy lightnings through them burning:\nNature, or God, or Love, or Pleasure,                                _2205\nOr Sympathy the sad tears turning\nTo mutual smiles, a drainless treasure,\nDescends amidst us;—Scorn and Hate,\nRevenge and Selfishness are desolate—\nA hundred nations swear that there shall be                          _2210\nPity and Peace and Love, among the good and free!\n\n51.3.\n‘Eldest of things, divine Equality!\nWisdom and Love are but the slaves of thee,\nThe Angels of thy sway, who pour around thee\nTreasures from all the cells of human thought,                       _2215\nAnd from the Stars, and from the Ocean brought,\nAnd the last living heart whose beatings bound thee:\nThe powerful and the wise had sought\nThy coming, thou in light descending\nO’er the wide land which is thine own                                _2220\nLike the Spring whose breath is blending\nAll blasts of fragrance into one,\nComest upon the paths of men!—\nEarth bares her general bosom to thy ken,\nAnd all her children here in glory meet                              _2225\nTo feed upon thy smiles, and clasp thy sacred feet.\n\n51.4\n‘My brethren, we are free! the plains and mountains,\nThe gray sea-shore, the forests and the fountains,\nAre haunts of happiest dwellers;—man and woman,\nTheir common bondage burst, may freely borrow                        _2230\nFrom lawless love a solace for their sorrow;\nFor oft we still must weep, since we are human.\nA stormy night’s serenest morrow,\nWhose showers are pity’s gentle tears,\nWhose clouds are smiles of those that die                            _2235\nLike infants without hopes or fears,\nAnd whose beams are joys that lie\nIn blended hearts, now holds dominion;\nThe dawn of mind, which upwards on a pinion\nBorne, swift as sunrise, far illumines space,                        _2240\nAnd clasps this barren world in its own bright embrace!\n\n51.5\n‘My brethren, we are free! The fruits are glowing\nBeneath the stars, and the night-winds are flowing\nO’er the ripe corn, the birds and beasts are dreaming—\nNever again may blood of bird or beast                               _2245\nStain with its venomous stream a human feast,\nTo the pure skies in accusation steaming;\nAvenging poisons shall have ceased\nTo feed disease and fear and madness,\nThe dwellers of the earth and air                                    _2250\nShall throng around our steps in gladness,\nSeeking their food or refuge there.\nOur toil from thought all glorious forms shall cull,\nTo make this Earth, our home, more beautiful,\nAnd Science, and her sister Poesy,                                   _2255\nShall clothe in light the fields and cities of the free!\n\n51.6\n‘Victory, Victory to the prostrate nations!\nBear witness Night, and ye mute Constellations\nWho gaze on us from your crystalline cars!\nThoughts have gone forth whose powers can sleep no more!             _2260\nVictory! Victory! Earth’s remotest shore,\nRegions which groan beneath the Antarctic stars,\nThe green lands cradled in the roar\nOf western waves, and wildernesses\nPeopled and vast, which skirt the oceans                             _2265\nWhere morning dyes her golden tresses,\nShall soon partake our high emotions:\nKings shall turn pale! Almighty Fear,\nThe Fiend-God, when our charmed name he hear,\nShall fade like shadow from his thousand fanes,                      _2270\nWhile Truth with Joy enthroned o’er his lost empire reigns!’\n\n51.52.\nEre she had ceased, the mists of night entwining\nTheir dim woof, floated o’er the infinite throng;\nShe, like a spirit through the darkness shining,\nIn tones whose sweetness silence did prolong,                        _2275\nAs if to lingering winds they did belong,\nPoured forth her inmost soul: a passionate speech\nWith wild and thrilling pauses woven among,\nWhich whoso heard was mute, for it could teach\nTo rapture like her own all listening hearts to reach.               _2280\n\n53.\nHer voice was as a mountain stream which sweeps\nThe withered leaves of Autumn to the lake,\nAnd in some deep and narrow bay then sleeps\nIn the shadow of the shores; as dead leaves wake,\nUnder the wave, in flowers and herbs which make                      _2285\nThose green depths beautiful when skies are blue,\nThe multitude so moveless did partake\nSuch living change, and kindling murmurs flew\nAs o’er that speechless calm delight and wonder grew.\n\n54.\nOver the plain the throngs were scattered then                       _2290\nIn groups around the fires, which from the sea\nEven to the gorge of the first mountain-glen\nBlazed wide and far: the banquet of the free\nWas spread beneath many a dark cypress-tree,\nBeneath whose spires, which swayed in the red flame,                 _2295\nReclining, as they ate, of Liberty,\nAnd Hope, and Justice, and Laone’s name,\nEarth’s children did a woof of happy converse frame.\n\n55.\nTheir feast was such as Earth, the general mother,\nPours from her fairest bosom, when she smiles                        _2300\nIn the embrace of Autumn;—to each other\nAs when some parent fondly reconciles\nHer warring children, she their wrath beguiles\nWith her own sustenance, they relenting weep:\nSuch was this Festival, which from their isles                       _2305\nAnd continents, and winds, and oceans deep,\nAll shapes might throng to share, that fly, or walk or creep,—\n\n56.\nMight share in peace and innocence, for gore\nOr poison none this festal did pollute,\nBut, piled on high, an overflowing store                             _2310\nOf pomegranates and citrons, fairest fruit,\nMelons, and dates, and figs, and many a root\nSweet and sustaining, and bright grapes ere yet\nAccursed fire their mild juice could transmute\nInto a mortal bane, and brown corn set                               _2315\nIn baskets; with pure streams their thirsting lips they wet.\n\n57.\nLaone had descended from the shrine,\nAnd every deepest look and holiest mind\nFed on her form, though now those tones divine\nWere silent as she passed; she did unwind                            _2320\nHer veil, as with the crowds of her own kind\nShe mixed; some impulse made my heart refrain\nFrom seeking her that night, so I reclined\nAmidst a group, where on the utmost plain\nA festal watchfire burned beside the dusky main.                     _2325\n\n58.\nAnd joyous was our feast; pathetic talk,\nAnd wit, and harmony of choral strains,\nWhile far Orion o’er the waves did walk\nThat flow among the isles, held us in chains\nOf sweet captivity which none disdains                               _2330\nWho feels; but when his zone grew dim in mist\nWhich clothes the Ocean’s bosom, o’er the plains\nThe multitudes went homeward, to their rest,\nWhich that delightful day with its own shadow blessed.\n\n\n_2295 flame]light edition 1818.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 6.",
    "body": "1.\nBeside the dimness of the glimmering sea,                            _2335\nWeaving swift language from impassioned themes,\nWith that dear friend I lingered, who to me\nSo late had been restored, beneath the gleams\nOf the silver stars; and ever in soft dreams\nOf future love and peace sweet converse lapped                       _2340\nOur willing fancies, till the pallid beams\nOf the last watchfire fell, and darkness wrapped\nThe waves, and each bright chain of floating fire was snapped;\n\n2.\nAnd till we came even to the City’s wall\nAnd the great gate; then, none knew whence or why,                   _2345\nDisquiet on the multitudes did fall:\nAnd first, one pale and breathless passed us by,\nAnd stared and spoke not;—then with piercing cry\nA troop of wild-eyed women, by the shrieks\nOf their own terror driven,—tumultuously                            _2350\nHither and thither hurrying with pale cheeks,\nEach one from fear unknown a sudden refuge seeks—\n\n3.\nThen, rallying cries of treason and of danger\nResounded: and—‘They come! to arms! to arms!\nThe Tyrant is amongst us, and the stranger                           _2355\nComes to enslave us in his name! to arms!’\nIn vain: for Panic, the pale fiend who charms\nStrength to forswear her right, those millions swept\nLike waves before the tempest—these alarms\nCame to me, as to know their cause I lept                            _2360\nOn the gate’s turret, and in rage and grief and scorn I wept!\n\n4.\nFor to the North I saw the town on fire,\nAnd its red light made morning pallid now,\nWhich burst over wide Asia;—louder, higher,\nThe yells of victory and the screams of woe                          _2365\nI heard approach, and saw the throng below\nStream through the gates like foam-wrought waterfalls\nFed from a thousand storms—the fearful glow\nOf bombs flares overhead—at intervals\nThe red artillery’s bolt mangling among them falls.                  _2370\n\n5.\nAnd now the horsemen come—and all was done\nSwifter than I have spoken—I beheld\nTheir red swords flash in the unrisen sun.\nI rushed among the rout, to have repelled\nThat miserable flight—one moment quelled                            _2375\nBy voice and looks and eloquent despair,\nAs if reproach from their own hearts withheld\nTheir steps, they stood; but soon came pouring there\nNew multitudes, and did those rallied bands o’erbear.\n\n6.\nI strove, as, drifted on some cataract                               _2380\nBy irresistible streams, some wretch might strive\nWho hears its fatal roar:—the files compact\nWhelmed me, and from the gate availed to drive\nWith quickening impulse, as each bolt did rive\nTheir ranks with bloodier chasm:—into the plain                     _2385\nDisgorged at length the dead and the alive\nIn one dread mass, were parted, and the stain\nOf blood, from mortal steel fell o’er the fields like rain.\n\n7.\nFor now the despot’s bloodhounds with their prey\nUnarmed and unaware, were gorging deep                               _2390\nTheir gluttony of death; the loose array\nOf horsemen o’er the wide fields murdering sweep,\nAnd with loud laughter for their tyrant reap\nA harvest sown with other hopes; the while,\nFar overhead, ships from Propontis keep                              _2395\nA killing rain of fire:—when the waves smile\nAs sudden earthquakes light many a volcano-isle,\n\n8.\nThus sudden, unexpected feast was spread\nFor the carrion-fowls of Heaven.—I saw the sight—\nI moved—I lived—as o’er the heaps of dead,                         _2400\nWhose stony eyes glared in the morning light\nI trod;—to me there came no thought of flight,\nBut with loud cries of scorn, which whoso heard\nThat dreaded death, felt in his veins the might\nOf virtuous shame return, the crowd I stirred,                       _2405\nAnd desperation’s hope in many hearts recurred.\n\n9.\nA band of brothers gathering round me, made,\nAlthough unarmed, a steadfast front, and still\nRetreating, with stern looks beneath the shade\nOf gathered eyebrows, did the victors fill                           _2410\nWith doubt even in success; deliberate will\nInspired our growing troop; not overthrown\nIt gained the shelter of a grassy hill,\nAnd ever still our comrades were hewn down,\nAnd their defenceless limbs beneath our footsteps strown.            _2415\n\n10.\nImmovably we stood—in joy I found,\nBeside me then, firm as a giant pine\nAmong the mountain-vapours driven around,\nThe old man whom I loved—his eyes divine\nWith a mild look of courage answered mine,                           _2420\nAnd my young friend was near, and ardently\nHis hand grasped mine a moment—now the line\nOf war extended, to our rallying cry\nAs myriads flocked in love and brotherhood to die.\n\n11.\nFor ever while the sun was climbing Heaven                           _2425\nThe horseman hewed our unarmed myriads down\nSafely, though when by thirst of carnage driven\nToo near, those slaves were swiftly overthrown\nBy hundreds leaping on them:—flesh and bone\nSoon made our ghastly ramparts; then the shaft                       _2430\nOf the artillery from the sea was thrown\nMore fast and fiery, and the conquerors laughed\nIn pride to hear the wind our screams of torment waft.\n\n12.\nFor on one side alone the hill gave shelter,\nSo vast that phalanx of unconquered men,                             _2435\nAnd there the living in the blood did welter\nOf the dead and dying, which in that green glen,\nLike stifled torrents, made a plashy fen\nUnder the feet—thus was the butchery waged\nWhile the sun clomb Heaven’s eastern steep—but when                 _2440\nIt ‘gan to sink—a fiercer combat raged,\nFor in more doubtful strife the armies were engaged.\n\n13.\nWithin a cave upon the hill were found\nA bundle of rude pikes, the instrument\nOf those who war but on their native ground                          _2445\nFor natural rights: a shout of joyance sent\nEven from our hearts the wide air pierced and rent,\nAs those few arms the bravest and the best\nSeized, and each sixth, thus armed, did now present\nA line which covered and sustained the rest,                         _2450\nA confident phalanx, which the foes on every side invest.\n\n14.\nThat onset turned the foes to flight almost;\nBut soon they saw their present strength, and knew\nThat coming night would to our resolute host\nBring victory; so dismounting, close they drew                       _2455\nTheir glittering files, and then the combat grew\nUnequal but most horrible;—and ever\nOur myriads, whom the swift bolt overthrew,\nOr the red sword, failed like a mountain river\nWhich rushes forth in foam to sink in sands for ever.                _2460\n\n15.\nSorrow and shame, to see with their own kind\nOur human brethren mix, like beasts of blood,\nTo mutual ruin armed by one behind\nWho sits and scoffs!—That friend so mild and good,\nWho like its shadow near my youth had stood,                         _2465\nWas stabbed!—my old preserver’s hoary hair\nWith the flesh clinging to its roots, was strewed\nUnder my feet!—I lost all sense or care,\nAnd like the rest I grew desperate and unaware.\n\n16.\nThe battle became ghastlier—in the midst                            _2470\nI paused, and saw, how ugly and how fell\nO Hate! thou art, even when thy life thou shedd’st\nFor love. The ground in many a little dell\nWas broken, up and down whose steeps befell\nAlternate victory and defeat, and there                              _2475\nThe combatants with rage most horrible\nStrove, and their eyes started with cracking stare,\nAnd impotent their tongues they lolled into the air,\n\n17.\nFlaccid and foamy, like a mad dog’s hanging;\nWant, and Moon-madness, and the pest’s swift Bane                    _2480\nWhen its shafts smite—while yet its bow is twanging—\nHave each their mark and sign—some ghastly stain;\nAnd this was thine, O War! of hate and pain\nThou loathed slave! I saw all shapes of death\nAnd ministered to many, o’er the plain                               _2485\nWhile carnage in the sunbeam’s warmth did seethe,\nTill twilight o’er the east wove her serenest wreath.\n\n18.\nThe few who yet survived, resolute and firm\nAround me fought. At the decline of day\nWinding above the mountain’s snowy term                              _2490\nNew banners shone; they quivered in the ray\nOf the sun’s unseen orb—ere night the array\nOf fresh troops hemmed us in—of those brave bands\nI soon survived alone—and now I lay\nVanquished and faint, the grasp of bloody hands                      _2495\nI felt, and saw on high the glare of falling brands,\n\n19.\nWhen on my foes a sudden terror came,\nAnd they fled, scattering—lo! with reinless speed\nA black Tartarian horse of giant frame\nComes trampling over the dead, the living bleed                      _2500\nBeneath the hoofs of that tremendous steed,\nOn which, like to an Angel, robed in white,\nSate one waving a sword;—the hosts recede\nAnd fly, as through their ranks with awful might,\nSweeps in the shadow of eve that Phantom swift and bright;           _2505\n\n20.\nAnd its path made a solitude.—I rose\nAnd marked its coming: it relaxed its course\nAs it approached me, and the wind that flows\nThrough night, bore accents to mine ear whose force\nMight create smiles in death—the Tartar horse                       _2510\nPaused, and I saw the shape its might which swayed,\nAnd heard her musical pants, like the sweet source\nOf waters in the desert, as she said,\n‘Mount with me, Laon, now’—I rapidly obeyed.\n\n21.\nThen: ‘Away! away!’ she cried, and stretched her sword               _2515\nAs ’twere a scourge over the courser’s head,\nAnd lightly shook the reins.—We spake no word,\nBut like the vapour of the tempest fled\nOver the plain; her dark hair was dispread\nLike the pine’s locks upon the lingering blast;                      _2520\nOver mine eyes its shadowy strings it spread\nFitfully, and the hills and streams fled fast,\nAs o’er their glimmering forms the steed’s broad shadow passed.\n\n22.\nAnd his hoofs ground the rocks to fire and dust,\nHis strong sides made the torrents rise in spray,                    _2525\nAnd turbulence, as of a whirlwind’s gust\nSurrounded us;—and still away! away!\nThrough the desert night we sped, while she alway\nGazed on a mountain which we neared, whose crest,\nCrowned with a marble ruin, in the ray                               _2530\nOf the obscure stars gleamed;—its rugged breast\nThe steed strained up, and then his impulse did arrest.\n\n23.\nA rocky hill which overhung the Ocean:—\nFrom that lone ruin, when the steed that panted\nPaused, might be heard the murmur of the motion                      _2535\nOf waters, as in spots for ever haunted\nBy the choicest winds of Heaven, which are enchanted\nTo music, by the wand of Solitude,\nThat wizard wild, and the far tents implanted\nUpon the plain, be seen by those who stood                           _2540\nThence marking the dark shore of Ocean’s curved flood.\n\n24.\nOne moment these were heard and seen—another\nPassed; and the two who stood beneath that night,\nEach only heard, or saw, or felt the other;\nAs from the lofty steed she did alight,                              _2545\nCythna, (for, from the eyes whose deepest light\nOf love and sadness made my lips feel pale\nWith influence strange of mournfullest delight,\nMy own sweet Cythna looked), with joy did quail,\nAnd felt her strength in tears of human weakness fail.               _2550\n\n25.\nAnd for a space in my embrace she rested,\nHer head on my unquiet heart reposing,\nWhile my faint arms her languid frame invested;\nAt length she looked on me, and half unclosing\nHer tremulous lips, said, ‘Friend, thy bands were losing             _2555\nThe battle, as I stood before the King\nIn bonds.—I burst them then, and swiftly choosing\nThe time, did seize a Tartar’s sword, and spring\nUpon his horse, and swift, as on the whirlwind’s wing,\n\n26.\n‘Have thou and I been borne beyond pursuer,                          _2560\nAnd we are here.’—Then, turning to the steed,\nShe pressed the white moon on his front with pure\nAnd rose-like lips, and many a fragrant weed\nFrom the green ruin plucked, that he might feed;—\nBut I to a stone seat that Maiden led,                               _2565\nAnd, kissing her fair eyes, said, ‘Thou hast need\nOf rest,’ and I heaped up the courser’s bed\nIn a green mossy nook, with mountain flowers dispread.\n\n27.\nWithin that ruin, where a shattered portal\nLooks to the eastern stars, abandoned now                            _2570\nBy man, to be the home of things immortal,\nMemories, like awful ghosts which come and go,\nAnd must inherit all he builds below,\nWhen he is gone, a hall stood; o’er whose roof\nFair clinging weeds with ivy pale did grow,                          _2575\nClasping its gray rents with a verdurous woof,\nA hanging dome of leaves, a canopy moon-proof.\n\n28.\nThe autumnal winds, as if spell-bound, had made\nA natural couch of leaves in that recess,\nWhich seasons none disturbed, but, in the shade                      _2580\nOf flowering parasites, did Spring love to dress\nWith their sweet blooms the wintry loneliness\nOf those dead leaves, shedding their stars, whene’er\nThe wandering wind her nurslings might caress;\nWhose intertwining fingers ever there                                _2585\nMade music wild and soft that filled the listening air.\n\n29.\nWe know not where we go, or what sweet dream\nMay pilot us through caverns strange and fair\nOf far and pathless passion, while the stream\nOf life, our bark doth on its whirlpools bear,                       _2590\nSpreading swift wings as sails to the dim air;\nNor should we seek to know, so the devotion\nOf love and gentle thoughts be heard still there\nLouder and louder from the utmost Ocean\nOf universal life, attuning its commotion.                           _2595\n\n30.\nTo the pure all things are pure! Oblivion wrapped\nOur spirits, and the fearful overthrow\nOf public hope was from our being snapped,\nThough linked years had bound it there; for now\nA power, a thirst, a knowledge, which below                          _2600\nAll thoughts, like light beyond the atmosphere,\nClothing its clouds with grace, doth ever flow,\nCame on us, as we sate in silence there,\nBeneath the golden stars of the clear azure air;—\n\n31.\nIn silence which doth follow talk that causes                        _2605\nThe baffled heart to speak with sighs and tears,\nWhen wildering passion swalloweth up the pauses\nOf inexpressive speech:—the youthful years\nWhich we together passed, their hopes and fears,\nThe blood itself which ran within our frames,                        _2610\nThat likeness of the features which endears\nThe thoughts expressed by them, our very names,\nAnd all the winged hours which speechless memory claims,\n\n32.\nHad found a voice—and ere that voice did pass,\nThe night grew damp and dim, and, through a rent                     _2615\nOf the ruin where we sate, from the morass\nA wandering Meteor by some wild wind sent,\nHung high in the green dome, to which it lent\nA faint and pallid lustre; while the song\nOf blasts, in which its blue hair quivering bent,                    _2620\nStrewed strangest sounds the moving leaves among;\nA wondrous light, the sound as of a spirit’s tongue.\n\n33.\nThe Meteor showed the leaves on which we sate,\nAnd Cythna’s glowing arms, and the thick ties\nOf her soft hair, which bent with gathered weight                    _2625\nMy neck near hers; her dark and deepening eyes,\nWhich, as twin phantoms of one star that lies\nO’er a dim well, move, though the star reposes,\nSwam in our mute and liquid ecstasies,\nHer marble brow, and eager lips, like roses,                         _2630\nWith their own fragrance pale, which Spring but half uncloses.\n\n34.\nThe Meteor to its far morass returned:\nThe beating of our veins one interval\nMade still; and then I felt the blood that burned\nWithin her frame, mingle with mine, and fall                         _2635\nAround my heart like fire; and over all\nA mist was spread, the sickness of a deep\nAnd speechless swoon of joy, as might befall\nTwo disunited spirits when they leap\nIn union from this earth’s obscure and fading sleep.                 _2640\n\n35.\nWas it one moment that confounded thus\nAll thought, all sense, all feeling, into one\nUnutterable power, which shielded us\nEven from our own cold looks, when we had gone\nInto a wide and wild oblivion                                        _2645\nOf tumult and of tenderness? or now\nHad ages, such as make the moon and sun,\nThe seasons, and mankind their changes know,\nLeft fear and time unfelt by us alone below?\n\n36.\nI know not. What are kisses whose fire clasps                        _2650\nThe failing heart in languishment, or limb\nTwined within limb? or the quick dying gasps\nOf the life meeting, when the faint eyes swim\nThrough tears of a wide mist boundless and dim,\nIn one caress? What is the strong control                            _2655\nWhich leads the heart that dizzy steep to climb,\nWhere far over the world those vapours roll\nWhich blend two restless frames in one reposing soul?\n37.\nIt is the shadow which doth float unseen,\nBut not unfelt, o’er blind mortality,                                _2660\nWhose divine darkness fled not from that green\nAnd lone recess, where lapped in peace did lie\nOur linked frames, till, from the changing sky\nThat night and still another day had fled;\nAnd then I saw and felt. The moon was high,                          _2665\nAnd clouds, as of a coming storm, were spread\nUnder its orb,—loud winds were gathering overhead.\n\n38.\nCythna’s sweet lips seemed lurid in the moon,\nHer fairest limbs with the night wind were chill,\nAnd her dark tresses were all loosely strewn                         _2670\nO’er her pale bosom:—all within was still,\nAnd the sweet peace of joy did almost fill\nThe depth of her unfathomable look;—\nAnd we sate calmly, though that rocky hill,\nThe waves contending in its caverns strook,                          _2675\nFor they foreknew the storm, and the gray ruin shook.\n\n39.\nThere we unheeding sate, in the communion\nOf interchanged vows, which, with a rite\nOf faith most sweet and sacred, stamped our union.—\nFew were the living hearts which could unite                         _2680\nLike ours, or celebrate a bridal night\nWith such close sympathies, for they had sprung\nFrom linked youth, and from the gentle might\nOf earliest love, delayed and cherished long,\nWhich common hopes and fears made, like a tempest, strong.           _2685\n\n40.\nAnd such is Nature’s law divine, that those\nWho grow together cannot choose but love,\nIf faith or custom do not interpose,\nOr common slavery mar what else might move\nAll gentlest thoughts; as in the sacred grove                        _2690\nWhich shades the springs of Ethiopian Nile,\nThat living tree which, if the arrowy dove\nStrike with her shadow, shrinks in fear awhile,\nBut its own kindred leaves clasps while the sunbeams smile;\n\n41.\nAnd clings to them, when darkness may dissever                       _2695\nThe close caresses of all duller plants\nWhich bloom on the wide earth—thus we for ever\nWere linked, for love had nursed us in the haunts\nWhere knowledge, from its secret source enchants\nYoung hearts with the fresh music of its springing,                  _2700\nEre yet its gathered flood feeds human wants,\nAs the great Nile feeds Egypt; ever flinging\nLight on the woven boughs which o’er its waves are swinging.\n\n42.\nThe tones of Cythna’s voice like echoes were\nOf those far murmuring streams; they rose and fell,                  _2705\nMixed with mine own in the tempestuous air,—\nAnd so we sate, until our talk befell\nOf the late ruin, swift and horrible,\nAnd how those seeds of hope might yet be sown,\nWhose fruit is evil’s mortal poison: well,                           _2710\nFor us, this ruin made a watch-tower lone,\nBut Cythna’s eyes looked faint, and now two days were gone\n\n43.\nSince she had food:—therefore I did awaken\nThe Tartar steed, who, from his ebon mane\nSoon as the clinging slumbers he had shaken,                         _2715\nBent his thin head to seek the brazen rein,\nFollowing me obediently; with pain\nOf heart, so deep and dread, that one caress,\nWhen lips and heart refuse to part again\nTill they have told their fill, could scarce express                 _2720\nThe anguish of her mute and fearful tenderness,\n\n44.\nCythna beheld me part, as I bestrode\nThat willing steed—the tempest and the night,\nWhich gave my path its safety as I rode\nDown the ravine of rocks, did soon unite                             _2725\nThe darkness and the tumult of their might\nBorne on all winds.—Far through the streaming rain\nFloating at intervals the garments white\nOf Cythna gleamed, and her voice once again\nCame to me on the gust, and soon I reached the plain.                _2730\n\n45.\nI dreaded not the tempest, nor did he\nWho bore me, but his eyeballs wide and red\nTurned on the lightning’s cleft exultingly;\nAnd when the earth beneath his tameless tread,\nShook with the sullen thunder, he would spread                       _2735\nHis nostrils to the blast, and joyously\nMock the fierce peal with neighings;—thus we sped\nO’er the lit plain, and soon I could descry\nWhere Death and Fire had gorged the spoil of victory.\n\n46.\nThere was a desolate village in a wood                               _2740\nWhose bloom-inwoven leaves now scattering fed\nThe hungry storm; it was a place of blood,\nA heap of hearthless walls;—the flames were dead\nWithin those dwellings now,—the life had fled\nFrom all those corpses now,—but the wide sky                        _2745\nFlooded with lightning was ribbed overhead\nBy the black rafters, and around did lie\nWomen, and babes, and men, slaughtered confusedly.\n\n47.\nBeside the fountain in the market-place\nDismounting, I beheld those corpses stare                            _2750\nWith horny eyes upon each other’s face,\nAnd on the earth and on the vacant air,\nAnd upon me, close to the waters where\nI stooped to slake my thirst;—I shrank to taste,\nFor the salt bitterness of blood was there;                          _2755\nBut tied the steed beside, and sought in haste\nIf any yet survived amid that ghastly waste.\n\n48.\nNo living thing was there beside one woman,\nWhom I found wandering in the streets, and she\nWas withered from a likeness of aught human                          _2760\nInto a fiend, by some strange misery:\nSoon as she heard my steps she leaped on me,\nAnd glued her burning lips to mine, and laughed\nWith a loud, long, and frantic laugh of glee,\nAnd cried, ‘Now, Mortal, thou hast deeply quaffed                    _2765\nThe Plague’s blue kisses—soon millions shall pledge the draught!\n\n49.\n‘My name is Pestilence—this bosom dry,\nOnce fed two babes—a sister and a brother—\nWhen I came home, one in the blood did lie\nOf three death-wounds—the flames had ate the other!                 _2770\nSince then I have no longer been a mother,\nBut I am Pestilence;—hither and thither\nI flit about, that I may slay and smother:—\nAll lips which I have kissed must surely wither,\nBut Death’s—if thou art he, we’ll go to work together!              _2775\n\n50.\n‘What seek’st thou here? The moonlight comes in flashes,—\nThe dew is rising dankly from the dell—\n‘Twill moisten her! and thou shalt see the gashes\nIn my sweet boy, now full of worms—but tell\nFirst what thou seek’st.’—‘I seek for food.’—‘’Tis well,           _2780\nThou shalt have food. Famine, my paramour,\nWaits for us at the feast—cruel and fell\nIs Famine, but he drives not from his door\nThose whom these lips have kissed, alone. No more, no more!’\n\n51.\nAs thus she spake, she grasped me with the strength                  _2785\nOf madness, and by many a ruined hearth\nShe led, and over many a corpse:—at length\nWe came to a lone hut where on the earth\nWhich made its floor, she in her ghastly mirth,\nGathering from all those homes now desolate,                         _2790\nHad piled three heaps of loaves, making a dearth\nAmong the dead—round which she set in state\nA ring of cold, stiff babes; silent and stark they sate.\n\n52.\nShe leaped upon a pile, and lifted high\nHer mad looks to the lightning, and cried: ‘Eat!                     _2795\nShare the great feast—to-morrow we must die!’\nAnd then she spurned the loaves with her pale feet,\nTowards her bloodless guests;—that sight to meet,\nMine eyes and my heart ached, and but that she\nWho loved me, did with absent looks defeat                           _2800\nDespair, I might have raved in sympathy;\nBut now I took the food that woman offered me;\n\n53.\nAnd vainly having with her madness striven\nIf I might win her to return with me,\nDeparted. In the eastern beams of Heaven                             _2805\nThe lightning now grew pallid—rapidly,\nAs by the shore of the tempestuous sea\nThe dark steed bore me; and the mountain gray\nSoon echoed to his hoofs, and I could see\nCythna among the rocks, where she alway                              _2810\nHad sate with anxious eyes fixed on the lingering day.\n\n54.\nAnd joy was ours to meet: she was most pale,\nFamished, and wet and weary, so I cast\nMy arms around her, lest her steps should fail\nAs to our home we went, and thus embraced,                           _2815\nHer full heart seemed a deeper joy to taste\nThan e’er the prosperous know; the steed behind\nTrod peacefully along the mountain waste;\nWe reached our home ere morning could unbind\nNight’s latest veil, and on our bridal-couch reclined.               _2820\n\n55.\nHer chilled heart having cherished in my bosom,\nAnd sweetest kisses past, we two did share\nOur peaceful meal:—as an autumnal blossom\nWhich spreads its shrunk leaves in the sunny air,\nAfter cold showers, like rainbows woven there,                       _2825\nThus in her lips and cheeks the vital spirit\nMantled, and in her eyes, an atmosphere\nOf health, and hope; and sorrow languished near it,\nAnd fear, and all that dark despondence doth inherit.\n\n\n_2397 -isle. Bradley, who cps. Marianne’s Dream, St. 12. See note at end.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 7.",
    "body": "1.\nSo we sate joyous as the morning ray                                 _2830\nWhich fed upon the wrecks of night and storm\nNow lingering on the winds; light airs did play\nAmong the dewy weeds, the sun was warm,\nAnd we sate linked in the inwoven charm\nOf converse and caresses sweet and deep,                             _2835\nSpeechless caresses, talk that might disarm\nTime, though he wield the darts of death and sleep,\nAnd those thrice mortal barbs in his own poison steep.\n\n2.\nI told her of my sufferings and my madness,\nAnd how, awakened from that dreamy mood                              _2840\nBy Liberty’s uprise, the strength of gladness\nCame to my spirit in my solitude;\nAnd all that now I was—while tears pursued\nEach other down her fair and listening cheek\nFast as the thoughts which fed them, like a flood                    _2845\nFrom sunbright dales; and when I ceased to speak,\nHer accents soft and sweet the pausing air did wake.\n\n3.\nShe told me a strange tale of strange endurance,\nLike broken memories of many a heart\nWoven into one; to which no firm assurance,                          _2850\nSo wild were they, could her own faith impart.\nShe said that not a tear did dare to start\nFrom the swoln brain, and that her thoughts were firm\nWhen from all mortal hope she did depart,\nBorne by those slaves across the Ocean’s term,                       _2855\nAnd that she reached the port without one fear infirm.\n\n4.\nOne was she among many there, the thralls\nOf the cold Tyrant’s cruel lust; and they\nLaughed mournfully in those polluted halls;\nBut she was calm and sad, musing alway                               _2860\nOn loftiest enterprise, till on a day\nThe Tyrant heard her singing to her lute\nA wild, and sad, and spirit-thrilling lay,\nLike winds that die in wastes—one moment mute\nThe evil thoughts it made, which did his breast pollute.             _2865\n\n5.\nEven when he saw her wondrous loveliness,\nOne moment to great Nature’s sacred power\nHe bent, and was no longer passionless;\nBut when he bade her to his secret bower\nBe borne, a loveless victim, and she tore                            _2870\nHer locks in agony, and her words of flame\nAnd mightier looks availed not; then he bore\nAgain his load of slavery, and became\nA king, a heartless beast, a pageant and a name.\n\n6.\nShe told me what a loathsome agony                                   _2875\nIs that when selfishness mocks love’s delight,\nFoul as in dream’s most fearful imagery,\nTo dally with the mowing dead—that night\nAll torture, fear, or horror made seem light\nWhich the soul dreams or knows, and when the day                     _2880\nShone on her awful frenzy, from the sight\nWhere like a Spirit in fleshly chains she lay\nStruggling, aghast and pale the Tyrant fled away.\n\n7.\nHer madness was a beam of light, a power\nWhich dawned through the rent soul; and words it gave,               _2885\nGestures and looks, such as in whirlwinds bore\nWhich might not be withstood—whence none could save—\nAll who approached their sphere,—like some calm wave\nVexed into whirlpools by the chasms beneath;\nAnd sympathy made each attendant slave                               _2890\nFearless and free, and they began to breathe\nDeep curses, like the voice of flames far underneath.\n\n8.\nThe King felt pale upon his noonday throne:\nAt night two slaves he to her chamber sent,—\nOne was a green and wrinkled eunuch, grown                           _2895\nFrom human shape into an instrument\nOf all things ill—distorted, bowed and bent.\nThe other was a wretch from infancy\nMade dumb by poison; who nought knew or meant\nBut to obey: from the fire isles came he,                            _2900\nA diver lean and strong, of Oman’s coral sea.\n\n9.\nThey bore her to a bark, and the swift stroke\nOf silent rowers clove the blue moonlight seas,\nUntil upon their path the morning broke;\nThey anchored then, where, be there calm or breeze,                  _2905\nThe gloomiest of the drear Symplegades\nShakes with the sleepless surge;—the Ethiop there\nWound his long arms around her, and with knees\nLike iron clasped her feet, and plunged with her\nAmong the closing waves out of the boundless air.                    _2910\n\n10.\n‘Swift as an eagle stooping from the plain\nOf morning light, into some shadowy wood,\nHe plunged through the green silence of the main,\nThrough many a cavern which the eternal flood\nHad scooped, as dark lairs for its monster brood;                    _2915\nAnd among mighty shapes which fled in wonder,\nAnd among mightier shadows which pursued\nHis heels, he wound: until the dark rocks under\nHe touched a golden chain—a sound arose like thunder.\n\n11.\n‘A stunning clang of massive bolts redoubling                        _2920\nBeneath the deep—a burst of waters driven\nAs from the roots of the sea, raging and bubbling:\nAnd in that roof of crags a space was riven\nThrough which there shone the emerald beams of heaven,\nShot through the lines of many waves inwoven,                        _2925\nLike sunlight through acacia woods at even,\nThrough which, his way the diver having cloven,\nPassed like a spark sent up out of a burning oven.\n\n12.\n‘And then,’ she said, ‘he laid me in a cave\nAbove the waters, by that chasm of sea,                              _2930\nA fountain round and vast, in which the wave\nImprisoned, boiled and leaped perpetually,\nDown which, one moment resting, he did flee,\nWinning the adverse depth; that spacious cell\nLike an hupaithric temple wide and high,                             _2935\nWhose aery dome is inaccessible,\nWas pierced with one round cleft through which the sunbeams fell.\n\n13.\n‘Below, the fountain’s brink was richly paven\nWith the deep’s wealth, coral, and pearl, and sand\nLike spangling gold, and purple shells engraven                      _2940\nWith mystic legends by no mortal hand,\nLeft there, when thronging to the moon’s command,\nThe gathering waves rent the Hesperian gate\nOf mountains, and on such bright floor did stand\nColumns, and shapes like statues, and the state                      _2945\nOf kingless thrones, which Earth did in her heart create.\n\n14.\n‘The fiend of madness which had made its prey\nOf my poor heart, was lulled to sleep awhile:\nThere was an interval of many a day,\nAnd a sea-eagle brought me food the while,                           _2950\nWhose nest was built in that untrodden isle,\nAnd who, to be the gaoler had been taught\nOf that strange dungeon; as a friend whose smile\nLike light and rest at morn and even is sought\nThat wild bird was to me, till madness misery brought.               _2955\n\n15.\n‘The misery of a madness slow and creeping,\nWhich made the earth seem fire, the sea seem air,\nAnd the white clouds of noon which oft were sleeping,\nIn the blue heaven so beautiful and fair,\nLike hosts of ghastly shadows hovering there;                        _2960\nAnd the sea-eagle looked a fiend, who bore\nThy mangled limbs for food!—Thus all things were\nTransformed into the agony which I wore\nEven as a poisoned robe around my bosom’s core.\n\n16.\n‘Again I knew the day and night fast fleeing,                        _2965\nThe eagle, and the fountain, and the air;\nAnother frenzy came—there seemed a being\nWithin me—a strange load my heart did bear,\nAs if some living thing had made its lair\nEven in the fountains of my life:—a long                            _2970\nAnd wondrous vision wrought from my despair,\nThen grew, like sweet reality among\nDim visionary woes, an unreposing throng.\n\n17.\n‘Methought I was about to be a mother—\nMonth after month went by, and still I dreamed                       _2975\nThat we should soon be all to one another,\nI and my child; and still new pulses seemed\nTo beat beside my heart, and still I deemed\nThere was a babe within—and, when the rain\nOf winter through the rifted cavern streamed,                        _2980\nMethought, after a lapse of lingering pain,\nI saw that lovely shape, which near my heart had lain.\n\n18.\n‘It was a babe, beautiful from its birth,—\nIt was like thee, dear love, its eyes were thine,\nIts brow, its lips, and so upon the earth                            _2985\nIt laid its fingers, as now rest on mine\nThine own, beloved!—’twas a dream divine;\nEven to remember how it fled, how swift,\nHow utterly, might make the heart repine,—\nThough ’twas a dream.’—Then Cythna did uplift                       _2990\nHer looks on mine, as if some doubt she sought to shift:\n\n19.\nA doubt which would not flee, a tenderness\nOf questioning grief, a source of thronging tears;\nWhich having passed, as one whom sobs oppress\nShe spoke: ‘Yes, in the wilderness of years                          _2995\nHer memory, aye, like a green home appears;\nShe sucked her fill even at this breast, sweet love,\nFor many months. I had no mortal fears;\nMethought I felt her lips and breath approve,—\nIt was a human thing which to my bosom clove.                        _3000\n\n20.\n‘I watched the dawn of her first smiles; and soon\nWhen zenith stars were trembling on the wave,\nOr when the beams of the invisible moon,\nOr sun, from many a prism within the cave\nTheir gem-born shadows to the water gave,                            _3005\nHer looks would hunt them, and with outspread hand,\nFrom the swift lights which might that fountain pave,\nShe would mark one, and laugh, when that command\nSlighting, it lingered there, and could not understand.\n\n21.\n‘Methought her looks began to talk with me;                          _3010\nAnd no articulate sounds, but something sweet\nHer lips would frame,—so sweet it could not be,\nThat it was meaningless; her touch would meet\nMine, and our pulses calmly flow and beat\nIn response while we slept; and on a day                             _3015\nWhen I was happiest in that strange retreat,\nWith heaps of golden shells we two did play,—\nBoth infants, weaving wings for time’s perpetual way.\n\n22.\n‘Ere night, methought, her waning eyes were grown\nWeary with joy, and tired with our delight,                          _3020\nWe, on the earth, like sister twins lay down\nOn one fair mother’s bosom:—from that night\nShe fled,—like those illusions clear and bright,\nWhich dwell in lakes, when the red moon on high\nPause ere it wakens tempest;—and her flight,                        _3025\nThough ’twas the death of brainless fantasy,\nYet smote my lonesome heart more than all misery.\n\n23.\n‘It seemed that in the dreary night the diver\nWho brought me thither, came again, and bore\nMy child away. I saw the waters quiver,                              _3030\nWhen he so swiftly sunk, as once before:\nThen morning came—it shone even as of yore,\nBut I was changed—the very life was gone\nOut of my heart—I wasted more and more,\nDay after day, and sitting there alone,                              _3035\nVexed the inconstant waves with my perpetual moan.\n\n24.\n‘I was no longer mad, and yet methought\nMy breasts were swoln and changed:—in every vein\nThe blood stood still one moment, while that thought\nWas passing—with a gush of sickening pain                           _3040\nIt ebbed even to its withered springs again:\nWhen my wan eyes in stern resolve I turned\nFrom that most strange delusion, which would fain\nHave waked the dream for which my spirit yearned\nWith more than human love,—then left it unreturned.                 _3045\n\n25.\n‘So now my reason was restored to me\nI struggled with that dream, which, like a beast\nMost fierce and beauteous, in my memory\nHad made its lair, and on my heart did feast;\nBut all that cave and all its shapes, possessed                      _3050\nBy thoughts which could not fade, renewed each one\nSome smile, some look, some gesture which had blessed\nMe heretofore: I, sitting there alone,\nVexed the inconstant waves with my perpetual moan.\n\n26.\n‘Time passed, I know not whether months or years;                    _3055\nFor day, nor night, nor change of seasons made\nIts note, but thoughts and unavailing tears:\nAnd I became at last even as a shade,\nA smoke, a cloud on which the winds have preyed,\nTill it be thin as air; until, one even,                             _3060\nA Nautilus upon the fountain played,\nSpreading his azure sail where breath of Heaven\nDescended not, among the waves and whirlpools driven.\n\n27.\n‘And, when the Eagle came, that lovely thing,\nOaring with rosy feet its silver boat,                               _3065\nFled near me as for shelter; on slow wing,\nThe Eagle, hovering o’er his prey did float;\nBut when he saw that I with fear did note\nHis purpose, proffering my own food to him,\nThe eager plumes subsided on his throat—                            _3070\nHe came where that bright child of sea did swim,\nAnd o’er it cast in peace his shadow broad and dim.\n\n28.\n‘This wakened me, it gave me human strength;\nAnd hope, I know not whence or wherefore, rose,\nBut I resumed my ancient powers at length;                           _3075\nMy spirit felt again like one of those\nLike thine, whose fate it is to make the woes\nOf humankind their prey—what was this cave?\nIts deep foundation no firm purpose knows\nImmutable, resistless, strong to save,                               _3080\nLike mind while yet it mocks the all-devouring grave.\n\n29.\n‘And where was Laon? might my heart be dead,\nWhile that far dearer heart could move and be?\nOr whilst over the earth the pall was spread,\nWhich I had sworn to rend? I might be free,                          _3085\nCould I but win that friendly bird to me,\nTo bring me ropes; and long in vain I sought\nBy intercourse of mutual imagery\nOf objects, if such aid he could be taught;\nBut fruit, and flowers, and boughs, yet never ropes he brought.      _3090\n\n30.\n‘We live in our own world, and mine was made\nFrom glorious fantasies of hope departed:\nAye we are darkened with their floating shade,\nOr cast a lustre on them—time imparted\nSuch power to me—I became fearless-hearted,                         _3095\nMy eye and voice grew firm, calm was my mind,\nAnd piercing, like the morn, now it has darted\nIts lustre on all hidden things, behind\nYon dim and fading clouds which load the weary wind.\n\n31.\n‘My mind became the book through which I grew                        _3100\nWise in all human wisdom, and its cave,\nWhich like a mine I rifled through and through,\nTo me the keeping of its secrets gave—\nOne mind, the type of all, the moveless wave\nWhose calm reflects all moving things that are,                      _3105\nNecessity, and love, and life, the grave,\nAnd sympathy, fountains of hope and fear,\nJustice, and truth, and time, and the world’s natural sphere.\n\n32.\n‘And on the sand would I make signs to range\nThese woofs, as they were woven, of my thought;                      _3110\nClear, elemental shapes, whose smallest change\nA subtler language within language wrought:\nThe key of truths which once were dimly taught\nIn old Crotona;—and sweet melodies\nOf love, in that lorn solitude I caught                              _3115\nFrom mine own voice in dream, when thy dear eyes\nShone through my sleep, and did that utterance harmonize.\n\n33.\n‘Thy songs were winds whereon I fled at will,\nAs in a winged chariot, o’er the plain\nOf crystal youth; and thou wert there to fill                        _3120\nMy heart with joy, and there we sate again\nOn the gray margin of the glimmering main,\nHappy as then but wiser far, for we\nSmiled on the flowery grave in which were lain\nFear, Faith and Slavery; and mankind was free,                       _3125\nEqual, and pure, and wise, in Wisdom’s prophecy.\n\n34.\n‘For to my will my fancies were as slaves\nTo do their sweet and subtile ministries;\nAnd oft from that bright fountain’s shadowy waves\nThey would make human throngs gather and rise                        _3130\nTo combat with my overflowing eyes,\nAnd voice made deep with passion—thus I grew\nFamiliar with the shock and the surprise\nAnd war of earthly minds, from which I drew\nThe power which has been mine to frame their thoughts anew.          _3135\n\n35.\n‘And thus my prison was the populous earth—\nWhere I saw—even as misery dreams of morn\nBefore the east has given its glory birth—\nReligion’s pomp made desolate by the scorn\nOf Wisdom’s faintest smile, and thrones uptorn,                      _3140\nAnd dwellings of mild people interspersed\nWith undivided fields of ripening corn,\nAnd love made free,—a hope which we have nursed\nEven with our blood and tears,—until its glory burst.\n\n36.\n‘All is not lost! There is some recompense                           _3145\nFor hope whose fountain can be thus profound,\nEven throned Evil’s splendid impotence,\nGirt by its hell of power, the secret sound\nOf hymns to truth and freedom—the dread bound\nOf life and death passed fearlessly and well,                        _3150\nDungeons wherein the high resolve is found,\nRacks which degraded woman’s greatness tell,\nAnd what may else be good and irresistible.\n\n37.\n‘Such are the thoughts which, like the fires that flare\nIn storm-encompassed isles, we cherish yet                           _3155\nIn this dark ruin—such were mine even there;\nAs in its sleep some odorous violet,\nWhile yet its leaves with nightly dews are wet,\nBreathes in prophetic dreams of day’s uprise,\nOr as, ere Scythian frost in fear has met                            _3160\nSpring’s messengers descending from the skies,\nThe buds foreknow their life—this hope must ever rise.\n\n38.\n‘So years had passed, when sudden earthquake rent\nThe depth of ocean, and the cavern cracked\nWith sound, as if the world’s wide continent                         _3165\nHad fallen in universal ruin wracked:\nAnd through the cleft streamed in one cataract\nThe stifling waters—when I woke, the flood\nWhose banded waves that crystal cave had sacked\nWas ebbing round me, and my bright abode                             _3170\nBefore me yawned—a chasm desert, and bare, and broad.\n\n39.\n‘Above me was the sky, beneath the sea:\nI stood upon a point of shattered stone,\nAnd heard loose rocks rushing tumultuously\nWith splash and shock into the deep—anon                            _3175\nAll ceased, and there was silence wide and lone.\nI felt that I was free! The Ocean-spray\nQuivered beneath my feet, the broad Heaven shone\nAround, and in my hair the winds did play\nLingering as they pursued their unimpeded way.                       _3180\n\n40.\n‘My spirit moved upon the sea like wind\nWhich round some thymy cape will lag and hover,\nThough it can wake the still cloud, and unbind\nThe strength of tempest: day was almost over,\nWhen through the fading light I could discover                       _3185\nA ship approaching—its white sails were fed\nWith the north wind—its moving shade did cover\nThe twilight deep; the mariners in dread\nCast anchor when they saw new rocks around them spread.\n\n41.\n‘And when they saw one sitting on a crag,                            _3190\nThey sent a boat to me;—the Sailors rowed\nIn awe through many a new and fearful jag\nOf overhanging rock, through which there flowed\nThe foam of streams that cannot make abode.\nThey came and questioned me, but when they heard                     _3195\nMy voice, they became silent, and they stood\nAnd moved as men in whom new love had stirred\nDeep thoughts: so to the ship we passed without a word.\n\n\n_2877 dreams edition 1818.\n_2994 opprest edition 1818.\n_3115 lone solitude edition 1818.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 8.",
    "body": "1.\n‘I sate beside the Steersman then, and gazing\nUpon the west, cried, “Spread the sails! Behold!                     _3200\nThe sinking moon is like a watch-tower blazing\nOver the mountains yet;—the City of Gold\nYon Cape alone does from the sight withhold;\nThe stream is fleet—the north breathes steadily\nBeneath the stars; they tremble with the cold!                       _3205\nYe cannot rest upon the dreary sea!—\nHaste, haste to the warm home of happier destiny!”\n\n2.\n‘The Mariners obeyed—the Captain stood\nAloof, and, whispering to the Pilot, said,\n“Alas, alas! I fear we are pursued                                   _3210\nBy wicked ghosts; a Phantom of the Dead,\nThe night before we sailed, came to my bed\nIn dream, like that!” The Pilot then replied,\n“It cannot be—she is a human Maid—\nHer low voice makes you weep—she is some bride,                     _3215\nOr daughter of high birth—she can be nought beside.”\n\n3.\n‘We passed the islets, borne by wind and stream,\nAnd as we sailed, the Mariners came near\nAnd thronged around to listen;—in the gleam\nOf the pale moon I stood, as one whom fear                           _3220\nMay not attaint, and my calm voice did rear;\n“Ye are all human—yon broad moon gives light\nTo millions who the selfsame likeness wear,\nEven while I speak—beneath this very night,\nTheir thoughts flow on like ours, in sadness or delight.             _3225\n\n4.\n‘“What dream ye? Your own hands have built an home,\nEven for yourselves on a beloved shore:\nFor some, fond eyes are pining till they come,\nHow they will greet him when his toils are o’er,\nAnd laughing babes rush from the well-known door!                    _3230\nIs this your care? ye toil for your own good—\nYe feel and think—has some immortal power\nSuch purposes? or in a human mood,\nDream ye some Power thus builds for man in solitude?\n\n5.\n‘“What is that Power? Ye mock yourselves, and give                   _3235\nA human heart to what ye cannot know:\nAs if the cause of life could think and live!\n’Twere as if man’s own works should feel, and show\nThe hopes, and fears, and thoughts from which they flow,\nAnd he be like to them! Lo! Plague is free                           _3240\nTo waste, Blight, Poison, Earthquake, Hail, and Snow,\nDisease, and Want, and worse Necessity\nOf hate and ill, and Pride, and Fear, and Tyranny!\n\n6.\n‘“What is that Power? Some moon-struck sophist stood\nWatching the shade from his own soul upthrown                        _3245\nFill Heaven and darken Earth, and in such mood\nThe Form he saw and worshipped was his own,\nHis likeness in the world’s vast mirror shown;\nAnd ’twere an innocent dream, but that a faith\nNursed by fear’s dew of poison, grows thereon,                       _3250\nAnd that men say, that Power has chosen Death\nOn all who scorn its laws, to wreak immortal wrath.\n\n7.\n‘“Men say that they themselves have heard and seen,\nOr known from others who have known such things,\nA Shade, a Form, which Earth and Heaven between                      _3255\nWields an invisible rod—that Priests and Kings,\nCustom, domestic sway, ay, all that brings\nMan’s freeborn soul beneath the oppressor’s heel,\nAre his strong ministers, and that the stings\nOf death will make the wise his vengeance feel,                      _3260\nThough truth and virtue arm their hearts with tenfold steel.\n\n8.\n‘“And it is said, this Power will punish wrong;\nYes, add despair to crime, and pain to pain!\nAnd deepest hell, and deathless snakes among,\nWill bind the wretch on whom is fixed a stain,                       _3265\nWhich, like a plague, a burden, and a bane,\nClung to him while he lived; for love and hate,\nVirtue and vice, they say are difference vain—\nThe will of strength is right—this human state\nTyrants, that they may rule, with lies thus desolate.                _3270\n\n9.\n‘“Alas, what strength? Opinion is more frail\nThan yon dim cloud now fading on the moon\nEven while we gaze, though it awhile avail\nTo hide the orb of truth—and every throne\nOf Earth or Heaven, though shadow, rests thereon,                    _3275\nOne shape of many names:—for this ye plough\nThe barren waves of ocean, hence each one\nIs slave or tyrant; all betray and bow,\nCommand, or kill, or fear, or wreak, or suffer woe.\n\n10.\n‘“Its names are each a sign which maketh holy                        _3280\nAll power—ay, the ghost, the dream, the shade\nOf power—lust, falsehood, hate, and pride, and folly;\nThe pattern whence all fraud and wrong is made,\nA law to which mankind has been betrayed;\nAnd human love, is as the name well known                            _3285\nOf a dear mother, whom the murderer laid\nIn bloody grave, and into darkness thrown,\nGathered her wildered babes around him as his own.\n\n11.\n‘“O Love, who to the hearts of wandering men\nArt as the calm to Ocean’s weary waves!                              _3290\nJustice, or Truth, or Joy! those only can\nFrom slavery and religion’s labyrinth caves\nGuide us, as one clear star the seaman saves.\nTo give to all an equal share of good,\nTo track the steps of Freedom, though through graves                 _3295\nShe pass, to suffer all in patient mood,\nTo weep for crime, though stained with thy friend’s dearest blood,—\n\n12.\n‘“To feel the peace of self-contentment’s lot,\nTo own all sympathies, and outrage none,\nAnd in the inmost bowers of sense and thought,                       _3300\nUntil life’s sunny day is quite gone down,\nTo sit and smile with Joy, or, not alone,\nTo kiss salt tears from the worn cheek of Woe;\nTo live, as if to love and live were one,—\nThis is not faith or law, nor those who bow                          _3305\nTo thrones on Heaven or Earth, such destiny may know.\n\n13.\n‘“But children near their parents tremble now,\nBecause they must obey—one rules another,\nAnd as one Power rules both high and low,\nSo man is made the captive of his brother,                           _3310\nAnd Hate is throned on high with Fear her mother,\nAbove the Highest—and those fountain-cells,\nWhence love yet flowed when faith had choked all other,\nAre darkened—Woman as the bond-slave dwells\nOf man, a slave; and life is poisoned in its wells.                  _3315\n\n14.\n‘“Man seeks for gold in mines, that he may weave\nA lasting chain for his own slavery;—\nIn fear and restless care that he may live\nHe toils for others, who must ever be\nThe joyless thralls of like captivity;                               _3320\nHe murders, for his chiefs delight in ruin;\nHe builds the altar, that its idol’s fee\nMay be his very blood; he is pursuing—\nO, blind and willing wretch!—his own obscure undoing.\n\n15.\n‘“Woman!—she is his slave, she has become                           _3325\nA thing I weep to speak—the child of scorn,\nThe outcast of a desolated home;\nFalsehood, and fear, and toil, like waves have worn\nChannels upon her cheek, which smiles adorn,\nAs calm decks the false Ocean:—well ye know                         _3330\nWhat Woman is, for none of Woman born\nCan choose but drain the bitter dregs of woe,\nWhich ever from the oppressed to the oppressors flow.\n\n16.\n‘“This need not be; ye might arise, and will\nThat gold should lose its power, and thrones their glory;            _3335\nThat love, which none may bind, be free to fill\nThe world, like light; and evil faith, grown hoary\nWith crime, be quenched and die.—Yon promontory\nEven now eclipses the descending moon!—\nDungeons and palaces are transitory—                                _3340\nHigh temples fade like vapour—Man alone\nRemains, whose will has power when all beside is gone.\n\n17.\n‘“Let all be free and equal!—From your hearts\nI feel an echo; through my inmost frame\nLike sweetest sound, seeking its mate, it darts—                    _3345\nWhence come ye, friends? Alas, I cannot name\nAll that I read of sorrow, toil, and shame,\nOn your worn faces; as in legends old\nWhich make immortal the disastrous fame\nOf conquerors and impostors false and bold,                          _3350\nThe discord of your hearts, I in your looks behold.\n\n18.\n‘“Whence come ye, friends? from pouring human blood\nForth on the earth? Or bring ye steel and gold,\nThat Kings may dupe and slay the multitude?\nOr from the famished poor, pale, weak and cold,                      _3355\nBear ye the earnings of their toil? Unfold!\nSpeak! Are your hands in slaughter’s sanguine hue\nStained freshly? have your hearts in guile grown old?\nKnow yourselves thus! ye shall be pure as dew,\nAnd I will be a friend and sister unto you.                          _3360\n\n19.\n‘“Disguise it not—we have one human heart—\nAll mortal thoughts confess a common home:\nBlush not for what may to thyself impart\nStains of inevitable crime: the doom\nIs this, which has, or may, or must become                           _3365\nThine, and all humankind’s. Ye are the spoil\nWhich Time thus marks for the devouring tomb—\nThou and thy thoughts and they, and all the toil\nWherewith ye twine the rings of life’s perpetual coil.\n\n20.\n‘“Disguise it not—ye blush for what ye hate,                        _3370\nAnd Enmity is sister unto Shame;\nLook on your mind—it is the book of fate—\nAh! it is dark with many a blazoned name\nOf misery—all are mirrors of the same;\nBut the dark fiend who with his iron pen                             _3375\nDipped in scorn’s fiery poison, makes his fame\nEnduring there, would o’er the heads of men\nPass harmless, if they scorned to make their hearts his den.\n\n21.\n‘“Yes, it is Hate, that shapeless fiendly thing\nOf many names, all evil, some divine,                                _3380\nWhom self-contempt arms with a mortal sting;\nWhich, when the heart its snaky folds entwine\nIs wasted quite, and when it doth repine\nTo gorge such bitter prey, on all beside\nIt turns with ninefold rage, as with its twine                       _3385\nWhen Amphisbaena some fair bird has tied,\nSoon o’er the putrid mass he threats on every side.\n\n22.\n‘“Reproach not thine own soul, but know thyself,\nNor hate another’s crime, nor loathe thine own.\nIt is the dark idolatry of self,                                     _3390\nWhich, when our thoughts and actions once are gone,\nDemands that man should weep, and bleed, and groan;\nOh, vacant expiation! Be at rest.—\nThe past is Death’s, the future is thine own;\nAnd love and joy can make the foulest breast                         _3395\nA paradise of flowers, where peace might build her nest.\n\n23.\n‘“Speak thou! whence come ye?”—A Youth made reply:\n“Wearily, wearily o’er the boundless deep\nWe sail;—thou readest well the misery\nTold in these faded eyes, but much doth sleep                        _3400\nWithin, which there the poor heart loves to keep,\nOr dare not write on the dishonoured brow;\nEven from our childhood have we learned to steep\nThe bread of slavery in the tears of woe,\nAnd never dreamed of hope or refuge until now.                       _3405\n\n24.\n‘“Yes—I must speak—my secret should have perished\nEven with the heart it wasted, as a brand\nFades in the dying flame whose life it cherished,\nBut that no human bosom can withstand\nThee, wondrous Lady, and the mild command                            _3410\nOf thy keen eyes:—yes, we are wretched slaves,\nWho from their wonted loves and native land\nAre reft, and bear o’er the dividing waves\nThe unregarded prey of calm and happy graves.\n\n25.\n‘“We drag afar from pastoral vales the fairest                       _3415\nAmong the daughters of those mountains lone,\nWe drag them there, where all things best and rarest\nAre stained and trampled:—years have come and gone\nSince, like the ship which bears me, I have known\nNo thought;—but now the eyes of one dear Maid                       _3420\nOn mine with light of mutual love have shone—\nShe is my life,—I am but as the shade\nOf her,—a smoke sent up from ashes, soon to fade.\n\n26.\n‘“For she must perish in the Tyrant’s hall—\nAlas, alas!”—He ceased, and by the sail                             _3425\nSate cowering—but his sobs were heard by all,\nAnd still before the ocean and the gale\nThe ship fled fast till the stars ‘gan to fail;\nAnd, round me gathered with mute countenance,\nThe Seamen gazed, the Pilot, worn and pale                           _3430\nWith toil, the Captain with gray locks, whose glance\nMet mine in restless awe—they stood as in a trance.\n\n27.\n‘“Recede not! pause not now! Thou art grown old,\nBut Hope will make thee young, for Hope and Youth\nAre children of one mother, even Love—behold!                       _3435\nThe eternal stars gaze on us!—is the truth\nWithin your soul? care for your own, or ruth\nFor others’ sufferings? do ye thirst to bear\nA heart which not the serpent Custom’s tooth\nMay violate?—Be free! and even here,                                _3440\nSwear to be firm till death!” They cried, “We swear! We swear!”\n\n28.\n‘The very darkness shook, as with a blast\nOf subterranean thunder, at the cry;\nThe hollow shore its thousand echoes cast\nInto the night, as if the sea and sky,                               _3445\nAnd earth, rejoiced with new-born liberty,\nFor in that name they swore! Bolts were undrawn,\nAnd on the deck, with unaccustomed eye\nThe captives gazing stood, and every one\nShrank as the inconstant torch upon her countenance shone.           _3450\n\n29.\n‘They were earth’s purest children, young and fair,\nWith eyes the shrines of unawakened thought,\nAnd brows as bright as Spring or Morning, ere\nDark time had there its evil legend wrought\nIn characters of cloud which wither not.—                           _3455\nThe change was like a dream to them; but soon\nThey knew the glory of their altered lot,\nIn the bright wisdom of youth’s breathless noon,\nSweet talk, and smiles, and sighs, all bosoms did attune.\n\n30.\n‘But one was mute; her cheeks and lips most fair,                    _3460\nChanging their hue like lilies newly blown,\nBeneath a bright acacia’s shadowy hair,\nWaved by the wind amid the sunny noon,\nShowed that her soul was quivering; and full soon\nThat Youth arose, and breathlessly did look                          _3465\nOn her and me, as for some speechless boon:\nI smiled, and both their hands in mine I took,\nAnd felt a soft delight from what their spirits shook.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 9.",
    "body": "1.\n‘That night we anchored in a woody bay,\nAnd sleep no more around us dared to hover                           _3470\nThan, when all doubt and fear has passed away,\nIt shades the couch of some unresting lover,\nWhose heart is now at rest: thus night passed over\nIn mutual joy:—around, a forest grew\nOf poplars and dark oaks, whose shade did cover                      _3475\nThe waning stars pranked in the waters blue,\nAnd trembled in the wind which from the morning flew.\n\n2.\n‘The joyous Mariners, and each free Maiden\nNow brought from the deep forest many a bough,\nWith woodland spoil most innocently laden;                           _3480\nSoon wreaths of budding foliage seemed to flow\nOver the mast and sails, the stern and prow\nWere canopied with blooming boughs,—the while\nOn the slant sun’s path o’er the waves we go\nRejoicing, like the dwellers of an isle                              _3485\nDoomed to pursue those waves that cannot cease to smile.\n\n3.\n‘The many ships spotting the dark blue deep\nWith snowy sails, fled fast as ours came nigh,\nIn fear and wonder; and on every steep\nThousands did gaze, they heard the startling cry,                    _3490\nLike Earth’s own voice lifted unconquerably\nTo all her children, the unbounded mirth,\nThe glorious joy of thy name—Liberty!\nThey heard!—As o’er the mountains of the earth\nFrom peak to peak leap on the beams of Morning’s birth:              _3495\n\n4.\n‘So from that cry over the boundless hills\nSudden was caught one universal sound,\nLike a volcano’s voice, whose thunder fills\nRemotest skies,—such glorious madness found\nA path through human hearts with stream which drowned                _3500\nIts struggling fears and cares, dark Custom’s brood;\nThey knew not whence it came, but felt around\nA wide contagion poured—they called aloud\nOn Liberty—that name lived on the sunny flood.\n\n5.\n‘We reached the port.—Alas! from many spirits                       _3505\nThe wisdom which had waked that cry, was fled,\nLike the brief glory which dark Heaven inherits\nFrom the false dawn, which fades ere it is spread,\nUpon the night’s devouring darkness shed:\nYet soon bright day will burst—even like a chasm                    _3510\nOf fire, to burn the shrouds outworn and dead,\nWhich wrap the world; a wide enthusiasm,\nTo cleanse the fevered world as with an earthquake’s spasm!\n\n6.\n‘I walked through the great City then, but free\nFrom shame or fear; those toil-worn Mariners                         _3515\nAnd happy Maidens did encompass me;\nAnd like a subterranean wind that stirs\nSome forest among caves, the hopes and fears\nFrom every human soul, a murmur strange\nMade as I passed; and many wept, with tears                          _3520\nOf joy and awe, and winged thoughts did range,\nAnd half-extinguished words, which prophesied of change.\n\n7.\n‘For, with strong speech I tore the veil that hid\nNature, and Truth, and Liberty, and Love,—\nAs one who from some mountain’s pyramid                              _3525\nPoints to the unrisen sun!—the shades approve\nHis truth, and flee from every stream and grove.\nThus, gentle thoughts did many a bosom fill,—\nWisdom, the mail of tried affections wove\nFor many a heart, and tameless scorn of ill,                         _3530\nThrice steeped in molten steel the unconquerable will.\n\n8.\n‘Some said I was a maniac wild and lost;\nSome, that I scarce had risen from the grave,\nThe Prophet’s virgin bride, a heavenly ghost:—\nSome said, I was a fiend from my weird cave,                         _3535\nWho had stolen human shape, and o’er the wave,\nThe forest, and the mountain, came;—some said\nI was the child of God, sent down to save\nWoman from bonds and death, and on my head\nThe burden of their sins would frightfully be laid.                  _3540\n\n9.\n‘But soon my human words found sympathy\nIn human hearts: the purest and the best,\nAs friend with friend, made common cause with me,\nAnd they were few, but resolute;—the rest,\nEre yet success the enterprise had blessed,                          _3545\nLeagued with me in their hearts;—their meals, their slumber,\nTheir hourly occupations, were possessed\nBy hopes which I had armed to overnumber\nThose hosts of meaner cares, which life’s strong wings encumber.\n\n10.\n‘But chiefly women, whom my voice did waken                          _3550\nFrom their cold, careless, willing slavery,\nSought me: one truth their dreary prison has shaken,—\nThey looked around, and lo! they became free!\nTheir many tyrants sitting desolately\nIn slave-deserted halls, could none restrain;                        _3555\nFor wrath’s red fire had withered in the eye,\nWhose lightning once was death,—nor fear, nor gain\nCould tempt one captive now to lock another’s chain.\n\n11.\n‘Those who were sent to bind me, wept, and felt\nTheir minds outsoar the bonds which clasped them round,              _3560\nEven as a waxen shape may waste and melt\nIn the white furnace; and a visioned swound,\nA pause of hope and awe the City bound,\nWhich, like the silence of a tempest’s birth,\nWhen in its awful shadow it has wound                                _3565\nThe sun, the wind, the ocean, and the earth,\nHung terrible, ere yet the lightnings have leaped forth.\n\n12.\n‘Like clouds inwoven in the silent sky,\nBy winds from distant regions meeting there,\nIn the high name of truth and liberty,                               _3570\nAround the City millions gathered were,\nBy hopes which sprang from many a hidden lair,—\nWords which the lore of truth in hues of flame\nArrayed, thine own wild songs which in the air\nLike homeless odours floated, and the name                           _3575\nOf thee, and many a tongue which thou hadst dipped in flame.\n\n13.\n‘The Tyrant knew his power was gone, but Fear,\nThe nurse of Vengeance, bade him wait the event—\nThat perfidy and custom, gold and prayer,\nAnd whatsoe’er, when force is impotent,                              _3580\nTo fraud the sceptre of the world has lent,\nMight, as he judged, confirm his failing sway.\nTherefore throughout the streets, the Priests he sent\nTo curse the rebels.—To their gods did they\nFor Earthquake, Plague, and Want, kneel in the public way.           _3585\n\n14.\n‘And grave and hoary men were bribed to tell\nFrom seats where law is made the slave of wrong,\nHow glorious Athens in her splendour fell,\nBecause her sons were free,—and that among\nMankind, the many to the few belong,                                 _3590\nBy Heaven, and Nature, and Necessity.\nThey said, that age was truth, and that the young\nMarred with wild hopes the peace of slavery,\nWith which old times and men had quelled the vain and free.\n\n15.\n‘And with the falsehood of their poisonous lips                      _3595\nThey breathed on the enduring memory\nOf sages and of bards a brief eclipse;\nThere was one teacher, who necessity\nHad armed with strength and wrong against mankind,\nHis slave and his avenger aye to be;                                 _3600\nThat we were weak and sinful, frail and blind,\nAnd that the will of one was peace, and we\nShould seek for nought on earth but toil and misery—\n\n16.\n‘“For thus we might avoid the hell hereafter.”\nSo spake the hypocrites, who cursed and lied;                        _3605\nAlas, their sway was past, and tears and laughter\nClung to their hoary hair, withering the pride\nWhich in their hollow hearts dared still abide;\nAnd yet obscener slaves with smoother brow,\nAnd sneers on their strait lips, thin, blue and wide,                _3610\nSaid that the rule of men was over now,\nAnd hence, the subject world to woman’s will must bow;\n\n17.\n‘And gold was scattered through the streets, and wine\nFlowed at a hundred feasts within the wall.\nIn vain! the steady towers in Heaven did shine                       _3615\nAs they were wont, nor at the priestly call\nLeft Plague her banquet in the Ethiop’s hall,\nNor Famine from the rich man’s portal came,\nWhere at her ease she ever preys on all\nWho throng to kneel for food: nor fear nor shame,                    _3620\nNor faith, nor discord, dimmed hope’s newly kindled flame.\n\n18.\n‘For gold was as a god whose faith began\nTo fade, so that its worshippers were few,\nAnd Faith itself, which in the heart of man\nGives shape, voice, name, to spectral Terror, knew                   _3625\nIts downfall, as the altars lonelier grew,\nTill the Priests stood alone within the fane;\nThe shafts of falsehood unpolluting flew,\nAnd the cold sneers of calumny were vain,\nThe union of the free with discord’s brand to stain.                 _3630\n\n19.\n‘The rest thou knowest.—Lo! we two are here—\nWe have survived a ruin wide and deep—\nStrange thoughts are mine.—I cannot grieve or fear,\nSitting with thee upon this lonely steep\nI smile, though human love should make me weep.                      _3635\nWe have survived a joy that knows no sorrow,\nAnd I do feel a mighty calmness creep\nOver my heart, which can no longer borrow\nIts hues from chance or change, dark children of to-morrow.\n\n20.\n‘We know not what will come—yet, Laon, dearest,                     _3640\nCythna shall be the prophetess of Love,\nHer lips shall rob thee of the grace thou wearest,\nTo hide thy heart, and clothe the shapes which rove\nWithin the homeless Future’s wintry grove;\nFor I now, sitting thus beside thee, seem                            _3645\nEven with thy breath and blood to live and move,\nAnd violence and wrong are as a dream\nWhich rolls from steadfast truth, an unreturning stream.\n\n21.\n‘The blasts of Autumn drive the winged seeds\nOver the earth,—next come the snows, and rain,                      _3650\nAnd frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads\nOut of his Scythian cave, a savage train;\nBehold! Spring sweeps over the world again,\nShedding soft dews from her ethereal wings;\nFlowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain,                     _3655\nAnd music on the waves and woods she flings,\nAnd love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things.\n\n22.\n‘O Spring, of hope, and love, and youth, and gladness\nWind-winged emblem! brightest, best and fairest!\nWhence comest thou, when, with dark Winter’s sadness                 _3660\nThe tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest?\nSister of joy, thou art the child who wearest\nThy mother’s dying smile, tender and sweet;\nThy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest\nFresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet,             _3665\nDisturbing not the leaves which are her winding-sheet.\n\n23.\n‘Virtue, and Hope, and Love, like light and Heaven,\nSurround the world.—We are their chosen slaves.\nHas not the whirlwind of our spirit driven\nTruth’s deathless germs to thought’s remotest caves?                 _3670\nLo, Winter comes!—the grief of many graves,\nThe frost of death, the tempest of the sword,\nThe flood of tyranny, whose sanguine waves\nStagnate like ice at Faith the enchanter’s word,\nAnd bind all human hearts in its repose abhorred.                    _3675\n\n24.\n‘The seeds are sleeping in the soil: meanwhile\nThe Tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey,\nPale victims on the guarded scaffold smile\nBecause they cannot speak; and, day by day,\nThe moon of wasting Science wanes away                               _3680\nAmong her stars, and in that darkness vast\nThe sons of earth to their foul idols pray,\nAnd gray Priests triumph, and like blight or blast\nA shade of selfish care o’er human looks is cast.\n\n25.\n‘This is the winter of the world;—and here                          _3685\nWe die, even as the winds of Autumn fade,\nExpiring in the frore and foggy air.\nBehold! Spring comes, though we must pass, who made\nThe promise of its birth,—even as the shade\nWhich from our death, as from a mountain, flings                     _3690\nThe future, a broad sunrise; thus arrayed\nAs with the plumes of overshadowing wings,\nFrom its dark gulf of chains, Earth like an eagle springs.\n\n26.\n‘O dearest love! we shall be dead and cold\nBefore this morn may on the world arise;                             _3695\nWouldst thou the glory of its dawn behold?\nAlas! gaze not on me, but turn thine eyes\nOn thine own heart—it is a paradise\nWhich everlasting Spring has made its own,\nAnd while drear Winter fills the naked skies,                        _3700\nSweet streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh-blown,\nAre there, and weave their sounds and odours into one.\n\n27.\n‘In their own hearts the earnest of the hope\nWhich made them great, the good will ever find;\nAnd though some envious shade may interlope                          _3705\nBetween the effect and it, One comes behind,\nWho aye the future to the past will bind—\nNecessity, whose sightless strength for ever\nEvil with evil, good with good must wind\nIn bands of union, which no power may sever:                         _3710\nThey must bring forth their kind, and be divided never!\n\n28.\n‘The good and mighty of departed ages\nAre in their graves, the innocent and free,\nHeroes, and Poets, and prevailing Sages,\nWho leave the vesture of their majesty                               _3715\nTo adorn and clothe this naked world;—and we\nAre like to them—such perish, but they leave\nAll hope, or love, or truth, or liberty,\nWhose forms their mighty spirits could conceive,\nTo be a rule and law to ages that survive.                           _3720\n\n29.\n‘So be the turf heaped over our remains\nEven in our happy youth, and that strange lot,\nWhate’er it be, when in these mingling veins\nThe blood is still, be ours; let sense and thought\nPass from our being, or be numbered not                              _3725\nAmong the things that are; let those who come\nBehind, for whom our steadfast will has bought\nA calm inheritance, a glorious doom,\nInsult with careless tread, our undivided tomb.\n\n30.\n‘Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love,                     _3730\nOur happiness, and all that we have been,\nImmortally must live, and burn and move,\nWhen we shall be no more;—the world has seen\nA type of peace; and—as some most serene\nAnd lovely spot to a poor maniac’s eye,                              _3735\nAfter long years, some sweet and moving scene\nOf youthful hope, returning suddenly,\nQuells his long madness—thus man shall remember thee.\n\n31.\n‘And Calumny meanwhile shall feed on us,\nAs worms devour the dead, and near the throne                        _3740\nAnd at the altar, most accepted thus\nShall sneers and curses be;—what we have done\nNone shall dare vouch, though it be truly known;\nThat record shall remain, when they must pass\nWho built their pride on its oblivion;                               _3745\nAnd fame, in human hope which sculptured was,\nSurvive the perished scrolls of unenduring brass.\n\n32.\n‘The while we two, beloved, must depart,\nAnd Sense and Reason, those enchanters fair,\nWhose wand of power is hope, would bid the heart                     _3750\nThat gazed beyond the wormy grave despair:\nThese eyes, these lips, this blood, seems darkly there\nTo fade in hideous ruin; no calm sleep\nPeopling with golden dreams the stagnant air,\nSeems our obscure and rotting eyes to steep                          _3755\nIn joy;—but senseless death—a ruin dark and deep!\n\n33.\n‘These are blind fancies—reason cannot know\nWhat sense can neither feel, nor thought conceive;\nThere is delusion in the world—and woe,\nAnd fear, and pain—we know not whence we live,                      _3760\nOr why, or how, or what mute Power may give\nTheir being to each plant, and star, and beast,\nOr even these thoughts.—Come near me! I do weave\nA chain I cannot break—I am possessed\nWith thoughts too swift and strong for one lone human breast.        _3765\n\n34.\n‘Yes, yes—thy kiss is sweet, thy lips are warm—\nO! willingly, beloved, would these eyes,\nMight they no more drink being from thy form,\nEven as to sleep whence we again arise,\nClose their faint orbs in death: I fear nor prize                    _3770\nAught that can now betide, unshared by thee—\nYes, Love when Wisdom fails makes Cythna wise:\nDarkness and death, if death be true, must be\nDearer than life and hope, if unenjoyed with thee.\n\n35.\n‘Alas, our thoughts flow on with stream, whose waters                _3775\nReturn not to their fountain—Earth and Heaven,\nThe Ocean and the Sun, the Clouds their daughters,\nWinter, and Spring, and Morn, and Noon, and Even,\nAll that we are or know, is darkly driven\nTowards one gulf.—Lo! what a change is come                         _3780\nSince I first spake—but time shall be forgiven,\nThough it change all but thee!’—She ceased—night’s gloom\nMeanwhile had fallen on earth from the sky’s sunless dome.\n\n36.\nThough she had ceased, her countenance uplifted\nTo Heaven, still spake, with solemn glory bright;                    _3785\nHer dark deep eyes, her lips, whose motions gifted\nThe air they breathed with love, her locks undight.\n‘Fair star of life and love,’ I cried, ‘my soul’s delight,\nWhy lookest thou on the crystalline skies?\nO, that my spirit were yon Heaven of night,                          _3790\nWhich gazes on thee with its thousand eyes!’\nShe turned to me and smiled—that smile was Paradise!\n\n\n_3573 hues of grace edition 1818.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 10.",
    "body": "1.\nWas there a human spirit in the steed,\nThat thus with his proud voice, ere night was gone,\nHe broke our linked rest? or do indeed                               _3795\nAll living things a common nature own,\nAnd thought erect an universal throne,\nWhere many shapes one tribute ever bear?\nAnd Earth, their mutual mother, does she groan\nTo see her sons contend? and makes she bare                          _3800\nHer breast, that all in peace its drainless stores may share?\n\n2.\nI have heard friendly sounds from many a tongue\nWhich was not human—the lone nightingale\nHas answered me with her most soothing song,\nOut of her ivy bower, when I sate pale                               _3805\nWith grief, and sighed beneath; from many a dale\nThe antelopes who flocked for food have spoken\nWith happy sounds, and motions, that avail\nLike man’s own speech; and such was now the token\nOf waning night, whose calm by that proud neigh was broken.          _3810\n\n3.\nEach night, that mighty steed bore me abroad,\nAnd I returned with food to our retreat,\nAnd dark intelligence; the blood which flowed\nOver the fields, had stained the courser’s feet;\nSoon the dust drinks that bitter dew,—then meet                     _3815\nThe vulture, and the wild dog, and the snake,\nThe wolf, and the hyaena gray, and eat\nThe dead in horrid truce: their throngs did make\nBehind the steed, a chasm like waves in a ship’s wake.\n\n4.\nFor, from the utmost realms of earth came pouring                    _3820\nThe banded slaves whom every despot sent\nAt that throned traitor’s summons; like the roaring\nOf fire, whose floods the wild deer circumvent\nIn the scorched pastures of the South; so bent\nThe armies of the leagued Kings around                               _3825\nTheir files of steel and flame;—the continent\nTrembled, as with a zone of ruin bound,\nBeneath their feet, the sea shook with their Navies’ sound.\n\n5.\nFrom every nation of the earth they came,\nThe multitude of moving heartless things,                            _3830\nWhom slaves call men: obediently they came,\nLike sheep whom from the fold the shepherd brings\nTo the stall, red with blood; their many kings\nLed them, thus erring, from their native land;\nTartar and Frank, and millions whom the wings                        _3835\nOf Indian breezes lull, and many a band\nThe Arctic Anarch sent, and Idumea’s sand,\n\n6.\nFertile in prodigies and lies;—so there\nStrange natures made a brotherhood of ill.\nThe desert savage ceased to grasp in fear                            _3840\nHis Asian shield and bow, when, at the will\nOf Europe’s subtler son, the bolt would kill\nSome shepherd sitting on a rock secure;\nBut smiles of wondering joy his face would fill,\nAnd savage sympathy: those slaves impure,                            _3845\nEach one the other thus from ill to ill did lure.\n\n7.\nFor traitorously did that foul Tyrant robe\nHis countenance in lies,—even at the hour\nWhen he was snatched from death, then o’er the globe,\nWith secret signs from many a mountain-tower,                        _3850\nWith smoke by day, and fire by night, the power\nOf Kings and Priests, those dark conspirators,\nHe called:—they knew his cause their own, and swore\nLike wolves and serpents to their mutual wars\nStrange truce, with many a rite which Earth and Heaven abhors.       _3855\n\n8.\nMyriads had come—millions were on their way;\nThe Tyrant passed, surrounded by the steel\nOf hired assassins, through the public way,\nChoked with his country’s dead:—his footsteps reel\nOn the fresh blood—he smiles. ‘Ay, now I feel                       _3860\nI am a King in truth!’ he said, and took\nHis royal seat, and bade the torturing wheel\nBe brought, and fire, and pincers, and the hook,\nAnd scorpions, that his soul on its revenge might look.\n\n9.\n‘But first, go slay the rebels—why return                           _3865\nThe victor bands?’ he said, ‘millions yet live,\nOf whom the weakest with one word might turn\nThe scales of victory yet;—let none survive\nBut those within the walls—each fifth shall give\nThe expiation for his brethren here.—                               _3870\nGo forth, and waste and kill!’—‘O king, forgive\nMy speech,’ a soldier answered—‘but we fear\nThe spirits of the night, and morn is drawing near;\n\n10.\n‘For we were slaying still without remorse,\nAnd now that dreadful chief beneath my hand                          _3875\nDefenceless lay, when on a hell-black horse,\nAn Angel bright as day, waving a brand\nWhich flashed among the stars, passed.’—‘Dost thou stand\nParleying with me, thou wretch?’ the king replied;\n‘Slaves, bind him to the wheel; and of this band,                    _3880\nWhoso will drag that woman to his side\nThat scared him thus, may burn his dearest foe beside;\n\n11.\n‘And gold and glory shall be his.—Go forth!’\nThey rushed into the plain.—Loud was the roar\nOf their career: the horsemen shook the earth;                       _3885\nThe wheeled artillery’s speed the pavement tore;\nThe infantry, file after file, did pour\nTheir clouds on the utmost hills. Five days they slew\nAmong the wasted fields; the sixth saw gore\nStream through the city; on the seventh, the dew                     _3890\nOf slaughter became stiff, and there was peace anew:\n\n12.\nPeace in the desert fields and villages,\nBetween the glutted beasts and mangled dead!\nPeace in the silent streets! save when the cries\nOf victims to their fiery judgement led,                             _3895\nMade pale their voiceless lips who seemed to dread\nEven in their dearest kindred, lest some tongue\nBe faithless to the fear yet unbetrayed;\nPeace in the Tyrant’s palace, where the throng\nWaste the triumphal hours in festival and song!                      _3900\n\n13.\nDay after day the burning sun rolled on\nOver the death-polluted land—it came\nOut of the east like fire, and fiercely shone\nA lamp of Autumn, ripening with its flame\nThe few lone ears of corn;—the sky became                           _3905\nStagnate with heat, so that each cloud and blast\nLanguished and died,—the thirsting air did claim\nAll moisture, and a rotting vapour passed\nFrom the unburied dead, invisible and fast.\n\n14.\nFirst Want, then Plague came on the beasts; their food               _3910\nFailed, and they drew the breath of its decay.\nMillions on millions, whom the scent of blood\nHad lured, or who, from regions far away,\nHad tracked the hosts in festival array,\nFrom their dark deserts; gaunt and wasting now,                      _3915\nStalked like fell shades among their perished prey;\nIn their green eyes a strange disease did glow,\nThey sank in hideous spasm, or pains severe and slow.\n\n15.\nThe fish were poisoned in the streams; the birds\nIn the green woods perished; the insect race                         _3920\nWas withered up; the scattered flocks and herds\nWho had survived the wild beasts’ hungry chase\nDied moaning, each upon the other’s face\nIn helpless agony gazing; round the City\nAll night, the lean hyaenas their sad case                           _3925\nLike starving infants wailed; a woeful ditty!\nAnd many a mother wept, pierced with unnatural pity.\n\n16.\nAmid the aereal minarets on high,\nThe Ethiopian vultures fluttering fell\nFrom their long line of brethren in the sky,                         _3930\nStartling the concourse of mankind.—Too well\nThese signs the coming mischief did foretell:—\nStrange panic first, a deep and sickening dread\nWithin each heart, like ice, did sink and dwell,\nA voiceless thought of evil, which did spread                        _3935\nWith the quick glance of eyes, like withering lightnings shed.\n\n17.\nDay after day, when the year wanes, the frosts\nStrip its green crown of leaves, till all is bare;\nSo on those strange and congregated hosts\nCame Famine, a swift shadow, and the air                             _3940\nGroaned with the burden of a new despair;\nFamine, than whom Misrule no deadlier daughter\nFeeds from her thousand breasts, though sleeping there\nWith lidless eyes, lie Faith, and Plague, and Slaughter,\nA ghastly brood; conceived of Lethe’s sullen water.                  _3945\n\n18.\nThere was no food, the corn was trampled down,\nThe flocks and herds had perished; on the shore\nThe dead and putrid fish were ever thrown;\nThe deeps were foodless, and the winds no more\nCreaked with the weight of birds, but, as before                     _3950\nThose winged things sprang forth, were void of shade;\nThe vines and orchards, Autumn’s golden store,\nWere burned;—so that the meanest food was weighed\nWith gold, and Avarice died before the god it made.\n\n19.\nThere was no corn—in the wide market-place                          _3955\nAll loathliest things, even human flesh, was sold;\nThey weighed it in small scales—and many a face\nWas fixed in eager horror then: his gold\nThe miser brought; the tender maid, grown bold\nThrough hunger, bared her scorned charms in vain;                    _3960\nThe mother brought her eldest born, controlled\nBy instinct blind as love, but turned again\nAnd bade her infant suck, and died in silent pain.\n\n20.\nThen fell blue Plague upon the race of man.\n‘O, for the sheathed steel, so late which gave                       _3965\nOblivion to the dead, when the streets ran\nWith brothers’ blood! O, that the earthquake’s grave\nWould gape, or Ocean lift its stifling wave!’\nVain cries—throughout the streets thousands pursued\nEach by his fiery torture howl and rave,                             _3970\nOr sit in frenzy’s unimagined mood,\nUpon fresh heaps of dead; a ghastly multitude.\n\n21.\nIt was not hunger now, but thirst. Each well\nWas choked with rotting corpses, and became\nA cauldron of green mist made visible                                _3975\nAt sunrise. Thither still the myriads came,\nSeeking to quench the agony of the flame,\nWhich raged like poison through their bursting veins;\nNaked they were from torture, without shame,\nSpotted with nameless scars and lurid blains,                        _3980\nChildhood, and youth, and age, writhing in savage pains.\n\n22.\nIt was not thirst, but madness! Many saw\nTheir own lean image everywhere, it went\nA ghastlier self beside them, till the awe\nOf that dread sight to self-destruction sent                         _3985\nThose shrieking victims; some, ere life was spent,\nSought, with a horrid sympathy, to shed\nContagion on the sound; and others rent\nTheir matted hair, and cried aloud, ‘We tread\nOn fire! the avenging Power his hell on earth has spread!’           _3990\n\n23.\nSometimes the living by the dead were hid.\nNear the great fountain in the public square,\nWhere corpses made a crumbling pyramid\nUnder the sun, was heard one stifled prayer\nFor life, in the hot silence of the air;                             _3995\nAnd strange ’twas, amid that hideous heap to see\nSome shrouded in their long and golden hair,\nAs if not dead, but slumbering quietly\nLike forms which sculptors carve, then love to agony.\n\n24.\nFamine had spared the palace of the king:—                          _4000\nHe rioted in festival the while,\nHe and his guards and priests; but Plague did fling\nOne shadow upon all. Famine can smile\nOn him who brings it food, and pass, with guile\nOf thankful falsehood, like a courtier gray,                         _4005\nThe house-dog of the throne; but many a mile\nComes Plague, a winged wolf, who loathes alway\nThe garbage and the scum that strangers make her prey.\n\n25.\nSo, near the throne, amid the gorgeous feast,\nSheathed in resplendent arms, or loosely dight                       _4010\nTo luxury, ere the mockery yet had ceased\nThat lingered on his lips, the warrior’s might\nWas loosened, and a new and ghastlier night\nIn dreams of frenzy lapped his eyes; he fell\nHeadlong, or with stiff eyeballs sate upright                        _4015\nAmong the guests, or raving mad did tell\nStrange truths; a dying seer of dark oppression’s hell.\n\n26.\nThe Princes and the Priests were pale with terror;\nThat monstrous faith wherewith they ruled mankind,\nFell, like a shaft loosed by the bowman’s error,                     _4020\nOn their own hearts: they sought and they could find\nNo refuge—’twas the blind who led the blind!\nSo, through the desolate streets to the high fane,\nThe many-tongued and endless armies wind\nIn sad procession: each among the train                              _4025\nTo his own Idol lifts his supplications vain.\n\n27.\n‘O God!’ they cried, ‘we know our secret pride\nHas scorned thee, and thy worship, and thy name;\nSecure in human power we have defied\nThy fearful might; we bend in fear and shame                         _4030\nBefore thy presence; with the dust we claim\nKindred; be merciful, O King of Heaven!\nMost justly have we suffered for thy fame\nMade dim, but be at length our sins forgiven,\nEre to despair and death thy worshippers be driven.                  _4035\n\n28.\n‘O King of Glory! thou alone hast power!\nWho can resist thy will? who can restrain\nThy wrath, when on the guilty thou dost shower\nThe shafts of thy revenge, a blistering rain?\nGreatest and best, be merciful again!                                _4040\nHave we not stabbed thine enemies, and made\nThe Earth an altar, and the Heavens a fane,\nWhere thou wert worshipped with their blood, and laid\nThose hearts in dust which would thy searchless works have weighed?\n\n29.\n‘Well didst thou loosen on this impious City                         _4045\nThine angels of revenge: recall them now;\nThy worshippers, abased, here kneel for pity,\nAnd bind their souls by an immortal vow:\nWe swear by thee! and to our oath do thou\nGive sanction, from thine hell of fiends and flame,                  _4050\nThat we will kill with fire and torments slow,\nThe last of those who mocked thy holy name,\nAnd scorned the sacred laws thy prophets did proclaim.’\n\n30.\nThus they with trembling limbs and pallid lips\nWorshipped their own hearts’ image, dim and vast,                    _4055\nScared by the shade wherewith they would eclipse\nThe light of other minds;—troubled they passed\nFrom the great Temple;—fiercely still and fast\nThe arrows of the plague among them fell,\nAnd they on one another gazed aghast,                                _4060\nAnd through the hosts contention wild befell,\nAs each of his own god the wondrous works did tell.\n\n31.\nAnd Oromaze, Joshua, and Mahomet,\nMoses, and Buddh, Zerdusht, and Brahm, and Foh,\nA tumult of strange names, which never met                           _4065\nBefore, as watchwords of a single woe,\nArose; each raging votary ‘gan to throw\nAloft his armed hands, and each did howl\n‘Our God alone is God!’—and slaughter now\nWould have gone forth, when from beneath a cowl                      _4070\nA voice came forth, which pierced like ice through every soul.\n\n32.\n’Twas an Iberian Priest from whom it came,\nA zealous man, who led the legioned West,\nWith words which faith and pride had steeped in flame,\nTo quell the unbelievers; a dire guest                               _4075\nEven to his friends was he, for in his breast\nDid hate and guile lie watchful, intertwined,\nTwin serpents in one deep and winding nest;\nHe loathed all faith beside his own, and pined\nTo wreak his fear of Heaven in vengeance on mankind.                 _4080\n\n33.\nBut more he loathed and hated the clear light\nOf wisdom and free thought, and more did fear,\nLest, kindled once, its beams might pierce the night,\nEven where his Idol stood; for, far and near\nDid many a heart in Europe leap to hear                              _4085\nThat faith and tyranny were trampled down;\nMany a pale victim, doomed for truth to share\nThe murderer’s cell, or see, with helpless groan,\nThe priests his children drag for slaves to serve their own.\n\n34.\nHe dared not kill the infidels with fire                             _4090\nOr steel, in Europe; the slow agonies\nOf legal torture mocked his keen desire:\nSo he made truce with those who did despise\nThe expiation, and the sacrifice,\nThat, though detested, Islam’s kindred creed                         _4095\nMight crush for him those deadlier enemies;\nFor fear of God did in his bosom breed\nA jealous hate of man, an unreposing need.\n\n35.\n‘Peace! Peace!’ he cried, ‘when we are dead, the Day\nOf Judgement comes, and all shall surely know                        _4100\nWhose God is God, each fearfully shall pay\nThe errors of his faith in endless woe!\nBut there is sent a mortal vengeance now\nOn earth, because an impious race had spurned\nHim whom we all adore,—a subtle foe,                                _4105\nBy whom for ye this dread reward was earned,\nAnd kingly thrones, which rest on faith, nigh overturned.\n\n36.\n‘Think ye, because ye weep, and kneel, and pray,\nThat God will lull the pestilence? It rose\nEven from beneath his throne, where, many a day,                     _4110\nHis mercy soothed it to a dark repose:\nIt walks upon the earth to judge his foes;\nAnd what are thou and I, that he should deign\nTo curb his ghastly minister, or close\nThe gates of death, ere they receive the twain                       _4115\nWho shook with mortal spells his undefended reign?\n\n37.\n‘Ay, there is famine in the gulf of hell,\nIts giant worms of fire for ever yawn.—\nTheir lurid eyes are on us! those who fell\nBy the swift shafts of pestilence ere dawn,                          _4120\nAre in their jaws! they hunger for the spawn\nOf Satan, their own brethren, who were sent\nTo make our souls their spoil. See! see! they fawn\nLike dogs, and they will sleep with luxury spent,\nWhen those detested hearts their iron fangs have rent!               _4125\n\n38.\n‘Our God may then lull Pestilence to sleep:—\nPile high the pyre of expiation now,\nA forest’s spoil of boughs, and on the heap\nPour venomous gums, which sullenly and slow,\nWhen touched by flame, shall burn, and melt, and flow,               _4130\nA stream of clinging fire,—and fix on high\nA net of iron, and spread forth below\nA couch of snakes, and scorpions, and the fry\nOf centipedes and worms, earth’s hellish progeny!\n\n39.\n‘Let Laon and Laone on that pyre,                                    _4135\nLinked tight with burning brass, perish!—then pray\nThat, with this sacrifice, the withering ire\nOf Heaven may be appeased.’ He ceased, and they\nA space stood silent, as far, far away\nThe echoes of his voice among them died;                             _4140\nAnd he knelt down upon the dust, alway\nMuttering the curses of his speechless pride,\nWhilst shame, and fear, and awe, the armies did divide.\n\n40.\nHis voice was like a blast that burst the portal\nOf fabled hell; and as he spake, each one                            _4145\nSaw gape beneath the chasms of fire immortal,\nAnd Heaven above seemed cloven, where, on a throne\nGirt round with storms and shadows, sate alone\nTheir King and Judge—fear killed in every breast\nAll natural pity then, a fear unknown                                _4150\nBefore, and with an inward fire possessed,\nThey raged like homeless beasts whom burning woods invest.\n\n41.\n’Twas morn.—At noon the public crier went forth,\nProclaiming through the living and the dead,\n‘The Monarch saith, that his great Empire’s worth                    _4155\nIs set on Laon and Laone’s head:\nHe who but one yet living here can lead,\nOr who the life from both their hearts can wring,\nShall be the kingdom’s heir—a glorious meed!\nBut he who both alive can hither bring,                              _4160\nThe Princess shall espouse, and reign an equal King.’\n\n42.\nEre night the pyre was piled, the net of iron\nWas spread above, the fearful couch below;\nIt overtopped the towers that did environ\nThat spacious square; for Fear is never slow                         _4165\nTo build the thrones of Hate, her mate and foe;\nSo, she scourged forth the maniac multitude\nTo rear this pyramid—tottering and slow,\nPlague-stricken, foodless, like lean herds pursued\nBy gadflies, they have piled the heath, and gums, and wood.          _4170\n\n43.\nNight came, a starless and a moonless gloom.\nUntil the dawn, those hosts of many a nation\nStood round that pile, as near one lover’s tomb\nTwo gentle sisters mourn their desolation;\nAnd in the silence of that expectation,                              _4175\nWas heard on high the reptiles’ hiss and crawl—\nIt was so deep—save when the devastation\nOf the swift pest, with fearful interval,\nMarking its path with shrieks, among the crowd would fall.\n\n44.\nMorn came,—among those sleepless multitudes,                        _4180\nMadness, and Fear, and Plague, and Famine still\nHeaped corpse on corpse, as in autumnal woods\nThe frosts of many a wind with dead leaves fill\nEarth’s cold and sullen brooks; in silence, still\nThe pale survivors stood; ere noon, the fear                         _4185\nOf Hell became a panic, which did kill\nLike hunger or disease, with whispers drear,\nAs ‘Hush! hark! Come they yet?—Just Heaven! thine hour is near!’\n\n45.\nAnd Priests rushed through their ranks, some counterfeiting\nThe rage they did inspire, some mad indeed                           _4190\nWith their own lies; they said their god was waiting\nTo see his enemies writhe, and burn, and bleed,—\nAnd that, till then, the snakes of Hell had need\nOf human souls:—three hundred furnaces\nSoon blazed through the wide City, where, with speed,                _4195\nMen brought their infidel kindred to appease\nGod’s wrath, and, while they burned, knelt round on quivering knees.\n\n46.\nThe noontide sun was darkened with that smoke,\nThe winds of eve dispersed those ashes gray.\nThe madness which these rites had lulled, awoke                      _4200\nAgain at sunset.—Who shall dare to say\nThe deeds which night and fear brought forth, or weigh\nIn balance just the good and evil there?\nHe might man’s deep and searchless heart display,\nAnd cast a light on those dim labyrinths, where                      _4205\nHope, near imagined chasms, is struggling with despair.\n\n47.\n’Tis said, a mother dragged three children then,\nTo those fierce flames which roast the eyes in the head,\nAnd laughed, and died; and that unholy men,\nFeasting like fiends upon the infidel dead,                          _4210\nLooked from their meal, and saw an Angel tread\nThe visible floor of Heaven, and it was she!\nAnd, on that night, one without doubt or dread\nCame to the fire, and said, ‘Stop, I am he!\nKill me!’—They burned them both with hellish mockery.               _4215\n\n48.\nAnd, one by one, that night, young maidens came,\nBeauteous and calm, like shapes of living stone\nClothed in the light of dreams, and by the flame\nWhich shrank as overgorged, they laid them down,\nAnd sung a low sweet song, of which alone                            _4220\nOne word was heard, and that was Liberty;\nAnd that some kissed their marble feet, with moan\nLike love, and died; and then that they did die\nWith happy smiles, which sunk in white tranquillity.\n\n\n_3834 native home edition 1818.\n_3967 earthquakes edition 1818.\n_4176 reptiles’]reptiles edition 1818.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 11.",
    "body": "1.\nShe saw me not—she heard me not—alone                              _4225\nUpon the mountain’s dizzy brink she stood;\nShe spake not, breathed not, moved not—there was thrown\nOver her look, the shadow of a mood\nWhich only clothes the heart in solitude,\nA thought of voiceless depth;—she stood alone,                      _4230\nAbove, the Heavens were spread;—below, the flood\nWas murmuring in its caves;—the wind had blown\nHer hair apart, through which her eyes and forehead shone.\n\n2.\nA cloud was hanging o’er the western mountains;\nBefore its blue and moveless depth were flying                       _4235\nGray mists poured forth from the unresting fountains\nOf darkness in the North:—the day was dying:—\nSudden, the sun shone forth, its beams were lying\nLike boiling gold on Ocean, strange to see,\nAnd on the shattered vapours, which defying                          _4240\nThe power of light in vain, tossed restlessly\nIn the red Heaven, like wrecks in a tempestuous sea.\n\n3.\nIt was a stream of living beams, whose bank\nOn either side by the cloud’s cleft was made;\nAnd where its chasms that flood of glory drank,                      _4245\nIts waves gushed forth like fire, and as if swayed\nBy some mute tempest, rolled on HER; the shade\nOf her bright image floated on the river\nOf liquid light, which then did end and fade—\nHer radiant shape upon its verge did shiver;                         _4250\nAloft, her flowing hair like strings of flame did quiver.\n\n4.\nI stood beside her, but she saw me not—\nShe looked upon the sea, and skies, and earth;\nRapture, and love, and admiration wrought\nA passion deeper far than tears, or mirth,                           _4255\nOr speech, or gesture, or whate’er has birth\nFrom common joy; which with the speechless feeling\nThat led her there united, and shot forth\nFrom her far eyes a light of deep revealing,\nAll but her dearest self from my regard concealing.                  _4260\n\n5.\nHer lips were parted, and the measured breath\nWas now heard there;—her dark and intricate eyes\nOrb within orb, deeper than sleep or death,\nAbsorbed the glories of the burning skies,\nWhich, mingling with her heart’s deep ecstasies,                     _4265\nBurst from her looks and gestures;—and a light\nOf liquid tenderness, like love, did rise\nFrom her whole frame, an atmosphere which quite\nArrayed her in its beams, tremulous and soft and bright.\n\n6.\nShe would have clasped me to her glowing frame;                      _4270\nThose warm and odorous lips might soon have shed\nOn mine the fragrance and the invisible flame\nWhich now the cold winds stole;—she would have laid\nUpon my languid heart her dearest head;\nI might have heard her voice, tender and sweet;                      _4275\nHer eyes, mingling with mine, might soon have fed\nMy soul with their own joy.—One moment yet\nI gazed—we parted then, never again to meet!\n\n7.\nNever but once to meet on Earth again!\nShe heard me as I fled—her eager tone                               _4280\nSunk on my heart, and almost wove a chain\nAround my will to link it with her own,\nSo that my stern resolve was almost gone.\n‘I cannot reach thee! whither dost thou fly?\nMy steps are faint—Come back, thou dearest one—                    _4285\nReturn, ah me! return!’—The wind passed by\nOn which those accents died, faint, far, and lingeringly.\n\n8.\nWoe! Woe! that moonless midnight!—Want and Pest\nWere horrible, but one more fell doth rear,\nAs in a hydra’s swarming lair, its crest                             _4290\nEminent among those victims—even the Fear\nOf Hell: each girt by the hot atmosphere\nOf his blind agony, like a scorpion stung\nBy his own rage upon his burning bier\nOf circling coals of fire; but still there clung                     _4295\nOne hope, like a keen sword on starting threads uphung:\n\n9.\nNot death—death was no more refuge or rest;\nNot life—it was despair to be!—not sleep,\nFor fiends and chasms of fire had dispossessed\nAll natural dreams: to wake was not to weep,                         _4300\nBut to gaze mad and pallid, at the leap\nTo which the Future, like a snaky scourge,\nOr like some tyrant’s eye, which aye doth keep\nIts withering beam upon his slaves, did urge\nTheir steps; they heard the roar of Hell’s sulphureous surge.        _4305\n\n10.\nEach of that multitude, alone, and lost\nTo sense of outward things, one hope yet knew;\nAs on a foam-girt crag some seaman tossed\nStares at the rising tide, or like the crew\nWhilst now the ship is splitting through and through;                _4310\nEach, if the tramp of a far steed was heard,\nStarted from sick despair, or if there flew\nOne murmur on the wind, or if some word\nWhich none can gather yet, the distant crowd has stirred.\n\n11.\nWhy became cheeks, wan with the kiss of death,                       _4315\nPaler from hope? they had sustained despair.\nWhy watched those myriads with suspended breath\nSleepless a second night? they are not here,\nThe victims, and hour by hour, a vision drear,\nWarm corpses fall upon the clay-cold dead;                           _4320\nAnd even in death their lips are wreathed with fear.—\nThe crowd is mute and moveless—overhead\nSilent Arcturus shines—‘Ha! hear’st thou not the tread\n\n12.\n‘Of rushing feet? laughter? the shout, the scream,\nOf triumph not to be contained? See! hark!                           _4325\nThey come, they come! give way!’ Alas, ye deem\nFalsely—’tis but a crowd of maniacs stark\nDriven, like a troop of spectres, through the dark,\nFrom the choked well, whence a bright death-fire sprung,\nA lurid earth-star, which dropped many a spark                       _4330\nFrom its blue train, and spreading widely, clung\nTo their wild hair, like mist the topmost pines among.\n\n13.\nAnd many, from the crowd collected there,\nJoined that strange dance in fearful sympathies;\nThere was the silence of a long despair,                             _4335\nWhen the last echo of those terrible cries\nCame from a distant street, like agonies\nStifled afar.—Before the Tyrant’s throne\nAll night his aged Senate sate, their eyes\nIn stony expectation fixed; when one                                 _4340\nSudden before them stood, a Stranger and alone.\n\n14.\nDark Priests and haughty Warriors gazed on him\nWith baffled wonder, for a hermit’s vest\nConcealed his face; but when he spake, his tone,\nEre yet the matter did their thoughts arrest,—                      _4345\nEarnest, benignant, calm, as from a breast\nVoid of all hate or terror—made them start;\nFor as with gentle accents he addressed\nHis speech to them, on each unwilling heart\nUnusual awe did fall—a spirit-quelling dart.                        _4350\n\n15.\n‘Ye Princes of the Earth, ye sit aghast\nAmid the ruin which yourselves have made,\nYes, Desolation heard your trumpet’s blast,\nAnd sprang from sleep!—dark Terror has obeyed\nYour bidding—O, that I whom ye have made                            _4355\nYour foe, could set my dearest enemy free\nFrom pain and fear! but evil casts a shade,\nWhich cannot pass so soon, and Hate must be\nThe nurse and parent still of an ill progeny.\n\n16.\n‘Ye turn to Heaven for aid in your distress;                         _4360\nAlas, that ye, the mighty and the wise,\nWho, if ye dared, might not aspire to less\nThan ye conceive of power, should fear the lies\nWhich thou, and thou, didst frame for mysteries\nTo blind your slaves:—consider your own thought,                    _4365\nAn empty and a cruel sacrifice\nYe now prepare, for a vain idol wrought\nOut of the fears and hate which vain desires have brought.\n\n17.\n‘Ye seek for happiness—alas, the day!\nYe find it not in luxury nor in gold,                                _4370\nNor in the fame, nor in the envied sway\nFor which, O willing slaves to Custom old,\nSevere taskmistress! ye your hearts have sold.\nYe seek for peace, and when ye die, to dream\nNo evil dreams: all mortal things are cold                           _4375\nAnd senseless then; if aught survive, I deem\nIt must be love and joy, for they immortal seem.\n\n18.\n‘Fear not the future, weep not for the past.\nOh, could I win your ears to dare be now\nGlorious, and great, and calm! that ye would cast                    _4380\nInto the dust those symbols of your woe,\nPurple, and gold, and steel! that ye would go\nProclaiming to the nations whence ye came,\nThat Want, and Plague, and Fear, from slavery flow;\nAnd that mankind is free, and that the shame                         _4385\nOf royalty and faith is lost in freedom’s fame!\n\n19.\n‘If thus, ’tis well—if not, I come to say\nThat Laon—’ while the Stranger spoke, among\nThe Council sudden tumult and affray\nArose, for many of those warriors young,                             _4390\nHad on his eloquent accents fed and hung\nLike bees on mountain-flowers; they knew the truth,\nAnd from their thrones in vindication sprung;\nThe men of faith and law then without ruth\nDrew forth their secret steel, and stabbed each ardent youth.        _4395\n\n20.\nThey stabbed them in the back and sneered—a slave\nWho stood behind the throne, those corpses drew\nEach to its bloody, dark, and secret grave;\nAnd one more daring raised his steel anew\nTo pierce the Stranger. ‘What hast thou to do                        _4400\nWith me, poor wretch?’—Calm, solemn and severe,\nThat voice unstrung his sinews, and he threw\nHis dagger on the ground, and pale with fear,\nSate silently—his voice then did the Stranger rear.\n\n21.\n‘It doth avail not that I weep for ye—                              _4405\nYe cannot change, since ye are old and gray,\nAnd ye have chosen your lot—your fame must be\nA book of blood, whence in a milder day\nMen shall learn truth, when ye are wrapped in clay:\nNow ye shall triumph. I am Laon’s friend,                            _4410\nAnd him to your revenge will I betray,\nSo ye concede one easy boon. Attend!\nFor now I speak of things which ye can apprehend.\n\n22.\n‘There is a People mighty in its youth,\nA land beyond the Oceans of the West,                                _4415\nWhere, though with rudest rites, Freedom and Truth\nAre worshipped; from a glorious Mother’s breast,\nWho, since high Athens fell, among the rest\nSate like the Queen of Nations, but in woe,\nBy inbred monsters outraged and oppressed,                           _4420\nTurns to her chainless child for succour now,\nIt draws the milk of Power in Wisdom’s fullest flow.\n\n23.\n‘That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze\nFeeds on the noontide beam, whose golden plume\nFloats moveless on the storm, and in the blaze                       _4425\nOf sunrise gleams when Earth is wrapped in gloom;\nAn epitaph of glory for the tomb\nOf murdered Europe may thy fame be made,\nGreat People! as the sands shalt thou become;\nThy growth is swift as morn, when night must fade;                   _4430\nThe multitudinous Earth shall sleep beneath thy shade.\n\n24.\n‘Yes, in the desert there is built a home\nFor Freedom. Genius is made strong to rear\nThe monuments of man beneath the dome\nOf a new Heaven; myriads assemble there,                             _4435\nWhom the proud lords of man, in rage or fear,\nDrive from their wasted homes: the boon I pray\nIs this—that Cythna shall be convoyed there—\nNay, start not at the name—America!\nAnd then to you this night Laon will I betray.                       _4440\n\n25.\n‘With me do what ye will. I am your foe!’\nThe light of such a joy as makes the stare\nOf hungry snakes like living emeralds glow,\nShone in a hundred human eyes—‘Where, where\nIs Laon? Haste! fly! drag him swiftly here!                          _4445\nWe grant thy boon.’—‘I put no trust in ye,\nSwear by the Power ye dread.’—‘We swear, we swear!’\nThe Stranger threw his vest back suddenly,\nAnd smiled in gentle pride, and said, ‘Lo! I am he!’\n\n\n_4321 wreathed]writhed. “Poetical Works” 1839. 1st edition.\n_4361 the mighty]tho’ mighty edition 1818.\n_4362 ye]he edition 1818.\n_4432 there]then edition 1818.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 12.",
    "body": "1.\nThe transport of a fierce and monstrous gladness                     _4450\nSpread through the multitudinous streets, fast flying\nUpon the winds of fear; from his dull madness\nThe starveling waked, and died in joy; the dying,\nAmong the corpses in stark agony lying,\nJust heard the happy tidings, and in hope                            _4455\nClosed their faint eyes; from house to house replying\nWith loud acclaim, the living shook Heaven’s cope,\nAnd filled the startled Earth with echoes: morn did ope\n\n2.\nIts pale eyes then; and lo! the long array\nOf guards in golden arms, and Priests beside,                        _4460\nSinging their bloody hymns, whose garbs betray\nThe blackness of the faith it seems to hide;\nAnd see, the Tyrant’s gem-wrought chariot glide\nAmong the gloomy cowls and glittering spears—\nA Shape of light is sitting by his side,                             _4465\nA child most beautiful. I’ the midst appears\nLaon,—exempt alone from mortal hopes and fears.\n\n3.\nHis head and feet are bare, his hands are bound\nBehind with heavy chains, yet none do wreak\nTheir scoffs on him, though myriads throng around;                   _4470\nThere are no sneers upon his lip which speak\nThat scorn or hate has made him bold; his cheek\nResolve has not turned pale,—his eyes are mild\nAnd calm, and, like the morn about to break,\nSmile on mankind—his heart seems reconciled                         _4475\nTo all things and itself, like a reposing child.\n\n4.\nTumult was in the soul of all beside,\nIll joy, or doubt, or fear; but those who saw\nTheir tranquil victim pass, felt wonder glide\nInto their brain, and became calm with awe.—                        _4480\nSee, the slow pageant near the pile doth draw.\nA thousand torches in the spacious square,\nBorne by the ready slaves of ruthless law,\nAwait the signal round: the morning fair\nIs changed to a dim night by that unnatural glare.                   _4485\n\n5.\nAnd see! beneath a sun-bright canopy,\nUpon a platform level with the pile,\nThe anxious Tyrant sit, enthroned on high,\nGirt by the chieftains of the host; all smile\nIn expectation, but one child: the while                             _4490\nI, Laon, led by mutes, ascend my bier\nOf fire, and look around: each distant isle\nIs dark in the bright dawn; towers far and near,\nPierce like reposing flames the tremulous atmosphere.\n\n6.\nThere was such silence through the host, as when                     _4495\nAn earthquake trampling on some populous town,\nHas crushed ten thousand with one tread, and men\nExpect the second; all were mute but one,\nThat fairest child, who, bold with love, alone\nStood up before the King, without avail,                             _4500\nPleading for Laon’s life—her stifled groan\nWas heard—she trembled like one aspen pale\nAmong the gloomy pines of a Norwegian vale.\n\n7.\nWhat were his thoughts linked in the morning sun,\nAmong those reptiles, stingless with delay,                          _4505\nEven like a tyrant’s wrath?—The signal-gun\nRoared—hark, again! In that dread pause he lay\nAs in a quiet dream—the slaves obey—\nA thousand torches drop,—and hark, the last\nBursts on that awful silence; far away,                              _4510\nMillions, with hearts that beat both loud and fast,\nWatch for the springing flame expectant and aghast.\n\n8.\nThey fly—the torches fall—a cry of fear\nHas startled the triumphant!—they recede!\nFor, ere the cannon’s roar has died, they hear                       _4515\nThe tramp of hoofs like earthquake, and a steed\nDark and gigantic, with the tempest’s speed,\nBursts through their ranks: a woman sits thereon,\nFairer, it seems, than aught that earth can breed,\nCalm, radiant, like the phantom of the dawn,                         _4520\nA spirit from the caves of daylight wandering gone.\n\n9.\nAll thought it was God’s Angel come to sweep\nThe lingering guilty to their fiery grave;\nThe Tyrant from his throne in dread did leap,—\nHer innocence his child from fear did save;                          _4525\nScared by the faith they feigned, each priestly slave\nKnelt for his mercy whom they served with blood,\nAnd, like the refluence of a mighty wave\nSucked into the loud sea, the multitude\nWith crushing panic, fled in terror’s altered mood.                  _4530\n\n10.\nThey pause, they blush, they gaze,—a gathering shout\nBursts like one sound from the ten thousand streams\nOf a tempestuous sea:—that sudden rout\nOne checked, who, never in his mildest dreams\nFelt awe from grace or loveliness, the seams                         _4535\nOf his rent heart so hard and cold a creed\nHad seared with blistering ice—but he misdeems\nThat he is wise, whose wounds do only bleed\nInly for self,—thus thought the Iberian Priest indeed,\n\n11.\nAnd others, too, thought he was wise to see,                         _4540\nIn pain, and fear, and hate, something divine;\nIn love and beauty, no divinity.—\nNow with a bitter smile, whose light did shine\nLike a fiend’s hope upon his lips and eyne,\nHe said, and the persuasion of that sneer                            _4545\nRallied his trembling comrades—‘Is it mine\nTo stand alone, when kings and soldiers fear\nA woman? Heaven has sent its other victim here.’\n\n12.\n‘Were it not impious,’ said the King, ‘to break\nOur holy oath?’—‘Impious to keep it, say!’                          _4550\nShrieked the exulting Priest:—‘Slaves, to the stake\nBind her, and on my head the burden lay\nOf her just torments:—at the Judgement Day\nWill I stand up before the golden throne\nOf Heaven, and cry, “To Thee did I betray                            _4555\nAn infidel; but for me she would have known\nAnother moment’s joy! the glory be thine own.”’\n\n13.\nThey trembled, but replied not, nor obeyed,\nPausing in breathless silence. Cythna sprung\nFrom her gigantic steed, who, like a shade                           _4560\nChased by the winds, those vacant streets among\nFled tameless, as the brazen rein she flung\nUpon his neck, and kissed his mooned brow.\nA piteous sight, that one so fair and young,\nThe clasp of such a fearful death should woo                         _4565\nWith smiles of tender joy as beamed from Cythna now.\n\n14.\nThe warm tears burst in spite of faith and fear\nFrom many a tremulous eye, but like soft dews\nWhich feed Spring’s earliest buds, hung gathered there,\nFrozen by doubt,—alas! they could not choose                        _4570\nBut weep; for when her faint limbs did refuse\nTo climb the pyre, upon the mutes she smiled;\nAnd with her eloquent gestures, and the hues\nOf her quick lips, even as a weary child\nWins sleep from some fond nurse with its caresses mild,              _4575\n\n15.\nShe won them, though unwilling, her to bind\nNear me, among the snakes. When there had fled\nOne soft reproach that was most thrilling kind,\nShe smiled on me, and nothing then we said,\nBut each upon the other’s countenance fed                            _4580\nLooks of insatiate love; the mighty veil\nWhich doth divide the living and the dead\nWas almost rent, the world grew dim and pale,—\nAll light in Heaven or Earth beside our love did fail.—\n\n16.\nYet—yet—one brief relapse, like the last beam                      _4585\nOf dying flames, the stainless air around\nHung silent and serene—a blood-red gleam\nBurst upwards, hurling fiercely from the ground\nThe globed smoke,—I heard the mighty sound\nOf its uprise, like a tempestuous ocean;                             _4590\nAnd through its chasms I saw, as in a swound,\nThe tyrant’s child fall without life or motion\nBefore his throne, subdued by some unseen emotion.—\n\n17.\nAnd is this death?—The pyre has disappeared,\nThe Pestilence, the Tyrant, and the throng;                          _4595\nThe flames grow silent—slowly there is heard\nThe music of a breath-suspending song,\nWhich, like the kiss of love when life is young,\nSteeps the faint eyes in darkness sweet and deep;\nWith ever-changing notes it floats along,                            _4600\nTill on my passive soul there seemed to creep\nA melody, like waves on wrinkled sands that leap.\n\n18.\nThe warm touch of a soft and tremulous hand\nWakened me then; lo! Cythna sate reclined\nBeside me, on the waved and golden sand                              _4605\nOf a clear pool, upon a bank o’ertwined\nWith strange and star-bright flowers, which to the wind\nBreathed divine odour; high above, was spread\nThe emerald heaven of trees of unknown kind,\nWhose moonlike blooms and bright fruit overhead                      _4610\nA shadow, which was light, upon the waters shed.\n\n19.\nAnd round about sloped many a lawny mountain\nWith incense-bearing forests and vast caves\nOf marble radiance, to that mighty fountain;\nAnd where the flood its own bright margin laves,                     _4615\nTheir echoes talk with its eternal waves,\nWhich, from the depths whose jagged caverns breed\nTheir unreposing strife, it lifts and heaves,—\nTill through a chasm of hills they roll, and feed\nA river deep, which flies with smooth but arrowy speed.              _4620\n\n20.\nAs we sate gazing in a trance of wonder,\nA boat approached, borne by the musical air\nAlong the waves which sung and sparkled under\nIts rapid keel—a winged shape sate there,\nA child with silver-shining wings, so fair,                          _4625\nThat as her bark did through the waters glide,\nThe shadow of the lingering waves did wear\nLight, as from starry beams; from side to side,\nWhile veering to the wind her plumes the bark did guide.\n\n21.\nThe boat was one curved shell of hollow pearl,                       _4630\nAlmost translucent with the light divine\nOf her within; the prow and stern did curl\nHorned on high, like the young moon supine,\nWhen o’er dim twilight mountains dark with pine,\nIt floats upon the sunset’s sea of beams,                            _4635\nWhose golden waves in many a purple line\nFade fast, till borne on sunlight’s ebbing streams,\nDilating, on earth’s verge the sunken meteor gleams.\n\n22.\nIts keel has struck the sands beside our feet;—\nThen Cythna turned to me, and from her eyes                          _4640\nWhich swam with unshed tears, a look more sweet\nThan happy love, a wild and glad surprise,\nGlanced as she spake: ‘Ay, this is Paradise\nAnd not a dream, and we are all united!\nLo, that is mine own child, who in the guise                         _4645\nOf madness came, like day to one benighted\nIn lonesome woods: my heart is now too well requited!’\n\n23.\nAnd then she wept aloud, and in her arms\nClasped that bright Shape, less marvellously fair\nThan her own human hues and living charms;                           _4650\nWhich, as she leaned in passion’s silence there,\nBreathed warmth on the cold bosom of the air,\nWhich seemed to blush and tremble with delight;\nThe glossy darkness of her streaming hair\nFell o’er that snowy child, and wrapped from sight                   _4655\nThe fond and long embrace which did their hearts unite.\n\n24.\nThen the bright child, the plumed Seraph came,\nAnd fixed its blue and beaming eyes on mine,\nAnd said, ‘I was disturbed by tremulous shame\nWhen once we met, yet knew that I was thine                          _4660\nFrom the same hour in which thy lips divine\nKindled a clinging dream within my brain,\nWhich ever waked when I might sleep, to twine\nThine image with HER memory dear—again\nWe meet; exempted now from mortal fear or pain.                      _4665\n\n25.\n‘When the consuming flames had wrapped ye round,\nThe hope which I had cherished went away;\nI fell in agony on the senseless ground,\nAnd hid mine eyes in dust, and far astray\nMy mind was gone, when bright, like dawning day,                     _4670\nThe Spectre of the Plague before me flew,\nAnd breathed upon my lips, and seemed to say,\n“They wait for thee, beloved!”—then I knew\nThe death-mark on my breast, and became calm anew.\n\n26.\n‘It was the calm of love—for I was dying.                           _4675\nI saw the black and half-extinguished pyre\nIn its own gray and shrunken ashes lying;\nThe pitchy smoke of the departed fire\nStill hung in many a hollow dome and spire\nAbove the towers, like night,—beneath whose shade                   _4680\nAwed by the ending of their own desire\nThe armies stood; a vacancy was made\nIn expectation’s depth, and so they stood dismayed.\n\n27.\n‘The frightful silence of that altered mood,\nThe tortures of the dying clove alone,                               _4685\nTill one uprose among the multitude,\nAnd said—“The flood of time is rolling on;\nWe stand upon its brink, whilst THEY are gone\nTo glide in peace down death’s mysterious stream.\nHave ye done well? They moulder, flesh and bone,                     _4690\nWho might have made this life’s envenomed dream\nA sweeter draught than ye will ever taste, I deem.\n\n28.\n‘“These perish as the good and great of yore\nHave perished, and their murderers will repent,—\nYes, vain and barren tears shall flow before                         _4695\nYon smoke has faded from the firmament\nEven for this cause, that ye who must lament\nThe death of those that made this world so fair,\nCannot recall them now; but there is lent\nTo man the wisdom of a high despair,                                 _4700\nWhen such can die, and he live on and linger here.\n\n29.\n‘“Ay, ye may fear not now the Pestilence,\nFrom fabled hell as by a charm withdrawn;\nAll power and faith must pass, since calmly hence\nIn pain and fire have unbelievers gone;                              _4705\nAnd ye must sadly turn away, and moan\nIn secret, to his home each one returning;\nAnd to long ages shall this hour be known;\nAnd slowly shall its memory, ever burning,\nFill this dark night of things with an eternal morning.              _4710\n\n30.\n‘“For me that world is grown too void and cold,\nSince Hope pursues immortal Destiny\nWith steps thus slow—therefore shall ye behold\nHow those who love, yet fear not, dare to die;\nTell to your children this!” Then suddenly                           _4715\nHe sheathed a dagger in his heart and fell;\nMy brain grew dark in death, and yet to me\nThere came a murmur from the crowd, to tell\nOf deep and mighty change which suddenly befell.\n\n31.\n‘Then suddenly I stood, a winged Thought,                            _4720\nBefore the immortal Senate, and the seat\nOf that star-shining spirit, whence is wrought\nThe strength of its dominion, good and great,\nThe better Genius of this world’s estate.\nHis realm around one mighty Fane is spread,                          _4725\nElysian islands bright and fortunate,\nCalm dwellings of the free and happy dead,\nWhere I am sent to lead!’ These winged words she said,\n\n32.\nAnd with the silence of her eloquent smile,\nBade us embark in her divine canoe;                                  _4730\nThen at the helm we took our seat, the while\nAbove her head those plumes of dazzling hue\nInto the winds’ invisible stream she threw,\nSitting beside the prow: like gossamer\nOn the swift breath of morn, the vessel flew                         _4735\nO’er the bright whirlpools of that fountain fair,\nWhose shores receded fast, while we seemed lingering there;\n\n33.\nTill down that mighty stream, dark, calm, and fleet,\nBetween a chasm of cedarn mountains riven,\nChased by the thronging winds whose viewless feet                    _4740\nAs swift as twinkling beams, had, under Heaven,\nFrom woods and waves wild sounds and odours driven,\nThe boat fled visibly—three nights and days,\nBorne like a cloud through morn, and noon, and even,\nWe sailed along the winding watery ways                              _4745\nOf the vast stream, a long and labyrinthine maze.\n\n34.\nA scene of joy and wonder to behold\nThat river’s shapes and shadows changing ever,\nWhere the broad sunrise filled with deepening gold\nIts whirlpools, where all hues did spread and quiver;                _4750\nAnd where melodious falls did burst and shiver\nAmong rocks clad with flowers, the foam and spray\nSparkled like stars upon the sunny river,\nOr when the moonlight poured a holier day,\nOne vast and glittering lake around green islands lay.               _4755\n\n35.\nMorn, noon, and even, that boat of pearl outran\nThe streams which bore it, like the arrowy cloud\nOf tempest, or the speedier thought of man,\nWhich flieth forth and cannot make abode;\nSometimes through forests, deep like night, we glode,                _4760\nBetween the walls of mighty mountains crowned\nWith Cyclopean piles, whose turrets proud,\nThe homes of the departed, dimly frowned\nO’er the bright waves which girt their dark foundations round.\n\n36.\nSometimes between the wide and flowering meadows,                    _4765\nMile after mile we sailed, and ’twas delight\nTo see far off the sunbeams chase the shadows\nOver the grass; sometimes beneath the night\nOf wide and vaulted caves, whose roofs were bright\nWith starry gems, we fled, whilst from their deep                    _4770\nAnd dark-green chasms, shades beautiful and white,\nAmid sweet sounds across our path would sweep,\nLike swift and lovely dreams that walk the waves of sleep.\n\n37.\nAnd ever as we sailed, our minds were full\nOf love and wisdom, which would overflow                             _4775\nIn converse wild, and sweet, and wonderful,\nAnd in quick smiles whose light would come and go\nLike music o’er wide waves, and in the flow\nOf sudden tears, and in the mute caress—\nFor a deep shade was cleft, and we did know,                         _4780\nThat virtue, though obscured on Earth, not less\nSurvives all mortal change in lasting loveliness.\n\n38.\nThree days and nights we sailed, as thought and feeling\nNumber delightful hours—for through the sky\nThe sphered lamps of day and night, revealing                        _4785\nNew changes and new glories, rolled on high,\nSun, Moon and moonlike lamps, the progeny\nOf a diviner Heaven, serene and fair:\nOn the fourth day, wild as a windwrought sea\nThe stream became, and fast and faster bare                          _4790\nThe spirit-winged boat, steadily speeding there.\n\n39.\nSteady and swift, where the waves rolled like mountains\nWithin the vast ravine, whose rifts did pour\nTumultuous floods from their ten thousand fountains,\nThe thunder of whose earth-uplifting roar                            _4795\nMade the air sweep in whirlwinds from the shore,\nCalm as a shade, the boat of that fair child\nSecurely fled, that rapid stress before,\nAmid the topmost spray, and sunbows wild,\nWreathed in the silver mist: in joy and pride we smiled.             _4800\n\n40.\nThe torrent of that wide and raging river\nIs passed, and our aereal speed suspended.\nWe look behind; a golden mist did quiver\nWhen its wild surges with the lake were blended,—\nOur bark hung there, as on a line suspended                          _4805\nBetween two heavens,—that windless waveless lake\nWhich four great cataracts from four vales, attended\nBy mists, aye feed; from rocks and clouds they break,\nAnd of that azure sea a silent refuge make.\n\n41.\nMotionless resting on the lake awhile,                               _4810\nI saw its marge of snow-bright mountains rear\nTheir peaks aloft, I saw each radiant isle,\nAnd in the midst, afar, even like a sphere\nHung in one hollow sky, did there appear\nThe Temple of the Spirit; on the sound                               _4815\nWhich issued thence, drawn nearer and more near,\nLike the swift moon this glorious earth around,\nThe charmed boat approached, and there its haven found.\n\n\n_4577 there]then edition 1818.\n_4699 there]then edition 1818.\n_4749 When]Where edition 1818.\n_4804 Where]When edition 1818.\n_4805 on a line]one line edition 1818.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On The “Revolt Of Islam”, By Mrs. Shelley.",
    "body": "Shelley possessed two remarkable qualities of intellect—a brilliant\nimagination, and a logical exactness of reason. His inclinations led\nhim (he fancied) almost alike to poetry and metaphysical discussions.\nI say ‘he fancied,’ because I believe the former to have been\nparamount, and that it would have gained the mastery even had he\nstruggled against it. However, he said that he deliberated at one time\nwhether he should dedicate himself to poetry or metaphysics; and,\nresolving on the former, he educated himself for it, discarding in a\ngreat measure his philosophical pursuits, and engaging himself in the\nstudy of the poets of Greece, Italy, and England. To these may be\nadded a constant perusal of portions of the old Testament—the Psalms,\nthe Book of Job, the Prophet Isaiah, and others, the sublime poetry of\nwhich filled him with delight.\n\nAs a poet, his intellect and compositions were powerfully influenced\nby exterior circumstances, and especially by his place of abode. He\nwas very fond of travelling, and ill-health increased this\nrestlessness. The sufferings occasioned by a cold English winter made\nhim pine, especially when our colder spring arrived, for a more genial\nclimate. In 1816 he again visited Switzerland, and rented a house on\nthe banks of the Lake of Geneva; and many a day, in cloud or sunshine,\nwas passed alone in his boat—sailing as the wind listed, or weltering\non the calm waters. The majestic aspect of Nature ministered such\nthoughts as he afterwards enwove in verse. His lines on the Bridge of\nthe Arve, and his “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”, were written at this\ntime. Perhaps during this summer his genius was checked by association\nwith another poet whose nature was utterly dissimilar to his own, yet\nwho, in the poem he wrote at that time, gave tokens that he shared for\na period the more abstract and etherealised inspiration of Shelley.\nThe saddest events awaited his return to England; but such was his\nfear to wound the feelings of others that he never expressed the\nanguish he felt, and seldom gave vent to the indignation roused by the\npersecutions he underwent; while the course of deep unexpressed\npassion, and the sense of injury, engendered the desire to embody\nthemselves in forms defecated of all the weakness and evil which cling\nto real life.\n\nHe chose therefore for his hero a youth nourished in dreams of\nliberty, some of whose actions are in direct opposition to the\nopinions of the world; but who is animated throughout by an ardent\nlove of virtue, and a resolution to confer the boons of political and\nintellectual freedom on his fellow-creatures. He created for this\nyouth a woman such as he delighted to imagine—full of enthusiasm for\nthe same objects; and they both, with will unvanquished, and the\ndeepest sense of the justice of their cause, met adversity and death.\nThere exists in this poem a memorial of a friend of his youth. The\ncharacter of the old man who liberates Laon from his tower prison, and\ntends on him in sickness, is founded on that of Doctor Lind, who, when\nShelley was at Eton, had often stood by to befriend and support him,\nand whose name he never mentioned without love and veneration.\n\nDuring the year 1817 we were established at Marlow in Buckinghamshire.\nShelley’s choice of abode was fixed chiefly by this town being at no\ngreat distance from London, and its neighbourhood to the Thames. The\npoem was written in his boat, as it floated under the beech groves of\nBisham, or during wanderings in the neighbouring country, which is\ndistinguished for peculiar beauty. The chalk hills break into cliffs\nthat overhang the Thames, or form valleys clothed with beech; the\nwilder portion of the country is rendered beautiful by exuberant\nvegetation; and the cultivated part is peculiarly fertile. With all\nthis wealth of Nature which, either in the form of gentlemen’s parks\nor soil dedicated to agriculture, flourishes around, Marlow was\ninhabited (I hope it is altered now) by a very poor population. The\nwomen are lacemakers, and lose their health by sedentary labour, for\nwhich they were very ill paid. The Poor-laws ground to the dust not\nonly the paupers, but those who had risen just above that state, and\nwere obliged to pay poor-rates. The changes produced by peace\nfollowing a long war, and a bad harvest, brought with them the most\nheart-rending evils to the poor. Shelley afforded what alleviation he\ncould. In the winter, while bringing out his poem, he had a severe\nattack of ophthalmia, caught while visiting the poor cottages. I\nmention these things,—for this minute and active sympathy with his\nfellow-creatures gives a thousandfold interest to his speculations,\nand stamps with reality his pleadings for the human race.\n\nThe poem, bold in its opinions and uncompromising in their expression,\nmet with many censurers, not only among those who allow of no virtue\nbut such as supports the cause they espouse, but even among those\nwhose opinions were similar to his own. I extract a portion of a\nletter written in answer to one of these friends. It best details the\nimpulses of Shelley’s mind, and his motives: it was written with\nentire unreserve; and is therefore a precious monument of his own\nopinion of his powers, of the purity of his designs, and the ardour\nwith which he clung, in adversity and through the valley of the shadow\nof death, to views from which he believed the permanent happiness of\nmankind must eventually spring.\n\n‘Marlowe, December 11, 1817.\n\n‘I have read and considered all that you say about my general powers,\nand the particular instance of the poem in which I have attempted to\ndevelop them. Nothing can be more satisfactory to me than the interest\nwhich your admonitions express. But I think you are mistaken in some\npoints with regard to the peculiar nature of my powers, whatever be\ntheir amount. I listened with deference and self-suspicion to your\ncensures of “The Revolt of Islam”; but the productions of mine which\nyou commend hold a very low place in my own esteem; and this reassures\nme, in some degree at least. The poem was produced by a series of\nthoughts which filled my mind with unbounded and sustained enthusiasm.\nI felt the precariousness of my life, and I engaged in this task,\nresolved to leave some record of myself. Much of what the volume\ncontains was written with the same feeling—as real, though not so\nprophetic—as the communications of a dying man. I never presumed\nindeed to consider it anything approaching to faultless; but, when I\nconsider contemporary productions of the same apparent pretensions, I\nown I was filled with confidence. I felt that it was in many respects\na genuine picture of my own mind. I felt that the sentiments were\ntrue, not assumed. And in this have I long believed that my power\nconsists; in sympathy, and that part of the imagination which relates\nto sentiment and contemplation. I am formed, if for anything not in\ncommon with the herd of mankind, to apprehend minute and remote\ndistinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature or the\nliving beings which surround us, and to communicate the conceptions\nwhich result from considering either the moral or the material\nuniverse as a whole. Of course, I believe these faculties, which\nperhaps comprehend all that is sublime in man, to exist very\nimperfectly in my own mind. But, when you advert to my Chancery-paper,\na cold, forced, unimpassioned, insignificant piece of cramped and\ncautious argument, and to the little scrap about “Mandeville”, which\nexpressed my feelings indeed, but cost scarcely two minutes’ thought\nto express, as specimens of my powers more favourable than that which\ngrew as it were from “the agony and bloody sweat” of intellectual\ntravail; surely I must feel that, in some manner, either I am mistaken\nin believing that I have any talent at all, or you in the selection of\nthe specimens of it. Yet, after all, I cannot but be conscious, in\nmuch of what I write, of an absence of that tranquillity which is the\nattribute and accompaniment of power. This feeling alone would make\nyour most kind and wise admonitions, on the subject of the economy of\nintellectual force, valuable to me. And, if I live, or if I see any\ntrust in coming years, doubt not but that I shall do something,\nwhatever it may be, which a serious and earnest estimate of my powers\nwill suggest to me, and which will be in every respect accommodated to\ntheir utmost limits.\n\n[Shelley to Godwin.]\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Fragment.",
    "body": "(The idea Shelley had formed of Prince Athanase was a good deal\nmodelled on “Alastor”. In the first sketch of the poem, he named it\n“Pandemos and Urania”. Athanase seeks through the world the One whom\nhe may love. He meets, in the ship in which he is embarked, a lady who\nappears to him to embody his ideal of love and beauty. But she proves\nto be Pandemos, or the earthly and unworthy Venus; who, after\ndisappointing his cherished dreams and hopes, deserts him. Athanase,\ncrushed by sorrow, pines and dies. ‘On his deathbed, the lady who can\nreally reply to his soul comes and kisses his lips’ (“The Deathbed of\nAthanase”). The poet describes her [in the words of the final\nfragment, page 164]. This slender note is all we have to aid our\nimagination in shaping out the form of the poem, such as its author\nimagined. [Mrs. Shelley’s Note.])\n\n[Written at Marlow in 1817, towards the close of the year; first\npublished in “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. Part 1 is dated by Mrs.\nShelley, ‘December, 1817,’ the remainder, ‘Marlow, 1817.’ The verses\nwere probably rehandled in Italy during the following year. Sources of\nthe text are (1) “Posthumous Poems”, 1824; (2) “Poetical Works” 1839,\neditions 1st and 2nd; (3) a much-tortured draft amongst the Bodleian\nmanuscripts, collated by Mr. C.D. Locock. For (1) and (2) Mrs. Shelley\nis responsible. Our text (enlarged by about thirty lines from the\nBodleian manuscript) follows for the most part the “Poetical Works”,\n1839; verbal exceptions are pointed out in the footnotes. See also the\nEditor’s Notes at the end of this volume, and Mr. Locock’s\n“Examination of Shelley Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library”, Oxford:\nClarendon Press, 1903.]\n\nPART 1.\n\nThere was a youth, who, as with toil and travel,\nHad grown quite weak and gray before his time;\nNor any could the restless griefs unravel\n\nWhich burned within him, withering up his prime\nAnd goading him, like fiends, from land to land.                     _5\nNot his the load of any secret crime,\n\nFor nought of ill his heart could understand,\nBut pity and wild sorrow for the same;—\nNot his the thirst for glory or command,\n\nBaffled with blast of hope-consuming shame;                          _10\nNor evil joys which fire the vulgar breast,\nAnd quench in speedy smoke its feeble flame,\n\nHad left within his soul their dark unrest:\nNor what religion fables of the grave\nFeared he,—Philosophy’s accepted guest.                             _15\n\nFor none than he a purer heart could have,\nOr that loved good more for itself alone;\nOf nought in heaven or earth was he the slave.\n\nWhat sorrow, strange, and shadowy, and unknown,\nSent him, a hopeless wanderer, through mankind?—                    _20\nIf with a human sadness he did groan,\n\nHe had a gentle yet aspiring mind;\nJust, innocent, with varied learning fed;\nAnd such a glorious consolation find\n\nIn others’ joy, when all their own is dead:                          _25\nHe loved, and laboured for his kind in grief,\nAnd yet, unlike all others, it is said\n\nThat from such toil he never found relief.\nAlthough a child of fortune and of power,\nOf an ancestral name the orphan chief,                               _30\n\nHis soul had wedded Wisdom, and her dower\nIs love and justice, clothed in which he sate\nApart from men, as in a lonely tower,\n\nPitying the tumult of their dark estate.—\nYet even in youth did he not e’er abuse                              _35\nThe strength of wealth or thought, to consecrate\n\nThose false opinions which the harsh rich use\nTo blind the world they famish for their pride;\nNor did he hold from any man his dues,\n\nBut, like a steward in honest dealings tried,                        _40\nWith those who toiled and wept, the poor and wise,\nHis riches and his cares he did divide.\n\nFearless he was, and scorning all disguise,\nWhat he dared do or think, though men might start,\nHe spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes;                               _45\n\nLiberal he was of soul, and frank of heart,\nAnd to his many friends—all loved him well—\nWhate’er he knew or felt he would impart,\n\nIf words he found those inmost thoughts to tell;\nIf not, he smiled or wept; and his weak foes                         _50\nHe neither spurned nor hated—though with fell\n\nAnd mortal hate their thousand voices rose,\nThey passed like aimless arrows from his ear—\nNor did his heart or mind its portal close\n\nTo those, or them, or any, whom life’s sphere                        _55\nMay comprehend within its wide array.\nWhat sadness made that vernal spirit sere?—\n\nHe knew not. Though his life, day after day,\nWas failing like an unreplenished stream,\nThough in his eyes a cloud and burthen lay,                          _60\n\nThrough which his soul, like Vesper’s serene beam\nPiercing the chasms of ever rising clouds,\nShone, softly burning; though his lips did seem\n\nLike reeds which quiver in impetuous floods;\nAnd through his sleep, and o’er each waking hour,                    _65\nThoughts after thoughts, unresting multitudes,\n\nWere driven within him by some secret power,\nWhich bade them blaze, and live, and roll afar,\nLike lights and sounds, from haunted tower to tower\n\nO’er castled mountains borne, when tempest’s war                     _70\nIs levied by the night-contending winds,\nAnd the pale dalesmen watch with eager ear;—\n\nThough such were in his spirit, as the fiends\nWhich wake and feed an everliving woe,—\nWhat was this grief, which ne’er in other minds                      _75\n\nA mirror found,—he knew not—none could know;\nBut on whoe’er might question him he turned\nThe light of his frank eyes, as if to show\n\nHe knew not of the grief within that burned,\nBut asked forbearance with a mournful look;                          _80\nOr spoke in words from which none ever learned\n\nThe cause of his disquietude; or shook\nWith spasms of silent passion; or turned pale:\nSo that his friends soon rarely undertook\n\nTo stir his secret pain without avail;—                             _85\nFor all who knew and loved him then perceived\nThat there was drawn an adamantine veil\n\nBetween his heart and mind,—both unrelieved\nWrought in his brain and bosom separate strife.\nSome said that he was mad, others believed                           _90\n\nThat memories of an antenatal life\nMade this, where now he dwelt, a penal hell;\nAnd others said that such mysterious grief\n\nFrom God’s displeasure, like a darkness, fell\nOn souls like his, which owned no higher law                         _95\nThan love; love calm, steadfast, invincible\n\nBy mortal fear or supernatural awe;\nAnd others,—‘’Tis the shadow of a dream\nWhich the veiled eye of Memory never saw,\n\n‘But through the soul’s abyss, like some dark stream                 _100\nThrough shattered mines and caverns underground,\nRolls, shaking its foundations; and no beam\n\n‘Of joy may rise, but it is quenched and drowned\nIn the dim whirlpools of this dream obscure;\nSoon its exhausted waters will have found                            _105\n\n‘A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure,\nO Athanase!—in one so good and great,\nEvil or tumult cannot long endure.\n\nSo spake they: idly of another’s state\nBabbling vain words and fond philosophy;                             _110\nThis was their consolation; such debate\n\nMen held with one another; nor did he,\nLike one who labours with a human woe,\nDecline this talk: as if its theme might be\n\nAnother, not himself, he to and fro                                  _115\nQuestioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit;\nAnd none but those who loved him best could know\n\nThat which he knew not, how it galled and bit\nHis weary mind, this converse vain and cold;\nFor like an eyeless nightmare grief did sit                          _120\n\nUpon his being; a snake which fold by fold\nPressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend\nWhich clenched him if he stirred with deadlier hold;—\nAnd so his grief remained—let it remain—untold. [1]\n\n\nPART 2.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment 1.",
    "body": "Prince Athanase had one beloved friend,                              _125\nAn old, old man, with hair of silver white,\nAnd lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend\n\nWith his wise words; and eyes whose arrowy light\nShone like the reflex of a thousand minds.\nHe was the last whom superstition’s blight                           _130\n\nHad spared in Greece—the blight that cramps and blinds,—\nAnd in his olive bower at Oenoe\nHad sate from earliest youth. Like one who finds\n\nA fertile island in the barren sea,\nOne mariner who has survived his mates                               _135\nMany a drear month in a great ship—so he\n\nWith soul-sustaining songs, and sweet debates\nOf ancient lore, there fed his lonely being:—\n‘The mind becomes that which it contemplates,’—\n\nAnd thus Zonoras, by for ever seeing                                 _140\nTheir bright creations, grew like wisest men;\nAnd when he heard the crash of nations fleeing\n\nA bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then,\nO sacred Hellas! many weary years\nHe wandered, till the path of Laian’s glen                           _145\n\nWas grass-grown—and the unremembered tears\nWere dry in Laian for their honoured chief,\nWho fell in Byzant, pierced by Moslem spears:—\n\nAnd as the lady looked with faithful grief\nFrom her high lattice o’er the rugged path,                          _150\nWhere she once saw that horseman toil, with brief\n\nAnd blighting hope, who with the news of death\nStruck body and soul as with a mortal blight,\nShe saw between the chestnuts, far beneath,\n\nAn old man toiling up, a weary wight;                                _155\nAnd soon within her hospitable hall\nShe saw his white hairs glittering in the light\n\nOf the wood fire, and round his shoulders fall;\nAnd his wan visage and his withered mien,\nYet calm and gentle and majestical.                                  _160\n\nAnd Athanase, her child, who must have been\nThen three years old, sate opposite and gazed\nIn patient silence.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment 2.",
    "body": "Such was Zonoras; and as daylight finds\nOne amaranth glittering on the path of frost,                        _165\nWhen autumn nights have nipped all weaker kinds,\n\nThus through his age, dark, cold, and tempest-tossed,\nShone truth upon Zonoras; and he filled\nFrom fountains pure, nigh overgrown and lost,\n\nThe spirit of Prince Athanase, a child,                              _170\nWith soul-sustaining songs of ancient lore\nAnd philosophic wisdom, clear and mild.\n\nAnd sweet and subtle talk they evermore,\nThe pupil and the master, shared; until,\nSharing that undiminishable store,                                   _175\n\nThe youth, as shadows on a grassy hill\nOutrun the winds that chase them, soon outran\nHis teacher, and did teach with native skill\n\nStrange truths and new to that experienced man;\nStill they were friends, as few have ever been                       _180\nWho mark the extremes of life’s discordant span.\n\nSo in the caverns of the forest green,\nOr on the rocks of echoing ocean hoar,\nZonoras and Prince Athanase were seen\n\nBy summer woodmen; and when winter’s roar                            _185\nSounded o’er earth and sea its blast of war,\nThe Balearic fisher, driven from shore,\n\nHanging upon the peaked wave afar,\nThen saw their lamp from Laian’s turret gleam,\nPiercing the stormy darkness, like a star                            _190\n\nWhich pours beyond the sea one steadfast beam,\nWhilst all the constellations of the sky\nSeemed reeling through the storm...They did but seem—\n\nFor, lo! the wintry clouds are all gone by,\nAnd bright Arcturus through yon pines is glowing,                    _195\nAnd far o’er southern waves, immovably\n\nBelted Orion hangs—warm light is flowing\nFrom the young moon into the sunset’s chasm.—\n‘O, summer eve! with power divine, bestowing\n\n‘On thine own bird the sweet enthusiasm                              _200\nWhich overflows in notes of liquid gladness,\nFilling the sky like light! How many a spasm\n\n‘Of fevered brains, oppressed with grief and madness,\nWere lulled by thee, delightful nightingale,—\nAnd these soft waves, murmuring a gentle sadness,—                  _205\n\n‘And the far sighings of yon piny dale\nMade vocal by some wind we feel not here.—\nI bear alone what nothing may avail\n\n‘To lighten—a strange load!’—No human ear\nHeard this lament; but o’er the visage wan                           _210\nOf Athanase, a ruffling atmosphere\n\nOf dark emotion, a swift shadow, ran,\nLike wind upon some forest-bosomed lake,\nGlassy and dark.—And that divine old man\n\nBeheld his mystic friend’s whole being shake,                        _215\nEven where its inmost depths were gloomiest—\nAnd with a calm and measured voice he spake,\n\nAnd, with a soft and equal pressure, pressed\nThat cold lean hand:—‘Dost thou remember yet\nWhen the curved moon then lingering in the west                      _220\n\n‘Paused, in yon waves her mighty horns to wet,\nHow in those beams we walked, half resting on the sea?\n’Tis just one year—sure thou dost not forget—\n\n‘Then Plato’s words of light in thee and me\nLingered like moonlight in the moonless east,                        _225\nFor we had just then read—thy memory\n\n‘Is faithful now—the story of the feast;\nAnd Agathon and Diotima seemed\nFrom death and dark forgetfulness released...’",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment 3.",
    "body": "And when the old man saw that on the green\nLeaves of his opening ... a blight had lighted                       _230\nHe said: ‘My friend, one grief alone can wean\n\nA gentle mind from all that once delighted:—\nThou lovest, and thy secret heart is laden\nWith feelings which should not be unrequited.’                       _235\n\nAnd Athanase ... then smiled, as one o’erladen\nWith iron chains might smile to talk (?) of bands\nTwined round her lover’s neck by some blithe maiden,\nAnd said...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment 4.",
    "body": "’Twas at the season when the Earth upsprings                         _240\nFrom slumber, as a sphered angel’s child,\nShadowing its eyes with green and golden wings,\n\nStands up before its mother bright and mild,\nOf whose soft voice the air expectant seems—\nSo stood before the sun, which shone and smiled                      _245\n\nTo see it rise thus joyous from its dreams,\nThe fresh and radiant Earth. The hoary grove\nWaxed green—and flowers burst forth like starry beams;—\n\nThe grass in the warm sun did start and move,\nAnd sea-buds burst under the waves serene:—                         _250\nHow many a one, though none be near to love,\n\nLoves then the shade of his own soul, half seen\nIn any mirror—or the spring’s young minions,\nThe winged leaves amid the copses green;—\n\nHow many a spirit then puts on the pinions                           _255\nOf fancy, and outstrips the lagging blast,\nAnd his own steps—and over wide dominions\n\nSweeps in his dream-drawn chariot, far and fast,\nMore fleet than storms—the wide world shrinks below,\nWhen winter and despondency are past.                                _260",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment 5.",
    "body": "’Twas at this season that Prince Athanase\nPassed the white Alps—those eagle-baffling mountains\nSlept in their shrouds of snow;—beside the ways\n\nThe waterfalls were voiceless—for their fountains\nWere changed to mines of sunless crystal now,                        _265\nOr by the curdling winds—like brazen wings\n\nWhich clanged along the mountain’s marble brow—\nWarped into adamantine fretwork, hung\nAnd filled with frozen light the chasms below.\n\nVexed by the blast, the great pines groaned and swung                _270\nUnder their load of [snow]—\n...\n...\nSuch as the eagle sees, when he dives down\nFrom the gray deserts of wide air, [beheld]                          _275\n[Prince] Athanase; and o’er his mien (?) was thrown\n\nThe shadow of that scene, field after field,\nPurple and dim and wide...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment 6.",
    "body": "Thou art the wine whose drunkenness is all\nWe can desire, O Love! and happy souls,                              _280\nEre from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall,\n\nCatch thee, and feed from their o’erflowing bowls\nThousands who thirst for thine ambrosial dew;—\nThou art the radiance which where ocean rolls\n\nInvesteth it; and when the heavens are blue                          _285\nThou fillest them; and when the earth is fair\nThe shadow of thy moving wings imbue\n\nIts deserts and its mountains, till they wear\nBeauty like some light robe;—thou ever soarest\nAmong the towers of men, and as soft air                             _290\n\nIn spring, which moves the unawakened forest,\nClothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak,\nThou floatest among men; and aye implorest\n\nThat which from thee they should implore:—the weak\nAlone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts                          _295\nThe strong have broken—yet where shall any seek\n\nA garment whom thou clothest not? the darts\nOf the keen winter storm, barbed with frost,\nWhich, from the everlasting snow that parts\n\nThe Alps from Heaven, pierce some traveller lost                     _300\nIn the wide waved interminable snow\nUngarmented,...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Another Fragment (A)",
    "body": "Yes, often when the eyes are cold and dry,\nAnd the lips calm, the Spirit weeps within\nTears bitterer than the blood of agony                               _305\n\nTrembling in drops on the discoloured skin\nOf those who love their kind and therefore perish\nIn ghastly torture—a sweet medicine\n\nOf peace and sleep are tears, and quietly\nThem soothe from whose uplifted eyes they fall                       _310\nBut...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Another Fragment (B)",
    "body": "Her hair was brown, her sphered eyes were brown,\nAnd in their dark and liquid moisture swam,\nLike the dim orb of the eclipsed moon;\n\nYet when the spirit flashed beneath, there came                      _315\nThe light from them, as when tears of delight\nDouble the western planet’s serene flame.\n\n\n_19 strange edition 1839; deep edition 1824.\n_74 feed an Bodleian manuscript; feed on editions 1824, 1839.\n\n_124 [1. The Author was pursuing a fuller development of the ideal\ncharacter of Athanase, when it struck him that in an attempt at\nextreme refinement and analysis, his conceptions might be betrayed\ninto the assuming a morbid character. The reader will judge whether he\nis a loser or gainer by this diffidence. [Shelley’s Note.]\nFootnote diffidence cj. Rossetti (1878); difference editions 1824,\n1839.]\n\n_154 beneath editions 1824, 1839; between Bodleian manuscript.\n_165 One Bodleian manuscript edition 1839; An edition 1824.\n_167 Thus thro’ Bodleian manuscript (?) edition 1839; Thus had edition 1824.\n_173 talk they edition 1824, Bodleian manuscript; talk now edition 1839.\n_175 that edition 1839; the edition 1824.\n_182 So edition 1839; And edition 1824.\n_183 Or on Bodleian manuscript; Or by editions 1824, 1839.\n_199 eve Bodleian manuscript edition 1839; night edition 1824.\n_212 emotion, a swift editions 1824, 1839;\n     emotion with swift Bodleian manuscript.\n_250 under edition 1824, Bodleian manuscript; beneath edition 1839.\n_256 outstrips editions 1824, 1839; outrides Bodleian manuscript.\n_259 Exulting, while the wide Bodleian manuscript.\n_262 mountains editions 1824, 1839; crags Bodleian manuscript.\n_264 fountains editions 1824, 1839; springs Bodleian manuscript.\n_269 chasms Bodleian manuscript; chasm editions 1824, 1839.\n_283 thine Bodleian manuscript; thy editions 1824, 1839.\n_285 Investeth Bodleian manuscript; Investest editions 1824, 1839.\n_289 light Bodleian manuscript; bright editions 1824, 1839.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Modern Eclogue.",
    "body": "[Begun at Marlow, 1817 (summer); already in the press, March, 1818;\nfinished at the Baths of Lucca, August, 1818; published with other\npoems, as the title-piece of a slender volume, by C. & J. Ollier,\nLondon, 1819 (spring). See “Biographical List”. Sources of the text\nare (1) editio princeps, 1819; (2) “Poetical Works”, edition Mrs.\nShelley, 1839, editions 1st and 2nd. A fragment of the text is amongst\nthe Boscombe manuscripts. The poem is reprinted here from the editio\nprinceps; verbal alterations are recorded in the footnotes, punctual\nin the Editor’s Notes at the end of Volume 3.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Advertisement.",
    "body": "The story of “Rosalind and Helen” is, undoubtedly, not an attempt in\nthe highest style of poetry. It is in no degree calculated to excite\nprofound meditation; and if, by interesting the affections and amusing\nthe imagination, it awakens a certain ideal melancholy favourable to\nthe reception of more important impressions, it will produce in the\nreader all that the writer experienced in the composition. I resigned\nmyself, as I wrote, to the impulses of the feelings which moulded the\nconception of the story; and this impulse determined the pauses of a\nmeasure, which only pretends to be regular inasmuch as it corresponds\nwith, and expresses, the irregularity of the imaginations which\ninspired it.\n\nI do not know which of the few scattered poems I left in England will\nbe selected by my bookseller to add to this collection. One (“Lines\nwritten among the Euganean Hills”.—Editor.), which I sent from Italy,\nwas written after a day’s excursion among those lovely mountains which\nsurround what was once the retreat, and where is now the sepulchre, of\nPetrarch. If any one is inclined to condemn the insertion of the\nintroductory lines, which image forth the sudden relief of a state of\ndeep despondency by the radiant visions disclosed by the sudden burst\nof an Italian sunrise in autumn on the highest peak of those\ndelightful mountains, I can only offer as my excuse, that they were\nnot erased at the request of a dear friend, with whom added years of\nintercourse only add to my apprehension of its value, and who would\nhave had more right than any one to complain, that she has not been\nable to extinguish in me the very power of delineating sadness.\n\nNaples, December 20, 1818.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Helen:",
    "body": "Come hither, my sweet Rosalind.\n’Tis long since thou and I have met;\nAnd yet methinks it were unkind\nThose moments to forget.\nCome, sit by me. I see thee stand                                    _5\nBy this lone lake, in this far land,\nThy loose hair in the light wind flying,\nThy sweet voice to each tone of even\nUnited, and thine eyes replying\nTo the hues of yon fair heaven.                                      _10\nCome, gentle friend: wilt sit by me?\nAnd be as thou wert wont to be\nEre we were disunited?\nNone doth behold us now; the power\nThat led us forth at this lone hour                                  _15\nWill be but ill requited\nIf thou depart in scorn: oh! come,\nAnd talk of our abandoned home.\nRemember, this is Italy,\nAnd we are exiles. Talk with me                                      _20\nOf that our land, whose wilds and floods,\nBarren and dark although they be,\nWere dearer than these chestnut woods:\nThose heathy paths, that inland stream,\nAnd the blue mountains, shapes which seem                            _25\nLike wrecks of childhood’s sunny dream:\nWhich that we have abandoned now,\nWeighs on the heart like that remorse\nWhich altered friendship leaves. I seek\nNo more our youthful intercourse.                                    _30\nThat cannot be! Rosalind, speak.\nSpeak to me. Leave me not.—When morn did come,\nWhen evening fell upon our common home,\nWhen for one hour we parted,—do not frown:\nI would not chide thee, though thy faith is broken:                  _35\nBut turn to me. Oh! by this cherished token,\nOf woven hair, which thou wilt not disown,\nTurn, as ’twere but the memory of me,\nAnd not my scorned self who prayed to thee.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Rosalind:",
    "body": "Is it a dream, or do I see                                           _40\nAnd hear frail Helen? I would flee\nThy tainting touch; but former years\nArise, and bring forbidden tears;\nAnd my o’erburthened memory\nSeeks yet its lost repose in thee.                                   _45\nI share thy crime. I cannot choose\nBut weep for thee: mine own strange grief\nBut seldom stoops to such relief:\nNor ever did I love thee less,\nThough mourning o’er thy wickedness                                  _50\nEven with a sister’s woe. I knew\nWhat to the evil world is due,\nAnd therefore sternly did refuse\nTo link me with the infamy\nOf one so lost as Helen. Now                                         _55\nBewildered by my dire despair,\nWondering I blush, and weep that thou\nShould’st love me still,—thou only!—There,\nLet us sit on that gray stone\nTill our mournful talk be done.                                      _60",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Helen:",
    "body": "Alas! not there; I cannot bear\nThe murmur of this lake to hear.\nA sound from there, Rosalind dear,\nWhich never yet I heard elsewhere\nBut in our native land, recurs,                                      _65\nEven here where now we meet. It stirs\nToo much of suffocating sorrow!\nIn the dell of yon dark chestnutwood\nIs a stone seat, a solitude\nLess like our own. The ghost of Peace                                _70\nWill not desert this spot. To-morrow,\nIf thy kind feelings should not cease,\nWe may sit here.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Helen:",
    "body": "It is a gentle child, my friend. Go home,\nHenry, and play with Lilla till I come.\nWe only cried with joy to see each other;\nWe are quite merry now: Good-night.\n\nThe boy                                                              _85\nLifted a sudden look upon his mother,\nAnd in the gleam of forced and hollow joy\nWhich lightened o’er her face, laughed with the glee\nOf light and unsuspecting infancy,\nAnd whispered in her ear, ‘Bring home with you                       _90\nThat sweet strange lady-friend.’ Then off he flew,\nBut stopped, and beckoned with a meaning smile,\nWhere the road turned. Pale Rosalind the while,\nHiding her face, stood weeping silently.\n\nIn silence then they took the way                                    _95\nBeneath the forest’s solitude.\nIt was a vast and antique wood,\nThro’ which they took their way;\nAnd the gray shades of evening\nO’er that green wilderness did fling                                 _100\nStill deeper solitude.\nPursuing still the path that wound\nThe vast and knotted trees around\nThrough which slow shades were wandering,\nTo a deep lawny dell they came,                                      _105\nTo a stone seat beside a spring,\nO’er which the columned wood did frame\nA roofless temple, like the fane\nWhere, ere new creeds could faith obtain,\nMan’s early race once knelt beneath                                  _110\nThe overhanging deity.\nO’er this fair fountain hung the sky,\nNow spangled with rare stars. The snake,\nThe pale snake, that with eager breath\nCreeps here his noontide thirst to slake,                            _115\nIs beaming with many a mingled hue,\nShed from yon dome’s eternal blue,\nWhen he floats on that dark and lucid flood\nIn the light of his own loveliness;\nAnd the birds that in the fountain dip                               _120\nTheir plumes, with fearless fellowship\nAbove and round him wheel and hover.\nThe fitful wind is heard to stir\nOne solitary leaf on high;\nThe chirping of the grasshopper                                      _125\nFills every pause. There is emotion\nIn all that dwells at noontide here;\nThen, through the intricate wild wood,\nA maze of life and light and motion\nIs woven. But there is stillness now:                                _130\nGloom, and the trance of Nature now:\nThe snake is in his cave asleep;\nThe birds are on the branches dreaming:\nOnly the shadows creep:\nOnly the glow-worm is gleaming:                                      _135\nOnly the owls and the nightingales\nWake in this dell when daylight fails,\nAnd gray shades gather in the woods:\nAnd the owls have all fled far away\nIn a merrier glen to hoot and play,                                  _140\nFor the moon is veiled and sleeping now.\nThe accustomed nightingale still broods\nOn her accustomed bough,\nBut she is mute; for her false mate\nHas fled and left her desolate.                                      _145\n\nThis silent spot tradition old\nHad peopled with the spectral dead.\nFor the roots of the speaker’s hair felt cold\nAnd stiff, as with tremulous lips he told\nThat a hellish shape at midnight led                                 _150\nThe ghost of a youth with hoary hair,\nAnd sate on the seat beside him there,\nTill a naked child came wandering by,\nWhen the fiend would change to a lady fair!\nA fearful tale! The truth was worse:                                 _155\nFor here a sister and a brother\nHad solemnized a monstrous curse,\nMeeting in this fair solitude:\nFor beneath yon very sky,\nHad they resigned to one another                                     _160\nBody and soul. The multitude:\nTracking them to the secret wood,\nTore limb from limb their innocent child,\nAnd stabbed and trampled on its mother;\nBut the youth, for God’s most holy grace,                            _165\nA priest saved to burn in the market-place.\n\nDuly at evening Helen came\nTo this lone silent spot,\nFrom the wrecks of a tale of wilder sorrow\nSo much of sympathy to borrow                                        _170\nAs soothed her own dark lot.\nDuly each evening from her home,\nWith her fair child would Helen come\nTo sit upon that antique seat,\nWhile the hues of day were pale;                                     _175\nAnd the bright boy beside her feet\nNow lay, lifting at intervals\nHis broad blue eyes on her;\nNow, where some sudden impulse calls\nFollowing. He was a gentle boy                                       _180\nAnd in all gentle sorts took joy;\nOft in a dry leaf for a boat,\nWith a small feather for a sail,\nHis fancy on that spring would float,\nIf some invisible breeze might stir                                  _185\nIts marble calm: and Helen smiled\nThrough tears of awe on the gay child,\nTo think that a boy as fair as he,\nIn years which never more may be,\nBy that same fount, in that same wood,                               _190\nThe like sweet fancies had pursued;\nAnd that a mother, lost like her,\nHad mournfully sate watching him.\nThen all the scene was wont to swim\nThrough the mist of a burning tear.                                  _195\n\nFor many months had Helen known\nThis scene; and now she thither turned\nHer footsteps, not alone.\nThe friend whose falsehood she had mourned,\nSate with her on that seat of stone.                                 _200\nSilent they sate; for evening,\nAnd the power its glimpses bring\nHad, with one awful shadow, quelled\nThe passion of their grief. They sate\nWith linked hands, for unrepelled                                    _205\nHad Helen taken Rosalind’s.\nLike the autumn wind, when it unbinds\nThe tangled locks of the nightshade’s hair,\nWhich is twined in the sultry summer air\nRound the walls of an outworn sepulchre,                             _210\nDid the voice of Helen, sad and sweet,\nAnd the sound of her heart that ever beat,\nAs with sighs and words she breathed on her,\nUnbind the knots of her friend’s despair,\nTill her thoughts were free to float and flow;                       _215\nAnd from her labouring bosom now,\nLike the bursting of a prisoned flame,\nThe voice of a long pent sorrow came.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Rosalind:",
    "body": "I saw the dark earth fall upon\nThe coffin; and I saw the stone                                      _220\nLaid over him whom this cold breast\nHad pillowed to his nightly rest!\nThou knowest not, thou canst not know\nMy agony. Oh! I could not weep:\nThe sources whence such blessings flow                               _225\nWere not to be approached by me!\nBut I could smile, and I could sleep,\nThough with a self-accusing heart.\nIn morning’s light, in evening’s gloom,\nI watched,—and would not thence depart—                            _230\nMy husband’s unlamented tomb.\nMy children knew their sire was gone,\nBut when I told them,—‘He is dead,’—\nThey laughed aloud in frantic glee,\nThey clapped their hands and leaped about,                           _235\nAnswering each other’s ecstasy\nWith many a prank and merry shout.\nBut I sate silent and alone,\nWrapped in the mock of mourning weed.\n\nThey laughed, for he was dead: but I                                 _240\nSate with a hard and tearless eye,\nAnd with a heart which would deny\nThe secret joy it could not quell,\nLow muttering o’er his loathed name;\nTill from that self-contention came                                  _245\nRemorse where sin was none; a hell\nWhich in pure spirits should not dwell.\n\nI’ll tell thee truth. He was a man\nHard, selfish, loving only gold,\nYet full of guile; his pale eyes ran                                 _250\nWith tears, which each some falsehood told,\nAnd oft his smooth and bridled tongue\nWould give the lie to his flushing cheek;\nHe was a coward to the strong:\nHe was a tyrant to the weak,                                         _255\nOn whom his vengeance he would wreak:\nFor scorn, whose arrows search the heart,\nFrom many a stranger’s eye would dart,\nAnd on his memory cling, and follow\nHis soul to its home so cold and hollow.                             _260\nHe was a tyrant to the weak,\nAnd we were such, alas the day!\nOft, when my little ones at play,\nWere in youth’s natural lightness gay,\nOr if they listened to some tale                                     _265\nOf travellers, or of fairy land,—\nWhen the light from the wood-fire’s dying brand\nFlashed on their faces,—if they heard\nOr thought they heard upon the stair\nHis footstep, the suspended word                                     _270\nDied on my lips: we all grew pale:\nThe babe at my bosom was hushed with fear\nIf it thought it heard its father near;\nAnd my two wild boys would near my knee\nCling, cowed and cowering fearfully.                                 _275\n\nI’ll tell thee truth: I loved another.\nHis name in my ear was ever ringing,\nHis form to my brain was ever clinging:\nYet if some stranger breathed that name,\nMy lips turned white, and my heart beat fast:                        _280\nMy nights were once haunted by dreams of flame,\nMy days were dim in the shadow cast\nBy the memory of the same!\nDay and night, day and night,\nHe was my breath and life and light,                                 _285\nFor three short years, which soon were passed.\nOn the fourth, my gentle mother\nLed me to the shrine, to be\nHis sworn bride eternally.\nAnd now we stood on the altar stair,                                 _290\nWhen my father came from a distant land,\nAnd with a loud and fearful cry\nRushed between us suddenly.\nI saw the stream of his thin gray hair,\nI saw his lean and lifted hand,                                      _295\nAnd heard his words,—and live! Oh God!\nWherefore do I live?—‘Hold, hold!’\nHe cried, ‘I tell thee ’tis her brother!\nThy mother, boy, beneath the sod\nOf yon churchyard rests in her shroud so cold:                       _300\nI am now weak, and pale, and old:\nWe were once dear to one another,\nI and that corpse! Thou art our child!’\nThen with a laugh both long and wild\nThe youth upon the pavement fell:                                    _305\nThey found him dead! All looked on me,\nThe spasms of my despair to see:\nBut I was calm. I went away:\nI was clammy-cold like clay!\nI did not weep: I did not speak:                                     _310\nBut day by day, week after week,\nI walked about like a corpse alive!\nAlas! sweet friend, you must believe\nThis heart is stone: it did not break.\nMy father lived a little while,                                      _315\nBut all might see that he was dying,\nHe smiled with such a woeful smile!\nWhen he was in the churchyard lying\nAmong the worms, we grew quite poor,\nSo that no one would give us bread:                                  _320\nMy mother looked at me, and said\nFaint words of cheer, which only meant\nThat she could die and be content;\nSo I went forth from the same church door\nTo another husband’s bed.                                            _325\nAnd this was he who died at last,\nWhen weeks and months and years had passed,\nThrough which I firmly did fulfil\nMy duties, a devoted wife,\nWith the stern step of vanquished will,                              _330\nWalking beneath the night of life,\nWhose hours extinguished, like slow rain\nFalling for ever, pain by pain,\nThe very hope of death’s dear rest;\nWhich, since the heart within my breast                              _335\nOf natural life was dispossessed,\nIts strange sustainer there had been.\n\nWhen flowers were dead, and grass was green\nUpon my mother’s grave,—that mother\nWhom to outlive, and cheer, and make                                 _340\nMy wan eyes glitter for her sake,\nWas my vowed task, the single care\nWhich once gave life to my despair,—\nWhen she was a thing that did not stir\nAnd the crawling worms were cradling her                             _345\nTo a sleep more deep and so more sweet\nThan a baby’s rocked on its nurse’s knee,\nI lived: a living pulse then beat\nBeneath my heart that awakened me.\nWhat was this pulse so warm and free?                                _350\nAlas! I knew it could not be\nMy own dull blood: ’twas like a thought\nOf liquid love, that spread and wrought\nUnder my bosom and in my brain,\nAnd crept with the blood through every vein;                         _355\nAnd hour by hour, day after day,\nThe wonder could not charm away,\nBut laid in sleep, my wakeful pain,\nUntil I knew it was a child,\nAnd then I wept. For long, long years                                _360\nThese frozen eyes had shed no tears:\nBut now—’twas the season fair and mild\nWhen April has wept itself to May:\nI sate through the sweet sunny day\nBy my window bowered round with leaves,                              _365\nAnd down my cheeks the quick tears fell\nLike twinkling rain-drops from the eaves,\nWhen warm spring showers are passing o’er.\nO Helen, none can ever tell\nThe joy it was to weep once more!                                    _370\n\nI wept to think how hard it were\nTo kill my babe, and take from it\nThe sense of light, and the warm air,\nAnd my own fond and tender care,\nAnd love and smiles; ere I knew yet                                  _375\nThat these for it might, as for me,\nBe the masks of a grinning mockery.\nAnd haply, I would dream, ’twere sweet\nTo feed it from my faded breast,\nOr mark my own heart’s restless beat                                 _380\nRock it to its untroubled rest,\nAnd watch the growing soul beneath\nDawn in faint smiles; and hear its breath,\nHalf interrupted by calm sighs,\nAnd search the depth of its fair eyes                                _385\nFor long departed memories!\nAnd so I lived till that sweet load\nWas lightened. Darkly forward flowed\nThe stream of years, and on it bore\nTwo shapes of gladness to my sight;                                  _390\nTwo other babes, delightful more\nIn my lost soul’s abandoned night,\nThan their own country ships may be\nSailing towards wrecked mariners,\nWho cling to the rock of a wintry sea.                               _395\nFor each, as it came, brought soothing tears;\nAnd a loosening warmth, as each one lay\nSucking the sullen milk away\nAbout my frozen heart, did play,\nAnd weaned it, oh how painfully—                                    _400\nAs they themselves were weaned each one\nFrom that sweet food,—even from the thirst\nOf death, and nothingness, and rest,\nStrange inmate of a living breast!\nWhich all that I had undergone                                       _405\nOf grief and shame, since she, who first\nThe gates of that dark refuge closed,\nCame to my sight, and almost burst\nThe seal of that Lethean spring;\nBut these fair shadows interposed:                                   _410\nFor all delights are shadows now!\nAnd from my brain to my dull brow\nThe heavy tears gather and flow:\nI cannot speak: Oh, let me weep!\n\nThe tears which fell from her wan eyes                               _415\nGlimmered among the moonlight dew:\nHer deep hard sobs and heavy sighs\nTheir echoes in the darkness threw.\nWhen she grew calm, she thus did keep\nThe tenor of her tale:\nHe died:                                                             _420\nI know not how: he was not old,\nIf age be numbered by its years:\nBut he was bowed and bent with fears,\nPale with the quenchless thirst of gold,\nWhich, like fierce fever, left him weak;                             _425\nAnd his strait lip and bloated cheek\nWere warped in spasms by hollow sneers;\nAnd selfish cares with barren plough,\nNot age, had lined his narrow brow,\nAnd foul and cruel thoughts, which feed                              _430\nUpon the withering life within,\nLike vipers on some poisonous weed.\nWhether his ill were death or sin\nNone knew, until he died indeed,\nAnd then men owned they were the same.                               _435\n\nSeven days within my chamber lay\nThat corse, and my babes made holiday:\nAt last, I told them what is death:\nThe eldest, with a kind of shame,\nCame to my knees with silent breath,                                 _440\nAnd sate awe-stricken at my feet;\nAnd soon the others left their play,\nAnd sate there too. It is unmeet\nTo shed on the brief flower of youth\nThe withering knowledge of the grave;                                _445\nFrom me remorse then wrung that truth.\nI could not bear the joy which gave\nToo just a response to mine own.\nIn vain. I dared not feign a groan,\nAnd in their artless looks I saw,                                    _450\nBetween the mists of fear and awe,\nThat my own thought was theirs, and they\nExpressed it not in words, but said,\nEach in its heart, how every day\nWill pass in happy work and play,                                    _455\nNow he is dead and gone away.\n\nAfter the funeral all our kin\nAssembled, and the will was read.\nMy friend, I tell thee, even the dead\nHave strength, their putrid shrouds within,                          _460\nTo blast and torture. Those who live\nStill fear the living, but a corse\nIs merciless, and power doth give\nTo such pale tyrants half the spoil\nHe rends from those who groan and toil,                              _465\nBecause they blush not with remorse\nAmong their crawling worms. Behold,\nI have no child! my tale grows old\nWith grief, and staggers: let it reach\nThe limits of my feeble speech,                                      _470\nAnd languidly at length recline\nOn the brink of its own grave and mine.\n\nThou knowest what a thing is Poverty\nAmong the fallen on evil days:\n’Tis Crime, and Fear, and Infamy,                                    _475\nAnd houseless Want in frozen ways\nWandering ungarmented, and Pain,\nAnd, worse than all, that inward stain\nFoul Self-contempt, which drowns in sneers\nYouth’s starlight smile, and makes its tears                         _480\nFirst like hot gall, then dry for ever!\nAnd well thou knowest a mother never\nCould doom her children to this ill,\nAnd well he knew the same. The will\nImported, that if e’er again                                         _485\nI sought my children to behold,\nOr in my birthplace did remain\nBeyond three days, whose hours were told,\nThey should inherit nought: and he,\nTo whom next came their patrimony,                                   _490\nA sallow lawyer, cruel and cold,\nAye watched me, as the will was read,\nWith eyes askance, which sought to see\nThe secrets of my agony;\nAnd with close lips and anxious brow                                 _495\nStood canvassing still to and fro\nThe chance of my resolve, and all\nThe dead man’s caution just did call;\nFor in that killing lie ’twas said—\n‘She is adulterous, and doth hold                                    _500\nIn secret that the Christian creed\nIs false, and therefore is much need\nThat I should have a care to save\nMy children from eternal fire.’\nFriend, he was sheltered by the grave,                               _505\nAnd therefore dared to be a liar!\nIn truth, the Indian on the pyre\nOf her dead husband, half consumed,\nAs well might there be false, as I\nTo those abhorred embraces doomed,                                   _510\nFar worse than fire’s brief agony\nAs to the Christian creed, if true\nOr false, I never questioned it:\nI took it as the vulgar do:\nNor my vexed soul had leisure yet                                    _515\nTo doubt the things men say, or deem\nThat they are other than they seem.\n\nAll present who those crimes did hear,\nIn feigned or actual scorn and fear,\nMen, women, children, slunk away,                                    _520\nWhispering with self-contented pride,\nWhich half suspects its own base lie.\nI spoke to none, nor did abide,\nBut silently I went my way,\nNor noticed I where joyously                                         _525\nSate my two younger babes at play,\nIn the court-yard through which I passed;\nBut went with footsteps firm and fast\nTill I came to the brink of the ocean green,\nAnd there, a woman with gray hairs,                                  _530\nWho had my mother’s servant been,\nKneeling, with many tears and prayers,\nMade me accept a purse of gold,\nHalf of the earnings she had kept\nTo refuge her when weak and old.                                     _535\n\nWith woe, which never sleeps or slept,\nI wander now. ’Tis a vain thought—\nBut on yon alp, whose snowy head\n‘Mid the azure air is islanded,\n(We see it o’er the flood of cloud,                                  _540\nWhich sunrise from its eastern caves\nDrives, wrinkling into golden waves,\nHung with its precipices proud,\nFrom that gray stone where first we met)\nThere now—who knows the dead feel nought?—                         _545\nShould be my grave; for he who yet\nIs my soul’s soul, once said: ‘’Twere sweet\n‘Mid stars and lightnings to abide,\nAnd winds and lulling snows, that beat\nWith their soft flakes the mountain wide,                            _550\nWhere weary meteor lamps repose,\nAnd languid storms their pinions close:\nAnd all things strong and bright and pure,\nAnd ever during, aye endure:\nWho knows, if one were buried there,                                 _555\nBut these things might our spirits make,\nAmid the all-surrounding air,\nTheir own eternity partake?’\nThen ’twas a wild and playful saying\nAt which I laughed, or seemed to laugh:                              _560\nThey were his words: now heed my praying,\nAnd let them be my epitaph.\nThy memory for a term may be\nMy monument. Wilt remember me?\nI know thou wilt, and canst forgive                                  _565\nWhilst in this erring world to live\nMy soul disdained not, that I thought\nIts lying forms were worthy aught\nAnd much less thee.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Helen:",
    "body": "O speak not so,\nBut come to me and pour thy woe                                      _570\nInto this heart, full though it be,\nAy, overflowing with its own:\nI thought that grief had severed me\nFrom all beside who weep and groan;\nIts likeness upon earth to be,                                       _575\nIts express image; but thou art\nMore wretched. Sweet! we will not part\nHenceforth, if death be not division;\nIf so, the dead feel no contrition.\nBut wilt thou hear since last we parted                              _580\nAll that has left me broken hearted?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Rosalind:",
    "body": "Yes, speak. The faintest stars are scarcely shorn\nOf their thin beams by that delusive morn\nWhich sinks again in darkness, like the light\nOf early love, soon lost in total night.                             _585",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Helen:",
    "body": "Alas! Italian winds are mild,\nBut my bosom is cold—wintry cold—\nWhen the warm air weaves, among the fresh leaves,\nSoft music, my poor brain is wild,\nAnd I am weak like a nursling child,                                 _590\nThough my soul with grief is gray and old.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Helen:",
    "body": "I fear ‘twill shake\nThy gentle heart with tears. Thou well\nRememberest when we met no more,                                     _595\nAnd, though I dwelt with Lionel,\nThat friendless caution pierced me sore\nWith grief; a wound my spirit bore\nIndignantly, but when he died,\nWith him lay dead both hope and pride.                               _600\nAlas! all hope is buried now.\nBut then men dreamed the aged earth\nWas labouring in that mighty birth,\nWhich many a poet and a sage\nHas aye foreseen—the happy age                                      _605\nWhen truth and love shall dwell below\nAmong the works and ways of men;\nWhich on this world not power but will\nEven now is wanting to fulfil.\n\nAmong mankind what thence befell                                     _610\nOf strife, how vain, is known too well;\nWhen Liberty’s dear paean fell\n‘Mid murderous howls. To Lionel,\nThough of great wealth and lineage high,\nYet through those dungeon walls there came                           _615\nThy thrilling light, O Liberty!\nAnd as the meteor’s midnight flame\nStartles the dreamer, sun-like truth\nFlashed on his visionary youth,\nAnd filled him, not with love, but faith,                            _620\nAnd hope, and courage mute in death;\nFor love and life in him were twins,\nBorn at one birth: in every other\nFirst life then love its course begins,\nThough they be children of one mother;                               _625\nAnd so through this dark world they fleet\nDivided, till in death they meet;\nBut he loved all things ever. Then\nHe passed amid the strife of men,\nAnd stood at the throne of armed power                               _630\nPleading for a world of woe:\nSecure as one on a rock-built tower\nO’er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro,\n‘Mid the passions wild of human kind\nHe stood, like a spirit calming them;                                _635\nFor, it was said, his words could bind\nLike music the lulled crowd, and stem\nThat torrent of unquiet dream\nWhich mortals truth and reason deem,\nBut is revenge and fear and pride.                                   _640\nJoyous he was; and hope and peace\nOn all who heard him did abide,\nRaining like dew from his sweet talk,\nAs where the evening star may walk\nAlong the brink of the gloomy seas,                                  _645\nLiquid mists of splendour quiver.\nHis very gestures touched to tears\nThe unpersuaded tyrant, never\nSo moved before: his presence stung\nThe torturers with their victim’s pain,                              _650\nAnd none knew how; and through their ears\nThe subtle witchcraft of his tongue\nUnlocked the hearts of those who keep\nGold, the world’s bond of slavery.\nMen wondered, and some sneered to see                                _655\nOne sow what he could never reap:\nFor he is rich, they said, and young,\nAnd might drink from the depths of luxury.\nIf he seeks Fame, Fame never crowned\nThe champion of a trampled creed:                                    _660\nIf he seeks Power, Power is enthroned\n‘Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed\nWhich hungry wolves with praise and spoil,\nThose who would sit near Power must toil;\nAnd such, there sitting, all may see.                                _665\nWhat seeks he? All that others seek\nHe casts away, like a vile weed\nWhich the sea casts unreturningly.\nThat poor and hungry men should break\nThe laws which wreak them toil and scorn,                            _670\nWe understand; but Lionel\nWe know, is rich and nobly born.\nSo wondered they: yet all men loved\nYoung Lionel, though few approved;\nAll but the priests, whose hatred fell                               _675\nLike the unseen blight of a smiling day,\nThe withering honey dew, which clings\nUnder the bright green buds of May,\nWhilst they unfold their emerald wings:\nFor he made verses wild and queer                                    _680\nOn the strange creeds priests hold so dear,\nBecause they bring them land and gold.\nOf devils and saints and all such gear,\nHe made tales which whoso heard or read\nWould laugh till he were almost dead.                                _685\nSo this grew a proverb: ‘Don’t get old\nTill Lionel’s “Banquet in Hell” you hear,\nAnd then you will laugh yourself young again.’\nSo the priests hated him, and he\nRepaid their hate with cheerful glee.                                _690\n\nAh, smiles and joyance quickly died,\nFor public hope grew pale and dim\nIn an altered time and tide,\nAnd in its wasting withered him,\nAs a summer flower that blows too soon                               _695\nDroops in the smile of the waning moon,\nWhen it scatters through an April night\nThe frozen dews of wrinkling blight.\nNone now hoped more. Gray Power was seated\nSafely on her ancestral throne;                                      _700\nAnd Faith, the Python, undefeated,\nEven to its blood-stained steps dragged on\nHer foul and wounded train, and men\nWere trampled and deceived again,\nAnd words and shows again could bind                                 _705\nThe wailing tribes of human kind\nIn scorn and famine. Fire and blood\nRaged round the raging multitude,\nTo fields remote by tyrants sent\nTo be the scorned instrument                                         _710\nWith which they drag from mines of gore\nThe chains their slaves yet ever wore:\nAnd in the streets men met each other,\nAnd by old altars and in halls,\nAnd smiled again at festivals.                                       _715\nBut each man found in his heart’s brother\nCold cheer; for all, though half deceived,\nThe outworn creeds again believed,\nAnd the same round anew began,\nWhich the weary world yet ever ran.                                  _720\n\nMany then wept, not tears, but gall\nWithin their hearts, like drops which fall\nWasting the fountain-stone away.\nAnd in that dark and evil day\nDid all desires and thoughts, that claim                             _725\nMen’s care—ambition, friendship, fame,\nLove, hope, though hope was now despair—\nIndue the colours of this change,\nAs from the all-surrounding air\nThe earth takes hues obscure and strange,                            _730\nWhen storm and earthquake linger there.\n\nAnd so, my friend, it then befell\nTo many, most to Lionel,\nWhose hope was like the life of youth\nWithin him, and when dead, became                                    _735\nA spirit of unresting flame,\nWhich goaded him in his distress\nOver the world’s vast wilderness.\nThree years he left his native land,\nAnd on the fourth, when he returned,                                 _740\nNone knew him: he was stricken deep\nWith some disease of mind, and turned\nInto aught unlike Lionel.\nOn him, on whom, did he pause in sleep,\nSerenest smiles were wont to keep,                                   _745\nAnd, did he wake, a winged band\nOf bright persuasions, which had fed\nOn his sweet lips and liquid eyes,\nKept their swift pinions half outspread\nTo do on men his least command;                                      _750\nOn him, whom once ’twas paradise\nEven to behold, now misery lay:\nIn his own heart ’twas merciless,\nTo all things else none may express\nIts innocence and tenderness.                                        _755\n\n’Twas said that he had refuge sought\nIn love from his unquiet thought\nIn distant lands, and been deceived\nBy some strange show; for there were found,\nBlotted with tears as those relieved                                 _760\nBy their own words are wont to do,\nThese mournful verses on the ground,\nBy all who read them blotted too.\n\n‘How am I changed! my hopes were once like fire:\nI loved, and I believed that life was love.                          _765\nHow am I lost! on wings of swift desire\nAmong Heaven’s winds my spirit once did move.\nI slept, and silver dreams did aye inspire\nMy liquid sleep: I woke, and did approve\nAll nature to my heart, and thought to make                          _770\nA paradise of earth for one sweet sake.\n\n‘I love, but I believe in love no more.\nI feel desire, but hope not. O, from sleep\nMost vainly must my weary brain implore\nIts long lost flattery now: I wake to weep,                          _775\nAnd sit through the long day gnawing the core\nOf my bitter heart, and, like a miser, keep,\nSince none in what I feel take pain or pleasure,\nTo my own soul its self-consuming treasure.’\n\nHe dwelt beside me near the sea;                                     _780\nAnd oft in evening did we meet,\nWhen the waves, beneath the starlight, flee\nO’er the yellow sands with silver feet,\nAnd talked: our talk was sad and sweet,\nTill slowly from his mien there passed                               _785\nThe desolation which it spoke;\nAnd smiles,—as when the lightning’s blast\nHas parched some heaven-delighting oak,\nThe next spring shows leaves pale and rare,\nBut like flowers delicate and fair,                                  _790\nOn its rent boughs,—again arrayed\nHis countenance in tender light:\nHis words grew subtile fire, which made\nThe air his hearers breathed delight:\nHis motions, like the winds, were free,                              _795\nWhich bend the bright grass gracefully,\nThen fade away in circlets faint:\nAnd winged Hope, on which upborne\nHis soul seemed hovering in his eyes,\nLike some bright spirit newly born                                   _800\nFloating amid the sunny skies,\nSprang forth from his rent heart anew.\nYet o’er his talk, and looks, and mien,\nTempering their loveliness too keen,\nPast woe its shadow backward threw,                                  _805\nTill like an exhalation, spread\nFrom flowers half drunk with evening dew,\nThey did become infectious: sweet\nAnd subtle mists of sense and thought:\nWhich wrapped us soon, when we might meet,                           _810\nAlmost from our own looks and aught\nThe wild world holds. And so, his mind\nWas healed, while mine grew sick with fear:\nFor ever now his health declined,\nLike some frail bark which cannot bear                               _815\nThe impulse of an altered wind,\nThough prosperous: and my heart grew full\n‘Mid its new joy of a new care:\nFor his cheek became, not pale, but fair,\nAs rose-o’ershadowed lilies are;                                     _820\nAnd soon his deep and sunny hair,\nIn this alone less beautiful,\nLike grass in tombs grew wild and rare.\nThe blood in his translucent veins\nBeat, not like animal life, but love                                 _825\nSeemed now its sullen springs to move,\nWhen life had failed, and all its pains:\nAnd sudden sleep would seize him oft\nLike death, so calm, but that a tear,\nHis pointed eyelashes between,                                       _830\nWould gather in the light serene\nOf smiles, whose lustre bright and soft\nBeneath lay undulating there.\nHis breath was like inconstant flame,\nAs eagerly it went and came;                                         _835\nAnd I hung o’er him in his sleep,\nTill, like an image in the lake\nWhich rains disturb, my tears would break\nThe shadow of that slumber deep:\nThen he would bid me not to weep,                                    _840\nAnd say, with flattery false, yet sweet,\nThat death and he could never meet,\nIf I would never part with him.\nAnd so we loved, and did unite\nAll that in us was yet divided:                                      _845\nFor when he said, that many a rite,\nBy men to bind but once provided,\nCould not be shared by him and me,\nOr they would kill him in their glee,\nI shuddered, and then laughing said—                                _850\n‘We will have rites our faith to bind,\nBut our church shall be the starry night,\nOur altar the grassy earth outspread,\nAnd our priest the muttering wind.’\n\n’Twas sunset as I spoke: one star                                    _855\nHad scarce burst forth, when from afar\nThe ministers of misrule sent,\nSeized upon Lionel, and bore\nHis chained limbs to a dreary tower,\nIn the midst of a city vast and wide.                                _860\nFor he, they said, from his mind had bent\nAgainst their gods keen blasphemy,\nFor which, though his soul must roasted be\nIn hell’s red lakes immortally,\nYet even on earth must he abide                                      _865\nThe vengeance of their slaves: a trial,\nI think, men call it. What avail\nAre prayers and tears, which chase denial\nFrom the fierce savage, nursed in hate?\nWhat the knit soul that pleading and pale                            _870\nMakes wan the quivering cheek, which late\nIt painted with its own delight?\nWe were divided. As I could,\nI stilled the tingling of my blood,\nAnd followed him in their despite,                                   _875\nAs a widow follows, pale and wild,\nThe murderers and corse of her only child;\nAnd when we came to the prison door\nAnd I prayed to share his dungeon floor\nWith prayers which rarely have been spurned,                         _880\nAnd when men drove me forth and I\nStared with blank frenzy on the sky,\nA farewell look of love he turned,\nHalf calming me; then gazed awhile,\nAs if thro’ that black and massy pile,                               _885\nAnd thro’ the crowd around him there,\nAnd thro’ the dense and murky air,\nAnd the thronged streets, he did espy\nWhat poets know and prophesy;\nAnd said, with voice that made them shiver                           _890\nAnd clung like music in my brain,\nAnd which the mute walls spoke again\nProlonging it with deepened strain:\n‘Fear not the tyrants shall rule for ever,\nOr the priests of the bloody faith;                                  _895\nThey stand on the brink of that mighty river,\nWhose waves they have tainted with death:\nIt is fed from the depths of a thousand dells,\nAround them it foams, and rages, and swells,\nAnd their swords and their sceptres I floating see,                  _900\nLike wrecks in the surge of eternity.’\n\nI dwelt beside the prison gate;\nAnd the strange crowd that out and in\nPassed, some, no doubt, with mine own fate,\nMight have fretted me with its ceaseless din,                        _905\nBut the fever of care was louder within.\nSoon, but too late, in penitence\nOr fear, his foes released him thence:\nI saw his thin and languid form,\nAs leaning on the jailor’s arm,                                      _910\nWhose hardened eyes grew moist the while,\nTo meet his mute and faded smile,\nAnd hear his words of kind farewell,\nHe tottered forth from his damp cell.\nMany had never wept before,                                          _915\nFrom whom fast tears then gushed and fell:\nMany will relent no more,\nWho sobbed like infants then; aye, all\nWho thronged the prison’s stony hall,\nThe rulers or the slaves of law,                                     _920\nFelt with a new surprise and awe\nThat they were human, till strong shame\nMade them again become the same.\nThe prison blood-hounds, huge and grim,\nFrom human looks the infection caught,                               _925\nAnd fondly crouched and fawned on him;\nAnd men have heard the prisoners say,\nWho in their rotting dungeons lay,\nThat from that hour, throughout one day,\nThe fierce despair and hate which kept                               _930\nTheir trampled bosoms almost slept:\nWhere, like twin vultures, they hung feeding\nOn each heart’s wound, wide torn and bleeding,—\nBecause their jailors’ rule, they thought,\nGrew merciful, like a parent’s sway.                                 _935\n\nI know not how, but we were free:\nAnd Lionel sate alone with me,\nAs the carriage drove thro’ the streets apace;\nAnd we looked upon each other’s face;\nAnd the blood in our fingers intertwined                             _940\nRan like the thoughts of a single mind,\nAs the swift emotions went and came\nThro’ the veins of each united frame.\nSo thro’ the long long streets we passed\nOf the million-peopled City vast;                                    _945\nWhich is that desert, where each one\nSeeks his mate yet is alone,\nBeloved and sought and mourned of none;\nUntil the clear blue sky was seen,\nAnd the grassy meadows bright and green,                             _950\nAnd then I sunk in his embrace,\nEnclosing there a mighty space\nOf love: and so we travelled on\nBy woods, and fields of yellow flowers,\nAnd towns, and villages, and towers,                                 _955\nDay after day of happy hours.\nIt was the azure time of June,\nWhen the skies are deep in the stainless noon,\nAnd the warm and fitful breezes shake\nThe fresh green leaves of the hedgerow briar,                        _960\nAnd there were odours then to make\nThe very breath we did respire\nA liquid element, whereon\nOur spirits, like delighted things\nThat walk the air on subtle wings,                                   _965\nFloated and mingled far away,\n‘Mid the warm winds of the sunny day.\nAnd when the evening star came forth\nAbove the curve of the new bent moon,\nAnd light and sound ebbed from the earth,                            _970\nLike the tide of the full and the weary sea\nTo the depths of its own tranquillity,\nOur natures to its own repose\nDid the earth’s breathless sleep attune:\nLike flowers, which on each other close                              _975\nTheir languid leaves when daylight’s gone,\nWe lay, till new emotions came,\nWhich seemed to make each mortal frame\nOne soul of interwoven flame,\nA life in life, a second birth                                       _980\nIn worlds diviner far than earth,\nWhich, like two strains of harmony\nThat mingle in the silent sky\nThen slowly disunite, passed by\nAnd left the tenderness of tears,                                    _985\nA soft oblivion of all fears,\nA sweet sleep: so we travelled on\nTill we came to the home of Lionel,\nAmong the mountains wild and lone,\nBeside the hoary western sea,                                        _990\nWhich near the verge of the echoing shore\nThe massy forest shadowed o’er.\n\nThe ancient steward, with hair all hoar,\nAs we alighted, wept to see\nHis master changed so fearfully;                                     _995\nAnd the old man’s sobs did waken me\nFrom my dream of unremaining gladness;\nThe truth flashed o’er me like quick madness\nWhen I looked, and saw that there was death\nOn Lionel: yet day by day                                            _1000\nHe lived, till fear grew hope and faith,\nAnd in my soul I dared to say,\nNothing so bright can pass away:\nDeath is dark, and foul, and dull,\nBut he is—O how beautiful!                                          _1005\nYet day by day he grew more weak,\nAnd his sweet voice, when he might speak,\nWhich ne’er was loud, became more low;\nAnd the light which flashed through his waxen cheek\nGrew faint, as the rose-like hues which flow                         _1010\nFrom sunset o’er the Alpine snow:\nAnd death seemed not like death in him,\nFor the spirit of life o’er every limb\nLingered, a mist of sense and thought.\nWhen the summer wind faint odours brought                            _1015\nFrom mountain flowers, even as it passed\nHis cheek would change, as the noonday sea\nWhich the dying breeze sweeps fitfully.\nIf but a cloud the sky o’ercast,\nYou might see his colour come and go,                                _1020\nAnd the softest strain of music made\nSweet smiles, yet sad, arise and fade\nAmid the dew of his tender eyes;\nAnd the breath, with intermitting flow,\nMade his pale lips quiver and part.                                  _1025\nYou might hear the beatings of his heart,\nQuick, but not strong; and with my tresses\nWhen oft he playfully would bind\nIn the bowers of mossy lonelinesses\nHis neck, and win me so to mingle                                    _1030\nIn the sweet depth of woven caresses,\nAnd our faint limbs were intertwined,\nAlas! the unquiet life did tingle\nFrom mine own heart through every vein,\nLike a captive in dreams of liberty,                                 _1035\nWho beats the walls of his stony cell.\nBut his, it seemed already free,\nLike the shadow of fire surrounding me!\nOn my faint eyes and limbs did dwell\nThat spirit as it passed, till soon,                                 _1040\nAs a frail cloud wandering o’er the moon,\nBeneath its light invisible,\nIs seen when it folds its gray wings again\nTo alight on midnight’s dusky plain,\nI lived and saw, and the gathering soul                              _1045\nPassed from beneath that strong control,\nAnd I fell on a life which was sick with fear\nOf all the woe that now I bear.\n\nAmid a bloomless myrtle wood,\nOn a green and sea-girt promontory,                                  _1050\nNot far from where we dwelt, there stood\nIn record of a sweet sad story,\nAn altar and a temple bright\nCircled by steps, and o’er the gate\nWas sculptured, ‘To Fidelity;’                                       _1055\nAnd in the shrine an image sate,\nAll veiled: but there was seen the light\nOf smiles which faintly could express\nA mingled pain and tenderness\nThrough that ethereal drapery.                                       _1060\nThe left hand held the head, the right—\nBeyond the veil, beneath the skin,\nYou might see the nerves quivering within—\nWas forcing the point of a barbed dart\nInto its side-convulsing heart.                                      _1065\nAn unskilled hand, yet one informed\nWith genius, had the marble warmed\nWith that pathetic life. This tale\nIt told: A dog had from the sea,\nWhen the tide was raging fearfully,                                  _1070\nDragged Lionel’s mother, weak and pale,\nThen died beside her on the sand,\nAnd she that temple thence had planned;\nBut it was Lionel’s own hand\nHad wrought the image. Each new moon                                 _1075\nThat lady did, in this lone fane,\nThe rites of a religion sweet,\nWhose god was in her heart and brain:\nThe seasons’ loveliest flowers were strewn\nOn the marble floor beneath her feet,                                _1080\nAnd she brought crowns of sea-buds white\nWhose odour is so sweet and faint,\nAnd weeds, like branching chrysolite,\nWoven in devices fine and quaint.\nAnd tears from her brown eyes did stain                              _1085\nThe altar: need but look upon\nThat dying statue fair and wan,\nIf tears should cease, to weep again:\nAnd rare Arabian odours came,\nThrough the myrtle copses steaming thence                            _1090\nFrom the hissing frankincense,\nWhose smoke, wool-white as ocean foam,\nHung in dense flocks beneath the dome—\nThat ivory dome, whose azure night\nWith golden stars, like heaven, was bright—                         _1095\nO’er the split cedar’s pointed flame;\nAnd the lady’s harp would kindle there\nThe melody of an old air,\nSofter than sleep; the villagers\nMixed their religion up with hers,                                   _1100\nAnd, as they listened round, shed tears.\n\nOne eve he led me to this fane:\nDaylight on its last purple cloud\nWas lingering gray, and soon her strain\nThe nightingale began; now loud,                                     _1105\nClimbing in circles the windless sky,\nNow dying music; suddenly\n’Tis scattered in a thousand notes,\nAnd now to the hushed ear it floats\nLike field smells known in infancy,                                  _1110\nThen failing, soothes the air again.\nWe sate within that temple lone,\nPavilioned round with Parian stone:\nHis mother’s harp stood near, and oft\nI had awakened music soft                                            _1115\nAmid its wires: the nightingale\nWas pausing in her heaven-taught tale:\n‘Now drain the cup,’ said Lionel,\n‘Which the poet-bird has crowned so well\nWith the wine of her bright and liquid song!                         _1120\nHeardst thou not sweet words among\nThat heaven-resounding minstrelsy?\nHeard’st thou not that those who die\nAwake in a world of ecstasy?\nThat love, when limbs are interwoven,                                _1125\nAnd sleep, when the night of life is cloven,\nAnd thought, to the world’s dim boundaries clinging,\nAnd music, when one beloved is singing,\nIs death? Let us drain right joyously\nThe cup which the sweet bird fills for me.’                          _1130\nHe paused, and to my lips he bent\nHis own: like spirit his words went\nThrough all my limbs with the speed of fire;\nAnd his keen eyes, glittering through mine,\nFilled me with the flame divine,                                     _1135\nWhich in their orbs was burning far,\nLike the light of an unmeasured star,\nIn the sky of midnight dark and deep:\nYes, ’twas his soul that did inspire\nSounds, which my skill could ne’er awaken;                           _1140\nAnd first, I felt my fingers sweep\nThe harp, and a long quivering cry\nBurst from my lips in symphony:\nThe dusk and solid air was shaken,\nAs swift and swifter the notes came                                  _1145\nFrom my touch, that wandered like quick flame,\nAnd from my bosom, labouring\nWith some unutterable thing:\nThe awful sound of my own voice made\nMy faint lips tremble; in some mood                                  _1150\nOf wordless thought Lionel stood\nSo pale, that even beside his cheek\nThe snowy column from its shade\nCaught whiteness: yet his countenance,\nRaised upward, burned with radiance                                  _1155\nOf spirit-piercing joy, whose light,\nLike the moon struggling through the night\nOf whirlwind-rifted clouds, did break\nWith beams that might not be confined.\nI paused, but soon his gestures kindled                              _1160\nNew power, as by the moving wind\nThe waves are lifted, and my song\nTo low soft notes now changed and dwindled,\nAnd from the twinkling wires among,\nMy languid fingers drew and flung                                    _1165\nCircles of life-dissolving sound,\nYet faint; in aery rings they bound\nMy Lionel, who, as every strain\nGrew fainter but more sweet, his mien\nSunk with the sound relaxedly;                                       _1170\nAnd slowly now he turned to me,\nAs slowly faded from his face\nThat awful joy: with looks serene\nHe was soon drawn to my embrace,\nAnd my wild song then died away                                      _1175\nIn murmurs: words I dare not say\nWe mixed, and on his lips mine fed\nTill they methought felt still and cold:\n‘What is it with thee, love?’ I said:\nNo word, no look, no motion! yes,                                    _1180\nThere was a change, but spare to guess,\nNor let that moment’s hope be told.\nI looked, and knew that he was dead,\nAnd fell, as the eagle on the plain\nFalls when life deserts her brain,                                   _1185\nAnd the mortal lightning is veiled again.\n\nO that I were now dead! but such\n(Did they not, love, demand too much,\nThose dying murmurs?) he forbade.\nO that I once again were mad!                                        _1190\nAnd yet, dear Rosalind, not so,\nFor I would live to share thy woe.\nSweet boy! did I forget thee too?\nAlas, we know not what we do\nWhen we speak words.\nNo memory more                                                       _1195\nIs in my mind of that sea shore.\nMadness came on me, and a troop\nOf misty shapes did seem to sit\nBeside me, on a vessel’s poop,\nAnd the clear north wind was driving it.                             _1200\nThen I heard strange tongues, and saw strange flowers,\nAnd the stars methought grew unlike ours,\nAnd the azure sky and the stormless sea\nMade me believe that I had died,\nAnd waked in a world, which was to me                                _1205\nDrear hell, though heaven to all beside:\nThen a dead sleep fell on my mind,\nWhilst animal life many long years\nHad rescued from a chasm of tears;\nAnd when I woke, I wept to find                                      _1210\nThat the same lady, bright and wise,\nWith silver locks and quick brown eyes,\nThe mother of my Lionel,\nHad tended me in my distress,\nAnd died some months before. Nor less                                _1215\nWonder, but far more peace and joy,\nBrought in that hour my lovely boy;\nFor through that trance my soul had well\nThe impress of thy being kept;\nAnd if I waked, or if I slept,                                       _1220\nNo doubt, though memory faithless be,\nThy image ever dwelt on me;\nAnd thus, O Lionel, like thee\nIs our sweet child. ’Tis sure most strange\nI knew not of so great a change,                                     _1225\nAs that which gave him birth, who now\nIs all the solace of my woe.\n\nThat Lionel great wealth had left\nBy will to me, and that of all\nThe ready lies of law bereft                                         _1230\nMy child and me, might well befall.\nBut let me think not of the scorn,\nWhich from the meanest I have borne,\nWhen, for my child’s beloved sake,\nI mixed with slaves, to vindicate                                    _1235\nThe very laws themselves do make:\nLet me not say scorn is my fate,\nLest I be proud, suffering the same\nWith those who live in deathless fame.\n\nShe ceased.—‘Lo, where red morning thro’ the woods                  _1240\nIs burning o’er the dew;’ said Rosalind.\nAnd with these words they rose, and towards the flood\nOf the blue lake, beneath the leaves now wind\nWith equal steps and fingers intertwined:\nThence to a lonely dwelling, where the shore                         _1245\nIs shadowed with steep rocks, and cypresses\nCleave with their dark green cones the silent skies,\nAnd with their shadows the clear depths below,\nAnd where a little terrace from its bowers,\nOf blooming myrtle and faint lemon-flowers,                          _1250\nScatters its sense-dissolving fragrance o’er\nThe liquid marble of the windless lake;\nAnd where the aged forest’s limbs look hoar,\nUnder the leaves which their green garments make,\nThey come: ’Tis Helen’s home, and clean and white,                   _1255\nLike one which tyrants spare on our own land\nIn some such solitude, its casements bright\nShone through their vine-leaves in the morning sun,\nAnd even within ’twas scarce like Italy.\nAnd when she saw how all things there were planned,                  _1260\nAs in an English home, dim memory\nDisturbed poor Rosalind: she stood as one\nWhose mind is where his body cannot be,\nTill Helen led her where her child yet slept,\nAnd said, ‘Observe, that brow was Lionel’s,                          _1265\nThose lips were his, and so he ever kept\nOne arm in sleep, pillowing his head with it.\nYou cannot see his eyes—they are two wells\nOf liquid love: let us not wake him yet.’\nBut Rosalind could bear no more, and wept                            _1270\nA shower of burning tears, which fell upon\nHis face, and so his opening lashes shone\nWith tears unlike his own, as he did leap\nIn sudden wonder from his innocent sleep.\n\nSo Rosalind and Helen lived together                                 _1275\nThenceforth, changed in all else, yet friends again,\nSuch as they were, when o’er the mountain heather\nThey wandered in their youth, through sun and rain.\nAnd after many years, for human things\nChange even like the ocean and the wind,                             _1280\nHer daughter was restored to Rosalind,\nAnd in their circle thence some visitings\nOf joy ‘mid their new calm would intervene:\nA lovely child she was, of looks serene,\nAnd motions which o’er things indifferent shed                       _1285\nThe grace and gentleness from whence they came.\nAnd Helen’s boy grew with her, and they fed\nFrom the same flowers of thought, until each mind\nLike springs which mingle in one flood became,\nAnd in their union soon their parents saw                            _1290\nThe shadow of the peace denied to them.\nAnd Rosalind, for when the living stem\nIs cankered in its heart, the tree must fall,\nDied ere her time; and with deep grief and awe\nThe pale survivors followed her remains                              _1295\nBeyond the region of dissolving rains,\nUp the cold mountain she was wont to call\nHer tomb; and on Chiavenna’s precipice\nThey raised a pyramid of lasting ice,\nWhose polished sides, ere day had yet begun,                         _1300\nCaught the first glow of the unrisen sun,\nThe last, when it had sunk; and thro’ the night\nThe charioteers of Arctos wheeled round\nIts glittering point, as seen from Helen’s home,\nWhose sad inhabitants each year would come,                          _1305\nWith willing steps climbing that rugged height,\nAnd hang long locks of hair, and garlands bound\nWith amaranth flowers, which, in the clime’s despite,\nFilled the frore air with unaccustomed light:\nSuch flowers, as in the wintry memory bloom                          _1310\nOf one friend left, adorned that frozen tomb.\n\nHelen, whose spirit was of softer mould,\nWhose sufferings too were less, Death slowlier led\nInto the peace of his dominion cold:\nShe died among her kindred, being old.                               _1315\nAnd know, that if love die not in the dead\nAs in the living, none of mortal kind\nAre blest, as now Helen and Rosalind.\n\n\n_63 from there]from thee edition 1819.\n_366 fell]ran edition 1819.\n_405-_408 See Editor’s Note on this passage.\n_551 Where]When edition 1819.\n_572 Ay, overflowing]Aye overflowing edition 1819.\n_612 dear]clear cj. Bradley.\n_711 gore editions 1819, 1839. See Editor’s Note.\n_932 Where]When edition 1819.\n_1093-_1096 See Editor’s Note.\n_1168-_1171] See Editor’s Note.\n_1209 rescue]rescued edition 1819. See Editor’s Note.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Conversation.",
    "body": "[Composed at Este after Shelley’s first visit to Venice, 1818\n(Autumn); first published in the “Posthumous Poems”, London, 1824\n(edition Mrs. Shelley). Shelley’s original intention had been to print\nthe poem in Leigh Hunt’s “Examiner”; but he changed his mind and, on\nAugust 15, 1819, sent the manuscript to Hunt to be published\nanonymously by Ollier. This manuscript, found by Mr. Townshend Mayer,\nand by him placed in the hands of Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B., is\ndescribed at length in Mr. Forman’s Library Edition of the poems\n(volume 3 page 107). The date, ‘May, 1819,’ affixed to “Julian and\nMaddalo” in the “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, indicates the time when the\ntext was finally revised by Shelley. Sources of the text are (1)\n“Posthumous Poems”, 1824; (2) the Hunt manuscript; (3) a fair draft of\nthe poem amongst the Boscombe manuscripts; (4) “Poetical Works”, 1839,\n1st and 2nd editions (Mrs. Shelley). Our text is that of the Hunt\nmanuscript, as printed in Forman’s Library Edition of the Poems, 1876,\nvolume 3, pages 103-30; variants of 1824 are indicated in the\nfootnotes; questions of punctuation are dealt with in the notes at the\nend of the volume.]\n\n\nThe meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme,\nThe goats with the green leaves of budding Spring,\nAre saturated not—nor Love with tears.—VIRGIL’S “Gallus”.\n\nCount Maddalo is a Venetian nobleman of ancient family and of great\nfortune, who, without mixing much in the society of his countrymen,\nresides chiefly at his magnificent palace in that city. He is a person\nof the most consummate genius, and capable, if he would direct his\nenergies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded\ncountry. But it is his weakness to be proud: he derives, from a\ncomparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects\nthat surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human\nlife. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those\nof other men; and, instead of the latter having been employed in\ncurbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength. His\nambition preys upon itself, for want of objects which it can consider\nworthy of exertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can find no\nother word to express the concentred and impatient feelings which\nconsume him; but it is on his own hopes and affections only that he\nseems to trample, for in social life no human being can be more\ngentle, patient and unassuming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank and\nwitty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication; men\nare held by it as by a spell. He has travelled much; and there is an\ninexpressible charm in his relation of his adventures in different\ncountries.\n\nJulian is an Englishman of good family, passionately attached to those\nphilosophical notions which assert the power of man over his own mind,\nand the immense improvements of which, by the extinction of certain\nmoral superstitions, human society may be yet susceptible. Without\nconcealing the evil in the world he is for ever speculating how good\nmay be made superior. He is a complete infidel, and a scoffer at all\nthings reputed holy; and Maddalo takes a wicked pleasure in drawing\nout his taunts against religion. What Maddalo thinks on these matters\nis not exactly known. Julian, in spite of his heterodox opinions, is\nconjectured by his friends to possess some good qualities. How far\nthis is possible the pious reader will determine. Julian is rather\nserious.\n\nOf the Maniac I can give no information. He seems, by his own account,\nto have been disappointed in love. He was evidently a very cultivated\nand amiable person when in his right senses. His story, told at\nlength, might be like many other stories of the same kind: the\nunconnected exclamations of his agony will perhaps be found a\nsufficient comment for the text of every heart.\n\n\nI rode one evening with Count Maddalo\nUpon the bank of land which breaks the flow\nOf Adria towards Venice: a bare strand\nOf hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,\nMatted with thistles and amphibious weeds,                           _5\nSuch as from earth’s embrace the salt ooze breeds,\nIs this; an uninhabited sea-side,\nWhich the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,\nAbandons; and no other object breaks\nThe waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes                    _10\nBroken and unrepaired, and the tide makes\nA narrow space of level sand thereon,\nWhere ’twas our wont to ride while day went down.\nThis ride was my delight. I love all waste\nAnd solitary places; where we taste                                  _15\nThe pleasure of believing what we see\nIs boundless, as we wish our souls to be:\nAnd such was this wide ocean, and this shore\nMore barren than its billows; and yet more\nThan all, with a remembered friend I love                            _20\nTo ride as then I rode;—for the winds drove\nThe living spray along the sunny air\nInto our faces; the blue heavens were bare,\nStripped to their depths by the awakening north;\nAnd, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth                  _25\nHarmonising with solitude, and sent\nInto our hearts aereal merriment.\nSo, as we rode, we talked; and the swift thought,\nWinging itself with laughter, lingered not,\nBut flew from brain to brain,—such glee was ours,                   _30\nCharged with light memories of remembered hours,\nNone slow enough for sadness: till we came\nHomeward, which always makes the spirit tame.\nThis day had been cheerful but cold, and now\nThe sun was sinking, and the wind also.                              _35\nOur talk grew somewhat serious, as may be\nTalk interrupted with such raillery\nAs mocks itself, because it cannot scorn\nThe thoughts it would extinguish: —’twas forlorn,\nYet pleasing, such as once, so poets tell,                           _40\nThe devils held within the dales of Hell\nConcerning God, freewill and destiny:\nOf all that earth has been or yet may be,\nAll that vain men imagine or believe,\nOr hope can paint or suffering may achieve,                          _45\nWe descanted; and I (for ever still\nIs it not wise to make the best of ill?)\nArgued against despondency, but pride\nMade my companion take the darker side.\nThe sense that he was greater than his kind                          _50\nHad struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind\nBy gazing on its own exceeding light.\nMeanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight,\nOver the horizon of the mountains;—Oh,\nHow beautiful is sunset, when the glow                               _55\nOf Heaven descends upon a land like thee,\nThou Paradise of exiles, Italy!\nThy mountains, seas and vineyards, and the towers\nOf cities they encircle!—it was ours\nTo stand on thee, beholding it: and then,                            _60\nJust where we had dismounted, the Count’s men\nWere waiting for us with the gondola.—\nAs those who pause on some delightful way\nThough bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood\nLooking upon the evening, and the flood                              _65\nWhich lay between the city and the shore,\nPaved with the image of the sky...the hoar\nAnd aery Alps towards the North appeared\nThrough mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared\nBetween the East and West; and half the sky                          _70\nWas roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry\nDark purple at the zenith, which still grew\nDown the steep West into a wondrous hue\nBrighter than burning gold, even to the rent\nWhere the swift sun yet paused in his descent                        _75\nAmong the many-folded hills: they were\nThose famous Euganean hills, which bear,\nAs seen from Lido thro’ the harbour piles,\nThe likeness of a clump of peaked isles—\nAnd then—as if the Earth and Sea had been                           _80\nDissolved into one lake of fire, were seen\nThose mountains towering as from waves of flame\nAround the vaporous sun, from which there came\nThe inmost purple spirit of light, and made\nTheir very peaks transparent. ‘Ere it fade,’                         _85\nSaid my companion, ‘I will show you soon\nA better station’—so, o’er the lagune\nWe glided; and from that funereal bark\nI leaned, and saw the city, and could mark\nHow from their many isles, in evening’s gleam,                       _90\nIts temples and its palaces did seem\nLike fabrics of enchantment piled to Heaven.\nI was about to speak, when—‘We are even\nNow at the point I meant,’ said Maddalo,\nAnd bade the gondolieri cease to row.                                _95\n‘Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well\nIf you hear not a deep and heavy bell.’\nI looked, and saw between us and the sun\nA building on an island; such a one\nAs age to age might add, for uses vile,                              _100\nA windowless, deformed and dreary pile;\nAnd on the top an open tower, where hung\nA bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung;\nWe could just hear its hoarse and iron tongue:\nThe broad sun sunk behind it, and it tolled                          _105\nIn strong and black relief.—‘What we behold\nShall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,’\nSaid Maddalo, ‘and ever at this hour\nThose who may cross the water, hear that bell\nWhich calls the maniacs, each one from his cell,                     _110\nTo vespers.’—‘As much skill as need to pray\nIn thanks or hope for their dark lot have they\nTo their stern maker,’ I replied. ‘O ho!\nYou talk as in years past,’ said Maddalo.\n‘’Tis strange men change not. You were ever still                    _115\nAmong Christ’s flock a perilous infidel,\nA wolf for the meek lambs—if you can’t swim\nBeware of Providence.’ I looked on him,\nBut the gay smile had faded in his eye.\n‘And such,’—he cried, ‘is our mortality,                            _120\nAnd this must be the emblem and the sign\nOf what should be eternal and divine!—\nAnd like that black and dreary bell, the soul,\nHung in a heaven-illumined tower, must toll\nOur thoughts and our desires to meet below                           _125\nRound the rent heart and pray—as madmen do\nFor what? they know not,—till the night of death\nAs sunset that strange vision, severeth\nOur memory from itself, and us from all\nWe sought and yet were baffled.’ I recall                            _130\nThe sense of what he said, although I mar\nThe force of his expressions. The broad star\nOf day meanwhile had sunk behind the hill,\nAnd the black bell became invisible,\nAnd the red tower looked gray, and all between                       _135\nThe churches, ships and palaces were seen\nHuddled in gloom;—into the purple sea\nThe orange hues of heaven sunk silently.\nWe hardly spoke, and soon the gondola\nConveyed me to my lodging by the way.                                _140\nThe following morn was rainy, cold, and dim:\nEre Maddalo arose, I called on him,\nAnd whilst I waited with his child I played;\nA lovelier toy sweet Nature never made;\nA serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being,                           _145\nGraceful without design and unforeseeing,\nWith eyes—Oh speak not of her eyes!—which seem\nTwin mirrors of Italian Heaven, yet gleam\nWith such deep meaning, as we never see\nBut in the human countenance: with me                                _150\nShe was a special favourite: I had nursed\nHer fine and feeble limbs when she came first\nTo this bleak world; and she yet seemed to know\nOn second sight her ancient playfellow,\nLess changed than she was by six months or so;                       _155\nFor after her first shyness was worn out\nWe sate there, rolling billiard balls about,\nWhen the Count entered. Salutations past—\n‘The word you spoke last night might well have cast\nA darkness on my spirit—if man be                                   _160\nThe passive thing you say, I should not see\nMuch harm in the religions and old saws\n(Tho’ I may never own such leaden laws)\nWhich break a teachless nature to the yoke:\nMine is another faith.’—thus much I spoke                           _165\nAnd noting he replied not, added: ‘See\nThis lovely child, blithe, innocent and free;\nShe spends a happy time with little care,\nWhile we to such sick thoughts subjected are\nAs came on you last night. It is our will                            _170\nThat thus enchains us to permitted ill—\nWe might be otherwise—we might be all\nWe dream of happy, high, majestical.\nWhere is the love, beauty, and truth we seek,\nBut in our mind? and if we were not weak                             _175\nShould we be less in deed than in desire?’\n‘Ay, if we were not weak—and we aspire\nHow vainly to be strong!’ said Maddalo:\n‘You talk Utopia.’ ‘It remains to know,’\nI then rejoined, ‘and those who try may find                         _180\nHow strong the chains are which our spirit bind;\nBrittle perchance as straw...We are assured\nMuch may be conquered, much may be endured,\nOf what degrades and crushes us. We know\nThat we have power over ourselves to do                              _185\nAnd suffer—what, we know not till we try;\nBut something nobler than to live and die—\nSo taught those kings of old philosophy\nWho reigned, before Religion made men blind;\nAnd those who suffer with their suffering kind                       _190\nYet feel their faith, religion.’ ‘My dear friend,’\nSaid Maddalo, ‘my judgement will not bend\nTo your opinion, though I think you might\nMake such a system refutation-tight\nAs far as words go. I knew one like you                              _195\nWho to this city came some months ago,\nWith whom I argued in this sort, and he\nIs now gone mad,—and so he answered me,—\nPoor fellow! but if you would like to go,\nWe’ll visit him, and his wild talk will show                         _200\nHow vain are such aspiring theories.’\n‘I hope to prove the induction otherwise,\nAnd that a want of that true theory, still,\nWhich seeks a “soul of goodness” in things ill\nOr in himself or others, has thus bowed                              _205\nHis being—there are some by nature proud,\nWho patient in all else demand but this—\nTo love and be beloved with gentleness;\nAnd being scorned, what wonder if they die\nSome living death? this is not destiny                               _210\nBut man’s own wilful ill.’\nAs thus I spoke\nServants announced the gondola, and we\nThrough the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea\nSailed to the island where the madhouse stands.\nWe disembarked. The clap of tortured hands,                          _215\nFierce yells and howlings and lamentings keen,\nAnd laughter where complaint had merrier been,\nMoans, shrieks, and curses, and blaspheming prayers\nAccosted us. We climbed the oozy stairs\nInto an old courtyard. I heard on high,                              _220\nThen, fragments of most touching melody,\nBut looking up saw not the singer there—\nThrough the black bars in the tempestuous air\nI saw, like weeds on a wrecked palace growing,\nLong tangled locks flung wildly forth, and flowing,                  _225\nOf those who on a sudden were beguiled\nInto strange silence, and looked forth and smiled\nHearing sweet sounds. Then I: ‘Methinks there were\nA cure of these with patience and kind care,\nIf music can thus move...but what is he                              _230\nWhom we seek here?’ ‘Of his sad history\nI know but this,’ said Maddalo: ‘he came\nTo Venice a dejected man, and fame\nSaid he was wealthy, or he had been so;\nSome thought the loss of fortune wrought him woe;                    _235\nBut he was ever talking in such sort\nAs you do—far more sadly—he seemed hurt,\nEven as a man with his peculiar wrong,\nTo hear but of the oppression of the strong,\nOr those absurd deceits (I think with you                            _240\nIn some respects, you know) which carry through\nThe excellent impostors of this earth\nWhen they outface detection—he had worth,\nPoor fellow! but a humorist in his way’—\n‘Alas, what drove him mad?’ ‘I cannot say:                           _245\nA lady came with him from France, and when\nShe left him and returned, he wandered then\nAbout yon lonely isles of desert sand\nTill he grew wild—he had no cash or land\nRemaining,—the police had brought him here—                        _250\nSome fancy took him and he would not bear\nRemoval; so I fitted up for him\nThose rooms beside the sea, to please his whim,\nAnd sent him busts and books and urns for flowers,\nWhich had adorned his life in happier hours,                         _255\nAnd instruments of music—you may guess\nA stranger could do little more or less\nFor one so gentle and unfortunate:\nAnd those are his sweet strains which charm the weight\nFrom madmen’s chains, and make this Hell appear                      _260\nA heaven of sacred silence, hushed to hear.’—\n‘Nay, this was kind of you—he had no claim,\nAs the world says’—‘None—but the very same\nWhich I on all mankind were I as he\nFallen to such deep reverse;—his melody                             _265\nIs interrupted—now we hear the din\nOf madmen, shriek on shriek, again begin;\nLet us now visit him; after this strain\nHe ever communes with himself again,\nAnd sees nor hears not any.’ Having said                             _270\nThese words, we called the keeper, and he led\nTo an apartment opening on the sea—\nThere the poor wretch was sitting mournfully\nNear a piano, his pale fingers twined\nOne with the other, and the ooze and wind                            _275\nRushed through an open casement, and did sway\nHis hair, and starred it with the brackish spray;\nHis head was leaning on a music book,\nAnd he was muttering, and his lean limbs shook;\nHis lips were pressed against a folded leaf                          _280\nIn hue too beautiful for health, and grief\nSmiled in their motions as they lay apart—\nAs one who wrought from his own fervid heart\nThe eloquence of passion, soon he raised\nHis sad meek face and eyes lustrous and glazed                       _285\nAnd spoke—sometimes as one who wrote, and thought\nHis words might move some heart that heeded not,\nIf sent to distant lands: and then as one\nReproaching deeds never to be undone\nWith wondering self-compassion; then his speech                      _290\nWas lost in grief, and then his words came each\nUnmodulated, cold, expressionless,—\nBut that from one jarred accent you might guess\nIt was despair made them so uniform:\nAnd all the while the loud and gusty storm                           _295\nHissed through the window, and we stood behind\nStealing his accents from the envious wind\nUnseen. I yet remember what he said\nDistinctly: such impression his words made.\n\n‘Month after month,’ he cried, ‘to bear this load                    _300\nAnd as a jade urged by the whip and goad\nTo drag life on, which like a heavy chain\nLengthens behind with many a link of pain!—\nAnd not to speak my grief—O, not to dare\nTo give a human voice to my despair,                                 _305\nBut live, and move, and, wretched thing! smile on\nAs if I never went aside to groan,\nAnd wear this mask of falsehood even to those\nWho are most dear—not for my own repose—\nAlas! no scorn or pain or hate could be                              _310\nSo heavy as that falsehood is to me—\nBut that I cannot bear more altered faces\nThan needs must be, more changed and cold embraces,\nMore misery, disappointment, and mistrust\nTo own me for their father...Would the dust                          _315\nWere covered in upon my body now!\nThat the life ceased to toil within my brow!\nAnd then these thoughts would at the least be fled;\nLet us not fear such pain can vex the dead.\n\n‘What Power delights to torture us? I know                           _320\nThat to myself I do not wholly owe\nWhat now I suffer, though in part I may.\nAlas! none strewed sweet flowers upon the way\nWhere wandering heedlessly, I met pale Pain\nMy shadow, which will leave me not again—                           _325\nIf I have erred, there was no joy in error,\nBut pain and insult and unrest and terror;\nI have not as some do, bought penitence\nWith pleasure, and a dark yet sweet offence,\nFor then,—if love and tenderness and truth                          _330\nHad overlived hope’s momentary youth,\nMy creed should have redeemed me from repenting;\nBut loathed scorn and outrage unrelenting\nMet love excited by far other seeming\nUntil the end was gained...as one from dreaming                      _335\nOf sweetest peace, I woke, and found my state\nSuch as it is.—\n‘O Thou, my spirit’s mate\nWho, for thou art compassionate and wise,\nWouldst pity me from thy most gentle eyes\nIf this sad writing thou shouldst ever see—                         _340\nMy secret groans must be unheard by thee,\nThou wouldst weep tears bitter as blood to know\nThy lost friend’s incommunicable woe.\n\n‘Ye few by whom my nature has been weighed\nIn friendship, let me not that name degrade                          _345\nBy placing on your hearts the secret load\nWhich crushes mine to dust. There is one road\nTo peace and that is truth, which follow ye!\nLove sometimes leads astray to misery.\nYet think not though subdued—and I may well                         _350\nSay that I am subdued—that the full Hell\nWithin me would infect the untainted breast\nOf sacred nature with its own unrest;\nAs some perverted beings think to find\nIn scorn or hate a medicine for the mind                             _355\nWhich scorn or hate have wounded—O how vain!\nThe dagger heals not but may rend again...\nBelieve that I am ever still the same\nIn creed as in resolve, and what may tame\nMy heart, must leave the understanding free,                         _360\nOr all would sink in this keen agony—\nNor dream that I will join the vulgar cry;\nOr with my silence sanction tyranny;\nOr seek a moment’s shelter from my pain\nIn any madness which the world calls gain,                           _365\nAmbition or revenge or thoughts as stern\nAs those which make me what I am; or turn\nTo avarice or misanthropy or lust...\nHeap on me soon, O grave, thy welcome dust!\nTill then the dungeon may demand its prey,                           _370\nAnd Poverty and Shame may meet and say—\nHalting beside me on the public way—\n“That love-devoted youth is ours—let’s sit\nBeside him—he may live some six months yet.”\nOr the red scaffold, as our country bends,                           _375\nMay ask some willing victim; or ye friends\nMay fall under some sorrow which this heart\nOr hand may share or vanquish or avert;\nI am prepared—in truth, with no proud joy—\nTo do or suffer aught, as when a boy                                 _380\nI did devote to justice and to love\nMy nature, worthless now!...\n‘I must remove\nA veil from my pent mind. ’Tis torn aside!\nO, pallid as Death’s dedicated bride,\nThou mockery which art sitting by my side,                           _385\nAm I not wan like thee? at the grave’s call\nI haste, invited to thy wedding-ball\nTo greet the ghastly paramour, for whom\nThou hast deserted me...and made the tomb\nThy bridal bed...But I beside your feet                              _390\nWill lie and watch ye from my winding-sheet—\nThus...wide awake tho’ dead...yet stay, O stay!\nGo not so soon—I know not what I say—\nHear but my reasons...I am mad, I fear,\nMy fancy is o’erwrought...thou art not here...                       _395\nPale art thou, ’tis most true...but thou art gone,\nThy work is finished...I am left alone!—\n...\n‘Nay, was it I who wooed thee to this breast\nWhich, like a serpent, thou envenomest\nAs in repayment of the warmth it lent?                               _400\nDidst thou not seek me for thine own content?\nDid not thy love awaken mine? I thought\nThat thou wert she who said, “You kiss me not\nEver, I fear you do not love me now”—\nIn truth I loved even to my overthrow                                _405\nHer, who would fain forget these words: but they\nCling to her mind, and cannot pass away.\n...\n‘You say that I am proud—that when I speak\nMy lip is tortured with the wrongs which break\nThe spirit it expresses...Never one                                  _410\nHumbled himself before, as I have done!\nEven the instinctive worm on which we tread\nTurns, though it wound not—then with prostrate head\nSinks in the dusk and writhes like me—and dies?\nNo: wears a living death of agonies!                                 _415\nAs the slow shadows of the pointed grass\nMark the eternal periods, his pangs pass,\nSlow, ever-moving,—making moments be\nAs mine seem—each an immortality!\n...\n‘That you had never seen me—never heard                             _420\nMy voice, and more than all had ne’er endured\nThe deep pollution of my loathed embrace—\nThat your eyes ne’er had lied love in my face—\nThat, like some maniac monk, I had torn out\nThe nerves of manhood by their bleeding root                         _425\nWith mine own quivering fingers, so that ne’er\nOur hearts had for a moment mingled there\nTo disunite in horror—these were not\nWith thee, like some suppressed and hideous thought\nWhich flits athwart our musings, but can find                        _430\nNo rest within a pure and gentle mind...\nThou sealedst them with many a bare broad word,\nAnd searedst my memory o’er them,—for I heard\nAnd can forget not...they were ministered\nOne after one, those curses. Mix them up                             _435\nLike self-destroying poisons in one cup,\nAnd they will make one blessing which thou ne’er\nDidst imprecate for, on me,—death.\n...\n‘It were\nA cruel punishment for one most cruel,\nIf such can love, to make that love the fuel                         _440\nOf the mind’s hell; hate, scorn, remorse, despair:\nBut ME—whose heart a stranger’s tear might wear\nAs water-drops the sandy fountain-stone,\nWho loved and pitied all things, and could moan\nFor woes which others hear not, and could see                        _445\nThe absent with the glance of phantasy,\nAnd with the poor and trampled sit and weep,\nFollowing the captive to his dungeon deep;\nME—who am as a nerve o’er which do creep\nThe else unfelt oppressions of this earth,                           _450\nAnd was to thee the flame upon thy hearth,\nWhen all beside was cold—that thou on me\nShouldst rain these plagues of blistering agony—\nSuch curses are from lips once eloquent\nWith love’s too partial praise—let none relent                      _455\nWho intend deeds too dreadful for a name\nHenceforth, if an example for the same\nThey seek...for thou on me lookedst so, and so—\nAnd didst speak thus...and thus...I live to show\nHow much men bear and die not!\n...\n‘Thou wilt tell                                                      _460\nWith the grimace of hate, how horrible\nIt was to meet my love when thine grew less;\nThou wilt admire how I could e’er address\nSuch features to love’s work...this taunt, though true,\n(For indeed Nature nor in form nor hue                               _465\nBestowed on me her choicest workmanship)\nShall not be thy defence...for since thy lip\nMet mine first, years long past, since thine eye kindled\nWith soft fire under mine, I have not dwindled\nNor changed in mind or body, or in aught                             _470\nBut as love changes what it loveth not\nAfter long years and many trials.\n\n‘How vain\nAre words! I thought never to speak again,\nNot even in secret,—not to mine own heart—\nBut from my lips the unwilling accents start,                        _475\nAnd from my pen the words flow as I write,\nDazzling my eyes with scalding tears...my sight\nIs dim to see that charactered in vain\nOn this unfeeling leaf which burns the brain\nAnd eats into it...blotting all things fair                          _480\nAnd wise and good which time had written there.\n\n‘Those who inflict must suffer, for they see\nThe work of their own hearts, and this must be\nOur chastisement or recompense—O child!\nI would that thine were like to be more mild                         _485\nFor both our wretched sakes...for thine the most\nWho feelest already all that thou hast lost\nWithout the power to wish it thine again;\nAnd as slow years pass, a funereal train\nEach with the ghost of some lost hope or friend                      _490\nFollowing it like its shadow, wilt thou bend\nNo thought on my dead memory?\n...\n‘Alas, love!\nFear me not...against thee I would not move\nA finger in despite. Do I not live\nThat thou mayst have less bitter cause to grieve?                    _495\nI give thee tears for scorn and love for hate;\nAnd that thy lot may be less desolate\nThan his on whom thou tramplest, I refrain\nFrom that sweet sleep which medicines all pain.\nThen, when thou speakest of me, never say                            _500\n“He could forgive not.” Here I cast away\nAll human passions, all revenge, all pride;\nI think, speak, act no ill; I do but hide\nUnder these words, like embers, every spark\nOf that which has consumed me—quick and dark                        _505\nThe grave is yawning...as its roof shall cover\nMy limbs with dust and worms under and over\nSo let Oblivion hide this grief...the air\nCloses upon my accents, as despair\nUpon my heart—let death upon despair!’                              _510\n\nHe ceased, and overcome leant back awhile,\nThen rising, with a melancholy smile\nWent to a sofa, and lay down, and slept\nA heavy sleep, and in his dreams he wept\nAnd muttered some familiar name, and we                              _515\nWept without shame in his society.\nI think I never was impressed so much;\nThe man who were not, must have lacked a touch\nOf human nature...then we lingered not,\nAlthough our argument was quite forgot,                              _520\nBut calling the attendants, went to dine\nAt Maddalo’s; yet neither cheer nor wine\nCould give us spirits, for we talked of him\nAnd nothing else, till daylight made stars dim;\nAnd we agreed his was some dreadful ill                              _525\nWrought on him boldly, yet unspeakable,\nBy a dear friend; some deadly change in love\nOf one vowed deeply which he dreamed not of;\nFor whose sake he, it seemed, had fixed a blot\nOf falsehood on his mind which flourished not                        _530\nBut in the light of all-beholding truth;\nAnd having stamped this canker on his youth\nShe had abandoned him—and how much more\nMight be his woe, we guessed not—he had store\nOf friends and fortune once, as we could guess                       _535\nFrom his nice habits and his gentleness;\nThese were now lost...it were a grief indeed\nIf he had changed one unsustaining reed\nFor all that such a man might else adorn.\nThe colours of his mind seemed yet unworn;                           _540\nFor the wild language of his grief was high,\nSuch as in measure were called poetry;\nAnd I remember one remark which then\nMaddalo made. He said: ‘Most wretched men\nAre cradled into poetry by wrong,                                    _545\nThey learn in suffering what they teach in song.’\n\nIf I had been an unconnected man,\nI, from this moment, should have formed some plan\nNever to leave sweet Venice,—for to me\nIt was delight to ride by the lone sea;                              _550\nAnd then, the town is silent—one may write\nOr read in gondolas by day or night,\nHaving the little brazen lamp alight,\nUnseen, uninterrupted; books are there,\nPictures, and casts from all those statues fair                      _555\nWhich were twin-born with poetry, and all\nWe seek in towns, with little to recall\nRegrets for the green country. I might sit\nIn Maddalo’s great palace, and his wit\nAnd subtle talk would cheer the winter night                         _560\nAnd make me know myself, and the firelight\nWould flash upon our faces, till the day\nMight dawn and make me wonder at my stay:\nBut I had friends in London too: the chief\nAttraction here, was that I sought relief                            _565\nFrom the deep tenderness that maniac wrought\nWithin me—’twas perhaps an idle thought—\nBut I imagined that if day by day\nI watched him, and but seldom went away,\nAnd studied all the beatings of his heart                            _570\nWith zeal, as men study some stubborn art\nFor their own good, and could by patience find\nAn entrance to the caverns of his mind,\nI might reclaim him from this dark estate:\nIn friendships I had been most fortunate—                           _575\nYet never saw I one whom I would call\nMore willingly my friend; and this was all\nAccomplished not; such dreams of baseless good\nOft come and go in crowds or solitude\nAnd leave no trace—but what I now designed                          _580\nMade for long years impression on my mind.\nThe following morning, urged by my affairs,\nI left bright Venice.\nAfter many years\nAnd many changes I returned; the name\nOf Venice, and its aspect, was the same;                             _585\nBut Maddalo was travelling far away\nAmong the mountains of Armenia.\nHis dog was dead. His child had now become\nA woman; such as it has been my doom\nTo meet with few,—a wonder of this earth,                           _590\nWhere there is little of transcendent worth,\nLike one of Shakespeare’s women: kindly she,\nAnd, with a manner beyond courtesy,\nReceived her father’s friend; and when I asked\nOf the lorn maniac, she her memory tasked,                           _595\nAnd told as she had heard the mournful tale:\n‘That the poor sufferer’s health began to fail\nTwo years from my departure, but that then\nThe lady who had left him, came again.\nHer mien had been imperious, but she now                             _600\nLooked meek—perhaps remorse had brought her low.\nHer coming made him better, and they stayed\nTogether at my father’s—for I played,\nAs I remember, with the lady’s shawl—\nI might be six years old—but after all                              _605\nShe left him.’...’Why, her heart must have been tough:\nHow did it end?’ ‘And was not this enough?\nThey met—they parted.’—‘Child, is there no more?’\n‘Something within that interval which bore\nThe stamp of WHY they parted, HOW they met:                          _610\nYet if thine aged eyes disdain to wet\nThose wrinkled cheeks with youth’s remembered tears,\nAsk me no more, but let the silent years\nBe closed and cered over their memory\nAs yon mute marble where their corpses lie.’                         _615\nI urged and questioned still, she told me how\nAll happened—but the cold world shall not know.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cancelled Fragments Of Julian And Maddalo.",
    "body": "‘What think you the dead are?’ ‘Why, dust and clay,\nWhat should they be?’ ‘’Tis the last hour of day.\nLook on the west, how beautiful it is                                _620\nVaulted with radiant vapours! The deep bliss\nOf that unutterable light has made\nThe edges of that cloud ... fade\nInto a hue, like some harmonious thought,\nWasting itself on that which it had wrought,                         _625\nTill it dies ... and ... between\nThe light hues of the tender, pure, serene,\nAnd infinite tranquillity of heaven.\nAy, beautiful! but when not...’\n...\n‘Perhaps the only comfort which remains                              _630\nIs the unheeded clanking of my chains,\nThe which I make, and call it melody.’\n\n\n_45 may Hunt manuscript; can 1824.\n_99 a one Hunt manuscript; an one 1824.\n_105 sunk  Hunt manuscript; sank 1824.\n_108 ever Hunt manuscript; even 1824.\n_119 in Hunt manuscript; from 1824.\n_124 a Hunt manuscript; an 1824.\n_171 That Hunt manuscript; Which 1824.\n_175 mind Hunt manuscript; minds 1824.\n_179 know 1824; see Hunt manuscript.\n_188 those Hunt manuscript; the 1824.\n_191 their Hunt manuscript; this 1824.\n_218 Moons, etc., Hunt manuscript;\n     The line is wanting in editions 1824 and 1839.\n_237 far Hunt manuscript; but 1824.\n_270 nor Hunt manuscript; and 1824.\n_292 cold Hunt manuscript; and 1824.\n_318 least Hunt manuscript; last 1824.\n_323 sweet Hunt manuscript; fresh 1824.\n_356 have Hunt manuscript; hath 1824.\n_361 in this keen Hunt manuscript; under this 1824.\n_362 cry Hunt manuscript; eye 1824.\n_372 on Hunt manuscript; in 1824.\n_388 greet Hunt manuscript; meet 1824.\n_390 your Hunt manuscript; thy 1824.\n_417 his Hunt manuscript; its 1824.\n_446 glance Hunt manuscript; glass 1824.\n_447 with Hunt manuscript; near 1824.\n_467 lip Hunt manuscript; life 1824.\n_483 this Hunt manuscript; that 1824.\n_493 I would Hunt manuscript; I’d 1824.\n_510 despair Hunt manuscript; my care 1839.\n_511 leant] See Editor’s Note.\n_518 were Hunt manuscript; was 1839.\n_525 his Hunt manuscript; it 1824.\n_530 on Hunt manuscript; in 1824.\n_537 were now Hunt manuscript; now were 1824.\n_588 regrets Hunt manuscript; regret 1824.\n_569 but Hunt manuscript;\n     wanting in editions 1824 and 1839.\n_574 his 1824; this [?] Hunt manuscript.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Audisne Haec Amphiarae, Sub Terram Abdite?",
    "body": "[Composed at Este, September, October, 1818 (Act 1); at Rome,\nMarch-April 6, 1819 (Acts 2, 3); at Florence, close of 1819 (Act 4).\nPublished by C. and J. Ollier, London, summer of 1820. Sources of the\ntext are (1) edition of 1820; (2) text in “Poetical Works”, 1839,\nprepared with the aid of a list of errata in (1) written out by\nShelley; (3) a fair draft in Shelley’s autograph, now in the Bodleian.\nThis has been carefully collated by Mr. C.D. Locock, who prints the\nresult in his “Examination of the Shelley Manuscripts in the Bodleian\nLibrary”, Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1903. Our text is that of 1820,\nmodified by edition 1839, and by the Bodleian fair copy. In the\nfollowing notes B = the Bodleian manuscript; 1820 = the editio\nprinceps, printed by Marchant for C. and J. Ollier, London; and 1839 =\nthe text as edited by Mrs. Shelley in the “Poetical Works”, 1st and\n2nd editions, 1839. The reader should consult the notes on the Play at\nthe end of the volume.]\n\n\n\nThe Greek tragic writers, in selecting as their subject any portion of\ntheir national history or mythology, employed in their treatment of it\na certain arbitrary discretion. They by no means conceived themselves\nbound to adhere to the common interpretation or to imitate in story as\nin title their rivals and predecessors. Such a system would have\namounted to a resignation of those claims to preference over their\ncompetitors which incited the composition. The Agamemnonian story was\nexhibited on the Athenian theatre with as many variations as dramas.\n\nI have presumed to employ a similar license. The “Prometheus Unbound”\nof Aeschylus supposed the reconciliation of Jupiter with his victim as\nthe price of the disclosure of the danger threatened to his empire by\nthe consummation of his marriage with Thetis. Thetis, according to\nthis view of the subject, was given in marriage to Peleus, and\nPrometheus, by the permission of Jupiter, delivered from his captivity\nby Hercules. Had I framed my story on this model, I should have done\nno more than have attempted to restore the lost drama of Aeschylus; an\nambition which, if my preference to this mode of treating the subject\nhad incited me to cherish, the recollection of the high comparison\nsuch an attempt would challenge might well abate. But, in truth, I was\naverse from a catastrophe so feeble as that of reconciling the\nChampion with the Oppressor of mankind. The moral interest of the\nfable, which is so powerfully sustained by the sufferings and\nendurance of Prometheus, would be annihilated if we could conceive of\nhim as unsaying his high language and quailing before his successful\nand perfidious adversary. The only imaginary being resembling in any\ndegree Prometheus, is Satan; and Prometheus is, in my judgement, a\nmore poetical character than Satan, because, in addition to courage,\nand majesty, and firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force, he\nis susceptible of being described as exempt from the taints of\nambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggrandisement,\nwhich, in the Hero of “Paradise Lost”, interfere with the interest.\nThe character of Satan engenders in the mind a pernicious casuistry\nwhich leads us to weigh his faults with his wrongs, and to excuse the\nformer because the latter exceed all measure. In the minds of those\nwho consider that magnificent fiction with a religious feeling it\nengenders something worse. But Prometheus is, as it were, the type of\nthe highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature, impelled by\nthe purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends.\n\nThis Poem was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the Baths\nof Caracalla, among the flowery glades, and thickets of odoriferous\nblossoming trees, which are extended in ever winding labyrinths upon\nits immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in the air. The\nbright blue sky of Rome, and the effect of the vigorous awakening\nspring in that divinest climate, and the new life with which it\ndrenches the spirits even to intoxication, were the inspiration of\nthis drama.\n\nThe imagery which I have employed will be found, in many instances, to\nhave been drawn from the operations of the human mind, or from those\nexternal actions by which they are expressed. This is unusual in\nmodern poetry, although Dante and Shakespeare are full of instances of\nthe same kind: Dante indeed more than any other poet, and with greater\nsuccess. But the Greek poets, as writers to whom no resource of\nawakening the sympathy of their contemporaries was unknown, were in\nthe habitual use of this power; and it is the study of their works\n(since a higher merit would probably be denied me) to which I am\nwilling that my readers should impute this singularity.\n\nOne word is due in candour to the degree in which the study of\ncontemporary writings may have tinged my composition, for such has\nbeen a topic of censure with regard to poems far more popular, and\nindeed more deservedly popular, than mine. It is impossible that any\none who inhabits the same age with such writers as those who stand in\nthe foremost ranks of our own, can conscientiously assure himself that\nhis language and tone of thought may not have been modified by the\nstudy of the productions of those extraordinary intellects. It is\ntrue, that, not the spirit of their genius, but the forms in which it\nhas manifested itself, are due less to the peculiarities of their own\nminds than to the peculiarity of the moral and intellectual condition\nof the minds among which they have been produced. Thus a number of\nwriters possess the form, whilst they want the spirit of those whom,\nit is alleged, they imitate; because the former is the endowment of\nthe age in which they live, and the latter must be the uncommunicated\nlightning of their own mind.\n\nThe peculiar style of intense and comprehensive imagery which\ndistinguishes the modern literature of England has not been, as a\ngeneral power, the product of the imitation of any particular writer.\nThe mass of capabilities remains at every period materially the same;\nthe circumstances which awaken it to action perpetually change. If\nEngland were divided into forty republics, each equal in population\nand extent to Athens, there is no reason to suppose but that, under\ninstitutions not more perfect than those of Athens, each would produce\nphilosophers and poets equal to those who (if we except Shakespeare)\nhave never been surpassed. We owe the great writers of the golden age\nof our literature to that fervid awakening of the public mind which\nshook to dust the oldest and most oppressive form of the Christian\nreligion. We owe Milton to the progress and development of the same\nspirit: the sacred Milton was, let it ever be remembered, a\nrepublican, and a bold inquirer into morals and religion. The great\nwriters of our own age are, we have reason to suppose, the companions\nand forerunners of some unimagined change in our social condition or\nthe opinions which cement it. The cloud of mind is discharging its\ncollected lightning, and the equilibrium between institutions and\nopinions is now restoring, or is about to be restored.\n\nAs to imitation, poetry is a mimetic art. It creates, but it creates\nby combination and representation. Poetical abstractions are beautiful\nand new, not because the portions of which they are composed had no\nprevious existence in the mind of man or in nature, but because the\nwhole produced by their combination has some intelligible and\nbeautiful analogy with those sources of emotion and thought, and with\nthe contemporary condition of them: one great poet is a masterpiece of\nnature which another not only ought to study but must study. He might\nas wisely and as easily determine that his mind should no longer be\nthe mirror of all that is lovely in the visible universe as exclude\nfrom his contemplation the beautiful which exists in the writings of a\ngreat contemporary. The pretence of doing it would be a presumption in\nany but the greatest; the effect, even in him, would be strained,\nunnatural and ineffectual. A poet is the combined product of such\ninternal powers as modify the nature of others; and of such external\ninfluences as excite and sustain these powers; he is not one, but\nboth. Every man’s mind is, in this respect, modified by all the\nobjects of nature and art; by every word and every suggestion which he\never admitted to act upon his consciousness; it is the mirror upon\nwhich all forms are reflected, and in which they compose one form.\nPoets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors and\nmusicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the\ncreations, of their age. From this subjection the loftiest do not\nescape. There is a similarity between Homer and Hesiod, between\nAeschylus and Euripides, between Virgil and Horace, between Dante and\nPetrarch, between Shakespeare and Fletcher, between Dryden and Pope;\neach has a generic resemblance under which their specific distinctions\nare arranged. If this similarity be the result of imitation, I am\nwilling to confess that I have imitated.\n\nLet this opportunity be conceded to me of acknowledging that I have,\nwhat a Scotch philosopher characteristically terms, ‘a passion for\nreforming the world:’ what passion incited him to write and publish\nhis book, he omits to explain. For my part I had rather be damned with\nPlato and Lord Bacon, than go to Heaven with Paley and Malthus. But it\nis a mistake to suppose that I dedicate my poetical compositions\nsolely to the direct enforcement of reform, or that I consider them in\nany degree as containing a reasoned system on the theory of human\nlife. Didactic poetry is my abhorrence; nothing can be equally well\nexpressed in prose that is not tedious and supererogatory in verse. My\npurpose has hitherto been simply to familiarise the highly refined\nimagination of the more select classes of poetical readers with\nbeautiful idealisms of moral excellence; aware that until the mind can\nlove, and admire, and trust, and hope, and endure, reasoned principles\nof moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life which the\nunconscious passenger tramples into dust, although they would bear the\nharvest of his happiness. Should I live to accomplish what I purpose,\nthat is, produce a systematical history of what appear to me to be the\ngenuine elements of human society, let not the advocates of injustice\nand superstition flatter themselves that I should take Aeschylus\nrather than Plato as my model.\n\nThe having spoken of myself with unaffected freedom will need little\napology with the candid; and let the uncandid consider that they\ninjure me less than their own hearts and minds by misrepresentation.\nWhatever talents a person may possess to amuse and instruct others, be\nthey ever so inconsiderable, he is yet bound to exert them: if his\nattempt be ineffectual, let the punishment of an unaccomplished\npurpose have been sufficient; let none trouble themselves to heap the\ndust of oblivion upon his efforts; the pile they raise will betray his\ngrave which might otherwise have been unknown.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prometheus.",
    "body": "DEMOGORGON.\nJUPITER.\nTHE EARTH.\nOCEAN.\nAPOLLO.\nMERCURY.\nOCEANIDES: ASIA, PANTHEA, IONE.\nHERCULES.\nTHE PHANTASM OF JUPITER.\nTHE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH.\nTHE SPIRIT OF THE MOON.\nSPIRITS OF THE HOURS.\nSPIRITS. ECHOES. FAUNS. FURIES.\n\n\nACT 1.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prometheus:",
    "body": "Monarch of Gods and DAEmons, and all Spirits\nBut One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds\nWhich Thou and I alone of living things\nBehold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth\nMade multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou                        _5\nRequitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,\nAnd toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,\nWith fear and self-contempt and barren hope.\nWhilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate,\nHast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn,                      _10\nO’er mine own misery and thy vain revenge.\nThree thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,\nAnd moments aye divided by keen pangs\nTill they seemed years, torture and solitude,\nScorn and despair,—these are mine empire:—                         _15\nMore glorious far than that which thou surveyest\nFrom thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God!\nAlmighty, had I deigned to share the shame\nOf thine ill tyranny, and hung not here\nNailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,                      _20\nBlack, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,\nInsect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.\nAh me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!\n\nNo change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.\nI ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?                        _25\nI ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,\nHas it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,\nHeaven’s ever-changing Shadow, spread below,\nHave its deaf waves not heard my agony?\nAh me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!                              _30\n\nThe crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears\nOf their moon-freezing crystals; the bright chains\nEat with their burning cold into my bones.\nHeaven’s winged hound, polluting from thy lips\nHis beak in poison not his own, tears up                             _35\nMy heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by,\nThe ghastly people of the realm of dream,\nMocking me: and the Earthquake-fiends are charged\nTo wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds\nWhen the rocks split and close again behind:                         _40\nWhile from their loud abysses howling throng\nThe genii of the storm, urging the rage\nOf whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail.\nAnd yet to me welcome is day and night,\nWhether one breaks the hoar-frost of the morn,                       _45\nOr starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs\nThe leaden-coloured east; for then they lead\nThe wingless, crawling hours, one among whom\n—As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim—\nShall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood                       _50\nFrom these pale feet, which then might trample thee\nIf they disdained not such a prostrate slave.\nDisdain! Ah, no! I pity thee. What ruin\nWill hunt thee undefended through wide Heaven!\nHow will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror,                  _55\nGape like a hell within! I speak in grief,\nNot exultation, for I hate no more,\nAs then ere misery made me wise. The curse\nOnce breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains,\nWhose many-voiced Echoes, through the mist                           _60\nOf cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell!\nYe icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost,\nWhich vibrated to hear me, and then crept\nShuddering through India! Thou serenest Air,\nThrough which the Sun walks burning without beams!                   _65\nAnd ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poised wings\nHung mute and moveless o’er yon hushed abyss,\nAs thunder, louder than your own, made rock\nThe orbed world! If then my words had power,\nThough I am changed so that aught evil wish                          _70\nIs dead within; although no memory be\nOf what is hate, let them not lose it now!\nWhat was that curse? for ye all heard me speak.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fourth Voice (From The Whirlwinds):",
    "body": "We had soared beneath these mountains\nUnresting ages; nor had thunder,\nNor yon volcano’s flaming fountains,\nNor any power above or under\nEver made us mute with wonder.                                       _90",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Second Voice:",
    "body": "Never such a sound before\nTo the Indian waves we bore.\nA pilot asleep on the howling sea                                    _95\nLeaped up from the deck in agony,\nAnd heard, and cried, ‘Ah, woe is me!’\nAnd died as mad as the wild waves be.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Earth:",
    "body": "The tongueless caverns of the craggy hills\nCried, ‘Misery!’ then; the hollow Heaven replied,\n‘Misery!’ And the Ocean’s purple waves,\nClimbing the land, howled to the lashing winds,                      _110\nAnd the pale nations heard it, ‘Misery!’",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prometheus:",
    "body": "I hear a sound of voices: not the voice\nWhich I gave forth. Mother, thy sons and thou\nScorn him, without whose all-enduring will\nBeneath the fierce omnipotence of Jove,                              _115\nBoth they and thou had vanished, like thin mist\nUnrolled on the morning wind. Know ye not me,\nThe Titan? He who made his agony\nThe barrier to your else all-conquering foe?\nOh, rock-embosomed lawns, and snow-fed streams,                      _120\nNow seen athwart frore vapours, deep below,\nThrough whose o’ershadowing woods I wandered once\nWith Asia, drinking life from her loved eyes;\nWhy scorns the spirit which informs ye, now\nTo commune with me? me alone, who checked,                           _125\nAs one who checks a fiend-drawn charioteer,\nThe falsehood and the force of him who reigns\nSupreme, and with the groans of pining slaves\nFills your dim glens and liquid wildernesses:\nWhy answer ye not, still? Brethren!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prometheus:",
    "body": "Who dares? for I would hear that curse again.\nHa, what an awful whisper rises up!\n’Tis scarce like sound: it tingles through the frame\nAs lightning tingles, hovering ere it strike.\nSpeak, Spirit! from thine inorganic voice                            _135\nI only know that thou art moving near\nAnd love. How cursed I him?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Earth:",
    "body": "I dare not speak like life, lest Heaven’s fell King                  _140\nShould hear, and link me to some wheel of pain\nMore torturing than the one whereon I roll.\nSubtle thou art and good; and though the Gods\nHear not this voice, yet thou art more than God,\nBeing wise and kind: earnestly hearken now.                          _145",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Earth:",
    "body": "I am the Earth,\nThy mother; she within whose stony veins,\nTo the last fibre of the loftiest tree\nWhose thin leaves trembled in the frozen air,                        _155\nJoy ran, as blood within a living frame,\nWhen thou didst from her bosom, like a cloud\nOf glory, arise, a spirit of keen joy!\nAnd at thy voice her pining sons uplifted\nTheir prostrate brows from the polluting dust,                       _160\nAnd our almighty Tyrant with fierce dread\nGrew pale, until his thunder chained thee here.\nThen, see those million worlds which burn and roll\nAround us: their inhabitants beheld\nMy sphered light wane in wide Heaven; the sea                        _165\nWas lifted by strange tempest, and new fire\nFrom earthquake-rifted mountains of bright snow\nShook its portentous hair beneath Heaven’s frown;\nLightning and Inundation vexed the plains;\nBlue thistles bloomed in cities; foodless toads                      _170\nWithin voluptuous chambers panting crawled:\nWhen Plague had fallen on man, and beast, and worm,\nAnd Famine; and black blight on herb and tree;\nAnd in the corn, and vines, and meadow-grass,\nTeemed ineradicable poisonous weeds                                  _175\nDraining their growth, for my wan breast was dry\nWith grief; and the thin air, my breath, was stained\nWith the contagion of a mother’s hate\nBreathed on her child’s destroyer; ay, I heard\nThy curse, the which, if thou rememberest not,                       _180\nYet my innumerable seas and streams,\nMountains, and caves, and winds, and yon wide air,\nAnd the inarticulate people of the dead,\nPreserve, a treasured spell. We meditate\nIn secret joy and hope those dreadful words,                         _185\nBut dare not speak them.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prometheus:",
    "body": "Venerable mother!\nAll else who live and suffer take from thee\nSome comfort; flowers, and fruits, and happy sounds,\nAnd love, though fleeting; these may not be mine.\nBut mine own words, I pray, deny me not.                             _190",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Earth:",
    "body": "They shall be told. Ere Babylon was dust,\nThe Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,\nMet his own image walking in the garden.\nThat apparition, sole of men, he saw.\nFor know there are two worlds of life and death:                     _195\nOne that which thou beholdest; but the other\nIs underneath the grave, where do inhabit\nThe shadows of all forms that think and live\nTill death unite them and they part no more;\nDreams and the light imaginings of men,                              _200\nAnd all that faith creates or love desires,\nTerrible, strange, sublime and beauteous shapes.\nThere thou art, and dost hang, a writhing shade,\n‘Mid whirlwind-peopled mountains; all the gods\nAre there, and all the powers of nameless worlds,                    _205\nVast, sceptred phantoms; heroes, men, and beasts;\nAnd Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom;\nAnd he, the supreme Tyrant, on his throne\nOf burning gold. Son, one of these shall utter\nThe curse which all remember. Call at will                           _210\nThine own ghost, or the ghost of Jupiter,\nHades or Typhon, or what mightier Gods\nFrom all-prolific Evil, since thy ruin,\nHave sprung, and trampled on my prostrate sons.\nAsk, and they must reply: so the revenge                             _215\nOf the Supreme may sweep through vacant shades,\nAs rainy wind through the abandoned gate\nOf a fallen palace.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ione:",
    "body": "My wings are folded o’er mine ears:\nMy wings are crossed o’er mine eyes:\nYet through their silver shade appears,\nAnd through their lulling plumes arise,                              _225\nA Shape, a throng of sounds;\nMay it be no ill to thee\nO thou of many wounds!\nNear whom, for our sweet sister’s sake,\nEver thus we watch and wake.                                         _230",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "The sound is of whirlwind underground,\nEarthquake, and fire, and mountains cloven;\nThe shape is awful like the sound,\nClothed in dark purple, star-inwoven.\nA sceptre of pale gold                                               _235\nTo stay steps proud, o’er the slow cloud\nHis veined hand doth hold.\nCruel he looks, but calm and strong,\nLike one who does, not suffers wrong.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Phantasm Of Jupiter:",
    "body": "Why have the secret powers of this strange world                     _240\nDriven me, a frail and empty phantom, hither\nOn direst storms? What unaccustomed sounds\nAre hovering on my lips, unlike the voice\nWith which our pallid race hold ghastly talk\nIn darkness? And, proud sufferer, who art thou?                      _245",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Earth:",
    "body": "Listen! And though your echoes must be mute,                         _250\nGrey mountains, and old woods, and haunted springs,\nProphetic caves, and isle-surrounding streams,\nRejoice to hear what yet ye cannot speak.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prometheus:",
    "body": "I see the curse on gestures proud and cold,\nAnd looks of firm defiance, and calm hate,\nAnd such despair as mocks itself with smiles,                        _260\nWritten as on a scroll: yet speak! Oh, speak!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Phantasm:",
    "body": "Fiend, I defy thee! with a calm, fixed mind,\nAll that thou canst inflict I bid thee do;\nFoul Tyrant both of Gods and Humankind,\nOne only being shalt thou not subdue.                                _265\nRain then thy plagues upon me here,\nGhastly disease, and frenzying fear;\nAnd let alternate frost and fire\nEat into me, and be thine ire\nLightning, and cutting hail, and legioned forms                      _270\nOf furies, driving by upon the wounding storms.\n\nAy, do thy worst. Thou art omnipotent.\nO’er all things but thyself I gave thee power,\nAnd my own will. Be thy swift mischiefs sent\nTo blast mankind, from yon ethereal tower.                           _275\nLet thy malignant spirit move\nIn darkness over those I love:\nOn me and mine I imprecate\nThe utmost torture of thy hate;\nAnd thus devote to sleepless agony,                                  _280\nThis undeclining head while thou must reign on high.\n\nBut thou, who art the God and Lord: O, thou,\nWho fillest with thy soul this world of woe,\nTo whom all things of Earth and Heaven do bow\nIn fear and worship: all-prevailing foe!                             _285\nI curse thee! let a sufferer’s curse\nClasp thee, his torturer, like remorse;\nTill thine Infinity shall be\nA robe of envenomed agony;\nAnd thine Omnipotence a crown of pain,                               _290\nTo cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain.\n\nHeap on thy soul, by virtue of this Curse,\nIll deeds, then be thou damned, beholding good;\nBoth infinite as is the universe,\nAnd thou, and thy self-torturing solitude.                           _295\nAn awful image of calm power\nThough now thou sittest, let the hour\nCome, when thou must appear to be\nThat which thou art internally;\nAnd after many a false and fruitless crime                           _300\nScorn track thy lagging fall through boundless space and time.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Earth:",
    "body": "Misery, Oh misery to me,\nThat Jove at length should vanquish thee.\nWail, howl aloud, Land and Sea,\nThe Earth’s rent heart shall answer ye.\nHowl, Spirits of the living and the dead,                            _310\nYour refuge, your defence, lies fallen and vanquished.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ione:",
    "body": "Fear not: ’tis but some passing spasm,\nThe Titan is unvanquished still.                                     _315\nBut see, where through the azure chasm\nOf yon forked and snowy hill\nTrampling the slant winds on high\nWith golden-sandalled feet, that glow\nUnder plumes of purple dye,                                          _320\nLike rose-ensanguined ivory,\nA Shape comes now,\nStretching on high from his right hand\nA serpent-cinctured wand.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ione:",
    "body": "And who are those with hydra tresses\nAnd iron wings that climb the wind,\nWhom the frowning God represses\nLike vapours steaming up behind,\nClanging loud, an endless crowd—                                    _330",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mercury:",
    "body": "Back to your towers of iron,\nAnd gnash, beside the streams of fire and wail,                      _345\nYour foodless teeth. Geryon, arise! and Gorgon,\nChimaera, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of fiends\nWho ministered to Thebes Heaven’s poisoned wine,\nUnnatural love, and more unnatural hate:\nThese shall perform your task.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mercury:",
    "body": "Crouch then in silence.\nAwful Sufferer!\nTo thee unwilling, most unwillingly\nI come, by the great Father’s will driven down,\nTo execute a doom of new revenge.                                    _355\nAlas! I pity thee, and hate myself\nThat I can do no more: aye from thy sight\nReturning, for a season, Heaven seems Hell,\nSo thy worn form pursues me night and day,\nSmiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good,                      _360\nBut vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife\nAgainst the Omnipotent; as yon clear lamps\nThat measure and divide the weary years\nFrom which there is no refuge, long have taught\nAnd long must teach. Even now thy Torturer arms                      _365\nWith the strange might of unimagined pains\nThe powers who scheme slow agonies in Hell,\nAnd my commission is to lead them here,\nOr what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends\nPeople the abyss, and leave them to their task.                      _370\nBe it not so! there is a secret known\nTo thee, and to none else of living things,\nWhich may transfer the sceptre of wide Heaven,\nThe fear of which perplexes the Supreme:\nClothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne                      _375\nIn intercession; bend thy soul in prayer,\nAnd like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane,\nLet the will kneel within thy haughty heart:\nFor benefits and meek submission tame\nThe fiercest and the mightiest.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prometheus:",
    "body": "Evil minds                                                           _380\nChange good to their own nature. I gave all\nHe has; and in return he chains me here\nYears, ages, night and day: whether the Sun\nSplit my parched skin, or in the moony night\nThe crystal-winged snow cling round my hair:                         _385\nWhilst my beloved race is trampled down\nBy his thought-executing ministers.\nSuch is the tyrant’s recompense: ’tis just:\nHe who is evil can receive no good;\nAnd for a world bestowed, or a friend lost,                          _390\nHe can feel hate, fear, shame; not gratitude:\nHe but requites me for his own misdeed.\nKindness to such is keen reproach, which breaks\nWith bitter stings the light sleep of Revenge.\nSubmission, thou dost know I cannot try:                             _395\nFor what submission but that fatal word,\nThe death-seal of mankind’s captivity,\nLike the Sicilian’s hair-suspended sword,\nWhich trembles o’er his crown, would he accept,\nOr could I yield? Which yet I will not yield.                        _400\nLet others flatter Crime, where it sits throned\nIn brief Omnipotence: secure are they:\nFor Justice, when triumphant, will weep down\nPity, not punishment, on her own wrongs,\nToo much avenged by those who err. I wait,                           _405\nEnduring thus, the retributive hour\nWhich since we spake is even nearer now.\nBut hark, the hell-hounds clamour: fear delay:\nBehold! Heaven lowers under thy Father’s frown.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mercury:",
    "body": "Yet pause, and plunge\nInto Eternity, where recorded time,\nEven all that we imagine, age on age,\nSeems but a point, and the reluctant mind\nFlags wearily in its unending flight,                                _420\nTill it sink, dizzy, blind, lost, shelterless;\nPerchance it has not numbered the slow years\nWhich thou must spend in torture, unreprieved?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ione:",
    "body": "Dear sister, close thy plumes over thine eyes\nLest thou behold and die: they come: they come                       _440\nBlackening the birth of day with countless wings,\nAnd hollow underneath, like death.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prometheus:",
    "body": "He whom some dreadful voice invokes is here,\nPrometheus, the chained Titan. Horrible forms,                       _445\nWhat and who are ye? Never yet there came\nPhantasms so foul through monster-teeming Hell\nFrom the all-miscreative brain of Jove;\nWhilst I behold such execrable shapes,\nMethinks I grow like what I contemplate,                             _450\nAnd laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "First Fury:",
    "body": "We are the ministers of pain, and fear,\nAnd disappointment, and mistrust, and hate,\nAnd clinging crime; and as lean dogs pursue\nThrough wood and lake some struck and sobbing fawn,                  _455\nWe track all things that weep, and bleed, and live,\nWhen the great King betrays them to our will.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prometheus:",
    "body": "Oh! many fearful natures in one name,\nI know ye; and these lakes and echoes know\nThe darkness and the clangour of your wings.                         _460\nBut why more hideous than your loathed selves\nGather ye up in legions from the deep?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Second Fury:",
    "body": "The beauty of delight makes lovers glad,                             _465\nGazing on one another: so are we.\nAs from the rose which the pale priestess kneels\nTo gather for her festal crown of flowers\nThe aereal crimson falls, flushing her cheek,\nSo from our victim’s destined agony                                  _470\nThe shade which is our form invests us round,\nElse we are shapeless as our mother Night.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Third Fury:",
    "body": "Thou think’st we will live through thee, one by one,\nLike animal life, and though we can obscure not\nThe soul which burns within, that we will dwell                      _485\nBeside it, like a vain loud multitude\nVexing the self-content of wisest men:\nThat we will be dread thought beneath thy brain,\nAnd foul desire round thine astonished heart,\nAnd blood within thy labyrinthine veins                              _490\nCrawling like agony?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus Of Furies:",
    "body": "From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth,              _495\nWhere the night has its grave and the morning its birth,\nCome, come, come!\nOh, ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth,\nWhen cities sink howling in ruin; and ye\nWho with wingless footsteps trample the sea,                         _500\nAnd close upon Shipwreck and Famine’s track,\nSit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck;\nCome, come, come!\nLeave the bed, low, cold, and red,\nStrewed beneath a nation dead;                                       _505\nLeave the hatred, as in ashes\nFire is left for future burning:\nIt will burst in bloodier flashes\nWhen ye stir it, soon returning:\nLeave the self-contempt implanted                                    _510\nIn young spirits, sense-enchanted,\nMisery’s yet unkindled fuel:\nLeave Hell’s secrets half unchanted\nTo the maniac dreamer; cruel\nMore than ye can be with hate                                        _515\nIs he with fear.\nCome, come, come!\nWe are steaming up from Hell’s wide gate\nAnd we burthen the blast of the atmosphere,\nBut vainly we toil till ye come here.                                _520",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Fury:",
    "body": "Speak not: whisper not:\nI know all that ye would tell,\nBut to speak might break the spell                                   _535\nWhich must bend the Invincible,\nThe stern of thought;\nHe yet defies the deepest power of Hell.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "The pale stars of the morn\nShine on a misery, dire to be borne.                                 _540\nDost thou faint, mighty Titan? We laugh thee to scorn.\nDost thou boast the clear knowledge thou waken’dst for man?\nThen was kindled within him a thirst which outran\nThose perishing waters; a thirst of fierce fever,\nHope, love, doubt, desire, which consume him for ever.               _545\nOne came forth of gentle worth\nSmiling on the sanguine earth;\nHis words outlived him, like swift poison\nWithering up truth, peace, and pity.\nLook! where round the wide horizon                                   _550\nMany a million-peopled city\nVomits smoke in the bright air.\nMark that outcry of despair!\n’Tis his mild and gentle ghost\nWailing for the faith he kindled:                                    _555\nLook again, the flames almost\nTo a glow-worm’s lamp have dwindled:\nThe survivors round the embers\nGather in dread.\nJoy, joy, joy!                                                       _560\nPast ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers,\nAnd the future is dark, and the present is spread\nLike a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 1:",
    "body": "Drops of bloody agony flow\nFrom his white and quivering brow.                                   _565\nGrant a little respite now:\nSee a disenchanted nation\nSprings like day from desolation;\nTo Truth its state is dedicate,\nAnd Freedom leads it forth, her mate;                                _570\nA legioned band of linked brothers\nWhom Love calls children—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 2:",
    "body": "’Tis another’s:\nSee how kindred murder kin:\n’Tis the vintage-time for death and sin:\nBlood, like new wine, bubbles within:                                _575\nTill Despair smothers\nThe struggling world, which slaves and tyrants win.\n\n[ALL THE FURIES VANISH, EXCEPT ONE.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ione:",
    "body": "Hark, sister! what a low yet dreadful groan\nQuite unsuppressed is tearing up the heart\nOf the good Titan, as storms tear the deep,                          _580\nAnd beasts hear the sea moan in inland caves.\nDarest thou observe how the fiends torture him?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "The heaven around, the earth below\nWas peopled with thick shapes of human death,\nAll horrible, and wrought by human hands,\nAnd some appeared the work of human hearts,\nFor men were slowly killed by frowns and smiles:                     _590\nAnd other sights too foul to speak and live\nWere wandering by. Let us not tempt worse fear\nBy looking forth: those groans are grief enough.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prometheus:",
    "body": "Remit the anguish of that lighted stare;\nClose those wan lips; let that thorn-wounded brow\nStream not with blood; it mingles with thy tears!\nFix, fix those tortured orbs in peace and death,                     _600\nSo thy sick throes shake not that crucifix,\nSo those pale fingers play not with thy gore.\nO, horrible! Thy name I will not speak,\nIt hath become a curse. I see, I see\nThe wise, the mild, the lofty, and the just,                         _605\nWhom thy slaves hate for being like to thee,\nSome hunted by foul lies from their heart’s home,\nAn early-chosen, late-lamented home;\nAs hooded ounces cling to the driven hind;\nSome linked to corpses in unwholesome cells:                         _610\nSome—Hear I not the multitude laugh loud?—\nImpaled in lingering fire: and mighty realms\nFloat by my feet, like sea-uprooted isles,\nWhose sons are kneaded down in common blood\nBy the red light of their own burning homes.                         _615",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fury:",
    "body": "In each human heart terror survives\nThe ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear\nAll that they would disdain to think were true:                      _620\nHypocrisy and custom make their minds\nThe fanes of many a worship, now outworn.\nThey dare not devise good for man’s estate,\nAnd yet they know not that they do not dare.\nThe good want power, but to weep barren tears.                       _625\nThe powerful goodness want: worse need for them.\nThe wise want love; and those who love want wisdom;\nAnd all best things are thus confused to ill.\nMany are strong and rich, and would be just,\nBut live among their suffering fellow-men                            _630\nAs if none felt: they know not what they do.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prometheus:",
    "body": "Ah woe!\nAh woe! Alas! pain, pain ever, for ever!                             _635\nI close my tearless eyes, but see more clear\nThy works within my woe-illumed mind,\nThou subtle tyrant! Peace is in the grave.\nThe grave hides all things beautiful and good:\nI am a God and cannot find it there,                                 _640\nNor would I seek it: for, though dread revenge,\nThis is defeat, fierce king, not victory.\nThe sights with which thou torturest gird my soul\nWith new endurance, till the hour arrives\nWhen they shall be no types of things which are.                     _645",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prometheus:",
    "body": "There are two woes:\nTo speak, and to behold; thou spare me one.\nNames are there, Nature’s sacred watchwords, they\nWere borne aloft in bright emblazonry;\nThe nations thronged around, and cried aloud,                        _650\nAs with one voice, Truth, liberty, and love!\nSuddenly fierce confusion fell from heaven\nAmong them: there was strife, deceit, and fear:\nTyrants rushed in, and did divide the spoil.\nThis was the shadow of the truth I saw.                              _655",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Earth:",
    "body": "I felt thy torture, son; with such mixed joy\nAs pain and virtue give. To cheer thy state\nI bid ascend those subtle and fair spirits,\nWhose homes are the dim caves of human thought,\nAnd who inhabit, as birds wing the wind,                             _660\nIts world-surrounding aether: they behold\nBeyond that twilight realm, as in a glass,\nThe future: may they speak comfort to thee!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ione:",
    "body": "And see! more come,\nLike fountain-vapours when the winds are dumb,\nThat climb up the ravine in scattered lines.\nAnd, hark! is it the music of the pines?\nIs it the lake? Is it the waterfall?                                 _670",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus Of Spirits:",
    "body": "From unremembered ages we\nGentle guides and guardians be\nOf heaven-oppressed mortality;\nAnd we breathe, and sicken not,                                      _675\nThe atmosphere of human thought:\nBe it dim, and dank, and gray,\nLike a storm-extinguished day,\nTravelled o’er by dying gleams;\nBe it bright as all between                                          _680\nCloudless skies and windless streams,\nSilent, liquid, and serene;\nAs the birds within the wind,\nAs the fish within the wave,\nAs the thoughts of man’s own mind                                    _685\nFloat through all above the grave;\nWe make there our liquid lair,\nVoyaging cloudlike and unpent\nThrough the boundless element:\nThence we bear the prophecy                                          _690\nWhich begins and ends in thee!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "First Spirit:",
    "body": "On a battle-trumpet’s blast\nI fled hither, fast, fast, fast,                                     _695\n‘Mid the darkness upward cast.\nFrom the dust of creeds outworn,\nFrom the tyrant’s banner torn,\nGathering ‘round me, onward borne,\nThere was mingled many a cry—                                       _700\nFreedom! Hope! Death! Victory!\nTill they faded through the sky;\nAnd one sound, above, around,\nOne sound beneath, around, above,\nWas moving; ’twas the soul of Love;                                  _705\n’Twas the hope, the prophecy,\nWhich begins and ends in thee.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Second Spirit:",
    "body": "A rainbow’s arch stood on the sea,\nWhich rocked beneath, immovably;\nAnd the triumphant storm did flee,                                   _710\nLike a conqueror, swift and proud,\nBetween, with many a captive cloud,\nA shapeless, dark and rapid crowd,\nEach by lightning riven in half:\nI heard the thunder hoarsely laugh:                                  _715\nMighty fleets were strewn like chaff\nAnd spread beneath a hell of death\nO’er the white waters. I alit\nOn a great ship lightning-split,\nAnd speeded hither on the sigh                                       _720\nOf one who gave an enemy\nHis plank, then plunged aside to die.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Third Spirit:",
    "body": "I sate beside a sage’s bed,\nAnd the lamp was burning red\nNear the book where he had fed,                                      _725\nWhen a Dream with plumes of flame,\nTo his pillow hovering came,\nAnd I knew it was the same\nWhich had kindled long ago\nPity, eloquence, and woe;                                            _730\nAnd the world awhile below\nWore the shade, its lustre made.\nIt has borne me here as fleet\nAs Desire’s lightning feet:\nI must ride it back ere morrow,                                      _735\nOr the sage will wake in sorrow.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fourth Spirit:",
    "body": "On a poet’s lips I slept\nDreaming like a love-adept\nIn the sound his breathing kept;\nNor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,                               _740\nBut feeds on the aereal kisses\nOf shapes that haunt thought’s wildernesses.\nHe will watch from dawn to gloom\nThe lake-reflected sun illume\nThe yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,                                    _745\nNor heed nor see, what things they be;\nBut from these create he can\nForms more real than living man,\nNurslings of immortality!\nOne of these awakened me,                                            _750\nAnd I sped to succour thee.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ione:",
    "body": "Behold’st thou not two shapes from the east and west\nCome, as two doves to one beloved nest,\nTwin nurslings of the all-sustaining air\nOn swift still wings glide down the atmosphere?                      _755\nAnd, hark! their sweet sad voices! ’tis despair\nMingled with love and then dissolved in sound.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ione:",
    "body": "Their beauty gives me voice. See how they float\nOn their sustaining wings of skiey grain,                            _760\nOrange and azure deepening into gold:\nTheir soft smiles light the air like a star’s fire.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fifth Spirit:",
    "body": "As over wide dominions\nI sped, like some swift cloud that wings the wide air’s wildernesses,\nThat planet-crested shape swept by on lightning-braided pinions,     _765\nScattering the liquid joy of life from his ambrosial tresses:\nHis footsteps paved the world with light; but as I passed ’twas fading,\nAnd hollow Ruin yawned behind: great sages bound in madness,\nAnd headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, unupbraiding,\nGleamed in the night. I wandered o’er, till thou, O King of sadness, _770\nTurned by thy smile the worst I saw to recollected gladness.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Sixth Spirit:",
    "body": "Ah, sister! Desolation is a delicate thing:\nIt walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air,\nBut treads with lulling footstep, and fans with silent wing\nThe tender hopes which in their hearts the best and gentlest bear;   _775\nWho, soothed to false repose by the fanning plumes above\nAnd the music-stirring motion of its soft and busy feet,\nDream visions of aereal joy, and call the monster, Love,\nAnd wake, and find the shadow Pain, as he whom now we greet.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "Though Ruin now Love’s shadow be,                                    _780\nFollowing him, destroyingly,\nOn Death’s white and winged steed,\nWhich the fleetest cannot flee,\nTrampling down both flower and weed,\nMan and beast, and foul and fair,                                    _785\nLike a tempest through the air;\nThou shalt quell this horseman grim,\nWoundless though in heart or limb.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "In the atmosphere we breathe,                                        _790\nAs buds grow red when the snow-storms flee,\nFrom Spring gathering up beneath,\nWhose mild winds shake the elder-brake,\nAnd the wandering herdsmen know\nThat the white-thorn soon will blow:                                 _795\nWisdom, Justice, Love, and Peace,\nWhen they struggle to increase,\nAre to us as soft winds be\nTo shepherd boys, the prophecy\nWhich begins and ends in thee.                                       _800",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "Only a sense\nRemains of them, like the omnipotence\nOf music, when the inspired voice and lute\nLanguish, ere yet the responses are mute,\nWhich through the deep and labyrinthine soul,                        _805\nLike echoes through long caverns, wind and roll.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prometheus:",
    "body": "How fair these airborn shapes! and yet I feel\nMost vain all hope but love; and thou art far,\nAsia! who, when my being overflowed,\nWert like a golden chalice to bright wine                            _810\nWhich else had sunk into the thirsty dust.\nAll things are still: alas! how heavily\nThis quiet morning weighs upon my heart;\nThough I should dream I could even sleep with grief\nIf slumber were denied not. I would fain                             _815\nBe what it is my destiny to be,\nThe saviour and the strength of suffering man,\nOr sink into the original gulf of things:\nThere is no agony, and no solace left;\nEarth can console, Heaven can torment no more.                       _820",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "Deeply in truth; but the eastern star looks white,                   _825\nAnd Asia waits in that far Indian vale,\nThe scene of her sad exile; rugged once\nAnd desolate and frozen, like this ravine;\nBut now invested with fair flowers and herbs,\nAnd haunted by sweet airs and sounds, which flow                     _830\nAmong the woods and waters, from the aether\nOf her transforming presence, which would fade\nIf it were mingled not with thine. Farewell!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Asia:",
    "body": "From all the blasts of heaven thou hast descended:\nYes, like a spirit, like a thought, which makes\nUnwonted tears throng to the horny eyes,\nAnd beatings haunt the desolated heart,\nWhich should have learnt repose: thou hast descended                 _5\nCradled in tempests; thou dost wake, O Spring!\nO child of many winds! As suddenly\nThou comest as the memory of a dream,\nWhich now is sad because it hath been sweet;\nLike genius, or like joy which riseth up                             _10\nAs from the earth, clothing with golden clouds\nThe desert of our life.\nThis is the season, this the day, the hour;\nAt sunrise thou shouldst come, sweet sister mine,\nToo long desired, too long delaying, come!                           _15\nHow like death-worms the wingless moments crawl!\nThe point of one white star is quivering still\nDeep in the orange light of widening morn\nBeyond the purple mountains: through a chasm\nOf wind-divided mist the darker lake                                 _20\nReflects it: now it wanes: it gleams again\nAs the waves fade, and as the burning threads\nOf woven cloud unravel in pale air:\n’Tis lost! and through yon peaks of cloud-like snow\nThe roseate sunlight quivers: hear I not                             _25\nThe Aeolian music of her sea-green plumes\nWinnowing the crimson dawn?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea [Enters]:",
    "body": "I feel, I see\nThose eyes which burn through smiles that fade in tears,\nLike stars half quenched in mists of silver dew.\nBeloved and most beautiful, who wearest                              _30\nThe shadow of that soul by which I live,\nHow late thou art! the sphered sun had climbed\nThe sea; my heart was sick with hope, before\nThe printless air felt thy belated plumes.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "Pardon, great Sister! but my wings were faint                        _35\nWith the delight of a remembered dream,\nAs are the noontide plumes of summer winds\nSatiate with sweet flowers. I was wont to sleep\nPeacefully, and awake refreshed and calm\nBefore the sacred Titan’s fall, and thy                              _40\nUnhappy love, had made, through use and pity,\nBoth love and woe familiar to my heart\nAs they had grown to thine: erewhile I slept\nUnder the glaucous caverns of old Ocean\nWithin dim bowers of green and purple moss,                          _45\nOur young Ione’s soft and milky arms\nLocked then, as now, behind my dark, moist hair,\nWhile my shut eyes and cheek were pressed within\nThe folded depth of her life-breathing bosom:\nBut not as now, since I am made the wind                             _50\nWhich fails beneath the music that I bear\nOf thy most wordless converse; since dissolved\nInto the sense with which love talks, my rest\nWas troubled and yet sweet; my waking hours\nToo full of care and pain.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "As I have said\nWith our sea-sister at his feet I slept.\nThe mountain mists, condensing at our voice\nUnder the moon, had spread their snowy flakes,\nFrom the keen ice shielding our linked sleep.                        _60\nThen two dreams came. One, I remember not.\nBut in the other his pale wound-worn limbs\nFell from Prometheus, and the azure night\nGrew radiant with the glory of that form\nWhich lives unchanged within, and his voice fell                     _65\nLike music which makes giddy the dim brain,\nFaint with intoxication of keen joy:\n‘Sister of her whose footsteps pave the world\nWith loveliness—more fair than aught but her,\nWhose shadow thou art—lift thine eyes on me.’                       _70\nI lifted them: the overpowering light\nOf that immortal shape was shadowed o’er\nBy love; which, from his soft and flowing limbs,\nAnd passion-parted lips, and keen, faint eyes,\nSteamed forth like vaporous fire; an atmosphere                      _75\nWhich wrapped me in its all-dissolving power,\nAs the warm ether of the morning sun\nWraps ere it drinks some cloud of wandering dew.\nI saw not, heard not, moved not, only felt\nHis presence flow and mingle through my blood                        _80\nTill it became his life, and his grew mine,\nAnd I was thus absorbed, until it passed,\nAnd like the vapours when the sun sinks down,\nGathering again in drops upon the pines,\nAnd tremulous as they, in the deep night                             _85\nMy being was condensed; and as the rays\nOf thought were slowly gathered, I could hear\nHis voice, whose accents lingered ere they died\nLike footsteps of weak melody: thy name\nAmong the many sounds alone I heard                                  _90\nOf what might be articulate; though still\nI listened through the night when sound was none.\nIone wakened then, and said to me:\n‘Canst thou divine what troubles me to-night?\nI always knew, what I desired before,                                _95\nNor ever found delight to wish in vain.\nBut now I cannot tell thee what I seek;\nI know not; something sweet, since it is sweet\nEven to desire; it is thy sport, false sister;\nThou hast discovered some enchantment old,                           _100\nWhose spells have stolen my spirit as I slept\nAnd mingled it with thine: for when just now\nWe kissed, I felt within thy parted lips\nThe sweet air that sustained me, and the warmth\nOf the life-blood, for loss of which I faint,                        _105\nQuivered between our intertwining arms.’\nI answered not, for the Eastern star grew pale,\nBut fled to thee.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Asia:",
    "body": "Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, boundless heaven\nContracted to two circles underneath                                 _115\nTheir long, fine lashes; dark, far, measureless,\nOrb within orb, and line through line inwoven.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Asia:",
    "body": "There is a change: beyond their inmost depth\nI see a shade, a shape: ’tis He, arrayed                             _120\nIn the soft light of his own smiles, which spread\nLike radiance from the cloud-surrounded moon.\nPrometheus, it is thine! depart not yet!\nSay not those smiles that we shall meet again\nWithin that bright pavilion which their beams                        _125\nShall build o’er the waste world? The dream is told.\nWhat shape is that between us? Its rude hair\nRoughens the wind that lifts it, its regard\nIs wild and quick, yet ’tis a thing of air,\nFor through its gray robe gleams the golden dew                      _130\nWhose stars the noon has quenched not.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "It passes now into my mind. Methought\nAs we sate here, the flower-infolding buds\nBurst on yon lightning-blasted almond tree,                          _135\nWhen swift from the white Scythian wilderness\nA wind swept forth wrinkling the Earth with frost:\nI looked, and all the blossoms were blown down;\nBut on each leaf was stamped, as the blue bells\nOf Hyacinth tell Apollo’s written grief,                             _140\nO, FOLLOW, FOLLOW!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Asia:",
    "body": "As you speak, your words\nFill, pause by pause, my own forgotten sleep\nWith shapes. Methought among these lawns together\nWe wandered, underneath the young gray dawn,\nAnd multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds                          _145\nWere wandering in thick flocks along the mountains\nShepherded by the slow, unwilling wind;\nAnd the white dew on the new-bladed grass,\nJust piercing the dark earth, hung silently;\nAnd there was more which I remember not:                             _150\nBut on the shadows of the morning clouds,\nAthwart the purple mountain slope, was written\nFOLLOW, O, FOLLOW! as they vanished by;\nAnd on each herb, from which Heaven’s dew had fallen,\nThe like was stamped, as with a withering fire;                      _155\nA wind arose among the pines; it shook\nThe clinging music from their boughs, and then\nLow, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts,\nWere heard: O, FOLLOW, FOLLOW, FOLLOW ME!\nAnd then I said, ‘Panthea, look on me.’                              _160\nBut in the depth of those beloved eyes\nStill I saw, FOLLOW, FOLLOW!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Echoes:",
    "body": "Oh, follow, follow,\nAs our voice recedeth\nThrough the caverns hollow,                                          _175\nWhere the forest spreadeth;\n[MORE DISTANT.]\nOh, follow, follow!\nThrough the caverns hollow,\nAs the song floats thou pursue,\nWhere the wild bee never flew,                                       _180\nThrough the noontide darkness deep,\nBy the odour-breathing sleep\nOf faint night-flowers, and the waves\nAt the fountain-lighted caves,\nWhile our music, wild and sweet,                                     _185\nMocks thy gently falling feet,\nChild of Ocean!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Echoes:",
    "body": "Oh, follow, follow!\nThrough the caverns hollow,\nAs the song floats thou pursue,\nBy the woodland noontide dew;\nBy the forests, lakes, and fountains,                                _200\nThrough the many-folded mountains;\nTo the rents, and gulfs, and chasms,\nWhere the Earth reposed from spasms,\nOn the day when He and thou\nParted, to commingle now;                                            _205\nChild of Ocean!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Asia:",
    "body": "Come, sweet Panthea, link thy hand in mine,\nAnd follow, ere the voices fade away.\n\nSCENE 2.2:\nA FOREST, INTERMINGLED WITH ROCKS AND CAVERNS.\nASIA AND PANTHEA PASS INTO IT.\nTWO YOUNG FAUNS ARE SITTING ON A ROCK LISTENING.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 1 Of Spirits:",
    "body": "The path through which that lovely twain\nHave passed, by cedar, pine, and yew,\nAnd each dark tree that ever grew,\nIs curtained out from Heaven’s wide blue;\nNor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain,                               _5\nCan pierce its interwoven bowers,\nNor aught, save where some cloud of dew,\nDrifted along the earth-creeping breeze,\nBetween the trunks of the hoar trees,\nHangs each a pearl in the pale flowers                               _10\nOf the green laurel, blown anew,\nAnd bends, and then fades silently,\nOne frail and fair anemone:\nOr when some star of many a one\nThat climbs and wanders through steep night,                         _15\nHas found the cleft through which alone\nBeams fall from high those depths upon\nEre it is borne away, away,\nBy the swift Heavens that cannot stay,\nIt scatters drops of golden light,                                   _20\nLike lines of rain that ne’er unite:\nAnd the gloom divine is all around,\nAnd underneath is the mossy ground.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 2:",
    "body": "There the voluptuous nightingales,\nAre awake through all the broad noonday.                             _25\nWhen one with bliss or sadness fails,\nAnd through the windless ivy-boughs,\nSick with sweet love, droops dying away\nOn its mate’s music-panting bosom;\nAnother from the swinging blossom,                                   _30\nWatching to catch the languid close\nOf the last strain, then lifts on high\nThe wings of the weak melody,\nTill some new strain of feeling bear\nThe song, and all the woods are mute;                                _35\nWhen there is heard through the dim air\nThe rush of wings, and rising there\nLike many a lake-surrounded flute,\nSounds overflow the listener’s brain\nSo sweet, that joy is almost pain.                                   _40",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 1:",
    "body": "There those enchanted eddies play\nOf echoes, music-tongued, which draw,\nBy Demogorgon’s mighty law,\nWith melting rapture, or sweet awe,\nAll spirits on that secret way;                                      _45\nAs inland boats are driven to Ocean\nDown streams made strong with mountain-thaw:\nAnd first there comes a gentle sound\nTo those in talk or slumber bound,\nAnd wakes the destined soft emotion,—                               _50\nAttracts, impels them; those who saw\nSay from the breathing earth behind\nThere steams a plume-uplifting wind\nWhich drives them on their path, while they\nBelieve their own swift wings and feet                               _55\nThe sweet desires within obey:\nAnd so they float upon their way,\nUntil, still sweet, but loud and strong,\nThe storm of sound is driven along,\nSucked up and hurrying: as they fleet                                _60\nBehind, its gathering billows meet\nAnd to the fatal mountain bear\nLike clouds amid the yielding air.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "First Faun:",
    "body": "Canst thou imagine where those spirits live\nWhich make such delicate music in the woods?                         _65\nWe haunt within the least frequented caves\nAnd closest coverts, and we know these wilds,\nYet never meet them, though we hear them oft:\nWhere may they hide themselves?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Second Faun:",
    "body": "’Tis hard to tell;\nI have heard those more skilled in spirits say,                      _70\nThe bubbles, which the enchantment of the sun\nSucks from the pale faint water-flowers that pave\nThe oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools,\nAre the pavilions where such dwell and float\nUnder the green and golden atmosphere                                _75\nWhich noontide kindles through the woven leaves;\nAnd when these burst, and the thin fiery air,\nThe which they breathed within those lucent domes,\nAscends to flow like meteors through the night,\nThey ride on them, and rein their headlong speed,                    _80\nAnd bow their burning crests, and glide in fire\nUnder the waters of the earth again.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "First Faun:",
    "body": "If such live thus, have others other lives,\nUnder pink blossoms or within the bells\nOf meadow flowers, or folded violets deep,                           _85\nOr on their dying odours, when they die,\nOr in the sunlight of the sphered dew?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Second Faun:",
    "body": "Ay, many more which we may well divine.\nBut should we stay to speak, noontide would come,\nAnd thwart Silenus find his goats undrawn,                           _90\nAnd grudge to sing those wise and lovely songs\nOf Fate, and Chance, and God, and Chaos old,\nAnd Love, and the chained Titan’s woful doom,\nAnd how he shall be loosed, and make the earth\nOne brotherhood: delightful strains which cheer                      _95\nOur solitary twilights, and which charm\nTo silence the unenvying nightingales.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "Hither the sound has borne us—to the realm\nOf Demogorgon, and the mighty portal,\nLike a volcano’s meteor-breathing chasm,\nWhence the oracular vapour is hurled up\nWhich lonely men drink wandering in their youth,                     _5\nAnd call truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy,\nThat maddening wine of life, whose dregs they drain\nTo deep intoxication; and uplift,\nLike Maenads who cry loud, Evoe! Evoe!\nThe voice which is contagion to the world.                           _10",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Asia:",
    "body": "Fit throne for such a Power! Magnificent!\nHow glorious art thou, Earth! And if thou be\nThe shadow of some spirit lovelier still,\nThough evil stain its work, and it should be\nLike its creation, weak yet beautiful,                               _15\nI could fall down and worship that and thee.\nEven now my heart adoreth: Wonderful!\nLook, sister, ere the vapour dim thy brain:\nBeneath is a wide plain of billowy mist,\nAs a lake, paving in the morning sky,                                _20\nWith azure waves which burst in silver light,\nSome Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on\nUnder the curdling winds, and islanding\nThe peak whereon we stand, midway, around,\nEncinctured by the dark and blooming forests,                        _25\nDim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumined caves,\nAnd wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist;\nAnd far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains\nFrom icy spires of sun-like radiance fling\nThe dawn, as lifted Ocean’s dazzling spray,                          _30\nFrom some Atlantic islet scattered up,\nSpangles the wind with lamp-like water-drops.\nThe vale is girdled with their walls, a howl\nOf cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines,\nSatiates the listening wind, continuous, vast,                       _35\nAwful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow!\nThe sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass,\nThrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there\nFlake after flake, in heaven-defying minds\nAs thought by thought is piled, till some great truth                _40\nIs loosened, and the nations echo round,\nShaken to their roots, as do the mountains now.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "Look how the gusty sea of mist is breaking\nIn crimson foam, even at our feet! it rises\nAs Ocean at the enchantment of the moon                              _45\nRound foodless men wrecked on some oozy isle.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Asia:",
    "body": "The fragments of the cloud are scattered up;\nThe wind that lifts them disentwines my hair;\nIts billows now sweep o’er mine eyes; my brain\nGrows dizzy; see’st thou shapes within the mist?                     _50",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song Of Spirits:",
    "body": "To the deep, to the deep,\nDown, down!                                                          _55\nThrough the shade of sleep,\nThrough the cloudy strife\nOf Death and of Life;\nThrough the veil and the bar\nOf things which seem and are                                         _60\nEven to the steps of the remotest throne,\nDown, down!\n\nWhile the sound whirls around,\nDown, down!\nAs the fawn draws the hound,                                         _65\nAs the lightning the vapour,\nAs a weak moth the taper;\nDeath, despair; love, sorrow;\nTime both; to-day, to-morrow;\nAs steel obeys the spirit of the stone,                              _70\nDown, down!\n\nThrough the gray, void abysm,\nDown, down!\nWhere the air is no prism,\nAnd the moon and stars are not,                                      _75\nAnd the cavern-crags wear not\nThe radiance of Heaven,\nNor the gloom to Earth given,\nWhere there is One pervading, One alone,\nDown, down!                                                          _80\n\nIn the depth of the deep,\nDown, down!\nLike veiled lightning asleep,\nLike the spark nursed in embers,\nThe last look Love remembers,                                        _85\nLike a diamond, which shines\nOn the dark wealth of mines,\nA spell is treasured but for thee alone.\nDown, down!\n\nWe have bound thee, we guide thee;                                   _90\nDown, down!\nWith the bright form beside thee;\nResist not the weakness,\nSuch strength is in meekness\nThat the Eternal, the Immortal,                                      _95\nMust unloose through life’s portal\nThe snake-like Doom coiled underneath his throne\nBy that alone.\n\nSCENE 2.4:\nTHE CAVE OF DEMOGORGON.\nASIA AND PANTHEA.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "I see a mighty darkness\nFilling the seat of power, and rays of gloom\nDart round, as light from the meridian sun.\n—Ungazed upon and shapeless; neither limb,                          _5\nNor form, nor outline; yet we feel it is\nA living Spirit.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Asia:",
    "body": "Who made that sense which, when the winds of Spring\nIn rarest visitation, or the voice\nOf one beloved heard in youth alone,\nFills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim                    _15\nThe radiant looks of unbewailing flowers,\nAnd leaves this peopled earth a solitude\nWhen it returns no more?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Asia:",
    "body": "And who made terror, madness, crime, remorse,\nWhich from the links of the great chain of things,                   _20\nTo every thought within the mind of man\nSway and drag heavily, and each one reels\nUnder the load towards the pit of death;\nAbandoned hope, and love that turns to hate;\nAnd self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood;                     _25\nPain, whose unheeded and familiar speech\nIs howling, and keen shrieks, day after day;\nAnd Hell, or the sharp fear of Hell?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Asia:",
    "body": "Who reigns? There was the Heaven and Earth at first,\nAnd Light and Love; then Saturn, from whose throne\nTime fell, an envious shadow: such the state\nOf the earth’s primal spirits beneath his sway,                      _35\nAs the calm joy of flowers and living leaves\nBefore the wind or sun has withered them\nAnd semivital worms; but he refused\nThe birthright of their being, knowledge, power,\nThe skill which wields the elements, the thought                     _40\nWhich pierces this dim universe like light,\nSelf-empire, and the majesty of love;\nFor thirst of which they fainted. Then Prometheus\nGave wisdom, which is strength, to Jupiter,\nAnd with this law alone, ‘Let man be free,’                          _45\nClothed him with the dominion of wide Heaven.\nTo know nor faith, nor love, nor law; to be\nOmnipotent but friendless is to reign;\nAnd Jove now reigned; for on the race of man\nFirst famine, and then toil, and then disease,                       _50\nStrife, wounds, and ghastly death unseen before,\nFell; and the unseasonable seasons drove\nWith alternating shafts of frost and fire,\nTheir shelterless, pale tribes to mountain caves:\nAnd in their desert hearts fierce wants he sent,                     _55\nAnd mad disquietudes, and shadows idle\nOf unreal good, which levied mutual war,\nSo ruining the lair wherein they raged.\nPrometheus saw, and waked the legioned hopes\nWhich sleep within folded Elysian flowers,                           _60\nNepenthe, Moly, Amaranth, fadeless blooms,\nThat they might hide with thin and rainbow wings\nThe shape of Death; and Love he sent to bind\nThe disunited tendrils of that vine\nWhich bears the wine of life, the human heart;                       _65\nAnd he tamed fire which, like some beast of prey,\nMost terrible, but lovely, played beneath\nThe frown of man; and tortured to his will\nIron and gold, the slaves and signs of power,\nAnd gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms                         _70\nHidden beneath the mountains and the waves.\nHe gave man speech, and speech created thought,\nWhich is the measure of the universe;\nAnd Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven,\nWhich shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind                   _75\nPoured itself forth in all-prophetic song;\nAnd music lifted up the listening spirit\nUntil it walked, exempt from mortal care,\nGodlike, o’er the clear billows of sweet sound;\nAnd human hands first mimicked and then mocked,                      _80\nWith moulded limbs more lovely than its own,\nThe human form, till marble grew divine;\nAnd mothers, gazing, drank the love men see\nReflected in their race, behold, and perish.\nHe told the hidden power of herbs and springs,                       _85\nAnd Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep.\nHe taught the implicated orbits woven\nOf the wide-wandering stars; and how the sun\nChanges his lair, and by what secret spell\nThe pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye                     _90\nGazes not on the interlunar sea:\nHe taught to rule, as life directs the limbs,\nThe tempest-winged chariots of the Ocean,\nAnd the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then\nWere built, and through their snow-like columns flowed               _95\nThe warm winds, and the azure ether shone,\nAnd the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen.\nSuch, the alleviations of his state,\nPrometheus gave to man, for which he hangs\nWithering in destined pain: but who rains down                       _100\nEvil, the immedicable plague, which, while\nMan looks on his creation like a God\nAnd sees that it is glorious, drives him on,\nThe wreck of his own will, the scorn of earth,\nThe outcast, the abandoned, the alone?                               _105\nNot Jove: while yet his frown shook Heaven ay, when\nHis adversary from adamantine chains\nCursed him, he trembled like a slave. Declare\nWho is his master? Is he too a slave?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Demogorgon:",
    "body": "If the abysm\nCould vomit forth its secrets...But a voice                          _115\nIs wanting, the deep truth is imageless;\nFor what would it avail to bid thee gaze\nOn the revolving world? What to bid speak\nFate, Time, Occasion, Chance and Change? To these\nAll things are subject but eternal Love.                             _120",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Asia:",
    "body": "So much I asked before, and my heart gave\nThe response thou hast given; and of such truths\nEach to itself must be the oracle.\nOne more demand; and do thou answer me\nAs my own soul would answer, did it know                             _125\nThat which I ask. Prometheus shall arise\nHenceforth the sun of this rejoicing world:\nWhen shall the destined hour arrive?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Asia:",
    "body": "The rocks are cloven, and through the purple night\nI see cars drawn by rainbow-winged steeds                            _130\nWhich trample the dim winds: in each there stands\nA wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight.\nSome look behind, as fiends pursued them there,\nAnd yet I see no shapes but the keen stars:\nOthers, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink                     _135\nWith eager lips the wind of their own speed,\nAs if the thing they loved fled on before,\nAnd now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks\nStream like a comet’s flashing hair; they all\nSweep onward.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "That terrible shadow floats                                          _150\nUp from its throne, as may the lurid smoke\nOf earthquake-ruined cities o’er the sea.\nLo! it ascends the car; the coursers fly\nTerrified: watch its path among the stars\nBlackening the night!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "See, near the verge, another chariot stays;\nAn ivory shell inlaid with crimson fire,\nWhich comes and goes within its sculptured rim\nOf delicate strange tracery; the young spirit\nThat guides it has the dove-like eyes of hope;                       _160\nHow its soft smiles attract the soul! as light\nLures winged insects through the lampless air.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Spirit:",
    "body": "My coursers are fed with the lightning,\nThey drink of the whirlwind’s stream,\nAnd when the red morning is bright’ning                              _165\nThey bathe in the fresh sunbeam;\nThey have strength for their swiftness I deem;\nThen ascend with me, daughter of Ocean.\nI desire: and their speed makes night kindle;\nI fear: they outstrip the Typhoon;                                   _170\nEre the cloud piled on Atlas can dwindle\nWe encircle the earth and the moon:\nWe shall rest from long labours at noon:\nThen ascend with me, daughter of Ocean.\n\nSCENE 2.5:\nTHE CAR PAUSES WITHIN A CLOUD ON THE TOP OF A SNOWY MOUNTAIN.\nASIA, PANTHEA, AND THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUR.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Spirit:",
    "body": "On the brink of the night and the morning\nMy coursers are wont to respire;\nBut the Earth has just whispered a warning\nThat their flight must be swifter than fire:\nThey shall drink the hot speed of desire!                            _5",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Spirit:",
    "body": "The sun will rise not until noon. Apollo                             _10\nIs held in heaven by wonder; and the light\nWhich fills this vapour, as the aereal hue\nOf fountain-gazing roses fills the water,\nFlows from thy mighty sister.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "How thou art changed! I dare not look on thee;\nI feel but see thee not. I scarce endure\nThe radiance of thy beauty. Some good change\nIs working in the elements, which suffer\nThy presence thus unveiled. The Nereids tell                         _20\nThat on the day when the clear hyaline\nWas cloven at thine uprise, and thou didst stand\nWithin a veined shell, which floated on\nOver the calm floor of the crystal sea,\nAmong the Aegean isles, and by the shores                            _25\nWhich bear thy name; love, like the atmosphere\nOf the sun’s fire filling the living world,\nBurst from thee, and illumined earth and heaven\nAnd the deep ocean and the sunless caves\nAnd all that dwells within them; till grief cast                     _30\nEclipse upon the soul from which it came:\nSuch art thou now; nor is it I alone,\nThy sister, thy companion, thine own chosen one,\nBut the whole world which seeks thy sympathy.\nHearest thou not sounds i’ the air which speak the love              _35\nOf all articulate beings? Feelest thou not\nThe inanimate winds enamoured of thee? List!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Asia:",
    "body": "Thy words are sweeter than aught else but his\nWhose echoes they are; yet all love is sweet,\nGiven or returned. Common as light is love,                          _40\nAnd its familiar voice wearies not ever.\nLike the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air,\nIt makes the reptile equal to the God:\nThey who inspire it most are fortunate,\nAs I am now; but those who feel it most                              _45\nAre happier still, after long sufferings,\nAs I shall soon become.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Voice In The Air, Singing:",
    "body": "Life of Life! thy lips enkindle\nWith their love the breath between them;\nAnd thy smiles before they dwindle                                   _50\nMake the cold air fire; then screen them\nIn those looks, where whoso gazes\nFaints, entangled in their mazes.\n\nChild of Light! thy limbs are burning\nThrough the vest which seems to hide them;                           _55\nAs the radiant lines of morning\nThrough the clouds ere they divide them;\nAnd this atmosphere divinest\nShrouds thee wheresoe’er thou shinest.\n\nFair are others; none beholds thee,                                  _60\nBut thy voice sounds low and tender\nLike the fairest, for it folds thee\nFrom the sight, that liquid splendour,\nAnd all feel, yet see thee never,\nAs I feel now, lost for ever!                                        _65\n\nLamp of Earth! where’er thou movest\nIts dim shapes are clad with brightness,\nAnd the souls of whom thou lovest\nWalk upon the winds with lightness,\nTill they fail, as I am failing,                                     _70\nDizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Asia:",
    "body": "My soul is an enchanted boat,\nWhich, like a sleeping swan, doth float\nUpon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;\nAnd thine doth like an angel sit                                     _75\nBeside a helm conducting it,\nWhilst all the winds with melody are ringing.\nIt seems to float ever, for ever,\nUpon that many-winding river,\nBetween mountains, woods, abysses,                                   _80\nA paradise of wildernesses!\nTill, like one in slumber bound,\nBorne to the ocean, I float down, around,\nInto a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound:\n\nMeanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions                               _85\nIn music’s most serene dominions;\nCatching the winds that fan that happy heaven.\nAnd we sail on, away, afar,\nWithout a course, without a star,\nBut, by the instinct of sweet music driven;                          _90\nTill through Elysian garden islets\nBy thee most beautiful of pilots,\nWhere never mortal pinnace glided,\nThe boat of my desire is guided:\nRealms where the air we breathe is love,                             _95\nWhich in the winds on the waves doth move,\nHarmonizing this earth with what we feel above.\n\nWe have passed Age’s icy caves,\nAnd Manhood’s dark and tossing waves,\nAnd Youth’s smooth ocean, smiling to betray:                         _100\nBeyond the glassy gulfs we flee\nOf shadow-peopled Infancy,\nThrough Death and Birth, to a diviner day;\nA paradise of vaulted bowers,\nLit by downward-gazing flowers,                                      _105\nAnd watery paths that wind between\nWildernesses calm and green,\nPeopled by shapes too bright to see,\nAnd rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee;\nWhich walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously!                      _110",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Jupiter:",
    "body": "Ye congregated powers of heaven, who share\nThe glory and the strength of him ye serve,\nRejoice! henceforth I am omnipotent.\nAll else had been subdued to me; alone\nThe soul of man, like unextinguished fire,                           _5\nYet burns towards heaven with fierce reproach, and doubt,\nAnd lamentation, and reluctant prayer,\nHurling up insurrection, which might make\nOur antique empire insecure, though built\nOn eldest faith, and hell’s coeval, fear;                            _10\nAnd though my curses through the pendulous air,\nLike snow on herbless peaks, fall flake by flake,\nAnd cling to it; though under my wrath’s night\nIt climbs the crags of life, step after step,\nWhich wound it, as ice wounds unsandalled feet,                      _15\nIt yet remains supreme o’er misery,\nAspiring, unrepressed, yet soon to fall:\nEven now have I begotten a strange wonder,\nThat fatal child, the terror of the earth,\nWho waits but till the destined hour arrive,                         _20\nBearing from Demogorgon’s vacant throne\nThe dreadful might of ever-living limbs\nWhich clothed that awful spirit unbeheld,\nTo redescend, and trample out the spark.\nPour forth heaven’s wine, Idaean Ganymede,                           _25\nAnd let it fill the Daedal cups like fire,\nAnd from the flower-inwoven soil divine\nYe all-triumphant harmonies arise,\nAs dew from earth under the twilight stars:\nDrink! be the nectar circling through your veins                     _30\nThe soul of joy, ye ever-living Gods,\nTill exultation burst in one wide voice\nLike music from Elysian winds.\nAnd thou\nAscend beside me, veiled in the light\nOf the desire which makes thee one with me,                          _35\nThetis, bright image of eternity!\nWhen thou didst cry, ‘Insufferable might!\nGod! Spare me! I sustain not the quick flames,\nThe penetrating presence; all my being,\nLike him whom the Numidian seps did thaw                             _40\nInto a dew with poison, is dissolved,\nSinking through its foundations:’ even then\nTwo mighty spirits, mingling, made a third\nMightier than either, which, unbodied now,\nBetween us floats, felt, although unbeheld,                          _45\nWaiting the incarnation, which ascends,\n(Hear ye the thunder of the fiery wheels\nGriding the winds?) from Demogorgon’s throne.\nVictory! victory! Feel’st thou not, O world,\nThe earthquake of his chariot thundering up                          _50\nOlympus?\n[THE CAR OF THE HOUR ARRIVES.\nDEMOGORGON DESCENDS, AND MOVES TOWARDS THE THRONE OF JUPITER.]\nAwful shape, what art thou? Speak!\n\n_5 like unextinguished B, edition 1839; like an unextinguished 1820.\n_13 night B, edition 1839; might 1820.\n_20 destined B, edition 1839; distant 1820.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Demogorgon:",
    "body": "Eternity. Demand no direr name.\nDescend, and follow me down the abyss.\nI am thy child, as thou wert Saturn’s child;\nMightier than thee: and we must dwell together                       _55\nHenceforth in darkness. Lift thy lightnings not.\nThe tyranny of heaven none may retain,\nOr reassume, or hold, succeeding thee:\nYet if thou wilt, as ’tis the destiny\nOf trodden worms to writhe till they are dead,                       _60\nPut forth thy might.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Jupiter:",
    "body": "Detested prodigy!\nEven thus beneath the deep Titanian prisons\nI trample thee! thou lingerest?\nMercy! mercy!\nNo pity, no release, no respite! Oh,\nThat thou wouldst make mine enemy my judge,                          _65\nEven where he hangs, seared by my long revenge,\nOn Caucasus! he would not doom me thus.\nGentle, and just, and dreadless, is he not\nThe monarch of the world? What then art thou?\nNo refuge! no appeal!\nSink with me then,                                                   _70\nWe two will sink on the wide waves of ruin,\nEven as a vulture and a snake outspent\nDrop, twisted in inextricable fight,\nInto a shoreless sea. Let hell unlock\nIts mounded oceans of tempestuous fire,                              _75\nAnd whelm on them into the bottomless void\nThis desolated world, and thee, and me,\nThe conqueror and the conquered, and the wreck\nOf that for which they combated.\nAi, Ai!\nThe elements obey me not. I sink                                     _80\nDizzily down, ever, for ever, down.\nAnd, like a cloud, mine enemy above\nDarkens my fall with victory! Ai, Ai!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Apollo:",
    "body": "Ay, when the strife was ended which made dim\nThe orb I rule, and shook the solid stars,\nThe terrors of his eye illumined heaven\nWith sanguine light, through the thick ragged skirts                 _5\nOf the victorious darkness, as he fell:\nLike the last glare of day’s red agony,\nWhich, from a rent among the fiery clouds,\nBurns far along the tempest-wrinkled deep.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Apollo:",
    "body": "An eagle so caught in some bursting cloud\nOn Caucasus, his thunder-baffled wings\nEntangled in the whirlwind, and his eyes\nWhich gazed on the undazzling sun, now blinded\nBy the white lightning, while the ponderous hail                     _15\nBeats on his struggling form, which sinks at length\nProne, and the aereal ice clings over it.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ocean:",
    "body": "Henceforth the fields of heaven-reflecting sea\nWhich are my realm, will heave, unstained with blood,\nBeneath the uplifting winds, like plains of corn                     _20\nSwayed by the summer air; my streams will flow\nRound many-peopled continents, and round\nFortunate isles; and from their glassy thrones\nBlue Proteus and his humid nymphs shall mark\nThe shadow of fair ships, as mortals see                             _25\nThe floating bark of the light-laden moon\nWith that white star, its sightless pilot’s crest,\nBorne down the rapid sunset’s ebbing sea;\nTracking their path no more by blood and groans,\nAnd desolation, and the mingled voice                                _30\nOf slavery and command; but by the light\nOf wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours,\nAnd music soft, and mild, free, gentle voices,\nAnd sweetest music, such as spirits love.\n\n_22 many-peopled B; many peopled 1820.\n_26 light-laden B; light laden 1820.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Apollo:",
    "body": "And I shall gaze not on the deeds which make                         _35\nMy mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipse\nDarkens the sphere I guide; but list, I hear\nThe small, clear, silver lute of the young Spirit\nThat sits i’ the morning star.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ocean:",
    "body": "Thou must away;\nThy steeds will pause at even, till when farewell:                   _40\nThe loud deep calls me home even now to feed it\nWith azure calm out of the emerald urns\nWhich stand for ever full beside my throne.\nBehold the Nereids under the green sea,\nTheir wavering limbs borne on the wind-like stream,                  _45\nTheir white arms lifted o’er their streaming hair\nWith garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns,\nHastening to grace their mighty sister’s joy.\n[A SOUND OF WAVES IS HEARD.]\nIt is the unpastured sea hungering for calm.\nPeace, monster; I come now. Farewell.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Apollo:",
    "body": "Farewell.                                                            _50\n\nSCENE 3.3:\nCAUCASUS.\nPROMETHEUS, HERCULES, IONE, THE EARTH, SPIRITS, ASIA,\nAND PANTHEA, BORNE IN THE CAR WITH THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUR.\nHERCULES UNBINDS PROMETHEUS, WHO DESCENDS.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prometheus:",
    "body": "Thy gentle words\nAre sweeter even than freedom long desired                           _5\nAnd long delayed.\nAsia, thou light of life,\nShadow of beauty unbeheld: and ye,\nFair sister nymphs, who made long years of pain\nSweet to remember, through your love and care:\nHenceforth we will not part. There is a cave,                        _10\nAll overgrown with trailing odorous plants,\nWhich curtain out the day with leaves and flowers,\nAnd paved with veined emerald, and a fountain\nLeaps in the midst with an awakening sound.\nFrom its curved roof the mountain’s frozen tears                     _15\nLike snow, or silver, or long diamond spires,\nHang downward, raining forth a doubtful light:\nAnd there is heard the ever-moving air,\nWhispering without from tree to tree, and birds,\nAnd bees; and all around are mossy seats,                            _20\nAnd the rough walls are clothed with long soft grass;\nA simple dwelling, which shall be our own;\nWhere we will sit and talk of time and change,\nAs the world ebbs and flows, ourselves unchanged.\nWhat can hide man from mutability?                                   _25\nAnd if ye sigh, then I will smile; and thou,\nIone, shalt chant fragments of sea-music,\nUntil I weep, when ye shall smile away\nThe tears she brought, which yet were sweet to shed.\nWe will entangle buds and flowers and beams                          _30\nWhich twinkle on the fountain’s brim, and make\nStrange combinations out of common things,\nLike human babes in their brief innocence;\nAnd we will search, with looks and words of love,\nFor hidden thoughts, each lovelier than the last,                    _35\nOur unexhausted spirits; and like lutes\nTouched by the skill of the enamoured wind,\nWeave harmonies divine, yet ever new,\nFrom difference sweet where discord cannot be;\nAnd hither come, sped on the charmed winds,                          _40\nWhich meet from all the points of heaven, as bees\nFrom every flower aereal Enna feeds,\nAt their known island-homes in Himera,\nThe echoes of the human world, which tell\nOf the low voice of love, almost unheard,                            _45\nAnd dove-eyed pity’s murmured pain, and music,\nItself the echo of the heart, and all\nThat tempers or improves man’s life, now free;\nAnd lovely apparitions,—dim at first,\nThen radiant, as the mind, arising bright                            _50\nFrom the embrace of beauty (whence the forms\nOf which these are the phantoms) casts on them\nThe gathered rays which are reality—\nShall visit us, the progeny immortal\nOf Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy,                              _55\nAnd arts, though unimagined, yet to be.\nThe wandering voices and the shadows these\nOf all that man becomes, the mediators\nOf that best worship love, by him and us\nGiven and returned; swift shapes and sounds, which grow              _60\nMore fair and soft as man grows wise and kind,\nAnd, veil by veil, evil and error fall:\nSuch virtue has the cave and place around.\n[TURNING TO THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUR.]\nFor thee, fair Spirit, one toil remains. Ione,\nGive her that curved shell, which Proteus old                        _65\nMade Asia’s nuptial boon, breathing within it\nA voice to be accomplished, and which thou\nDidst hide in grass under the hollow rock.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ione:",
    "body": "Thou most desired Hour, more loved and lovely\nThan all thy sisters, this is the mystic shell;                      _70\nSee the pale azure fading into silver\nLining it with a soft yet glowing light:\nLooks it not like lulled music sleeping there?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prometheus:",
    "body": "Go, borne over the cities of mankind\nOn whirlwind-footed coursers: once again\nOutspeed the sun around the orbed world;\nAnd as thy chariot cleaves the kindling air,\nThou breathe into the many-folded shell,                             _80\nLoosening its mighty music; it shall be\nAs thunder mingled with clear echoes: then\nReturn; and thou shalt dwell beside our cave.\nAnd thou, O Mother Earth!—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Earth:",
    "body": "I hear, I feel;\nThy lips are on me, and thy touch runs down                          _85\nEven to the adamantine central gloom\nAlong these marble nerves; ’tis life, ’tis joy,\nAnd, through my withered, old, and icy frame\nThe warmth of an immortal youth shoots down\nCircling. Henceforth the many children fair                          _90\nFolded in my sustaining arms; all plants,\nAnd creeping forms, and insects rainbow-winged,\nAnd birds, and beasts, and fish, and human shapes,\nWhich drew disease and pain from my wan bosom,\nDraining the poison of despair, shall take                           _95\nAnd interchange sweet nutriment; to me\nShall they become like sister-antelopes\nBy one fair dam, snow-white and swift as wind,\nNursed among lilies near a brimming stream.\nThe dew-mists of my sunless sleep shall float                        _100\nUnder the stars like balm: night-folded flowers\nShall suck unwithering hues in their repose:\nAnd men and beasts in happy dreams shall gather\nStrength for the coming day, and all its joy:\nAnd death shall be the last embrace of her                           _105\nWho takes the life she gave, even as a mother,\nFolding her child, says, ‘Leave me not again.’\n\n_85 their B; thy 1820.\n_102 unwithering B, edition 1839; unwitting 1820.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Earth:",
    "body": "It would avail not to reply:                                         _110\nThou art immortal, and this tongue is known\nBut to the uncommunicating dead.\nDeath is the veil which those who live call life:\nThey sleep, and it is lifted: and meanwhile\nIn mild variety the seasons mild                                     _115\nWith rainbow-skirted showers, and odorous winds,\nAnd long blue meteors cleansing the dull night,\nAnd the life-kindling shafts of the keen sun’s\nAll-piercing bow, and the dew-mingled rain\nOf the calm moonbeams, a soft influence mild,                        _120\nShall clothe the forests and the fields, ay, even\nThe crag-built deserts of the barren deep,\nWith ever-living leaves, and fruits, and flowers.\nAnd thou! There is a cavern where my spirit\nWas panted forth in anguish whilst thy pain                          _125\nMade my heart mad, and those who did inhale it\nBecame mad too, and built a temple there,\nAnd spoke, and were oracular, and lured\nThe erring nations round to mutual war,\nAnd faithless faith, such as Jove kept with thee;                    _130\nWhich breath now rises, as amongst tall weeds\nA violet’s exhalation, and it fills\nWith a serener light and crimson air\nIntense, yet soft, the rocks and woods around;\nIt feeds the quick growth of the serpent vine,                       _135\nAnd the dark linked ivy tangling wild,\nAnd budding, blown, or odour-faded blooms\nWhich star the winds with points of coloured light,\nAs they rain through them, and bright golden globes\nOf fruit, suspended in their own green heaven,                       _140\nAnd through their veined leaves and amber stems\nThe flowers whose purple and translucid bowls\nStand ever mantling with aereal dew,\nThe drink of spirits: and it circles round,\nLike the soft waving wings of noonday dreams,                        _145\nInspiring calm and happy thoughts, like mine,\nNow thou art thus restored. This cave is thine.\nArise! Appear!\n[A SPIRIT RISES IN THE LIKENESS OF A WINGED CHILD.]\nThis is my torch-bearer;\nWho let his lamp out in old time with gazing\nOn eyes from which he kindled it anew                                _150\nWith love, which is as fire, sweet daughter mine,\nFor such is that within thine own. Run, wayward,\nAnd guide this company beyond the peak\nOf Bacchic Nysa, Maenad-haunted mountain,\nAnd beyond Indus and its tribute rivers,                             _155\nTrampling the torrent streams and glassy lakes\nWith feet unwet, unwearied, undelaying,\nAnd up the green ravine, across the vale,\nBeside the windless and crystalline pool,\nWhere ever lies, on unerasing waves,                                 _160\nThe image of a temple, built above,\nDistinct with column, arch, and architrave,\nAnd palm-like capital, and over-wrought,\nAnd populous with most living imagery,\nPraxitelean shapes, whose marble smiles                              _165\nFill the hushed air with everlasting love.\nIt is deserted now, but once it bore\nThy name, Prometheus; there the emulous youths\nBore to thy honour through the divine gloom\nThe lamp which was thine emblem; even as those                       _170\nWho bear the untransmitted torch of hope\nInto the grave, across the night of life,\nAs thou hast borne it most triumphantly\nTo this far goal of Time. Depart, farewell.\nBeside that temple is the destined cave.                             _175",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ione:",
    "body": "Sister, it is not earthly: how it glides\nUnder the leaves! how on its head there burns\nA light, like a green star, whose emerald beams\nAre twined with its fair hair! how, as it moves,\nThe splendour drops in flakes upon the grass!                        _5\nKnowest thou it?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "It is the delicate spirit\nThat guides the earth through heaven. From afar\nThe populous constellations call that light\nThe loveliest of the planets; and sometimes\nIt floats along the spray of the salt sea,                           _10\nOr makes its chariot of a foggy cloud,\nOr walks through fields or cities while men sleep,\nOr o’er the mountain tops, or down the rivers,\nOr through the green waste wilderness, as now,\nWondering at all it sees. Before Jove reigned                        _15\nIt loved our sister Asia, and it came\nEach leisure hour to drink the liquid light\nOut of her eyes, for which it said it thirsted\nAs one bit by a dipsas, and with her\nIt made its childish confidence, and told her                        _20\nAll it had known or seen, for it saw much,\nYet idly reasoned what it saw; and called her—\nFor whence it sprung it knew not, nor do I—\nMother, dear mother.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Spirit Of The Earth [Running To Asia]:",
    "body": "Mother, dearest mother;\nMay I then talk with thee as I was wont?                             _25\nMay I then hide my eyes in thy soft arms,\nAfter thy looks have made them tired of joy?\nMay I then play beside thee the long noons,\nWhen work is none in the bright silent air?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Spirit Of The Earth:",
    "body": "Mother, I am grown wiser, though a child\nCannot be wise like thee, within this day;\nAnd happier too; happier and wiser both.                             _35\nThou knowest that toads, and snakes, and loathly worms,\nAnd venomous and malicious beasts, and boughs\nThat bore ill berries in the woods, were ever\nAn hindrance to my walks o’er the green world:\nAnd that, among the haunts of humankind,                             _40\nHard-featured men, or with proud, angry looks,\nOr cold, staid gait, or false and hollow smiles,\nOr the dull sneer of self-loved ignorance,\nOr other such foul masks, with which ill thoughts\nHide that fair being whom we spirits call man;                       _45\nAnd women too, ugliest of all things evil,\n(Though fair, even in a world where thou art fair,\nWhen good and kind, free and sincere like thee)\nWhen false or frowning made me sick at heart\nTo pass them, though they slept, and I unseen.                       _50\nWell, my path lately lay through a great city\nInto the woody hills surrounding it:\nA sentinel was sleeping at the gate:\nWhen there was heard a sound, so loud, it shook\nThe towers amid the moonlight, yet more sweet                        _55\nThan any voice but thine, sweetest of all;\nA long, long sound, as it would never end:\nAnd all the inhabitants leaped suddenly\nOut of their rest, and gathered in the streets,\nLooking in wonder up to Heaven, while yet                            _60\nThe music pealed along. I hid myself\nWithin a fountain in the public square,\nWhere I lay like the reflex of the moon\nSeen in a wave under green leaves; and soon\nThose ugly human shapes and visages                                  _65\nOf which I spoke as having wrought me pain,\nPassed floating through the air, and fading still\nInto the winds that scattered them; and those\nFrom whom they passed seemed mild and lovely forms\nAfter some foul disguise had fallen, and all                         _70\nWere somewhat changed, and after brief surprise\nAnd greetings of delighted wonder, all\nWent to their sleep again: and when the dawn\nCame, wouldst thou think that toads, and snakes, and efts,\nCould e’er be beautiful? yet so they were,                           _75\nAnd that with little change of shape or hue:\nAll things had put their evil nature off:\nI cannot tell my joy, when o’er a lake,\nUpon a drooping bough with nightshade twined,\nI saw two azure halcyons clinging downward                           _80\nAnd thinning one bright bunch of amber berries,\nWith quick long beaks, and in the deep there lay\nThose lovely forms imaged as in a sky;\nSo, with my thoughts full of these happy changes,\nWe meet again, the happiest change of all.                           _85",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Spirit Of The Hour:",
    "body": "Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled\nThe abysses of the sky and the wide earth,\nThere was a change: the impalpable thin air                          _100\nAnd the all-circling sunlight were transformed,\nAs if the sense of love dissolved in them\nHad folded itself round the sphered world.\nMy vision then grew clear, and I could see\nInto the mysteries of the universe:                                  _105\nDizzy as with delight I floated down,\nWinnowing the lightsome air with languid plumes,\nMy coursers sought their birthplace in the sun,\nWhere they henceforth will live exempt from toil,\nPasturing flowers of vegetable fire;                                 _110\nAnd where my moonlike car will stand within\nA temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms\nOf thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and me,\nAnd you fair nymphs looking the love we feel,—\nIn memory of the tidings it has borne,—                             _115\nBeneath a dome fretted with graven flowers,\nPoised on twelve columns of resplendent stone,\nAnd open to the bright and liquid sky.\nYoked to it by an amphisbaenic snake\nThe likeness of those winged steeds will mock                        _120\nThe flight from which they find repose. Alas,\nWhither has wandered now my partial tongue\nWhen all remains untold which ye would hear?\nAs I have said, I floated to the earth:\nIt was, as it is still, the pain of bliss                            _125\nTo move, to breathe, to be. I wandering went\nAmong the haunts and dwellings of mankind,\nAnd first was disappointed not to see\nSuch mighty change as I had felt within\nExpressed in outward things; but soon I looked,                      _130\nAnd behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked\nOne with the other even as spirits do,\nNone fawned, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear,\nSelf-love or self-contempt, on human brows\nNo more inscribed, as o’er the gate of hell,                         _135\n‘All hope abandon ye who enter here;’\nNone frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear\nGazed on another’s eye of cold command,\nUntil the subject of a tyrant’s will\nBecame, worse fate, the abject of his own,                           _140\nWhich spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death.\nNone wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines\nWhich smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak;\nNone, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart\nThe sparks of love and hope till there remained                      _145\nThose bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed,\nAnd the wretch crept a vampire among men,\nInfecting all with his own hideous ill;\nNone talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk\nWhich makes the heart deny the “yes” it breathes,                    _150\nYet question that unmeant hypocrisy\nWith such a self-mistrust as has no name.\nAnd women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind\nAs the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew\nOn the wide earth, past; gentle radiant forms,                       _155\nFrom custom’s evil taint exempt and pure;\nSpeaking the wisdom once they could not think,\nLooking emotions once they feared to feel,\nAnd changed to all which once they dared not be,\nYet being now, made earth like heaven; nor pride,                    _160\nNor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame,\nThe bitterest of those drops of treasured gall,\nSpoiled the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love.\n\nThrones, altars, judgement-seats, and prisons; wherein,\nAnd beside which, by wretched men were borne                         _165\nSceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes\nOf reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance,\nWere like those monstrous and barbaric shapes,\nThe ghosts of a no-more-remembered fame,\nWhich, from their unworn obelisks, look forth                        _170\nIn triumph o’er the palaces and tombs\nOf those who were their conquerors: mouldering round,\nThese imaged to the pride of kings and priests\nA dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide\nAs is the world it wasted, and are now                               _175\nBut an astonishment; even so the tools\nAnd emblems of its last captivity,\nAmid the dwellings of the peopled earth,\nStand, not o’erthrown, but unregarded now.\nAnd those foul shapes, abhorred by god and man,—                    _180\nWhich, under many a name and many a form\nStrange, savage, ghastly, dark and execrable,\nWere Jupiter, the tyrant of the world;\nAnd which the nations, panic-stricken, served\nWith blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love                 _185\nDragged to his altars soiled and garlandless,\nAnd slain among men’s unreclaiming tears,\nFlattering the thing they feared, which fear was hate,—\nFrown, mouldering fast, o’er their abandoned shrines:\nThe painted veil, by those who were, called life,                    _190\nWhich mimicked, as with colours idly spread,\nAll men believed and hoped, is torn aside;\nThe loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains\nSceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man\nEqual, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,                         _195\nExempt from awe, worship, degree, the king\nOver himself; just, gentle, wise; but man\nPassionless?—no, yet free from guilt or pain,\nWhich were, for his will made or suffered them,\nNor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves,                      _200\nFrom chance, and death, and mutability,\nThe clogs of that which else might oversoar\nThe loftiest star of unascended heaven,\nPinnacled dim in the intense inane.\n\n_121 flight B, edition 1839; light 1820.\n_173 These B; Those 1820.\n_187 amid B; among 1820.\n_192 or B; and 1820.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Voice Of Unseen Spirits:",
    "body": "The pale stars are gone!\nFor the sun, their swift shepherd,\nTo their folds them compelling,\nIn the depths of the dawn,\nHastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and they flee                     _5\nBeyond his blue dwelling,\nAs fawns flee the leopard.\nBut where are ye?\n\n[A TRAIN OF DARK FORMS AND SHADOWS PASSES BY CONFUSEDLY, SINGING.]\n\nHere, oh, here:\nWe bear the bier                                                     _10\nOf the father of many a cancelled year!\nSpectres we\nOf the dead Hours be,\nWe bear Time to his tomb in eternity.\n\nStrew, oh, strew                                                     _15\nHair, not yew!\nWet the dusty pall with tears, not dew!\nBe the faded flowers\nOf Death’s bare bowers\nSpread on the corpse of the King of Hours!                           _20\n\nHaste, oh, haste!\nAs shades are chased,\nTrembling, by day, from heaven’s blue waste.\nWe melt away,\nLike dissolving spray,                                               _25\nFrom the children of a diviner day,\nWith the lullaby\nOf winds that die\nOn the bosom of their own harmony!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Voice Of Unseen Spirits:",
    "body": "Bright clouds float in heaven,                                       _40\nDew-stars gleam on earth,\nWaves assemble on ocean,\nThey are gathered and driven\nBy the storm of delight, by the panic of glee!\nThey shake with emotion,                                             _45\nThey dance in their mirth.\nBut where are ye?\n\nThe pine boughs are singing\nOld songs with new gladness,\nThe billows and fountains                                            _50\nFresh music are flinging,\nLike the notes of a spirit from land and from sea;\nThe storms mock the mountains\nWith the thunder of gladness.\nBut where are ye?                                                    _55",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze,\nPierce with song heaven’s silent light,                              _70\nEnchant the day that too swiftly flees,\nTo check its flight ere the cave of Night.\n\nOnce the hungry Hours were hounds\nWhich chased the day like a bleeding deer,\nAnd it limped and stumbled with many wounds                          _75\nThrough the nightly dells of the desert year.\n\nBut now, oh weave the mystic measure\nOf music, and dance, and shapes of light,\nLet the Hours, and the spirits of might and pleasure,\nLike the clouds and sunbeams, unite—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus Of Spirits:",
    "body": "We join the throng\nOf the dance and the song,\nBy the whirlwind of gladness borne along;                            _85\nAs the flying-fish leap\nFrom the Indian deep,\nAnd mix with the sea-birds, half-asleep.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus Of Hours:",
    "body": "Whence come ye, so wild and so fleet,\nFor sandals of lightning are on your feet,                           _90\nAnd your wings are soft and swift as thought,\nAnd your eyes are as love which is veiled not?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus Of Spirits:",
    "body": "We come from the mind\nOf human kind\nWhich was late so dusk, and obscene, and blind,                      _95\nNow ’tis an ocean\nOf clear emotion,\nA heaven of serene and mighty motion.\n\nFrom that deep abyss\nOf wonder and bliss,                                                 _100\nWhose caverns are crystal palaces;\nFrom those skiey towers\nWhere Thought’s crowned powers\nSit watching your dance, ye happy Hours!\n\nFrom the dim recesses                                                _105\nOf woven caresses,\nWhere lovers catch ye by your loose tresses;\nFrom the azure isles,\nWhere sweet Wisdom smiles,\nDelaying your ships with her siren wiles.                            _110\n\nFrom the temples high\nOf Man’s ear and eye,\nRoofed over Sculpture and Poesy;\nFrom the murmurings\nOf the unsealed springs                                              _115\nWhere Science bedews her Daedal wings.\n\nYears after years,\nThrough blood, and tears,\nAnd a thick hell of hatreds, and hopes, and fears;\nWe waded and flew,                                                   _120\nAnd the islets were few\nWhere the bud-blighted flowers of happiness grew.\n\nOur feet now, every palm,\nAre sandalled with calm,\nAnd the dew of our wings is a rain of balm;                          _125\nAnd, beyond our eyes,\nThe human love lies\nWhich makes all it gazes on Paradise.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus Of Spirits And Hours:",
    "body": "Then weave the web of the mystic measure;\nFrom the depths of the sky and the ends of the earth,                _130\nCome, swift Spirits of might and of pleasure,\nFill the dance and the music of mirth,\nAs the waves of a thousand streams rush by\nTo an ocean of splendour and harmony!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus Of Spirits:",
    "body": "Our spoil is won,                                                    _135\nOur task is done,\nWe are free to dive, or soar, or run;\nBeyond and around,\nOr within the bound\nWhich clips the world with darkness round.                           _140\n\nWe’ll pass the eyes\nOf the starry skies\nInto the hoar deep to colonize;\nDeath, Chaos, and Night,\nFrom the sound of our flight,                                        _145\nShall flee, like mist from a tempest’s might.\n\nAnd Earth, Air, and Light,\nAnd the Spirit of Might,\nWhich drives round the stars in their fiery flight;\nAnd Love, Thought, and Breath,                                       _150\nThe powers that quell Death,\nWherever we soar shall assemble beneath.\n\nAnd our singing shall build\nIn the void’s loose field\nA world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield;                           _155\nWe will take our plan\nFrom the new world of man,\nAnd our work shall be called the Promethean.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus Of Hours And Spirits:",
    "body": "Break the dance, and scatter the song;                               _175\nLet some depart, and some remain,\nWherever we fly we lead along\nIn leashes, like starbeams, soft yet strong,\nThe clouds that are heavy with love’s sweet rain.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ione:",
    "body": "Listen too,\nHow every pause is filled with under-notes,\nClear, silver, icy, keen awakening tones,                            _190\nWhich pierce the sense, and live within the soul,\nAs the sharp stars pierce winter’s crystal air\nAnd gaze upon themselves within the sea.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "But see where through two openings in the forest\nWhich hanging branches overcanopy,                                   _195\nAnd where two runnels of a rivulet,\nBetween the close moss violet-inwoven,\nHave made their path of melody, like sisters\nWho part with sighs that they may meet in smiles,\nTurning their dear disunion to an isle                               _200\nOf lovely grief, a wood of sweet sad thoughts;\nTwo visions of strange radiance float upon\nThe ocean-like enchantment of strong sound,\nWhich flows intenser, keener, deeper yet\nUnder the ground and through the windless air.                       _205",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ione:",
    "body": "I see a chariot like that thinnest boat,\nIn which the Mother of the Months is borne\nBy ebbing light into her western cave,\nWhen she upsprings from interlunar dreams;\nO’er which is curved an orblike canopy                               _210\nOf gentle darkness, and the hills and woods,\nDistinctly seen through that dusk aery veil,\nRegard like shapes in an enchanter’s glass;\nIts wheels are solid clouds, azure and gold,\nSuch as the genii of the thunderstorm                                _215\nPile on the floor of the illumined sea\nWhen the sun rushes under it; they roll\nAnd move and grow as with an inward wind;\nWithin it sits a winged infant, white\nIts countenance, like the whiteness of bright snow,                  _220\nIts plumes are as feathers of sunny frost,\nIts limbs gleam white, through the wind-flowing folds\nOf its white robe, woof of ethereal pearl.\nIts hair is white, the brightness of white light\nScattered in strings; yet its two eyes are heavens                   _225\nOf liquid darkness, which the Deity\nWithin seems pouring, as a storm is poured\nFrom jagged clouds, out of their arrowy lashes,\nTempering the cold and radiant air around,\nWith fire that is not brightness; in its hand                        _230\nIt sways a quivering moonbeam, from whose point\nA guiding power directs the chariot’s prow\nOver its wheeled clouds, which as they roll\nOver the grass, and flowers, and waves, wake sounds,\nSweet as a singing rain of silver dew.                               _235\n\n_208 light B; night 1820.\n_212 aery B; airy 1820.\n_225 strings B, edition 1839; string 1820.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "And from the other opening in the wood\nRushes, with loud and whirlwind harmony,\nA sphere, which is as many thousand spheres,\nSolid as crystal, yet through all its mass\nFlow, as through empty space, music and light:                       _240\nTen thousand orbs involving and involved,\nPurple and azure, white, and green, and golden,\nSphere within sphere; and every space between\nPeopled with unimaginable shapes,\nSuch as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deep,                     _245\nYet each inter-transpicuous, and they whirl\nOver each other with a thousand motions,\nUpon a thousand sightless axles spinning,\nAnd with the force of self-destroying swiftness,\nIntensely, slowly, solemnly, roll on,                                _250\nKindling with mingled sounds, and many tones,\nIntelligible words and music wild.\nWith mighty whirl the multitudinous orb\nGrinds the bright brook into an azure mist\nOf elemental subtlety, like light;                                   _255\nAnd the wild odour of the forest flowers,\nThe music of the living grass and air,\nThe emerald light of leaf-entangled beams\nRound its intense yet self-conflicting speed,\nSeem kneaded into one aereal mass                                    _260\nWhich drowns the sense. Within the orb itself,\nPillowed upon its alabaster arms,\nLike to a child o’erwearied with sweet toil,\nOn its own folded wings, and wavy hair,\nThe Spirit of the Earth is laid asleep,                              _265\nAnd you can see its little lips are moving,\nAmid the changing light of their own smiles,\nLike one who talks of what he loves in dream.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "And from a star upon its forehead, shoot,                            _270\nLike swords of azure fire, or golden spears\nWith tyrant-quelling myrtle overtwined,\nEmbleming heaven and earth united now,\nVast beams like spokes of some invisible wheel\nWhich whirl as the orb whirls, swifter than thought,                 _275\nFilling the abyss with sun-like lightenings,\nAnd perpendicular now, and now transverse,\nPierce the dark soil, and as they pierce and pass,\nMake bare the secrets of the earth’s deep heart;\nInfinite mine of adamant and gold,                                   _280\nValueless stones, and unimagined gems,\nAnd caverns on crystalline columns poised\nWith vegetable silver overspread;\nWells of unfathomed fire, and water springs\nWhence the great sea, even as a child is fed,                        _285\nWhose vapours clothe earth’s monarch mountain-tops\nWith kingly, ermine snow. The beams flash on\nAnd make appear the melancholy ruins\nOf cancelled cycles; anchors, beaks of ships;\nPlanks turned to marble; quivers, helms, and spears,                 _290\nAnd gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels\nOf scythed chariots, and the emblazonry\nOf trophies, standards, and armorial beasts,\nRound which death laughed, sepulchred emblems\nOf dead destruction, ruin within ruin!                               _295\nThe wrecks beside of many a city vast,\nWhose population which the earth grew over\nWas mortal, but not human; see, they lie,\nTheir monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons,\nTheir statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes                    _300\nHuddled in gray annihilation, split,\nJammed in the hard, black deep; and over these,\nThe anatomies of unknown winged things,\nAnd fishes which were isles of living scale,\nAnd serpents, bony chains, twisted around                            _305\nThe iron crags, or within heaps of dust\nTo which the tortuous strength of their last pangs\nHad crushed the iron crags; and over these\nThe jagged alligator, and the might\nOf earth-convulsing behemoth, which once                             _310\nWere monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores,\nAnd weed-overgrown continents of earth,\nIncreased and multiplied like summer worms\nOn an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe\nWrapped deluge round it like a cloak, and they                       _315\nYelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God\nWhose throne was in a comet, passed, and cried,\n‘Be not!’ And like my words they were no more.\n\n_274 spokes B, edition 1839; spoke 1820.\n_276 lightenings B; lightnings 1820.\n_280 mines B; mine 1820.\n_282 poised B; poized edition 1839; poured 1820.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Earth:",
    "body": "The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!\nThe boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness,                       _320\nThe vaporous exultation not to be confined!\nHa! ha! the animation of delight\nWhich wraps me, like an atmosphere of light,\nAnd bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Moon:",
    "body": "Brother mine, calm wanderer,                                         _325\nHappy globe of land and air,\nSome Spirit is darted like a beam from thee,\nWhich penetrates my frozen frame,\nAnd passes with the warmth of flame,\nWith love, and odour, and deep melody                                _330\nThrough me, through me!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Earth:",
    "body": "Ha! ha! the caverns of my hollow mountains,\nMy cloven fire-crags, sound-exulting fountains\nLaugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter.\nThe oceans, and the deserts, and the abysses,                        _335\nAnd the deep air’s unmeasured wildernesses,\nAnswer from all their clouds and billows, echoing after.\n\nThey cry aloud as I do. Sceptred curse,\nWho all our green and azure universe\nThreatenedst to muffle round with black destruction, sending         _340\nA solid cloud to rain hot thunderstones,\nAnd splinter and knead down my children’s bones,\nAll I bring forth, to one void mass battering and blending,—\n\nUntil each crag-like tower, and storied column,\nPalace, and obelisk, and temple solemn,                              _345\nMy imperial mountains crowned with cloud, and snow, and fire,\nMy sea-like forests, every blade and blossom\nWhich finds a grave or cradle in my bosom,\nWere stamped by thy strong hate into a lifeless mire:\n\nHow art thou sunk, withdrawn, covered, drunk up                      _350\nBy thirsty nothing, as the brackish cup\nDrained by a desert-troop, a little drop for all;\nAnd from beneath, around, within, above,\nFilling thy void annihilation, love\nBursts in like light on caves cloven by the thunder-ball.            _355\n\n_335-_336 the abysses, And 1820, 1839; the abysses Of B.\n_355 the omitted 1820.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Moon:",
    "body": "The snow upon my lifeless mountains\nIs loosened into living fountains,\nMy solid oceans flow, and sing and shine:\nA spirit from my heart bursts forth,\nIt clothes with unexpected birth                                     _360\nMy cold bare bosom: Oh! it must be thine\nOn mine, on mine!\n\nGazing on thee I feel, I know\nGreen stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow,\nAnd living shapes upon my bosom move:                                _365\nMusic is in the sea and air,\nWinged clouds soar here and there,\nDark with the rain new buds are dreaming of:\n’Tis love, all love!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Earth:",
    "body": "It interpenetrates my granite mass,                                  _370\nThrough tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass\nInto the utmost leaves and delicatest flowers;\nUpon the winds, among the clouds ’tis spread,\nIt wakes a life in the forgotten dead,\nThey breathe a spirit up from their obscurest bowers.                _375\n\nAnd like a storm bursting its cloudy prison\nWith thunder, and with whirlwind, has arisen\nOut of the lampless caves of unimagined being:\nWith earthquake shock and swiftness making shiver\nThought’s stagnant chaos, unremoved for ever,                        _380\nTill hate, and fear, and pain, light-vanquished shadows, fleeing,\n\nLeave Man, who was a many-sided mirror,\nWhich could distort to many a shape of error,\nThis true fair world of things, a sea reflecting love;\nWhich over all his kind, as the sun’s heaven                         _385\nGliding o’er ocean, smooth, serene, and even,\nDarting from starry depths radiance and life, doth move:\n\nLeave Man, even as a leprous child is left,\nWho follows a sick beast to some warm cleft\nOf rocks, through which the might of healing springs is poured;      _390\nThen when it wanders home with rosy smile,\nUnconscious, and its mother fears awhile\nIt is a spirit, then, weeps on her child restored.\n\nMan, oh, not men! a chain of linked thought,\nOf love and might to be divided not,                                 _395\nCompelling the elements with adamantine stress;\nAs the sun rules, even with a tyrant’s gaze,\nThe unquiet republic of the maze\nOf planets, struggling fierce towards heaven’s free wilderness.\n\nMan, one harmonious soul of many a soul,                             _400\nWhose nature is its own divine control,\nWhere all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea;\nFamiliar acts are beautiful through love;\nLabour, and pain, and grief, in life’s green grove\nSport like tame beasts, none knew how gentle they could be!          _405\n\nHis will, with all mean passions, bad delights,\nAnd selfish cares, its trembling satellites,\nA spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey,\nIs as a tempest-winged ship, whose helm\nLove rules, through waves which dare not overwhelm,                  _410\nForcing life’s wildest shores to own its sovereign sway.\n\nAll things confess his strength. Through the cold mass\nOf marble and of colour his dreams pass;\nBright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear;\nLanguage is a perpetual Orphic song,                                 _415\nWhich rules with Daedal harmony a throng\nOf thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were.\n\nThe lightning is his slave; heaven’s utmost deep\nGives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep\nThey pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on!                 _420\nThe tempest is his steed, he strides the air;\nAnd the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare,\nHeaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Moon:",
    "body": "The shadow of white death has passed\nFrom my path in heaven at last,                                      _425\nA clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep;\nAnd through my newly-woven bowers,\nWander happy paramours,\nLess mighty, but as mild as those who keep\nThy vales more deep.                                                 _430",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Earth:",
    "body": "As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold\nA half unfrozen dew-globe, green, and gold,\nAnd crystalline, till it becomes a winged mist,\nAnd wanders up the vault of the blue day,\nOutlives the noon, and on the sun’s last ray                         _435\nHangs o’er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Moon:",
    "body": "Thou art folded, thou art lying\nIn the light which is undying\nOf thine own joy, and heaven’s smile divine;\nAll suns and constellations shower                                   _440\nOn thee a light, a life, a power\nWhich doth array thy sphere; thou pourest thine\nOn mine, on mine!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Earth:",
    "body": "I spin beneath my pyramid of night,\nWhich points into the heavens dreaming delight,                      _445\nMurmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep;\nAs a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,\nUnder the shadow of his beauty lying,\nWhich round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Moon:",
    "body": "As in the soft and sweet eclipse,                                    _450\nWhen soul meets soul on lovers’ lips,\nHigh hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull;\nSo when thy shadow falls on me,\nThen am I mute and still, by thee\nCovered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful,                            _455\nFull, oh, too full!\n\nThou art speeding round the sun\nBrightest world of many a one;\nGreen and azure sphere which shinest\nWith a light which is divinest                                       _460\nAmong all the lamps of Heaven\nTo whom life and light is given;\nI, thy crystal paramour\nBorne beside thee by a power\nLike the polar Paradise,                                             _465\nMagnet-like of lovers’ eyes;\nI, a most enamoured maiden\nWhose weak brain is overladen\nWith the pleasure of her love,\nManiac-like around thee move\nGazing, an insatiate bride,                                          _470\nOn thy form from every side\nLike a Maenad, round the cup\nWhich Agave lifted up\nIn the weird Cadmaean forest.                                        _475\nBrother, wheresoe’er thou soarest\nI must hurry, whirl and follow\nThrough the heavens wide and hollow,\nSheltered by the warm embrace\nOf thy soul from hungry space,                                       _480\nDrinking from thy sense and sight\nBeauty, majesty, and might,\nAs a lover or a chameleon\nGrows like what it looks upon,\nAs a violet’s gentle eye                                             _485\nGazes on the azure sky\nUntil its hue grows like what it beholds,\nAs a gray and watery mist\nGlows like solid amethyst\nAthwart the western mountain it enfolds,                             _490\nWhen the sunset sleeps\nUpon its snow—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Earth:",
    "body": "And the weak day weeps\nThat it should be so.\nOh, gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight                            _495\nFalls on me like thy clear and tender light\nSoothing the seaman, borne the summer night,\nThrough isles for ever calm;\nOh, gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce\nThe caverns of my pride’s deep universe,                             _500\nCharming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce\nMade wounds which need thy balm.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ione:",
    "body": "Ah me! sweet sister,                                                 _505\nThe stream of sound has ebbed away from us,\nAnd you pretend to rise out of its wave,\nBecause your words fall like the clear, soft dew\nShaken from a bathing wood-nymph’s limbs and hair.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "Peace! peace! a mighty Power, which is as darkness,                  _510\nIs rising out of Earth, and from the sky\nIs showered like night, and from within the air\nBursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up\nInto the pores of sunlight: the bright visions,\nWherein the singing spirits rode and shone,                          _515\nGleam like pale meteors through a watery night.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Demogorgon:",
    "body": "Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul,\nSphere of divinest shapes and harmonies,                             _520\nBeautiful orb! gathering as thou dost roll\nThe love which paves thy path along the skies:",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Demogorgon:",
    "body": "Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth\nWith wonder, as it gazes upon thee;                                  _525\nWhilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth\nOf birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony:",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Demogorgon:",
    "body": "Spirits, whose homes are flesh; ye beasts and birds,\nYe worms and fish; ye living leaves and buds;                        _545\nLightning and wind; and ye untameable herds,\nMeteors and mists, which throng air’s solitudes:—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Demogorgon:",
    "body": "This is the day, which down the void abysm\nAt the Earth-born’s spell yawns for Heaven’s despotism,              _555\nAnd Conquest is dragged captive through the deep:\nLove, from its awful throne of patient power\nIn the wise heart, from the last giddy hour\nOf dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,\nAnd narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs                         _560\nAnd folds over the world its healing wings.\n\nGentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,\nThese are the seals of that most firm assurance\nWhich bars the pit over Destruction’s strength;\nAnd if, with infirm hand, Eternity,                                  _565\nMother of many acts and hours, should free\nThe serpent that would clasp her with his length;\nThese are the spells by which to reassume\nAn empire o’er the disentangled doom.\n\nTo suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;                           _570\nTo forgive wrongs darker than death or night;\nTo defy Power, which seems omnipotent;\nTo love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates\nFrom its own wreck the thing it contemplates;\nNeither to change, nor falter, nor repent;                           _575\nThis, like thy glory, Titan, is to be\nGood, great and joyous, beautiful and free;\nThis is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!\n\n_559 dread B, edition 1839; dead 1820.\n_575 falter B, edition 1839; flatter 1820.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cancelled Fragments Of “Prometheus Unbound”.",
    "body": "[First printed by Mr. C.D. Locock, “Examination of the Shelley\nManuscripts at the Bodleian Library”, 1903, pages 33-7.]\n\n(following 1._37.)\nWhen thou descendst each night with open eyes\nIn torture, for a tyrant seldom sleeps,\nThou never; ...\n...\n\n(following 1._195.)\nWhich thou henceforth art doomed to interweave\n...\n\n(following the first two words of 1._342.)\n[Of Hell:] I placed it in his choice to be\nThe crown, or trampled refuse of the world\nWith but one law itself a glorious boon—\nI gave—\n...\n\n(following 1._707.)\nSECOND SPIRIT:\nI leaped on the wings of the Earth-star damp\nAs it rose on the steam of a slaughtered camp—\nThe sleeping newt heard not our tramp\nAs swift as the wings of fire may pass—\nWe threaded the points of long thick grass\nWhich hide the green pools of the morass\nBut shook a water-serpent’s couch\nIn a cleft skull, of many such\nThe widest; at the meteor’s touch\nThe snake did seem to see in dream\nThrones and dungeons overthrown\nVisions how unlike his own...\n’Twas the hope the prophecy\nWhich begins and ends in thee\n...\n\n(following 2.1._110.)\nLift up thine eyes Panthea—they pierce they burn",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "Rest, rest!\nSleep death annihilation pain! aught else\n...\n\n(following 2.4._27.)\nOr looks which tell that while the lips are calm\nAnd the eyes cold, the spirit weeps within\nTears like the sanguine sweat of agony;\n...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Panthea:",
    "body": "Alas it was Prometheus spoke\nWithin me, and I know it must be so\nI mixed my own weak nature with his love\n...And my thoughts\nAre like the many forests of a vale\nThrough which the might of whirlwind and of rain\nHad passed—they rest rest through the evening light\nAs mine do now in thy beloved smile.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cancelled Stage Directions.",
    "body": "(following 1._221.)\n[THE SOUND BENEATH AS OF EARTHQUAKE AND THE DRIVING OF WHIRLWINDS—THE\nRAVINE IS SPLIT, AND THE PHANTASM OF JUPITER RISES, SURROUNDED BY\nHEAVY CLOUDS WHICH DART FORTH LIGHTNING.]\n\n(following 1._520.)\n[ENTER RUSHING BY GROUPS OF HORRIBLE FORMS; THEY SPEAK AS THEY PASS IN\nCHORUS.]\n\n(following 1._552.)\n[A SHADOW PASSES OVER THE SCENE, AND A PIERCING SHRIEK IS HEARD.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On “Prometheus Unbound”, By Mrs. Shelley.",
    "body": "On the 12th of March, 1818, Shelley quitted England, never to return.\nHis principal motive was the hope that his health would be improved by\na milder climate; he suffered very much during the winter previous to\nhis emigration, and this decided his vacillating purpose. In December,\n1817, he had written from Marlow to a friend, saying:\n\n‘My health has been materially worse. My feelings at intervals are of\na deadly and torpid kind, or awakened to such a state of unnatural and\nkeen excitement that, only to instance the organ of sight, I find the\nvery blades of grass and the boughs of distant trees present\nthemselves to me with microscopic distinctness. Towards evening I sink\ninto a state of lethargy and inanimation, and often remain for hours\non the sofa between sleep and waking, a prey to the most painful\nirritability of thought. Such, with little intermission, is my\ncondition. The hours devoted to study are selected with vigilant\ncaution from among these periods of endurance. It is not for this that\nI think of travelling to Italy, even if I knew that Italy would\nrelieve me. But I have experienced a decisive pulmonary attack; and\nalthough at present it has passed away without any considerable\nvestige of its existence, yet this symptom sufficiently shows the true\nnature of my disease to be consumptive. It is to my advantage that\nthis malady is in its nature slow, and, if one is sufficiently alive\nto its advances, is susceptible of cure from a warm climate. In the\nevent of its assuming any decided shape, IT WOULD BE MY DUTY to go to\nItaly without delay. It is not mere health, but life, that I should\nseek, and that not for my own sake—I feel I am capable of trampling\non all such weakness; but for the sake of those to whom my life may be\na source of happiness, utility, security, and honour, and to some of\nwhom my death might be all that is the reverse.’\n\nIn almost every respect his journey to Italy was advantageous. He left\nbehind friends to whom he was attached; but cares of a thousand kinds,\nmany springing from his lavish generosity, crowded round him in his\nnative country, and, except the society of one or two friends, he had\nno compensation. The climate caused him to consume half his existence\nin helpless suffering. His dearest pleasure, the free enjoyment of the\nscenes of Nature, was marred by the same circumstance.\n\nHe went direct to Italy, avoiding even Paris, and did not make any\npause till he arrived at Milan. The first aspect of Italy enchanted\nShelley; it seemed a garden of delight placed beneath a clearer and\nbrighter heaven than any he had lived under before. He wrote long\ndescriptive letters during the first year of his residence in Italy,\nwhich, as compositions, are the most beautiful in the world, and show\nhow truly he appreciated and studied the wonders of Nature and Art in\nthat divine land.\n\nThe poetical spirit within him speedily revived with all the power and\nwith more than all the beauty of his first attempts. He meditated\nthree subjects as the groundwork for lyrical dramas. One was the story\nof Tasso; of this a slight fragment of a song of Tasso remains. The\nother was one founded on the Book of Job, which he never abandoned in\nidea, but of which no trace remains among his papers. The third was\nthe “Prometheus Unbound”. The Greek tragedians were now his most\nfamiliar companions in his wanderings, and the sublime majesty of\nAeschylus filled him with wonder and delight. The father of Greek\ntragedy does not possess the pathos of Sophocles, nor the variety and\ntenderness of Euripides; the interest on which he founds his dramas is\noften elevated above human vicissitudes into the mighty passions and\nthroes of gods and demi-gods: such fascinated the abstract imagination\nof Shelley.\n\nWe spent a month at Milan, visiting the Lake of Como during that\ninterval. Thence we passed in succession to Pisa, Leghorn, the Baths\nof Lucca, Venice, Este, Rome, Naples, and back again to Rome, whither\nwe returned early in March, 1819. During all this time Shelley\nmeditated the subject of his drama, and wrote portions of it. Other\npoems were composed during this interval, and while at the Bagni di\nLucca he translated Plato’s “Symposium”. But, though he diversified\nhis studies, his thoughts centred in the Prometheus. At last, when at\nRome, during a bright and beautiful Spring, he gave up his whole time\nto the composition. The spot selected for his study was, as he\nmentions in his preface, the mountainous ruins of the Baths of\nCaracalla. These are little known to the ordinary visitor at Rome. He\ndescribes them in a letter, with that poetry and delicacy and truth of\ndescription which render his narrated impressions of scenery of\nunequalled beauty and interest.\n\nAt first he completed the drama in three acts. It was not till several\nmonths after, when at Florence, that he conceived that a fourth act, a\nsort of hymn of rejoicing in the fulfilment of the prophecies with\nregard to Prometheus, ought to be added to complete the composition.\n\nThe prominent feature of Shelley’s theory of the destiny of the human\nspecies was that evil is not inherent in the system of the creation,\nbut an accident that might be expelled. This also forms a portion of\nChristianity: God made earth and man perfect, till he, by his fall,\n\n‘Brought death into the world and all our woe.’\n\nShelley believed that mankind had only to will that there should be no\nevil, and there would be none. It is not my part in these Notes to\nnotice the arguments that have been urged against this opinion, but to\nmention the fact that he entertained it, and was indeed attached to it\nwith fervent enthusiasm. That man could be so perfectionized as to be\nable to expel evil from his own nature, and from the greater part of\nthe creation, was the cardinal point of his system. And the subject he\nloved best to dwell on was the image of One warring with the Evil\nPrinciple, oppressed not only by it, but by all—even the good, who\nwere deluded into considering evil a necessary portion of humanity; a\nvictim full of fortitude and hope and the spirit of triumph emanating\nfrom a reliance in the ultimate omnipotence of Good. Such he had\ndepicted in his last poem, when he made Laon the enemy and the victim\nof tyrants. He now took a more idealized image of the same subject. He\nfollowed certain classical authorities in figuring Saturn as the good\nprinciple, Jupiter the usurping evil one, and Prometheus as the\nregenerator, who, unable to bring mankind back to primitive innocence,\nused knowledge as a weapon to defeat evil, by leading mankind, beyond\nthe state wherein they are sinless through ignorance, to that in which\nthey are virtuous through wisdom. Jupiter punished the temerity of the\nTitan by chaining him to a rock of Caucasus, and causing a vulture to\ndevour his still-renewed heart. There was a prophecy afloat in heaven\nportending the fall of Jove, the secret of averting which was known\nonly to Prometheus; and the god offered freedom from torture on\ncondition of its being communicated to him. According to the\nmythological story, this referred to the offspring of Thetis, who was\ndestined to be greater than his father. Prometheus at last bought\npardon for his crime of enriching mankind with his gifts, by revealing\nthe prophecy. Hercules killed the vulture, and set him free; and\nThetis was married to Peleus, the father of Achilles.\n\nShelley adapted the catastrophe of this story to his peculiar views.\nThe son greater than his father, born of the nuptials of Jupiter and\nThetis, was to dethrone Evil, and bring back a happier reign than that\nof Saturn. Prometheus defies the power of his enemy, and endures\ncenturies of torture; till the hour arrives when Jove, blind to the\nreal event, but darkly guessing that some great good to himself will\nflow, espouses Thetis. At the moment, the Primal Power of the world\ndrives him from his usurped throne, and Strength, in the person of\nHercules, liberates Humanity, typified in Prometheus, from the\ntortures generated by evil done or suffered. Asia, one of the\nOceanides, is the wife of Prometheus—she was, according to other\nmythological interpretations, the same as Venus and Nature. When the\nbenefactor of mankind is liberated, Nature resumes the beauty of her\nprime, and is united to her husband, the emblem of the human race, in\nperfect and happy union. In the Fourth Act, the Poet gives further\nscope to his imagination, and idealizes the forms of creation—such as\nwe know them, instead of such as they appeared to the Greeks. Maternal\nEarth, the mighty parent, is superseded by the Spirit of the Earth,\nthe guide of our planet through the realms of sky; while his fair and\nweaker companion and attendant, the Spirit of the Moon, receives bliss\nfrom the annihilation of Evil in the superior sphere.\n\nShelley develops, more particularly in the lyrics of this drama, his\nabstruse and imaginative theories with regard to the Creation. It\nrequires a mind as subtle and penetrating as his own to understand the\nmystic meanings scattered throughout the poem. They elude the ordinary\nreader by their abstraction and delicacy of distinction, but they are\nfar from vague. It was his design to write prose metaphysical essays\non the nature of Man, which would have served to explain much of what\nis obscure in his poetry; a few scattered fragments of observations\nand remarks alone remain. He considered these philosophical views of\nMind and Nature to be instinct with the intensest spirit of poetry.\n\nMore popular poets clothe the ideal with familiar and sensible\nimagery. Shelley loved to idealize the real—to gift the mechanism of\nthe material universe with a soul and a voice, and to bestow such also\non the most delicate and abstract emotions and thoughts of the mind.\nSophocles was his great master in this species of imagery.\n\nI find in one of his manuscript books some remarks on a line in the\n“Oedipus Tyrannus”, which show at once the critical subtlety of\nShelley’s mind, and explain his apprehension of those ‘minute and\nremote distinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature or\nthe living beings which surround us,’ which he pronounces, in the\nletter quoted in the note to the “Revolt of Islam”, to comprehend all\nthat is sublime in man.\n\n‘In the Greek Shakespeare, Sophocles, we find the image,\n\nPollas d’ odous elthonta phrontidos planois:\n\na line of almost unfathomable depth of poetry; yet how simple are the\nimages in which it is arrayed!\n\n“Coming to many ways in the wanderings of careful thought.”\n\nIf the words odous and planois had not been used, the line might have\nbeen explained in a metaphorical instead of an absolute sense, as we\nsay “WAYS and means,” and “wanderings” for error and confusion. But\nthey meant literally paths or roads, such as we tread with our feet;\nand wanderings, such as a man makes when he loses himself in a desert,\nor roams from city to city—as Oedipus, the speaker of this verse, was\ndestined to wander, blind and asking charity. What a picture does this\nline suggest of the mind as a wilderness of intricate paths, wide as\nthe universe, which is here made its symbol; a world within a world\nwhich he who seeks some knowledge with respect to what he ought to do\nsearches throughout, as he would search the external universe for some\nvalued thing which was hidden from him upon its surface.’\n\nIn reading Shelley’s poetry, we often find similar verses, resembling,\nbut not imitating the Greek in this species of imagery; for, though he\nadopted the style, he gifted it with that originality of form and\ncolouring which sprung from his own genius.\n\nIn the “Prometheus Unbound”, Shelley fulfils the promise quoted from a\nletter in the Note on the “Revolt of Islam”. (While correcting the\nproof-sheets of that poem, it struck me that the poet had indulged in\nan exaggerated view of the evils of restored despotism; which, however\ninjurious and degrading, were less openly sanguinary than the triumph\nof anarchy, such as it appeared in France at the close of the last\ncentury. But at this time a book, “Scenes of Spanish Life”, translated\nby Lieutenant Crawford from the German of Dr. Huber, of Rostock, fell\ninto my hands. The account of the triumph of the priests and the\nserviles, after the French invasion of Spain in 1823, bears a strong\nand frightful resemblance to some of the descriptions of the massacre\nof the patriots in the “Revolt of Islam”.) The tone of the composition\nis calmer and more majestic, the poetry more perfect as a whole, and\nthe imagination displayed at once more pleasingly beautiful and more\nvaried and daring. The description of the Hours, as they are seen in\nthe cave of Demogorgon, is an instance of this—it fills the mind as\nthe most charming picture—we long to see an artist at work to bring\nto our view the\n\n‘cars drawn by rainbow-winged steeds\nWhich trample the dim winds: in each there stands\nA wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight.\nSome look behind, as fiends pursued them there,\nAnd yet I see no shapes but the keen stars:\nOthers, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink\nWith eager lips the wind of their own speed,\nAs if the thing they loved fled on before,\nAnd now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks\nStream like a comet’s flashing hair: they all\nSweep onward.’\n\nThrough the whole poem there reigns a sort of calm and holy spirit of\nlove; it soothes the tortured, and is hope to the expectant, till the\nprophecy is fulfilled, and Love, untainted by any evil, becomes the\nlaw of the world.\n\nEngland had been rendered a painful residence to Shelley, as much by\nthe sort of persecution with which in those days all men of liberal\nopinions were visited, and by the injustice he had lately endured in\nthe Court of Chancery, as by the symptoms of disease which made him\nregard a visit to Italy as necessary to prolong his life. An exile,\nand strongly impressed with the feeling that the majority of his\ncountrymen regarded him with sentiments of aversion such as his own\nheart could experience towards none, he sheltered himself from such\ndisgusting and painful thoughts in the calm retreats of poetry, and\nbuilt up a world of his own—with the more pleasure, since he hoped to\ninduce some one or two to believe that the earth might become such,\ndid mankind themselves consent. The charm of the Roman climate helped\nto clothe his thoughts in greater beauty than they had ever worn\nbefore. And, as he wandered among the ruins made one with Nature in\ntheir decay, or gazed on the Praxitelean shapes that throng the\nVatican, the Capitol, and the palaces of Rome, his soul imbibed forms\nof loveliness which became a portion of itself. There are many\npassages in the “Prometheus” which show the intense delight he\nreceived from such studies, and give back the impression with a beauty\nof poetical description peculiarly his own. He felt this, as a poet\nmust feel when he satisfies himself by the result of his labours; and\nhe wrote from Rome, ‘My “Prometheus Unbound” is just finished, and in\na month or two I shall send it. It is a drama, with characters and\nmechanism of a kind yet unattempted; and I think the execution is\nbetter than any of my former attempts.’\n\nI may mention, for the information of the more critical reader, that\nthe verbal alterations in this edition of “Prometheus” are made from a\nlist of errata written by Shelley himself.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Tragedy In Five Acts.",
    "body": "[Composed at Rome and near Leghorn (Villa Valsovano), May-August 5,\n1819; published 1820 (spring) by C. & J. Ollier, London. This edition\nof two hundred and fifty copies was printed in Italy ‘because,’ writes\nShelley to Peacock, September 21, 1819, ‘it costs, with all duties and\nfreightage, about half what it would cost in London.’ A Table of\nErrata in Mrs. Shelley’s handwriting is printed by Forman in “The\nShelley Library”, page 91. A second edition, published by Ollier in\n1821 (C.H. Reynell, printer), embodies the corrections indicated in\nthis Table. No manuscript of “The Cenci” is known to exist. Our text\nfollows that of the second edition (1821); variations of the first\n(Italian) edition, the title-page of which bears date 1819, are given\nin the footnotes. The text of the “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st and 2nd\neditions (Mrs. Shelley), follows for the most part that of the editio\nprinceps of 1819.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Dedication, To Leigh Hunt, Esq.",
    "body": "Mv dear friend—\n\nI inscribe with your name, from a distant country, and after an\nabsence whose months have seemed years, this the latest of my literary\nefforts.\n\nThose writings which I have hitherto published, have been little else\nthan visions which impersonate my own apprehensions of the beautiful\nand the just. I can also perceive in them the literary defects\nincidental to youth and impatience; they are dreams of what ought to\nbe, or may be. The drama which I now present to you is a sad reality.\nI lay aside the presumptuous attitude of an instructor, and am content\nto paint, with such colours as my own heart furnishes, that which has\nbeen.\n\nHad I known a person more highly endowed than yourself with all that\nit becomes a man to possess, I had solicited for this work the\nornament of his name. One more gentle, honourable, innocent and brave;\none of more exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet\nhimself more free from evil; one who knows better how to receive, and\nhow to confer a benefit, though he must ever confer far more than he\ncan receive; one of simpler, and, in the highest sense of the word, of\npurer life and manners I never knew: and I had already been fortunate\nin friendships when your name was added to the list.\n\nIn that patient and irreconcilable enmity with domestic and political\ntyranny and imposture which the tenor of your life has illustrated,\nand which, had I health and talents, should illustrate mine, let us,\ncomforting each other in our task, live and die.\n\nAll happiness attend you! Your affectionate friend,",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Cenci.",
    "body": "A manuscript was communicated to me during my travels in Italy, which\nwas copied from the archives of the Cenci Palace at Rome, and contains\na detailed account of the horrors which ended in the extinction of one\nof the noblest and richest families of that city during the\nPontificate of Clement VIII, in the year 1599. The story is, that an\nold man having spent his life in debauchery and wickedness, conceived\nat length an implacable hatred towards his children; which showed\nitself towards one daughter under the form of an incestuous passion,\naggravated by every circumstance of cruelty and violence. This\ndaughter, after long and vain attempts to escape from what she\nconsidered a perpetual contamination both of body and mind, at length\nplotted with her mother-in-law and brother to murder their common\ntyrant. The young maiden, who was urged to this tremendous deed by an\nimpulse which overpowered its horror, was evidently a most gentle and\namiable being, a creature formed to adorn and be admired, and thus\nviolently thwarted from her nature by the necessity of circumstance\nand opinion. The deed was quickly discovered, and, in spite of the\nmost earnest prayers made to the Pope by the highest persons in Rome,\nthe criminals were put to death. The old man had during his life\nrepeatedly bought his pardon from the Pope for capital crimes of the\nmost enormous and unspeakable kind, at the price of a hundred thousand\ncrowns; the death therefore of his victims can scarcely be accounted\nfor by the love of justice. The Pope, among other motives for\nseverity, probably felt that whoever killed the Count Cenci deprived\nhis treasury of a certain and copious source of revenue. (The Papal\nGovernment formerly took the most extraordinary precautions against\nthe publicity of facts which offer so tragical a demonstration of its\nown wickedness and weakness; so that the communication of the\nmanuscript had become, until very lately, a matter of some\ndifficulty.) Such a story, if told so as to present to the reader all\nthe feelings of those who once acted it, their hopes and fears, their\nconfidences and misgivings, their various interests, passions, and\nopinions, acting upon and with each other, yet all conspiring to one\ntremendous end, would be as a light to make apparent some of the most\ndark and secret caverns of the human heart.\n\nOn my arrival at Rome I found that the story of the Cenci was a\nsubject not to be mentioned in Italian society without awakening a\ndeep and breathless interest; and that the feelings of the company\nnever failed to incline to a romantic pity for the wrongs, and a\npassionate exculpation of the horrible deed to which they urged her,\nwho has been mingled two centuries with the common dust. All ranks of\npeople knew the outlines of this history, and participated in the\noverwhelming interest which it seems to have the magic of exciting in\nthe human heart. I had a copy of Guido’s picture of Beatrice which is\npreserved in the Colonna Palace, and my servant instantly recognized\nit as the portrait of La Cenci.\n\nThis national and universal interest which the story produces and has\nproduced for two centuries and among all ranks of people in a great\nCity, where the imagination is kept for ever active and awake, first\nsuggested to me the conception of its fitness for a dramatic purpose.\nIn fact it is a tragedy which has already received, from its capacity\nof awakening and sustaining the sympathy of men, approbation and\nsuccess. Nothing remained as I imagined, but to clothe it to the\napprehensions of my countrymen in such language and action as would\nbring it home to their hearts. The deepest and the sublimest tragic\ncompositions, King Lear and the two plays in which the tale of Oedipus\nis told, were stories which already existed in tradition, as matters\nof popular belief and interest, before Shakspeare and Sophocles made\nthem familiar to the sympathy of all succeeding generations of\nmankind.\n\nThis story of the Cenci is indeed eminently fearful and monstrous:\nanything like a dry exhibition of it on the stage would be\ninsupportable. The person who would treat such a subject must increase\nthe ideal, and diminish the actual horror of the events, so that the\npleasure which arises from the poetry which exists in these\ntempestuous sufferings and crimes may mitigate the pain of the\ncontemplation of the moral deformity from which they spring. There\nmust also be nothing attempted to make the exhibition subservient to\nwhat is vulgarly termed a moral purpose. The highest moral purpose\naimed at in the highest species of the drama, is the teaching the\nhuman heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowledge of\nitself; in proportion to the possession of which knowledge, every\nhuman being is wise, just, sincere, tolerant and kind. If dogmas can\ndo more, it is well: but a drama is no fit place for the enforcement\nof them. Undoubtedly, no person can be truly dishonoured by the act of\nanother; and the fit return to make to the most enormous injuries is\nkindness and forbearance, and a resolution to convert the injurer from\nhis dark passions by peace and love. Revenge, retaliation, atonement,\nare pernicious mistakes. If Beatrice had thought in this manner she\nwould have been wiser and better; but she would never have been a\ntragic character: the few whom such an exhibition would have\ninterested, could never have been sufficiently interested for a\ndramatic purpose, from the want of finding sympathy in their interest\namong the mass who surround them. It is in the restless and\nanatomizing casuistry with which men seek the justification of\nBeatrice, yet feel that she has done what needs justification; it is\nin the superstitious horror with which they contemplate alike her\nwrongs and their revenge, that the dramatic character of what she did\nand suffered, consists.\n\nI have endeavoured as nearly as possible to represent the characters\nas they probably were, and have sought to avoid the error of making\nthem actuated by my own conceptions of right or wrong, false or true:\nthus under a thin veil converting names and actions of the sixteenth\ncentury into cold impersonations of my own mind. They are represented\nas Catholics, and as Catholics deeply tinged with religion. To a\nProtestant apprehension there will appear something unnatural in the\nearnest and perpetual sentiment of the relations between God and men\nwhich pervade the tragedy of the Cenci. It will especially be startled\nat the combination of an undoubting persuasion of the truth of the\npopular religion with a cool and determined perseverance in enormous\nguilt. But religion in Italy is not, as in Protestant countries, a\ncloak to be worn on particular days; or a passport which those who do\nnot wish to be railed at carry with them to exhibit; or a gloomy\npassion for penetrating the impenetrable mysteries of our being, which\nterrifies its possessor at the darkness of the abyss to the brink of\nwhich it has conducted him. Religion coexists, as it were, in the mind\nof an Italian Catholic, with a faith in that of which all men have the\nmost certain knowledge. It is interwoven with the whole fabric of\nlife. It is adoration, faith, submission, penitence, blind admiration;\nnot a rule for moral conduct. It has no necessary connection with any\none virtue. The most atrocious villain may be rigidly devout, and\nwithout any shock to established faith, confess himself to be so.\nReligion pervades intensely the whole frame of society, and is\naccording to the temper of the mind which it inhabits, a passion, a\npersuasion, an excuse, a refuge; never a check. Cenci himself built a\nchapel in the court of his Palace, and dedicated it to St. Thomas the\nApostle, and established masses for the peace of his soul. Thus in the\nfirst scene of the fourth act Lucretia’s design in exposing herself to\nthe consequences of an expostulation with Cenci after having\nadministered the opiate, was to induce him by a feigned tale to\nconfess himself before death; this being esteemed by Catholics as\nessential to salvation; and she only relinquishes her purpose when she\nperceives that her perseverance would expose Beatrice to new outrages.\n\nI have avoided with great care in writing this play the introduction\nof what is commonly called mere poetry, and I imagine there will\nscarcely be found a detached simile or a single isolated description,\nunless Beatrice’s description of the chasm appointed for her father’s\nmurder should be judged to be of that nature. (An idea in this speech\nwas suggested by a most sublime passage in “El Purgaterio de San\nPatricio” of Calderon; the only plagiarism which I have intentionally\ncommitted in the whole piece.)\n\nIn a dramatic composition the imagery and the passion should\ninterpenetrate one another, the former being reserved simply for the\nfull development and illustration of the latter. Imagination is as the\nimmortal God which should assume flesh for the redemption of mortal\npassion. It is thus that the most remote and the most familiar imagery\nmay alike be fit for dramatic purposes when employed in the\nillustration of strong feeling, which raises what is low, and levels\nto the apprehension that which is lofty, casting over all the shadow\nof its own greatness. In other respects, I have written more\ncarelessly; that is, without an over-fastidious and learned choice of\nwords. In this respect I entirely agree with those modern critics who\nassert that in order to move men to true sympathy we must use the\nfamiliar language of men, and that our great ancestors the ancient\nEnglish poets are the writers, a study of whom might incite us to do\nthat for our own age which they have done for theirs. But it must be\nthe real language of men in general and not that of any particular\nclass to whose society the writer happens to belong. So much for what\nI have attempted; I need not be assured that success is a very\ndifferent matter; particularly for one whose attention has but newly\nbeen awakened to the study of dramatic literature.\n\nI endeavoured whilst at Rome to observe such monuments of this story\nas might be accessible to a stranger. The portrait of Beatrice at the\nColonna Palace is admirable as a work of art: it was taken by Guido\nduring her confinement in prison. But it is most interesting as a just\nrepresentation of one of the loveliest specimens of the workmanship of\nNature. There is a fixed and pale composure upon the features: she\nseems sad and stricken down in spirit, yet the despair thus expressed\nis lightened by the patience of gentleness. Her head is bound with\nfolds of white drapery from which the yellow strings of her golden\nhair escape, and fall about her neck. The moulding of her face is\nexquisitely delicate; the eyebrows are distinct and arched: the lips\nhave that permanent meaning of imagination and sensibility which\nsuffering has not repressed and which it seems as if death scarcely\ncould extinguish. Her forehead is large and clear; her eyes, which we\nare told were remarkable for their vivacity, are swollen with weeping\nand lustreless, but beautifully tender and serene. In the whole mien\nthere is a simplicity and dignity which, united with her exquisite\nloveliness and deep sorrow, are inexpressibly pathetic. Beatrice Cenci\nappears to have been one of those rare persons in whom energy and\ngentleness dwell together without destroying one another: her nature\nwas simple and profound. The crimes and miseries in which she was an\nactor and a sufferer are as the mask and the mantle in which\ncircumstances clothed her for her impersonation on the scene of the\nworld.\n\nThe Cenci Palace is of great extent; and though in part modernized,\nthere yet remains a vast and gloomy pile of feudal architecture in the\nsame state as during the dreadful scenes which are the subject of this\ntragedy. The Palace is situated in an obscure corner of Rome, near the\nquarter of the Jews, and from the upper windows you see the immense\nruins of Mount Palatine half hidden under their profuse overgrowth of\ntrees. There is a court in one part of the Palace (perhaps that in\nwhich Cenci built the Chapel to St. Thomas), supported by granite\ncolumns and adorned with antique friezes of fine workmanship, and\nbuilt up, according to the ancient Italian fashion, with balcony over\nbalcony of open-work. One of the gates of the Palace formed of immense\nstones and leading through a passage, dark and lofty and opening into\ngloomy subterranean chambers, struck me particularly.\n\nOf the Castle of Petrella, I could obtain no further information than\nthat which is to be found in the manuscript.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Count Francesco Cenci.",
    "body": "GIACOMO, BERNARDO, HIS SONS.\nCARDINAL CAMILLO.\nPRINCE COLONNA.\nORSINO, A PRELATE.\nSAVELLA, THE POPE’S LEGATE.\nOLIMPIO, MARZIO, ASSASSINS.\nANDREA, SERVANT TO CENCI.\nNOBLES. JUDGES. GUARDS, SERVANTS.\nLUCRETIA, WIFE OF CENCI AND STEP-MOTHER OF HIS CHILDREN.\nBEATRICE, HIS DAUGHTER.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Camillo:",
    "body": "That matter of the murder is hushed up\nIf you consent to yield his Holiness\nYour fief that lies beyond the Pincian gate.—\nIt needed all my interest in the conclave\nTo bend him to this point; he said that you                          _5\nBought perilous impunity with your gold;\nThat crimes like yours if once or twice compounded\nEnriched the Church, and respited from hell\nAn erring soul which might repent and live: —\nBut that the glory and the interest                                  _10\nOf the high throne he fills, little consist\nWith making it a daily mart of guilt\nAs manifold and hideous as the deeds\nWhich you scarce hide from men’s revolted eyes.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "The third of my possessions—let it go!                              _15\nAy, I once heard the nephew of the Pope\nHad sent his architect to view the ground,\nMeaning to build a villa on my vines\nThe next time I compounded with his uncle:\nI little thought he should outwit me so!                             _20\nHenceforth no witness—not the lamp—shall see\nThat which the vassal threatened to divulge\nWhose throat is choked with dust for his reward.\nThe deed he saw could not have rated higher\nThan his most worthless life:—it angers me!                         _25\nRespited me from Hell! So may the Devil\nRespite their souls from Heaven! No doubt Pope Clement,\nAnd his most charitable nephews, pray\nThat the Apostle Peter and the Saints\nWill grant for their sake that I long enjoy                          _30\nStrength, wealth, and pride, and lust, and length of days\nWherein to act the deeds which are the stewards\nOf their revenue.—But much yet remains\nTo which they show no title.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Camillo:",
    "body": "Oh, Count Cenci!\nSo much that thou mightst honourably live                            _35\nAnd reconcile thyself with thine own heart\nAnd with thy God, and with the offended world.\nHow hideously look deeds of lust and blood\nThrough those snow white and venerable hairs!—\nYour children should be sitting round you now,                       _40\nBut that you fear to read upon their looks\nThe shame and misery you have written there.\nWhere is your wife? Where is your gentle daughter?\nMethinks her sweet looks, which make all things else\nBeauteous and glad, might kill the fiend within you.                 _45\nWhy is she barred from all society\nBut her own strange and uncomplaining wrongs?\nTalk with me, Count,—you know I mean you well.\nI stood beside your dark and fiery youth\nWatching its bold and bad career, as men                             _50\nWatch meteors, but it vanished not—I marked\nYour desperate and remorseless manhood; now\nDo I behold you in dishonoured age\nCharged with a thousand unrepented crimes.\nYet I have ever hoped you would amend,                               _55\nAnd in that hope have saved your life three times.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "For which Aldobrandino owes you now\nMy fief beyond the Pincian.—Cardinal,\nOne thing, I pray you, recollect henceforth,\nAnd so we shall converse with less restraint.                        _60\nA man you knew spoke of my wife and daughter—\nHe was accustomed to frequent my house;\nSo the next day HIS wife and daughter came\nAnd asked if I had seen him; and I smiled:\nI think they never saw him any more.                                 _65",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "Of thee?\nNay, this is idle: —We should know each other.\nAs to my character for what men call crime\nSeeing I please my senses as I list,\nAnd vindicate that right with force or guile,                        _70\nIt is a public matter, and I care not\nIf I discuss it with you. I may speak\nAlike to you and my own conscious heart—\nFor you give out that you have half reformed me,\nTherefore strong vanity will keep you silent                         _75\nIf fear should not; both will, I do not doubt.\nAll men delight in sensual luxury,\nAll men enjoy revenge; and most exult\nOver the tortures they can never feel—\nFlattering their secret peace with others’ pain.                     _80\nBut I delight in nothing else. I love\nThe sight of agony, and the sense of joy,\nWhen this shall be another’s, and that mine.\nAnd I have no remorse and little fear,\nWhich are, I think, the checks of other men.                         _85\nThis mood has grown upon me, until now\nAny design my captious fancy makes\nThe picture of its wish, and it forms none\nBut such as men like you would start to know,\nIs as my natural food and rest debarred                              _90\nUntil it be accomplished.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "Why miserable?—\nNo.—I am what your theologians call\nHardened;—which they must be in impudence,\nSo to revile a man’s peculiar taste.                                 _95\nTrue, I was happier than I am, while yet\nManhood remained to act the thing I thought;\nWhile lust was sweeter than revenge; and now\nInvention palls:—Ay, we must all grow old—\nAnd but that there remains a deed to act                             _100\nWhose horror might make sharp an appetite\nDuller than mine—I’d do,—I know not what.\nWhen I was young I thought of nothing else\nBut pleasure; and I fed on honey sweets:\nMen, by St. Thomas! cannot live like bees,                           _105\nAnd I grew tired:—yet, till I killed a foe,\nAnd heard his groans, and heard his children’s groans,\nKnew I not what delight was else on earth,\nWhich now delights me little. I the rather\nLook on such pangs as terror ill conceals,                           _110\nThe dry fixed eyeball; the pale, quivering lip,\nWhich tell me that the spirit weeps within\nTears bitterer than the bloody sweat of Christ.\nI rarely kill the body, which preserves,\nLike a strong prison, the soul within my power,                      _115\nWherein I feed it with the breath of fear\nFor hourly pain.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Camillo:",
    "body": "Hell’s most abandoned fiend\nDid never, in the drunkenness of guilt,\nSpeak to his heart as now you speak to me;\nI thank my God that I believe you not.                               _120\n\n[ENTER ANDREA.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "The third of my possessions! I must use\nClose husbandry, or gold, the old man’s sword,\nFalls from my withered hand. But yesterday\nThere came an order from the Pope to make\nFourfold provision for my cursed sons;                               _130\nWhom I had sent from Rome to Salamanca,\nHoping some accident might cut them off;\nAnd meaning if I could to starve them there.\nI pray thee, God, send some quick death upon them!\nBernardo and my wife could not be worse                              _135\nIf dead and damned:—then, as to Beatrice—\n[LOOKING AROUND HIM SUSPICIOUSLY.]\nI think they cannot hear me at that door;\nWhat if they should? And yet I need not speak\nThough the heart triumphs with itself in words.\nO, thou most silent air, that shalt not hear                         _140\nWhat now I think! Thou, pavement, which I tread\nTowards her chamber,—let your echoes talk\nOf my imperious step scorning surprise,\nBut not of my intent!—Andrea!\n\n_131 Whom I had edition 1821; Whom I have editions 1819, 1839.\n_140 that shalt edition 1821; that shall editions 1819, 1839.\n\n[ENTER ANDREA.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "Bid Beatrice attend me in her chamber                                _145\nThis evening:—no, at midnight and alone.\n\n[EXEUNT.]\n\nSCENE 1.2:\nA GARDEN OF THE CENCI PALACE.\nENTER BEATRICE AND ORSINO, AS IN CONVERSATION.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Pervert not truth,\nOrsino. You remember where we held\nThat conversation;—nay, we see the spot\nEven from this cypress;—two long years are past\nSince, on an April midnight, underneath                              _5\nThe moonlight ruins of Mount Palatine,\nI did confess to you my secret mind.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "I may obtain\nThe dispensation of the Pope to marry.                               _10\nBecause I am a Priest do you believe\nYour image, as the hunter some struck deer,\nFollows me not whether I wake or sleep?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "As I have said, speak to me not of love;\nHad you a dispensation I have not;                                   _15\nNor will I leave this home of misery\nWhilst my poor Bernard, and that gentle lady\nTo whom I owe life, and these virtuous thoughts,\nMust suffer what I still have strength to share.\nAlas, Orsino! All the love that once                                 _20\nI felt for you, is turned to bitter pain.\nOurs was a youthful contract, which you first\nBroke, by assuming vows no Pope will loose.\nAnd thus I love you still, but holily,\nEven as a sister or a spirit might;                                  _25\nAnd so I swear a cold fidelity.\nAnd it is well perhaps we shall not marry.\nYou have a sly, equivocating vein\nThat suits me not.—Ah, wretched that I am!\nWhere shall I turn? Even now you look on me                          _30\nAs you were not my friend, and as if you\nDiscovered that I thought so, with false smiles\nMaking my true suspicion seem your wrong.\nAh, no! forgive me; sorrow makes me seem\nSterner than else my nature might have been;                         _35\nI have a weight of melancholy thoughts,\nAnd they forebode,—but what can they forebode\nWorse than I now endure?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "All will be well.\nIs the petition yet prepared? You know\nMy zeal for all you wish, sweet Beatrice;                            _40\nDoubt not but I will use my utmost skill\nSo that the Pope attend to your complaint.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Your zeal for all I wish;—Ah me, you are cold!\nYour utmost skill...speak but one word...\n[ASIDE.]\nAlas!\nWeak and deserted creature that I am,                                _45\nHere I stand bickering with my only friend!\n[TO ORSINO.]\nThis night my father gives a sumptuous feast,\nOrsino; he has heard some happy news\nFrom Salamanca, from my brothers there,\nAnd with this outward show of love he mocks                          _50\nHis inward hate. ’Tis bold hypocrisy,\nFor he would gladlier celebrate their deaths,\nWhich I have heard him pray for on his knees:\nGreat God! that such a father should be mine!\nBut there is mighty preparation made,                                _55\nAnd all our kin, the Cenci, will be there,\nAnd all the chief nobility of Rome.\nAnd he has bidden me and my pale Mother\nAttire ourselves in festival array.\nPoor lady! She expects some happy change                             _60\nIn his dark spirit from this act; I none.\nAt supper I will give you the petition:\nTill when—farewell.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "Farewell.\n[EXIT BEATRICE.]\nI know the Pope\nWill ne’er absolve me from my priestly vow\nBut by absolving me from the revenue                                 _65\nOf many a wealthy see; and, Beatrice,\nI think to win thee at an easier rate.\nNor shall he read her eloquent petition:\nHe might bestow her on some poor relation\nOf his sixth cousin, as he did her sister,                           _70\nAnd I should be debarred from all access.\nThen as to what she suffers from her father,\nIn all this there is much exaggeration:—\nOld men are testy and will have their way;\nA man may stab his enemy, or his vassal,                             _75\nAnd live a free life as to wine or women,\nAnd with a peevish temper may return\nTo a dull home, and rate his wife and children;\nDaughters and wives call this foul tyranny.\nI shall be well content if on my conscience                          _80\nThere rest no heavier sin than what they suffer\nFrom the devices of my love—a net\nFrom which he shall escape not. Yet I fear\nHer subtle mind, her awe-inspiring gaze,\nWhose beams anatomize me nerve by nerve                              _85\nAnd lay me bare, and make me blush to see\nMy hidden thoughts.—Ah, no! A friendless girl\nWho clings to me, as to her only hope:—\nI were a fool, not less than if a panther\nWere panic-stricken by the antelope’s eye,                           _90\nIf she escape me.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "Welcome, my friends and kinsmen; welcome ye,\nPrinces and Cardinals, pillars of the church,\nWhose presence honours our festivity.\nI have too long lived like an anchorite,\nAnd in my absence from your merry meetings                           _5\nAn evil word is gone abroad of me;\nBut I do hope that you, my noble friends,\nWhen you have shared the entertainment here,\nAnd heard the pious cause for which ’tis given,\nAnd we have pledged a health or two together,                        _10\nWill think me flesh and blood as well as you;\nSinful indeed, for Adam made all so,\nBut tender-hearted, meek and pitiful.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "First Guest:",
    "body": "In truth, my Lord, you seem too light of heart,\nToo sprightly and companionable a man,                               _15\nTo act the deeds that rumour pins on you.\n[TO HIS COMPANION.]\nI never saw such blithe and open cheer\nIn any eye!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "It is indeed a most desired event.\nIf when a parent from a parent’s heart\nLifts from this earth to the great Father of all\nA prayer, both when he lays him down to sleep,\nAnd when he rises up from dreaming it;                               _25\nOne supplication, one desire, one hope,\nThat he would grant a wish for his two sons,\nEven all that he demands in their regard—\nAnd suddenly beyond his dearest hope\nIt is accomplished, he should then rejoice,                          _30\nAnd call his friends and kinsmen to a feast,\nAnd task their love to grace his merriment,—\nThen honour me thus far—for I am he.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "Here are the letters brought from Salamanca;\nBeatrice, read them to your mother. God!                             _40\nI thank thee! In one night didst thou perform,\nBy ways inscrutable, the thing I sought.\nMy disobedient and rebellious sons\nAre dead!—Why, dead!—What means this change of cheer?\nYou hear me not, I tell you they are dead;                           _45\nAnd they will need no food or raiment more:\nThe tapers that did light them the dark way\nAre their last cost. The Pope, I think, will not\nExpect I should maintain them in their coffins.\nRejoice with me—my heart is wondrous glad.                          _50\n\n[LUCRETIA SINKS, HALF FAINTING; BEATRICE SUPPORTS HER.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "Ay, as the word of God; whom here I call                             _55\nTo witness that I speak the sober truth;—\nAnd whose most favouring Providence was shown\nEven in the manner of their deaths. For Rocco\nWas kneeling at the mass, with sixteen others,\nWhen the church fell and crushed him to a mummy,                     _60\nThe rest escaped unhurt. Cristofano\nWas stabbed in error by a jealous man,\nWhilst she he loved was sleeping with his rival;\nAll in the self-same hour of the same night;\nWhich shows that Heaven has special care of me.                      _65\nI beg those friends who love me, that they mark\nThe day a feast upon their calendars.\nIt was the twenty-seventh of December:\nAy, read the letters if you doubt my oath.\n\n[THE ASSEMBLY APPEARS CONFUSED; SEVERAL OF THE GUESTS RISE.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Third Guest:",
    "body": "No, stay!                                                            _70\nI do believe it is some jest; though faith!\n’Tis mocking us somewhat too solemnly.\nI think his son has married the Infanta,\nOr found a mine of gold in El Dorado.\n’Tis but to season some such news; stay, stay!                       _75\nI see ’tis only raillery by his smile.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci [Filling A Bowl Of Wine, And Lifting It Up]:",
    "body": "Oh, thou bright wine whose purple splendour leaps\nAnd bubbles gaily in this golden bowl\nUnder the lamplight, as my spirits do,\nTo hear the death of my accursed sons!                               _80\nCould I believe thou wert their mingled blood,\nThen would I taste thee like a sacrament,\nAnd pledge with thee the mighty Devil in Hell,\nWho, if a father’s curses, as men say,\nClimb with swift wings after their children’s souls,                 _85\nAnd drag them from the very throne of Heaven,\nNow triumphs in my triumph!—But thou art\nSuperfluous; I have drunken deep of joy,\nAnd I will taste no other wine to-night.\nHere, Andrea! Bear the bowl around.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci [Addressing Those Who Rise With A Threatening Gesture]:",
    "body": "Who moves? Who speaks?\n[TURNING TO THE COMPANY.]\n’tis nothing,                                                        _95\nEnjoy yourselves.—Beware! For my revenge\nIs as the sealed commission of a king\nThat kills, and none dare name the murderer.\n\n[THE BANQUET IS BROKEN UP; SEVERAL OF THE GUESTS ARE DEPARTING.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "I do entreat you, go not, noble guests;\nWhat, although tyranny and impious hate                              _100\nStand sheltered by a father’s hoary hair?\nWhat if ’tis he who clothed us in these limbs\nWho tortures them, and triumphs? What, if we,\nThe desolate and the dead, were his own flesh,\nHis children and his wife, whom he is bound                          _105\nTo love and shelter? Shall we therefore find\nNo refuge in this merciless wide world?\nO think what deep wrongs must have blotted out\nFirst love, then reverence in a child’s prone mind,\nTill it thus vanquish shame and fear! O think!                       _110\nI have borne much, and kissed the sacred hand\nWhich crushed us to the earth, and thought its stroke\nWas perhaps some paternal chastisement!\nHave excused much, doubted; and when no doubt\nRemained, have sought by patience, love, and tears                   _115\nTo soften him, and when this could not be\nI have knelt down through the long sleepless nights\nAnd lifted up to God, the Father of all,\nPassionate prayers: and when these were not heard\nI have still borne,—until I meet you here,                          _120\nPrinces and kinsmen, at this hideous feast\nGiven at my brothers’ deaths. Two yet remain,\nHis wife remains and I, whom if ye save not,\nYe may soon share such merriment again\nAs fathers make over their children’s graves.                        _125\nO Prince Colonna, thou art our near kinsman,\nCardinal, thou art the Pope’s chamberlain,\nCamillo, thou art chief justiciary,\nTake us away!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci [He Has Been Conversing With Camillo During The First Part Of",
    "body": "BEATRICE’S SPEECH; HE HEARS THE CONCLUSION, AND NOW ADVANCES]:\nI hope my good friends here\nWill think of their own daughters—or perhaps                        _130\nOf their own throats—before they lend an ear\nTo this wild girl.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice [Not Noticing The Words Of Cenci]:",
    "body": "Dare no one look on me?\nNone answer? Can one tyrant overbear\nThe sense of many best and wisest men?\nOr is it that I sue not in some form                                 _135\nOf scrupulous law, that ye deny my suit?\nO God! That I were buried with my brothers!\nAnd that the flowers of this departed spring\nWere fading on my grave! And that my father\nWere celebrating now one feast for all!                              _140",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Retire thou, impious man! Ay, hide thyself\nWhere never eye can look upon thee more!\nWouldst thou have honour and obedience\nWho art a torturer? Father, never dream,\nThough thou mayst overbear this company,                             _150\nBut ill must come of ill.—Frown not on me!\nHaste, hide thyself, lest with avenging looks\nMy brothers’ ghosts should hunt thee from thy seat!\nCover thy face from every living eye,\nAnd start if thou but hear a human step:                             _155\nSeek out some dark and silent corner, there,\nBow thy white head before offended God,\nAnd we will kneel around, and fervently\nPray that he pity both ourselves and thee.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "My friends, I do lament this insane girl                             _160\nHas spoilt the mirth of our festivity.\nGood night, farewell; I will not make you longer\nSpectators of our dull domestic quarrels.\nAnother time.—\n[EXEUNT ALL BUT CENCI AND BEATRICE.]\nMy brain is swimming round;\nGive me a bowl of wine!\n[TO BEATRICE.]\nThou painted viper!                                                  _165\nBeast that thou art! Fair and yet terrible!\nI know a charm shall make thee meek and tame,\nNow get thee from my sight!\n[EXIT BEATRICE.]\nHere, Andrea,\nFill up this goblet with Greek wine. I said\nI would not drink this evening; but I must;                          _170\nFor, strange to say, I feel my spirits fail\nWith thinking what I have decreed to do.—\n[DRINKING THE WINE.]\nBe thou the resolution of quick youth\nWithin my veins, and manhood’s purpose stern,\nAnd age’s firm, cold, subtle villainy;                               _175\nAs if thou wert indeed my children’s blood\nWhich I did thirst to drink! The charm works well;\nIt must be done; it shall be done, I swear!\n\n[EXIT.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lucretia:",
    "body": "Weep not, my gentle boy; he struck but me\nWho have borne deeper wrongs. In truth, if he\nHad killed me, he had done a kinder deed.\nO God Almighty, do Thou look upon us,\nWe have no other friend but only Thee!                               _5\nYet weep not; though I love you as my own,\nI am not your true mother.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice [In A Hurried Voice]:",
    "body": "Did he pass this way? Have you seen him, brother?\nAh, no! that is his step upon the stairs;\n’Tis nearer now; his hand is on the door;\nMother, if I to thee have ever been                                  _15\nA duteous child, now save me! Thou, great God,\nWhose image upon earth a father is,\nDost thou indeed abandon me? He comes;\nThe door is opening now; I see his face;\nHe frowns on others, but he smiles on me,                            _20\nEven as he did after the feast last night.\n[ENTER A SERVANT.]\nAlmighty God, how merciful Thou art!\n’Tis but Orsino’s servant.—Well, what news?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lucretia:",
    "body": "At the Ave Mary.\n[EXIT SERVANT.]\nSo, daughter, our last hope has failed. Ah me!\nHow pale you look; you tremble, and you stand\nWrapped in some fixed and fearful meditation,                        _30\nAs if one thought were over strong for you:\nYour eyes have a chill glare; O, dearest child!\nAre you gone mad? If not, pray speak to me.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lucretia:",
    "body": "You talked of something that your father did                         _35\nAfter that dreadful feast? Could it be worse\nThan when he smiled, and cried, ‘My sons are dead!’\nAnd every one looked in his neighbour’s face\nTo see if others were as white as he?\nAt the first word he spoke I felt the blood                          _40\nRush to my heart, and fell into a trance;\nAnd when it passed I sat all weak and wild;\nWhilst you alone stood up, and with strong words\nChecked his unnatural pride; and I could see\nThe devil was rebuked that lives in him.                             _45\nUntil this hour thus you have ever stood\nBetween us and your father’s moody wrath\nLike a protecting presence; your firm mind\nHas been our only refuge and defence:\nWhat can have thus subdued it? What can now                          _50\nHave given you that cold melancholy look,\nSucceeding to your unaccustomed fear?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "What is it that you say? I was just thinking\n’Twere better not to struggle any more.\nMen, like my father, have been dark and bloody,                      _55\nYet never—Oh! Before worse comes of it\n’Twere wise to die: it ends in that at last.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice [Speaking Very Slowly, With A Forced Calmness]:",
    "body": "It was one word, Mother, one little word;\nOne look, one smile.\n[WILDLY.]\nOh! He has trampled me\nUnder his feet, and made the blood stream down                       _65\nMy pallid cheeks. And he has given us all\nDitch-water, and the fever-stricken flesh\nOf buffaloes, and bade us eat or starve,\nAnd we have eaten.—He has made me look\nOn my beloved Bernardo, when the rust                                _70\nOf heavy chains has gangrened his sweet limbs,\nAnd I have never yet despaired—but now!\nWhat could I say?\n[RECOVERING HERSELF.]\nAh, no! ’tis nothing new.\nThe sufferings we all share have made me wild:\nHe only struck and cursed me as he passed;                           _75\nHe said, he looked, he did;—nothing at all\nBeyond his wont, yet it disordered me.\nAlas! I am forgetful of my duty,\nI should preserve my senses for your sake.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lucretia:",
    "body": "Nay, Beatrice; have courage, my sweet girl.                          _80\nIf any one despairs it should be I\nWho loved him once, and now must live with him\nTill God in pity call for him or me.\nFor you may, like your sister, find some husband,\nAnd smile, years hence, with children round your knees;              _85\nWhilst I, then dead, and all this hideous coil\nShall be remembered only as a dream.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Talk not to me, dear lady, of a husband.\nDid you not nurse me when my mother died?\nDid you not shield me and that dearest boy?                          _90\nAnd had we any other friend but you\nIn infancy, with gentle words and looks,\nTo win our father not to murder us?\nAnd shall I now desert you? May the ghost\nOf my dead Mother plead against my soul                              _95\nIf I abandon her who filled the place\nShe left, with more, even, than a mother’s love!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Bernardo:",
    "body": "And I am of my sister’s mind. Indeed\nI would not leave you in this wretchedness,\nEven though the Pope should make me free to live                     _100\nIn some blithe place, like others of my age,\nWith sports, and delicate food, and the fresh air.\nOh, never think that I will leave you, Mother!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "What! Beatrice here!\nCome hither!\n[SHE SHRINKS BACK, AND COVERS HER FACE.]\nNay, hide not your face, ’tis fair;                                  _105\nLook up! Why, yesternight you dared to look\nWith disobedient insolence upon me,\nBending a stern and an inquiring brow\nOn what I meant; whilst I then sought to hide\nThat which I came to tell you—but in vain.                          _110",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "Then it was I whose inarticulate words\nFell from my lips, and who with tottering steps\nFled from your presence, as you now from mine.\nStay, I command you—from this day and hour                          _115\nNever again, I think, with fearless eye,\nAnd brow superior, and unaltered cheek,\nAnd that lip made for tenderness or scorn,\nShalt thou strike dumb the meanest of mankind;\nMe least of all. Now get thee to thy chamber!                        _120\nThou too, loathed image of thy cursed mother,\n[TO BERNARDO.]\nThy milky, meek face makes me sick with hate!\n[EXEUNT BEATRICE AND BERNARDO.]\n[ASIDE.]\nSo much has passed between us as must make\nMe bold, her fearful.—’Tis an awful thing\nTo touch such mischief as I now conceive:                            _125\nSo men sit shivering on the dewy bank,\nAnd try the chill stream with their feet; once in...\nHow the delighted spirit pants for joy!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "Nor you perhaps?                                                     _130\nNor that young imp, whom you have taught by rote\nParricide with his alphabet? Nor Giacomo?\nNor those two most unnatural sons, who stirred\nEnmity up against me with the Pope?\nWhom in one night merciful God cut off:                              _135\nInnocent lambs! They thought not any ill.\nYou were not here conspiring? You said nothing\nOf how I might be dungeoned as a madman;\nOr be condemned to death for some offence,\nAnd you would be the witnesses?—This failing,                       _140\nHow just it were to hire assassins, or\nPut sudden poison in my evening drink?\nOr smother me when overcome by wine?\nSeeing we had no other judge but God,\nAnd He had sentenced me, and there were none                         _145\nBut you to be the executioners\nOf His decree enregistered in heaven?\nOh, no! You said not this?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "If you dare to speak that wicked lie again                           _150\nI’ll kill you. What! It was not by your counsel\nThat Beatrice disturbed the feast last night?\nYou did not hope to stir some enemies\nAgainst me, and escape, and laugh to scorn\nWhat every nerve of you now trembles at?                             _155\nYou judged that men were bolder than they are;\nFew dare to stand between their grave and me.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lucretia:",
    "body": "Look not so dreadfully! By my salvation\nI knew not aught that Beatrice designed;\nNor do I think she designed any thing                                _160\nUntil she heard you talk of her dead brothers.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "Blaspheming liar! You are damned for this!\nBut I will take you where you may persuade\nThe stones you tread on to deliver you:\nFor men shall there be none but those who dare                       _165\nAll things—not question that which I command.\nOn Wednesday next I shall set out: you know\nThat savage rock, the Castle of Petrella:\n’Tis safely walled, and moated round about:\nIts dungeons underground, and its thick towers                       _170\nNever told tales; though they have heard and seen\nWhat might make dumb things speak.—Why do you linger?\nMake speediest preparation for the journey!\n[EXIT LUCRETIA.]\nThe all-beholding sun yet shines; I hear\nA busy stir of men about the streets;                                _175\nI see the bright sky through the window panes:\nIt is a garish, broad, and peering day;\nLoud, light, suspicious, full of eyes and ears,\nAnd every little corner, nook, and hole\nIs penetrated with the insolent light.                               _180\nCome darkness! Yet, what is the day to me?\nAnd wherefore should I wish for night, who do\nA deed which shall confound both night and day?\n’Tis she shall grope through a bewildering mist\nOf horror: if there be a sun in heaven                               _185\nShe shall not dare to look upon its beams;\nNor feel its warmth. Let her then wish for night;\nThe act I think shall soon extinguish all\nFor me: I bear a darker deadlier gloom\nThan the earth’s shade, or interlunar air,                           _190\nOr constellations quenched in murkiest cloud,\nIn which I walk secure and unbeheld\nTowards my purpose.—Would that it were done!\n\n[EXIT.]\n\nSCENE 2.2:\nA CHAMBER IN THE VATICAN.\nENTER CAMILLO AND GIACOMO, IN CONVERSATION.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Giacomo:",
    "body": "Nothing more? Alas!\nBare must be the provision which strict law\nAwards, and aged, sullen avarice pays.                               _5\nWhy did my father not apprentice me\nTo some mechanic trade? I should have then\nBeen trained in no highborn necessities\nWhich I could meet not by my daily toil.\nThe eldest son of a rich nobleman                                    _10\nIs heir to all his incapacities;\nHe has wide wants, and narrow powers. If you,\nCardinal Camillo, were reduced at once\nFrom thrice-driven beds of down, and delicate food,\nAn hundred servants, and six palaces,                                _15\nTo that which nature doth indeed require?—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Giacomo:",
    "body": "’Tis hard for a firm man to bear: but I\nHave a dear wife, a lady of high birth,\nWhose dowry in ill hour I lent my father                             _20\nWithout a bond or witness to the deed:\nAnd children, who inherit her fine senses,\nThe fairest creatures in this breathing world;\nAnd she and they reproach me not. Cardinal,\nDo you not think the Pope would interpose                            _25\nAnd stretch authority beyond the law?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Camillo:",
    "body": "Though your peculiar case is hard, I know\nThe Pope will not divert the course of law.\nAfter that impious feast the other night\nI spoke with him, and urged him then to check                        _30\nYour father’s cruel hand; he frowned and said,\n‘Children are disobedient, and they sting\nTheir fathers’ hearts to madness and despair,\nRequiting years of care with contumely.\nI pity the Count Cenci from my heart;                                _35\nHis outraged love perhaps awakened hate,\nAnd thus he is exasperated to ill.\nIn the great war between the old and young\nI, who have white hairs and a tottering body,\nWill keep at least blameless neutrality.’                            _40\n[ENTER ORSINO.]\nYou, my good Lord Orsino, heard those words.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Giacomo:",
    "body": "Alas, repeat them not again!\nThere then is no redress for me, at least\nNone but that which I may achieve myself,\nSince I am driven to the brink.—But, say,                           _45\nMy innocent sister and my only brother\nAre dying underneath my father’s eye.\nThe memorable torturers of this land,\nGaleaz Visconti, Borgia, Ezzelin,\nNever inflicted on their meanest slave                               _50\nWhat these endure; shall they have no protection?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Camillo:",
    "body": "Why, if they would petition to the Pope\nI see not how he could refuse it—yet\nHe holds it of most dangerous example\nIn aught to weaken the paternal power,                               _55\nBeing, as ’twere, the shadow of his own.\nI pray you now excuse me. I have business\nThat will not bear delay.\n\n[EXIT CAMILLO.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "I have presented it, and backed it with                              _60\nMy earnest prayers, and urgent interest;\nIt was returned unanswered. I doubt not\nBut that the strange and execrable deeds\nAlleged in it—in truth they might well baffle\nAny belief—have turned the Pope’s displeasure                       _65\nUpon the accusers from the criminal:\nSo I should guess from what Camillo said.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Giacomo:",
    "body": "My friend, that palace-walking devil Gold\nHas whispered silence to his Holiness:\nAnd we are left, as scorpions ringed with fire.                      _70\nWhat should we do but strike ourselves to death?\nFor he who is our murderous persecutor\nIs shielded by a father’s holy name,\nOr I would—\n\n[STOPS ABRUPTLY.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "What? Fear not to speak your thought.\nWords are but holy as the deeds they cover:                          _75\nA priest who has forsworn the God he serves;\nA judge who makes Truth weep at his decree;\nA friend who should weave counsel, as I now,\nBut as the mantle of some selfish guile;\nA father who is all a tyrant seems,                                  _80\nWere the profaner for his sacred name.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Giacomo:",
    "body": "Ask me not what I think; the unwilling brain\nFeigns often what it would not; and we trust\nImagination with such fantasies\nAs the tongue dares not fashion into words,                          _85\nWhich have no words, their horror makes them dim\nTo the mind’s eye.—My heart denies itself\nTo think what you demand.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Giacomo:",
    "body": "Spare me now!\nI am as one lost in a midnight wood,\nWho dares not ask some harmless passenger\nThe path across the wilderness, lest he,                             _95\nAs my thoughts are, should be—a murderer.\nI know you are my friend, and all I dare\nSpeak to my soul that will I trust with thee.\nBut now my heart is heavy, and would take\nLone counsel from a night of sleepless care.                         _100\nPardon me, that I say farewell—farewell!\nI would that to my own suspected self\nI could address a word so full of peace.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "Farewell!—Be your thoughts better or more bold.\n[EXIT GIACOMO.]\nI had disposed the Cardinal Camillo                                  _105\nTo feed his hope with cold encouragement:\nIt fortunately serves my close designs\nThat ’tis a trick of this same family\nTo analyse their own and other minds.\nSuch self-anatomy shall teach the will                               _110\nDangerous secrets: for it tempts our powers,\nKnowing what must be thought, and may be done.\nInto the depth of darkest purposes:\nSo Cenci fell into the pit; even I,\nSince Beatrice unveiled me to myself,                                _115\nAnd made me shrink from what I cannot shun,\nShow a poor figure to my own esteem,\nTo which I grow half reconciled. I’ll do\nAs little mischief as I can; that thought\nShall fee the accuser conscience.\n[AFTER A PAUSE.]\nNow what harm                                                        _120\nIf Cenci should be murdered?—Yet, if murdered,\nWherefore by me? And what if I could take\nThe profit, yet omit the sin and peril\nIn such an action? Of all earthly things\nI fear a man whose blows outspeed his words                          _125\nAnd such is Cenci: and while Cenci lives\nHis daughter’s dowry were a secret grave\nIf a priest wins her.—Oh, fair Beatrice!\nWould that I loved thee not, or loving thee,\nCould but despise danger and gold and all                            _130\nThat frowns between my wish and its effect.\nOr smiles beyond it! There is no escape...\nHer bright form kneels beside me at the altar,\nAnd follows me to the resort of men,\nAnd fills my slumber with tumultuous dreams,                         _135\nSo when I wake my blood seems liquid fire;\nAnd if I strike my damp and dizzy head\nMy hot palm scorches it: her very name,\nBut spoken by a stranger, makes my heart\nSicken and pant; and thus unprofitably                               _140\nI clasp the phantom of unfelt delights\nTill weak imagination half possesses\nThe self-created shadow. Yet much longer\nWill I not nurse this life of feverous hours:\nFrom the unravelled hopes of Giacomo                                 _145\nI must work out my own dear purposes.\nI see, as from a tower, the end of all:\nHer father dead; her brother bound to me\nBy a dark secret, surer than the grave;\nHer mother scared and unexpostulating                                _150\nFrom the dread manner of her wish achieved;\nAnd she!—Once more take courage, my faint heart;\nWhat dares a friendless maiden matched with thee?\nI have such foresight as assures success:\nSome unbeheld divinity doth ever,                                    _155\nWhen dread events are near, stir up men’s minds\nTo black suggestions; and he prospers best,\nNot who becomes the instrument of ill,\nBut who can flatter the dark spirit, that makes\nIts empire and its prey of other hearts                              _160\nTill it become his slave...as I will do.\n\n[EXIT.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "How comes this hair undone?\nIts wandering strings must be what blind me so,\nAnd yet I tied it fast.—Oh, horrible!\nThe pavement sinks under my feet! The walls\nSpin round! I see a woman weeping there,                             _10\nAnd standing calm and motionless, whilst I\nSlide giddily as the world reels...My God!\nThe beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood!\nThe sunshine on the floor is black! The air\nIs changed to vapours such as the dead breathe                       _15\nIn charnel pits! Pah! I am choked! There creeps\nA clinging, black, contaminating mist\nAbout me...’tis substantial, heavy, thick,\nI cannot pluck it from me, for it glues\nMy fingers and my limbs to one another,                              _20\nAnd eats into my sinews, and dissolves\nMy flesh to a pollution, poisoning\nThe subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life!\nMy God! I never knew what the mad felt\nBefore; for I am mad beyond all doubt!                               _25\n[MORE WILDLY.]\nNo, I am dead! These putrefying limbs\nShut round and sepulchre the panting soul\nWhich would burst forth into the wandering air!\n[A PAUSE.]\nWhat hideous thought was that I had even now?\n’Tis gone; and yet its burthen remains here                          _30\nO’er these dull eyes...upon this weary heart!\nO, world! O, life! O, day! O, misery!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice [Doubtfully]:",
    "body": "Who art thou, questioner? I have no father.                          _40\n[ASIDE.]\nShe is the madhouse nurse who tends on me,\nIt is a piteous office.\n[TO LUCRETIA, IN A SLOW, SUBDUED VOICE.]\nDo you know\nI thought I was that wretched Beatrice\nMen speak of, whom her father sometimes hales\nFrom hall to hall by the entangled hair;                             _45\nAt others, pens up naked in damp cells\nWhere scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there,\nTill she will eat strange flesh. This woful story\nSo did I overact in my sick dreams,\nThat I imagined...no, it cannot be!                                  _50\nHorrible things have been in this wide world,\nProdigious mixtures, and confusions strange\nOf good and ill; and worse have been conceived\nThan ever there was found a heart to do.\nBut never fancy imaged such a deed                                   _55\nAs...\n[PAUSES, SUDDENLY RECOLLECTING HERSELF.]\nWho art thou? Swear to me, ere I die\nWith fearful expectation, that indeed\nThou art not what thou seemest...Mother!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Yet speak it not:\nFor then if this be truth, that other too                            _60\nMust be a truth, a firm enduring truth,\nLinked with each lasting circumstance of life,\nNever to change, never to pass away.\nWhy so it is. This is the Cenci Palace;\nThou art Lucretia; I am Beatrice.                                    _65\nI have talked some wild words, but will no more.\nMother, come near me: from this point of time,\nI am...\n[HER VOICE DIES AWAY FAINTLY.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "What have I done?\nAm I not innocent? Is it my crime                                    _70\nThat one with white hair, and imperious brow,\nWho tortured me from my forgotten years,\nAs parents only dare, should call himself\nMy father, yet should be!—Oh, what am I?\nWhat name, what place, what memory shall be mine?                    _75\nWhat retrospects, outliving even despair?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lucretia:",
    "body": "He is a violent tyrant, surely, child:\nWe know that death alone can make us free;\nHis death or ours. But what can he have done\nOf deadlier outrage or worse injury?                                 _80\nThou art unlike thyself; thine eyes shoot forth\nA wandering and strange spirit. Speak to me,\nUnlock those pallid hands whose fingers twine\nWith one another.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "’Tis the restless life\nTortured within them. If I try to speak,                             _85\nI shall go mad. Ay, something must be done;\nWhat, yet I know not...something which shall make\nThe thing that I have suffered but a shadow\nIn the dread lightning which avenges it;\nBrief, rapid, irreversible, destroying                               _90\nThe consequence of what it cannot cure.\nSome such thing is to be endured or done:\nWhen I know what, I shall be still and calm,\nAnd never anything will move me more.\nBut now!—O blood, which art my father’s blood,                      _95\nCircling through these contaminated veins,\nIf thou, poured forth on the polluted earth,\nCould wash away the crime, and punishment\nBy which I suffer...no, that cannot be!\nMany might doubt there were a God above                              _100\nWho sees and permits evil, and so die:\nThat faith no agony shall obscure in me.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "I hide them not.\nWhat are the words which you would have me speak?\nI, who can feign no image in my mind\nOf that which has transformed me: I, whose thought\nIs like a ghost shrouded and folded up                               _110\nIn its own formless horror: of all words,\nThat minister to mortal intercourse,\nWhich wouldst thou hear? For there is none to tell\nMy misery: if another ever knew\nAught like to it, she died as I will die,                            _115\nAnd left it, as I must, without a name.\nDeath, Death! Our law and our religion call thee\nA punishment and a reward...Oh, which\nHave I deserved?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lucretia:",
    "body": "The peace of innocence;\nTill in your season you be called to heaven.                         _120\nWhate’er you may have suffered, you have done\nNo evil. Death must be the punishment\nOf crime, or the reward of trampling down\nThe thorns which God has strewed upon the path\nWhich leads to immortality.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Ay, death...                                                         _125\nThe punishment of crime. I pray thee, God,\nLet me not be bewildered while I judge.\nIf I must live day after day, and keep\nThese limbs, the unworthy temple of Thy spirit,\nAs a foul den from which what Thou abhorrest                         _130\nMay mock Thee, unavenged...it shall not be!\nSelf-murder...no, that might be no escape,\nFor Thy decree yawns like a Hell between\nOur will and it:—O! In this mortal world\nThere is no vindication and no law                                   _135\nWhich can adjudge and execute the doom\nOf that through which I suffer.\n[ENTER ORSINO.]\n[SHE APPROACHES HIM SOLEMNLY.]\nWelcome, Friend!\nI have to tell you that, since last we met,\nI have endured a wrong so great and strange,\nThat neither life nor death can give me rest.                        _140\nAsk me not what it is, for there are deeds\nWhich have no form, sufferings which have no tongue.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "What it can be, or not,                                              _145\nForbear to think. It is, and it has been;\nAdvise me how it shall not be again.\nI thought to die; but a religious awe\nRestrains me, and the dread lest death itself\nMight be no refuge from the consciousness                            _150\nOf what is yet unexpiated. Oh, speak!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Oh, ice-hearted counsellor!\nIf I could find a word that might make known\nThe crime of my destroyer; and that done,                            _155\nMy tongue should like a knife tear out the secret\nWhich cankers my heart’s core; ay, lay all bare,\nSo that my unpolluted fame should be\nWith vilest gossips a stale mouthed story;\nA mock, a byword, an astonishment:—                                 _160\nIf this were done, which never shall be done,\nThink of the offender’s gold, his dreaded hate,\nAnd the strange horror of the accuser’s tale,\nBaffling belief, and overpowering speech;\nScarce whispered, unimaginable, wrapped                              _165\nIn hideous hints...Oh, most assured redress!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Endure!—Orsino,\nIt seems your counsel is small profit.\n[TURNS FROM HIM, AND SPEAKS HALF TO HERSELF.]\nAy,\nAll must be suddenly resolved and done.\nWhat is this undistinguishable mist                                  _170\nOf thoughts, which rise, like shadow after shadow,\nDarkening each other?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "Should the offender live?\nTriumph in his misdeed? and make, by use,\nHis crime, whate’er it is, dreadful no doubt,\nThine element; until thou mayest become                              _175\nUtterly lost; subdued even to the hue\nOf that which thou permittest?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lucretia:",
    "body": "But if one, like this wretch,\nShould mock, with gold, opinion, law, and power?                     _185\nIf there be no appeal to that which makes\nThe guiltiest tremble? If because our wrongs,\nFor that they are unnatural, strange and monstrous,\nExceed all measure of belief? O God!\nIf, for the very reasons which should make                           _190\nRedress most swift and sure, our injurer triumphs?\nAnd we, the victims, bear worse punishment\nThan that appointed for their torturer?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "Why, his late outrage to Beatrice;\nFor it is such, as I but faintly guess,\nAs makes remorse dishonour, and leaves her                           _200\nOnly one duty, how she may avenge:\nYou, but one refuge from ills ill endured;\nMe, but one counsel...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Peace, Orsino!\nAnd, honoured Lady, while I speak, I pray,\nThat you put off, as garments overworn,\nForbearance and respect, remorse and fear,\nAnd all the fit restraints of daily life,                            _210\nWhich have been borne from childhood, but which now\nWould be a mockery to my holier plea.\nAs I have said, I have endured a wrong,\nWhich, though it be expressionless, is such\nAs asks atonement; both for what is past,                            _215\nAnd lest I be reserved, day after day,\nTo load with crimes an overburthened soul,\nAnd be...what ye can dream not. I have prayed\nTo God, and I have talked with my own heart,\nAnd have unravelled my entangled will,                               _220\nAnd have at length determined what is right.\nArt thou my friend, Orsino? False or true?\nPledge thy salvation ere I speak.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "I know two dull, fierce outlaws,\nWho think man’s spirit as a worm’s, and they\nWould trample out, for any slight caprice,                           _235\nThe meanest or the noblest life. This mood\nIs marketable here in Rome. They sell\nWhat we now want.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "But I remember\nTwo miles on this side of the fort, the road\nCrosses a deep ravine; ’tis rough and narrow,                        _245\nAnd winds with short turns down the precipice;\nAnd in its depth there is a mighty rock,\nWhich has, from unimaginable years,\nSustained itself with terror and with toil\nOver a gulf, and with the agony                                      _250\nWith which it clings seems slowly coming down;\nEven as a wretched soul hour after hour,\nClings to the mass of life; yet, clinging, leans;\nAnd leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss\nIn which it fears to fall: beneath this crag                         _255\nHuge as despair, as if in weariness,\nThe melancholy mountain yawns...below,\nYou hear but see not an impetuous torrent\nRaging among the caverns, and a bridge\nCrosses the chasm; and high above there grow,                        _260\nWith intersecting trunks, from crag to crag,\nCedars, and yews, and pines; whose tangled hair\nIs matted in one solid roof of shade\nBy the dark ivy’s twine. At noonday here\n’Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night.                         _265",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "What shall I do?\nCenci must find me here, and I must bear\nThe imperious inquisition of his looks                               _275\nAs to what brought me hither: let me mask\nMine own in some inane and vacant smile.\n[ENTER GIACOMO, IN A HURRIED MANNER.]\nHow! Have you ventured hither? Know you then\nThat Cenci is from home?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Giacomo:",
    "body": "Ay!\nDoes my destroyer know his danger? We\nAre now no more, as once, parent and child,\nBut man to man; the oppressor to the oppressed;\nThe slanderer to the slandered; foe to foe:                          _285\nHe has cast Nature off, which was his shield,\nAnd Nature casts him off, who is her shame;\nAnd I spurn both. Is it a father’s throat\nWhich I will shake, and say, I ask not gold;\nI ask not happy years; nor memories                                  _290\nOf tranquil childhood; nor home-sheltered love;\nThough all these hast thou torn from me, and more;\nBut only my fair fame; only one hoard\nOf peace, which I thought hidden from thy hate,\nUnder the penury heaped on me by thee,                               _295\nOr I will...God can understand and pardon,\nWhy should I speak with man?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Giacomo:",
    "body": "Well, I will calmly tell you what he did.\nThis old Francesco Cenci, as you know,\nBorrowed the dowry of my wife from me,                               _300\nAnd then denied the loan; and left me so\nIn poverty, the which I sought to mend\nBy holding a poor office in the state.\nIt had been promised to me, and already\nI bought new clothing for my ragged babes,                           _305\nAnd my wife smiled; and my heart knew repose.\nWhen Cenci’s intercession, as I found,\nConferred this office on a wretch, whom thus\nHe paid for vilest service. I returned\nWith this ill news, and we sate sad together                         _310\nSolacing our despondency with tears\nOf such affection and unbroken faith\nAs temper life’s worst bitterness; when he,\nAs he is wont, came to upbraid and curse,\nMocking our poverty, and telling us                                  _315\nSuch was God’s scourge for disobedient sons.\nAnd then, that I might strike him dumb with shame,\nI spoke of my wife’s dowry; but he coined\nA brief yet specious tale, how I had wasted\nThe sum in secret riot; and he saw                                   _320\nMy wife was touched, and he went smiling forth.\nAnd when I knew the impression he had made,\nAnd felt my wife insult with silent scorn\nMy ardent truth, and look averse and cold,\nI went forth too: but soon returned again;                           _325\nYet not so soon but that my wife had taught\nMy children her harsh thoughts, and they all cried,\n‘Give us clothes, father! Give us better food!\nWhat you in one night squander were enough\nFor months!’ I looked, and saw that home was hell.                   _330\nAnd to that hell will I return no more\nUntil mine enemy has rendered up\nAtonement, or, as he gave life to me\nI will, reversing Nature’s law...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Giacomo:",
    "body": "Then...Are you not my friend?\nDid you not hint at the alternative,\nUpon the brink of which you see I stand,\nThe other day when we conversed together?\nMy wrongs were then less. That word parricide,                       _340\nAlthough I am resolved, haunts me like fear.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "It must be fear itself, for the bare word\nIs hollow mockery. Mark, how wisest God\nDraws to one point the threads of a just doom,\nSo sanctifying it: what you devise                                   _345\nIs, as it were, accomplished.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "That she speaks not, but you may\nConceive such half conjectures as I do,                              _350\nFrom her fixed paleness, and the lofty grief\nOf her stern brow bent on the idle air,\nAnd her severe unmodulated voice,\nDrowning both tenderness and dread; and last\nFrom this; that whilst her step-mother and I,                        _355\nBewildered in our horror, talked together\nWith obscure hints; both self-misunderstood\nAnd darkly guessing, stumbling, in our talk,\nOver the truth, and yet to its revenge,\nShe interrupted us, and with a look                                  _360\nWhich told, before she spoke it, he must die:...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Giacomo:",
    "body": "It is enough. My doubts are well appeased;\nThere is a higher reason for the act\nThan mine; there is a holier judge than me,\nA more unblamed avenger. Beatrice,                                   _365\nWho in the gentleness of thy sweet youth\nHast never trodden on a worm, or bruised\nA living flower, but thou hast pitied it\nWith needless tears! Fair sister, thou in whom\nMen wondered how such loveliness and wisdom                          _370\nDid not destroy each other! Is there made\nRavage of thee? O, heart, I ask no more\nJustification! Shall I wait, Orsino,\nTill he return, and stab him at the door?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "Not so; some accident might interpose                                _375\nTo rescue him from what is now most sure;\nAnd you are unprovided where to fly,\nHow to excuse or to conceal. Nay, listen:\nAll is contrived; success is so assured\nThat...\n\n[ENTER BEATRICE.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Lost indeed!\nI see Orsino has talked with you, and\nThat you conjecture things too horrible\nTo speak, yet far less than the truth. Now, stay not,\nHe might return: yet kiss me; I shall know                           _385\nThat then thou hast consented to his death.\nFarewell, farewell! Let piety to God,\nBrotherly love, justice and clemency,\nAnd all things that make tender hardest hearts\nMake thine hard, brother. Answer not...farewell.                     _390\n\n[EXEUNT SEVERALLY.]\n\nSCENE 3.2:\nA MEAN APARTMENT IN GIACOMO’S HOUSE.\nGIACOMO ALONE.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Giacomo:",
    "body": "’Tis midnight, and Orsino comes not yet.\n[THUNDER, AND THE SOUND OF A STORM.]\nWhat! can the everlasting elements\nFeel with a worm like man? If so, the shaft\nOf mercy-winged lightning would not fall\nOn stones and trees. My wife and children sleep:                     _5\nThey are now living in unmeaning dreams:\nBut I must wake, still doubting if that deed\nBe just which is most necessary. O,\nThou unreplenished lamp! whose narrow fire\nIs shaken by the wind, and on whose edge                             _10\nDevouring darkness hovers! Thou small flame,\nWhich, as a dying pulse rises and falls,\nStill flickerest up and down, how very soon,\nDid I not feed thee, wouldst thou fail and be\nAs thou hadst never been! So wastes and sinks                        _15\nEven now, perhaps, the life that kindled mine:\nBut that no power can fill with vital oil\nThat broken lamp of flesh. Ha! ’tis the blood\nWhich fed these veins that ebbs till all is cold:\nIt is the form that moulded mine that sinks                          _20\nInto the white and yellow spasms of death:\nIt is the soul by which mine was arrayed\nIn God’s immortal likeness which now stands\nNaked before Heaven’s judgement seat!\n[A BELL STRIKES.]\nOne! Two!\nThe hours crawl on; and, when my hairs are white,                    _25\nMy son will then perhaps be waiting thus,\nTortured between just hate and vain remorse;\nChiding the tardy messenger of news\nLike those which I expect. I almost wish\nHe be not dead, although my wrongs are great;                        _30\nYet...’tis Orsino’s step...\n[ENTER ORSINO.]\nSpeak!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Giacomo:",
    "body": "Are we the fools of such contingencies?                              _35\nAnd do we waste in blind misgivings thus\nThe hours when we should act? Then wind and thunder,\nWhich seemed to howl his knell, is the loud laughter\nWith which Heaven mocks our weakness! I henceforth\nWill ne’er repent of aught designed or done                          _40\nBut my repentance.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Giacomo:",
    "body": "If no remorse is ours when the dim air\nHas drank this innocent flame, why should we quail\nWhen Cenci’s life, that light by which ill spirits\nSee the worst deeds they prompt, shall sink for ever?                _45\nNo, I am hardened.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "Why, what need of this?\nWho feared the pale intrusion of remorse\nIn a just deed? Although our first plan failed,\nDoubt not but he will soon be laid to rest.\nBut light the lamp; let us not talk i’ the dark.                     _50",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "Once gone\nYou cannot now recall your sister’s peace;\nYour own extinguished years of youth and hope;                       _55\nNor your wife’s bitter words; nor all the taunts\nWhich, from the prosperous, weak misfortune takes;\nNor your dead mother; nor...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "There is no need of that. Listen: you know\nOlimpio, the castellan of Petrella\nIn old Colonna’s time; him whom your father\nDegraded from his post? And Marzio,\nThat desperate wretch, whom he deprived last year                    _65\nOf a reward of blood, well earned and due?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "The moments which even now\nPass onward to to-morrow’s midnight hour                             _75\nMay memorize their flight with death: ere then\nThey must have talked, and may perhaps have done,\nAnd made an end...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "Whilst he\nWho truly took it from them, and who fills\nTheir hungry rest with bitterness, now sleeps                        _85\nLapped in bad pleasures, and triumphantly\nMocks thee in visions of successful hate\nToo like the truth of day.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "She comes not; yet I left her even now\nVanquished and faint. She knows the penalty\nOf her delay: yet what if threats are vain?\nAm I not now within Petrella’s moat?\nOr fear I still the eyes and ears of Rome?                           _5\nMight I not drag her by the golden hair?\nStamp on her? keep her sleepless till her brain\nBe overworn? Tame her with chains and famine?\nLess would suffice. Yet so to leave undone\nWhat I most seek! No, ’tis her stubborn will                         _10\nWhich by its own consent shall stoop as low\nAs that which drags it down.\n[ENTER LUCRETIA.]\nThou loathed wretch!\nHide thee from my abhorrence: fly, begone!\nYet stay! Bid Beatrice come hither.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lucretia:",
    "body": "Oh,\nHusband! I pray, for thine own wretched sake                         _15\nHeed what thou dost. A man who walks like thee\nThrough crimes, and through the danger of his crimes,\nEach hour may stumble o’er a sudden grave.\nAnd thou art old; thy hairs are hoary gray;\nAs thou wouldst save thyself from death and hell,                    _20\nPity thy daughter; give her to some friend\nIn marriage: so that she may tempt thee not\nTo hatred, or worse thoughts, if worse there be.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "What! like her sister who has found a home\nTo mock my hate from with prosperity?                                _25\nStrange ruin shall destroy both her and thee\nAnd all that yet remain. My death may be\nRapid, her destiny outspeeds it. Go,\nBid her come hither, and before my mood\nBe changed, lest I should drag her by the hair.                      _30",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lucretia:",
    "body": "She sent me to thee, husband. At thy presence\nShe fell, as thou dost know, into a trance;\nAnd in that trance she heard a voice which said,\n‘Cenci must die! Let him confess himself!\nEven now the accusing Angel waits to hear                            _35\nIf God, to punish his enormous crimes,\nHarden his dying heart!’",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "Why—such things are...\nNo doubt divine revealings may be made.\n’Tis plain I have been favoured from above,\nFor when I cursed my sons they died.—Ay...so...                     _40\nAs to the right or wrong, that’s talk...repentance...\nRepentance is an easy moment’s work\nAnd more depends on God than me. Well...well...\nI must give up the greater point, which was\nTo poison and corrupt her soul.\n[A PAUSE, LUCRETIA APPROACHES ANXIOUSLY,\nAND THEN SHRINKS BACK AS HE SPEAKS.]\nOne, two;                                                            _45\nAy...Rocco and Cristofano my curse\nStrangled: and Giacomo, I think, will find\nLife a worse Hell than that beyond the grave:\nBeatrice shall, if there be skill in hate,\nDie in despair, blaspheming: to Bernardo,                            _50\nHe is so innocent, I will bequeath\nThe memory of these deeds, and make his youth\nThe sepulchre of hope, where evil thoughts\nShall grow like weeds on a neglected tomb.\nWhen all is done, out in the wide Campagna,                          _55\nI will pile up my silver and my gold;\nMy costly robes, paintings, and tapestries;\nMy parchments and all records of my wealth,\nAnd make a bonfire in my joy, and leave\nOf my possessions nothing but my name;                               _60\nWhich shall be an inheritance to strip\nIts wearer bare as infamy. That done,\nMy soul, which is a scourge, will I resign\nInto the hands of him who wielded it;\nBe it for its own punishment or theirs,                              _65\nHe will not ask it of me till the lash\nBe broken in its last and deepest wound;\nUntil its hate be all inflicted. Yet,\nLest death outspeed my purpose, let me make\nShort work and sure...\n\n[GOING.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "Andrea! Go call my daughter,\nAnd if she comes not tell her that I come.\nWhat sufferings? I will drag her, step by step,                      _80\nThrough infamies unheard of among men:\nShe shall stand shelterless in the broad noon\nOf public scorn, for acts blazoned abroad,\nOne among which shall be...What? Canst thou guess?\nShe shall become (for what she most abhors                           _85\nShall have a fascination to entrap\nHer loathing will) to her own conscious self\nAll she appears to others; and when dead,\nAs she shall die unshrived and unforgiven,\nA rebel to her father and her God,                                   _90\nHer corpse shall be abandoned to the hounds;\nHer name shall be the terror of the earth;\nHer spirit shall approach the throne of God\nPlague-spotted with my curses. I will make\nBody and soul a monstrous lump of ruin.                              _95\n\n[ENTER ANDREA.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "Go thou quick, Lucretia,                                             _100\nTell her to come; yet let her understand\nHer coming is consent: and say, moreover,\nThat if she come not I will curse her.\n[EXIT LUCRETIA.]\nHa!\nWith what but with a father’s curse doth God\nPanic-strike armed victory, and make pale                            _105\nCities in their prosperity? The world’s Father\nMust grant a parent’s prayer against his child,\nBe he who asks even what men call me.\nWill not the deaths of her rebellious brothers\nAwe her before I speak? For I on them                                _110\nDid imprecate quick ruin, and it came.\n[ENTER LUCRETIA.]\nWell; what? Speak, wretch!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci [Kneeling]:",
    "body": "God,\nHear me! If this most specious mass of flesh,                        _115\nWhich Thou hast made my daughter; this my blood,\nThis particle of my divided being;\nOr rather, this my bane and my disease,\nWhose sight infects and poisons me; this devil\nWhich sprung from me as from a hell, was meant                       _120\nTo aught good use; if her bright loveliness\nWas kindled to illumine this dark world;\nIf nursed by Thy selectest dew of love\nSuch virtues blossom in her as should make\nThe peace of life, I pray Thee for my sake,                          _125\nAs Thou the common God and Father art\nOf her, and me, and all; reverse that doom!\nEarth, in the name of God, let her food be\nPoison, until she be encrusted round\nWith leprous stains! Heaven, rain upon her head                      _130\nThe blistering drops of the Maremma’s dew,\nTill she be speckled like a toad; parch up\nThose love-enkindled lips, warp those fine limbs\nTo loathed lameness! All-beholding sun,\nStrike in thine envy those life-darting eyes                         _135\nWith thine own blinding beams!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "That if she ever have a child; and thou,\nQuick Nature! I adjure thee by thy God,\nThat thou be fruitful in her, and increase\nAnd multiply, fulfilling his command,\nAnd my deep imprecation! May it be                                   _145\nA hideous likeness of herself, that as\nFrom a distorting mirror, she may see\nHer image mixed with what she most abhors,\nSmiling upon her from her nursing breast.\nAnd that the child may from its infancy                              _150\nGrow, day by day, more wicked and deformed,\nTurning her mother’s love to misery:\nAnd that both she and it may live until\nIt shall repay her care and pain with hate,\nOr what may else be more unnatural.                                  _155\nSo he may hunt her through the clamorous scoffs\nOf the loud world to a dishonoured grave.\nShall I revoke this curse? Go, bid her come,\nBefore my words are chronicled in Heaven.\n[EXIT LUCRETIA.]\nI do not feel as if I were a man,                                    _160\nBut like a fiend appointed to chastise\nThe offences of some unremembered world.\nMy blood is running up and down my veins;\nA fearful pleasure makes it prick and tingle:\nI feel a giddy sickness of strange awe;                              _165\nMy heart is beating with an expectation\nOf horrid joy.\n[ENTER LUCRETIA.]\nWhat? Speak!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cenci:",
    "body": "She would not come. ’Tis well,\nI can do both; first take what I demand,                             _170\nAnd then extort concession. To thy chamber!\nFly ere I spurn thee; and beware this night\nThat thou cross not my footsteps. It were safer\nTo come between the tiger and his prey.\n[EXIT LUCRETIA.]\nIt must be late; mine eyes grow weary dim                            _175\nWith unaccustomed heaviness of sleep.\nConscience! Oh, thou most insolent of lies!\nThey say that sleep, that healing dew of Heaven,\nSteeps not in balm the foldings of the brain\nWhich thinks thee an impostor. I will go                             _180\nFirst to belie thee with an hour of rest,\nWhich will be deep and calm, I feel: and then...\nO, multitudinous Hell, the fiends will shake\nThine arches with the laughter of their joy!\nThere shall be lamentation heard in Heaven                           _185\nAs o’er an angel fallen; and upon Earth\nAll good shall droop and sicken, and ill things\nShall with a spirit of unnatural life,\nStir and be quickened...even as I am now.\n\n[EXIT.]\n\nSCENE 4.2:\nBEFORE THE CASTLE OF PETRELLA.\nENTER BEATRICE AND LUCRETIA ABOVE ON THE RAMPARTS.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lucretia:",
    "body": "’Tis true he spoke\nOf death and judgement with strange confidence\nFor one so wicked; as a man believing                                _10\nIn God, yet recking not of good or ill.\nAnd yet to die without confession!...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Olimpio:",
    "body": "Ay,                                                                  _25\nIf one should bribe me with a thousand crowns\nTo kill a serpent which had stung my child,\nI could not be more willing.\n[ENTER BEATRICE AND LUCRETIA BELOW.]\nNoble ladies!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "That his death will be\nBut as a change of sin-chastising dreams,\nA dark continuance of the Hell within him,\nWhich God extinguish! But ye are resolved?\nYe know it is a high and holy deed?                                  _35",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Ye conscience-stricken cravens, rock to rest\nYour baby hearts. It is the iron gate,                               _40\nWhich ye left open, swinging to the wind,\nThat enters whistling as in scorn. Come, follow!\nAnd be your steps like mine, light, quick and bold.\n\n[EXEUNT.]\n\nSCENE 4.3:\nAN APARTMENT IN THE CASTLE.\nENTER BEATRICE AND LUCRETIA.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Olimpio:",
    "body": "We dare not kill an old and sleeping man;\nHis thin gray hair, his stern and reverend brow,                     _10\nHis veined hands crossed on his heaving breast,\nAnd the calm innocent sleep in which he lay,\nQuelled me. Indeed, indeed, I cannot do it.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Marzio:",
    "body": "But I was bolder; for I chid Olimpio,\nAnd bade him bear his wrongs to his own grave                        _15\nAnd leave me the reward. And now my knife\nTouched the loose wrinkled throat, when the old man\nStirred in his sleep, and said, ‘God! hear, O, hear,\nA father’s curse! What, art Thou not our Father?’\nAnd then he laughed. I knew it was the ghost                         _20\nOf my dead father speaking through his lips,\nAnd could not kill him.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Miserable slaves!\nWhere, if ye dare not kill a sleeping man,\nFound ye the boldness to return to me\nWith such a deed undone? Base palterers!                             _25\nCowards and traitors! Why, the very conscience\nWhich ye would sell for gold and for revenge\nIs an equivocation: it sleeps over\nA thousand daily acts disgracing men;\nAnd when a deed where mercy insults Heaven...                        _30\nWhy do I talk?\n[SNATCHING A DAGGER FROM ONE OF THEM, AND RAISING IT.]\nHadst thou a tongue to say,\n‘She murdered her own father!’—I must do it!\nBut never dream ye shall outlive him long!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Even whilst\nThat doubt is passing through your mind, the world\nIs conscious of a change. Darkness and Hell                          _40\nHave swallowed up the vapour they sent forth\nTo blacken the sweet light of life. My breath\nComes, methinks, lighter, and the jellied blood\nRuns freely through my veins. Hark!\n[ENTER OLIMPIO AND MARZIO.]\nHe is...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice [Giving Them A Bag Of Coin]:",
    "body": "Here, take this gold, and hasten to your homes.\nAnd, Marzio, because thou wast only awed\nBy that which made me tremble, wear thou this!                       _50\n[CLOTHES HIM IN A RICH MANTLE.]\nIt was the mantle which my grandfather\nWore in his high prosperity, and men\nEnvied his state: so may they envy thine.\nThou wert a weapon in the hand of God\nTo a just use. Live long and thrive! And, mark,                      _55\nIf thou hast crimes, repent: this deed is none.\n\n[A HORN IS SOUNDED.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Let us retire to counterfeit deep rest;\nI scarcely need to counterfeit it now:\nThe spirit which doth reign within these limbs\nSeems strangely undisturbed. I could even sleep\nFearless and calm: all ill is surely past.                           _65\n\n[EXEUNT.]\n\nSCENE 4.4:\nANOTHER APARTMENT IN THE CASTLE.\nENTER ON ONE SIDE THE LEGATE SAVELLA,\nINTRODUCED BY A SERVANT,\nAND ON THE OTHER LUCRETIA AND BERNARDO.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lucretia [In A Hurried And Confused Manner]:",
    "body": "I think he sleeps;\nYet, wake him not, I pray, spare me awhile,                          _5\nHe is a wicked and a wrathful man;\nShould he be roused out of his sleep to-night,\nWhich is, I know, a hell of angry dreams,\nIt were not well; indeed it were not well.\nWait till day break...\n[ASIDE.]\nOh, I am deadly sick!                                                _10",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lucretia:",
    "body": "Oh, agony of fear!                                                   _25\nWould that he yet might live! Even now I heard\nThe Legate’s followers whisper as they passed\nThey had a warrant for his instant death.\nAll was prepared by unforbidden means\nWhich we must pay so dearly, having done.                            _30\nEven now they search the tower, and find the body;\nNow they suspect the truth; now they consult\nBefore they come to tax us with the fact;\nO, horrible, ’tis all discovered!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Mother,\nWhat is done wisely, is done well. Be bold                           _35\nAs thou art just. ’Tis like a truant child\nTo fear that others know what thou hast done,\nEven from thine own strong consciousness, and thus\nWrite on unsteady eyes and altered cheeks\nAll thou wouldst hide. Be faithful to thyself,                       _40\nAnd fear no other witness but thy fear.\nFor if, as cannot be, some circumstance\nShould rise in accusation, we can blind\nSuspicion with such cheap astonishment,\nOr overbear it with such guiltless pride,                            _45\nAs murderers cannot feign. The deed is done,\nAnd what may follow now regards not me.\nI am as universal as the light;\nFree as the earth-surrounding air; as firm\nAs the world’s centre. Consequence, to me,                           _50\nIs as the wind which strikes the solid rock,\nBut shakes it not.\n\n[A CRY WITHIN AND TUMULT.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Savella:",
    "body": "’Tis strange! There were clear marks of violence.\nI found the old man’s body in the moonlight\nHanging beneath the window of his chamber,\nAmong the branches of a pine: he could not\nHave fallen there, for all his limbs lay heaped                      _75\nAnd effortless; ’tis true there was no blood...\nFavour me, Sir; it much imports your house\nThat all should be made clear; to tell the ladies\nThat I request their presence.\n\n[EXIT BERNARDO.]\n\n[ENTER GUARDS, BRINGING IN MARZIO.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Officer:",
    "body": "My Lord, we found this ruffian and another                           _80\nLurking among the rocks; there is no doubt\nBut that they are the murderers of Count Cenci:\nEach had a bag of coin; this fellow wore\nA gold-inwoven robe, which, shining bright\nUnder the dark rocks to the glimmering moon                          _85\nBetrayed them to our notice: the other fell\nDesperately fighting.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Savella:",
    "body": "Their language is at least sincere.\n[READS.]\n‘To the Lady Beatrice.                                               _90\nThat the atonement of what my nature sickens to conjecture may soon\narrive, I send thee, at thy brother’s desire, those who will speak and\ndo more than I dare write...\n‘Thy devoted servant, Orsino.’\n[ENTER LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, AND BERNARDO.]\nKnowest thou this writing, Lady?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Savella:",
    "body": "Nor thou?                                                            _95\n\nLUCRETIA [HER CONDUCT THROUGHOUT THE SCENE IS MARKED BY EXTREME AGITATION]:\nWhere was it found? What is it? It should be\nOrsino’s hand! It speaks of that strange horror\nWhich never yet found utterance, but which made\nBetween that hapless child and her dead father\nA gulf of obscure hatred.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Guilty! Who dares talk of guilt? My Lord,\nI am more innocent of parricide\nThan is a child born fatherless...Dear mother,\nYour gentleness and patience are no shield\nFor this keen-judging world, this two-edged lie,                     _115\nWhich seems, but is not. What! will human laws,\nRather will ye who are their ministers,\nBar all access to retribution first,\nAnd then, when Heaven doth interpose to do\nWhat ye neglect, arming familiar things                              _120\nTo the redress of an unwonted crime,\nMake ye the victims who demanded it\nCulprits? ’Tis ye are culprits! That poor wretch\nWho stands so pale, and trembling, and amazed,\nIf it be true he murdered Cenci, was                                 _125\nA sword in the right hand of justest God.\nWherefore should I have wielded it? Unless\nThe crimes which mortal tongue dare never name\nGod therefore scruples to avenge.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "It would have been                                                   _130\nA crime no less than his, if for one moment\nThat fierce desire had faded in my heart.\n’Tis true I did believe, and hope, and pray,\nAy, I even knew...for God is wise and just,\nThat some strange sudden death hung over him.                        _135\n’Tis true that this did happen, and most true\nThere was no other rest for me on earth,\nNo other hope in Heaven...now what of this?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "And yet, if you arrest me,                                           _140\nYou are the judge and executioner\nOf that which is the life of life: the breath\nOf accusation kills an innocent name,\nAnd leaves for lame acquittal the poor life\nWhich is a mask without it. ’Tis most false                          _145\nThat I am guilty of foul parricide;\nAlthough I must rejoice, for justest cause,\nThat other hands have sent my father’s soul\nTo ask the mercy he denied to me.\nNow leave us free; stain not a noble house                           _150\nWith vague surmises of rejected crime;\nAdd to our sufferings and your own neglect\nNo heavier sum: let them have been enough:\nLeave us the wreck we have.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Why not to Rome, dear mother? There as here\nOur innocence is as an armed heel\nTo trample accusation. God is there                                  _160\nAs here, and with His shadow ever clothes\nThe innocent, the injured and the weak;\nAnd such are we. Cheer up, dear Lady, lean\nOn me; collect your wandering thoughts. My Lord,\nAs soon as you have taken some refreshment,                          _165\nAnd had all such examinations made\nUpon the spot, as may be necessary\nTo the full understanding of this matter,\nWe shall be ready. Mother; will you come?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lucretia:",
    "body": "Ha! they will bind us to the rack, and wrest                         _170\nSelf-accusation from our agony!\nWill Giacomo be there? Orsino? Marzio?\nAll present; all confronted; all demanding\nEach from the other’s countenance the thing\nWhich is in every heart! O, misery!                                  _175\n\n[SHE FAINTS, AND IS BORNE OUT.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "My Lord,\nShe knows not yet the uses of the world.\nShe fears that power is as a beast which grasps\nAnd loosens not: a snake whose look transmutes\nAll things to guilt which is its nutriment.                          _180\nShe cannot know how well the supine slaves\nOf blind authority read the truth of things\nWhen written on a brow of guilelessness:\nShe sees not yet triumphant Innocence\nStand at the judgement-seat of mortal man,                           _185\nA judge and an accuser of the wrong\nWhich drags it there. Prepare yourself, my Lord;\nOur suite will join yours in the court below.\n\n[EXEUNT.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Giacomo:",
    "body": "Do evil deeds thus quickly come to end?\nO, that the vain remorse which must chastise\nCrimes done, had but as loud a voice to warn\nAs its keen sting is mortal to avenge!\nO, that the hour when present had cast off                           _5\nThe mantle of its mystery, and shown\nThe ghastly form with which it now returns\nWhen its scared game is roused, cheering the hounds\nOf conscience to their prey! Alas! Alas!\nIt was a wicked thought, a piteous deed,                             _10\nTo kill an old and hoary-headed father.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Giacomo:",
    "body": "To violate the sacred doors of sleep;\nTo cheat kind Nature of the placid death\nWhich she prepares for overwearied age;                              _15\nTo drag from Heaven an unrepentant soul\nWhich might have quenched in reconciling prayers\nA life of burning crimes...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Giacomo:",
    "body": "O, had I never\nFound in thy smooth and ready countenance                            _20\nThe mirror of my darkest thoughts; hadst thou\nNever with hints and questions made me look\nUpon the monster of my thought, until\nIt grew familiar to desire...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "’Tis thus\nMen cast the blame of their unprosperous acts                        _25\nUpon the abettors of their own resolve;\nOr anything but their weak, guilty selves.\nAnd yet, confess the truth, it is the peril\nIn which you stand that gives you this pale sickness\nOf penitence; confess ’tis fear disguised                            _30\nFrom its own shame that takes the mantle now\nOf thin remorse. What if we yet were safe?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Giacomo:",
    "body": "Rather expire in tortures, as I may.\nWhat! will you cast by self-accusing flight                          _40\nAssured conviction upon Beatrice?\nShe, who alone in this unnatural work,\nStands like God’s angel ministered upon\nBy fiends; avenging such a nameless wrong\nAs turns black parricide to piety;                                   _45\nWhilst we for basest ends...I fear, Orsino,\nWhile I consider all your words and looks,\nComparing them with your proposal now,\nThat you must be a villain. For what end\nCould you engage in such a perilous crime,                           _50\nTraining me on with hints, and signs, and smiles,\nEven to this gulf? Thou art no liar? No,\nThou art a lie! Traitor and murderer!\nCoward and slave! But no, defend thyself;\n[DRAWING.]\nLet the sword speak what the indignant tongue                        _55\nDisdains to brand thee with.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "Put up your weapon.\nIs it the desperation of your fear\nMakes you thus rash and sudden with a friend,\nNow ruined for your sake? If honest anger\nHave moved you, know, that what I just proposed                      _60\nWas but to try you. As for me, I think,\nThankless affection led me to this point,\nFrom which, if my firm temper could repent,\nI cannot now recede. Even whilst we speak\nThe ministers of justice wait below:                                 _65\nThey grant me these brief moments. Now if you\nHave any word of melancholy comfort\nTo speak to your pale wife, ’twere best to pass\nOut at the postern, and avoid them so.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orsino:",
    "body": "That wish\nNow comes a day too late. Haste; fare thee well!\nHear’st thou not steps along the corridor?\n[EXIT GIACOMO.]\nI’m sorry for it; but the guards are waiting\nAt his own gate, and such was my contrivance                         _75\nThat I might rid me both of him and them.\nI thought to act a solemn comedy\nUpon the painted scene of this new world,\nAnd to attain my own peculiar ends\nBy some such plot of mingled good and ill                            _80\nAs others weave; but there arose a Power\nWhich grasped and snapped the threads of my device\nAnd turned it to a net of ruin...Ha!\n[A SHOUT IS HEARD.]\nIs that my name I hear proclaimed abroad?\nBut I will pass, wrapped in a vile disguise;                         _85\nRags on my back, and a false innocence\nUpon my face, through the misdeeming crowd\nWhich judges by what seems. ’Tis easy then\nFor a new name and for a country new,\nAnd a new life, fashioned on old desires,                            _90\nTo change the honours of abandoned Rome.\nAnd these must be the masks of that within,\nWhich must remain unaltered...Oh, I fear\nThat what is past will never let me rest!\nWhy, when none else is conscious, but myself,                        _95\nOf my misdeeds, should my own heart’s contempt\nTrouble me? Have I not the power to fly\nMy own reproaches? Shall I be the slave\nOf...what? A word? which those of this false world\nEmploy against each other, not themselves;                           _100\nAs men wear daggers not for self-offence.\nBut if I am mistaken, where shall I\nFind the disguise to hide me from myself,\nAs now I skulk from every other eye?\n\n[EXIT.]\n\nSCENE 5.2:\nA HALL OF JUSTICE.\nCAMILLO, JUDGES, ETC., ARE DISCOVERED SEATED;\nMARZIO IS LED IN.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "First Judge:",
    "body": "Dare you, with lips yet white from the rack’s kiss\nSpeak false? Is it so soft a questioner,\nThat you would bandy lover’s talk with it                            _10\nTill it wind out your life and soul? Away!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Marzio:",
    "body": "His own son Giacomo, and the young prelate\nOrsino sent me to Petrella; there                                    _15\nThe ladies Beatrice and Lucretia\nTempted me with a thousand crowns, and I\nAnd my companion forthwith murdered him.\nNow let me die.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "First Judge:",
    "body": "This sounds as bad as truth. Guards, there,\nLead forth the prisoner!\n[ENTER LUCRETIA, BEATRICE AND GIACOMO, GUARDED.]\nLook upon this man;                                                  _20\nWhen did you see him last?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Marzio:",
    "body": "You know ’twas I\nWhom you did urge with menaces and bribes\nTo kill your father. When the thing was done                         _25\nYou clothed me in a robe of woven gold\nAnd bade me thrive: how I have thriven, you see.\nYou, my Lord Giacomo, Lady Lucretia,\nYou know that what I speak is true.\n[BEATRICE ADVANCES TOWARDS HIM;\nHE COVERS HIS FACE, AND SHRINKS BACK.]\nOh, dart\nThe terrible resentment of those eyes                                _30\nOn the dead earth! Turn them away from me!\nThey wound: ’twas torture forced the truth. My Lords,\nHaving said this let me be led to death.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Cardinal Camillo,                                                    _35\nYou have a good repute for gentleness\nAnd wisdom: can it be that you sit here\nTo countenance a wicked farce like this?\nWhen some obscure and trembling slave is dragged\nFrom sufferings which might shake the sternest heart                 _40\nAnd bade to answer, not as he believes,\nBut as those may suspect or do desire\nWhose questions thence suggest their own reply:\nAnd that in peril of such hideous torments\nAs merciful God spares even the damned. Speak now                    _45\nThe thing you surely know, which is that you,\nIf your fine frame were stretched upon that wheel,\nAnd you were told: ‘Confess that you did poison\nYour little nephew; that fair blue-eyed child\nWho was the lodestar of your life:’—and though                      _50\nAll see, since his most swift and piteous death,\nThat day and night, and heaven and earth, and time,\nAnd all the things hoped for or done therein\nAre changed to you, through your exceeding grief,\nYet you would say, ‘I confess anything:’                             _55\nAnd beg from your tormentors, like that slave,\nThe refuge of dishonourable death.\nI pray thee, Cardinal, that thou assert\nMy innocence.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Camillo:",
    "body": "I would as soon have tortured mine own nephew\n(If he now lived he would be just her age;\nHis hair, too, was her colour, and his eyes                          _65\nLike hers in shape, but blue and not so deep)\nAs that most perfect image of God’s love\nThat ever came sorrowing upon the earth.\nShe is as pure as speechless infancy!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Judge:",
    "body": "Well, be her purity on your head, my Lord,                           _70\nIf you forbid the rack. His Holiness\nEnjoined us to pursue this monstrous crime\nBy the severest forms of law; nay even\nTo stretch a point against the criminals.\nThe prisoners stand accused of parricide                             _75\nUpon such evidence as justifies\nTorture.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Fix thine eyes on mine;\nAnswer to what I ask.\n[TURNING TO THE JUDGES.]\nI prithee mark\nHis countenance: unlike bold calumny\nWhich sometimes dares not speak the thing it looks,\nHe dares not look the thing he speaks, but bends                     _85\nHis gaze on the blind earth.\n[TO MARZIO.]\nWhat! wilt thou say\nThat I did murder my own father?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Marzio:",
    "body": "Oh!\nSpare me! My brain swims round...I cannot speak...\nIt was that horrid torture forced the truth.\nTake me away! Let her not look on me!                                _90\nI am a guilty miserable wretch;\nI have said all I know; now, let me die!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "My Lords, if by my nature I had been\nSo stern, as to have planned the crime alleged,\nWhich your suspicions dictate to this slave,                         _95\nAnd the rack makes him utter, do you think\nI should have left this two-edged instrument\nOf my misdeed; this man, this bloody knife\nWith my own name engraven on the heft,\nLying unsheathed amid a world of foes,                               _100\nFor my own death? That with such horrible need\nFor deepest silence, I should have neglected\nSo trivial a precaution, as the making\nHis tomb the keeper of a secret written\nOn a thief’s memory? What is his poor life?                          _105\nWhat are a thousand lives? A parricide\nHad trampled them like dust; and, see, he lives!\n[TURNING TO MARZIO.]\nAnd thou...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Marzio:",
    "body": "Oh, spare me! Speak to me no more!\nThat stern yet piteous look, those solemn tones,\nWound worse than torture.\n[TO THE JUDGES.]\nI have told it all;                                                  _110\nFor pity’s sake lead me away to death.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "O thou who tremblest on the giddy verge                              _115\nOf life and death, pause ere thou answerest me;\nSo mayst thou answer God with less dismay:\nWhat evil have we done thee? I, alas!\nHave lived but on this earth a few sad years,\nAnd so my lot was ordered, that a father                             _120\nFirst turned the moments of awakening life\nTo drops, each poisoning youth’s sweet hope; and then\nStabbed with one blow my everlasting soul;\nAnd my untainted fame; and even that peace\nWhich sleeps within the core of the heart’s heart;                   _125\nBut the wound was not mortal; so my hate\nBecame the only worship I could lift\nTo our great father, who in pity and love,\nArmed thee, as thou dost say, to cut him off;\nAnd thus his wrong becomes my accusation;                            _130\nAnd art thou the accuser? If thou hopest\nMercy in heaven, show justice upon earth:\nWorse than a bloody hand is a hard heart.\nIf thou hast done murders, made thy life’s path\nOver the trampled laws of God and man,                               _135\nRush not before thy Judge, and say: ‘My maker,\nI have done this and more; for there was one\nWho was most pure and innocent on earth;\nAnd because she endured what never any\nGuilty or innocent endured before:                                   _140\nBecause her wrongs could not be told, not thought;\nBecause thy hand at length did rescue her;\nI with my words killed her and all her kin.’\nThink, I adjure you, what it is to slay\nThe reverence living in the minds of men                             _145\nTowards our ancient house, and stainless fame!\nThink what it is to strangle infant pity,\nCradled in the belief of guileless looks,\nTill it become a crime to suffer. Think\nWhat ’tis to blot with infamy and blood                              _150\nAll that which shows like innocence, and is,\nHear me, great God! I swear, most innocent,\nSo that the world lose all discrimination\nBetween the sly, fierce, wild regard of guilt,\nAnd that which now compels thee to reply                             _155\nTo what I ask: Am I, or am I not\nA parricide?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Marzio:",
    "body": "Torture me as ye will:\nA keener pang has wrung a higher truth\nFrom my last breath. She is most innocent!                           _165\nBloodhounds, not men, glut yourselves well with me;\nI will not give you that fine piece of nature\nTo rend and ruin.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Entrap me not with questions. Who stands here\nAs my accuser? Ha! wilt thou be he,\nWho art my judge? Accuser, witness, judge,\nWhat, all in one? Here is Orsino’s name;                             _175\nWhere is Orsino? Let his eye meet mine.\nWhat means this scrawl? Alas! ye know not what,\nAnd therefore on the chance that it may be\nSome evil, will ye kill us?\n\n[ENTER AN OFFICER.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Judge:",
    "body": "Let the Pope’s pleasure then be done. Meanwhile\nConduct these culprits each to separate cells;                       _190\nAnd be the engines ready; for this night\nIf the Pope’s resolution be as grave,\nPious, and just as once, I’ll wring the truth\nOut of those nerves and sinews, groan by groan.\n\n[EXEUNT.]\n\nSCENE 5.3:\nTHE CELL OF A PRISON.\nBEATRICE IS DISCOVERED ASLEEP ON A COUCH.\nENTER BERNARDO.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Bernardo:",
    "body": "How gently slumber rests upon her face,\nLike the last thoughts of some day sweetly spent\nClosing in night and dreams, and so prolonged.\nAfter such torments as she bore last night,\nHow light and soft her breathing comes. Ay me!                       _5\nMethinks that I shall never sleep again.\nBut I must shake the heavenly dew of rest\nFrom this sweet folded flower, thus...wake, awake!\nWhat, sister, canst thou sleep?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Ha! What was there to confess?\nThey must have told some weak and wicked lie\nTo flatter their tormentors. Have they said\nThat they were guilty? O white innocence,\nThat thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt to hide                    _25\nThine awful and serenest countenance\nFrom those who know thee not!\n[ENTER JUDGE WITH LUCRETIA AND GIACOMO, GUARDED.]\nIgnoble hearts!\nFor some brief spasms of pain, which are at least\nAs mortal as the limbs through which they pass,\nAre centuries of high splendour laid in dust?                        _30\nAnd that eternal honour which should live\nSunlike, above the reek of mortal fame,\nChanged to a mockery and a byword? What!\nWill you give up these bodies to be dragged\nAt horses’ heels, so that our hair should sweep                      _35\nThe footsteps of the vain and senseless crowd,\nWho, that they may make our calamity\nTheir worship and their spectacle, will leave\nThe churches and the theatres as void\nAs their own hearts? Shall the light multitude                       _40\nFling, at their choice, curses or faded pity,\nSad funeral flowers to deck a living corpse,\nUpon us as we pass to pass away,\nAnd leave...what memory of our having been?\nInfamy, blood, terror, despair? O thou,                              _45\nWho wert a mother to the parentless,\nKill not thy child! Let not her wrongs kill thee!\nBrother, lie down with me upon the rack,\nAnd let us each be silent as a corpse;\nIt soon will be as soft as any grave.                                _50\n’Tis but the falsehood it can wring from fear\nMakes the rack cruel.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Tortures! Turn\nThe rack henceforth into a spinning-wheel!\nTorture your dog, that he may tell when last\nHe lapped the blood his master shed...not me!\nMy pangs are of the mind, and of the heart,                          _65\nAnd of the soul; ay, of the inmost soul,\nWhich weeps within tears as of burning gall\nTo see, in this ill world where none are true,\nMy kindred false to their deserted selves.\nAnd with considering all the wretched life                           _70\nWhich I have lived, and its now wretched end,\nAnd the small justice shown by Heaven and Earth\nTo me or mine; and what a tyrant thou art,\nAnd what slaves these; and what a world we make,\nThe oppressor and the oppressed...such pangs compel                  _75\nMy answer. What is it thou wouldst with me?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Or wilt thou rather tax high-judging God\nThat He permitted such an act as that\nWhich I have suffered, and which He beheld;                          _80\nMade it unutterable, and took from it\nAll refuge, all revenge, all consequence,\nBut that which thou hast called my father’s death?\nWhich is or is not what men call a crime,\nWhich either I have done, or have not done;                          _85\nSay what ye will. I shall deny no more.\nIf ye desire it thus, thus let it be,\nAnd so an end of all. Now do your will;\nNo other pains shall force another word.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Giacomo:",
    "body": "Have I confessed? Is it all over now?\nNo hope! No refuge! O weak, wicked tongue\nWhich hast destroyed me, would that thou hadst been\nCut out and thrown to dogs first! To have killed\nMy father first, and then betrayed my sister;                        _100\nAy, thee! the one thing innocent and pure\nIn this black, guilty world, to that which I\nSo well deserve! My wife! my little ones!\nDestitute, helpless, and I...Father! God!\nCanst Thou forgive even the unforgiving,                             _105\nWhen their full hearts break thus, thus!...\n\n[COVERS HIS FACE AND WEEPS.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lucretia:",
    "body": "O my child!\nTo what a dreadful end are we all come!\nWhy did I yield? Why did I not sustain\nThose torments? Oh, that I were all dissolved\nInto these fast and unavailing tears,                                _110\nWhich flow and feel not!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "What ’twas weak to do,\n’Tis weaker to lament, once being done;\nTake cheer! The God who knew my wrong, and made\nOur speedy act the angel of His wrath,\nSeems, and but seems, to have abandoned us.                          _115\nLet us not think that we shall die for this.\nBrother, sit near me; give me your firm hand,\nYou had a manly heart. Bear up! Bear up!\nO dearest Lady, put your gentle head\nUpon my lap, and try to sleep awhile:                                _120\nYour eyes look pale, hollow, and overworn,\nWith heaviness of watching and slow grief.\nCome, I will sing you some low, sleepy tune,\nNot cheerful, nor yet sad; some dull old thing,\nSome outworn and unused monotony,                                    _125\nSuch as our country gossips sing and spin,\nTill they almost forget they live: lie down!\nSo, that will do. Have I forgot the words?\nFaith! They are sadder than I thought they were.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song:",
    "body": "False friend, wilt thou smile or weep                                _130\nWhen my life is laid asleep?\nLittle cares for a smile or a tear,\nThe clay-cold corpse upon the bier!\nFarewell! Heighho!\nWhat is this whispers low?                                           _135\nThere is a snake in thy smile, my dear;\nAnd bitter poison within thy tear.\n\nSweet sleep, were death like to thee,\nOr if thou couldst mortal be,\nI would close these eyes of pain;                                    _140\nWhen to wake? Never again.\nO World! Farewell!\nListen to the passing bell!\nIt says, thou and I must part,\nWith a light and a heavy heart.                                      _145\n\n[THE SCENE CLOSES.]\n\nSCENE 5.4:\nA HALL OF THE PRISON.\nENTER CAMILLO AND BERNARDO.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Camillo:",
    "body": "The Pope is stern; not to be moved or bent.\nHe looked as calm and keen as is the engine\nWhich tortures and which kills, exempt itself\nFrom aught that it inflicts; a marble form,\nA rite, a law, a custom: not a man.                                  _5\nHe frowned, as if to frown had been the trick\nOf his machinery, on the advocates\nPresenting the defences, which he tore\nAnd threw behind, muttering with hoarse, harsh voice:\n‘Which among ye defended their old father                            _10\nKilled in his sleep?’ Then to another: ‘Thou\nDost this in virtue of thy place; ’tis well.’\nHe turned to me then, looking deprecation,\nAnd said these three words, coldly: ‘They must die.’",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Camillo:",
    "body": "I urged him still;                                                   _15\nPleading, as I could guess, the devilish wrong\nWhich prompted your unnatural parent’s death.\nAnd he replied: ‘Paolo Santa Croce\nMurdered his mother yester evening,\nAnd he is fled. Parricide grows so rife                              _20\nThat soon, for some just cause no doubt, the young\nWill strangle us all, dozing in our chairs.\nAuthority, and power, and hoary hair\nAre grown crimes capital. You are my nephew,\nYou come to ask their pardon; stay a moment;                         _25\nHere is their sentence; never see me more\nTill, to the letter, it be all fulfilled.’",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Bernardo:",
    "body": "O God, not so! I did believe indeed\nThat all you said was but sad preparation\nFor happy news. Oh, there are words and looks                        _30\nTo bend the sternest purpose! Once I knew them,\nNow I forget them at my dearest need.\nWhat think you if I seek him out, and bathe\nHis feet and robe with hot and bitter tears?\nImportune him with prayers, vexing his brain                         _35\nWith my perpetual cries, until in rage\nHe strike me with his pastoral cross, and trample\nUpon my prostrate head, so that my blood\nMay stain the senseless dust on which he treads,\nAnd remorse waken mercy? I will do it!                               _40\nOh, wait till I return!\n\n[RUSHES OUT.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice [Wildly]:",
    "body": "O\nMy God! Can it be possible I have\nTo die so suddenly? So young to go\nUnder the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground!                      _50\nTo be nailed down into a narrow place;\nTo see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more\nBlithe voice of living thing; muse not again\nUpon familiar thoughts, sad, yet thus lost—\nHow fearful! to be nothing! Or to be...                              _55\nWhat? Oh, where am I? Let me not go mad!\nSweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should be\nNo God, no Heaven, no Earth in the void world;\nThe wide, gray, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!\nIf all things then should be...my father’s spirit,                   _60\nHis eye, his voice, his touch surrounding me;\nThe atmosphere and breath of my dead life!\nIf sometimes, as a shape more like himself,\nEven the form which tortured me on earth,\nMasked in gray hairs and wrinkles, he should come                    _65\nAnd wind me in his hellish arms, and fix\nHis eyes on mine, and drag me down, down, down!\nFor was he not alone omnipotent\nOn Earth, and ever present? Even though dead,\nDoes not his spirit live in all that breathe,                        _70\nAnd work for me and mine still the same ruin,\nScorn, pain, despair? Who ever yet returned\nTo teach the laws of Death’s untrodden realm?\nUnjust perhaps as those which drive us now,\nOh, whither, whither?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "’Tis past!\nWhatever comes, my heart shall sink no more.\nAnd yet, I know not why, your words strike chill:\nHow tedious, false, and cold seem all things. I                      _80\nHave met with much injustice in this world;\nNo difference has been made by God or man,\nOr any power moulding my wretched lot,\n’Twixt good or evil, as regarded me.\nI am cut off from the only world I know,                             _85\nFrom light, and life, and love, in youth’s sweet prime.\nYou do well telling me to trust in God;\nI hope I do trust in him. In whom else\nCan any trust? And yet my heart is cold.\n\n[DURING THE LATTER SPEECHES GIACOMO HAS RETIRED CONVERSING WITH\nCAMILLO, WHO NOW GOES OUT;\nGIACOMO ADVANCES.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Yet both will soon be cold.\nOh, trample out that thought! Worse than despair,\nWorse than the bitterness of death, is hope:\nIt is the only ill which can find place\nUpon the giddy, sharp, and narrow hour                               _100\nTottering beneath us. Plead with the swift frost\nThat it should spare the eldest flower of spring:\nPlead with awakening earthquake, o’er whose couch\nEven now a city stands, strong, fair, and free;\nNow stench and blackness yawn, like death. Oh, plead                 _105\nWith famine, or wind-walking Pestilence,\nBlind lightning, or the deaf sea, not with man!\nCruel, cold, formal man; righteous in words,\nIn deeds a Cain. No, Mother, we must die:\nSince such is the reward of innocent lives;                          _110\nSuch the alleviation of worst wrongs.\nAnd whilst our murderers live, and hard, cold men,\nSmiling and slow, walk through a world of tears\nTo death as to life’s sleep; ’twere just the grave\nWere some strange joy for us. Come, obscure Death,                   _115\nAnd wind me in thine all-embracing arms!\nLike a fond mother hide me in thy bosom,\nAnd rock me to the sleep from which none wake.\nLive ye, who live, subject to one another\nAs we were once, who now...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Bernardo:",
    "body": "Oh, horrible!                                                        _120\nThat tears, that looks, that hope poured forth in prayer,\nEven till the heart is vacant and despairs,\nShould all be vain! The ministers of death\nAre waiting round the doors. I thought I saw\nBlood on the face of one...What if ’twere fancy?                     _125\nSoon the heart’s blood of all I love on earth\nWill sprinkle him, and he will wipe it off\nAs if ’twere only rain. O life! O world!\nCover me! let me be no more! To see\nThat perfect mirror of pure innocence                                _130\nWherein I gazed, and grew happy and good,\nShivered to dust! To see thee, Beatrice,\nWho made all lovely thou didst look upon...\nThee, light of life ... dead, dark! while I say, sister,\nTo hear I have no sister; and thou, Mother,                          _135\nWhose love was as a bond to all our loves...\nDead! The sweet bond broken!\n[ENTER CAMILLO AND GUARDS.]\nThey come! Let me\nKiss those warm lips before their crimson leaves\nAre blighted...white...cold. Say farewell, before\nDeath chokes that gentle voice! Oh, let me hear                      _140\nYou speak!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Farewell, my tender brother. Think\nOf our sad fate with gentleness, as now:\nAnd let mild, pitying thoughts lighten for thee\nThy sorrow’s load. Err not in harsh despair,\nBut tears and patience. One thing more, my child:                    _145\nFor thine own sake be constant to the love\nThou bearest us; and to the faith that I,\nThough wrapped in a strange cloud of crime and shame,\nLived ever holy and unstained. And though\nIll tongues shall wound me, and our common name                      _150\nBe as a mark stamped on thine innocent brow\nFor men to point at as they pass, do thou\nForbear, and never think a thought unkind\nOf those, who perhaps love thee in their graves.\nSo mayest thou die as I do; fear and pain                            _155\nBeing subdued. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beatrice:",
    "body": "Give yourself no unnecessary pain,\nMy dear Lord Cardinal. Here, Mother, tie\nMy girdle for me, and bind up this hair                              _160\nIn any simple knot; ay, that does well.\nAnd yours I see is coming down. How often\nHave we done this for one another; now\nWe shall not do it any more. My Lord,\nWe are quite ready. Well, ’tis very well.                            _165",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On The Cenci, By Mrs. Shelley.",
    "body": "The sort of mistake that Shelley made as to the extent of his own\ngenius and powers, which led him deviously at first, but lastly into\nthe direct track that enabled him fully to develop them, is a curious\ninstance of his modesty of feeling, and of the methods which the human\nmind uses at once to deceive itself, and yet, in its very delusion, to\nmake its way out of error into the path which Nature has marked out as\nits right one. He often incited me to attempt the writing a tragedy:\nhe conceived that I possessed some dramatic talent, and he was always\nmost earnest and energetic in his exhortations that I should cultivate\nany talent I possessed, to the utmost. I entertained a truer estimate\nof my powers; and above all (though at that time not exactly aware of\nthe fact) I was far too young to have any chance of succeeding, even\nmoderately, in a species of composition that requires a greater scope\nof experience in, and sympathy with, human passion than could then\nhave fallen to my lot,—or than any perhaps, except Shelley, ever\npossessed, even at the age of twenty-six, at which he wrote The Cenci.\n\nOn the other hand, Shelley most erroneously conceived himself to be\ndestitute of this talent. He believed that one of the first requisites\nwas the capacity of forming and following-up a story or plot. He\nfancied himself to be defective in this portion of imagination: it was\nthat which gave him least pleasure in the writings of others, though\nhe laid great store by it as the proper framework to support the\nsublimest efforts of poetry. He asserted that he was too metaphysical\nand abstract, too fond of the theoretical and the ideal, to succeed as\na tragedian. It perhaps is not strange that I shared this opinion with\nhimself; for he had hitherto shown no inclination for, nor given any\nspecimen of his powers in framing and supporting the interest of a\nstory, either in prose or verse. Once or twice, when he attempted\nsuch, he had speedily thrown it aside, as being even disagreeable to\nhim as an occupation.\n\nThe subject he had suggested for a tragedy was Charles I: and he had\nwritten to me: ‘Remember, remember Charles I. I have been already\nimagining how you would conduct some scenes. The second volume of “St.\nLeon” begins with this proud and true sentiment: “There is nothing\nwhich the human mind can conceive which it may not execute.”\nShakespeare was only a human being.’ These words were written in 1818,\nwhile we were in Lombardy, when he little thought how soon a work of\nhis own would prove a proud comment on the passage he quoted. When in\nRome, in 1819, a friend put into our hands the old manuscript account\nof the story of the Cenci. We visited the Colonna and Doria palaces,\nwhere the portraits of Beatrice were to be found; and her beauty cast\nthe reflection of its own grace over her appalling story. Shelley’s\nimagination became strongly excited, and he urged the subject to me as\none fitted for a tragedy. More than ever I felt my incompetence; but I\nentreated him to write it instead; and he began, and proceeded\nswiftly, urged on by intense sympathy with the sufferings of the human\nbeings whose passions, so long cold in the tomb, he revived, and\ngifted with poetic language. This tragedy is the only one of his works\nthat he communicated to me during its progress. We talked over the\narrangement of the scenes together. I speedily saw the great mistake\nwe had made, and triumphed in the discovery of the new talent brought\nto light from that mine of wealth (never, alas, through his untimely\ndeath, worked to its depths)—his richly gifted mind.\n\nWe suffered a severe affliction in Rome by the loss of our eldest\nchild, who was of such beauty and promise as to cause him deservedly\nto be the idol of our hearts. We left the capital of the world,\nanxious for a time to escape a spot associated too intimately with his\npresence and loss. (Such feelings haunted him when, in “The Cenci”, he\nmakes Beatrice speak to Cardinal Camillo of\n\n‘that fair blue-eyed child\nWho was the lodestar of your life:’—and say—\nAll see, since his most swift and piteous death,\nThat day and night, and heaven and earth, and time,\nAnd all the things hoped for or done therein\nAre changed to you, through your exceeding grief.’)\n\nSome friends of ours were residing in the neighbourhood of Leghorn,\nand we took a small house, Villa Valsovano, about half-way between the\ntown and Monte Nero, where we remained during the summer. Our villa\nwas situated in the midst of a podere; the peasants sang as they\nworked beneath our windows, during the heats of a very hot season, and\nin the evening the water-wheel creaked as the process of irrigation\nwent on, and the fireflies flashed from among the myrtle hedges:\nNature was bright, sunshiny, and cheerful, or diversified by storms of\na majestic terror, such as we had never before witnessed.\n\nAt the top of the house there was a sort of terrace. There is often\nsuch in Italy, generally roofed: this one was very small, yet not only\nroofed but glazed. This Shelley made his study; it looked out on a\nwide prospect of fertile country, and commanded a view of the near\nsea. The storms that sometimes varied our day showed themselves most\npicturesquely as they were driven across the ocean; sometimes the dark\nlurid clouds dipped towards the waves, and became water-spouts that\nchurned up the waters beneath, as they were chased onward and\nscattered by the tempest. At other times the dazzling sunlight and\nheat made it almost intolerable to every other; but Shelley basked in\nboth, and his health and spirits revived under their influence. In\nthis airy cell he wrote the principal part of “The Cenci”. He was\nmaking a study of Calderon at the time, reading his best tragedies\nwith an accomplished lady living near us, to whom his letter from\nLeghorn was addressed during the following year. He admired Calderon,\nboth for his poetry and his dramatic genius; but it shows his\njudgement and originality that, though greatly struck by his first\nacquaintance with the Spanish poet, none of his peculiarities crept\ninto the composition of “The Cenci”; and there is no trace of his new\nstudies, except in that passage to which he himself alludes as\nsuggested by one in “El Purgatorio de San Patricio”.\n\nShelley wished “The Cenci” to be acted. He was not a playgoer, being\nof such fastidious taste that he was easily disgusted by the bad\nfilling-up of the inferior parts. While preparing for our departure\nfrom England, however, he saw Miss O’Neil several times. She was then\nin the zenith of her glory; and Shelley was deeply moved by her\nimpersonation of several parts, and by the graceful sweetness, the\nintense pathos, the sublime vehemence of passion she displayed. She\nwas often in his thoughts as he wrote: and, when he had finished, he\nbecame anxious that his tragedy should be acted, and receive the\nadvantage of having this accomplished actress to fill the part of the\nheroine. With this view he wrote the following letter to a friend in\nLondon:\n\n‘The object of the present letter us to ask a favour of you. I have\nwritten a tragedy on a story well known in Italy, and, in my\nconception, eminently dramatic. I have taken some pains to make my\nplay fit for representation, and those who have already seen it judge\nfavourably. It is written without any of the peculiar feelings and\nopinions which characterize my other compositions; I have attended\nsimply to the impartial development of such characters as it is\nprobable the persons represented really were, together with the\ngreatest degree of popular effect to be produced by such a\ndevelopment. I send you a translation of the Italian manuscript on\nwhich my play is founded; the chief circumstance of which I have\ntouched very delicately; for my principal doubt as to whether it would\nsucceed as an acting play hangs entirely on the question as to whether\nany such a thing as incest in this shape, however treated, would be\nadmitted on the stage. I think, however, it will form no objection;\nconsidering, first, that the facts are matter of history, and,\nsecondly, the peculiar delicacy with which I have treated it. (In\nspeaking of his mode of treating this main incident, Shelley said that\nit might be remarked that, in the course of the play, he had never\nmentioned expressly Cenci’s worst crime. Every one knew what it must\nbe, but it was never imaged in words—the nearest allusion to it being\nthat portion of Cenci’s curse beginning—\n\n“That, if she have a child,” etc.)\n\n‘I am exceedingly interested in the question of whether this attempt\nof mine will succeed or not. I am strongly inclined to the affirmative\nat present; founding my hopes on this—that, as a composition, it is\ncertainly not inferior to any of the modern plays that have been\nacted, with the exception of “Remorse”; that the interest of the plot\nis incredibly greater and more real; and that there is nothing beyond\nwhat the multitude are contented to believe that they can understand,\neither in imagery, opinion, or sentiment. I wish to preserve a\ncomplete incognito, and can trust to you that, whatever else you do,\nyou will at least favour me on this point. Indeed, this is essential,\ndeeply essential, to its success. After it had been acted, and\nsuccessfully (could I hope for such a thing), I would own it if I\npleased, and use the celebrity it might acquire to my own purposes.\n\n‘What I want you to do is to procure for me its presentation at Covent\nGarden. The principal character, Beatrice, is precisely fitted for\nMiss O’Neil, and it might even seem to have been written for her (God\nforbid that I should see her play it—it would tear my nerves to\npieces); and in all respects it is fitted only for Covent Garden. The\nchief male character I confess I should be very unwilling that any one\nbut Kean should play. That is impossible, and I must be contented with\nan inferior actor.’\n\nThe play was accordingly sent to Mr. Harris. He pronounced the subject\nto be so objectionable that he could not even submit the part to Miss\nO’Neil for perusal, but expressed his desire that the author would\nwrite a tragedy on some other subject, which he would gladly accept.\nShelley printed a small edition at Leghorn, to ensure its correctness;\nas he was much annoyed by the many mistakes that crept into his text\nwhen distance prevented him from correcting the press.\n\nUniversal approbation soon stamped “The Cenci” as the best tragedy of\nmodern times. Writing concerning it, Shelley said: ‘I have been\ncautious to avoid the introducing faults of youthful composition;\ndiffuseness, a profusion of inapplicable imagery, vagueness,\ngenerality, and, as Hamlet says, “words, words”.’ There is nothing\nthat is not purely dramatic throughout; and the character of Beatrice,\nproceeding, from vehement struggle, to horror, to deadly resolution,\nand lastly to the elevated dignity of calm suffering, joined to\npassionate tenderness and pathos, is touched with hues so vivid and so\nbeautiful that the poet seems to have read intimately the secrets of\nthe noble heart imaged in the lovely countenance of the unfortunate\ngirl. The Fifth Act is a masterpiece. It is the finest thing he ever\nwrote, and may claim proud comparison not only with any contemporary,\nbut preceding, poet. The varying feelings of Beatrice are expressed\nwith passionate, heart-reaching eloquence. Every character has a voice\nthat echoes truth in its tones. It is curious, to one acquainted with\nthe written story, to mark the success with which the poet has inwoven\nthe real incidents of the tragedy into his scenes, and yet, through\nthe power of poetry, has obliterated all that would otherwise have\nshown too harsh or too hideous in the picture. His success was a\ndouble triumph; and often after he was earnestly entreated to write\nagain in a style that commanded popular favour, while it was not less\ninstinct with truth and genius. But the bent of his mind went the\nother way; and, even when employed on subjects whose interest depended\non character and incident, he would start off in another direction,\nand leave the delineations of human passion, which he could depict in\nso able a manner, for fantastic creations of his fancy, or the\nexpression of those opinions and sentiments, with regard to human\nnature and its destiny, a desire to diffuse which was the master\npassion of his soul.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Written On The Occasion Of The Massacre At Manchester.",
    "body": "[Composed at the Villa Valsovano near Leghorn—or possibly later,\nduring Shelley’s sojourn at Florence—in the autumn of 1819, shortly\nafter the Peterloo riot at Manchester, August 16; edited with Preface\nby Leigh Hunt, and published under the poet’s name by Edward Moxon,\n1832 (Bradbury & Evans, printers). Two manuscripts are extant: a\ntranscript by Mrs. Shelley with Shelley’s autograph corrections, known\nas the ‘Hunt manuscript’; and an earlier draft, not quite complete, in\nthe poet’s handwriting, presented by Mrs. Shelley to (Sir) John\nBowring in 1826, and now in the possession of Mr. Thomas J. Wise (the\n‘Wise manuscript’). Mrs. Shelley’s copy was sent to Leigh Hunt in 1819\nwith view to its publication in “The Examiner”; hence the name ‘Hunt\nmanuscript.’ A facsimile of the Wise manuscript was published by the\nShelley Society in 1887. Sources of the text are (1) the Hunt\nmanuscript; (2) the Wise manuscript; (3) the editio princeps, editor\nLeigh Hunt, 1832; (4) Mrs. Shelley’s two editions (“Poetical Works”)\nof 1839. Of the two manuscripts Mrs. Shelley’s transcript is the later\nand more authoritative.]\n\n1.\nAs I lay asleep in Italy\nThere came a voice from over the Sea,\nAnd with great power it forth led me\nTo walk in the visions of Poesy.\n\n2.\nI met Murder on the way—                                            _5\nHe had a mask like Castlereagh—\nVery smooth he looked, yet grim;\nSeven blood-hounds followed him:\n\n3.\nAll were fat; and well they might\nBe in admirable plight,                                              _10\nFor one by one, and two by two,\nHe tossed them human hearts to chew\nWhich from his wide cloak he drew.\n\n4.\nNext came Fraud, and he had on,\nLike Eldon, an ermined gown;                                         _15\nHis big tears, for he wept well,\nTurned to mill-stones as they fell.\n\n5.\nAnd the little children, who\nRound his feet played to and fro,\nThinking every tear a gem,                                           _20\nHad their brains knocked out by them.\n\n6.\nClothed with the Bible, as with light,\nAnd the shadows of the night,\nLike Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy\nOn a crocodile rode by.                                              _25\n\n7.\nAnd many more Destructions played\nIn this ghastly masquerade,\nAll disguised, even to the eyes,\nLike Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.\n\n8.\nLast came Anarchy: he rode                                           _30\nOn a white horse, splashed with blood;\nHe was pale even to the lips,\nLike Death in the Apocalypse.\n\n9.\nAnd he wore a kingly crown;\nAnd in his grasp a sceptre shone;                                    _35\nOn his brow this mark I saw—\n‘I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!’\n\n10.\nWith a pace stately and fast,\nOver English land he passed,\nTrampling to a mire of blood                                         _40\nThe adoring multitude.\n\n11.\nAnd a mighty troop around,\nWith their trampling shook the ground,\nWaving each a bloody sword,\nFor the service of their Lord.                                       _45\n\n12.\nAnd with glorious triumph, they\nRode through England proud and gay,\nDrunk as with intoxication\nOf the wine of desolation.\n\n13.\nO’er fields and towns, from sea to sea,                              _50\nPassed the Pageant swift and free,\nTearing up, and trampling down;\nTill they came to London town.\n\n14.\nAnd each dweller, panic-stricken,\nFelt his heart with terror sicken                                    _55\nHearing the tempestuous cry\nOf the triumph of Anarchy.\n\n15.\nFor with pomp to meet him came,\nClothed in arms like blood and flame,\nThe hired murderers, who did sing                                    _60\n‘Thou art God, and Law, and King.\n\n16.\n‘We have waited, weak and lone\nFor thy coming, Mighty One!\nOur purses are empty, our swords are cold,\nGive us glory, and blood, and gold.’                                 _65\n\n17.\nLawyers and priests, a motley crowd,\nTo the earth their pale brows bowed;\nLike a bad prayer not over loud,\nWhispering—‘Thou art Law and God.’—\n\n18.\nThen all cried with one accord,                                      _70\n‘Thou art King, and God, and Lord;\nAnarchy, to thee we bow,\nBe thy name made holy now!’\n\n19.\nAnd Anarchy, the Skeleton,\nBowed and grinned to every one,                                      _75\nAs well as if his education\nHad cost ten millions to the nation.\n\n20.\nFor he knew the Palaces\nOf our Kings were rightly his;\nHis the sceptre, crown, and globe,                                   _80\nAnd the gold-inwoven robe.\n\n21.\nSo he sent his slaves before\nTo seize upon the Bank and Tower,\nAnd was proceeding with intent\nTo meet his pensioned Parliament                                     _85\n\n22.\nWhen one fled past, a maniac maid,\nAnd her name was Hope, she said:\nBut she looked more like Despair,\nAnd she cried out in the air:\n\n23.\n‘My father Time is weak and gray                                     _90\nWith waiting for a better day;\nSee how idiot-like he stands,\nFumbling with his palsied hands!\n\n24.\n‘He has had child after child,\nAnd the dust of death is piled                                       _95\nOver every one but me—\nMisery, oh, Misery!’\n\n25.\nThen she lay down in the street,\nRight before the horses’ feet,\nExpecting, with a patient eye,                                       _100\nMurder, Fraud, and Anarchy.\n\n26.\nWhen between her and her foes\nA mist, a light, an image rose,\nSmall at first, and weak, and frail\nLike the vapour of a vale:                                           _105\n\n27.\nTill as clouds grow on the blast,\nLike tower-crowned giants striding fast,\nAnd glare with lightnings as they fly,\nAnd speak in thunder to the sky,\n\n28.\nIt grew—a Shape arrayed in mail                                     _110\nBrighter than the viper’s scale,\nAnd upborne on wings whose grain\nWas as the light of sunny rain.\n\n29.\nOn its helm, seen far away,\nA planet, like the Morning’s, lay;                                   _115\nAnd those plumes its light rained through\nLike a shower of crimson dew.\n\n30.\nWith step as soft as wind it passed\nO’er the heads of men—so fast\nThat they knew the presence there,                                   _120\nAnd looked,—but all was empty air.\n\n31.\nAs flowers beneath May’s footstep waken,\nAs stars from Night’s loose hair are shaken,\nAs waves arise when loud winds call,\nThoughts sprung where’er that step did fall.                         _125\n\n32.\nAnd the prostrate multitude\nLooked—and ankle-deep in blood,\nHope, that maiden most serene,\nWas walking with a quiet mien:\n\n33.\nAnd Anarchy, the ghastly birth,                                      _130\nLay dead earth upon the earth;\nThe Horse of Death tameless as wind\nFled, and with his hoofs did grind\nTo dust the murderers thronged behind.\n\n34.\nA rushing light of clouds and splendour,                             _135\nA sense awakening and yet tender\nWas heard and felt—and at its close\nThese words of joy and fear arose\n\n35.\nAs if their own indignant Earth\nWhich gave the sons of England birth                                 _140\nHad felt their blood upon her brow,\nAnd shuddering with a mother’s throe\n\n36.\nHad turned every drop of blood\nBy which her face had been bedewed\nTo an accent unwithstood,—                                          _145\nAs if her heart had cried aloud:\n\n37.\n‘Men of England, heirs of Glory,\nHeroes of unwritten story,\nNurslings of one mighty Mother,\nHopes of her, and one another;                                       _150\n\n38.\n‘Rise like Lions after slumber\nIn unvanquishable number,\nShake your chains to earth like dew\nWhich in sleep had fallen on you—\nYe are many—they are few.                                           _155\n\n39.\n‘What is Freedom?—ye can tell\nThat which slavery is, too well—\nFor its very name has grown\nTo an echo of your own.\n\n40.\n‘’Tis to work and have such pay                                      _160\nAs just keeps life from day to day\nIn your limbs, as in a cell\nFor the tyrants’ use to dwell,\n\n41.\n‘So that ye for them are made\nLoom, and plough, and sword, and spade,                              _165\nWith or without your own will bent\nTo their defence and nourishment.\n\n42.\n‘’Tis to see your children weak\nWith their mothers pine and peak,\nWhen the winter winds are bleak,—                                   _170\nThey are dying whilst I speak.\n\n43.\n‘’Tis to hunger for such diet\nAs the rich man in his riot\nCasts to the fat dogs that lie\nSurfeiting beneath his eye;                                          _175\n\n44.\n‘’Tis to let the Ghost of Gold\nTake from Toil a thousandfold\nMore than e’er its substance could\nIn the tyrannies of old.\n\n45.\n‘Paper coin—that forgery                                            _180\nOf the title-deeds, which ye\nHold to something of the worth\nOf the inheritance of Earth.\n\n46.\n‘’Tis to be a slave in soul\nAnd to hold no strong control                                        _185\nOver your own wills, but be\nAll that others make of ye.\n\n47.\n‘And at length when ye complain\nWith a murmur weak and vain\n’Tis to see the Tyrant’s crew                                        _190\nRide over your wives and you\nBlood is on the grass like dew.\n\n48.\n‘Then it is to feel revenge\nFiercely thirsting to exchange\nBlood for blood—and wrong for wrong—                               _195\nDo not thus when ye are strong.\n\n49.\n‘Birds find rest, in narrow nest\nWhen weary of their winged quest;\nBeasts find fare, in woody lair\nWhen storm and snow are in the air.                                  _200\n\n50.\n‘Asses, swine, have litter spread\nAnd with fitting food are fed;\nAll things have a home but one—\nThou, Oh, Englishman, hast none!\n\n51.\n‘This is Slavery—savage men,                                        _205\nOr wild beasts within a den\nWould endure not as ye do—\nBut such ills they never knew.\n\n52.\n‘What art thou Freedom? O! could slaves\nAnswer from their living graves                                      _210\nThis demand—tyrants would flee\nLike a dream’s dim imagery:\n\n53.\n‘Thou art not, as impostors say,\nA shadow soon to pass away,\nA superstition, and a name                                           _215\nEchoing from the cave of Fame.\n\n54.\n‘For the labourer thou art bread,\nAnd a comely table spread\nFrom his daily labour come\nIn a neat and happy home.                                            _220\n\n55.\nThou art clothes, and fire, and food\nFor the trampled multitude—\nNo—in countries that are free\nSuch starvation cannot be\nAs in England now we see.                                            _225\n\n56.\n‘To the rich thou art a check,\nWhen his foot is on the neck\nOf his victim, thou dost make\nThat he treads upon a snake.\n\n57.\nThou art Justice—ne’er for gold                                     _230\nMay thy righteous laws be sold\nAs laws are in England—thou\nShield’st alike the high and low.\n\n58.\n‘Thou art Wisdom—Freemen never\nDream that God will damn for ever                                    _235\nAll who think those things untrue\nOf which Priests make such ado.\n\n59.\n‘Thou art Peace—never by thee\nWould blood and treasure wasted be\nAs tyrants wasted them, when all                                     _240\nLeagued to quench thy flame in Gaul.\n\n60.\n‘What if English toil and blood\nWas poured forth, even as a flood?\nIt availed, Oh, Liberty,\nTo dim, but not extinguish thee.                                     _245\n\n61.\n‘Thou art Love—the rich have kissed\nThy feet, and like him following Christ,\nGive their substance to the free\nAnd through the rough world follow thee,\n\n62.\n‘Or turn their wealth to arms, and make                              _250\nWar for thy beloved sake\nOn wealth, and war, and fraud—whence they\nDrew the power which is their prey.\n\n63.\n‘Science, Poetry, and Thought\nAre thy lamps; they make the lot                                     _255\nOf the dwellers in a cot\nSo serene, they curse it not.\n\n64.\n‘Spirit, Patience, Gentleness,\nAll that can adorn and bless\nArt thou—let deeds, not words, express                              _260\nThine exceeding loveliness.\n\n65.\n‘Let a great Assembly be\nOf the fearless and the free\nOn some spot of English ground\nWhere the plains stretch wide around.                                _265\n\n66.\n‘Let the blue sky overhead,\nThe green earth on which ye tread,\nAll that must eternal be\nWitness the solemnity.\n\n67.\n‘From the corners uttermost                                          _270\nOf the bounds of English coast;\nFrom every hut, village, and town\nWhere those who live and suffer moan\nFor others’ misery or their own,\n\n68.\n‘From the workhouse and the prison\nWhere pale as corpses newly risen,\nWomen, children, young and old                                       _277\nGroan for pain, and weep for cold—\n\n69.\n‘From the haunts of daily life\nWhere is waged the daily strife                                      _280\nWith common wants and common cares\nWhich sows the human heart with tares—\n\n70.\n‘Lastly from the palaces\nWhere the murmur of distress\nEchoes, like the distant sound                                       _285\nOf a wind alive around\n\n71.\n‘Those prison halls of wealth and fashion,\nWhere some few feel such compassion\nFor those who groan, and toil, and wail\nAs must make their brethren pale—\n\n72.\n‘Ye who suffer woes untold,                                          _291\nOr to feel, or to behold\nYour lost country bought and sold\nWith a price of blood and gold—\n\n73.\n‘Let a vast assembly be,                                             _295\nAnd with great solemnity\nDeclare with measured words that ye\nAre, as God has made ye, free—\n\n74.\n‘Be your strong and simple words\nKeen to wound as sharpened swords,                                   _300\nAnd wide as targes let them be,\nWith their shade to cover ye.\n\n75.\n‘Let the tyrants pour around\nWith a quick and startling sound,\nLike the loosening of a sea,                                         _305\nTroops of armed emblazonry.\n\n76.\n‘Let the charged artillery drive\nTill the dead air seems alive\nWith the clash of clanging wheels,\nAnd the tramp of horses’ heels.                                      _310\n\n77.\n‘Let the fixed bayonet\nGleam with sharp desire to wet\nIts bright point in English blood\nLooking keen as one for food.\n\n78.\nLet the horsemen’s scimitars                                         _315\nWheel and flash, like sphereless stars\nThirsting to eclipse their burning\nIn a sea of death and mourning.\n\n79.\n‘Stand ye calm and resolute,\nLike a forest close and mute,                                        _320\nWith folded arms and looks which are\nWeapons of unvanquished war,\n\n80.\n‘And let Panic, who outspeeds\nThe career of armed steeds\nPass, a disregarded shade                                            _325\nThrough your phalanx undismayed.\n\n81.\n‘Let the laws of your own land,\nGood or ill, between ye stand\nHand to hand, and foot to foot,\nArbiters of the dispute,                                             _330\n\n82.\n‘The old laws of England—they\nWhose reverend heads with age are gray,\nChildren of a wiser day;\nAnd whose solemn voice must be\nThine own echo—Liberty!                                             _335\n\n83.\n‘On those who first should violate\nSuch sacred heralds in their state\nRest the blood that must ensue,\nAnd it will not rest on you.\n\n84.\n‘And if then the tyrants dare                                        _340\nLet them ride among you there,\nSlash, and stab, and maim, and hew,—\nWhat they like, that let them do.\n\n85.\n‘With folded arms and steady eyes,\nAnd little fear, and less surprise,                                  _345\nLook upon them as they slay\nTill their rage has died away.\n\n86.\nThen they will return with shame\nTo the place from which they came,\nAnd the blood thus shed will speak                                   _350\nIn hot blushes on their cheek.\n\n87.\n‘Every woman in the land\nWill point at them as they stand—\nThey will hardly dare to greet\nTheir acquaintance in the street.                                    _355\n\n88.\n‘And the bold, true warriors\nWho have hugged Danger in wars\nWill turn to those who would be free,\nAshamed of such base company.\n\n89.\n‘And that slaughter to the Nation                                    _360\nShall steam up like inspiration,\nEloquent, oracular;\nA volcano heard afar.\n\n90.\n‘And these words shall then become\nLike Oppression’s thundered doom                                     _365\nRinging through each heart and brain,\nHeard again—again—again—\n\n91.\n‘Rise like Lions after slumber\nIn unvanquishable number—\nShake your chains to earth like dew                                  _370\nWhich in sleep had fallen on you—\nYe are many—they are few.’\n\n_15. Like Eldon Hunt manuscript; Like Lord Eldon Wise manuscript.\n_15. ermined Hunt manuscript, Wise manuscript edition 1832;\n     ermine editions 1839.\n_23 shadows]shadow editions 1839 only.\n_29 or]and Wise manuscript only.\n_35 And in his grasp Hunt manuscript, edition 1882;\n    In his hand Wise manuscript,\n    Hunt manuscript cancelled, edition 1839.\n_36 On his]And on his edition 1832 only.\n_51 the Hunt manuscript, edition 1832; that Wise manuscript.\n_56 tempestuous]tremendous editions 1839 only.\n_58 For with pomp]For from... Hunt manuscript, Wise manuscript.\n_71 God]Law editions 1839 only.\n_79 rightly Wise manuscript; nightly Hunt manuscript, editions 1832, 1839.\n_93 Fumbling] Trembling editions 1839 only.\n_105 a vale Hunt manuscript, Wise manuscript; the vale editions 1832, 1839.\n_113 as]like editions 1839 only.\n_116 its Wise manuscript, Hunt manuscript; it editions 1832, 1839.\n_121 but Wise MS; and Hunt manuscript, editions 1832, 1839.\n_122 May’s footstep Wise manuscript, Hunt manuscript;\n     the footstep edition 1832; May’s footsteps editions 1839.\n_132-4 omit Wise manuscript.\n_146 had cried Hunt manuscript, editions 1832, 1839;\n     cried out Wise manuscript.\n_155 omit edition 1832 only.\n_182 of]from Wise manuscript only.\n_186 wills Hunt manuscript, editions 1832, 1839; will Wise manuscript.\n_198 their Wise manuscript, Hunt manuscript, editions 1839;\n     the edition 1832.\n_216 cave Wise manuscript, Hunt manuscript, editions 1839;\n     caves edition 1832, Hunt manuscript cancelled.\n_220 In Wise manuscript, editions 1832, 1839; To Hunt manuscript.\n\n(Note at stanza 49: The following stanza is found in the Wise\nmanuscript and in editions 1839, but is wanting in the Hunt manuscript\nand in edition 1832:—\n\n‘Horses, oxen, have a home,\nWhen from daily toil they come;\nHousehold dogs, when the wind roars,\nFind a home within warm doors.’)\n\n_233 the Hunt manuscript, editions 1832, 1839; both Wise manuscript.\n_234 Freemen Wise manuscript, Hunt manuscript, editions 1839;\n     Freedom edition 1832.\n_235 Dream Wise manuscript, Hunt manuscript, editions 1839;\n     Dreams edition 1832. damn]doom editions 1839 only.\n_248 Give Hunt manuscript, edition 1832;\n     Given Wise manuscript, Hunt manuscript cancelled, editions 1839.\n_249 follow]followed editions 1839 only.\n_250 Or Wise manuscript, Hunt manuscript; Oh editions 1832, 1839.\n_254 Science, Poetry, Wise manuscript, Hunt manuscript;\n     Science, and Poetry editions 1832, 1839.\n_257 So Hunt manuscript, edition 1832;\n     Such they curse their Maker not Wise manuscript, editions 1839.\n_263 and]of edition 1832 only.\n_274 or]and edition 1832 only.\n\n(Note to end of stanza 67: The following stanza is found (cancelled)\nat this place in the Wise manuscript:—\n\n‘From the cities where from caves,\nLike the dead from putrid graves,\nTroops of starvelings gliding come,\nLiving Tenants of a tomb.’\n\n_282 sows Wise manuscript, Hunt manuscript;\n     sow editions 1832, 1839.\n_297 measured Wise manuscript, Hunt manuscript, edition 1832;\n     ne’er-said editions 1839.\n_322 of unvanquished Wise manuscript;\n     of an unvanquished Hunt manuscript, editions 1832, 1839.\n_346 slay Wise manuscript; Hunt manuscript, editions 1839;\n     stay edition 1832.\n_357 in wars Wise manuscript, Hunt manuscript, edition 1832;\n     in the wars editions 1839.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On The Mask Of Anarchy, By Mrs. Shelley.",
    "body": "Though Shelley’s first eager desire to excite his countrymen to resist\nopenly the oppressions existent during ‘the good old times’ had faded\nwith early youth, still his warmest sympathies were for the people. He\nwas a republican, and loved a democracy. He looked on all human beings\nas inheriting an equal right to possess the dearest privileges of our\nnature; the necessaries of life when fairly earned by labour, and\nintellectual instruction. His hatred of any despotism that looked upon\nthe people as not to be consulted, or protected from want and\nignorance, was intense. He was residing near Leghorn, at Villa\nValsovano, writing “The Cenci”, when the news of the Manchester\nMassacre reached us; it roused in him violent emotions of indignation\nand compassion. The great truth that the many, if accordant and\nresolute, could control the few, as was shown some years after, made\nhim long to teach his injured countrymen how to resist. Inspired by\nthese feelings, he wrote the “Mask of Anarchy”, which he sent to his\nfriend Leigh Hunt, to be inserted in the Examiner, of which he was\nthen the Editor.\n\n‘I did not insert it,’ Leigh Hunt writes in his valuable and\ninteresting preface to this poem, when he printed it in 1832, ‘because\nI thought that the public at large had not become sufficiently\ndiscerning to do justice to the sincerity and kind-heartedness of the\nspirit that walked in this flaming robe of verse.’ Days of outrage\nhave passed away, and with them the exasperation that would cause such\nan appeal to the many to be injurious. Without being aware of them,\nthey at one time acted on his suggestions, and gained the day. But\nthey rose when human life was respected by the Minister in power; such\nwas not the case during the Administration which excited Shelley’s\nabhorrence.\n\nThe poem was written for the people, and is therefore in a more\npopular tone than usual: portions strike as abrupt and unpolished, but\nmany stanzas are all his own. I heard him repeat, and admired, those\nbeginning\n\n‘My Father Time is old and gray,’\n\nbefore I knew to what poem they were to belong. But the most touching\npassage is that which describes the blessed effects of liberty; it\nmight make a patriot of any man whose heart was not wholly closed\nagainst his humbler fellow-creatures.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "By Miching Mallecho, Esq.",
    "body": "Is it a party in a parlour,\nCrammed just as they on earth were crammed,\nSome sipping punch—some sipping tea;\nBut, as you by their faces see,\nAll silent, and all—damned!\n“Peter Bell”, by W. WORDSWORTH.\n\nOPHELIA.—What means this, my lord?\nHAMLET.—Marry, this is Miching Mallecho; it means mischief.\nSHAKESPEARE.\n\n[Composed at Florence, October, 1819, and forwarded to Hunt (November\n2) to be published by C. & J. Ollier without the author’s name;\nultimately printed by Mrs. Shelley in the second edition of the\n“Poetical Works”, 1839. A skit by John Hamilton Reynolds, “Peter Bell,\na Lyrical Ballad”, had already appeared (April, 1819), a few days\nbefore the publication of Wordsworth’s “Peter Bell, a Tale”. These\nproductions were reviewed in Leigh Hunt’s “Examiner” (April 26, May 3,\n1819); and to the entertainment derived from his perusal of Hunt’s\ncriticisms the composition of Shelley’s “Peter Bell the Third” is\nchiefly owing.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prologue.",
    "body": "Peter Bells, one, two and three,\nO’er the wide world wandering be.—\nFirst, the antenatal Peter,\nWrapped in weeds of the same metre,\nThe so-long-predestined raiment                                      _5\nClothed in which to walk his way meant\nThe second Peter; whose ambition\nIs to link the proposition,\nAs the mean of two extremes—\n(This was learned from Aldric’s themes)                              _10\nShielding from the guilt of schism\nThe orthodoxal syllogism;\nThe First Peter—he who was\nLike the shadow in the glass\nOf the second, yet unripe,                                           _15\nHis substantial antitype.—\n\nThen came Peter Bell the Second,\nWho henceforward must be reckoned\nThe body of a double soul,\nAnd that portion of the whole                                        _20\nWithout which the rest would seem\nEnds of a disjointed dream.—\nAnd the Third is he who has\nO’er the grave been forced to pass\nTo the other side, which is,—                                       _25\nGo and try else,—just like this.\n\nPeter Bell the First was Peter\nSmugger, milder, softer, neater,\nLike the soul before it is\nBorn from THAT world into THIS.                                      _30\nThe next Peter Bell was he,\nPredevote, like you and me,\nTo good or evil as may come;\nHis was the severer doom,—\nFor he was an evil Cotter,                                           _35\nAnd a polygamic Potter.\nAnd the last is Peter Bell,\nDamned since our first parents fell,\nDamned eternally to Hell—\nSurely he deserves it well!                                          _40\n\n_10 Aldric’s] i.e. Aldrich’s—a spelling adopted here by Woodberry.\n\n(_36 The oldest scholiasts read—\nA dodecagamic Potter.\nThis is at once more descriptive and more megalophonous,—but the\nalliteration of the text had captivated the vulgar ear of the herd of\nlater commentators.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])\n\n\nPART 1.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Death.",
    "body": "1.\nAnd Peter Bell, when he had been\nWith fresh-imported Hell-fire warmed,\nGrew serious—from his dress and mien\n’Twas very plainly to be seen\nPeter was quite reformed.                                            _5\n\n2.\nHis eyes turned up, his mouth turned down;\nHis accent caught a nasal twang;\nHe oiled his hair; there might be heard\nThe grace of God in every word\nWhich Peter said or sang.                                            _10\n\n3.\nBut Peter now grew old, and had\nAn ill no doctor could unravel:\nHis torments almost drove him mad;—\nSome said it was a fever bad—\nSome swore it was the gravel.                                        _15\n\n4.\nHis holy friends then came about,\nAnd with long preaching and persuasion\nConvinced the patient that, without\nThe smallest shadow of a doubt,\nHe was predestined to damnation.                                     _20\n\n5.\nThey said—‘Thy name is Peter Bell;\nThy skin is of a brimstone hue;\nAlive or dead—ay, sick or well—\nThe one God made to rhyme with hell;\nThe other, I think, rhymes with you.                                 _25\n\n6.\nThen Peter set up such a yell!—\nThe nurse, who with some water gruel\nWas climbing up the stairs, as well\nAs her old legs could climb them—fell,\nAnd broke them both—the fall was cruel.                             _30\n\n7.\nThe Parson from the casement lept\nInto the lake of Windermere—\nAnd many an eel—though no adept\nIn God’s right reason for it—kept\nGnawing his kidneys half a year.                                     _35\n\n8.\nAnd all the rest rushed through the door\nAnd tumbled over one another,\nAnd broke their skulls.—Upon the floor\nMeanwhile sat Peter Bell, and swore,\nAnd cursed his father and his mother;                                _40\n\n9.\nAnd raved of God, and sin, and death,\nBlaspheming like an infidel;\nAnd said, that with his clenched teeth\nHe’d seize the earth from underneath,\nAnd drag it with him down to hell.                                   _45\n\n10.\nAs he was speaking came a spasm,\nAnd wrenched his gnashing teeth asunder;\nLike one who sees a strange phantasm\nHe lay,—there was a silent chasm\nBetween his upper jaw and under.                                     _50\n\n11.\nAnd yellow death lay on his face;\nAnd a fixed smile that was not human\nTold, as I understand the case,\nThat he was gone to the wrong place:—\nI heard all this from the old woman.                                 _55\n\n12.\nThen there came down from Langdale Pike\nA cloud, with lightning, wind and hail;\nIt swept over the mountains like\nAn ocean,—and I heard it strike\nThe woods and crags of Grasmere vale.                                _60\n\n13.\nAnd I saw the black storm come\nNearer, minute after minute;\nIts thunder made the cataracts dumb;\nWith hiss, and clash, and hollow hum,\nIt neared as if the Devil was in it.                                 _65\n\n14.\nThe Devil WAS in it:—he had bought\nPeter for half-a-crown; and when\nThe storm which bore him vanished, nought\nThat in the house that storm had caught\nWas ever seen again.                                                 _70\n\n15.\nThe gaping neighbours came next day—\nThey found all vanished from the shore:\nThe Bible, whence he used to pray,\nHalf scorched under a hen-coop lay;\nSmashed glass—and nothing more!                                     _75\n\n\nPART 2.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Devil.",
    "body": "1.\nThe Devil, I safely can aver,\nHas neither hoof, nor tail, nor sting;\nNor is he, as some sages swear,\nA spirit, neither here nor there,\nIn nothing—yet in everything.                                       _80\n\n2.\nHe is—what we are; for sometimes\nThe Devil is a gentleman;\nAt others a bard bartering rhymes\nFor sack; a statesman spinning crimes;\nA swindler, living as he can;                                        _85\n\n3.\nA thief, who cometh in the night,\nWith whole boots and net pantaloons,\nLike some one whom it were not right\nTo mention;—or the luckless wight\nFrom whom he steals nine silver spoons.                              _90\n\n4.\nBut in this case he did appear\nLike a slop-merchant from Wapping,\nAnd with smug face, and eye severe,\nOn every side did perk and peer\nTill he saw Peter dead or napping.                                   _95\n\n5.\nHe had on an upper Benjamin\n(For he was of the driving schism)\nIn the which he wrapped his skin\nFrom the storm he travelled in,\nFor fear of rheumatism.                                              _100\n\n6.\nHe called the ghost out of the corse;—\nIt was exceedingly like Peter,—\nOnly its voice was hollow and hoarse—\nIt had a queerish look of course—\nIts dress too was a little neater.                                   _105\n\n7.\nThe Devil knew not his name and lot;\nPeter knew not that he was Bell:\nEach had an upper stream of thought,\nWhich made all seem as it was not;\nFitting itself to all things well.                                   _110\n\n8.\nPeter thought he had parents dear,\nBrothers, sisters, cousins, cronies,\nIn the fens of Lincolnshire;\nHe perhaps had found them there\nHad he gone and boldly shown his                                     _115\n\n9.\nSolemn phiz in his own village;\nWhere he thought oft when a boy\nHe’d clomb the orchard walls to pillage\nThe produce of his neighbour’s tillage,\nWith marvellous pride and joy.                                       _120\n\n10.\nAnd the Devil thought he had,\n‘Mid the misery and confusion\nOf an unjust war, just made\nA fortune by the gainful trade\nOf giving soldiers rations bad—                                     _125\nThe world is full of strange delusion—\n\n11.\nThat he had a mansion planned\nIn a square like Grosvenor Square,\nThat he was aping fashion, and\nThat he now came to Westmoreland                                     _130\nTo see what was romantic there.\n\n12.\nAnd all this, though quite ideal,—\nReady at a breath to vanish,—\nWas a state not more unreal\nThan the peace he could not feel,                                    _135\nOr the care he could not banish.\n\n13.\nAfter a little conversation,\nThe Devil told Peter, if he chose,\nHe’d bring him to the world of fashion\nBy giving him a situation                                            _140\nIn his own service—and new clothes.\n\n14.\nAnd Peter bowed, quite pleased and proud,\nAnd after waiting some few days\nFor a new livery—dirty yellow\nTurned up with black—the wretched fellow                            _145\nWas bowled to Hell in the Devil’s chaise.\n\n\nPART 3.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hell.",
    "body": "1.\nHell is a city much like London—\nA populous and a smoky city;\nThere are all sorts of people undone,\nAnd there is little or no fun done;                                  _150\nSmall justice shown, and still less pity.\n\n2.\nThere is a Castles, and a Canning,\nA Cobbett, and a Castlereagh;\nAll sorts of caitiff corpses planning\nAll sorts of cozening for trepanning                                 _155\nCorpses less corrupt than they.\n\n3.\nThere is a ***, who has lost\nHis wits, or sold them, none knows which;\nHe walks about a double ghost,\nAnd though as thin as Fraud almost—                                 _160\nEver grows more grim and rich.\n\n4.\nThere is a Chancery Court; a King;\nA manufacturing mob; a set\nOf thieves who by themselves are sent\nSimilar thieves to represent;                                        _165\nAn army; and a public debt.\n\n5.\nWhich last is a scheme of paper money,\nAnd means—being interpreted—\n‘Bees, keep your wax—give us the honey,\nAnd we will plant, while skies are sunny,                            _170\nFlowers, which in winter serve instead.’\n\n6.\nThere is a great talk of revolution—\nAnd a great chance of despotism—\nGerman soldiers—camps—confusion—\nTumults—lotteries—rage—delusion—                                 _175\nGin—suicide—and methodism;\n\n7.\nTaxes too, on wine and bread,\nAnd meat, and beer, and tea, and cheese,\nFrom which those patriots pure are fed,\nWho gorge before they reel to bed                                    _180\nThe tenfold essence of all these.\n\n8.\nThere are mincing women, mewing,\n(Like cats, who amant misere,)\nOf their own virtue, and pursuing\nTheir gentler sisters to that ruin,                                  _185\nWithout which—what were chastity?(2)\n\n9.\nLawyers—judges—old hobnobbers\nAre there—bailiffs—chancellors—\nBishops—great and little robbers—\nRhymesters—pamphleteers—stock-jobbers—                            _190\nMen of glory in the wars,—\n\n10.\nThings whose trade is, over ladies\nTo lean, and flirt, and stare, and simper,\nTill all that is divine in woman\nGrows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman,                             _195\nCrucified ’twixt a smile and whimper.\n\n11.\nThrusting, toiling, wailing, moiling,\nFrowning, preaching—such a riot!\nEach with never-ceasing labour,\nWhilst he thinks he cheats his neighbour,                            _200\nCheating his own heart of quiet.\n\n12.\nAnd all these meet at levees;—\nDinners convivial and political;—\nSuppers of epic poets;—teas,\nWhere small talk dies in agonies;—                                  _205\nBreakfasts professional and critical;\n\n13.\nLunches and snacks so aldermanic\nThat one would furnish forth ten dinners,\nWhere reigns a Cretan-tongued panic,\nLest news Russ, Dutch, or Alemannic                                  _210\nShould make some losers, and some winners—\n\n45.\nAt conversazioni—balls—\nConventicles—and drawing-rooms—\nCourts of law—committees—calls\nOf a morning—clubs—book-stalls—                                   _215\nChurches—masquerades—and tombs.\n\n15.\nAnd this is Hell—and in this smother\nAll are damnable and damned;\nEach one damning, damns the other;\nThey are damned by one another,                                      _220\nBy none other are they damned.\n\n16.\n’Tis a lie to say, ‘God damns’! (1)\nWhere was Heaven’s Attorney General\nWhen they first gave out such flams?\nLet there be an end of shams,                                        _225\nThey are mines of poisonous mineral.\n\n17.\nStatesmen damn themselves to be\nCursed; and lawyers damn their souls\nTo the auction of a fee;\nChurchmen damn themselves to see                                     _230\nGod’s sweet love in burning coals.\n\n18.\nThe rich are damned, beyond all cure,\nTo taunt, and starve, and trample on\nThe weak and wretched; and the poor\nDamn their broken hearts to endure                                   _235\nStripe on stripe, with groan on groan.\n\n19.\nSometimes the poor are damned indeed\nTo take,—not means for being blessed,—\nBut Cobbett’s snuff, revenge; that weed\nFrom which the worms that it doth feed                               _240\nSqueeze less than they before possessed.\n\n20.\nAnd some few, like we know who,\nDamned—but God alone knows why—\nTo believe their minds are given\nTo make this ugly Hell a Heaven;                                     _245\nIn which faith they live and die.\n\n21.\nThus, as in a town, plague-stricken,\nEach man be he sound or no\nMust indifferently sicken;\nAs when day begins to thicken,                                       _250\nNone knows a pigeon from a crow,—\n\n22.\nSo good and bad, sane and mad,\nThe oppressor and the oppressed;\nThose who weep to see what others\nSmile to inflict upon their brothers;                                _255\nLovers, haters, worst and best;\n\n23.\nAll are damned—they breathe an air,\nThick, infected, joy-dispelling:\nEach pursues what seems most fair,\nMining like moles, through mind, and there                           _260\nScoop palace-caverns vast, where Care\nIn throned state is ever dwelling.\n\n\nPART 4.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Sin.",
    "body": "1.\nLo. Peter in Hell’s Grosvenor Square,\nA footman in the Devil’s service!\nAnd the misjudging world would swear                                 _265\nThat every man in service there\nTo virtue would prefer vice.\n\n2.\nBut Peter, though now damned, was not\nWhat Peter was before damnation.\nMen oftentimes prepare a lot                                         _270\nWhich ere it finds them, is not what\nSuits with their genuine station.\n\n3.\nAll things that Peter saw and felt\nHad a peculiar aspect to him;\nAnd when they came within the belt                                   _275\nOf his own nature, seemed to melt,\nLike cloud to cloud, into him.\n\n4.\nAnd so the outward world uniting\nTo that within him, he became\nConsiderably uninviting                                              _280\nTo those who, meditation slighting,\nWere moulded in a different frame.\n\n5.\nAnd he scorned them, and they scorned him;\nAnd he scorned all they did; and they\nDid all that men of their own trim                                   _285\nAre wont to do to please their whim,\nDrinking, lying, swearing, play.\n\n6.\nSuch were his fellow-servants; thus\nHis virtue, like our own, was built\nToo much on that indignant fuss                                      _290\nHypocrite Pride stirs up in us\nTo bully one another’s guilt.\n\n7.\nHe had a mind which was somehow\nAt once circumference and centre\nOf all he might or feel or know;                                     _295\nNothing went ever out, although\nSomething did ever enter.\n\n8.\nHe had as much imagination\nAs a pint-pot;—he never could\nFancy another situation,                                             _300\nFrom which to dart his contemplation,\nThan that wherein he stood.\n\n9.\nYet his was individual mind,\nAnd new created all he saw\nIn a new manner, and refined                                         _305\nThose new creations, and combined\nThem, by a master-spirit’s law.\n\n10.\nThus—though unimaginative—\nAn apprehension clear, intense,\nOf his mind’s work, had made alive                                   _310\nThe things it wrought on; I believe\nWakening a sort of thought in sense.\n\n11.\nBut from the first ’twas Peter’s drift\nTo be a kind of moral eunuch,\nHe touched the hem of Nature’s shift,                                _315\nFelt faint—and never dared uplift\nThe closest, all-concealing tunic.\n\n12.\nShe laughed the while, with an arch smile,\nAnd kissed him with a sister’s kiss,\nAnd said—My best Diogenes,                                          _320\nI love you well—but, if you please,\nTempt not again my deepest bliss.\n\n13.\n‘’Tis you are cold—for I, not coy,\nYield love for love, frank, warm, and true;\nAnd Burns, a Scottish peasant boy—                                  _325\nHis errors prove it—knew my joy\nMore, learned friend, than you.\n\n14.\n‘Boeca bacciata non perde ventura,\nAnzi rinnuova come fa la luna:—\nSo thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might cure a                 _330\nMale prude, like you, from what you now endure, a\nLow-tide in soul, like a stagnant laguna.\n\n15.\nThen Peter rubbed his eyes severe.\nAnd smoothed his spacious forehead down\nWith his broad palm;—’twixt love and fear,                          _335\nHe looked, as he no doubt felt, queer,\nAnd in his dream sate down.\n\n16.\nThe Devil was no uncommon creature;\nA leaden-witted thief—just huddled\nOut of the dross and scum of nature;                                 _340\nA toad-like lump of limb and feature,\nWith mind, and heart, and fancy muddled.\n\n17.\nHe was that heavy, dull, cold thing,\nThe spirit of evil well may be:\nA drone too base to have a sting;                                    _345\nWho gluts, and grimes his lazy wing,\nAnd calls lust, luxury.\n\n18.\nNow he was quite the kind of wight\nRound whom collect, at a fixed aera,\nVenison, turtle, hock, and claret,—                                 _350\nGood cheer—and those who come to share it—\nAnd best East Indian madeira!\n\n19.\nIt was his fancy to invite\nMen of science, wit, and learning,\nWho came to lend each other light;                                   _355\nHe proudly thought that his gold’s might\nHad set those spirits burning.\n\n20.\nAnd men of learning, science, wit,\nConsidered him as you and I\nThink of some rotten tree, and sit                                   _360\nLounging and dining under it,\nExposed to the wide sky.\n\n21.\nAnd all the while with loose fat smile,\nThe willing wretch sat winking there,\nBelieving ’twas his power that made                                  _365\nThat jovial scene—and that all paid\nHomage to his unnoticed chair.\n\n22.\nThough to be sure this place was Hell;\nHe was the Devil—and all they—\nWhat though the claret circled well,                                 _370\nAnd wit, like ocean, rose and fell?—\nWere damned eternally.\n\n\nPART 5.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Grace.",
    "body": "1.\nAmong the guests who often stayed\nTill the Devil’s petits-soupers,\nA man there came, fair as a maid,                                    _375\nAnd Peter noted what he said,\nStanding behind his master’s chair.\n\n2.\nHe was a mighty poet—and\nA subtle-souled psychologist;\nAll things he seemed to understand,                                  _380\nOf old or new—of sea or land—\nBut his own mind—which was a mist.\n\n3.\nThis was a man who might have turned\nHell into Heaven—and so in gladness\nA Heaven unto himself have earned;                                   _385\nBut he in shadows undiscerned\nTrusted.—and damned himself to madness.\n\n4.\nHe spoke of poetry, and how\n‘Divine it was—a light—a love—\nA spirit which like wind doth blow                                   _390\nAs it listeth, to and fro;\nA dew rained down from God above;\n\n5.\n‘A power which comes and goes like dream,\nAnd which none can ever trace—\nHeaven’s light on earth—Truth’s brightest beam.’                    _395\nAnd when he ceased there lay the gleam\nOf those words upon his face.\n\n6.\nNow Peter, when he heard such talk,\nWould, heedless of a broken pate,\nStand like a man asleep, or balk                                     _400\nSome wishing guest of knife or fork,\nOr drop and break his master’s plate.\n\n7.\nAt night he oft would start and wake\nLike a lover, and began\nIn a wild measure songs to make                                      _405\nOn moor, and glen, and rocky lake,\nAnd on the heart of man—\n\n8.\nAnd on the universal sky—\nAnd the wide earth’s bosom green,—\nAnd the sweet, strange mystery                                       _410\nOf what beyond these things may lie,\nAnd yet remain unseen.\n\n9.\nFor in his thought he visited\nThe spots in which, ere dead and damned,\nHe his wayward life had led;                                         _415\nYet knew not whence the thoughts were fed\nWhich thus his fancy crammed.\n\n10.\nAnd these obscure remembrances\nStirred such harmony in Peter,\nThat, whensoever he should please,                                   _420\nHe could speak of rocks and trees\nIn poetic metre.\n\n11.\nFor though it was without a sense\nOf memory, yet he remembered well\nMany a ditch and quick-set fence;                                    _425\nOf lakes he had intelligence,\nHe knew something of heath and fell.\n\n12.\nHe had also dim recollections\nOf pedlars tramping on their rounds;\nMilk-pans and pails; and odd collections                             _430\nOf saws, and proverbs; and reflections\nOld parsons make in burying-grounds.\n\n13.\nBut Peter’s verse was clear, and came\nAnnouncing from the frozen hearth\nOf a cold age, that none might tame                                  _435\nThe soul of that diviner flame\nIt augured to the Earth:\n\n14.\nLike gentle rains, on the dry plains,\nMaking that green which late was gray,\nOr like the sudden moon, that stains                                 _440\nSome gloomy chamber’s window-panes\nWith a broad light like day.\n\n15.\nFor language was in Peter’s hand\nLike clay while he was yet a potter;\nAnd he made songs for all the land,                                  _445\nSweet both to feel and understand,\nAs pipkins late to mountain Cotter.\n\n16.\nAnd Mr. —, the bookseller,\nGave twenty pounds for some;—then scorning\nA footman’s yellow coat to wear,                                     _450\nPeter, too proud of heart, I fear,\nInstantly gave the Devil warning.\n\n17.\nWhereat the Devil took offence,\nAnd swore in his soul a great oath then,\n‘That for his damned impertinence                                    _455\nHe’d bring him to a proper sense\nOf what was due to gentlemen!’\n\n\nPART 6.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Damnation.",
    "body": "1.\n‘O that mine enemy had written\nA book!’—cried Job:—a fearful curse,\nIf to the Arab, as the Briton,                                       _460\n’Twas galling to be critic-bitten:—\nThe Devil to Peter wished no worse.\n\n2.\nWhen Peter’s next new book found vent,\nThe Devil to all the first Reviews\nA copy of it slyly sent,                                             _465\nWith five-pound note as compliment,\nAnd this short notice—‘Pray abuse.’\n\n3.\nThen seriatim, month and quarter,\nAppeared such mad tirades.—One said—\n‘Peter seduced Mrs. Foy’s daughter,                                  _470\nThen drowned the mother in Ullswater,\nThe last thing as he went to bed.’\n\n4.\nAnother—‘Let him shave his head!\nWhere’s Dr. Willis?—Or is he joking?\nWhat does the rascal mean or hope,                                   _475\nNo longer imitating Pope,\nIn that barbarian Shakespeare poking?’\n\n5.\nOne more, ‘Is incest not enough?\nAnd must there be adultery too?\nGrace after meat? Miscreant and Liar!                                _480\nThief! Blackguard! Scoundrel! Fool! hell-fire\nIs twenty times too good for you.\n\n6.\n‘By that last book of yours WE think\nYou’ve double damned yourself to scorn;\nWe warned you whilst yet on the brink                                _485\nYou stood. From your black name will shrink\nThe babe that is unborn.’\n\n7.\nAll these Reviews the Devil made\nUp in a parcel, which he had\nSafely to Peter’s house conveyed.                                    _490\nFor carriage, tenpence Peter paid—\nUntied them—read them—went half mad.\n\n8.\n‘What!’ cried he, ‘this is my reward\nFor nights of thought, and days, of toil?\nDo poets, but to be abhorred                                         _495\nBy men of whom they never heard,\nConsume their spirits’ oil?\n\n9.\n‘What have I done to them?—and who\nIS Mrs. Foy? ’Tis very cruel\nTo speak of me and Betty so!                                         _500\nAdultery! God defend me! Oh!\nI’ve half a mind to fight a duel.\n\n10.\n‘Or,’ cried he, a grave look collecting,\n‘Is it my genius, like the moon,\nSets those who stand her face inspecting,                            _505\nThat face within their brain reflecting,\nLike a crazed bell-chime, out of tune?’\n\n11.\nFor Peter did not know the town,\nBut thought, as country readers do,\nFor half a guinea or a crown,                                        _510\nHe bought oblivion or renown\nFrom God’s own voice (1) in a review.\n\n12.\nAll Peter did on this occasion\nWas, writing some sad stuff in prose.\nIt is a dangerous invasion                                           _515\nWhen poets criticize; their station\nIs to delight, not pose.\n\n13.\nThe Devil then sent to Leipsic fair\nFor Born’s translation of Kant’s book;\nA world of words, tail foremost, where                               _520\nRight—wrong—false—true—and foul—and fair\nAs in a lottery-wheel are shook.\n\n14.\nFive thousand crammed octavo pages\nOf German psychologics,—he\nWho his furor verborum assuages                                      _525\nThereon, deserves just seven months’ wages\nMore than will e’er be due to me.\n\n15.\nI looked on them nine several days,\nAnd then I saw that they were bad;\nA friend, too, spoke in their dispraise,—                           _530\nHe never read them;—with amaze\nI found Sir William Drummond had.\n\n16.\nWhen the book came, the Devil sent\nIt to P. Verbovale (2), Esquire,\nWith a brief note of compliment,                                     _535\nBy that night’s Carlisle mail. It went,\nAnd set his soul on fire.\n\n17.\nFire, which ex luce praebens fumum,\nMade him beyond the bottom see\nOf truth’s clear well—when I and you, Ma’am,                        _540\nGo, as we shall do, subter humum,\nWe may know more than he.\n\n18.\nNow Peter ran to seed in soul\nInto a walking paradox;\nFor he was neither part nor whole,                                   _545\nNor good, nor bad—nor knave nor fool;\n—Among the woods and rocks\n\n19.\nFurious he rode, where late he ran,\nLashing and spurring his tame hobby;\nTurned to a formal puritan,                                          _550\nA solemn and unsexual man,—\nHe half believed “White Obi”.\n\n20.\nThis steed in vision he would ride,\nHigh trotting over nine-inch bridges,\nWith Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride,                                  _555\nMocking and mowing by his side—\nA mad-brained goblin for a guide—\nOver corn-fields, gates, and hedges.\n\n21.\nAfter these ghastly rides, he came\nHome to his heart, and found from thence                             _560\nMuch stolen of its accustomed flame;\nHis thoughts grew weak, drowsy, and lame\nOf their intelligence.\n\n22.\nTo Peter’s view, all seemed one hue;\nHe was no Whig, he was no Tory;                                      _565\nNo Deist and no Christian he;—\nHe got so subtle, that to be\nNothing, was all his glory.\n\n23.\nOne single point in his belief\nFrom his organization sprung,                                        _570\nThe heart-enrooted faith, the chief\nEar in his doctrines’ blighted sheaf,\nThat ‘Happiness is wrong’;\n\n24.\nSo thought Calvin and Dominic;\nSo think their fierce successors, who                                _575\nEven now would neither stint nor stick\nOur flesh from off our bones to pick,\nIf they might ‘do their do.’\n\n25.\nHis morals thus were undermined:—\nThe old Peter—the hard, old Potter—                                _580\nWas born anew within his mind;\nHe grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined,\nAs when he tramped beside the Otter. (1)\n\n26.\nIn the death hues of agony\nLambently flashing from a fish,                                      _585\nNow Peter felt amused to see\nShades like a rainbow’s rise and flee,\nMixed with a certain hungry wish(2).\n\n27.\nSo in his Country’s dying face\nHe looked—and, lovely as she lay,                                   _590\nSeeking in vain his last embrace,\nWailing her own abandoned case,\nWith hardened sneer he turned away:\n\n28.\nAnd coolly to his own soul said;—\n‘Do you not think that we might make                                 _595\nA poem on her when she’s dead:—\nOr, no—a thought is in my head—\nHer shroud for a new sheet I’ll take:\n\n29.\n‘My wife wants one.—Let who will bury\nThis mangled corpse! And I and you,                                  _600\nMy dearest Soul, will then make merry,\nAs the Prince Regent did with Sherry,—’\n‘Ay—and at last desert me too.’\n\n30.\nAnd so his Soul would not be gay,\nBut moaned within him; like a fawn                                   _605\nMoaning within a cave, it lay\nWounded and wasting, day by day,\nTill all its life of life was gone.\n\n31.\nAs troubled skies stain waters clear,\nThe storm in Peter’s heart and mind                                  _610\nNow made his verses dark and queer:\nThey were the ghosts of what they were,\nShaking dim grave-clothes in the wind.\n\n32.\nFor he now raved enormous folly,\nOf Baptisms, Sunday-schools, and Graves,                             _615\n’Twould make George Colman melancholy\nTo have heard him, like a male Molly,\nChanting those stupid staves.\n\n33.\nYet the Reviews, who heaped abuse\nOn Peter while he wrote for freedom,                                 _620\nSo soon as in his song they spy\nThe folly which soothes tyranny,\nPraise him, for those who feed ’em.\n\n34.\n‘He was a man, too great to scan;—\nA planet lost in truth’s keen rays:—                                _625\nHis virtue, awful and prodigious;—\nHe was the most sublime, religious,\nPure-minded Poet of these days.’\n\n35.\nAs soon as he read that, cried Peter,\n‘Eureka! I have found the way                                        _630\nTo make a better thing of metre\nThan e’er was made by living creature\nUp to this blessed day.’\n\n36.\nThen Peter wrote odes to the Devil;—\nIn one of which he meekly said:                                      _635\n‘May Carnage and Slaughter,\nThy niece and thy daughter,\nMay Rapine and Famine,\nThy gorge ever cramming,\nGlut thee with living and dead!                                      _640\n\n37.\n‘May Death and Damnation,\nAnd Consternation,\nFlit up from Hell with pure intent!\nSlash them at Manchester,\nGlasgow, Leeds, and Chester;                                         _645\nDrench all with blood from Avon to Trent.\n\n38.\n‘Let thy body-guard yeomen\nHew down babes and women,\nAnd laugh with bold triumph till Heaven be rent!\nWhen Moloch in Jewry                                                 _650\nMunched children with fury,\nIt was thou, Devil, dining with pure intent. (1)\n\n\nPART 7.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Double Damnation.",
    "body": "1.\nThe Devil now knew his proper cue.—\nSoon as he read the ode, he drove\nTo his friend Lord MacMurderchouse’s,                                _655\nA man of interest in both houses,\nAnd said:—‘For money or for love,\n\n2.\n‘Pray find some cure or sinecure;\nTo feed from the superfluous taxes\nA friend of ours—a poet—fewer                                      _660\nHave fluttered tamer to the lure\nThan he.’ His lordship stands and racks his\n\n3.\nStupid brains, while one might count\nAs many beads as he had boroughs,—\nAt length replies; from his mean front,                              _665\nLike one who rubs out an account,\nSmoothing away the unmeaning furrows:\n\n4.\n‘It happens fortunately, dear Sir,\nI can. I hope I need require\nNo pledge from you, that he will stir                                _670\nIn our affairs;—like Oliver.\nThat he’ll be worthy of his hire.’\n\n5.\nThese words exchanged, the news sent off\nTo Peter, home the Devil hied,—\nTook to his bed; he had no cough,                                    _675\nNo doctor,—meat and drink enough.—\nYet that same night he died.\n\n6.\nThe Devil’s corpse was leaded down;\nHis decent heirs enjoyed his pelf,\nMourning-coaches, many a one,                                        _680\nFollowed his hearse along the town:—\nWhere was the Devil himself?\n\n7.\nWhen Peter heard of his promotion,\nHis eyes grew like two stars for bliss:\nThere was a bow of sleek devotion                                    _685\nEngendering in his back; each motion\nSeemed a Lord’s shoe to kiss.\n\n8.\nHe hired a house, bought plate, and made\nA genteel drive up to his door,\nWith sifted gravel neatly laid,—                                    _690\nAs if defying all who said,\nPeter was ever poor.\n\n9.\nBut a disease soon struck into\nThe very life and soul of Peter—\nHe walked about—slept—had the hue                                  _695\nOf health upon his cheeks—and few\nDug better—none a heartier eater.\n\n10.\nAnd yet a strange and horrid curse\nClung upon Peter, night and day;\nMonth after month the thing grew worse,                              _700\nAnd deadlier than in this my verse\nI can find strength to say.\n\n11.\nPeter was dull—he was at first\nDull—oh, so dull—so very dull!\nWhether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed—                             _705\nStill with this dulness was he cursed—\nDull—beyond all conception—dull.\n\n12.\nNo one could read his books—no mortal,\nBut a few natural friends, would hear him;\nThe parson came not near his portal;                                 _710\nHis state was like that of the immortal\nDescribed by Swift—no man could bear him.\n\n13.\nHis sister, wife, and children yawned,\nWith a long, slow, and drear ennui,\nAll human patience far beyond;                                       _715\nTheir hopes of Heaven each would have pawned,\nAnywhere else to be.\n\n14.\nBut in his verse, and in his prose,\nThe essence of his dulness was\nConcentred and compressed so close,                                  _720\n’Twould have made Guatimozin doze\nOn his red gridiron of brass.\n\n15.\nA printer’s boy, folding those pages,\nFell slumbrously upon one side;\nLike those famed Seven who slept three ages.                         _725\nTo wakeful frenzy’s vigil—rages,\nAs opiates, were the same applied.\n\n16.\nEven the Reviewers who were hired\nTo do the work of his reviewing,\nWith adamantine nerves, grew tired;—                                _730\nGaping and torpid they retired,\nTo dream of what they should be doing.\n\n17.\nAnd worse and worse, the drowsy curse\nYawned in him, till it grew a pest—\nA wide contagious atmosphere,                                        _735\nCreeping like cold through all things near;\nA power to infect and to infest.\n\n18.\nHis servant-maids and dogs grew dull;\nHis kitten, late a sportive elf;\nThe woods and lakes, so beautiful,                                   _740\nOf dim stupidity were full.\nAll grew dull as Peter’s self.\n\n19.\nThe earth under his feet—the springs,\nWhich lived within it a quick life,\nThe air, the winds of many wings,                                    _745\nThat fan it with new murmurings,\nWere dead to their harmonious strife.\n\n20.\nThe birds and beasts within the wood,\nThe insects, and each creeping thing,\nWere now a silent multitude;                                         _750\nLove’s work was left unwrought—no brood\nNear Peter’s house took wing.\n\n21.\nAnd every neighbouring cottager\nStupidly yawned upon the other:\nNo jackass brayed; no little cur                                     _755\nCocked up his ears;—no man would stir\nTo save a dying mother.\n\n22.\nYet all from that charmed district went\nBut some half-idiot and half-knave,\nWho rather than pay any rent,                                        _760\nWould live with marvellous content,\nOver his father’s grave.\n\n23.\nNo bailiff dared within that space,\nFor fear of the dull charm, to enter;\nA man would bear upon his face,                                      _765\nFor fifteen months in any case,\nThe yawn of such a venture.\n\n24.\nSeven miles above—below—around—\nThis pest of dulness holds its sway;\nA ghastly life without a sound;                                      _770\nTo Peter’s soul the spell is bound—\nHow should it ever pass away?\n\n(_8 To those who have not duly appreciated the distinction between\nWhale and Russia oil, this attribute might rather seem to belong to\nthe Dandy than the Evangelic. The effect, when to the windward, is\nindeed so similar, that it requires a subtle naturalist to\ndiscriminate the animals. They belong, however, to distinct\ngenera.—[SHELLEY’s NOTE.)\n\n(_183 One of the attributes in Linnaeus’s description of the Cat. To a\nsimilar cause the caterwauling of more than one species of this genus\nis to be referred;—except, indeed, that the poor quadruped is\ncompelled to quarrel with its own pleasures, whilst the biped is\nsupposed only to quarrel with those of others.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])\n\n(_186 What would this husk and excuse for a virtue be without its\nkernel prostitution, or the kernel prostitution without this husk of a\nvirtue? I wonder the women of the town do not form an association,\nlike the Society for the Suppression of Vice, for the support of what\nmay be called the ‘King, Church, and Constitution’ of their order. But\nthis subject is almost too horrible for a joke.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])\n\n(_222 This libel on our national oath, and this accusation of all our\ncountrymen of being in the daily practice of solemnly asseverating the\nmost enormous falsehood, I fear deserves the notice of a more active\nAttorney General than that here alluded to.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])\n\n_292 one Fleay cj., Rossetti, Forman, Dowden, Woodberry;\n     out 1839, 2nd edition.\n_500 Betty]Emma 1839, 2nd edition. See letter from Shelley to Ollier,\n     May 14, 1820 (Shelley Memorials, page 139).\n\n(_512 Vox populi, vox dei. As Mr. Godwin truly observes of a more\nfamous saying, of some merit as a popular maxim, but totally destitute\nof philosophical accuracy.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])\n\n(_534 Quasi, Qui valet verba:—i.e. all the words which have been,\nare, or may be expended by, for, against, with, or on him. A\nsufficient proof of the utility of this history. Peter’s progenitor\nwho selected this name seems to have possessed A PURE ANTICIPATED\nCOGNITION of the nature and modesty of this ornament of his\nposterity.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])\n\n_602-3 See Editor’s Note.\n\n(_583 A famous river in the new Atlantis of the Dynastophylic\nPantisocratists.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])\n\n(_588 See the description of the beautiful colours produced during the\nagonizing death of a number of trout, in the fourth part of a long\npoem in blank verse, published within a few years. [“The Excursion”, 8\n2 568-71.—Ed.] That poem contains curious evidence of the gradual\nhardening of a strong but circumscribed sensibility, of the perversion\nof a penetrating but panic-stricken understanding. The author might\nhave derived a lesson which he had probably forgotten from these sweet\nand sublime verses:—\n\n‘This lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,\nTaught both by what she (Nature) shows and what conceals,\nNever to blend our pleasure or our pride\nWith sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.’—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])\n\n(_652 It is curious to observe how often extremes meet. Cobbett and\nPeter use the same language for a different purpose: Peter is indeed a\nsort of metrical Cobbett. Cobbett is, however, more mischievous than\nPeter, because he pollutes a holy and how unconquerable cause with the\nprinciples of legitimate murder; whilst the other only makes a bad one\nridiculous and odious.\n\nIf either Peter or Cobbett should see this note, each will feel more\nindignation at being compared to the other than at any censure implied\nin the moral perversion laid to their charge.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On Peter Bell The Third, By Mrs. Shelley.",
    "body": "In this new edition I have added “Peter Bell the Third”. A critique on\nWordsworth’s “Peter Bell” reached us at Leghorn, which amused Shelley\nexceedingly, and suggested this poem.\n\nI need scarcely observe that nothing personal to the author of “Peter\nBell” is intended in this poem. No man ever admired Wordsworth’s\npoetry more;—he read it perpetually, and taught others to appreciate\nits beauties. This poem is, like all others written by Shelley, ideal.\nHe conceived the idealism of a poet—a man of lofty and creative\ngenius—quitting the glorious calling of discovering and announcing\nthe beautiful and good, to support and propagate ignorant prejudices\nand pernicious errors; imparting to the unenlightened, not that ardour\nfor truth and spirit of toleration which Shelley looked on as the\nsources of the moral improvement and happiness of mankind, but false\nand injurious opinions, that evil was good, and that ignorance and\nforce were the best allies of purity and virtue. His idea was that a\nman gifted, even as transcendently as the author of “Peter Bell”, with\nthe highest qualities of genius, must, if he fostered such errors, be\ninfected with dulness. This poem was written as a warning—not as a\nnarration of the reality. He was unacquainted personally with\nWordsworth, or with Coleridge (to whom he alludes in the fifth part of\nthe poem), and therefore, I repeat, his poem is purely ideal;—it\ncontains something of criticism on the compositions of those great\npoets, but nothing injurious to the men themselves.\n\nNo poem contains more of Shelley’s peculiar views with regard to the\nerrors into which many of the wisest have fallen, and the pernicious\neffects of certain opinions on society. Much of it is beautifully\nwritten: and, though, like the burlesque drama of “Swellfoot”, it must\nbe looked on as a plaything, it has so much merit and poetry—so much\nof HIMSELF in it—that it cannot fail to interest greatly, and by\nright belongs to the world for whose instruction and benefit it was\nwritten.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Letter To Maria Gisborne.",
    "body": "[Composed during Shelley’s occupation of the Gisbornes’ house at\nLeghorn, July, 1820; published in “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. Sources of\nthe text are (1) a draft in Shelley’s hand, ‘partly illegible’\n(Forman), amongst the Boscombe manuscripts; (2) a transcript by Mrs.\nShelley; (3) the editio princeps, 1824; the text in “Poetical Works”,\n1839, let and 2nd editions. Our text is that of Mrs. Shelley’s\ntranscript, modified by the Boscombe manuscript. Here, as elsewhere in\nthis edition, the readings of the editio princeps are preserved in the\nfootnotes.]\n\nLEGHORN, July 1, 1820.]\n\nThe spider spreads her webs, whether she be\nIn poet’s tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;\nThe silk-worm in the dark green mulberry leaves\nHis winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;\nSo I, a thing whom moralists call worm,                              _5\nSit spinning still round this decaying form,\nFrom the fine threads of rare and subtle thought—\nNo net of words in garish colours wrought\nTo catch the idle buzzers of the day—\nBut a soft cell, where when that fades away,                         _10\nMemory may clothe in wings my living name\nAnd feed it with the asphodels of fame,\nWhich in those hearts which must remember me\nGrow, making love an immortality.\n\nWhoever should behold me now, I wist,                                _15\nWould think I were a mighty mechanist,\nBent with sublime Archimedean art\nTo breathe a soul into the iron heart\nOf some machine portentous, or strange gin,\nWhich by the force of figured spells might win                       _20\nIts way over the sea, and sport therein;\nFor round the walls are hung dread engines, such\nAs Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch\nIxion or the Titan:—or the quick\nWit of that man of God, St. Dominic,                                 _25\nTo convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic,\nOr those in philanthropic council met,\nWho thought to pay some interest for the debt\nThey owed to Jesus Christ for their salvation,\nBy giving a faint foretaste of damnation                             _30\nTo Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, and the rest\nWho made our land an island of the blest,\nWhen lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire\nOn Freedom’s hearth, grew dim with Empire:—\nWith thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag,              _35\nWhich fishers found under the utmost crag\nOf Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles,\nWhere to the sky the rude sea rarely smiles\nUnless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn\nWhen the exulting elements in scorn,                                 _40\nSatiated with destroyed destruction, lay\nSleeping in beauty on their mangled prey,\nAs panthers sleep;—and other strange and dread\nMagical forms the brick floor overspread,—\nProteus transformed to metal did not make                            _45\nMore figures, or more strange; nor did he take\nSuch shapes of unintelligible brass,\nOr heap himself in such a horrid mass\nOf tin and iron not to be understood;\nAnd forms of unimaginable wood,                                      _50\nTo puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood:\nGreat screws, and cones, and wheels, and grooved blocks,\nThe elements of what will stand the shocks\nOf wave and wind and time.—Upon the table\nMore knacks and quips there be than I am able                        _55\nTo catalogize in this verse of mine:—\nA pretty bowl of wood—not full of wine,\nBut quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink\nWhen at their subterranean toil they swink,\nPledging the demons of the earthquake, who                           _60\nReply to them in lava—cry halloo!\nAnd call out to the cities o’er their head,—\nRoofs, towers, and shrines, the dying and the dead,\nCrash through the chinks of earth—and then all quaff\nAnother rouse, and hold their sides and laugh.                       _65\nThis quicksilver no gnome has drunk—within\nThe walnut bowl it lies, veined and thin,\nIn colour like the wake of light that stains\nThe Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains\nThe inmost shower of its white fire—the breeze                      _70\nIs still—blue Heaven smiles over the pale seas.\nAnd in this bowl of quicksilver—for I\nYield to the impulse of an infancy\nOutlasting manhood—I have made to float\nA rude idealism of a paper boat:—                                   _75\nA hollow screw with cogs—Henry will know\nThe thing I mean and laugh at me,—if so\nHe fears not I should do more mischief.—Next\nLie bills and calculations much perplexed,\nWith steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint                     _80\nTraced over them in blue and yellow paint.\nThen comes a range of mathematical\nInstruments, for plans nautical and statical,\nA heap of rosin, a queer broken glass\nWith ink in it;—a china cup that was                                _85\nWhat it will never be again, I think,—\nA thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink\nThe liquor doctors rail at—and which I\nWill quaff in spite of them—and when we die\nWe’ll toss up who died first of drinking tea,                        _90\nAnd cry out,—‘Heads or tails?’ where’er we be.\nNear that a dusty paint-box, some odd hooks,\nA half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books,\nWhere conic sections, spherics, logarithms,\nTo great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims,                          _95\nLie heaped in their harmonious disarray\nOf figures,—disentangle them who may.\nBaron de Tott’s Memoirs beside them lie,\nAnd some odd volumes of old chemistry.\nNear those a most inexplicable thing,                                _100\nWith lead in the middle—I’m conjecturing\nHow to make Henry understand; but no—\nI’ll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo,\nThis secret in the pregnant womb of time,\nToo vast a matter for so weak a rhyme.                               _105\n\nAnd here like some weird Archimage sit I,\nPlotting dark spells, and devilish enginery,\nThe self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind\nWhich pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind\nThe gentle spirit of our meek reviews                                _110\nInto a powdery foam of salt abuse,\nRuffling the ocean of their self-content;—\nI sit—and smile or sigh as is my bent,\nBut not for them—Libeccio rushes round\nWith an inconstant and an idle sound,                                _115\nI heed him more than them—the thunder-smoke\nIs gathering on the mountains, like a cloak\nFolded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;\nThe ripe corn under the undulating air\nUndulates like an ocean;—and the vines                              _120\nAre trembling wide in all their trellised lines—\nThe murmur of the awakening sea doth fill\nThe empty pauses of the blast;—the hill\nLooks hoary through the white electric rain,\nAnd from the glens beyond, in sullen strain,                         _125\nThe interrupted thunder howls; above\nOne chasm of Heaven smiles, like the eye of Love\nOn the unquiet world;—while such things are,\nHow could one worth your friendship heed the war\nOf worms? the shriek of the world’s carrion jays,                    _130\nTheir censure, or their wonder, or their praise?\n\nYou are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees,\nIn vacant chairs, your absent images,\nAnd points where once you sat, and now should be\nBut are not.—I demand if ever we                                    _135\nShall meet as then we met;—and she replies.\nVeiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;\n‘I know the past alone—but summon home\nMy sister Hope,—she speaks of all to come.’\nBut I, an old diviner, who knew well                                 _140\nEvery false verse of that sweet oracle,\nTurned to the sad enchantress once again,\nAnd sought a respite from my gentle pain,\nIn citing every passage o’er and o’er\nOf our communion—how on the sea-shore                               _145\nWe watched the ocean and the sky together,\nUnder the roof of blue Italian weather;\nHow I ran home through last year’s thunder-storm,\nAnd felt the transverse lightning linger warm\nUpon my cheek—and how we often made                                 _150\nFeasts for each other, where good will outweighed\nThe frugal luxury of our country cheer,\nAs well it might, were it less firm and clear\nThan ours must ever be;—and how we spun\nA shroud of talk to hide us from the sun                             _155\nOf this familiar life, which seems to be\nBut is not:—or is but quaint mockery\nOf all we would believe, and sadly blame\nThe jarring and inexplicable frame\nOf this wrong world:—and then anatomize                             _160\nThe purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes\nWere closed in distant years;—or widely guess\nThe issue of the earth’s great business,\nWhen we shall be as we no longer are—\nLike babbling gossips safe, who hear the war                         _165\nOf winds, and sigh, but tremble not;—or how\nYou listened to some interrupted flow\nOf visionary rhyme,—in joy and pain\nStruck from the inmost fountains of my brain,\nWith little skill perhaps;—or how we sought                         _170\nThose deepest wells of passion or of thought\nWrought by wise poets in the waste of years,\nStaining their sacred waters with our tears;\nQuenching a thirst ever to be renewed!\nOr how I, wisest lady! then endued                                   _175\nThe language of a land which now is free,\nAnd, winged with thoughts of truth and majesty,\nFlits round the tyrant’s sceptre like a cloud,\nAnd bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,\n‘My name is Legion!’—that majestic tongue                           _180\nWhich Calderon over the desert flung\nOf ages and of nations; and which found\nAn echo in our hearts, and with the sound\nStartled oblivion;—thou wert then to me\nAs is a nurse—when inarticulately                                   _185\nA child would talk as its grown parents do.\nIf living winds the rapid clouds pursue,\nIf hawks chase doves through the aethereal way,\nHuntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey,\nWhy should not we rouse with the spirit’s blast                      _190\nOut of the forest of the pathless past\nThese recollected pleasures?\nYou are now\nIn London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow\nAt once is deaf and loud, and on the shore\nVomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.                      _195\nYet in its depth what treasures! You will see\nThat which was Godwin,—greater none than he\nThough fallen—and fallen on evil times—to stand\nAmong the spirits of our age and land,\nBefore the dread tribunal of “to come”                               _200\nThe foremost,—while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb.\nYou will see Coleridge—he who sits obscure\nIn the exceeding lustre and the pure\nIntense irradiation of a mind,\nWhich, with its own internal lightning blind,                        _200\nFlags wearily through darkness and despair—\nA cloud-encircled meteor of the air,\nA hooded eagle among blinking owls.—\nYou will see Hunt—one of those happy souls\nWhich are the salt of the earth, and without whom                    _210\nThis world would smell like what it is—a tomb;\nWho is, what others seem; his room no doubt\nIs still adorned with many a cast from Shout,\nWith graceful flowers tastefully placed about;\nAnd coronals of bay from ribbons hung,                               _215\nAnd brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung;\nThe gifts of the most learned among some dozens\nOf female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins.\nAnd there is he with his eternal puns,\nWhich beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns                   _220\nThundering for money at a poet’s door;\nAlas! it is no use to say, ‘I’m poor!’\nOr oft in graver mood, when he will look\nThings wiser than were ever read in book,\nExcept in Shakespeare’s wisest tenderness.—                         _225\nYou will see Hogg,—and I cannot express\nHis virtues,—though I know that they are great,\nBecause he locks, then barricades the gate\nWithin which they inhabit;—of his wit\nAnd wisdom, you’ll cry out when you are bit.                         _230\nHe is a pearl within an oyster shell.\nOne of the richest of the deep;—and there\nIs English Peacock, with his mountain Fair,\nTurned into a Flamingo;—that shy bird\nThat gleams i’ the Indian air—have you not heard                    _235\nWhen a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,\nHis best friends hear no more of him?—but you\nWill see him, and will like him too, I hope,\nWith the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope\nMatched with this cameleopard—his fine wit                          _240\nMakes such a wound, the knife is lost in it;\nA strain too learned for a shallow age,\nToo wise for selfish bigots; let his page,\nWhich charms the chosen spirits of the time,\nFold itself up for the serener clime                                 _245\nOf years to come, and find its recompense\nIn that just expectation.—Wit and sense,\nVirtue and human knowledge; all that might\nMake this dull world a business of delight,\nAre all combined in Horace Smith.—And these.                        _250\nWith some exceptions, which I need not tease\nYour patience by descanting on,—are all\nYou and I know in London.\nI recall\nMy thoughts, and bid you look upon the night.\nAs water does a sponge, so the moonlight                             _255\nFills the void, hollow, universal air—\nWhat see you?—unpavilioned Heaven is fair,\nWhether the moon, into her chamber gone,\nLeaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan\nClimbs with diminished beams the azure steep;                        _260\nOr whether clouds sail o’er the inverse deep,\nPiloted by the many-wandering blast,\nAnd the rare stars rush through them dim and fast:—\nAll this is beautiful in every land.—\nBut what see you beside?—a shabby stand                             _265\nOf Hackney coaches—a brick house or wall\nFencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl\nOf our unhappy politics;—or worse—\nA wretched woman reeling by, whose curse\nMixed with the watchman’s, partner of her trade,                     _270\nYou must accept in place of serenade—\nOr yellow-haired Pollonia murmuring\nTo Henry, some unutterable thing.\nI see a chaos of green leaves and fruit\nBuilt round dark caverns, even to the root                           _275\nOf the living stems that feed them—in whose bowers\nThere sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers;\nBeyond, the surface of the unsickled corn\nTrembles not in the slumbering air, and borne\nIn circles quaint, and ever-changing dance,                          _280\nLike winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance,\nPale in the open moonshine, but each one\nUnder the dark trees seems a little sun,\nA meteor tamed; a fixed star gone astray\nFrom the silver regions of the milky way;—                          _285\nAfar the Contadino’s song is heard,\nRude, but made sweet by distance—and a bird\nWhich cannot be the Nightingale, and yet\nI know none else that sings so sweet as it\nAt this late hour;—and then all is still—                          _290\nNow—Italy or London, which you will!\n\nNext winter you must pass with me; I’ll have\nMy house by that time turned into a grave\nOf dead despondence and low-thoughted care,\nAnd all the dreams which our tormentors are;                         _295\nOh! that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock, and Smith were there,\nWith everything belonging to them fair!—\nWe will have books, Spanish, Italian, Greek;\nAnd ask one week to make another week\nAs like his father, as I’m unlike mine,                              _300\nWhich is not his fault, as you may divine.\nThough we eat little flesh and drink no wine,\nYet let’s be merry: we’ll have tea and toast;\nCustards for supper, and an endless host\nOf syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies,                             _305\nAnd other such lady-like luxuries,—\nFeasting on which we will philosophize!\nAnd we’ll have fires out of the Grand Duke’s wood,\nTo thaw the six weeks’ winter in our blood.\nAnd then we’ll talk;—what shall we talk about?                      _310\nOh! there are themes enough for many a bout\nOf thought-entangled descant;—as to nerves—\nWith cones and parallelograms and curves\nI’ve sworn to strangle them if once they dare\nTo bother me—when you are with me there.                            _315\nAnd they shall never more sip laudanum,\nFrom Helicon or Himeros (1);—well, come,\nAnd in despite of God and of the devil,\nWe’ll make our friendly philosophic revel\nOutlast the leafless time; till buds and flowers                     _320\nWarn the obscure inevitable hours,\nSweet meeting by sad parting to renew;—\n‘To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.’\n\n_13 must Bos. manuscript; most edition 1824.\n_27 philanthropic Bos. manuscript; philosophic edition 1824.\n_29 so 1839, 2nd edition; They owed... edition 1824.\n_36 Which fishers Bos. manuscript; Which fishes edition 1824;\n    With fishes editions 1839.\n_38 rarely transcript; seldom editions 1824, 1839.\n_61 lava—cry]lava-cry editions 1824, 1839.\n_63 towers transcript; towns editions 1824, 1839.\n_84 queer Bos. manuscript; green transcript, editions 1824, 1839.\n_92 odd hooks transcript; old books editions 1839 (an evident misprint);\n    old hooks edition 1824.\n_93 A]An edition 1824.\n_100 those transcript; them editions 1824, 1839.\n_101 lead Bos. manuscript; least transcript, editions 1824, 1839.\n_127 eye Bos. manuscript, transcript, editions 1839; age edition 1824.\n_140 knew Bos. manuscript; know transcript, editions 1824, 1839.\n_144 citing Bos. manuscript; acting transcript, editions 1824, 1839.\n_151 Feasts transcript; Treats editions 1824, 1839.\n_153 As well it]As it well editions 1824, 1839.\n_158 believe, and]believe; or editions 1824, 1839.\n_173 their transcript; the editions 1824, 1839.\n_188 aethereal transcript; aereal editions 1824, 1839.\n_197-201 See notes Volume 3.\n_202 Coleridge]C— edition 1824. So too H—t l. 209; H— l. 226;\n     P— l. 233; H.S. l. 250; H— — and — l. 296.\n_205 lightning Bos. manuscript, transcript; lustre editions 1824, 1839.\n_224 read Bos. manuscript; said transcript, editions 1824, 1839.\n_244 time Bos. manuscript, transcript; age editions 1824, 1839.\n_245 the transcript: a editions 1824, 1839.\n_272, _273 found in the 2nd edition of P. W., 1839;\n     wanting in transcript, edition 1824 and 1839, 1st. edition.\n_276 that transcript; who editions 1824, 1839.\n_288 the transcript; a editions 1824, 1839.\n_296 See notes Volume 3.\n_299, _300 So 1839, 2nd edition; wanting in editions 1824, 1839, 1st.\n_301 So transcript; wanting in editions 1824, 1839.\n_317 well, come 1839, 2nd edition; we’ll come editions 1824, 1839. 1st.\n_318 despite of God] transcript; despite of... edition 1824;\n     spite of... editions 1839.\n\n(_317 Imeros, from which the river Himera was named, is, with some\nslight shade of difference, a synonym of Love.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.]\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Witch Of Atlas.",
    "body": "[Composed at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa, August 14-16, 1820;\npublished in Posthumous Poems, edition Mrs. Shelley, 1824. The\ndedication To Mas-y first appeared in the Poetical Works, 1839, 1st\nedition Sources of the text are (1) the editio princeps, 1824; (2)\neditions 1839 (which agree, and, save in two instances, follow edition\n1824); (3) an early and incomplete manuscript in Shelley’s handwriting\n(now at the Bodleian, here, as throughout, cited as B.), carefully\ncollated by Mr. C.D. Locock, who printed the results in his\nExamination of the Shelley manuscripts, etc., Oxford, Clarendon Press,\n1903; (4) a later, yet intermediate, transcript by Mrs. Shelley, the\nvariations of which are noted by Mr. H. Buxton Forman. The original\ntext is modified in many places by variants from the manuscripts, but\nthe readings of edition 1824 are, in every instance, given in the\nfootnotes.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Witch Of Atlas.",
    "body": "1.\nBefore those cruel Twins, whom at one birth\nIncestuous Change bore to her father Time,                           _50\nError and Truth, had hunted from the Earth\nAll those bright natures which adorned its prime,\nAnd left us nothing to believe in, worth\nThe pains of putting into learned rhyme,\nA lady-witch there lived on Atlas’ mountain                          _55\nWithin a cavern, by a secret fountain.\n\n2.\nHer mother was one of the Atlantides:\nThe all-beholding Sun had ne’er beholden\nIn his wide voyage o’er continents and seas\nSo fair a creature, as she lay enfolden                              _60\nIn the warm shadow of her loveliness;—\nHe kissed her with his beams, and made all golden\nThe chamber of gray rock in which she lay—\nShe, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.\n\n3.\n’Tis said, she first was changed into a vapour,                      _65\nAnd then into a cloud, such clouds as flit,\nLike splendour-winged moths about a taper,\nRound the red west when the sun dies in it:\nAnd then into a meteor, such as caper\nOn hill-tops when the moon is in a fit:                              _70\nThen, into one of those mysterious stars\nWhich hide themselves between the Earth and Mars.\n\n4.\nTen times the Mother of the Months had bent\nHer bow beside the folding-star, and bidden\nWith that bright sign the billows to indent                          _75\nThe sea-deserted sand—like children chidden,\nAt her command they ever came and went—\nSince in that cave a dewy splendour hidden\nTook shape and motion: with the living form\nOf this embodied Power, the cave grew warm.                          _80\n\n5.\nA lovely lady garmented in light\nFrom her own beauty—deep her eyes, as are\nTwo openings of unfathomable night\nSeen through a Temple’s cloven roof—her hair\nDark—the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight.                       _85\nPicturing her form; her soft smiles shone afar,\nAnd her low voice was heard like love, and drew\nAll living things towards this wonder new.\n\n6.\nAnd first the spotted cameleopard came,\nAnd then the wise and fearless elephant;                             _90\nThen the sly serpent, in the golden flame\nOf his own volumes intervolved;—all gaunt\nAnd sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame.\nThey drank before her at her sacred fount;\nAnd every beast of beating heart grew bold,                          _95\nSuch gentleness and power even to behold.\n\n7.\nThe brinded lioness led forth her young,\nThat she might teach them how they should forego\nTheir inborn thirst of death; the pard unstrung\nHis sinews at her feet, and sought to know                           _100\nWith looks whose motions spoke without a tongue\nHow he might be as gentle as the doe.\nThe magic circle of her voice and eyes\nAll savage natures did imparadise.\n\n8.\nAnd old Silenus, shaking a green stick                               _105\nOf lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew\nCame, blithe, as in the olive copses thick\nCicadae are, drunk with the noonday dew:\nAnd Dryope and Faunus followed quick,\nTeasing the God to sing them something new;                          _110\nTill in this cave they found the lady lone,\nSitting upon a seat of emerald stone.\n\n9.\nAnd universal Pan, ’tis said, was there,\nAnd though none saw him,—through the adamant\nOf the deep mountains, through the trackless air,                    _115\nAnd through those living spirits, like a want,\nHe passed out of his everlasting lair\nWhere the quick heart of the great world doth pant,\nAnd felt that wondrous lady all alone,—\nAnd she felt him, upon her emerald throne.                           _120\n\n10.\nAnd every nymph of stream and spreading tree,\nAnd every shepherdess of Ocean’s flocks,\nWho drives her white waves over the green sea,\nAnd Ocean with the brine on his gray locks,\nAnd quaint Priapus with his company,                                 _125\nAll came, much wondering how the enwombed rocks\nCould have brought forth so beautiful a birth;—\nHer love subdued their wonder and their mirth.\n\n11.\nThe herdsmen and the mountain maidens came,\nAnd the rude kings of pastoral Garamant—                            _130\nTheir spirits shook within them, as a flame\nStirred by the air under a cavern gaunt:\nPigmies, and Polyphemes, by many a name,\nCentaurs, and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt\nWet clefts,—and lumps neither alive nor dead,                       _135\nDog-headed, bosom-eyed, and bird-footed.\n\n12.\nFor she was beautiful—her beauty made\nThe bright world dim, and everything beside\nSeemed like the fleeting image of a shade:\nNo thought of living spirit could abide,                             _140\nWhich to her looks had ever been betrayed,\nOn any object in the world so wide,\nOn any hope within the circling skies,\nBut on her form, and in her inmost eyes.\n\n13.\nWhich when the lady knew, she took her spindle                       _145\nAnd twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three\nLong lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle\nThe clouds and waves and mountains with; and she\nAs many star-beams, ere their lamps could dwindle\nIn the belated moon, wound skilfully;                                _150\nAnd with these threads a subtle veil she wove—\nA shadow for the splendour of her love.\n\n14.\nThe deep recesses of her odorous dwelling\nWere stored with magic treasures—sounds of air,\nWhich had the power all spirits of compelling,                       _155\nFolded in cells of crystal silence there;\nSuch as we hear in youth, and think the feeling\nWill never die—yet ere we are aware,\nThe feeling and the sound are fled and gone,\nAnd the regret they leave remains alone.                             _160\n\n15.\nAnd there lay Visions swift, and sweet, and quaint,\nEach in its thin sheath, like a chrysalis,\nSome eager to burst forth, some weak and faint\nWith the soft burthen of intensest bliss.\nIt was its work to bear to many a saint                              _165\nWhose heart adores the shrine which holiest is,\nEven Love’s:—and others white, green, gray, and black,\nAnd of all shapes—and each was at her beck.\n\n16.\nAnd odours in a kind of aviary\nOf ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept,                                _170\nClipped in a floating net, a love-sick Fairy\nHad woven from dew-beams while the moon yet slept;\nAs bats at the wired window of a dairy,\nThey beat their vans; and each was an adept,\nWhen loosed and missioned, making wings of winds,                    _175\nTo stir sweet thoughts or sad, in destined minds.\n\n17.\nAnd liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might\nCould medicine the sick soul to happy sleep,\nAnd change eternal death into a night\nOf glorious dreams—or if eyes needs must weep,                      _180\nCould make their tears all wonder and delight,\nShe in her crystal vials did closely keep:\nIf men could drink of those clear vials, ’tis said\nThe living were not envied of the dead.\n\n18.\nHer cave was stored with scrolls of strange device,                  _185\nThe works of some Saturnian Archimage,\nWhich taught the expiations at whose price\nMen from the Gods might win that happy age\nToo lightly lost, redeeming native vice;\nAnd which might quench the Earth-consuming rage                      _190\nOf gold and blood—till men should live and move\nHarmonious as the sacred stars above;\n\n19.\nAnd how all things that seem untameable,\nNot to be checked and not to be confined,\nObey the spells of Wisdom’s wizard skill;                            _195\nTime, earth, and fire—the ocean and the wind,\nAnd all their shapes—and man’s imperial will;\nAnd other scrolls whose writings did unbind\nThe inmost lore of Love—let the profane\nTremble to ask what secrets they contain.                            _200\n\n20.\nAnd wondrous works of substances unknown,\nTo which the enchantment of her father’s power\nHad changed those ragged blocks of savage stone,\nWere heaped in the recesses of her bower;\nCarved lamps and chalices, and vials which shone                     _205\nIn their own golden beams—each like a flower,\nOut of whose depth a fire-fly shakes his light\nUnder a cypress in a starless night.\n\n21.\nAt first she lived alone in this wild home,\nAnd her own thoughts were each a minister,                           _210\nClothing themselves, or with the ocean foam,\nOr with the wind, or with the speed of fire,\nTo work whatever purposes might come\nInto her mind; such power her mighty Sire\nHad girt them with, whether to fly or run,                           _215\nThrough all the regions which he shines upon.\n\n22.\nThe Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades,\nOreads and Naiads, with long weedy locks,\nOffered to do her bidding through the seas,\nUnder the earth, and in the hollow rocks,                            _220\nAnd far beneath the matted roots of trees,\nAnd in the gnarled heart of stubborn oaks,\nSo they might live for ever in the light\nOf her sweet presence—each a satellite.\n\n23.\n‘This may not be,’ the wizard maid replied;                          _225\n‘The fountains where the Naiades bedew\nTheir shining hair, at length are drained and dried;\nThe solid oaks forget their strength, and strew\nTheir latest leaf upon the mountains wide;\nThe boundless ocean like a drop of dew                               _230\nWill be consumed—the stubborn centre must\nBe scattered, like a cloud of summer dust.\n\n24.\n‘And ye with them will perish, one by one;—\nIf I must sigh to think that this shall be,\nIf I must weep when the surviving Sun                                _235\nShall smile on your decay—oh, ask not me\nTo love you till your little race is run;\nI cannot die as ye must—over me\nYour leaves shall glance—the streams in which ye dwell\nShall be my paths henceforth, and so—farewell!’—                   _240\n\n25.\nShe spoke and wept:—the dark and azure well\nSparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears,\nAnd every little circlet where they fell\nFlung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres\nAnd intertangled lines of light:—a knell                            _245\nOf sobbing voices came upon her ears\nFrom those departing Forms, o’er the serene\nOf the white streams and of the forest green.\n\n26.\nAll day the wizard lady sate aloof,\nSpelling out scrolls of dread antiquity,                             _250\nUnder the cavern’s fountain-lighted roof;\nOr broidering the pictured poesy\nOf some high tale upon her growing woof,\nWhich the sweet splendour of her smiles could dye\nIn hues outshining heaven—and ever she                              _255\nAdded some grace to the wrought poesy.\n\n27.\nWhile on her hearth lay blazing many a piece\nOf sandal wood, rare gums, and cinnamon;\nMen scarcely know how beautiful fire is—\nEach flame of it is as a precious stone                              _260\nDissolved in ever-moving light, and this\nBelongs to each and all who gaze upon.\nThe Witch beheld it not, for in her hand\nShe held a woof that dimmed the burning brand.\n\n28.\nThis lady never slept, but lay in trance                             _265\nAll night within the fountain—as in sleep.\nIts emerald crags glowed in her beauty’s glance;\nThrough the green splendour of the water deep\nShe saw the constellations reel and dance\nLike fire-flies—and withal did ever keep                            _270\nThe tenour of her contemplations calm,\nWith open eyes, closed feet, and folded palm.\n\n29.\nAnd when the whirlwinds and the clouds descended\nFrom the white pinnacles of that cold hill,\nShe passed at dewfall to a space extended,                           _275\nWhere in a lawn of flowering asphodel\nAmid a wood of pines and cedars blended,\nThere yawned an inextinguishable well\nOf crimson fire—full even to the brim,\nAnd overflowing all the margin trim.                                 _280\n\n30.\nWithin the which she lay when the fierce war\nOf wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor\nIn many a mimic moon and bearded star\nO’er woods and lawns;—the serpent heard it flicker\nIn sleep, and dreaming still, he crept afar—                        _285\nAnd when the windless snow descended thicker\nThan autumn leaves, she watched it as it came\nMelt on the surface of the level flame.\n\n31.\nShe had a boat, which some say Vulcan wrought\nFor Venus, as the chariot of her star;                               _290\nBut it was found too feeble to be fraught\nWith all the ardours in that sphere which are,\nAnd so she sold it, and Apollo bought\nAnd gave it to this daughter: from a car\nChanged to the fairest and the lightest boat                         _295\nWhich ever upon mortal stream did float.\n\n32.\nAnd others say, that, when but three hours old,\nThe first-born Love out of his cradle lept,\nAnd clove dun Chaos with his wings of gold,\nAnd like a horticultural adept,                                      _300\nStole a strange seed, and wrapped it up in mould,\nAnd sowed it in his mother’s star, and kept\nWatering it all the summer with sweet dew,\nAnd with his wings fanning it as it grew.\n\n33.\nThe plant grew strong and green, the snowy flower                    _305\nFell, and the long and gourd-like fruit began\nTo turn the light and dew by inward power\nTo its own substance; woven tracery ran\nOf light firm texture, ribbed and branching, o’er\nThe solid rind, like a leaf’s veined fan—                           _310\nOf which Love scooped this boat—and with soft motion\nPiloted it round the circumfluous ocean.\n\n34.\nThis boat she moored upon her fount, and lit\nA living spirit within all its frame,\nBreathing the soul of swiftness into it.                             _315\nCouched on the fountain like a panther tame,\nOne of the twain at Evan’s feet that sit—\nOr as on Vesta’s sceptre a swift flame—\nOr on blind Homer’s heart a winged thought,—\nIn joyous expectation lay the boat.                                  _320\n\n35.\nThen by strange art she kneaded fire and snow\nTogether, tempering the repugnant mass\nWith liquid love—all things together grow\nThrough which the harmony of love can pass;\nAnd a fair Shape out of her hands did flow—                         _325\nA living Image, which did far surpass\nIn beauty that bright shape of vital stone\nWhich drew the heart out of Pygmalion.\n\n36.\nA sexless thing it was, and in its growth\nIt seemed to have developed no defect                                _330\nOf either sex, yet all the grace of both,—\nIn gentleness and strength its limbs were decked;\nThe bosom swelled lightly with its full youth,\nThe countenance was such as might select\nSome artist that his skill should never die,                         _335\nImaging forth such perfect purity.\n\n37.\nFrom its smooth shoulders hung two rapid wings,\nFit to have borne it to the seventh sphere,\nTipped with the speed of liquid lightenings,\nDyed in the ardours of the atmosphere:                               _340\nShe led her creature to the boiling springs\nWhere the light boat was moored, and said: ‘Sit here!’\nAnd pointed to the prow, and took her seat\nBeside the rudder, with opposing feet.\n\n38.\nAnd down the streams which clove those mountains vast,               _345\nAround their inland islets, and amid\nThe panther-peopled forests whose shade cast\nDarkness and odours, and a pleasure hid\nIn melancholy gloom, the pinnace passed;\nBy many a star-surrounded pyramid                                    _350\nOf icy crag cleaving the purple sky,\nAnd caverns yawning round unfathomably.\n\n39.\nThe silver noon into that winding dell,\nWith slanted gleam athwart the forest tops,\nTempered like golden evening, feebly fell;                           _355\nA green and glowing light, like that which drops\nFrom folded lilies in which glow-worms dwell,\nWhen Earth over her face Night’s mantle wraps;\nBetween the severed mountains lay on high,\nOver the stream, a narrow rift of sky.                               _360\n\n40.\nAnd ever as she went, the Image lay\nWith folded wings and unawakened eyes;\nAnd o’er its gentle countenance did play\nThe busy dreams, as thick as summer flies,\nChasing the rapid smiles that would not stay,                        _365\nAnd drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs\nInhaling, which, with busy murmur vain,\nThey had aroused from that full heart and brain.\n\n41.\nAnd ever down the prone vale, like a cloud\nUpon a stream of wind, the pinnace went:                             _370\nNow lingering on the pools, in which abode\nThe calm and darkness of the deep content\nIn which they paused; now o’er the shallow road\nOf white and dancing waters, all besprent\nWith sand and polished pebbles:—mortal boat                         _375\nIn such a shallow rapid could not float.\n\n42.\nAnd down the earthquaking cataracts which shiver\nTheir snow-like waters into golden air,\nOr under chasms unfathomable ever\nSepulchre them, till in their rage they tear                         _380\nA subterranean portal for the river,\nIt fled—the circling sunbows did upbear\nIts fall down the hoar precipice of spray,\nLighting it far upon its lampless way.\n\n43.\nAnd when the wizard lady would ascend                                _385\nThe labyrinths of some many-winding vale,\nWhich to the inmost mountain upward tend—\nShe called ‘Hermaphroditus!’—and the pale\nAnd heavy hue which slumber could extend\nOver its lips and eyes, as on the gale                               _390\nA rapid shadow from a slope of grass,\nInto the darkness of the stream did pass.\n\n44.\nAnd it unfurled its heaven-coloured pinions,\nWith stars of fire spotting the stream below;\nAnd from above into the Sun’s dominions                              _395\nFlinging a glory, like the golden glow\nIn which Spring clothes her emerald-winged minions,\nAll interwoven with fine feathery snow\nAnd moonlight splendour of intensest rime,\nWith which frost paints the pines in winter time.                    _400\n\n45.\nAnd then it winnowed the Elysian air\nWhich ever hung about that lady bright,\nWith its aethereal vans—and speeding there,\nLike a star up the torrent of the night,\nOr a swift eagle in the morning glare                                _405\nBreasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight,\nThe pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings,\nClove the fierce streams towards their upper springs.\n\n46.\nThe water flashed, like sunlight by the prow\nOf a noon-wandering meteor flung to Heaven;                          _410\nThe still air seemed as if its waves did flow\nIn tempest down the mountains; loosely driven\nThe lady’s radiant hair streamed to and fro:\nBeneath, the billows having vainly striven\nIndignant and impetuous, roared to feel                              _415\nThe swift and steady motion of the keel.\n\n47.\nOr, when the weary moon was in the wane,\nOr in the noon of interlunar night,\nThe lady-witch in visions could not chain\nHer spirit; but sailed forth under the light                         _420\nOf shooting stars, and bade extend amain\nIts storm-outspeeding wings, the Hermaphrodite;\nShe to the Austral waters took her way,\nBeyond the fabulous Thamondocana,—\n\n48.\nWhere, like a meadow which no scythe has shaven,                     _425\nWhich rain could never bend, or whirl-blast shake,\nWith the Antarctic constellations paven,\nCanopus and his crew, lay the Austral lake—\nThere she would build herself a windless haven\nOut of the clouds whose moving turrets make                          _430\nThe bastions of the storm, when through the sky\nThe spirits of the tempest thundered by:\n\n49.\nA haven beneath whose translucent floor\nThe tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably,\nAnd around which the solid vapours hoar,                             _435\nBased on the level waters, to the sky\nLifted their dreadful crags, and like a shore\nOf wintry mountains, inaccessibly\nHemmed in with rifts and precipices gray,\nAnd hanging crags, many a cove and bay.                              _440\n\n50.\nAnd whilst the outer lake beneath the lash\nOf the wind’s scourge, foamed like a wounded thing,\nAnd the incessant hail with stony clash\nPloughed up the waters, and the flagging wing\nOf the roused cormorant in the lightning flash                       _445\nLooked like the wreck of some wind-wandering\nFragment of inky thunder-smoke—this haven\nWas as a gem to copy Heaven engraven,—\n\n51.\nOn which that lady played her many pranks,\nCircling the image of a shooting star,                               _450\nEven as a tiger on Hydaspes’ banks\nOutspeeds the antelopes which speediest are,\nIn her light boat; and many quips and cranks\nShe played upon the water, till the car\nOf the late moon, like a sick matron wan,                            _455\nTo journey from the misty east began.\n\n52.\nAnd then she called out of the hollow turrets\nOf those high clouds, white, golden and vermilion,\nThe armies of her ministering spirits—\nIn mighty legions, million after million,                            _460\nThey came, each troop emblazoning its merits\nOn meteor flags; and many a proud pavilion\nOf the intertexture of the atmosphere\nThey pitched upon the plain of the calm mere.\n\n53.\nThey framed the imperial tent of their great Queen                   _465\nOf woven exhalations, underlaid\nWith lambent lightning-fire, as may be seen\nA dome of thin and open ivory inlaid\nWith crimson silk—cressets from the serene\nHung there, and on the water for her tread                           _470\nA tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn,\nDyed in the beams of the ascending moon.\n\n54.\nAnd on a throne o’erlaid with starlight, caught\nUpon those wandering isles of aery dew,\nWhich highest shoals of mountain shipwreck not,                      _475\nShe sate, and heard all that had happened new\nBetween the earth and moon, since they had brought\nThe last intelligence—and now she grew\nPale as that moon, lost in the watery night—\nAnd now she wept, and now she laughed outright.                      _480\n\n55.\nThese were tame pleasures; she would often climb\nThe steepest ladder of the crudded rack\nUp to some beaked cape of cloud sublime,\nAnd like Arion on the dolphin’s back\nRide singing through the shoreless air;—oft-time                    _485\nFollowing the serpent lightning’s winding track,\nShe ran upon the platforms of the wind,\nAnd laughed to hear the fire-balls roar behind.\n\n56.\nAnd sometimes to those streams of upper air\nWhich whirl the earth in its diurnal round,                          _490\nShe would ascend, and win the spirits there\nTo let her join their chorus. Mortals found\nThat on those days the sky was calm and fair,\nAnd mystic snatches of harmonious sound\nWandered upon the earth where’er she passed,                         _495\nAnd happy thoughts of hope, too sweet to last.\n\n57.\nBut her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep,\nTo glide adown old Nilus, where he threads\nEgypt and Aethiopia, from the steep\nOf utmost Axume, until he spreads,                                   _500\nLike a calm flock of silver-fleeced sheep,\nHis waters on the plain: and crested heads\nOf cities and proud temples gleam amid,\nAnd many a vapour-belted pyramid.\n\n58.\nBy Moeris and the Mareotid lakes,                                    _505\nStrewn with faint blooms like bridal chamber floors,\nWhere naked boys bridling tame water-snakes,\nOr charioteering ghastly alligators,\nHad left on the sweet waters mighty wakes\nOf those huge forms—within the brazen doors                         _510\nOf the great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast,\nTired with the pomp of their Osirian feast.\n\n59.\nAnd where within the surface of the river\nThe shadows of the massy temples lie,\nAnd never are erased—but tremble ever                               _515\nLike things which every cloud can doom to die,\nThrough lotus-paven canals, and wheresoever\nThe works of man pierced that serenest sky\nWith tombs, and towers, and fanes, ’twas her delight\nTo wander in the shadow of the night.                                _520\n\n60.\nWith motion like the spirit of that wind\nWhose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet\nPassed through the peopled haunts of humankind.\nScattering sweet visions from her presence sweet,\nThrough fane, and palace-court, and labyrinth mined                  _525\nWith many a dark and subterranean street\nUnder the Nile, through chambers high and deep\nShe passed, observing mortals in their sleep.\n\n61.\nA pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see\nMortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep.                          _530\nHere lay two sister twins in infancy;\nThere, a lone youth who in his dreams did weep;\nWithin, two lovers linked innocently\nIn their loose locks which over both did creep\nLike ivy from one stem;—and there lay calm                          _535\nOld age with snow-bright hair and folded palm.\n\n62.\nBut other troubled forms of sleep she saw,\nNot to be mirrored in a holy song—\nDistortions foul of supernatural awe,\nAnd pale imaginings of visioned wrong;                               _540\nAnd all the code of Custom’s lawless law\nWritten upon the brows of old and young:\n‘This,’ said the wizard maiden, ‘is the strife\nWhich stirs the liquid surface of man’s life.’\n\n63.\nAnd little did the sight disturb her soul.—                         _545\nWe, the weak mariners of that wide lake\nWhere’er its shores extend or billows roll,\nOur course unpiloted and starless make\nO’er its wild surface to an unknown goal:—\nBut she in the calm depths her way could take,                       _550\nWhere in bright bowers immortal forms abide\nBeneath the weltering of the restless tide.\n\n64.\nAnd she saw princes couched under the glow\nOf sunlike gems; and round each temple-court\nIn dormitories ranged, row after row,                                _555\nShe saw the priests asleep—all of one sort—\nFor all were educated to be so.—\nThe peasants in their huts, and in the port\nThe sailors she saw cradled on the waves,\nAnd the dead lulled within their dreamless graves.                   _560\n\n65.\nAnd all the forms in which those spirits lay\nWere to her sight like the diaphanous\nVeils, in which those sweet ladies oft array\nTheir delicate limbs, who would conceal from us\nOnly their scorn of all concealment: they                            _565\nMove in the light of their own beauty thus.\nBut these and all now lay with sleep upon them,\nAnd little thought a Witch was looking on them.\n\n66.\nShe, all those human figures breathing there,\nBeheld as living spirits—to her eyes                                _570\nThe naked beauty of the soul lay bare,\nAnd often through a rude and worn disguise\nShe saw the inner form most bright and fair—\nAnd then she had a charm of strange device,\nWhich, murmured on mute lips with tender tone,                       _575\nCould make that spirit mingle with her own.\n\n67.\nAlas! Aurora, what wouldst thou have given\nFor such a charm when Tithon became gray?\nOr how much, Venus, of thy silver heaven\nWouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina                            _580\nHad half (oh! why not all?) the debt forgiven\nWhich dear Adonis had been doomed to pay,\nTo any witch who would have taught you it?\nThe Heliad doth not know its value yet.\n\n68.\n’Tis said in after times her spirit free                             _585\nKnew what love was, and felt itself alone—\nBut holy Dian could not chaster be\nBefore she stooped to kiss Endymion,\nThan now this lady—like a sexless bee\nTasting all blossoms, and confined to none,                          _590\nAmong those mortal forms, the wizard-maiden\nPassed with an eye serene and heart unladen.\n\n69.\nTo those she saw most beautiful, she gave\nStrange panacea in a crystal bowl:—\nThey drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave,                   _595\nAnd lived thenceforward as if some control,\nMightier than life, were in them; and the grave\nOf such, when death oppressed the weary soul,\nWas as a green and overarching bower\nLit by the gems of many a starry flower.                             _600\n\n70.\nFor on the night when they were buried, she\nRestored the embalmers’ ruining, and shook\nThe light out of the funeral lamps, to be\nA mimic day within that deathy nook;\nAnd she unwound the woven imagery                                    _605\nOf second childhood’s swaddling bands, and took\nThe coffin, its last cradle, from its niche,\nAnd threw it with contempt into a ditch.\n\n71.\nAnd there the body lay, age after age.\nMute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying,                      _610\nLike one asleep in a green hermitage,\nWith gentle smiles about its eyelids playing,\nAnd living in its dreams beyond the rage\nOf death or life; while they were still arraying\nIn liveries ever new, the rapid, blind                               _615\nAnd fleeting generations of mankind.\n\n72.\nAnd she would write strange dreams upon the brain\nOf those who were less beautiful, and make\nAll harsh and crooked purposes more vain\nThan in the desert is the serpent’s wake                             _620\nWhich the sand covers—all his evil gain\nThe miser in such dreams would rise and shake\nInto a beggar’s lap;—the lying scribe\nWould his own lies betray without a bribe.\n\n73.\nThe priests would write an explanation full,                         _625\nTranslating hieroglyphics into Greek,\nHow the God Apis really was a bull,\nAnd nothing more; and bid the herald stick\nThe same against the temple doors, and pull\nThe old cant down; they licensed all to speak                        _630\nWhate’er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese,\nBy pastoral letters to each diocese.\n\n74.\nThe king would dress an ape up in his crown\nAnd robes, and seat him on his glorious seat,\nAnd on the right hand of the sunlike throne                          _635\nWould place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat\nThe chatterings of the monkey.—Every one\nOf the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet\nOf their great Emperor, when the morning came,\nAnd kissed—alas, how many kiss the same!                            _640\n\n75.\nThe soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and\nWalked out of quarters in somnambulism;\nRound the red anvils you might see them stand\nLike Cyclopses in Vulcan’s sooty abysm,\nBeating their swords to ploughshares;—in a band                     _645\nThe gaolers sent those of the liberal schism\nFree through the streets of Memphis, much, I wis,\nTo the annoyance of king Amasis.\n\n76.\nAnd timid lovers who had been so coy,\nThey hardly knew whether they loved or not,                          _650\nWould rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy,\nTo the fulfilment of their inmost thought;\nAnd when next day the maiden and the boy\nMet one another, both, like sinners caught,\nBlushed at the thing which each believed was done                    _655\nOnly in fancy—till the tenth moon shone;\n\n77.\nAnd then the Witch would let them take no ill:\nOf many thousand schemes which lovers find,\nThe Witch found one,—and so they took their fill\nOf happiness in marriage warm and kind.                              _660\nFriends who, by practice of some envious skill,\nWere torn apart—a wide wound, mind from mind!—\nShe did unite again with visions clear\nOf deep affection and of truth sincere.\n\n80.\nThese were the pranks she played among the cities                    _665\nOf mortal men, and what she did to Sprites\nAnd Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties\nTo do her will, and show their subtle sleights,\nI will declare another time; for it is\nA tale more fit for the weird winter nights                          _670\nThan for these garish summer days, when we\nScarcely believe much more than we can see.\n\n_2 dead]deaf cj. A.C. Bradley, who cps. “Adonais” 317.\n_65 first was transcript, B.; was first edition 1824.\n_84 Temple’s transcript, B.; tempest’s edition 1824.\n_165 was its transcript, B.; is its edition 1824.\n_184 envied so all manuscripts and editions;\n     envious cj. James Thomson (‘B. V.’).\n_262 upon so all manuscripts and editions: thereon cj. Rossetti.\n_333 swelled lightly edition 1824, B.;\n     lightly swelled editions 1839;\n     swelling lightly with its full growth transcript.\n_339 lightenings B., editions 1839; lightnings edition 1824, transcript.\n_422 Its transcript; His edition 1824, B.\n_424 Thamondocana transcript, B.; Thamondocona edition 1824.\n_442 wind’s transcript, B.; winds’ edition 1834.\n_493 where transcript, B.; when edition 1824.\n_596 thenceforward B.;\n     thence forth edition 1824; henceforward transcript.\n_599 Was as a B.; Was a edition 1824.\n_601 night when transcript; night that edition 1824, B.\n_612 smiles transcript, B.; sleep edition 1824.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On The Witch Of Atlas, By Mrs. Shelley.",
    "body": "We spent the summer of 1820 at the Baths of San Giuliano, four miles\nfrom Pisa. These baths were of great use to Shelley in soothing his\nnervous irritability. We made several excursions in the neighbourhood.\nThe country around is fertile, and diversified and rendered\npicturesque by ranges of near hills and more distant mountains. The\npeasantry are a handsome intelligent race; and there was a gladsome\nsunny heaven spread over us, that rendered home and every scene we\nvisited cheerful and bright. During some of the hottest days of\nAugust, Shelley made a solitary journey on foot to the summit of Monte\nSan Pellegrino—a mountain of some height, on the top of which there\nis a chapel, the object, during certain days of the year, of many\npilgrimages. The excursion delighted him while it lasted; though he\nexerted himself too much, and the effect was considerable lassitude\nand weakness on his return. During the expedition he conceived the\nidea, and wrote, in the three days immediately succeeding to his\nreturn, the “Witch of Atlas”. This poem is peculiarly characteristic\nof his tastes—wildly fanciful, full of brilliant imagery, and\ndiscarding human interest and passion, to revel in the fantastic ideas\nthat his imagination suggested.\n\nThe surpassing excellence of “The Cenci” had made me greatly desire\nthat Shelley should increase his popularity by adopting subjects that\nwould more suit the popular taste than a poem conceived in the\nabstract and dreamy spirit of the “Witch of Atlas”. It was not only\nthat I wished him to acquire popularity as redounding to his fame; but\nI believed that he would obtain a greater mastery over his own powers,\nand greater happiness in his mind, if public applause crowned his\nendeavours. The few stanzas that precede the poem were addressed to me\non my representing these ideas to him. Even now I believe that I was\nin the right. Shelley did not expect sympathy and approbation from the\npublic; but the want of it took away a portion of the ardour that\nought to have sustained him while writing. He was thrown on his own\nresources, and on the inspiration of his own soul; and wrote because\nhis mind overflowed, without the hope of being appreciated. I had not\nthe most distant wish that he should truckle in opinion, or submit his\nlofty aspirations for the human race to the low ambition and pride of\nthe many; but I felt sure that, if his poems were more addressed to\nthe common feelings of men, his proper rank among the writers of the\nday would be acknowledged, and that popularity as a poet would enable\nhis countrymen to do justice to his character and virtues, which in\nthose days it was the mode to attack with the most flagitious\ncalumnies and insulting abuse. That he felt these things deeply cannot\nbe doubted, though he armed himself with the consciousness of acting\nfrom a lofty and heroic sense of right. The truth burst from his heart\nsometimes in solitude, and he would writes few unfinished verses that\nshowed that he felt the sting; among such I find the following:—\n\n‘Alas! this is not what I thought Life was.\nI knew that there were crimes and evil men,\nMisery and hate; nor did I hope to pass\nUntouched by suffering through the rugged glen.\nIn mine own heart I saw as in a glass\nThe hearts of others...And, when\nI went among my kind, with triple brass\nOf calm endurance my weak breast I armed,\nTo bear scorn, fear, and hate—a woful mass!’\n\nI believed that all this morbid feeling would vanish if the chord of\nsympathy between him and his countrymen were touched. But my\npersuasions were vain, the mind could not be bent from its natural\ninclination. Shelley shrunk instinctively from portraying human\npassion, with its mixture of good and evil, of disappointment and\ndisquiet. Such opened again the wounds of his own heart; and he loved\nto shelter himself rather in the airiest flights of fancy, forgetting\nlove and hate, and regret and lost hope, in such imaginations as\nborrowed their hues from sunrise or sunset, from the yellow moonshine\nor paly twilight, from the aspect of the far ocean or the shadows of\nthe woods,—which celebrated the singing of the winds among the pines,\nthe flow of a murmuring stream, and the thousand harmonious sounds\nwhich Nature creates in her solitudes. These are the materials which\nform the “Witch of Atlas”: it is a brilliant congregation of ideas\nsuch as his senses gathered, and his fancy coloured, during his\nrambles in the sunny land he so much loved.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Translated From The Original Doric.",
    "body": "‘Choose Reform or Civil War,\nWhen through thy streets, instead of hare with dogs,\nA CONSORT-QUEEN shall hunt a king with hogs,\nRiding on the IONIAN MINOTAUR.’\n\n[Begun at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa, August 24, 1819;\npublished anonymously by J. Johnston, Cheapside (imprint C.F.\nSeyfang), 1820. On a threat of prosecution the publisher surrendered\nthe whole impression, seven copies—the total number sold—excepted.\n“Oedipus” does not appear in the first edition of the “Poetical\nWorks”, 1839, but it was included by Mrs. Shelley in the second\nedition of that year. Our text is that of the editio princeps, 1820,\nsave in three places, where the reading of edition 1820 will be found\nin the notes.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Advertisement.",
    "body": "This Tragedy is one of a triad, or system of three Plays (an\narrangement according to which the Greeks were accustomed to connect\ntheir dramatic representations), elucidating the wonderful and\nappalling fortunes of the SWELLFOOT dynasty. It was evidently written\nby some LEARNED THEBAN, and, from its characteristic dulness,\napparently before the duties on the importation of ATTIC SALT had been\nrepealed by the Boeotarchs. The tenderness with which he treats the\nPIGS proves him to have been a sus Boeotiae; possibly Epicuri de grege\nporcus; for, as the poet observes,\n\n‘A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind.’\n\nNo liberty has been taken with the translation of this remarkable\npiece of antiquity, except the suppressing a seditious and blasphemous\nChorus of the Pigs and Bulls at the last Act. The work Hoydipouse (or\nmore properly Oedipus) has been rendered literally SWELLFOOT, without\nits having been conceived necessary to determine whether a swelling of\nthe hind or the fore feet of the Swinish Monarch is particularly\nindicated.\n\nShould the remaining portions of this Tragedy be found, entitled,\n“Swellfoot in Angaria”, and “Charite”, the Translator might be tempted\nto give them to the reading Public.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Tyrant Swellfoot, King Of Thebes.",
    "body": "IONA TAURINA, HIS QUEEN.\nMAMMON, ARCH-PRIEST OF FAMINE.\nPURGANAX, DAKRY, LAOCTONOS—WIZARDS, MINISTERS OF SWELLFOOT.\nTHE GADFLY.\nTHE LEECH.\nTHE RAT.\nMOSES, THE SOW-GELDER.\nSOLOMON, THE PORKMAN.\nZEPHANIAH, PIG-BUTCHER.\nTHE MINOTAUR.\nCHORUS OF THE SWINISH MULTITUDE.\nGUARDS, ATTENDANTS, PRIESTS, ETC., ETC.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Scene.—Thebes.",
    "body": "ACT 1.\n\nSCENE 1.1.—A MAGNIFICENT TEMPLE, BUILT OF THIGH-BONES AND\nDEATH’S-HEADS, AND TILED WITH SCALPS. OVER THE ALTAR THE STATUE OF\nFAMINE, VEILED; A NUMBER OF BOARS, SOWS, AND SUCKING-PIGS, CROWNED\nWITH THISTLE, SHAMROCK, AND OAK, SITTING ON THE STEPS, AND CLINGING\nROUND THE ALTAR OF THE TEMPLE.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Swellfoot:",
    "body": "Thou supreme Goddess! by whose power divine\nThese graceful limbs are clothed in proud array\n[HE CONTEMPLATES HIMSELF WITH SATISFACTION.]\nOf gold and purple, and this kingly paunch\nSwells like a sail before a favouring breeze,\nAnd these most sacred nether promontories                            _5\nLie satisfied with layers of fat; and these\nBoeotian cheeks, like Egypt’s pyramid,\n(Nor with less toil were their foundations laid),\nSustain the cone of my untroubled brain,\nThat point, the emblem of a pointless nothing!                       _10\nThou to whom Kings and laurelled Emperors,\nRadical-butchers, Paper-money-millers,\nBishops and Deacons, and the entire army\nOf those fat martyrs to the persecution\nOf stifling turtle-soup, and brandy-devils,                          _15\nOffer their secret vows! Thou plenteous Ceres\nOf their Eleusis, hail!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note:",
    "body": "(_8 See Universal History for an account of the number of people who\ndied, and the immense consumption of garlic by the wretched Egyptians,\nwho made a sepulchre for the name as well as the bodies of their\ntyrants.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Swellfoot:",
    "body": "What! ye that are\nThe very beasts that, offered at her altar                           _20\nWith blood and groans, salt-cake, and fat, and inwards,\nEver propitiate her reluctant will\nWhen taxes are withheld?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Swellfoot:",
    "body": "What! ye who grub\nWith filthy snouts my red potatoes up\nIn Allan’s rushy bog? Who eat the oats                               _25\nUp, from my cavalry in the Hebrides?\nWho swill the hog-wash soup my cooks digest\nFrom bones, and rags, and scraps of shoe-leather,\nWhich should be given to cleaner Pigs than you?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus Of Swine:",
    "body": "I have heard your Laureate sing,\nThat pity was a royal thing;\nUnder your mighty ancestors, we Pigs\nWere bless’d as nightingales on myrtle sprigs,                       _40\nOr grasshoppers that live on noonday dew,\nAnd sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too;\nBut now our sties are fallen in, we catch\nThe murrain and the mange, the scab and itch;\nSometimes your royal dogs tear down our thatch,                      _45\nAnd then we seek the shelter of a ditch;\nHog-wash or grains, or ruta-baga, none\nHas yet been ours since your reign begun.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus:",
    "body": "Happier Swine were they than we,                                     _55\nDrowned in the Gadarean sea—\nI wish that pity would drive out the devils,\nWhich in your royal bosom hold their revels,\nAnd sink us in the waves of thy compassion!\nAlas! the Pigs are an unhappy nation!                                _60\nNow if your Majesty would have our bristles\nTo bind your mortar with, or fill our colons\nWith rich blood, or make brawn out of our gristles,\nIn policy—ask else your royal Solons—\nYou ought to give us hog-wash and clean straw,                       _65\nAnd sties well thatched; besides it is the law!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Swellfoot:",
    "body": "Out with your knife, old Moses, and spay those Sows\n[THE PIGS RUN ABOUT IN CONSTERNATION.]\nThat load the earth with Pigs; cut close and deep.\nMoral restraint I see has no effect,\nNor prostitution, nor our own example,                               _75\nStarvation, typhus-fever, war, nor prison—\nThis was the art which the arch-priest of Famine\nHinted at in his charge to the Theban clergy—\nCut close and deep, good Moses.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Swellfoot:",
    "body": "’Tis all the same,\nHe’ll serve instead of riot money, when\nOur murmuring troops bivouac in Thebes’ streets\nAnd January winds, after a day\nOf butchering, will make them relish carrion.                        _90\nNow, Solomon, I’ll sell you in a lump\nThe whole kit of them.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Swellfoot:",
    "body": "Kill them out of the way,\nThat shall be price enough, and let me hear\nTheir everlasting grunts and whines no more!                         _95\n\n[EXEUNT, DRIVING IN THE SWINE.\nENTER MAMM0N, THE ARCH-PRIEST,\nAND PURGANAX, CHIEF OF THE COUNCIL OF WIZARDS.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Purganax:",
    "body": "The future looks as black as death, a cloud,\nDark as the frown of Hell, hangs over it—\nThe troops grow mutinous—the revenue fails—\nThere’s something rotten in us—for the level                        _100\nOf the State slopes, its very bases topple,\nThe boldest turn their backs upon themselves!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mammon:",
    "body": "Why what’s the matter, my dear fellow, now?\nDo the troops mutiny?—decimate some regiments;\nDoes money fail?—come to my mint—coin paper,\nTill gold be at a discount, and ashamed                              _105\nTo show his bilious face, go purge himself,\nIn emulation of her vestal whiteness.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Purganax:",
    "body": "The words went thus:—\n‘Boeotia, choose reform or civil war!\nWhen through the streets, instead of hare with dogs,\nA Consort Queen shall hunt a King with Hogs,                         _115\nRiding on the Ionian Minotaur.’",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mammon:",
    "body": "Now if the oracle had ne’er foretold\nThis sad alternative, it must arrive,\nOr not, and so it must now that it has;\nAnd whether I was urged by grace divine                              _120\nOr Lesbian liquor to declare these words,\nWhich must, as all words must, be false or true,\nIt matters not: for the same Power made all,\nOracle, wine, and me and you—or none—\n’Tis the same thing. If you knew as much                             _125\nOf oracles as I do—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mammon:",
    "body": "Yet our tickets\nAre seldom blanks. But what steps have you taken?                    _130\nFor prophecies, when once they get abroad,\nLike liars who tell the truth to serve their ends,\nOr hypocrites who, from assuming virtue,\nDo the same actions that the virtuous do,\nContrive their own fulfilment. This Iona—                           _135\nWell—you know what the chaste Pasiphae did,\nWife to that most religious King of Crete,\nAnd still how popular the tale is here;\nAnd these dull Swine of Thebes boast their descent\nFrom the free Minotaur. You know they still                          _140\nCall themselves Bulls, though thus degenerate,\nAnd everything relating to a Bull\nIs popular and respectable in Thebes.\nTheir arms are seven Bulls in a field gules;\nThey think their strength consists in eating beef,—                 _145\nNow there were danger in the precedent\nIf Queen Iona—\n\n_114 the edition 1820; thy cj. Forman;\n     cf. Motto below Title, and II. i, 153-6. ticket? edition 1820;\n     ticket! edition 1839.\n_135 their own Mrs. Shelley, later editions;\n     their editions 1820 and 1839.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Purganax:",
    "body": "I have taken good care\nThat shall not be. I struck the crust o’ the earth\nWith this enchanted rod, and Hell lay bare!\nAnd from a cavern full of ugly shapes                                _150\nI chose a LEECH, a GADFLY, and a RAT.\nThe Gadfly was the same which Juno sent\nTo agitate Io, and which Ezekiel mentions\nThat the Lord whistled for out of the mountains\nOf utmost Aethiopia, to torment                                      _155\nMesopotamian Babylon. The beast\nHas a loud trumpet like the scarabee,\nHis crooked tail is barbed with many stings,\nEach able to make a thousand wounds, and each\nImmedicable; from his convex eyes                                    _160\nHe sees fair things in many hideous shapes,\nAnd trumpets all his falsehood to the world.\nLike other beetles he is fed on dung—\nHe has eleven feet with which he crawls,\nTrailing a blistering slime, and this foul beast                     _165\nHas tracked Iona from the Theban limits,\nFrom isle to isle, from city unto city,\nUrging her flight from the far Chersonese\nTo fabulous Solyma, and the Aetnean Isle,\nOrtygia, Melite, and Calypso’s Rock,                                 _170\nAnd the swart tribes of Garamant and Fez,\nAeolia and Elysium, and thy shores,\nParthenope, which now, alas! are free!\nAnd through the fortunate Saturnian land,\nInto the darkness of the West.\n\n(_153 (Io) The Promethetes Bound of Aeschylus.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])\n(_153 (Ezekiel) And the Lord whistled for the gadfly out of Aethiopia,\nand for the bee of Egypt, etc.—EZEKIEL.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Purganax:",
    "body": "Gods! what an IF! but there is my gray RAT:\nSo thin with want, he can crawl in and out\nOf any narrow chink and filthy hole,\nAnd he shall creep into her dressing-room,                           _180\nAnd—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Purganax:",
    "body": "But my LEECH—a leech\nFit to suck blood, with lubricous round rings,                       _185\nCapaciously expatiative, which make\nHis little body like a red balloon,\nAs full of blood as that of hydrogen,\nSucked from men’s hearts; insatiably he sucks\nAnd clings and pulls—a horse-leech, whose deep maw                  _190\nThe plethoric King Swellfoot could not fill,\nAnd who, till full, will cling for ever.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mammon:",
    "body": "Disinherited                                                         _195\nMy eldest son Chrysaor, because he\nAttended public meetings, and would always\nStand prating there of commerce, public faith,\nEconomy, and unadulterate coin,\nAnd other topics, ultra-radical;                                     _200\nAnd have entailed my estate, called the Fool’s Paradise,\nAnd funds in fairy-money, bonds, and bills,\nUpon my accomplished daughter Banknotina,\nAnd married her to the gallows. [1]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mammon:",
    "body": "A high connexion, Purganax. The bridegroom                           _205\nIs of a very ancient family,\nOf Hounslow Heath, Tyburn, and the New Drop,\nAnd has great influence in both Houses;—oh!\nHe makes the fondest husband; nay, TOO fond,—\nNew-married people should not kiss in public;                        _210\nBut the poor souls love one another so!\nAnd then my little grandchildren, the gibbets,\nPromising children as you ever saw,—\nThe young playing at hanging, the elder learning\nHow to hold radicals. They are well taught too,                      _215\nFor every gibbet says its catechism\nAnd reads a select chapter in the Bible\nBefore it goes to play.\n\n[A MOST TREMENDOUS HUMMING IS HEARD.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Gadfly:",
    "body": "Hum! hum! hum!                                                       _220\nFrom the lakes of the Alps, and the cold gray scalps\nOf the mountains, I come!\nHum! hum! hum!\nFrom Morocco and Fez, and the high palaces\nOf golden Byzantium;                                                 _225\nFrom the temples divine of old Palestine,\nFrom Athens and Rome,\nWith a ha! and a hum!\nI come! I come!\n\nAll inn-doors and windows                                            _230\nWere open to me:\nI saw all that sin does,\nWhich lamps hardly see\nThat burn in the night by the curtained bed,—\nThe impudent lamps! for they blushed not red,                        _235\nDinging and singing,\nFrom slumber I rung her,\nLoud as the clank of an ironmonger;\nHum! hum! hum!\n\nFar, far, far!                                                       _240\nWith the trump of my lips, and the sting at my hips,\nI drove her—afar!\nFar, far, far!\nFrom city to city, abandoned of pity,\nA ship without needle or star;—                                     _245\nHomeless she passed, like a cloud on the blast,\nSeeking peace, finding war;—\nShe is here in her car,\nFrom afar, and afar;—\nHum! hum!                                                            _250\n\nI have stung her and wrung her,\nThe venom is working;—\nAnd if you had hung her\nWith canting and quirking,\nShe could not be deader than she will be soon;—                     _255\nI have driven her close to you, under the moon,\nNight and day, hum! hum! ha!\nI have hummed her and drummed her\nFrom place to place, till at last I have dumbed her,\nHum! hum! hum!                                                       _260",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Purganax:",
    "body": "Aroint ye! thou unprofitable worm!\n[TO THE LEECH.]\nAnd thou, dull beetle, get thee back to hell!                        _270\n[TO THE GADFLY.]\nTo sting the ghosts of Babylonian kings,\nAnd the ox-headed Io—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Swellfoot:",
    "body": "She is returned! Taurina is in Thebes,\nWhen Swellfoot wishes that she were in hell!\nOh, Hymen, clothed in yellow jealousy,\nAnd waving o’er the couch of wedded kings\nThe torch of Discord with its fiery hair;                            _285\nThis is thy work, thou patron saint of queens!\nSwellfoot is wived! though parted by the sea,\nThe very name of wife had conjugal rights;\nHer cursed image ate, drank, slept with me,\nAnd in the arms of Adiposa oft 290\nHer memory has received a husband’s—\n[A LOUD TUMULT, AND CRIES OF ‘IONA FOR EVER —NO SWELLFOOT!‘]\nHark!\nHow the Swine cry Iona Taurina;\nI suffer the real presence; Purganax,\nOff with her head!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Purganax:",
    "body": "Or fattening some few in two separate sties.\nAnd giving them clean straw, tying some bits\nOf ribbon round their legs—giving their Sows\nSome tawdry lace, and bits of lustre glass,\nAnd their young Boars white and red rags, and tails                  _300\nOf cows, and jay feathers, and sticking cauliflowers\nBetween the ears of the old ones; and when\nThey are persuaded, that by the inherent virtue\nOf these things, they are all imperial Pigs,\nGood Lord! they’d rip each other’s bellies up,                       _305\nNot to say, help us in destroying her.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Swellfoot:",
    "body": "This plan might be tried too;—where’s General Laoctonos?\n[ENTER LAOCTONOS AND DAKRY.]\nIt is my royal pleasure\nThat you, Lord General, bring the head and body,\nIf separate it would please me better, hither                        _310\nOf Queen Iona.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Laoctonos:",
    "body": "That pleasure I well knew,\nAnd made a charge with those battalions bold,\nCalled, from their dress and grin, the royal apes,\nUpon the Swine, who in a hollow square\nEnclosed her, and received the first attack                          _315\nLike so many rhinoceroses, and then\nRetreating in good order, with bare tusks\nAnd wrinkled snouts presented to the foe,\nBore her in triumph to the public sty.\nWhat is still worse, some Sows upon the ground                       _320\nHave given the ape-guards apples, nuts, and gin,\nAnd they all whisk their tails aloft, and cry,\n‘Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!’",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Dakry:",
    "body": "I\nWent to the garret of the swineherd’s tower,                         _325\nWhich overlooks the sty, and made a long\nHarangue (all words) to the assembled Swine,\nOf delicacy mercy, judgement, law,\nMorals, and precedents, and purity,\nAdultery, destitution, and divorce,                                  _330\nPiety, faith, and state necessity,\nAnd how I loved the Queen!—and then I wept\nWith the pathos of my own eloquence,\nAnd every tear turned to a mill-stone, which\nBrained many a gaping Pig, and there was made                        _335\nA slough of blood and brains upon the place,\nGreased with the pounded bacon; round and round\nThe mill-stones rolled, ploughing the pavement up,\nAnd hurling Sucking-Pigs into the air,\nWith dust and stones.—\n\n[ENTER MAMMON.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mammon:",
    "body": "I wonder that gray wizards                                           _340\nLike you should be so beardless in their schemes;\nIt had been but a point of policy\nTo keep Iona and the Swine apart.\nDivide and rule! but ye have made a junction\nBetween two parties who will govern you                              _345\nBut for my art.—Behold this BAG! it is\nThe poison BAG of that Green Spider huge,\nOn which our spies skulked in ovation through\nThe streets of Thebes, when they were paved with dead:\nA bane so much the deadlier fills it now                             _350\nAs calumny is worse than death,—for here\nThe Gadfly’s venom, fifty times distilled,\nIs mingled with the vomit of the Leech,\nIn due proportion, and black ratsbane, which\nThat very Rat, who, like the Pontic tyrant,                          _355\nNurtures himself on poison, dare not touch;—\nAll is sealed up with the broad seal of Fraud,\nWho is the Devil’s Lord High Chancellor,\nAnd over it the Primate of all Hell\nMurmured this pious baptism:—‘Be thou called                        _360\nThe GREEN BAG; and this power and grace be thine:\nThat thy contents, on whomsoever poured,\nTurn innocence to guilt, and gentlest looks\nTo savage, foul, and fierce deformity.\nLet all baptized by thy infernal dew                                 _365\nBe called adulterer, drunkard, liar, wretch!\nNo name left out which orthodoxy loves,\nCourt Journal or legitimate Review!—\nBe they called tyrant, beast, fool, glutton, lover\nOf other wives and husbands than their own—                         _370\nThe heaviest sin on this side of the Alps!\nWither they to a ghastly caricature\nOf what was human!—let not man or beast\nBehold their face with unaverted eyes!\nOr hear their names with ears that tingle not                        _375\nWith blood of indignation, rage, and shame!’—\nThis is a perilous liquor;—good my Lords.—\n[SWELLFOOT APPROACHES TO TOUCH THE GREEN BAG.]\nBeware! for God’s sake, beware!-if you should break\nThe seal, and touch the fatal liquor—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mammon:",
    "body": "Now, with a little common sense, my Lords,\nOnly undoing all that has been done\n(Yet so as it may seem we but confirm it),                           _385\nOur victory is assured. We must entice\nHer Majesty from the sty, and make the Pigs\nBelieve that the contents of the GREEN BAG\nAre the true test of guilt or innocence.\nAnd that, if she be guilty, ‘twill transform her                     _390\nTo manifest deformity like guilt.\nIf innocent, she will become transfigured\nInto an angel, such as they say she is;\nAnd they will see her flying through the air,\nSo bright that she will dim the noonday sun;                         _395\nShowering down blessings in the shape of comfits.\nThis, trust a priest, is just the sort of thing\nSwine will believe. I’ll wager you will see them\nClimbing upon the thatch of their low sties,\nWith pieces of smoked glass, to watch her sail                       _400\nAmong the clouds, and some will hold the flaps\nOf one another’s ears between their teeth,\nTo catch the coming hail of comfits in.\nYou, Purganax, who have the gift o’ the gab,\nMake them a solemn speech to this effect:                            _405\nI go to put in readiness the feast\nKept to the honour of our goddess Famine,\nWhere, for more glory, let the ceremony\nTake place of the uglification of the Queen.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Purganax:",
    "body": "Grant me your patience, Gentlemen and Boars,\nYe, by whose patience under public burthens\nThe glorious constitution of these sties\nSubsists, and shall subsist. The Lean-Pig rates\nGrow with the growing populace of Swine,                             _5\nThe taxes, that true source of Piggishness\n(How can I find a more appropriate term\nTo include religion, morals, peace, and plenty,\nAnd all that fit Boeotia as a nation\nTo teach the other nations how to live?),                            _10\nIncrease with Piggishness itself; and still\nDoes the revenue, that great spring of all\nThe patronage, and pensions, and by-payments,\nWhich free-born Pigs regard with jealous eyes,\nDiminish, till at length, by glorious steps,                         _15\nAll the land’s produce will be merged in taxes,\nAnd the revenue will amount to—nothing!\nThe failure of a foreign market for\nSausages, bristles, and blood-puddings,\nAnd such home manufactures, is but partial;                          _20\nAnd, that the population of the Pigs,\nInstead of hog-wash, has been fed on straw\nAnd water, is a fact which is—you know—\nThat is—it is a state-necessity—\nTemporary, of course. Those impious Pigs,                            _25\nWho, by frequent squeaks, have dared impugn\nThe settled Swellfoot system, or to make\nIrreverent mockery of the genuflexions\nInculcated by the arch-priest, have been whipped\nInto a loyal and an orthodox whine.                                  _30\nThings being in this happy state, the Queen\nIona—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Purganax:",
    "body": "That is the very thing that I was saying,\nGentlemen Swine; the Queen Iona being\nMost innocent, no doubt, returns to Thebes,                          _35\nAnd the lean Sows and Bears collect about her,\nWishing to make her think that WE believe\n(I mean those more substantial Pigs, who swill\nRich hog-wash, while the others mouth damp straw)\nThat she is guilty; thus, the Lean-Pig faction                       _40\nSeeks to obtain that hog-wash, which has been\nYour immemorial right, and which I will\nMaintain you in to the last drop of—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Purganax:",
    "body": "Why, no one\nMakes ANY positive accusation;—but                                  _45\nThere were hints dropped, and so the privy wizards\nConceived that it became them to advise\nHis Majesty to investigate their truth;—\nNot for his own sake; he could be content\nTo let his wife play any pranks she pleased,                         _50\nIf, by that sufferance, HE could please the Pigs;\nBut then he fears the morals of the Swine,\nThe Sows especially, and what effect\nIt might produce upon the purity and\nReligion of the rising generation                                    _55\nOf Sucking-Pigs, if it could be suspected\nThat Queen Iona—\n\n[A PAUSE.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Purganax:",
    "body": "Why, it is hinted, that a certain Bull—\nThus much is KNOWN:—the milk-white Bulls that feed                  _60\nBeside Clitumnus and the crystal lakes\nOf the Cisalpine mountains, in fresh dews\nOf lotus-grass and blossoming asphodel\nSleeking their silken hair, and with sweet breath\nLoading the morning winds until they faint                           _65\nWith living fragrance, are so beautiful!—\nWell, _I_ say nothing;—but Europa rode\nOn such a one from Asia into Crete,\nAnd the enamoured sea grew calm beneath\nHis gliding beauty. And Pasiphae,                                    _70\nIona’s grandmother,—but SHE is innocent!\nAnd that both you and I, and all assert.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Purganax:",
    "body": "Honourable Swine,\nIn Piggish souls can prepossessions reign?\nAllow me to remind you, grass is green—\nAll flesh is grass;—no bacon but is flesh—\nYe are but bacon. This divining BAG                                  _80\n(Which is not green, but only bacon colour)\nIs filled with liquor, which if sprinkled o’er\nA woman guilty of—we all know what—\nMakes her so hideous, till she finds one blind\nShe never can commit the like again.                                 _85\nIf innocent, she will turn into an angel,\nAnd rain down blessings in the shape of comfits\nAs she flies up to heaven. Now, my proposal\nIs to convert her sacred Majesty\nInto an angel (as I am sure we shall do),                            _90\nBy pouring on her head this mystic water.\n[SHOWING THE BAG.]\nI know that she is innocent; I wish\nOnly to prove her so to all the world.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Purganax:",
    "body": "Oh no!\nBut like a standard of an admiral’s ship,\nOr like the banner of a conquering host,\nOr like a cloud dyed in the dying day,                               _100\nUnravelled on the blast from a white mountain;\nOr like a meteor, or a war-steed’s mane,\nOr waterfall from a dizzy precipice\nScattered upon the wind.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Purganax:",
    "body": "Gentlemen Boars, I move a resolution,\nThat her most sacred Majesty should be\nInvited to attend the feast of Famine,\nAnd to receive upon her chaste white body\nDews of Apotheosis from this BAG.                                    _110\n\n[A GREAT CONFUSION IS HEARD OF THE PIGS OUT OF DOORS, WHICH\nCOMMUNICATES ITSELF TO THOSE WITHIN. DURING THE FIRST STROPHE, THE\nDOORS OF THE STY ARE STAVED IN, AND A NUMBER OF EXCEEDINGLY LEAN PIGS\nAND SOWS AND BOARS RUSH IN.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "Hog-wash has been ta’en away:\nIf the Bull-Queen is divested,\nWe shall be in every way\nHunted, stripped, exposed, molested;                                 _140\nLet us do whate’er we may,\nThat she shall not be arrested.\nQUEEN, we entrench you with walls of brawn,\nAnd palisades of tusks, sharp as a bayonet:\nPlace your most sacred person here. We pawn                          _145\nOur lives that none a finger dare to lay on it.\nThose who wrong you, wrong us;\nThose who hate you, hate us;\nThose who sting you, sting us;\nThose who bait you, bait us;                                         _150\nThe ORACLE is now about to be\nFulfilled by circumvolving destiny;\nWhich says: ‘Thebes, choose REFORM or CIVIL WAR,\nWhen through your streets, instead of hare with dogs,\nA CONSORT QUEEN shall hunt a KING with Hogs,                         _155\nRiding upon the IONIAN MINOTAUR.’",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iona Taurina (Coming Forward):",
    "body": "Gentlemen Swine, and gentle Lady-Pigs,\nThe tender heart of every Boar acquits\nTheir QUEEN, of any act incongruous\nWith native Piggishness, and she, reposing                           _160\nWith confidence upon the grunting nation,\nHas thrown herself, her cause, her life, her all,\nHer innocence, into their Hoggish arms;\nNor has the expectation been deceived\nOf finding shelter there. Yet know, great Boars,                     _165\n(For such whoever lives among you finds you,\nAnd so do I), the innocent are proud!\nI have accepted your protection only\nIn compliment of your kind love and care,\nNot for necessity. The innocent                                      _170\nAre safest there where trials and dangers wait;\nInnocent Queens o’er white-hot ploughshares tread\nUnsinged, and ladies, Erin’s laureate sings it,\nDecked with rare gems, and beauty rarer still,\nWalked from Killarney to the Giant’s Causeway,                       _175\nThrough rebels, smugglers, troops of yeomanry,\nWhite-boys and Orange-boys, and constables,\nTithe-proctors, and excise people, uninjured!\nThus I!—\nLord Purganax, I do commit myself                                    _180\nInto your custody, and am prepared\nTo stand the test, whatever it may be!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Purganax:",
    "body": "This magnanimity in your sacred Majesty\nMust please the Pigs. You cannot fail of being\nA heavenly angel. Smoke your bits of glass,                          _185\nYe loyal Swine, or her transfiguration\nWill blind your wondering eyes.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iona Taurina [Aside]:",
    "body": "I, most content of all,                                              _190\nKnow that my foes even thus prepare their fall!\n\n[EXEUNT OMNES.]\n\nSCENE 2.2:\nTHE INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE OF FAMINE.\nTHE STATUE OF THE GODDESS, A SKELETON CLOTHED IN PARTI-COLOURED RAGS,\nSEATED UPON A HEAP OF SKULLS AND LOAVES INTERMINGLED.\nA NUMBER OF EXCEEDINGLY FAT PRIESTS IN BLACK GARMENTS ARRAYED ON EACH\nSIDE, WITH MARROW-BONES AND CLEAVERS IN THEIR HANDS.\n[SOLOMON, THE COURT PORKMAN.]\nA FLOURISH OF TRUMPETS.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus Of Priests, Accompanied By The Court Porkman On Marrow-Bones",
    "body": "AND CLEAVERS:\nGODDESS bare, and gaunt, and pale,\nEmpress of the world, all hail!\nWhat though Cretans old called thee\nCity-crested Cybele?\nWe call thee FAMINE!                                                 _5\nGoddess of fasts and feasts, starving and cramming!\nThrough thee, for emperors, kings, and priests and lords,\nWho rule by viziers, sceptres, bank-notes, words,\nThe earth pours forth its plenteous fruits,\nCorn, wool, linen, flesh, and roots—                                _10\nThose who consume these fruits through thee grow fat,\nThose who produce these fruits through thee grow lean,\nWhatever change takes place, oh, stick to that!\nAnd let things be as they have ever been;\nAt least while we remain thy priests,                                _15\nAnd proclaim thy fasts and feasts.\nThrough thee the sacred SWELLFOOT dynasty\nIs based upon a rock amid that sea\nWhose waves are Swine—so let it ever be!\n\n[SWELLFOOT, ETC., SEAT THEMSELVES AT A TABLE MAGNIFICENTLY COVERED AT\nTHE UPPER END OF THE TEMPLE.\nATTENDANTS PASS OVER THE STAGE WITH HOG-WASH IN PAILS.\nA NUMBER OF PIGS, EXCEEDINGLY LEAN, FOLLOW THEM LICKING UP THE WASH.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mammon:",
    "body": "I fear your sacred Majesty has lost                                  _20\nThe appetite which you were used to have.\nAllow me now to recommend this dish—\nA simple kickshaw by your Persian cook,\nSuch as is served at the great King’s second table.\nThe price and pains which its ingredients cost                       _25\nMight have maintained some dozen families\nA winter or two—not more—so plain a dish\nCould scarcely disagree.—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Swellfoot:",
    "body": "After the trial,\nAnd these fastidious Pigs are gone, perhaps\nI may recover my lost appetite,—                                    _30\nI feel the gout flying about my stomach—\nGive me a glass of Maraschino punch.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Swellfoot:",
    "body": "Laoctonos is fishing for a compliment,\nBut ’tis his due. Yes, you have drunk more wine,\nAnd shed more blood, than any man in Thebes.\n[TO PURGANAX.]\nFor God’s sake stop the grunting of those Pigs!                      _40",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus Of Swine:",
    "body": "Hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine!\nThy throne is on blood, and thy robe is of rags;\nThou devil which livest on damning;\nSaint of new churches, and cant, and GREEN BAGS,                     _45\nTill in pity and terror thou risest,\nConfounding the schemes of the wisest;\nWhen thou liftest thy skeleton form,\nWhen the loaves and the skulls roll about,\nWe will greet thee-the voice of a storm                              _50\nWould be lost in our terrible shout!\n\nThen hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine!\nHail to thee, Empress of Earth!\nWhen thou risest, dividing possessions;\nWhen thou risest, uprooting oppressions,                             _55\nIn the pride of thy ghastly mirth;\nOver palaces, temples, and graves,\nWe will rush as thy minister-slaves,\nTrampling behind in thy train,\nTill all be made level again!                                        _60",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mammon:",
    "body": "I hear a crackling of the giant bones\nOf the dread image, and in the black pits\nWhich once were eyes, I see two livid flames.\nThese prodigies are oracular, and show\nThe presence of the unseen Deity.                                    _65\nMighty events are hastening to their doom!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Purganax:",
    "body": "I have rehearsed the entire scene\nWith an ox-bladder and some ditchwater,\nOn Lady P—; it cannot fail.\n[TAKING UP THE BAG.]\nYour Majesty\n[TO SWELLFOOT.]\nIn such a filthy business had better                                 _75\nStand on one side, lest it should sprinkle you.\nA spot or two on me would do no harm,\nNay, it might hide the blood, which the sad Genius\nOf the Green Isle has fixed, as by a spell,\nUpon my brow—which would stain all its seas,                        _80\nBut which those seas could never wash away!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iona Taurina:",
    "body": "My Lord, I am ready—nay, I am impatient\nTo undergo the test.\n[A GRACEFUL FIGURE IN A SEMI-TRANSPARENT VEIL PASSES UNNOTICED THROUGH\nTHE TEMPLE; THE WORD “LIBERTY” IS SEEN THROUGH THE VEIL, AS IF IT WERE\nWRITTEN IN FIRE UPON ITS FOREHEAD. ITS WORDS ARE ALMOST DROWNED IN THE\nFURIOUS GRUNTING OF THE PIGS, AND THE BUSINESS OF THE TRIAL. SHE\nKNEELS ON THE STEPS OF THE ALTAR, AND SPEAKS IN TONES AT FIRST FAINT\nAND LOW, BUT WHICH EVER BECOME LOUDER AND LOUDER.]\nMighty Empress! Death’s white wife!\nGhastly mother-in-law of Life!                                       _85\nBy the God who made thee such,\nBy the magic of thy touch,\nBy the starving and the cramming\nOf fasts and feasts! by thy dread self, O Famine!\nI charge thee! when thou wake the multitude,                         _90\nThou lead them not upon the paths of blood.\nThe earth did never mean her foison\nFor those who crown life’s cup with poison\nOf fanatic rage and meaningless revenge—\nBut for those radiant spirits, who are still                         _95\nThe standard-bearers in the van of Change.\nBe they th’ appointed stewards, to fill\nThe lap of Pain, and Toil, and Age!—\nRemit, O Queen! thy accustomed rage!\nBe what thou art not! In voice faint and low                         _100\nFREEDOM calls “Famine”,—her eternal foe,\nTo brief alliance, hollow truce.—Rise now!\n\n[WHILST THE VEILED FIGURE HAS BEEN CHANTING THIS STROPHE, MAMMON,\nDAKRY, LAOCTONOS, AND SWELLFOOT, HAVE SURROUNDED IONA TAURINA, WHO,\nWITH HER HANDS FOLDED ON HER BREAST, AND HER EYES LIFTED TO HEAVEN,\nSTANDS, AS WITH SAINT-LIKE RESIGNATION, TO WAIT THE ISSUE OF THE\nBUSINESS, IN PERFECT CONFIDENCE OF HER INNOCENCE.]\n\n[PURGANAX, AFTER UNSEALING THE GREEN BAG, IS GRAVELY ABOUT TO POUR THE\nLIQUOR UPON HER HEAD, WHEN SUDDENLY THE WHOLE EXPRESSION OF HER FIGURE\nAND COUNTENANCE CHANGES; SHE SNATCHES IT FROM HIS HAND WITH A LOUD\nLAUGH OF TRIUMPH, AND EMPTIES IT OVER SWELLFOOT AND HIS WHOLE COURT,\nWHO ARE INSTANTLY CHANGED INTO A NUMBER OF FILTHY AND UGLY ANIMALS,\nAND RUSH OUT OF THE TEMPLE. THE IMAGE OF FAMINE THEN ARISES WITH A\nTREMENDOUS SOUND, THE PIGS BEGIN SCRAMBLING FOR THE LOAVES, AND ARE\nTRIPPED UP BY THE SKULLS; ALL THOSE WHO EAT THE LOAVES ARE TURNED INTO\nBULLS, AND ARRANGE THEMSELVES QUIETLY BEHIND THE ALTAR. THE IMAGE OF\nFAMINE SINKS THROUGH A CHASM IN THE EARTH, AND A MINOTAUR RISES.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Minotaur:",
    "body": "I am the Ionian Minotaur, the mightiest\nOf all Europa’s taurine progeny—\nI am the old traditional Man-Bull;                                   _105\nAnd from my ancestors having been Ionian,\nI am called Ion, which, by interpretation,\nIs JOHN; in plain Theban, that is to say,\nMy name’s JOHN BULL; I am a famous hunter,\nAnd can leaf any gate in all Boeotia,                                _110\nEven the palings of the royal park,\nOr double ditch about the new enclosures;\nAnd if your Majesty will deign to mount me,\nAt least till you have hunted down your game,\nI will not throw you.                                                _115",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iona Taurina [During This Speech She Has Been Putting On Boots And",
    "body": "SPURS, AND A HUNTING-CAP, BUCKISHLY COCKED ON ONE SIDE, AND TUCKING UP\nHER HAIR, SHE LEAPS NIMBLY ON HIS BACK]:\nHoa! hoa! tallyho! tallyho! ho! ho!\nCome, let us hunt these ugly badgers down,\nThese stinking foxes, these devouring otters,\nThese hares, these wolves, these anything but men.\nHey, for a whipper-in! my loyal Pigs\nNow let your noses be as keen as beagles’,                           _120\nYour steps as swift as greyhounds’, and your cries\nMore dulcet and symphonious than the bells\nOf village-towers, on sunshine holiday;\nWake all the dewy woods with jangling music.\nGive them no law (are they not beasts of blood?)                     _125\nBut such as they gave you. Tallyho! ho!\nThrough forest, furze, and bog, and den, and desert,\nPursue the ugly beasts! tallyho! ho!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Full Chorus Of Iona And The Swine:",
    "body": "Tallyho! tallyho!\nThrough rain, hail, and snow,                                        _130\nThrough brake, gorse, and briar,\nThrough fen, flood, and mire,\nWe go! we go!\n\nTallyho! tallyho!\nThrough pond, ditch, and slough,                                     _135\nWind them, and find them,\nLike the Devil behind them,\nTallyho! tallyho!\n\n[EXEUNT, IN FULL CRY;\nIONA DRIVING ON THE SWINE, WITH THE EMPTY GEEEN BAG.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On Oedipus Tyrannus, By Mrs. Shelley.",
    "body": "In the brief journal I kept in those days, I find recorded, in August,\n1820, Shelley ‘begins “Swellfoot the Tyrant”, suggested by the pigs at\nthe fair of San Giuliano.’ This was the period of Queen Caroline’s\nlanding in England, and the struggles made by George IV to get rid of\nher claims; which failing, Lord Castlereagh placed the “Green Bag” on\nthe table of the House of Commons, demanding in the King’s name that\nan enquiry should be instituted into his wife’s conduct. These\ncircumstances were the theme of all conversation among the English. We\nwere then at the Baths of San Giuliano. A friend came to visit us on\nthe day when a fair was held in the square, beneath our windows:\nShelley read to us his “Ode to Liberty”; and was riotously accompanied\nby the grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair. He\ncompared it to the ‘chorus of frogs’ in the satiric drama of\nAristophanes; and, it being an hour of merriment, and one ludicrous\nassociation suggesting another, he imagined a political-satirical\ndrama on the circumstances of the day, to which the pigs would serve\nas chorus—and “Swellfoot” was begun. When finished, it was\ntransmitted to England, printed, and published anonymously; but\nstifled at the very dawn of its existence by the Society for the\nSuppression of Vice, who threatened to prosecute it, if not\nimmediately withdrawn. The friend who had taken the trouble of\nbringing it out, of course did not think it worth the annoyance and\nexpense of a contest, and it was laid aside.\n\nHesitation of whether it would do honour to Shelley prevented my\npublishing it at first. But I cannot bring myself to keep back\nanything he ever wrote; for each word is fraught with the peculiar\nviews and sentiments which he believed to be beneficial to the human\nrace, and the bright light of poetry irradiates every thought. The\nworld has a right to the entire compositions of such a man; for it\ndoes not live and thrive by the outworn lesson of the dullard or the\nhypocrite, but by the original free thoughts of men of genius, who\naspire to pluck bright truth\n\n‘from the pale-faced moon;\nOr dive into the bottom of the deep\nWhere fathom-line would never touch the ground,\nAnd pluck up drowned’\n\ntruth. Even those who may dissent from his opinions will consider that\nhe was a man of genius, and that the world will take more interest in\nhis slightest word than in the waters of Lethe which are so eagerly\nprescribed as medicinal for all its wrongs and woe. This drama,\nhowever, must not be judged for more than was meant. It is a mere\nplaything of the imagination; which even may not excite smiles among\nmany, who will not see wit in those combinations of thought which were\nfull of the ridiculous to the author. But, like everything he wrote,\nit breathes that deep sympathy for the sorrows of humanity, and\nindignation against its oppressors, which make it worthy of his name.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Now Imprisoned In The Convent Of —.",
    "body": "L’anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nell’ infinito un\nMondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro.\nHER OWN WORDS.\n\n[“Epipsychidion” was composed at Pisa, January, February, 1821, and\npublished without the author’s name, in the following summer, by C. &\nJ. Ollier, London. The poem was included by Mrs. Shelley in the\n“Poetical Works”, 1839, both editions. Amongst the Shelley manuscripts\nin the Bodleian is a first draft of “Epipsychidion”, ‘consisting of\nthree versions, more or less complete, of the “Preface\n[Advertisement]”, a version in ink and pencil, much cancelled, of the\nlast eighty lines of the poem, and some additional lines which did not\nappear in print’ (“Examination of the Shelley manuscripts in the\nBodleian Library, by C.D. Locock”. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1903, page\n3). This draft, the writing of which is ‘extraordinarily confused and\nillegible,’ has been carefully deciphered and printed by Mr. Locock in\nthe volume named above. Our text follows that of the editio princeps,\n1821.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Advertisement.",
    "body": "The Writer of the following lines died at Florence, as he was\npreparing for a voyage to one of the wildest of the Sporades, which he\nhad bought, and where he had fitted up the ruins of an old building,\nand where it was his hope to have realised a scheme of life, suited\nperhaps to that happier and better world of which he is now an\ninhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. His life was singular;\nless on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it,\nthan the ideal tinge which it received from his own character and\nfeelings. The present Poem, like the “Vita Nuova” of Dante, is\nsufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a\nmatter-of-fact history of the circumstances to which it relates and to\na certain other class it must ever remain incomprehensible, from a\ndefect of a common organ of perception for the ideas of which it\ntreats. Not but that gran vergogna sarebbe a colui, che rimasse cosa\nsotto veste di figura, o di colore rettorico: e domandato non sapesse\ndenudare le sue parole da cotal veste, in guisa che avessero verace\nintendimento.\n\nThe present poem appears to have been intended by the Writer as the\ndedication to some longer one. The stanza on the opposite page [1] is\nalmost a literal translation from Dante’s famous Canzone\n\nVoi, ch’ intendendo, il terzo ciel movete, etc.\n\nThe presumptuous application of the concluding lines to his own\ncomposition will raise a smile at the expense of my unfortunate\nfriend: be it a smile not of contempt, but pity. S.\n\n[1] i.e. the nine lines which follow, beginning, ‘My Song, I fear,’\netc.—ED.\n\nMy Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few\nWho fitly shalt conceive thy reasoning,\nOf such hard matter dost thou entertain;\nWhence, if by misadventure, chance should bring\nThee to base company (as chance may do),                             _5\nQuite unaware of what thou dost contain,\nI prithee, comfort thy sweet self again,\nMy last delight! tell them that they are dull,\nAnd bid them own that thou art beautiful.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Epipsychidion.",
    "body": "Sweet Spirit! Sister of that orphan one,\nWhose empire is the name thou weepest on,\nIn my heart’s temple I suspend to thee\nThese votive wreaths of withered memory.\n\nPoor captive bird! who, from thy narrow cage,                        _5\nPourest such music, that it might assuage\nThe rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee,\nWere they not deaf to all sweet melody;\nThis song shall be thy rose: its petals pale\nAre dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale!                             _10\nBut soft and fragrant is the faded blossom,\nAnd it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom.\n\nHigh, spirit-winged Heart! who dost for ever\nBeat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour,\nTill those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed                _15\nIt over-soared this low and worldly shade,\nLie shattered; and thy panting, wounded breast\nStains with dear blood its unmaternal nest!\nI weep vain tears: blood would less bitter be,\nYet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee.                     _20\n\nSeraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human,\nVeiling beneath that radiant form of Woman\nAll that is insupportable in thee\nOf light, and love, and immortality!\nSweet Benediction in the eternal Curse!                              _25\nVeiled Glory of this lampless Universe!\nThou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form\nAmong the Dead! Thou Star above the Storm!\nThou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror!\nThou Harmony of Nature’s art! Thou Mirror                            _30\nIn whom, as in the splendour of the Sun,\nAll shapes look glorious which thou gazest on!\nAy, even the dim words which obscure thee now\nFlash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow;\nI pray thee that thou blot from this sad song                        _35\nAll of its much mortality and wrong,\nWith those clear drops, which start like sacred dew\nFrom the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through,\nWeeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy:\nThen smile on it, so that it may not die.                            _40\n\nI never thought before my death to see\nYouth’s vision thus made perfect. Emily,\nI love thee; though the world by no thin name\nWill hide that love from its unvalued shame.\nWould we two had been twins of the same mother!                      _45\nOr, that the name my heart lent to another\nCould be a sister’s bond for her and thee,\nBlending two beams of one eternity!\nYet were one lawful and the other true,\nThese names, though dear, could paint not, as is due.                _50\nHow beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me!\nI am not thine: I am a part of THEE.\n\nSweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burned its wings\nOr, like a dying swan who soars and sings,\nYoung Love should teach Time, in his own gray style,                 _55\nAll that thou art. Art thou not void of guile,\nA lovely soul formed to be blessed and bless?\nA well of sealed and secret happiness,\nWhose waters like blithe light and music are,\nVanquishing dissonance and gloom? A Star                             _60\nWhich moves not in the moving heavens, alone?\nA Smile amid dark frowns? a gentle tone\nAmid rude voices? a beloved light?\nA Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight?\nA Lute, which those whom Love has taught to play                     _65\nMake music on, to soothe the roughest day\nAnd lull fond Grief asleep? a buried treasure?\nA cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure?\nA violet-shrouded grave of Woe?—I measure\nThe world of fancies, seeking one like thee,                         _70\nAnd find—alas! mine own infirmity.\n\nShe met me, Stranger, upon life’s rough way,\nAnd lured me towards sweet Death; as Night by Day,\nWinter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope,\nLed into light, life, peace. An antelope,                            _75\nIn the suspended impulse of its lightness,\nWere less aethereally light: the brightness\nOf her divinest presence trembles through\nHer limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew\nEmbodied in the windless heaven of June                              _80\nAmid the splendour-winged stars, the Moon\nBurns, inextinguishably beautiful:\nAnd from her lips, as from a hyacinth full\nOf honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops,\nKilling the sense with passion; sweet as stops                       _85\nOf planetary music heard in trance.\nIn her mild lights the starry spirits dance,\nThe sunbeams of those wells which ever leap\nUnder the lightnings of the soul—too deep\nFor the brief fathom-line of thought or sense.                       _90\nThe glory of her being, issuing thence,\nStains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade\nOf unentangled intermixture, made\nBy Love, of light and motion: one intense\nDiffusion, one serene Omnipresence,                                  _95\nWhose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing,\nAround her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing\nWith the unintermitted blood, which there\nQuivers, (as in a fleece of snow-like air\nThe crimson pulse of living morning quiver,)                         _100\nContinuously prolonged, and ending never,\nTill they are lost, and in that Beauty furled\nWhich penetrates and clasps and fills the world;\nScarce visible from extreme loveliness.\nWarm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress                    _105\nAnd her loose hair; and where some heavy tress\nThe air of her own speed has disentwined,\nThe sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind;\nAnd in the soul a wild odour is felt\nBeyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt                          _110\nInto the bosom of a frozen bud.—\nSee where she stands! a mortal shape indued\nWith love and life and light and deity,\nAnd motion which may change but cannot die;\nAn image of some bright Eternity;                                    _115\nA shadow of some golden dream; a Splendour\nLeaving the third sphere pilotless; a tender\nReflection of the eternal Moon of Love\nUnder whose motions life’s dull billows move;\nA Metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning;                          _120\nA Vision like incarnate April, warning,\nWith smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy\nInto his summer grave.\nAh, woe is me!\nWhat have I dared? where am I lifted? how\nShall I descend, and perish not? I know                              _125\nThat Love makes all things equal: I have heard\nBy mine own heart this joyous truth averred:\nThe spirit of the worm beneath the sod\nIn love and worship, blends itself with God.\n\nSpouse! Sister! Angel! Pilot of the Fate                             _130\nWhose course has been so starless! O too late\nBeloved! O too soon adored, by me!\nFor in the fields of Immortality\nMy spirit should at first have worshipped thine,\nA divine presence in a place divine;                                 _135\nOr should have moved beside it on this earth,\nA shadow of that substance, from its birth;\nBut not as now:—I love thee; yes, I feel\nThat on the fountain of my heart a seal\nIs set, to keep its waters pure and bright                           _140\nFor thee, since in those TEARS thou hast delight.\nWe—are we not formed, as notes of music are,\nFor one another, though dissimilar;\nSuch difference without discord, as can make\nThose sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake                    _145\nAs trembling leaves in a continuous air?\n\nThy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare\nBeacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked.\nI never was attached to that great sect,\nWhose doctrine is, that each one should select                       _150\nOut of the crowd a mistress or a friend,\nAnd all the rest, though fair and wise, commend\nTo cold oblivion, though it is in the code\nOf modern morals, and the beaten road\nWhich those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,                  _155\nWho travel to their home among the dead\nBy the broad highway of the world, and so\nWith one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,\nThe dreariest and the longest journey go.\n\nTrue Love in this differs from gold and clay,                        _160\nThat to divide is not to take away.\nLove is like understanding, that grows bright,\nGazing on many truths; ’tis like thy light,\nImagination! which from earth and sky,\nAnd from the depths of human fantasy,                                _165\nAs from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills\nThe Universe with glorious beams, and kills\nError, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow\nOf its reverberated lightning. Narrow\nThe heart that loves, the brain that contemplates,                   _170\nThe life that wears, the spirit that creates\nOne object, and one form, and builds thereby\nA sepulchre for its eternity.\n\nMind from its object differs most in this:\nEvil from good; misery from happiness;                               _175\nThe baser from the nobler; the impure\nAnd frail, from what is clear and must endure.\nIf you divide suffering and dross, you may\nDiminish till it is consumed away;\nIf you divide pleasure and love and thought,                         _180\nEach part exceeds the whole; and we know not\nHow much, while any yet remains unshared,\nOf pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared:\nThis truth is that deep well, whence sages draw\nThe unenvied light of hope; the eternal law                          _185\nBy which those live, to whom this world of life\nIs as a garden ravaged, and whose strife\nTills for the promise of a later birth\nThe wilderness of this Elysian earth.\n\nThere was a Being whom my spirit oft                                 _190\nMet on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,\nIn the clear golden prime of my youth’s dawn,\nUpon the fairy isles of sunny lawn,\nAmid the enchanted mountains, and the caves\nOf divine sleep, and on the air-like waves                           _195\nOf wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor\nPaved her light steps;—on an imagined shore,\nUnder the gray beak of some promontory\nShe met me, robed in such exceeding glory,\nThat I beheld her not. In solitudes                                  _200\nHer voice came to me through the whispering woods,\nAnd from the fountains, and the odours deep\nOf flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleep\nOf the sweet kisses which had lulled them there,\nBreathed but of HER to the enamoured air;                            _205\nAnd from the breezes whether low or loud,\nAnd from the rain of every passing cloud,\nAnd from the singing of the summer-birds,\nAnd from all sounds, all silence. In the words\nOf antique verse and high romance,—in form,                         _210\nSound, colour—in whatever checks that Storm\nWhich with the shattered present chokes the past;\nAnd in that best philosophy, whose taste\nMakes this cold common hell, our life, a doom\nAs glorious as a fiery martyrdom;                                    _215\nHer Spirit was the harmony of truth.—\n\nThen, from the caverns of my dreamy youth\nI sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire,\nAnd towards the lodestar of my one desire,\nI flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight                           _220\nIs as a dead leaf’s in the owlet light,\nWhen it would seek in Hesper’s setting sphere\nA radiant death, a fiery sepulchre,\nAs if it were a lamp of earthly flame.—\nBut She, whom prayers or tears then could not tame,                  _225\nPassed, like a God throned on a winged planet,\nWhose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it,\nInto the dreary cone of our life’s shade;\nAnd as a man with mighty loss dismayed,\nI would have followed, though the grave between                      _230\nYawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen:\nWhen a voice said:—‘O thou of hearts the weakest,\nThe phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest.’\nThen I—‘Where?’—the world’s echo answered ‘where?’\nAnd in that silence, and in my despair,                              _235\nI questioned every tongueless wind that flew\nOver my tower of mourning, if it knew\nWhither ’twas fled, this soul out of my soul;\nAnd murmured names and spells which have control\nOver the sightless tyrants of our fate;                              _240\nBut neither prayer nor verse could dissipate\nThe night which closed on her; nor uncreate\nThat world within this Chaos, mine and me,\nOf which she was the veiled Divinity,\nThe world I say of thoughts that worshipped her:                     _245\nAnd therefore I went forth, with hope and fear\nAnd every gentle passion sick to death,\nFeeding my course with expectation’s breath,\nInto the wintry forest of our life;\nAnd struggling through its error with vain strife,                   _250\nAnd stumbling in my weakness and my haste,\nAnd half bewildered by new forms, I passed,\nSeeking among those untaught foresters\nIf I could find one form resembling hers,\nIn which she might have masked herself from me.                      _255\nThere,—One, whose voice was venomed melody\nSate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers:\nThe breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers,\nHer touch was as electric poison,—flame\nOut of her looks into my vitals came,                                _260\nAnd from her living cheeks and bosom flew\nA killing air, which pierced like honey-dew\nInto the core of my green heart, and lay\nUpon its leaves; until, as hair grown gray\nO’er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime                        _265\nWith ruins of unseasonable time.\n\nIn many mortal forms I rashly sought\nThe shadow of that idol of my thought.\nAnd some were fair—but beauty dies away:\nOthers were wise—but honeyed words betray:                          _270\nAnd One was true—oh! why not true to me?\nThen, as a hunted deer that could not flee,\nI turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay,\nWounded and weak and panting; the cold day\nTrembled, for pity of my strife and pain.                            _275\nWhen, like a noonday dawn, there shone again\nDeliverance. One stood on my path who seemed\nAs like the glorious shape which I had dreamed\nAs is the Moon, whose changes ever run\nInto themselves, to the eternal Sun;                                 _280\nThe cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven’s bright isles,\nWho makes all beautiful on which she smiles,\nThat wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame\nWhich ever is transformed, yet still the same,\nAnd warms not but illumines. Young and fair                          _285\nAs the descended Spirit of that sphere,\nShe hid me, as the Moon may hide the night\nFrom its own darkness, until all was bright\nBetween the Heaven and Earth of my calm mind,\nAnd, as a cloud charioted by the wind,                               _290\nShe led me to a cave in that wild place,\nAnd sate beside me, with her downward face\nIllumining my slumbers, like the Moon\nWaxing and waning o’er Endymion.\nAnd I was laid asleep, spirit and limb,                              _295\nAnd all my being became bright or dim\nAs the Moon’s image in a summer sea,\nAccording as she smiled or frowned on me;\nAnd there I lay, within a chaste cold bed:\nAlas, I then was nor alive nor dead:—                               _300\nFor at her silver voice came Death and Life,\nUnmindful each of their accustomed strife,\nMasked like twin babes, a sister and a brother,\nThe wandering hopes of one abandoned mother,\nAnd through the cavern without wings they flew,                      _305\nAnd cried ‘Away, he is not of our crew.’\nI wept, and though it be a dream, I weep.\n\nWhat storms then shook the ocean of my sleep,\nBlotting that Moon, whose pale and waning lips\nThen shrank as in the sickness of eclipse;—                         _310\nAnd how my soul was as a lampless sea,\nAnd who was then its Tempest; and when She,\nThe Planet of that hour, was quenched, what frost\nCrept o’er those waters, till from coast to coast\nThe moving billows of my being fell                                  _315\nInto a death of ice, immovable;—\nAnd then—what earthquakes made it gape and split,\nThe white Moon smiling all the while on it,\nThese words conceal:—If not, each word would be\nThe key of staunchless tears. Weep not for me!                       _320\n\nAt length, into the obscure Forest came\nThe Vision I had sought through grief and shame.\nAthwart that wintry wilderness of thorns\nFlashed from her motion splendour like the Morn’s,\nAnd from her presence life was radiated                              _325\nThrough the gray earth and branches bare and dead;\nSo that her way was paved, and roofed above\nWith flowers as soft as thoughts of budding love;\nAnd music from her respiration spread\nLike light,—all other sounds were penetrated                        _330\nBy the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound,\nSo that the savage winds hung mute around;\nAnd odours warm and fresh fell from her hair\nDissolving the dull cold in the frore air:\nSoft as an Incarnation of the Sun,                                   _335\nWhen light is changed to love, this glorious One\nFloated into the cavern where I lay,\nAnd called my Spirit, and the dreaming clay\nWas lifted by the thing that dreamed below\nAs smoke by fire, and in her beauty’s glow                           _340\nI stood, and felt the dawn of my long night\nWas penetrating me with living light:\nI knew it was the Vision veiled from me\nSo many years—that it was Emily.\n\nTwin Spheres of light who rule this passive Earth,                   _345\nThis world of loves, this ME; and into birth\nAwaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart\nMagnetic might into its central heart;\nAnd lift its billows and its mists, and guide\nBy everlasting laws, each wind and tide                              _350\nTo its fit cloud, and its appointed cave;\nAnd lull its storms, each in the craggy grave\nWhich was its cradle, luring to faint bowers\nThe armies of the rainbow-winged showers;\nAnd, as those married lights, which from the towers                  _355\nOf Heaven look forth and fold the wandering globe\nIn liquid sleep and splendour, as a robe;\nAnd all their many-mingled influence blend,\nIf equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end;—\nSo ye, bright regents, with alternate sway                           _360\nGovern my sphere of being, night and day!\nThou, not disdaining even a borrowed might;\nThou, not eclipsing a remoter light;\nAnd, through the shadow of the seasons three,\nFrom Spring to Autumn’s sere maturity,                               _365\nLight it into the Winter of the tomb,\nWhere it may ripen to a brighter bloom.\nThou too, O Comet beautiful and fierce,\nWho drew the heart of this frail Universe\nTowards thine own; till, wrecked in that convulsion,                 _370\nAlternating attraction and repulsion,\nThine went astray and that was rent in twain;\nOh, float into our azure heaven again!\nBe there Love’s folding-star at thy return;\nThe living Sun will feed thee from its urn                           _375\nOf golden fire; the Moon will veil her horn\nIn thy last smiles; adoring Even and Morn\nWill worship thee with incense of calm breath\nAnd lights and shadows; as the star of Death\nAnd Birth is worshipped by those sisters wild                        _380\nCalled Hope and Fear—upon the heart are piled\nTheir offerings,—of this sacrifice divine\nA World shall be the altar.\nLady mine,\nScorn not these flowers of thought, the fading birth\nWhich from its heart of hearts that plant puts forth                 _385\nWhose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny eyes,\nWill be as of the trees of Paradise.\n\nThe day is come, and thou wilt fly with me.\nTo whatsoe’er of dull mortality\nIs mine, remain a vestal sister still;                               _390\nTo the intense, the deep, the imperishable,\nNot mine but me, henceforth be thou united\nEven as a bride, delighting and delighted.\nThe hour is come:—the destined Star has risen\nWhich shall descend upon a vacant prison.                            _395\nThe walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set\nThe sentinels—but true Love never yet\nWas thus constrained: it overleaps all fence:\nLike lightning, with invisible violence\nPiercing its continents; like Heaven’s free breath,                  _400\nWhich he who grasps can hold not; liker Death,\nWho rides upon a thought, and makes his way\nThrough temple, tower, and palace, and the array\nOf arms: more strength has Love than he or they;\nFor it can burst his charnel, and make free                          _405\nThe limbs in chains, the heart in agony,\nThe soul in dust and chaos.\nEmily,\nA ship is floating in the harbour now,\nA wind is hovering o’er the mountain’s brow;\nThere is a path on the sea’s azure floor,                            _410\nNo keel has ever ploughed that path before;\nThe halcyons brood around the foamless isles;\nThe treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;\nThe merry mariners are bold and free:\nSay, my heart’s sister, wilt thou sail with me?                      _415\nOur bark is as an albatross, whose nest\nIs a far Eden of the purple East;\nAnd we between her wings will sit, while Night,\nAnd Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight,\nOur ministers, along the boundless Sea,                              _420\nTreading each other’s heels, unheededly.\nIt is an isle under Ionian skies,\nBeautiful as a wreck of Paradise,\nAnd, for the harbours are not safe and good,\nThis land would have remained a solitude                             _425\nBut for some pastoral people native there,\nWho from the Elysian, clear, and golden air\nDraw the last spirit of the age of gold,\nSimple and spirited; innocent and bold.\nThe blue Aegean girds this chosen home,                              _430\nWith ever-changing sound and light and foam,\nKissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar;\nAnd all the winds wandering along the shore\nUndulate with the undulating tide:\nThere are thick woods where sylvan forms abide;                      _435\nAnd many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,\nAs clear as elemental diamond,\nOr serene morning air; and far beyond,\nThe mossy tracks made by the goats and deer\n(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year)                    _440\nPierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls\nBuilt round with ivy, which the waterfalls\nIllumining, with sound that never fails\nAccompany the noonday nightingales;\nAnd all the place is peopled with sweet airs;                        _445\nThe light clear element which the isle wears\nIs heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,\nWhich floats like mist laden with unseen showers.\nAnd falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;\nAnd from the moss violets and jonquils peep,                         _450\nAnd dart their arrowy odour through the brain\nTill you might faint with that delicious pain.\nAnd every motion, odour, beam and tone,\nWith that deep music is in unison:\nWhich is a soul within the soul—they seem                           _455\nLike echoes of an antenatal dream.—\nIt is an isle ’twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea,\nCradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;\nBright as that wandering Eden Lucifer,\nWashed by the soft blue Oceans of young air.                         _460\nIt is a favoured place. Famine or Blight,\nPestilence, War and Earthquake, never light\nUpon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they\nSail onward far upon their fatal way:\nThe winged storms, chanting their thunder-psalm                      _465\nTo other lands, leave azure chasms of calm\nOver this isle, or weep themselves in dew,\nFrom which its fields and woods ever renew\nTheir green and golden immortality.\nAnd from the sea there rise, and from the sky                        _470\nThere fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright.\nVeil after veil, each hiding some delight,\nWhich Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside,\nTill the isle’s beauty, like a naked bride\nGlowing at once with love and loveliness,                            _475\nBlushes and trembles at its own excess:\nYet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less\nBurns in the heart of this delicious isle,\nAn atom of th’ Eternal, whose own smile\nUnfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen                            _480\nO’er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green,\nFilling their bare and void interstices.—\nBut the chief marvel of the wilderness\nIs a lone dwelling, built by whom or how\nNone of the rustic island-people know:                               _485\n’Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height\nIt overtops the woods; but, for delight,\nSome wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime\nHad been invented, in the world’s young prime,\nReared it, a wonder of that simple time,                             _490\nAn envy of the isles, a pleasure-house\nMade sacred to his sister and his spouse.\nIt scarce seems now a wreck of human art,\nBut, as it were Titanic; in the heart\nOf Earth having assumed its form, then grown                         _495\nOut of the mountains, from the living stone,\nLifting itself in caverns light and high:\nFor all the antique and learned imagery\nHas been erased, and in the place of it\nThe ivy and the wild-vine interknit                                  _500\nThe volumes of their many-twining stems;\nParasite flowers illume with dewy gems\nThe lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky\nPeeps through their winter-woof of tracery\nWith moonlight patches, or star atoms keen,                          _505\nOr fragments of the day’s intense serene;—\nWorking mosaic on their Parian floors.\nAnd, day and night, aloof, from the high towers\nAnd terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem\nTo sleep in one another’s arms, and dream                            _510\nOf waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we\nRead in their smiles, and call reality.\n\nThis isle and house are mine, and I have vowed\nThee to be lady of the solitude.—\nAnd I have fitted up some chambers there                             _515\nLooking towards the golden Eastern air,\nAnd level with the living winds, which flow\nLike waves above the living waves below.—\nI have sent books and music there, and all\nThose instruments with which high Spirits call                       _520\nThe future from its cradle, and the past\nOut of its grave, and make the present last\nIn thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die,\nFolded within their own eternity.\nOur simple life wants little, and true taste                         _525\nHires not the pale drudge Luxury, to waste\nThe scene it would adorn, and therefore still,\nNature with all her children haunts the hill.\nThe ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet\nKeeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit                          _530\nRound the evening tower, and the young stars glance\nBetween the quick bats in their twilight dance;\nThe spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight\nBefore our gate, and the slow, silent night\nIs measured by the pants of their calm sleep.                        _535\nBe this our home in life, and when years heap\nTheir withered hours, like leaves, on our decay,\nLet us become the overhanging day,\nThe living soul of this Elysian isle,\nConscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile                               _540\nWe two will rise, and sit, and walk together,\nUnder the roof of blue Ionian weather,\nAnd wander in the meadows, or ascend\nThe mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend\nWith lightest winds, to touch their paramour;                        _545\nOr linger, where the pebble-paven shore,\nUnder the quick, faint kisses of the sea\nTrembles and sparkles as with ecstasy,—\nPossessing and possessed by all that is\nWithin that calm circumference of bliss,                             _550\nAnd by each other, till to love and live\nBe one:—or, at the noontide hour, arrive\nWhere some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep\nThe moonlight of the expired night asleep,\nThrough which the awakened day can never peep;                       _555\nA veil for our seclusion, close as night’s,\nWhere secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights:\nSleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain\nWhose drops quench kisses till they burn again.\nAnd we will talk, until thought’s melody                             _560\nBecome too sweet for utterance, and it die\nIn words, to live again in looks, which dart\nWith thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,\nHarmonizing silence without a sound.\nOur breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,                         _565\nAnd our veins beat together; and our lips\nWith other eloquence than words, eclipse\nThe soul that burns between them, and the wells\nWhich boil under our being’s inmost cells,\nThe fountains of our deepest life, shall be                          _570\nConfused in Passion’s golden purity,\nAs mountain-springs under the morning sun.\nWe shall become the same, we shall be one\nSpirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?\nOne passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,                    _575\nTill like two meteors of expanding flame,\nThose spheres instinct with it become the same,\nTouch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still\nBurning, yet ever inconsumable:\nIn one another’s substance finding food,                             _580\nLike flames too pure and light and unimbued\nTo nourish their bright lives with baser prey,\nWhich point to Heaven and cannot pass away:\nOne hope within two wills, one will beneath\nTwo overshadowing minds, one life, one death,                        _585\nOne Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,\nAnd one annihilation. Woe is me!\nThe winged words on which my soul would pierce\nInto the height of Love’s rare Universe,\nAre chains of lead around its flight of fire—                       _590\nI pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!\n\n...\n\nWeak Verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign’s feet,\nAnd say:—‘We are the masters of thy slave;\nWhat wouldest thou with us and ours and thine?’\nThen call your sisters from Oblivion’s cave,                         _595\nAll singing loud: ‘Love’s very pain is sweet,\nBut its reward is in the world divine\nWhich, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.’\nSo shall ye live when I am there. Then haste\nOver the hearts of men, until ye meet                                _600\nMarina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest,\nAnd bid them love each other and be blessed:\nAnd leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,\nAnd come and be my guest,—for I am Love’s.\n\n_100 morning]morn may Rossetti cj.\n_118 of]on edition 1839.\n_405 it]he edition 1839.\n_501 many-twining]many twining editio prin. 1821.\n_504 winter-woof]inter-woof Rossetti cj.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragments Connected With Epipsychidion.",
    "body": "[Of the fragments of verse that follow, lines 1-37, 62-92 were printed\nby Mrs. Shelley in “Posthumous Works”, 1839, 2nd edition; lines 1-174\nwere printed or reprinted by Dr. Garnett in “Relics of Shelley”, 1862;\nand lines 175-186 were printed by Mr. C.D. Locock from the first draft\nof “Epipsychidion” amongst the Shelley manuscripts in the Bodleian\nLibrary. See “Examination, etc.”, 1903, pages 12, 13. The three early\ndrafts of the “Preface (Advertisement)” were printed by Mr. Locock in\nthe same volume, pages 4, 5.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Preface 1.",
    "body": "The following Poem was found amongst other papers in the Portfolio of\na young Englishman with whom the Editor had contracted an intimacy at\nFlorence, brief indeed, but sufficiently long to render the\nCatastrophe by which it terminated one of the most painful events of\nhis life.—\n\nThe literary merit of the Poem in question may not be considerable;\nbut worse verses are printed every day, &\n\nHe was an accomplished & amiable person but his error was, thuntos on\nun thunta phronein,—his fate is an additional proof that ‘The tree of\nKnowledge is not that of Life.’—He had framed to himself certain\nopinions, founded no doubt upon the truth of things, but built up to a\nBabel height; they fell by their own weight, & the thoughts that were\nhis architects, became unintelligible one to the other, as men upon\nwhom confusion of tongues has fallen.\n\n[These] verses seem to have been written as a sort of dedication of\nsome work to have been presented to the person whom they address: but\nhis papers afford no trace of such a work—The circumstances to which\n[they] the poem allude, may easily be understood by those to whom\n[the] spirit of the poem itself is [un]intelligible: a detail of\nfacts, sufficiently romantic in [themselves but] their combinations\n\nThe melancholy [task] charge of consigning the body of my poor friend\nto the grave, was committed to me by his desolated family. I caused\nhim to be buried in a spot selected by himself, & on the h",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Preface 2.",
    "body": "[Epips] T. E. V. Epipsych\nLines addressed to\nthe Noble Lady\n[Emilia] [E. V.]\nEmilia\n\n[The following Poem was found in the PF. of a young Englishman, who\ndied on his passage from Leghorn to the Levant. He had bought one of\nthe Sporades] He was accompanied by a lady [who might have been]\nsupposed to be his wife, & an effeminate looking youth, to whom he\nshewed an [attachment] so [singular] excessive an attachment as to\ngive rise to the suspicion, that she was a woman—At his death this\nsuspicion was confirmed;...object speedily found a refuge both from\nthe taunts of the brute multitude, and from the...of her grief in the\nsame grave that contained her lover.—He had bought one of the\nSporades, & fitted up a Saracenic castle which accident had preserved\nin some repair with simple elegance, & it was his intention to\ndedicate the remainder of his life to undisturbed intercourse with his\ncompanions\n\nThese verses apparently were intended as a dedication of a longer poem\nor series of poems",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Preface 3.",
    "body": "The writer of these lines died at Florence in [January 1820] while he\nwas preparing * * for one wildest of the of the Sporades, where he\nbought & fitted up the ruins of some old building—His life was\nsingular, less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which\ndiversified it, than the ideal tinge which they received from his own\ncharacter & feelings—\n\nThe verses were apparently intended by the writer to accompany some\nlonger poem or collection of poems, of which there* [are no remnants\nin his] * * * remains [in his] portfolio.—\n\nThe editor is induced to\n\nThe present poem, like the vita Nova of Dante, is sufficiently\nintelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter of fact\nhistory of the circumstances to which it relate, & to a certain other\nclass, it must & ought ever to remain incomprehensible—It was\nevidently intended to be prefixed to a longer poem or series of\npoems—but among his papers there are no traces of such a collection.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Passages Of The Poem, Or Connected Therewith.",
    "body": "Here, my dear friend, is a new book for you;\nI have already dedicated two\nTo other friends, one female and one male,—\nWhat you are, is a thing that I must veil;\nWhat can this be to those who praise or rail?                        _5\nI never was attached to that great sect\nWhose doctrine is that each one should select\nOut of the world a mistress or a friend,\nAnd all the rest, though fair and wise, commend\nTo cold oblivion—though ’tis in the code                            _10\nOf modern morals, and the beaten road\nWhich those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread\nWho travel to their home among the dead\nBy the broad highway of the world—and so\nWith one sad friend, and many a jealous foe,                         _15\nThe dreariest and the longest journey go.\n\nFree love has this, different from gold and clay,\nThat to divide is not to take away.\nLike ocean, which the general north wind breaks\nInto ten thousand waves, and each one makes                          _20\nA mirror of the moon—like some great glass,\nWhich did distort whatever form might pass,\nDashed into fragments by a playful child,\nWhich then reflects its eyes and forehead mild;\nGiving for one, which it could ne’er express,                        _25\nA thousand images of loveliness.\n\nIf I were one whom the loud world held wise,\nI should disdain to quote authorities\nIn commendation of this kind of love:—\nWhy there is first the God in heaven above,                          _30\nWho wrote a book called Nature, ’tis to be\nReviewed, I hear, in the next Quarterly;\nAnd Socrates, the Jesus Christ of Greece,\nAnd Jesus Christ Himself, did never cease\nTo urge all living things to love each other,                        _35\nAnd to forgive their mutual faults, and smother\nThe Devil of disunion in their souls.\n\n...\n\nI love you!—Listen, O embodied Ray\nOf the great Brightness; I must pass away\nWhile you remain, and these light words must be                      _40\nTokens by which you may remember me.\nStart not—the thing you are is unbetrayed,\nIf you are human, and if but the shade\nOf some sublimer spirit...\n\n...\n\nAnd as to friend or mistress, ’tis a form;                           _45\nPerhaps I wish you were one. Some declare\nYou a familiar spirit, as you are;\nOthers with a ... more inhuman\nHint that, though not my wife, you are a woman;\nWhat is the colour of your eyes and hair?                            _50\nWhy, if you were a lady, it were fair\nThe world should know—but, as I am afraid,\nThe Quarterly would bait you if betrayed;\nAnd if, as it will be sport to see them stumble\nOver all sorts of scandals. hear them mumble                         _55\nTheir litany of curses—some guess right,\nAnd others swear you’re a Hermaphrodite;\nLike that sweet marble monster of both sexes,\nWhich looks so sweet and gentle that it vexes\nThe very soul that the soul is gone                                  _60\nWhich lifted from her limbs the veil of stone.\n\n...\n\nIt is a sweet thing, friendship, a dear balm,\nA happy and auspicious bird of calm,\nWhich rides o’er life’s ever tumultuous Ocean;\nA God that broods o’er chaos in commotion;                           _65\nA flower which fresh as Lapland roses are,\nLifts its bold head into the world’s frore air,\nAnd blooms most radiantly when others die,\nHealth, hope, and youth, and brief prosperity;\nAnd with the light and odour of its bloom,                           _70\nShining within the dun eon and the tomb;\nWhose coming is as light and music are\n‘Mid dissonance and gloom—a star\nWhich moves not ‘mid the moving heavens alone—\nA smile among dark frowns—a gentle tone                             _75\nAmong rude voices, a beloved light,\nA solitude, a refuge, a delight.\nIf I had but a friend! Why, I have three\nEven by my own confession; there may be\nSome more, for what I know, for ’tis my mind                         _80\nTo call my friends all who are wise and kind,-\nAnd these, Heaven knows, at best are very few;\nBut none can ever be more dear than you.\nWhy should they be? My muse has lost her wings,\nOr like a dying swan who soars and sings,                            _85\nI should describe you in heroic style,\nBut as it is, are you not void of guile?\nA lovely soul, formed to be blessed and bless:\nA well of sealed and secret happiness;\nA lute which those whom Love has taught to play                      _90\nMake music on to cheer the roughest day,\nAnd enchant sadness till it sleeps?...\n\n...\n\nTo the oblivion whither I and thou,\nAll loving and all lovely, hasten now\nWith steps, ah, too unequal! may we meet                             _95\nIn one Elysium or one winding-sheet!\n\nIf any should be curious to discover\nWhether to you I am a friend or lover,\nLet them read Shakespeare’s sonnets, taking thence\nA whetstone for their dull intelligence                              _100\nThat tears and will not cut, or let them guess\nHow Diotima, the wise prophetess,\nInstructed the instructor, and why he\nRebuked the infant spirit of melody\nOn Agathon’s sweet lips, which as he spoke                           _105\nWas as the lovely star when morn has broke\nThe roof of darkness, in the golden dawn,\nHalf-hidden, and yet beautiful.\nI’ll pawn\nMy hopes of Heaven-you know what they are worth —\nThat the presumptuous pedagogues of Earth,                           _110\nIf they could tell the riddle offered here\nWould scorn to be, or being to appear\nWhat now they seem and are—but let them chide,\nThey have few pleasures in the world beside;\nPerhaps we should be dull were we not chidden,                       _115\nParadise fruits are sweetest when forbidden.\nFolly can season Wisdom, Hatred Love.\n\n...\n\nFarewell, if it can be to say farewell\nTo those who\n\n...\n\nI will not, as most dedicators do,                                   _120\nAssure myself and all the world and you,\nThat you are faultless—would to God they were\nWho taunt me with your love! I then should wear\nThese heavy chains of life with a light spirit,\nAnd would to God I were, or even as near it                          _125\nAs you, dear heart. Alas! what are we? Clouds\nDriven by the wind in warring multitudes,\nWhich rain into the bosom of the earth,\nAnd rise again, and in our death and birth,\nAnd through our restless life, take as from heaven                   _130\nHues which are not our own, but which are given,\nAnd then withdrawn, and with inconstant glance\nFlash from the spirit to the countenance.\nThere is a Power, a Love, a Joy, a God\nWhich makes in mortal hearts its brief abode,                        _135\nA Pythian exhalation, which inspires\nLove, only love—a wind which o’er the wires\nOf the soul’s giant harp\nThere is a mood which language faints beneath;\nYou feel it striding, as Almighty Death                              _140\nHis bloodless steed...\n\n...\n\nAnd what is that most brief and bright delight\nWhich rushes through the touch and through the sight,\nAnd stands before the spirit’s inmost throne,\nA naked Seraph? None hath ever known.                                _145\nIts birth is darkness, and its growth desire;\nUntameable and fleet and fierce as fire,\nNot to be touched but to be felt alone,\nIt fills the world with glory-and is gone.\n\n...\n\nIt floats with rainbow pinions o’er the stream                       _150\nOf life, which flows, like a ... dream\nInto the light of morning, to the grave\nAs to an ocean...\n\n...\n\nWhat is that joy which serene infancy\nPerceives not, as the hours content them by,                         _155\nEach in a chain of blossoms, yet enjoys\nThe shapes of this new world, in giant toys\nWrought by the busy ... ever new?\nRemembrance borrows Fancy’s glass, to show\nThese forms more ... sincere                                         _160\nThan now they are, than then, perhaps, they were.\nWhen everything familiar seemed to be\nWonderful, and the immortality\nOf this great world, which all things must inherit,\nWas felt as one with the awakening spirit,                           _165\nUnconscious of itself, and of the strange\nDistinctions which in its proceeding change\nIt feels and knows, and mourns as if each were\nA desolation...\n\n...\n\nWere it not a sweet refuge, Emily,                                   _170\nFor all those exiles from the dull insane\nWho vex this pleasant world with pride and pain,\nFor all that band of sister-spirits known\nTo one another by a voiceless tone?\n\n...\n\nIf day should part us night will mend division                       _175\nAnd if sleep parts us—we will meet in vision\nAnd if life parts us—we will mix in death\nYielding our mite [?] of unreluctant breath\nDeath cannot part us—we must meet again\nIn all in nothing in delight in pain:                                _180\nHow, why or when or where—it matters not\nSo that we share an undivided lot...\n\n...\n\nAnd we will move possessing and possessed\nWherever beauty on the earth’s bare [?] breast\nLies like the shadow of thy soul—till we                            _185\nBecome one being with the world we see...\n\n_52-_53 afraid The cj. A.C. Bradley.\n_54 And as cj. Rossetti, A.C. Bradley.\n_61 stone... cj. A.C. Bradley.\n_155 them]trip or troop cj. A.C. Bradley.\n_157 in]as cj. A.C. Bradley.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "An Elegy On The Death Of John Keats,",
    "body": "AUTHOR OF ENDYMION, HYPERION, ETC.\n\nAster prin men elampes eni zooisin Eoos\nnun de thanon lampeis Esperos en phthimenois.—PLATO.\n\n[“Adonais” was composed at Pisa during the early days of June, 1821,\nand printed, with the author’s name, at Pisa, ‘with the types of\nDidot,’ by July 13, 1821. Part of the impression was sent to the\nbrothers Ollier for sale in London. An exact reprint of this Pisa\nedition (a few typographical errors only being corrected) was issued\nin 1829 by Gee & Bridges, Cambridge, at the instance of Arthur Hallam\nand Richard Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton). The poem was included in\nGalignani’s edition of “Coleridge, Shelley and Keats”, Paris, 1829,\nand by Mrs. Shelley in the “Poetical Works” of 1839. Mrs. Shelley’s\ntext presents three important variations from that of the editio\nprinceps. In 1876 an edition of the “Adonais”, with Introduction and\nNotes, was printed for private circulation by Mr. H. Buxton Forman,\nC.B. Ten years later a reprint ‘in exact facsimile’ of the Pisa\nedition was edited with a Bibliographical Introduction by Mr. T.J.\nWise (“Shelley Society Publications”, 2nd Series, No. 1, Reeves &\nTurner, London, 1886). Our text is that of the editio princeps, Pisa,\n1821, modified by Mrs. Shelley’s text of 1839. The readings of the\neditio princeps, wherever superseded, are recorded in the footnotes.\nThe Editor’s Notes at the end of the Volume 3 should be consulted.]\n\n\nPharmakon elthe, Bion, poti son stoma, pharmakon eides.\npos ten tois cheilessi potesrame, kouk eglukanthe;\ntis de Brotos tossouton anameros, e kerasai toi,\ne dounai laleonti to pharmakon; ekphugen odan.\n—MOSCHUS, EPITAPH. BION.\n\nIt is my intention to subjoin to the London edition of this poem a\ncriticism upon the claims of its lamented object to be classed among\nthe writers of the highest genius who have adorned our age. My known\nrepugnance to the narrow principles of taste on which several of his\nearlier compositions were modelled prove at least that I am an\nimpartial judge. I consider the fragment of “Hyperion” as second to\nnothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years.\n\nJohn Keats died at Rome of a consumption, in his twenty-fourth year,\non the — of — 1821; and was buried in the romantic and lonely\ncemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is\nthe tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering\nand desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery\nis an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and\ndaisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one\nshould be buried in so sweet a place.\n\nThe genius of the lamented person to whose memory I have dedicated\nthese unworthy verses was not less delicate and fragile than it was\nbeautiful; and where cankerworms abound, what wonder if its young\nflower was blighted in the bud? The savage criticism on his\n“Endymion”, which appeared in the “Quarterly Review”, produced the\nmost violent effect on his susceptible mind; the agitation thus\noriginated ended in the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs; a\nrapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgements from\nmore candid critics of the true greatness of his powers were\nineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted.\n\nIt may be well said that these wretched men know not what they do.\nThey scatter their insults and their slanders without heed as to\nwhether the poisoned shaft lights on a heart made callous by many\nblows or one like Keats’s composed of more penetrable stuff. One of\ntheir associates is, to my knowledge, a most base and unprincipled\ncalumniator. As to “Endymion”, was it a poem, whatever might be its\ndefects, to be treated contemptuously by those who had celebrated,\nwith various degrees of complacency and panegyric, “Paris”, and\n“Woman”, and a “Syrian Tale”, and Mrs. Lefanu, and Mr. Barrett, and\nMr. Howard Payne, and a long list of the illustrious obscure? Are\nthese the men who in their venal good nature presumed to draw a\nparallel between the Reverend Mr. Milman and Lord Byron? What gnat did\nthey strain at here, after having swallowed all those camels? Against\nwhat woman taken in adultery dares the foremost of these literary\nprostitutes to cast his opprobrious stone? Miserable man! you, one of\nthe meanest, have wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens of the\nworkmanship of God. Nor shall it be your excuse, that, murderer as you\nare, you have spoken daggers, but used none.\n\nThe circumstances of the closing scene of poor Keats’s life were not\nmade known to me until the “Elegy” was ready for the press. I am given\nto understand that the wound which his sensitive spirit had received\nfrom the criticism of “Endymion” was exasperated by the bitter sense\nof unrequited benefits; the poor fellow seems to have been hooted from\nthe stage of life, no less by those on whom he had wasted the promise\nof his genius, than those on whom he had lavished his fortune and his\ncare. He was accompanied to Rome, and attended in his last illness by\nMr. Severn, a young artist of the highest promise, who, I have been\ninformed, ‘almost risked his own life, and sacrificed every prospect\nto unwearied attendance upon his dying friend.’ Had I known these\ncircumstances before the completion of my poem, I should have been\ntempted to add my feeble tribute of applause to the more solid\nrecompense which the virtuous man finds in the recollection of his own\nmotives. Mr. Severn can dispense with a reward from ‘such stuff as\ndreams are made of.’ His conduct is a golden augury of the success of\nhis future career—may the unextinguished Spirit of his illustrious\nfriend animate the creations of his pencil, and plead against Oblivion\nfor his name!\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Adonais.",
    "body": "I weep for Adonais—he is dead!\nO, weep for Adonais! though our tears\nThaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!\nAnd thou, sad Hour, selected from all years\nTo mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,                       _5\nAnd teach them thine own sorrow, say: “With me\nDied Adonais; till the Future dares\nForget the Past, his fate and fame shall be\nAn echo and a light unto eternity!”\n\n2.\nWhere wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,                         _10\nWhen thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies\nIn darkness? where was lorn Urania\nWhen Adonais died? With veiled eyes,\n‘Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise\nShe sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath,                     _15\nRekindled all the fading melodies,\nWith which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,\nHe had adorned and hid the coming bulk of Death.\n\n3.\nOh, weep for Adonais—he is dead!\nWake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!                              _20\nYet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed\nThy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep\nLike his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;\nFor he is gone, where all things wise and fair\nDescend;—oh, dream not that the amorous Deep                        _25\nWill yet restore him to the vital air;\nDeath feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.\n\n4.\nMost musical of mourners, weep again!\nLament anew, Urania!—He died,\nWho was the Sire of an immortal strain,                              _30\nBlind, old and lonely, when his country’s pride,\nThe priest, the slave, and the liberticide,\nTrampled and mocked with many a loathed rite\nOf lust and blood; he went, unterrified,\nInto the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite                         _35\nYet reigns o’er earth; the third among the sons of light.\n\n5.\nMost musical of mourners, weep anew!\nNot all to that bright station dared to climb;\nAnd happier they their happiness who knew,\nWhose tapers yet burn through that night of time                     _40\nIn which suns perished; others more sublime,\nStruck by the envious wrath of man or god,\nHave sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;\nAnd some yet live, treading the thorny road,\nWhich leads, through toil and hate, to Fame’s serene abode.          _45\n\n6.\nBut now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perished—\nThe nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,\nLike a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,\nAnd fed with true-love tears, instead of dew;\nMost musical of mourners, weep anew!                                 _50\nThy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last,\nThe bloom, whose petals nipped before they blew\nDied on the promise of the fruit, is waste;\nThe broken lily lies—the storm is overpast.\n\n7.\nTo that high Capital, where kingly Death                             _55\nKeeps his pale court in beauty and decay,\nHe came; and bought, with price of purest breath,\nA grave among the eternal.—Come away!\nHaste, while the vault of blue Italian day\nIs yet his fitting charnel-roof! while still                         _60\nHe lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay;\nAwake him not! surely he takes his fill\nOf deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.\n\n8.\nHe will awake no more, oh, never more!—\nWithin the twilight chamber spreads apace                            _65\nThe shadow of white Death, and at the door\nInvisible Corruption waits to trace\nHis extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;\nThe eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe\nSoothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface                        _70\nSo fair a prey, till darkness and the law\nOf change, shall o’er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.\n\n9.\nOh, weep for Adonais!—The quick Dreams,\nThe passion-winged Ministers of thought,\nWho were his flocks, whom near the living streams                    _75\nOf his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught\nThe love which was its music, wander not,—\nWander no more, from kindling brain to brain,\nBut droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot\nRound the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,                 _80\nThey ne’er will gather strength, or find a home again.\n\n10.\nAnd one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,\nAnd fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries;\n‘Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead;\nSee, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes,                         _85\nLike dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies\nA tear some Dream has loosened from his brain.’\nLost Angel of a ruined Paradise!\nShe knew not ’twas her own; as with no stain\nShe faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.                  _90\n\n11.\nOne from a lucid urn of starry dew\nWashed his light limbs as if embalming them;\nAnother clipped her profuse locks, and threw\nThe wreath upon him, like an anadem,\nWhich frozen tears instead of pearls begem;                          _95\nAnother in her wilful grief would break\nHer bow and winged reeds, as if to stem\nA greater loss with one which was more weak;\nAnd dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek.\n\n12.\nAnother Splendour on his mouth alit,                                 _100\nThat mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath\nWhich gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,\nAnd pass into the panting heart beneath\nWith lightning and with music: the damp death\nQuenched its caress upon his icy lips;                               _105\nAnd, as a dying meteor stains a wreath\nOf moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,\nIt flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse.\n\n13.\nAnd others came...Desires and Adorations,\nWinged Persuasions and veiled Destinies,                             _110\nSplendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations\nOf hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;\nAnd Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,\nAnd Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam\nOf her own dying smile instead of eyes,                              _115\nCame in slow pomp;—the moving pomp might seem\nLike pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.\n\n14.\nAll he had loved, and moulded into thought,\nFrom shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,\nLamented Adonais. Morning sought                                     _120\nHer eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,\nWet with the tears which should adorn the ground,\nDimmed the aereal eyes that kindle day;\nAfar the melancholy thunder moaned,\nPale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,                                   _125\nAnd the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.\n\n15.\nLost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,\nAnd feeds her grief with his remembered lay,\nAnd will no more reply to winds or fountains,\nOr amorous birds perched on the young green spray,                   _130\nOr herdsman’s horn, or bell at closing day;\nSince she can mimic not his lips, more dear\nThan those for whose disdain she pined away\nInto a shadow of all sounds:—a drear\nMurmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear.                _135\n\n16.\nGrief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down\nHer kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,\nOr they dead leaves; since her delight is flown,\nFor whom should she have waked the sullen year?\nTo Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear                                  _140\nNor to himself Narcissus, as to both\nThou, Adonais: wan they stand and sere\nAmid the faint companions of their youth,\nWith dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing ruth.\n\n17.\nThy spirit’s sister, the lorn nightingale                            _145\nMourns not her mate with such melodious pain;\nNot so the eagle, who like thee could scale\nHeaven, and could nourish in the sun’s domain\nHer mighty youth with morning, doth complain,\nSoaring and screaming round her empty nest,                          _150\nAs Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain\nLight on his head who pierced thy innocent breast,\nAnd scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest!\n\n18.\nAh, woe is me! Winter is come and gone,\nBut grief returns with the revolving year;                           _155\nThe airs and streams renew their joyous tone;\nThe ants, the bees, the swallows reappear;\nFresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons’ bier;\nThe amorous birds now pair in every brake,\nAnd build their mossy homes in field and brere;                      _160\nAnd the green lizard, and the golden snake,\nLike unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.\n\n19.\nThrough wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean\nA quickening life from the Earth’s heart has burst\nAs it has ever done, with change and motion,                         _165\nFrom the great morning of the world when first\nGod dawned on Chaos; in its stream immersed,\nThe lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light;\nAll baser things pant with life’s sacred thirst;\nDiffuse themselves; and spend in love’s delight,                     _170\nThe beauty and the joy of their renewed might.\n\n20.\nThe leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender,\nExhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;\nLike incarnations of the stars, when splendour\nIs changed to fragrance, they illumine death                         _175\nAnd mock the merry worm that wakes beneath;\nNought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows\nBe as a sword consumed before the sheath\nBy sightless lightning?—the intense atom glows\nA moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.                    _180\n\n21.\nAlas! that all we loved of him should be,\nBut for our grief, as if it had not been,\nAnd grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!\nWhence are we, and why are we? of what scene\nThe actors or spectators? Great and mean                             _185\nMeet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.\nAs long as skies are blue, and fields are green,\nEvening must usher night, night urge the morrow,\nMonth follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.\n\n22.\nHE will awake no more, oh, never more!                               _190\n‘Wake thou,’ cried Misery, ‘childless Mother, rise\nOut of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart’s core,\nA wound more fierce than his, with tears and sighs.’\nAnd all the Dreams that watched Urania’s eyes,\nAnd all the Echoes whom their sister’s song                          _195\nHad held in holy silence, cried: ‘Arise!’\nSwift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung,\nFrom her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung.\n\n23.\nShe rose like an autumnal Night, that springs\nOut of the East, and follows wild and drear                          _200\nThe golden Day, which, on eternal wings,\nEven as a ghost abandoning a bier,\nHad left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear\nSo struck, so roused, so rapped Urania;\nSo saddened round her like an atmosphere                             _205\nOf stormy mist; so swept her on her way\nEven to the mournful place where Adonais lay.\n\n24.\nOut of her secret Paradise she sped,\nThrough camps and cities rough with stone, and steel,\nAnd human hearts, which to her aery tread                            _210\nYielding not, wounded the invisible\nPalms of her tender feet where’er they fell:\nAnd barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they,\nRent the soft Form they never could repel,\nWhose sacred blood, like the young tears of May,                     _215\nPaved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.\n\n25.\nIn the death-chamber for a moment Death,\nShamed by the presence of that living Might,\nBlushed to annihilation, and the breath\nRevisited those lips, and Life’s pale light                          _220\nFlashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight.\n‘Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless,\nAs silent lightning leaves the starless night!\nLeave me not!’ cried Urania: her distress\nRoused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress.        _225\n\n26.\n‘Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again;\nKiss me, so long but as a kiss may live;\nAnd in my heartless breast and burning brain\nThat word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,\nWith food of saddest memory kept alive,                              _230\nNow thou art dead, as if it were a part\nOf thee, my Adonais! I would give\nAll that I am to be as thou now art!\nBut I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!\n\n27.\n‘O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,                             _235\nWhy didst thou leave the trodden paths of men\nToo soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart\nDare the unpastured dragon in his den?\nDefenceless as thou wert, oh, where was then\nWisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear?                      _240\nOr hadst thou waited the full cycle, when\nThy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere,\nThe monsters of life’s waste had fled from thee like deer.\n\n28.\n‘The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;\nThe obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead;                         _245\nThe vultures to the conqueror’s banner true\nWho feed where Desolation first has fed,\nAnd whose wings rain contagion;—how they fled,\nWhen, like Apollo, from his golden bow\nThe Pythian of the age one arrow sped                                _250\nAnd smiled!—The spoilers tempt no second blow,\nThey fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.\n\n29.\n‘The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;\nHe sets, and each ephemeral insect then\nIs gathered into death without a dawn,                               _255\nAnd the immortal stars awake again;\nSo is it in the world of living men:\nA godlike mind soars forth, in its delight\nMaking earth bare and veiling heaven, and when\nIt sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light                 _260\nLeave to its kindred lamps the spirit’s awful night.’\n\n30.\nThus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came,\nTheir garlands sere, their magic mantles rent;\nThe Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame\nOver his living head like Heaven is bent,                            _265\nAn early but enduring monument,\nCame, veiling all the lightnings of his song\nIn sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent\nThe sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,\nAnd Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue.            _270\n\n31.\nMidst others of less note, came one frail Form,\nA phantom among men; companionless\nAs the last cloud of an expiring storm\nWhose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,\nHad gazed on Nature’s naked loveliness,                              _275\nActaeon-like, and now he fled astray\nWith feeble steps o’er the world’s wilderness,\nAnd his own thoughts, along that rugged way,\nPursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.\n\n32.\nA pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift—                              _280\nA Love in desolation masked;—a Power\nGirt round with weakness;—it can scarce uplift\nThe weight of the superincumbent hour;\nIt is a dying lamp, a falling shower,\nA breaking billow;—even whilst we speak                             _285\nIs it not broken? On the withering flower\nThe killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek\nThe life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.\n\n33.\nHis head was bound with pansies overblown,\nAnd faded violets, white, and pied, and blue;                        _290\nAnd a light spear topped with a cypress cone,\nRound whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew\nYet dripping with the forest’s noonday dew,\nVibrated, as the ever-beating heart\nShook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew                    _295\nHe came the last, neglected and apart;\nA herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter’s dart.\n\n34.\nAll stood aloof, and at his partial moan\nSmiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band\nWho in another’s fate now wept his own,                              _300\nAs in the accents of an unknown land\nHe sung new sorrow; sad Urania scanned\nThe Stranger’s mien, and murmured: ‘Who art thou?’\nHe answered not, but with a sudden hand\nMade bare his branded and ensanguined brow,                          _305\nWhich was like Cain’s or Christ’s—oh! that it should be so!\n\n35.\nWhat softer voice is hushed over the dead?\nAthwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?\nWhat form leans sadly o’er the white death-bed,\nIn mockery of monumental stone,                                      _310\nThe heavy heart heaving without a moan?\nIf it be He, who, gentlest of the wise,\nTaught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one,\nLet me not vex, with inharmonious sighs,\nThe silence of that heart’s accepted sacrifice.                      _315\n\n36.\nOur Adonais has drunk poison—oh!\nWhat deaf and viperous murderer could crown\nLife’s early cup with such a draught of woe?\nThe nameless worm would now itself disown:\nIt felt, yet could escape, the magic tone                            _320\nWhose prelude held all envy, hate and wrong,\nBut what was howling in one breast alone,\nSilent with expectation of the song,\nWhose master’s hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.\n\n37.\nLive thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!                             _325\nLive! fear no heavier chastisement from me,\nThou noteless blot on a remembered name!\nBut be thyself, and know thyself to be!\nAnd ever at thy season be thou free\nTo spill the venom when thy fangs o’erflow;                          _330\nRemorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee;\nHot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow,\nAnd like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt—as now.\n\n38.\nNor let us weep that our delight is fled\nFar from these carrion kites that scream below;                      _335\nHe wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;\nThou canst not soar where he is sitting now—\nDust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow\nBack to the burning fountain whence it came,\nA portion of the Eternal, which must glow                            _340\nThrough time and change, unquenchably the same,\nWhilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.\n\n39.\nPeace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep—\nHe hath awakened from the dream of life—\n’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep                            _345\nWith phantoms an unprofitable strife,\nAnd in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife\nInvulnerable nothings.—WE decay\nLike corpses in a charnel; fear and grief\nConvulse us and consume us day by day,                               _350\nAnd cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.\n\n40.\nHe has outsoared the shadow of our night;\nEnvy and calumny and hate and pain,\nAnd that unrest which men miscall delight,\nCan touch him not and torture not again;                             _355\nFrom the contagion of the world’s slow stain\nHe is secure, and now can never mourn\nA heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;\nNor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn,\nWith sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.                         _360\n\n41.\nHe lives, he wakes—’tis Death is dead, not he;\nMourn not for Adonais.—Thou young Dawn,\nTurn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee\nThe spirit thou lamentest is not gone;\nYe caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!                            _365\nCease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air,\nWhich like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown\nO’er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare\nEven to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!\n\n42.\nHe is made one with Nature: there is heard                           _370\nHis voice in all her music, from the moan\nOf thunder, to the song of night’s sweet bird;\nHe is a presence to be felt and known\nIn darkness and in light, from herb and stone,\nSpreading itself where’er that Power may move                        _375\nWhich has withdrawn his being to its own;\nWhich wields the world with never-wearied love,\nSustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.\n\n43.\nHe is a portion of the loveliness\nWhich once he made more lovely: he doth bear                         _380\nHis part, while the one Spirit’s plastic stress\nSweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there\nAll new successions to the forms they wear;\nTorturing th’ unwilling dross that checks its flight\nTo its own likeness, as each mass may bear;                          _385\nAnd bursting in its beauty and its might\nFrom trees and beasts and men into the Heaven’s light.\n\n44.\nThe splendours of the firmament of time\nMay be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;\nLike stars to their appointed height they climb,                     _390\nAnd death is a low mist which cannot blot\nThe brightness it may veil. When lofty thought\nLifts a young heart above its mortal lair,\nAnd love and life contend in it, for what\nShall be its earthly doom, the dead live there                       _395\nAnd move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.\n\n45.\nThe inheritors of unfulfilled renown\nRose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought,\nFar in the Unapparent. Chatterton\nRose pale,—his solemn agony had not                                 _400\nYet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought\nAnd as he fell and as he lived and loved\nSublimely mild, a Spirit without spot,\nArose; and Lucan, by his death approved:\nOblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved.                  _405\n\n46.\nAnd many more, whose names on Earth are dark,\nBut whose transmitted effluence cannot die\nSo long as fire outlives the parent spark,\nRose, robed in dazzling immortality.\n‘Thou art become as one of us,’ they cry,                            _410\n‘It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long\nSwung blind in unascended majesty,\nSilent alone amid a Heaven of Song.\nAssume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!’\n\n47.\nWho mourns for Adonais? Oh, come forth,                              _415\nFond wretch! and know thyself and him aright.\nClasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth;\nAs from a centre, dart thy spirit’s light\nBeyond all worlds, until its spacious might\nSatiate the void circumference: then shrink                          _420\nEven to a point within our day and night;\nAnd keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink\nWhen hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink.\n\n48.\nOr go to Rome, which is the sepulchre,\nOh, not of him, but of our joy: ’tis nought                          _425\nThat ages, empires and religions there\nLie buried in the ravage they have wrought;\nFor such as he can lend,—they borrow not\nGlory from those who made the world their prey;\nAnd he is gathered to the kings of thought                           _430\nWho waged contention with their time’s decay,\nAnd of the past are all that cannot pass away.\n\n49.\nGo thou to Rome,—at once the Paradise,\nThe grave, the city, and the wilderness;\nAnd where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,                  _435\nAnd flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress\nThe bones of Desolation’s nakedness\nPass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead\nThy footsteps to a slope of green access\nWhere, like an infant’s smile, over the dead                         _440\nA light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;\n\n50.\nAnd gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time\nFeeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;\nAnd one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,\nPavilioning the dust of him who planned                              _445\nThis refuge for his memory, doth stand\nLike flame transformed to marble; and beneath,\nA field is spread, on which a newer band\nHave pitched in Heaven’s smile their camp of death,\nWelcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.               _450\n\n51.\nHere pause: these graves are all too young as yet\nTo have outgrown the sorrow which consigned\nIts charge to each; and if the seal is set,\nHere, on one fountain of a mourning mind,\nBreak it not thou! too surely shalt thou find\nThine own well full, if thou returnest home,\nOf tears and gall. From the world’s bitter wind\nSeek shelter in the shadow of the tomb.\nWhat Adonais is, why fear we to become?\n\n52.\nThe One remains, the many change and pass;\nHeaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;\nLife, like a dome of many-coloured glass,\nStains the white radiance of Eternity,\nUntil Death tramples it to fragments.—Die,\nIf thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!\nFollow where all is fled!—Rome’s azure sky,\nFlowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak\nThe glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.\n\n53.\nWhy linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart?\nThy hopes are gone before: from all things here\nThey have departed; thou shouldst now depart!\nA light is passed from the revolving year,\nAnd man, and woman; and what still is dear\nAttracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.\nThe soft sky smiles,—the low wind whispers near:\n’Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither,\nNo more let Life divide what Death can join together.\n\n54.\nThat Light whose smile kindles the Universe,\nThat Beauty in which all things work and move,\nThat Benediction which the eclipsing Curse\nOf birth can quench not, that sustaining Love\nWhich through the web of being blindly wove\nBy man and beast and earth and air and sea,\nBurns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of\nThe fire for which all thirst; now beams on me,\nConsuming the last clouds of cold mortality.\n\n55.\nThe breath whose might I have invoked in song\nDescends on me; my spirit’s bark is driven,\nFar from the shore, far from the trembling throng\nWhose sails were never to the tempest given;\nThe massy earth and sphered skies are riven!\nI am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;\nWhilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,\nThe soul of Adonais, like a star,\nBeacons from the abode where the Eternal are.                        _495\n\n_49 true-love]true love editions 1821, 1839.\n_72 Of change, etc. so editions 1829 (Galignani), 1839;\n    Of mortal change, shall fill the grave which is her maw edition 1821.\n_81 or edition 1821; nor edition 1839.\n_105 his edition 1821; its edition 1839.\n_126 round edition 1821; around edition 1839.\n_143 faint companions edition 1839; drooping comrades edition 1821.\n_204 See Editor’s Note.\n_252 lying low edition 1839; as they go edition 1821.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Passages Of The Preface.",
    "body": "...the expression of my indignation and sympathy. I will allow myself\na first and last word on the subject of calumny as it relates to me.\nAs an author I have dared and invited censure. If I understand myself,\nI have written neither for profit nor for fame. I have employed my\npoetical compositions and publications simply as the instruments of\nthat sympathy between myself and others which the ardent and unbounded\nlove I cherished for my kind incited me to acquire. I expected all\nsorts of stupidity and insolent contempt from those...\n\n...These compositions (excepting the tragedy of “The Cenci”, which was\nwritten rather to try my powers than to unburthen my full heart) are\ninsufficiently...commendation than perhaps they deserve, even from\ntheir bitterest enemies; but they have not attained any corresponding\npopularity. As a man, I shrink from notice and regard; the ebb and\nflow of the world vexes me; I desire to be left in peace. Persecution,\ncontumely, and calumny have been heaped upon me in profuse measure;\nand domestic conspiracy and legal oppression have violated in my\nperson the most sacred rights of nature and humanity. The bigot will\nsay it was the recompense of my errors; the man of the world will call\nit the result of my imprudence; but never upon one head...\n\n...Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and\nmalignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thieftaker in despair, so an\nunsuccessful author turns critic. But a young spirit panting for fame,\ndoubtful of its powers, and certain only of its aspirations, is ill\nqualified to assign its true value to the sneer of this world. He\nknows not that such stuff as this is of the abortive and monstrous\nbirths which time consumes as fast as it produces. He sees the truth\nand falsehood, the merits and demerits, of his case inextricably\nentangled...No personal offence should have drawn from me this public\ncomment upon such stuff...\n\n...The offence of this poor victim seems to have consisted solely in\nhis intimacy with Leigh Hunt, Mr. Hazlitt, and some other enemies of\ndespotism and superstition. My friend Hunt has a very hard skull to\ncrack, and will take a deal of killing. I do not know much of Mr.\nHazlitt, but...\n\n...I knew personally but little of Keats; but on the news of his\nsituation I wrote to him, suggesting the propriety of trying the\nItalian climate, and inviting him to join me. Unfortunately he did not\nallow me...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Passages Of The Poem.",
    "body": "And ever as he went he swept a lyre\nOf unaccustomed shape, and ... strings\nNow like the ... of impetuous fire,\nWhich shakes the forest with its murmurings,\nNow like the rush of the aereal wings                                _5\nOf the enamoured wind among the treen,\nWhispering unimaginable things,\nAnd dying on the streams of dew serene,\nWhich feed the unmown meads with ever-during green.\n\n...\n\nAnd the green Paradise which western waves                           _10\nEmbosom in their ever-wailing sweep,\nTalking of freedom to their tongueless caves,\nOr to the spirits which within them keep\nA record of the wrongs which, though they sleep,\nDie not, but dream of retribution, heard                             _15\nHis hymns, and echoing them from steep to steep,\nKept—\n\n...\n\nAnd then came one of sweet and earnest looks,\nWhose soft smiles to his dark and night-like eyes\nWere as the clear and ever-living brooks                             _20\nAre to the obscure fountains whence they rise,\nShowing how pure they are: a Paradise\nOf happy truth upon his forehead low\nLay, making wisdom lovely, in the guise\nOf earth-awakening morn upon the brow                                _25\nOf star-deserted heaven, while ocean gleams below.\n\nHis song, though very sweet, was low and faint,\nA simple strain—\n\n...\n\nA mighty Phantasm, half concealed\nIn darkness of his own exceeding light,                              _30\nWhich clothed his awful presence unrevealed,\nCharioted on the ... night\nOf thunder-smoke, whose skirts were chrysolite.\n\nAnd like a sudden meteor, which outstrips\nThe splendour-winged chariot of the sun,                             _35\n... eclipse\nThe armies of the golden stars, each one\nPavilioned in its tent of light—all strewn\nOver the chasms of blue night—\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mantis Eim Ezthlon Agonun.—Oedip. Colon.",
    "body": "[“Hellas” was composed at Pisa in the autumn of 1821, and dispatched\nto London, November 11. It was published, with the author’s name, by\nC. & J. Ollier in the spring of 1822. A transcript of the poem by\nEdward Williams is in the Rowfant Library. Ollier availed himself of\nShelley’s permission to cancel certain passages in the notes; he also\nstruck out certain lines of the text. These omissions were, some of\nthem, restored in Galignani’s one-volume edition of “Coleridge,\nShelley and Keats”, Paris, 1829, and also by Mrs. Shelley in the\n“Poetical Works”, 1839. A passage in the “Preface”, suppressed by\nOllier, was restored by Mr. Buxton Forman (1892) from a proof copy of\n“Hellas” in his possession. The “Prologue to Hellas” was edited by Dr.\nGarnett in 1862 (“Relics of Shelley”) from the manuscripts at Boscombe\nManor.\n\nOur text is that of the editio princeps, 1822, corrected by a list of\n“Errata” sent by Shelley to Ollier, April 11, 1822. The Editor’s Notes\nat the end of Volume 3 should be consulted.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Author.",
    "body": "Pisa, November 1, 1821.\n\n\n\nThe poem of “Hellas”, written at the suggestion of the events of the\nmoment, is a mere improvise, and derives its interest (should it be\nfound to possess any) solely from the intense sympathy which the\nAuthor feels with the cause he would celebrate.\n\nThe subject, in its present state, is insusceptible of being treated\notherwise than lyrically, and if I have called this poem a drama from\nthe circumstance of its being composed in dialogue, the licence is not\ngreater than that which has been assumed by other poets who have\ncalled their productions epics, only because they have been divided\ninto twelve or twenty-four books.\n\nThe “Persae” of Aeschylus afforded me the first model of my\nconception, although the decision of the glorious contest now waging\nin Greece being yet suspended forbids a catastrophe parallel to the\nreturn of Xerxes and the desolation of the Persians. I have,\ntherefore, contented myself with exhibiting a series of lyric\npictures, and with having wrought upon the curtain of futurity, which\nfalls upon the unfinished scene, such figures of indistinct and\nvisionary delineation as suggest the final triumph of the Greek cause\nas a portion of the cause of civilisation and social improvement.\n\nThe drama (if drama it must be called) is, however, so inartificial\nthat I doubt whether, if recited on the Thespian waggon to an Athenian\nvillage at the Dionysiaca, it would have obtained the prize of the\ngoat. I shall bear with equanimity any punishment, greater than the\nloss of such a reward, which the Aristarchi of the hour may think fit\nto inflict.\n\nThe only “goat-song” which I have yet attempted has, I confess, in\nspite of the unfavourable nature of the subject, received a greater\nand a more valuable portion of applause than I expected or than it\ndeserved.\n\nCommon fame is the only authority which I can allege for the details\nwhich form the basis of the poem, and I must trespass upon the\nforgiveness of my readers for the display of newspaper erudition to\nwhich I have been reduced. Undoubtedly, until the conclusion of the\nwar, it will be impossible to obtain an account of it sufficiently\nauthentic for historical materials; but poets have their privilege,\nand it is unquestionable that actions of the most exalted courage have\nbeen performed by the Greeks—that they have gained more than one\nnaval victory, and that their defeat in Wallachia was signalized by\ncircumstances of heroism more glorious even than victory.\n\nThe apathy of the rulers of the civilised world to the astonishing\ncircumstance of the descendants of that nation to which they owe their\ncivilisation, rising as it were from the ashes of their ruin, is\nsomething perfectly inexplicable to a mere spectator of the shows of\nthis mortal scene. We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our\nreligion, our arts have their root in Greece. But for Greece—Rome,\nthe instructor, the conqueror, or the metropolis of our ancestors,\nwould have spread no illumination with her arms, and we might still\nhave been savages and idolaters; or, what is worse, might have arrived\nat such a stagnant and miserable state of social institution as China\nand Japan possess.\n\nThe human form and the human mind attained to a perfection in Greece\nwhich has impressed its image on those faultless productions, whose\nvery fragments are the despair of modern art, and has propagated\nimpulses which cannot cease, through a thousand channels of manifest\nor imperceptible operation, to ennoble and delight mankind until the\nextinction of the race.\n\nThe modern Greek is the descendant of those glorious beings whom the\nimagination almost refuses to figure to itself as belonging to our\nkind, and he inherits much of their sensibility, their rapidity of\nconception, their enthusiasm, and their courage. If in many instances\nhe is degraded by moral and political slavery to the practice of the\nbasest vices it engenders—and that below the level of ordinary\ndegradation—let us reflect that the corruption of the best produces\nthe worst, and that habits which subsist only in relation to a\npeculiar state of social institution may be expected to cease as soon\nas that relation is dissolved. In fact, the Greeks, since the\nadmirable novel of Anastasius could have been a faithful picture of\ntheir manners, have undergone most important changes; the flower of\ntheir youth, returning to their country from the universities of\nItaly, Germany, and France, have communicated to their fellow-citizens\nthe latest results of that social perfection of which their ancestors\nwere the original source. The University of Chios contained before the\nbreaking out of the revolution eight hundred students, and among them\nseveral Germans and Americans. The munificence and energy of many of\nthe Greek princes and merchants, directed to the renovation of their\ncountry with a spirit and a wisdom which has few examples, is above\nall praise.\n\nThe English permit their own oppressors to act according to their\nnatural sympathy with the Turkish tyrant, and to brand upon their name\nthe indelible blot of an alliance with the enemies of domestic\nhappiness, of Christianity and civilisation.\n\nRussia desires to possess, not to liberate Greece; and is contented to\nsee the Turks, its natural enemies, and the Greeks, its intended\nslaves, enfeeble each other until one or both fall into its net. The\nwise and generous policy of England would have consisted in\nestablishing the independence of Greece, and in maintaining it both\nagainst Russia and the Turk;—but when was the oppressor generous or\njust?\n\n[Should the English people ever become free, they will reflect upon\nthe part which those who presume to represent their will have played\nin the great drama of the revival of liberty, with feelings which it\nwould become them to anticipate. This is the age of the war of the\noppressed against the oppressors, and every one of those ringleaders\nof the privileged gangs of murderers and swindlers, called Sovereigns,\nlook to each other for aid against the common enemy, and suspend their\nmutual jealousies in the presence of a mightier fear. Of this holy\nalliance all the despots of the earth are virtual members. But a new\nrace has arisen throughout Europe, nursed in the abhorrence of the\nopinions which are its chains, and she will continue to produce fresh\ngenerations to accomplish that destiny which tyrants foresee and\ndread. (This paragraph, suppressed in 1822 by Charles Ollier, was\nfirst restored in 1892 by Mr. Buxton Forman [“Poetical Works of P. B.\nS.”, volume 4 pages 40-41] from a proof copy of Hellas in his\npossession.]\n\nThe Spanish Peninsula is already free. France is tranquil in the\nenjoyment of a partial exemption from the abuses which its unnatural\nand feeble government are vainly attempting to revive. The seed of\nblood and misery has been sown in Italy, and a more vigorous race is\narising to go forth to the harvest. The world waits only the news of a\nrevolution of Germany to see the tyrants who have pinnacled themselves\non its supineness precipitated into the ruin from which they shall\nnever arise. Well do these destroyers of mankind know their enemy,\nwhen they impute the insurrection in Greece to the same spirit before\nwhich they tremble throughout the rest of Europe, and that enemy well\nknows the power and the cunning of its opponents, and watches the\nmoment of their approaching weakness and inevitable division to wrest\nthe bloody sceptres from their grasp.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Herald Of Eternity:",
    "body": "It is the day when all the sons of God\nWait in the roofless senate-house, whose floor\nIs Chaos, and the immovable abyss\nFrozen by His steadfast word to hyaline\n\n...\n\nThe shadow of God, and delegate                                      _5\nOf that before whose breath the universe\nIs as a print of dew.\nHierarchs and kings\nWho from your thrones pinnacled on the past\nSway the reluctant present, ye who sit\nPavilioned on the radiance or the gloom                              _10\nOf mortal thought, which like an exhalation\nSteaming from earth, conceals the ... of heaven\nWhich gave it birth. ... assemble here\nBefore your Father’s throne; the swift decree\nYet hovers, and the fiery incarnation                                _15\nIs yet withheld, clothed in which it shall\nannul\nThe fairest of those wandering isles that gem\nThe sapphire space of interstellar air,\nThat green and azure sphere, that earth enwrapped                    _20\nLess in the beauty of its tender light\nThan in an atmosphere of living spirit\nWhich interpenetrating all the ...\nit rolls from realm to realm\nAnd age to age, and in its ebb and flow                              _25\nImpels the generations\nTo their appointed place,\nWhilst the high Arbiter\nBeholds the strife, and at the appointed time\nSends His decrees veiled in eternal...                               _30\n\nWithin the circuit of this pendent orb\nThere lies an antique region, on which fell\nThe dews of thought in the world’s golden dawn\nEarliest and most benign, and from it sprung\nTemples and cities and immortal forms                                _35\nAnd harmonies of wisdom and of song,\nAnd thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair.\nAnd when the sun of its dominion failed,\nAnd when the winter of its glory came,\nThe winds that stripped it bare blew on and swept                    _40\nThat dew into the utmost wildernesses\nIn wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed\nThe unmaternal bosom of the North.\nHaste, sons of God, ... for ye beheld,\nReluctant, or consenting, or astonished,                             _45\nThe stern decrees go forth, which heaped on Greece\nRuin and degradation and despair.\nA fourth now waits: assemble, sons of God,\nTo speed or to prevent or to suspend,\nIf, as ye dream, such power be not withheld,                         _50\nThe unaccomplished destiny.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "The curtain of the Universe\nIs rent and shattered,\nThe splendour-winged worlds disperse\nLike wild doves scattered.                                           _55\n\nSpace is roofless and bare,\nAnd in the midst a cloudy shrine,\nDark amid thrones of light.\nIn the blue glow of hyaline\nGolden worlds revolve and shine.                                     _60\nIn ... flight\nFrom every point of the Infinite,\nLike a thousand dawns on a single night\nThe splendours rise and spread;\nAnd through thunder and darkness dread                               _65\nLight and music are radiated,\nAnd in their pavilioned chariots led\nBy living wings high overhead\nThe giant Powers move,\nGloomy or bright as the thrones they fill.                           _70\n\n...\n\nA chaos of light and motion\nUpon that glassy ocean.\n\n...\n\nThe senate of the Gods is met,\nEach in his rank and station set;\nThere is silence in the spaces—                                     _75\nLo! Satan, Christ, and Mahomet\nStart from their places!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Christ:",
    "body": "Almighty Father!\nLow-kneeling at the feet of Destiny\n\n...\n\nThere are two fountains in which spirits weep                        _80\nWhen mortals err, Discord and Slavery named,\nAnd with their bitter dew two Destinies\nFilled each their irrevocable urns; the third\nFiercest and mightiest, mingled both, and added\nChaos and Death, and slow Oblivion’s lymph,                          _85\nAnd hate and terror, and the poisoned rain\n\n...\n\nThe Aurora of the nations. By this brow\nWhose pores wept tears of blood, by these wide wounds,\nBy this imperial crown of agony,\nBy infamy and solitude and death,                                    _90\nFor this I underwent, and by the pain\nOf pity for those who would ... for me\nThe unremembered joy of a revenge,\nFor this I felt—by Plato’s sacred light,\nOf which my spirit was a burning morrow—                            _95\nBy Greece and all she cannot cease to be.\nHer quenchless words, sparks of immortal truth,\nStars of all night—her harmonies and forms,\nEchoes and shadows of what Love adores\nIn thee, I do compel thee, send forth Fate,                          _100\nThy irrevocable child: let her descend,\nA seraph-winged Victory [arrayed]\nIn tempest of the omnipotence of God\nWhich sweeps through all things.\n\nFrom hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms                         _105\nAdverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies\nTo stamp, as on a winged serpent’s seed,\nUpon the name of Freedom; from the storm\nOf faction, which like earthquake shakes and sickens\nThe solid heart of enterprise; from all                              _110\nBy which the holiest dreams of highest spirits\nAre stars beneath the dawn...\nShe shall arise\nVictorious as the world arose from Chaos!\nAnd as the Heavens and the Earth arrayed\nTheir presence in the beauty and the light                           _115\nOf Thy first smile, O Father,—as they gather\nThe spirit of Thy love which paves for them\nTheir path o’er the abyss, till every sphere\nShall be one living Spirit,—so shall Greece—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Satan:",
    "body": "Be as all things beneath the empyrean,                               _120\nMine! Art thou eyeless like old Destiny,\nThou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns?\nWhose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed\nWhich pierces thee! whose throne a chair of scorn;\nFor seest thou not beneath this crystal floor                        _125\nThe innumerable worlds of golden light\nWhich are my empire, and the least of them\nwhich thou wouldst redeem from me?\nKnow’st thou not them my portion?\nOr wouldst rekindle the ... strife                                   _130\nWhich our great Father then did arbitrate\nWhich he assigned to his competing sons\nEach his apportioned realm?\nThou Destiny,\nThou who art mailed in the omnipotence\nOf Him who tends thee forth, whate’er thy task,                      _135\nSpeed, spare not to accomplish, and be mine\nThy trophies, whether Greece again become\nThe fountain in the desert whence the earth\nShall drink of freedom, which shall give it strength\nTo suffer, or a gulf of hollow death                                 _140\nTo swallow all delight, all life, all hope.\nGo, thou Vicegerent of my will, no less\nThan of the Father’s; but lest thou shouldst faint,\nThe winged hounds, Famine and Pestilence,\nShall wait on thee, the hundred-forked snake                         _145\nInsatiate Superstition still shall...\nThe earth behind thy steps, and War shall hover\nAbove, and Fraud shall gape below, and Change\nShall flit before thee on her dragon wings,\nConvulsing and consuming, and I add                                  _150\nThree vials of the tears which daemons weep\nWhen virtuous spirits through the gate of Death\nPass triumphing over the thorns of life,\nSceptres and crowns, mitres and swords and snares,\nTrampling in scorn, like Him and Socrates.                           _155\nThe first is Anarchy; when Power and Pleasure,\nGlory and science and security,\nOn Freedom hang like fruit on the green tree,\nThen pour it forth, and men shall gather ashes.\nThe second Tyranny—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Christ:",
    "body": "Obdurate spirit!                                                     _160\nThou seest but the Past in the To-come.\nPride is thy error and thy punishment.\nBoast not thine empire, dream not that thy worlds\nAre more than furnace-sparks or rainbow-drops\nBefore the Power that wields and kindles them.                       _165\nTrue greatness asks not space, true excellence\nLives in the Spirit of all things that live,\nWhich lends it to the worlds thou callest thine.\n\n...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mahomet:",
    "body": "...Haste thou and fill the waning crescent\nWith beams as keen as those which pierced the shadow                 _170\nOf Christian night rolled back upon the West,\nWhen the orient moon of Islam rode in triumph\nFrom Tmolus to the Acroceraunian snow.\n\n...\n\nWake, thou Word\nOf God, and from the throne of Destiny                               _175\nEven to the utmost limit of thy way\nMay Triumph\n\n...\n\nBe thou a curse on them whose creed\nDivides and multiplies the most high God.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus Of Greek Captive Women:",
    "body": "We strew these opiate flowers\nOn thy restless pillow,—\nThey were stripped from Orient bowers,\nBy the Indian billow.\nBe thy sleep                                                         _5\nCalm and deep,\nLike theirs who fell—not ours who weep!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Indian:",
    "body": "Away, unlovely dreams!\nAway, false shapes of sleep\nBe his, as Heaven seems,                                             _10\nClear, and bright, and deep!\nSoft as love, and calm as death,\nSweet as a summer night without a breath.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "Sleep, sleep! our song is laden\nWith the soul of slumber;                                            _15\nIt was sung by a Samian maiden,\nWhose lover was of the number\nWho now keep\nThat calm sleep\nWhence none may wake, where none shall weep.                         _20",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Indian:",
    "body": "I touch thy temples pale!\nI breathe my soul on thee!\nAnd could my prayers avail,\nAll my joy should be\nDead, and I would live to weep,                                      _25\nSo thou mightst win one hour of quiet sleep.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "Breathe low, low\nThe spell of the mighty mistress now!\nWhen Conscience lulls her sated snake,\nAnd Tyrants sleep, let Freedom wake.                                 _30\nBreathe low—low\nThe words which, like secret fire, shall flow\nThrough the veins of the frozen earth—low, low!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "In the great morning of the world,\nThe Spirit of God with might unfurled\nThe flag of Freedom over Chaos,\nAnd all its banded anarchs fled,\nLike vultures frighted from Imaus,                                   _50\nBefore an earthquake’s tread.—\nSo from Time’s tempestuous dawn\nFreedom’s splendour burst and shone:—\nThermopylae and Marathon\nCaught like mountains beacon-lighted,                                _55\nThe springing Fire.—The winged glory\nOn Philippi half-alighted,\nLike an eagle on a promontory.\nIts unwearied wings could fan\nThe quenchless ashes of Milan.                                       _60\nFrom age to age, from man to man,\nIt lived; and lit from land to land\nFlorence, Albion, Switzerland.\n\nThen night fell; and, as from night,\nReassuming fiery flight,                                             _65\nFrom the West swift Freedom came,\nAgainst the course of Heaven and doom.\nA second sun arrayed in flame,\nTo burn, to kindle, to illume.\nFrom far Atlantis its young beams                                    _70\nChased the shadows and the dreams.\nFrance, with all her sanguine steams,\nHid, but quenched it not; again\nThrough clouds its shafts of glory rain\nFrom utmost Germany to Spain.                                        _75\nAs an eagle fed with morning\nScorns the embattled tempest’s warning,\nWhen she seeks her aerie hanging\nIn the mountain-cedar’s hair,\nAnd her brood expect the clanging                                    _80\nOf her wings through the wild air,\nSick with famine:—Freedom, so\nTo what of Greece remaineth now\nReturns; her hoary ruins glow\nLike Orient mountains lost in day;                                   _85\nBeneath the safety of her wings\nHer renovated nurslings prey,\nAnd in the naked lightenings\nOf truth they purge their dazzled eyes.\nLet Freedom leave—where’er she flies,                               _90\nA Desert, or a Paradise:\nLet the beautiful and the brave\nShare her glory, or a grave.\n\n_77 tempest’s]tempests edition 1822.\n_87 prey edition 1822; play editions 1839.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mahmud [Starting From His Sleep]:",
    "body": "Man the Seraglio-guard! make fast the gate!\nWhat! from a cannonade of three short hours?                         _115\n’Tis false! that breach towards the Bosphorus\nCannot be practicable yet—who stirs?\nStand to the match; that when the foe prevails\nOne spark may mix in reconciling ruin\nThe conqueror and the conquered! Heave the tower                     _120\nInto the gap—wrench off the roof!\n[ENTER HASSAN.]\nHa! what!\nThe truth of day lightens upon my dream\nAnd I am Mahmud still.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mahmud:",
    "body": "The times do cast strange shadows\nOn those who watch and who must rule their course,                   _125\nLest they, being first in peril as in glory,\nBe whelmed in the fierce ebb:—and these are of them.\nThrice has a gloomy vision hunted me\nAs thus from sleep into the troubled day;\nIt shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea,                          _130\nLeaving no figure upon memory’s glass.\nWould that—no matter. Thou didst say thou knewest\nA Jew, whose spirit is a chronicle\nOf strange and secret and forgotten things.\nI bade thee summon him:—’tis said his tribe                         _135\nDream, and are wise interpreters of dreams.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hassan:",
    "body": "The Jew of whom I spake is old,—so old\nHe seems to have outlived a world’s decay;\nThe hoary mountains and the wrinkled ocean\nSeem younger still than he;—his hair and beard                      _140\nAre whiter than the tempest-sifted snow;\nHis cold pale limbs and pulseless arteries\nAre like the fibres of a cloud instinct\nWith light, and to the soul that quickens them\nAre as the atoms of the mountain-drift                               _145\nTo the winter wind:—but from his eye looks forth\nA life of unconsumed thought which pierces\nThe Present, and the Past, and the To-come.\nSome say that this is he whom the great prophet\nJesus, the son of Joseph, for his mockery,                           _150\nMocked with the curse of immortality.\nSome feign that he is Enoch: others dream\nHe was pre-adamite and has survived\nCycles of generation and of ruin.\nThe sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinence                           _155\nAnd conquering penance of the mutinous flesh,\nDeep contemplation, and unwearied study,\nIn years outstretched beyond the date of man,\nMay have attained to sovereignty and science\nOver those strong and secret things and thoughts                     _160\nWhich others fear and know not.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hassan:",
    "body": "Thy will is even now\nMade known to him, where he dwells in a sea-cavern\n‘Mid the Demonesi, less accessible\nThan thou or God! He who would question him                          _165\nMust sail alone at sunset, where the stream\nOf Ocean sleeps around those foamless isles,\nWhen the young moon is westering as now,\nAnd evening airs wander upon the wave;\nAnd when the pines of that bee-pasturing isle,                       _170\nGreen Erebinthus, quench the fiery shadow\nOf his gilt prow within the sapphire water,\nThen must the lonely helmsman cry aloud\n‘Ahasuerus!’ and the caverns round\nWill answer ‘Ahasuerus!’ If his prayer                               _175\nBe granted, a faint meteor will arise\nLighting him over Marmora, and a wind\nWill rush out of the sighing pine-forest,\nAnd with the wind a storm of harmony\nUnutterably sweet, and pilot him                                     _180\nThrough the soft twilight to the Bosphorus:\nThence at the hour and place and circumstance\nFit for the matter of their conference\nThe Jew appears. Few dare, and few who dare\nWin the desired communion—but that shout                            _185\nBodes—\n\n[A SHOUT WITHIN.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mahmud:",
    "body": "When the omnipotent hour to which are yoked\nHe, I, and all things shall compel—enough!                          _190\nSilence those mutineers—that drunken crew,\nThat crowd about the pilot in the storm.\nAy! strike the foremost shorter by a head!\nThey weary me, and I have need of rest.\nKinks are like stars—they rise and set, they have                   _195\nThe worship of the world, but no repose.\n\n[EXEUNT SEVERALLY.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "Worlds on worlds are rolling ever\nFrom creation to decay,\nLike the bubbles on a river\nSparkling, bursting, borne away.                                     _200\nBut they are still immortal\nWho, through birth’s orient portal\nAnd death’s dark chasm hurrying to and fro,\nClothe their unceasing flight\nIn the brief dust and light                                          _205\nGathered around their chariots as they go;\nNew shapes they still may weave,\nNew gods, new laws receive,\nBright or dim are they as the robes they last\nOn Death’s bare ribs had cast.                                       _210\n\nA power from the unknown God,\nA Promethean conqueror, came;\nLike a triumphal path he trod\nThe thorns of death and shame.\nA mortal shape to him                                                _215\nWas like the vapour dim\nWhich the orient planet animates with light;\nHell, Sin, and Slavery came,\nLike bloodhounds mild and tame,\nNor preyed, until their Lord had taken flight;                       _220\nThe moon of Mahomet\nArose, and it shall set:\nWhile blazoned as on Heaven’s immortal noon\nThe cross leads generations on.\n\nSwift as the radiant shapes of sleep                                 _225\nFrom one whose dreams are Paradise\nFly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep,\nAnd Day peers forth with her blank eyes;\nSo fleet, so faint, so fair,\nThe Powers of earth and air                                          _230\nFled from the folding-star of Bethlehem:\nApollo, Pan, and Love,\nAnd even Olympian Jove\nGrew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them;\nOur hills and seas and streams,                                      _235\nDispeopled of their dreams,\nTheir waters turned to blood, their dew to tears,\nWailed for the golden years.\n\n[ENTER MAHMUD, HASSAN, DAOOD, AND OTHERS.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mahmud:",
    "body": "Go! bid them pay themselves\nWith Christian blood! Are there no Grecian virgins\nWhose shrieks and spasms and tears they may enjoy?\nNo infidel children to impale on spears?\nNo hoary priests after that Patriarch                                _245\nWho bent the curse against his country’s heart,\nWhich clove his own at last? Go! bid them kill,\nBlood is the seed of gold.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mahmud:",
    "body": "Then, take this signet,                                              _250\nUnlock the seventh chamber in which lie\nThe treasures of victorious Solyman,—\nAn empire’s spoil stored for a day of ruin.\nO spirit of my sires! is it not come?\nThe prey-birds and the wolves are gorged and sleep;                  _255\nBut these, who spread their feast on the red earth,\nHunger for gold, which fills not.—See them fed;\nThen, lead them to the rivers of fresh death.\n[EXIT DAOOD.]\nO miserable dawn, after a night\nMore glorious than the day which it usurped!                         _260\nO faith in God! O power on earth! O word\nOf the great prophet, whose o’ershadowing wings\nDarkened the thrones and idols of the West,\nNow bright!—For thy sake cursed be the hour,\nEven as a father by an evil child,                                   _265\nWhen the orient moon of Islam rolled in triumph\nFrom Caucasus to White Ceraunia!\nRuin above, and anarchy below;\nTerror without, and treachery within;\nThe Chalice of destruction full, and all                             _270\nThirsting to drink; and who among us dares\nTo dash it from his lips? and where is Hope?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hassan:",
    "body": "The lamp of our dominion still rides high;\nOne God is God—Mahomet is His prophet.\nFour hundred thousand Moslems, from the limits                       _275\nOf utmost Asia, irresistibly\nThrong, like full clouds at the Sirocco’s cry;\nBut not like them to weep their strength in tears:\nThey bear destroying lightning, and their step\nWakes earthquake to consume and overwhelm,                           _280\nAnd reign in ruin. Phrygian Olympus,\nTmolus, and Latmos, and Mycale, roughen\nWith horrent arms; and lofty ships even now,\nLike vapours anchored to a mountain’s edge,\nFreighted with fire and whirlwind, wait at Scala                     _285\nThe convoy of the ever-veering wind.\nSamos is drunk with blood;—the Greek has paid\nBrief victory with swift loss and long despair.\nThe false Moldavian serfs fled fast and far\nWhen the fierce shout of ‘Allah-illa-Allah!’                         _290\nRose like the war-cry of the northern wind\nWhich kills the sluggish clouds, and leaves a flock\nOf wild swans struggling with the naked storm.\nSo were the lost Greeks on the Danube’s day!\nIf night is mute, yet the returning sun                              _295\nKindles the voices of the morning birds;\nNor at thy bidding less exultingly\nThan birds rejoicing in the golden day,\nThe Anarchies of Africa unleash\nTheir tempest-winged cities of the sea,                              _300\nTo speak in thunder to the rebel world.\nLike sulphurous clouds, half-shattered by the storm,\nThey sweep the pale Aegean, while the Queen\nOf Ocean, bound upon her island-throne,\nFar in the West, sits mourning that her sons                         _305\nWho frown on Freedom spare a smile for thee:\nRussia still hovers, as an eagle might\nWithin a cloud, near which a kite and crane\nHang tangled in inextricable fight,\nTo stoop upon the victor;—for she fears                             _310\nThe name of Freedom, even as she hates thine.\nBut recreant Austria loves thee as the Grave\nLoves Pestilence, and her slow dogs of war\nFleshed with the chase, come up from Italy,\nAnd howl upon their limits; for they see                             _315\nThe panther, Freedom, fled to her old cover,\nAmid seas and mountains, and a mightier brood\nCrouch round. What Anarch wears a crown or mitre,\nOr bears the sword, or grasps the key of gold,\nWhose friends are not thy friends, whose foes thy foes?              _320\nOur arsenals and our armouries are full;\nOur forts defy assault; ten thousand cannon\nLie ranged upon the beach, and hour by hour\nTheir earth-convulsing wheels affright the city;\nThe galloping of fiery steeds makes pale                             _325\nThe Christian merchant; and the yellow Jew\nHides his hoard deeper in the faithless earth.\nLike clouds, and like the shadows of the clouds,\nOver the hills of Anatolia,\nSwift in wide troops the Tartar chivalry                             _330\nSweep;—the far flashing of their starry lances\nReverberates the dying light of day.\nWe have one God, one King, one Hope, one Law;\nBut many-headed Insurrection stands\nDivided in itself, and soon must fall.                               _335\n\n_253 spoil edition 1822; spoils editions 1839.\n_279 bear edition 1822; have editions 1839.\n_322 assault edition 1822; assaults editions 1839.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mahmud:",
    "body": "Proud words, when deeds come short, are seasonable:\nLook, Hassan, on yon crescent moon, emblazoned\nUpon that shattered flag of fiery cloud\nWhich leads the rear of the departing day;\nWan emblem of an empire fading now!                                  _340\nSee how it trembles in the blood-red air,\nAnd like a mighty lamp whose oil is spent\nShrinks on the horizon’s edge, while, from above,\nOne star with insolent and victorious light\nHovers above its fall, and with keen beams,                          _345\nLike arrows through a fainting antelope,\nStrikes its weak form to death.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mahmud:",
    "body": "Shall we be not renewed!\nFar other bark than ours were needed now\nTo stem the torrent of descending time:                              _350\nThe Spirit that lifts the slave before his lord\nStalks through the capitals of armed kings,\nAnd spreads his ensign in the wilderness:\nExults in chains; and, when the rebel falls,\nCries like the blood of Abel from the dust;                          _355\nAnd the inheritors of the earth, like beasts\nWhen earthquake is unleashed, with idiot fear\nCower in their kingly dens—as I do now.\nWhat were Defeat when Victory must appal?\nOr Danger, when Security looks pale?—                               _360\nHow said the messenger—who, from the fort\nIslanded in the Danube, saw the battle\nOf Bucharest?—that—\n\n_351 his edition 1822; its editions 1839.\n_356 of the earth edition 1822; of earth editions 1839.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hassan:",
    "body": "The light Wallachians,\nThe Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian allies\nFled from the glance of our artillery\nAlmost before the thunderstone alit.                                 _370\nOne half the Grecian army made a bridge\nOf safe and slow retreat, with Moslem dead;\nThe other—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hassan:",
    "body": "Islanded\nBy victor myriads, formed in hollow square\nWith rough and steadfast front, and thrice flung back                _375\nThe deluge of our foaming cavalry;\nThrice their keen wedge of battle pierced our lines.\nOur baffled army trembled like one man\nBefore a host, and gave them space; but soon,\nFrom the surrounding hills, the batteries blazed,                    _380\nKneading them down with fire and iron rain:\nYet none approached; till, like a field of corn\nUnder the hook of the swart sickleman,\nThe band, intrenched in mounds of Turkish dead,\nGrew weak and few.—Then said the Pacha, ‘Slaves,                    _385\nRender yourselves—they have abandoned you—\nWhat hope of refuge, or retreat, or aid?\nWe grant your lives.’ ‘Grant that which is thine own!’\nCried one, and fell upon his sword and died!\nAnother—‘God, and man, and hope abandon me;                         _390\nBut I to them, and to myself, remain\nConstant:’—he bowed his head, and his heart burst.\nA third exclaimed, ‘There is a refuge, tyrant,\nWhere thou darest not pursue, and canst not harm\nShouldst thou pursue; there we shall meet again.’                    _395\nThen held his breath, and, after a brief spasm,\nThe indignant spirit cast its mortal garment\nAmong the slain—dead earth upon the earth!\nSo these survivors, each by different ways,\nSome strange, all sudden, none dishonourable,                        _400\nMet in triumphant death; and when our army\nClosed in, while yet wonder, and awe, and shame\nHeld back the base hyaenas of the battle\nThat feed upon the dead and fly the living,\nOne rose out of the chaos of the slain:                              _405\nAnd if it were a corpse which some dread spirit\nOf the old saviours of the land we rule\nHad lifted in its anger, wandering by;—\nOr if there burned within the dying man\nUnquenchable disdain of death, and faith                             _410\nCreating what it feigned;—I cannot tell—\nBut he cried, ‘Phantoms of the free, we come!\nArmies of the Eternal, ye who strike\nTo dust the citadels of sanguine kings,\nAnd shake the souls throned on their stony hearts,                   _415\nAnd thaw their frostwork diadems like dew;—\nO ye who float around this clime, and weave\nThe garment of the glory which it wears,\nWhose fame, though earth betray the dust it clasped,\nLies sepulchred in monumental thought;—                             _420\nProgenitors of all that yet is great,\nAscribe to your bright senate, O accept\nIn your high ministrations, us, your sons—\nUs first, and the more glorious yet to come!\nAnd ye, weak conquerors! giants who look pale                        _425\nWhen the crushed worm rebels beneath your tread,\nThe vultures and the dogs, your pensioners tame,\nAre overgorged; but, like oppressors, still\nThey crave the relic of Destruction’s feast.\nThe exhalations and the thirsty winds                                _430\nAre sick with blood; the dew is foul with death;\nHeaven’s light is quenched in slaughter: thus, where’er\nUpon your camps, cities, or towers, or fleets,\nThe obscene birds the reeking remnants cast\nOf these dead limbs,—upon your streams and mountains,               _435\nUpon your fields, your gardens, and your housetops,\nWhere’er the winds shall creep, or the clouds fly,\nOr the dews fall, or the angry sun look down\nWith poisoned light—Famine, and Pestilence,\nAnd Panic, shall wage war upon our side!                             _440\nNature from all her boundaries is moved\nAgainst ye: Time has found ye light as foam.\nThe Earth rebels; and Good and Evil stake\nTheir empire o’er the unborn world of men\nOn this one cast;—but ere the die be thrown,                        _445\nThe renovated genius of our race,\nProud umpire of the impious game, descends,\nA seraph-winged Victory, bestriding\nThe tempest of the Omnipotence of God,\nWhich sweeps all things to their appointed doom,                     _450\nAnd you to oblivion!’—More he would have said,\nBut—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mahmud:",
    "body": "The fleet which, like a flock of clouds                              _460\nChased by the wind, flies the insurgent banner!\nOur winged castles from their merchant ships!\nOur myriads before their weak pirate bands!\nOur arms before their chains! our years of empire\nBefore their centuries of servile fear!                              _465\nDeath is awake! Repulse is on the waters!\nThey own no more the thunder-bearing banner\nOf Mahmud; but, like hounds of a base breed,\nGorge from a stranger’s hand, and rend their master.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mahmud:",
    "body": "The caves of the Icarian isles\nTold each to the other in loud mockery,\nAnd with the tongue as of a thousand echoes,\nFirst of the sea-convulsing fight—and, then,—\nThou darest to speak—senseless are the mountains:                   _475\nInterpret thou their voice!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hassan:",
    "body": "My presence bore\nA part in that day’s shame. The Grecian fleet\nBore down at daybreak from the North, and hung\nAs multitudinous on the ocean line,\nAs cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind.                          _480\nOur squadron, convoying ten thousand men,\nWas stretching towards Nauplia when the battle\nWas kindled.—\nFirst through the hail of our artillery\nThe agile Hydriote barks with press of sail                          _485\nDashed:—ship to ship, cannon to cannon, man\nTo man were grappled in the embrace of war,\nInextricable but by death or victory.\nThe tempest of the raging fight convulsed\nTo its crystalline depths that stainless sea,                        _490\nAnd shook Heaven’s roof of golden morning clouds,\nPoised on an hundred azure mountain-isles.\nIn the brief trances of the artillery\nOne cry from the destroyed and the destroyer\nRose, and a cloud of desolation wrapped                              _495\nThe unforeseen event, till the north wind\nSprung from the sea, lifting the heavy veil\nOf battle-smoke—then victory—victory!\nFor, as we thought, three frigates from Algiers\nBore down from Naxos to our aid, but soon                            _500\nThe abhorred cross glimmered behind, before,\nAmong, around us; and that fatal sign\nDried with its beams the strength in Moslem hearts,\nAs the sun drinks the dew.—What more? We fled!—\nOur noonday path over the sanguine foam                              _505\nWas beaconed,—and the glare struck the sun pale,—\nBy our consuming transports: the fierce light\nMade all the shadows of our sails blood-red,\nAnd every countenance blank. Some ships lay feeding\nThe ravening fire, even to the water’s level;                        _510\nSome were blown up; some, settling heavily,\nSunk; and the shrieks of our companions died\nUpon the wind, that bore us fast and far,\nEven after they were dead. Nine thousand perished!\nWe met the vultures legioned in the air                              _515\nStemming the torrent of the tainted wind;\nThey, screaming from their cloudy mountain-peaks,\nStooped through the sulphurous battle-smoke and perched\nEach on the weltering carcase that we loved,\nLike its ill angel or its damned soul,                               _520\nRiding upon the bosom of the sea.\nWe saw the dog-fish hastening to their feast.\nJoy waked the voiceless people of the sea,\nAnd ravening Famine left his ocean cave\nTo dwell with War, with us, and with Despair.                        _525\nWe met night three hours to the west of Patmos,\nAnd with night, tempest—\n\n_503 in edition 1822; of editions 1839.\n_527 And edition 1822; As editions 1839.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Messenger:",
    "body": "Your Sublime Highness,\nThat Christian hound, the Muscovite Ambassador,\nHas left the city.—If the rebel fleet\nHad anchored in the port, had victory                                _530\nCrowned the Greek legions in the Hippodrome,\nPanic were tamer.—Obedience and Mutiny,\nLike giants in contention planet-struck,\nStand gazing on each other.—There is peace\nIn Stamboul.—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hassan:",
    "body": "Fear not the Russian:\nThe tiger leagues not with the stag at bay\nAgainst the hunter.—Cunning, base, and cruel,\nHe crouches, watching till the spoil be won,\nAnd must be paid for his reserve in blood.                           _540\nAfter the war is fought, yield the sleek Russian\nThat which thou canst not keep, his deserved portion\nOf blood, which shall not flow through streets and fields,\nRivers and seas, like that which we may win,\nBut stagnate in the veins of Christian slaves!                       _545\n\n[ENTER SECOND MESSENGER.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Second Messenger:",
    "body": "Nauplia, Tripolizza, Mothon, Athens,\nNavarin, Artas, Monembasia,\nCorinth, and Thebes are carried by assault,\nAnd every Islamite who made his dogs\nFat with the flesh of Galilean slaves                                _550\nPassed at the edge of the sword: the lust of blood,\nWhich made our warriors drunk, is quenched in death;\nBut like a fiery plague breaks out anew\nIn deeds which make the Christian cause look pale\nIn its own light. The garrison of Patras                             _555\nHas store but for ten days, nor is there hope\nBut from the Briton: at once slave and tyrant,\nHis wishes still are weaker than his fears,\nOr he would sell what faith may yet remain\nFrom the oaths broke in Genoa and in Norway;                         _560\nAnd if you buy him not, your treasury\nIs empty even of promises—his own coin.\nThe freedman of a western poet-chief\nHolds Attica with seven thousand rebels,\nAnd has beat back the Pacha of Negropont:                            _565\nThe aged Ali sits in Yanina\nA crownless metaphor of empire:\nHis name, that shadow of his withered might,\nHolds our besieging army like a spell\nIn prey to famine, pest, and mutiny;                                 _570\nHe, bastioned in his citadel, looks forth\nJoyless upon the sapphire lake that mirrors\nThe ruins of the city where he reigned\nChildless and sceptreless. The Greek has reaped\nThe costly harvest his own blood matured,                            _575\nNot the sower, Ali—who has bought a truce\nFrom Ypsilanti with ten camel-loads\nOf Indian gold.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Third Messenger:",
    "body": "The Christian tribes\nOf Lebanon and the Syrian wilderness\nAre in revolt;—Damascus, Hems, Aleppo                               _580\nTremble;—the Arab menaces Medina,\nThe Aethiop has intrenched himself in Sennaar,\nAnd keeps the Egyptian rebel well employed,\nWho denies homage, claims investiture\nAs price of tardy aid. Persia demands                                _585\nThe cities on the Tigris, and the Georgians\nRefuse their living tribute. Crete and Cyprus,\nLike mountain-twins that from each other’s veins\nCatch the volcano-fire and earthquake-spasm,\nShake in the general fever. Through the city,                        _590\nLike birds before a storm, the Santons shriek,\nAnd prophesyings horrible and new\nAre heard among the crowd: that sea of men\nSleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless and still.\nA Dervise, learned in the Koran, preaches                            _595\nThat it is written how the sins of Islam\nMust raise up a destroyer even now.\nThe Greeks expect a Saviour from the West,\nWho shall not come, men say, in clouds and glory,\nBut in the omnipresence of that Spirit                               _600\nIn which all live and are. Ominous signs\nAre blazoned broadly on the noonday sky:\nOne saw a red cross stamped upon the sun;\nIt has rained blood; and monstrous births declare\nThe secret wrath of Nature and her Lord.                             _605\nThe army encamped upon the Cydaris\nWas roused last night by the alarm of battle,\nAnd saw two hosts conflicting in the air,\nThe shadows doubtless of the unborn time\nCast on the mirror of the night. While yet                           _610\nThe fight hung balanced, there arose a storm\nWhich swept the phantoms from among the stars.\nAt the third watch the Spirit of the Plague\nWas heard abroad flapping among the tents;\nThose who relieved watch found the sentinels dead.                   _615\nThe last news from the camp is, that a thousand\nHave sickened, and—\n\n[ENTER A FOURTH MESSENGER.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fourth Messenger:",
    "body": "One comes\nFainting with toil, covered with foam and blood:\nHe stood, he says, on Chelonites’                                    _620\nPromontory, which o’erlooks the isles that groan\nUnder the Briton’s frown, and all their waters\nThen trembling in the splendour of the moon,\nWhen as the wandering clouds unveiled or hid\nHer boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets                       _625\nStalk through the night in the horizon’s glimmer,\nMingling fierce thunders and sulphureous gleams,\nAnd smoke which strangled every infant wind\nThat soothed the silver clouds through the deep air.\nAt length the battle slept, but the Sirocco                          _630\nAwoke, and drove his flock of thunder-clouds\nOver the sea-horizon, blotting out\nAll objects—save that in the faint moon-glimpse\nHe saw, or dreamed he saw, the Turkish admiral\nAnd two the loftiest of our ships of war,                            _635\nWith the bright image of that Queen of Heaven,\nWho hid, perhaps, her face for grief, reversed;\nAnd the abhorred cross—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mahmud:",
    "body": "Could not come more seasonably:\nBid him attend. I’ll hear no more! too long                          _640\nWe gaze on danger through the mist of fear,\nAnd multiply upon our shattered hopes\nThe images of ruin. Come what will!\nTo-morrow and to-morrow are as lamps\nSet in our path to light us to the edge                              _645\nThrough rough and smooth, nor can we suffer aught\nWhich He inflicts not in whose hand we are.\n\n[EXEUNT.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 1:",
    "body": "Would I were the winged cloud\nOf a tempest swift and loud!\nI would scorn                                                        _650\nThe smile of morn\nAnd the wave where the moonrise is born!\nI would leave\nThe spirits of eve\nA shroud for the corpse of the day to weave                          _655\nFrom other threads than mine!\nBask in the deep blue noon divine.\nWho would? Not I.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 1:",
    "body": "Where the rocks that gird th’ Aegean                                 _660\nEcho to the battle paean\nOf the free—\nI would flee\nA tempestuous herald of victory!\nMy golden rain\nFor the Grecian slain                                                _665\nShould mingle in tears with the bloody main,\nAnd my solemn thunder-knell\nShould ring to the world the passing-bell\nOf Tyranny!                                                          _670",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "O Slavery! thou frost of the world’s prime,\nKilling its flowers and leaving its thorns bare!\nThy touch has stamped these limbs with crime,\nThese brows thy branding garland bear,\nBut the free heart, the impassive soul                               _680\nScorn thy control!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 1:",
    "body": "Let there be light! said Liberty,\nAnd like sunrise from the sea,\nAthens arose!—Around her born,\nShone like mountains in the morn                                     _685\nGlorious states;—and are they now\nAshes, wrecks, oblivion?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 1:",
    "body": "Temples and towers,\nCitadels and marts, and they\nWho live and die there, have been ours,\nAnd may be thine, and must decay;                                    _695\nBut Greece and her foundations are\nBuilt below the tide of war,\nBased on the crystalline sea\nOf thought and its eternity;\nHer citizens, imperial spirits,                                      _700\nRule the present from the past,\nOn all this world of men inherits\nTheir seal is set.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 2:",
    "body": "Hear ye the blast,\nWhose Orphic thunder thrilling calls\nFrom ruin her Titanian walls?                                        _705\nWhose spirit shakes the sapless bones\nOf Slavery? Argos, Corinth, Crete\nHear, and from their mountain thrones\nThe daemons and the nymphs repeat\nThe harmony.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 2:",
    "body": "The world’s eyeless charioteer,\nDestiny, is hurrying by!\nWhat faith is crushed, what empire bleeds\nBeneath her earthquake-footed steeds?\nWhat eagle-winged victory sits                                       _715\nAt her right hand? what shadow flits\nBefore? what splendour rolls behind?\nRuin and renovation cry\n‘Who but We?’",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 1:",
    "body": "I hear! I hear!\nThe hiss as of a rushing wind,                                       _720\nThe roar as of an ocean foaming,\nThe thunder as of earthquake coming.\nI hear! I hear!\nThe crash as of an empire falling,\nThe shrieks as of a people calling                                   _725\n‘Mercy! mercy!’—How they thrill!\nThen a shout of ‘kill! kill! kill!’\nAnd then a small still voice, thus—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 1:",
    "body": "In sacred Athens, near the fane\nOf Wisdom, Pity’s altar stood:\nServe not the unknown God in vain.                                   _735\nBut pay that broken shrine again,\nLove for hate and tears for blood.\n\n[ENTER MAHMUD AND AHASUERUS.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mahmud:",
    "body": "Thou art an adept in the difficult lore\nOf Greek and Frank philosophy; thou numberest\nThe flowers, and thou measurest the stars;\nThou severest element from element;\nThy spirit is present in the Past, and sees                          _745\nThe birth of this old world through all its cycles\nOf desolation and of loveliness,\nAnd when man was not, and how man became\nThe monarch and the slave of this low sphere,\nAnd all its narrow circles—it is much—                             _750\nI honour thee, and would be what thou art\nWere I not what I am; but the unborn hour,\nCradled in fear and hope, conflicting storms,\nWho shall unveil? Nor thou, nor I, nor any\nMighty or wise. I apprehended not                                    _755\nWhat thou hast taught me, but I now perceive\nThat thou art no interpreter of dreams;\nThou dost not own that art, device, or God,\nCan make the Future present—let it come!\nMoreover thou disdainest us and ours;                                _760\nThou art as God, whom thou contemplatest.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ahasuerus:",
    "body": "Disdain thee?—not the worm beneath thy feet!\nThe Fathomless has care for meaner things\nThan thou canst dream, and has made pride for those\nWho would be what they may not, or would seem                        _765\nThat which they are not. Sultan! talk no more\nOf thee and me, the Future and the Past;\nBut look on that which cannot change—the One,\nThe unborn and the undying. Earth and ocean,\nSpace, and the isles of life or light that gem                       _770\nThe sapphire floods of interstellar air,\nThis firmament pavilioned upon chaos,\nWith all its cressets of immortal fire,\nWhose outwall, bastioned impregnably\nAgainst the escape of boldest thoughts, repels them                  _775\nAs Calpe the Atlantic clouds—this Whole\nOf suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and flowers,\nWith all the silent or tempestuous workings\nBy which they have been, are, or cease to be,\nIs but a vision;—all that it inherits                               _780\nAre motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams;\nThought is its cradle and its grave, nor less\nThe Future and the Past are idle shadows\nOf thought’s eternal flight—they have no being:\nNought is but that which feels itself to be.                         _785",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mahmud:",
    "body": "What meanest thou? Thy words stream like a tempest\nOf dazzling mist within my brain—they shake\nThe earth on which I stand, and hang like night\nOn Heaven above me. What can they avail?\nThey cast on all things surest, brightest, best,                     _790\nDoubt, insecurity, astonishment.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ahasuerus:",
    "body": "Mistake me not! All is contained in each.\nDodona’s forest to an acorn’s cup\nIs that which has been, or will be, to that\nWhich is—the absent to the present. Thought                         _795\nAlone, and its quick elements, Will, Passion,\nReason, Imagination, cannot die;\nThey are, what that which they regard appears,\nThe stuff whence mutability can weave\nAll that it hath dominion o’er, worlds, worms,                       _800\nEmpires, and superstitions. What has thought\nTo do with time, or place, or circumstance?\nWouldst thou behold the Future?—ask and have!\nKnock and it shall be opened—look, and lo!\nThe coming age is shadowed on the Past                               _805\nAs on a glass.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mahmud:",
    "body": "The sound\nAs of the assault of an imperial city,                               _815\nThe hiss of inextinguishable fire,\nThe roar of giant cannon; the earthquaking\nFall of vast bastions and precipitous towers,\nThe shock of crags shot from strange enginery,\nThe clash of wheels, and clang of armed hoofs,                       _820\nAnd crash of brazen mail as of the wreck\nOf adamantine mountains—the mad blast\nOf trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds,\nThe shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood,\nAnd one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear,                          _825\nAs of a joyous infant waked and playing\nWith its dead mother’s breast, and now more loud\nThe mingled battle-cry,—ha! hear I not\n‘En touto nike!’ ‘Allah-illa-Allah!‘?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mahmud:",
    "body": "A chasm,                                                             _830\nAs of two mountains in the wall of Stamboul;\nAnd in that ghastly breach the Islamites,\nLike giants on the ruins of a world,\nStand in the light of sunrise. In the dust\nGlimmers a kingless diadem, and one                                  _835\nOf regal port has cast himself beneath\nThe stream of war. Another proudly clad\nIn golden arms spurs a Tartarian barb\nInto the gap, and with his iron mace\nDirects the torrent of that tide of men,                             _840\nAnd seems—he is—Mahomet!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ahasuerus:",
    "body": "What thou seest\nIs but the ghost of thy forgotten dream.\nA dream itself, yet less, perhaps, than that\nThou call’st reality. Thou mayst behold\nHow cities, on which Empire sleeps enthroned,                        _845\nBow their towered crests to mutability.\nPoised by the flood, e’en on the height thou holdest,\nThou mayst now learn how the full tide of power\nEbbs to its depths.—Inheritor of glory,\nConceived in darkness, born in blood, and nourished                  _850\nWith tears and toil, thou seest the mortal throes\nOf that whose birth was but the same. The Past\nNow stands before thee like an Incarnation\nOf the To-come; yet wouldst thou commune with\nThat portion of thyself which was ere thou                           _855\nDidst start for this brief race whose crown is death,\nDissolve with that strong faith and fervent passion\nWhich called it from the uncreated deep,\nYon cloud of war, with its tempestuous phantoms\nOf raging death; and draw with mighty will                           _860\nThe imperial shade hither.\n\n[EXIT AHASUERUS.]\n\n[THE PHANTOM OF MAHOMET THE SECOND APPEARS.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Phantom:",
    "body": "I come\nThence whither thou must go! The grave is fitter\nTo take the living than give up the dead;\nYet has thy faith prevailed, and I am here.\nThe heavy fragments of the power which fell                          _865\nWhen I arose, like shapeless crags and clouds,\nHang round my throne on the abyss, and voices\nOf strange lament soothe my supreme repose,\nWailing for glory never to return.—\nA later Empire nods in its decay:                                    _870\nThe autumn of a greener faith is come,\nAnd wolfish change, like winter, howls to strip\nThe foliage in which Fame, the eagle, built\nHer aerie, while Dominion whelped below.\nThe storm is in its branches, and the frost                          _875\nIs on its leaves, and the blank deep expects\nOblivion on oblivion, spoil on spoil,\nRuin on ruin:—Thou art slow, my son;\nThe Anarchs of the world of darkness keep\nA throne for thee, round which thine empire lies                     _880\nBoundless and mute; and for thy subjects thou,\nLike us, shalt rule the ghosts of murdered life,\nThe phantoms of the powers who rule thee now—\nMutinous passions, and conflicting fears,\nAnd hopes that sate themselves on dust, and die!—                   _885\nStripped of their mortal strength, as thou of thine.\nIslam must fall, but we will reign together\nOver its ruins in the world of death:—\nAnd if the trunk be dry, yet shall the seed\nUnfold itself even in the shape of that                              _890\nWhich gathers birth in its decay. Woe! woe!\nTo the weak people tangled in the grasp\nOf its last spasms.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mahmud:",
    "body": "Spirit, woe to all!\nWoe to the wronged and the avenger! Woe\nTo the destroyer, woe to the destroyed!                              _895\nWoe to the dupe, and woe to the deceiver!\nWoe to the oppressed, and woe to the oppressor!\nWoe both to those that suffer and inflict;\nThose who are born and those who die! but say,\nImperial shadow of the thing I am,                                   _900\nWhen, how, by whom, Destruction must accomplish\nHer consummation!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Phantom:",
    "body": "Ask the cold pale Hour,\nRich in reversion of impending death,\nWhen HE shall fall upon whose ripe gray hairs\nSit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity—                                _905\nThe weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed with years,\nLeaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heart\nOver the heads of men, under which burthen\nThey bow themselves unto the grave: fond wretch!\nHe leans upon his crutch, and talks of years                         _910\nTo come, and how in hours of youth renewed\nHe will renew lost joys, and—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mahmud:",
    "body": "Weak lightning before darkness! poor faint smile                     _915\nOf dying Islam! Voice which art the response\nOf hollow weakness! Do I wake and live?\nWere there such things, or may the unquiet brain,\nVexed by the wise mad talk of the old Jew,\nHave shaped itself these shadows of its fear?                        _920\nIt matters not!—for nought we see or dream,\nPossess, or lose, or grasp at, can be worth\nMore than it gives or teaches. Come what may,\nThe Future must become the Past, and I\nAs they were to whom once this present hour,                         _925\nThis gloomy crag of time to which I cling,\nSeemed an Elysian isle of peace and joy\nNever to be attained.—I must rebuke\nThis drunkenness of triumph ere it die,\nAnd dying, bring despair. Victory! poor slaves!                      _930\n\n[EXIT MAHMUD.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Voice Without:",
    "body": "Shout in the jubilee of death! The Greeks\nAre as a brood of lions in the net\nRound which the kingly hunters of the earth\nStand smiling. Anarchs, ye whose daily food\nAre curses, groans, and gold, the fruit of death,                    _935\nFrom Thule to the girdle of the world,\nCome, feast! the board groans with the flesh of men;\nThe cup is foaming with a nation’s blood,\nFamine and Thirst await! eat, drink, and die!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 1:",
    "body": "Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream,                               _940\nSalutes the rising sun, pursues the flying day!\nI saw her, ghastly as a tyrant’s dream,\nPerch on the trembling pyramid of night,\nBeneath which earth and all her realms pavilioned lay\nIn visions of the dawning undelight.                                 _945\nWho shall impede her flight?\nWho rob her of her prey?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Voice Without:",
    "body": "Victory! Victory! Russia’s famished eagles\nDare not to prey beneath the crescent’s light.\nImpale the remnant of the Greeks! despoil!                           _950\nViolate! make their flesh cheaper than dust!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 2:",
    "body": "Thou voice which art\nThe herald of the ill in splendour hid!\nThou echo of the hollow heart\nOf monarchy, bear me to thine abode                                  _955\nWhen desolation flashes o’er a world destroyed:\nOh, bear me to those isles of jagged cloud\nWhich float like mountains on the earthquake, mid\nThe momentary oceans of the lightning,\nOr to some toppling promontory proud                                 _960\nOf solid tempest whose black pyramid,\nRiven, overhangs the founts intensely bright’ning\nOf those dawn-tinted deluges of fire\nBefore their waves expire,\nWhen heaven and earth are light, and only light                      _965\nIn the thunder-night!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Voice Without:",
    "body": "Victory! Victory! Austria, Russia, England,\nAnd that tame serpent, that poor shadow, France,\nCry peace, and that means death when monarchs speak.\nHo, there! bring torches, sharpen those red stakes,                  _970\nThese chains are light, fitter for slaves and poisoners\nThan Greeks. Kill! plunder! burn! let none remain.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 1:",
    "body": "Alas! for Liberty!\nIf numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years,\nOr fate, can quell the free!                                         _975\nAlas! for Virtue, when\nTorments, or contumely, or the sneers\nOf erring judging men\nCan break the heart where it abides.\nAlas! if Love, whose smile makes this obscure world splendid,        _980\nCan change with its false times and tides,\nLike hope and terror,—\nAlas for Love!\nAnd Truth, who wanderest lone and unbefriended,\nIf thou canst veil thy lie-consuming mirror                          _985\nBefore the dazzled eyes of Error,\nAlas for thee! Image of the Above.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 2:",
    "body": "Repulse, with plumes from conquest torn,\nLed the ten thousand from the limits of the morn\nThrough many an hostile Anarchy!                                     _990\nAt length they wept aloud, and cried, ‘The Sea! the Sea!’\nThrough exile, persecution, and despair,\nRome was, and young Atlantis shall become\nThe wonder, or the terror, or the tomb\nOf all whose step wakes Power lulled in her savage lair:             _995\nBut Greece was as a hermit-child,\nWhose fairest thoughts and limbs were built\nTo woman’s growth, by dreams so mild,\nShe knew not pain or guilt;\nAnd now, O Victory, blush! and Empire, tremble                       _1000\nWhen ye desert the free—\nIf Greece must be\nA wreck, yet shall its fragments reassemble,\nAnd build themselves again impregnably\nIn a diviner clime,                                                  _1005\nTo Amphionic music on some Cape sublime,\nWhich frowns above the idle foam of Time.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 1:",
    "body": "Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made;\nLet the free possess the Paradise they claim;\nBe the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighed                      _1010\nWith our ruin, our resistance, and our name!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Voice Without:",
    "body": "Victory! Victory! The bought Briton sends\nThe keys of ocean to the Islamite.—\nNow shall the blazon of the cross be veiled,\nAnd British skill directing Othman might,\nThunder-strike rebel victory. Oh, keep holy                          _1020\nThis jubilee of unrevenged blood!\nKill! crush! despoil! Let not a Greek escape!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 1:",
    "body": "Darkness has dawned in the East\nOn the noon of time:\nThe death-birds descend to their feast                               _1025\nFrom the hungry clime.\nLet Freedom and Peace flee far\nTo a sunnier strand,\nAnd follow Love’s folding-star\nTo the Evening land!                                                 _1030",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 2:",
    "body": "The young moon has fed\nHer exhausted horn\nWith the sunset’s fire:\nThe weak day is dead,\nBut the night is not born;                                           _1035\nAnd, like loveliness panting with wild desire\nWhile it trembles with fear and delight,\nHesperus flies from awakening night,\nAnd pants in its beauty and speed with light\nFast-flashing, soft, and bright.                                     _1040\nThou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free!\nGuide us far, far away,\nTo climes where now veiled by the ardour of day\nThou art hidden\nFrom waves on which weary Noon                                       _1045\nFaints in her summer swoon,\nBetween kingless continents sinless as Eden,\nAround mountains and islands inviolably\nPranked on the sapphire sea.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 1:",
    "body": "Through the sunset of hope,                                          _1050\nLike the shapes of a dream.\nWhat Paradise islands of glory gleam!\nBeneath Heaven’s cope,\nTheir shadows more clear float by—\nThe sound of their oceans, the light of their sky,                   _1055\nThe music and fragrance their solitudes breathe\nBurst, like morning on dream, or like Heaven on death,\nThrough the walls of our prison;\nAnd Greece, which was dead, is arisen!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "The world’s great age begins anew,                                   _1060\nThe golden years return,\nThe earth doth like a snake renew\nHer winter weeds outworn:\nHeaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,\nLike wrecks of a dissolving dream.                                   _1065\n\nA brighter Hellas rears its mountains\nFrom waves serener far;\nA new Peneus rolls his fountains\nAgainst the morning star.\nWhere fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep                               _1070\nYoung Cyclads on a sunnier deep.\n\nA loftier Argo cleaves the main,\nFraught with a later prize;\nAnother Orpheus sings again,\nAnd loves, and weeps, and dies.                                      _1075\nA new Ulysses leaves once more\nCalypso for his native shore.\n\nOh, write no more the tale of Troy,\nIf earth Death’s scroll must be!\nNor mix with Laian rage the joy                                      _1080\nWhich dawns upon the free:\nAlthough a subtler Sphinx renew\nRiddles of death Thebes never knew.\n\nAnother Athens shall arise,\nAnd to remoter time                                                  _1085\nBequeath, like sunset to the skies,\nThe splendour of its prime;\nAnd leave, if nought so bright may live,\nAll earth can take or Heaven can give.\n\nSaturn and Love their long repose                                    _1090\nShall burst, more bright and good\nThan all who fell, than One who rose,\nThan many unsubdued:\nNot gold, not blood, their altar dowers,\nBut votive tears and symbol flowers.                                 _1095\n\nOh, cease! must hate and death return?\nCease! must men kill and die?\nCease! drain not to its dregs the urn\nOf bitter prophecy.\nThe world is weary of the past,                                      _1100\nOh, might it die or rest at last!\n\n_1068 his edition 1822; its editions 1839.\n_1072 Argo]Argos edition 1822.\n_1091-_1093 See Editor’s note.\n_1091 bright editions 1839; wise edition 1829  (ed. Galignani).\n_1093 unsubdued editions 1839; unwithstood edition 1829 (ed. Galignani).",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "(1) The Quenchless Ashes Of Milan [L. 60].",
    "body": "Milan was the centre of the resistance of the Lombard league against\nthe Austrian tyrant. Frederic Barbarossa burnt the city to the ground,\nbut liberty lived in its ashes, and it rose like an exhalation from\nits ruin. See Sismondi’s “Histoire des Republiques Italiennes”, a book\nwhich has done much towards awakening the Italians to an imitation of\ntheir great ancestors.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "(2) The Chorus [L. 197].",
    "body": "The popular notions of Christianity are represented in this chorus as\ntrue in their relation to the worship they superseded, and that which\nin all probability they will supersede, without considering their\nmerits in a relation more universal. The first stanza contrasts the\nimmortality of the living and thinking beings which inhabit the\nplanets, and to use a common and inadequate phrase, “clothe themselves\nin matter”, with the transience of the noblest manifestations of the\nexternal world.\n\nThe concluding verses indicate a progressive state of more or loss\nexalted existence, according to the degree of perfection which every\ndistinct intelligence may have attained. Let it not be supposed that I\nmean to dogmatise upon a subject, concerning which all men are equally\nignorant, or that I think the Gordian knot of the origin of evil can\nbe disentangled by that or any similar assertions. The received\nhypothesis of a Being resembling men in the moral attributes of His\nnature, having called us out of non-existence, and after inflicting on\nus the misery of the commission of error, should superadd that of the\npunishment and the privations consequent upon it, still would remain\ninexplicable and incredible. That there is a true solution of the\nriddle, and that in our present state that solution is unattainable by\nus, are propositions which may be regarded as equally certain:\nmeanwhile, as it is the province of the poet to attach himself to\nthose ideas which exalt and ennoble humanity, let him be permitted to\nhave conjectured the condition of that futurity towards which we are\nall impelled by an inextinguishable thirst for immortality. Until\nbetter arguments can be produced than sophisms which disgrace the\ncause, this desire itself must remain the strongest and the only\npresumption that eternity is the inheritance of every thinking being.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "(3) No Hoary Priests After That Patriarch [L. 245].",
    "body": "The Greek Patriarch, after haying been compelled to fulminate an\nanathema against the insurgents, was put to death by the Turks.\n\nFortunately the Greeks have been taught that they cannot buy security\nby degradation, and the Turks, though equally cruel, are less cunning\nthan the smooth-faced tyrants of Europe. As to the anathema, his\nHoliness might as well have thrown his mitre at Mount Athos for any\neffect that it produced. The chiefs of the Greeks are almost all men\nof comprehension and enlightened views on religion and politics.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "(4) The Freedman Of A Western Poet-Chief [L. 563].",
    "body": "A Greek who had been Lord Byron’s servant commands the insurgents in\nAttica. This Greek, Lord Byron informs me, though a poet and an\nenthusiastic patriot, gave him rather the idea of a timid and\nunenterprising person. It appears that circumstances make men what\nthey are, and that we all contain the germ of a degree of degradation\nor of greatness whose connection with our character is determined by\nevents.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "(5) The Greeks Expect A Saviour From The West [L. 598].",
    "body": "It is reported that this Messiah had arrived at a seaport near\nLacedaemon in an American brig. The association of names and ideas is\nirresistibly ludicrous, but the prevalence of such a rumour strongly\nmarks the state of popular enthusiasm in Greece.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "(6) The Sound As Of The Assault Of An Imperial City [Ll. 814-15].",
    "body": "For the vision of Mahmud of the taking of Constantinople in 1453, see\nGibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, volume 12 page 223.\n\nThe manner of the invocation of the spirit of Mahomet the Second will\nbe censured as over subtle. I could easily have made the Jew a regular\nconjuror, and the Phantom an ordinary ghost. I have preferred to\nrepresent the Jew as disclaiming all pretension, or even belief, in\nsupernatural agency, and as tempting Mahmud to that state of mind in\nwhich ideas may be supposed to assume the force of sensations through\nthe confusion of thought with the objects of thought, and the excess\nof passion animating the creations of imagination.\n\nIt is a sort of natural magic, susceptible of being exercised in a\ndegree by any one who should have made himself master of the secret\nassociations of another’s thoughts.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "(7) The Chorus [L. 1060].",
    "body": "The final chorus is indistinct and obscure, as the event of the living\ndrama whose arrival it foretells. Prophecies of wars, and rumours of\nwars, etc., may safely be made by poet or prophet in any age, but to\nanticipate however darkly a period of regeneration and happiness is a\nmore hazardous exercise of the faculty which bards possess or feign.\nIt will remind the reader ‘magno NEC proximus intervallo’ of Isaiah\nand Virgil, whose ardent spirits overleaping the actual reign of evil\nwhich we endure and bewail, already saw the possible and perhaps\napproaching state of society in which the ‘lion shall lie down with\nthe lamb,’ and ‘omnis feret omnia tellus.’ Let these great names be my\nauthority and my excuse.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "(8) Saturn And Love Their Long Repose Shall Burst [L. 1090].",
    "body": "Saturn and Love were among the deities of a real or imaginary state of\ninnocence and happiness. ALL those WHO FELL, or the Gods of Greece,\nAsia, and Egypt; the ONE WHO ROSE, or Jesus Christ, at whose\nappearance the idols of the Pagan World wore amerced of their worship;\nand the MANY UNSUBDUED, or the monstrous objects of the idolatry of\nChina, India, the Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of America,\ncertainly have reigned over the understandings of men in conjunction\nor in succession, during periods in which all we know of evil has been\nin a state of portentous, and, until the revival of learning and the\narts, perpetually increasing, activity. The Grecian gods seem indeed\nto have been personally more innocent, although it cannot be said,\nthat as far as temperance and chastity are concerned, they gave so\nedifying an example as their successor. The sublime human character of\nJesus Christ was deformed by an imputed identification with a Power,\nwho tempted, betrayed, and punished the innocent beings who were\ncalled into existence by His sole will; and for the period of a\nthousand years, the spirit of this most just, wise, and benevolent of\nmen has been propitiated with myriads of hecatombs of those who\napproached the nearest to His innocence and wisdom, sacrificed under\nevery aggravation of atrocity and variety of torture. The horrors of\nthe Mexican, the Peruvian, and the Indian superstitions are well\nknown.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On Hellas, By Mrs. Shelley.",
    "body": "The South of Europe was in a state of great political excitement at\nthe beginning of the year 1821. The Spanish Revolution had been a\nsignal to Italy; secrete societies were formed; and, when Naples rose\nto declare the Constitution, the call was responded to from Brundusium\nto the foot of the Alps. To crush these attempts to obtain liberty,\nearly in 1821 the Austrians poured their armies into the Peninsula: at\nfirst their coming rather seemed to add energy and resolution to a\npeople long enslaved. The Piedmontese asserted their freedom; Genoa\nthrew off the yoke of the King of Sardinia; and, as if in playful\nimitation, the people of the little state of Massa and Carrara gave\nthe conge to their sovereign, and set up a republic.\n\nTuscany alone was perfectly tranquil. It was said that the Austrian\nminister presented a list of sixty Carbonari to the Grand Duke, urging\ntheir imprisonment; and the Grand Duke replied, ‘I do not know whether\nthese sixty men are Carbonari, but I know, if I imprison them, I shall\ndirectly have sixty thousand start up.’ But, though the Tuscans had no\ndesire to disturb the paternal government beneath whose shelter they\nslumbered, they regarded the progress of the various Italian\nrevolutions with intense interest, and hatred for the Austrian was\nwarm in every bosom. But they had slender hopes; they knew that the\nNeapolitans would offer no fit resistance to the regular German\ntroops, and that the overthrow of the constitution in Naples would act\nas a decisive blow against all struggles for liberty in Italy.\n\nWe have seen the rise and progress of reform. But the Holy Alliance\nwas alive and active in those days, and few could dream of the\npeaceful triumph of liberty. It seemed then that the armed assertion\nof freedom in the South of Europe was the only hope of the liberals,\nas, if it prevailed, the nations of the north would imitate the\nexample. Happily the reverse has proved the fact. The countries\naccustomed to the exercise of the privileges of freemen, to a limited\nextent, have extended, and are extending, these limits. Freedom and\nknowledge have now a chance of proceeding hand in hand; and, if it\ncontinue thus, we may hope for the durability of both. Then, as I have\nsaid—in 1821—Shelley, as well as every other lover of liberty,\nlooked upon the struggles in Spain and Italy as decisive of the\ndestinies of the world, probably for centuries to come. The interest\nhe took in the progress of affairs was intense. When Genoa declared\nitself free, his hopes were at their highest. Day after day he read\nthe bulletins of the Austrian army, and sought eagerly to gather\ntokens of its defeat. He heard of the revolt of Genoa with emotions of\ntransport. His whole heart and soul were in the triumph of the cause.\nWe were living at Pisa at that time; and several well-informed\nItalians, at the head of whom we may place the celebrated Vacca, were\naccustomed to seek for sympathy in their hopes from Shelley: they did\nnot find such for the despair they too generally experienced, founded\non contempt for their southern countrymen.\n\nWhile the fate of the progress of the Austrian armies then invading\nNaples was yet in suspense, the news of another revolution filled him\nwith exultation. We had formed the acquaintance at Pisa of several\nConstantinopolitan Greeks, of the family of Prince Caradja, formerly\nHospodar of Wallachia; who, hearing that the bowstring, the accustomed\nfinale of his viceroyalty, was on the road to him, escaped with his\ntreasures, and took up his abode in Tuscany. Among these was the\ngentleman to whom the drama of “Hellas” is dedicated. Prince\nMavrocordato was warmed by those aspirations for the independence of\nhis country which filled the hearts of many of his countrymen. He\noften intimated the possibility of an insurrection in Greece; but we\nhad no idea of its being so near at hand, when, on the 1st of April\n1821, he called on Shelley, bringing the proclamation of his cousin,\nPrince Ypsilanti, and, radiant with exultation and delight, declared\nthat henceforth Greece would be free.\n\nShelley had hymned the dawn of liberty in Spain and Naples, in two\nodes dictated by the warmest enthusiasm; he felt himself naturally\nimpelled to decorate with poetry the uprise of the descendants of that\npeople whose works he regarded with deep admiration, and to adopt the\nvaticinatory character in prophesying their success. “Hellas” was\nwritten in a moment of enthusiasm. It is curious to remark how well he\novercomes the difficulty of forming a drama out of such scant\nmaterials. His prophecies, indeed, came true in their general, not\ntheir particular, purport. He did not foresee the death of Lord\nLondonderry, which was to be the epoch of a change in English\npolitics, particularly as regarded foreign affairs; nor that the navy\nof his country would fight for instead of against the Greeks, and by\nthe battle of Navarino secure their enfranchisement from the Turks.\nAlmost against reason, as it appeared to him, he resolved to believe\nthat Greece would prove triumphant; and in this spirit, auguring\nultimate good, yet grieving over the vicissitudes to be endured in the\ninterval, he composed his drama.\n\n“Hellas” was among the last of his compositions, and is among the most\nbeautiful. The choruses are singularly imaginative, and melodious in\ntheir versification. There are some stanzas that beautifully exemplify\nShelley’s peculiar style; as, for instance, the assertion of the\nintellectual empire which must be for ever the inheritance of the\ncountry of Homer, Sophocles, and Plato:—\n\n‘But Greece and her foundations are\nBuilt below the tide of war,\nBased on the crystalline sea\nOf thought and its eternity.’\n\nAnd again, that philosophical truth felicitously imaged forth—\n\n‘Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind,\nThe foul cubs like their parents are,\nTheir den is in the guilty mind,\nAnd Conscience feeds them with despair.’\n\nThe conclusion of the last chorus is among the most beautiful of his\nlyrics. The imagery is distinct and majestic; the prophecy, such as\npoets love to dwell upon, the Regeneration of Mankind—and that\nregeneration reflecting back splendour on the foregone time, from\nwhich it inherits so much of intellectual wealth, and memory of past\nvirtuous deeds, as must render the possession of happiness and peace\nof tenfold value.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragments Of An Unfinished Drama.",
    "body": "[Published in part (lines 1-69, 100-120) by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous\nPoems”, 1824; and again, with the notes, in “Poetical Works”, 1839.\nLines 127-238 were printed by Dr. Garnett under the title of “The\nMagic Plant” in his “Relics of Shelley”, 1862. The whole was edited in\nits present form from the Boscombe manuscript by Mr. W.M. Rossetti in\n1870 (“Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, Moxon, 2 volumes.).\n‘Written at Pisa during the late winter or early spring of 1822’\n(Garnett).]\n\nThe following fragments are part of a Drama undertaken for the\namusement of the individuals who composed our intimate society, but\nleft unfinished. I have preserved a sketch of the story as far as it\nhad been shadowed in the poet’s mind.\n\nAn Enchantress, living in one of the islands of the Indian\nArchipelago, saves the life of a Pirate, a man of savage but noble\nnature. She becomes enamoured of him; and he, inconstant to his mortal\nlove, for a while returns her passion; but at length, recalling the\nmemory of her whom he left, and who laments his loss, he escapes from\nthe Enchanted Island, and returns to his lady. His mode of life makes\nhim again go to sea, and the Enchantress seizes the opportunity to\nbring him, by a spirit-brewed tempest, back to her Island. —[MRS.\nSHELLEY’S NOTE, 1839.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Enchantress:",
    "body": "He came like a dream in the dawn of life,\nHe fled like a shadow before its noon;\nHe is gone, and my peace is turned to strife,\nAnd I wander and wane like the weary moon.\nO, sweet Echo, wake,                                                 _5\nAnd for my sake\nMake answer the while my heart shall break!\n\nBut my heart has a music which Echo’s lips,\nThough tender and true, yet can answer not,\nAnd the shadow that moves in the soul’s eclipse                      _10\nCan return not the kiss by his now forgot;\nSweet lips! he who hath\nOn my desolate path\nCast the darkness of absence, worse than death!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Spirit:",
    "body": "Within the silent centre of the earth                                _15\nMy mansion is; where I have lived insphered\nFrom the beginning, and around my sleep\nHave woven all the wondrous imagery\nOf this dim spot, which mortals call the world;\nInfinite depths of unknown elements                                  _20\nMassed into one impenetrable mask;\nSheets of immeasurable fire, and veins\nOf gold and stone, and adamantine iron.\nAnd as a veil in which I walk through Heaven\nI have wrought mountains, seas, and waves, and clouds,               _25\nAnd lastly light, whose interfusion dawns\nIn the dark space of interstellar air.\n\n_15-_27 Within...air. 1839; omitted 1824.\n    See these lines in “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, page 209: “Song of a Spirit”.\n_16 have 1839; omitted 1824, page 209.\n_25 seas, and waves 1824, page 209; seas, waves 1839.\n\n[A good Spirit, who watches over the Pirate’s fate, leads, in a\nmysterious manner, the lady of his love to the Enchanted Isle. She is\naccompanied by a Youth, who loves the lady, but whose passion she\nreturns only with a sisterly affection. The ensuing scene takes place\nbetween them on their arrival at the Isle. [MRS. SHELLEY’S NOTE,\n1839.]]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lady:",
    "body": "Peace, perturbed heart!                                              _35\nI am to thee only as thou to mine,\nThe passing wind which heals the brow at noon,\nAnd may strike cold into the breast at night,\nYet cannot linger where it soothes the most,\nOr long soothe could it linger.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lady:",
    "body": "Oh! would that I could claim exemption\nFrom all the bitterness of that sweet name.\nI loved, I love, and when I love no more\nLet joys and grief perish, and leave despair                         _50\nTo ring the knell of youth. He stood beside me,\nThe embodied vision of the brightest dream,\nWhich like a dawn heralds the day of life;\nThe shadow of his presence made my world\nA Paradise. All familiar things he touched,                          _55\nAll common words he spoke, became to me\nLike forms and sounds of a diviner world.\nHe was as is the sun in his fierce youth,\nAs terrible and lovely as a tempest;\nHe came, and went, and left me what I am.                            _60\nAlas! Why must I think how oft we two\nHave sate together near the river springs,\nUnder the green pavilion which the willow\nSpreads on the floor of the unbroken fountain,\nStrewn, by the nurslings that linger there,                          _65\nOver that islet paved with flowers and moss,\nWhile the musk-rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,\nShowered on us, and the dove mourned in the pine,\nSad prophetess of sorrows not her own?\nThe crane returned to her unfrozen haunt,                            _70\nAnd the false cuckoo bade the spray good morn;\nAnd on a wintry bough the widowed bird,\nHid in the deepest night of ivy-leaves,\nRenewed the vigils of a sleepless sorrow.\nI, left like her, and leaving one like her,                          _75\nAlike abandoned and abandoning\n(Oh! unlike her in this!) the gentlest youth,\nWhose love had made my sorrows dear to him,\nEven as my sorrow made his love to me!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Indian:",
    "body": "One curse of Nature stamps in the same mould                         _80\nThe features of the wretched; and they are\nAs like as violet to violet,\nWhen memory, the ghost, their odours keeps\nMid the cold relics of abandoned joy.—\nProceed.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Indian [Aside]:",
    "body": "God of Heaven!\nFrom such an islet, such a river-spring—!\nI dare not ask her if there stood upon it                            _90\nA pleasure-dome surmounted by a crescent,\nWith steps to the blue water.\n[ALOUD.]\nIt may be\nThat Nature masks in life several copies\nOf the same lot, so that the sufferers\nMay feel another’s sorrow as their own,                              _95\nAnd find in friendship what they lost in love.\nThat cannot be: yet it is strange that we,\nFrom the same scene, by the same path to this\nRealm of abandonment— But speak! your breath—\nYour breath is like soft music, your words are                       _100\nThe echoes of a voice which on my heart\nSleeps like a melody of early days.\nBut as you said—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lady:",
    "body": "He was so awful, yet\nSo beautiful in mystery and terror,\nCalming me as the loveliness of heaven                               _105\nSoothes the unquiet sea:—and yet not so,\nFor he seemed stormy, and would often seem\nA quenchless sun masked in portentous clouds;\nFor such his thoughts, and even his actions were;\nBut he was not of them, nor they of him,                             _110\nBut as they hid his splendour from the earth.\nSome said he was a man of blood and peril,\nAnd steeped in bitter infamy to the lips.\nMore need was there I should be innocent,\nMore need that I should be most true and kind,                       _115\nAnd much more need that there should be found one\nTo share remorse and scorn and solitude,\nAnd all the ills that wait on those who do\nThe tasks of ruin in the world of life.\nHe fled, and I have followed him.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Indian:",
    "body": "Such a one                                                           _120\nIs he who was the winter of my peace.\nBut, fairest stranger, when didst thou depart\nFrom the far hills where rise the springs of India?\nHow didst thou pass the intervening sea?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lady:",
    "body": "If I be sure I am not dreaming now,                                  _125\nI should not doubt to say it was a dream.\nMethought a star came down from heaven,\nAnd rested mid the plants of India,\nWhich I had given a shelter from the frost\nWithin my chamber. There the meteor lay,                             _130\nPanting forth light among the leaves and flowers,\nAs if it lived, and was outworn with speed;\nOr that it loved, and passion made the pulse\nOf its bright life throb like an anxious heart,\nTill it diffused itself; and all the chamber                         _135\nAnd walls seemed melted into emerald fire\nThat burned not; in the midst of which appeared\nA spirit like a child, and laughed aloud\nA thrilling peal of such sweet merriment\nAs made the blood tingle in my warm feet:                            _140\nThen bent over a vase, and murmuring\nLow, unintelligible melodies,\nPlaced something in the mould like melon-seeds,\nAnd slowly faded, and in place of it\nA soft hand issued from the veil of fire,                            _145\nHolding a cup like a magnolia flower,\nAnd poured upon the earth within the vase\nThe element with which it overflowed,\nBrighter than morning light, and purer than\nThe water of the springs of Himalah.                                 _150",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lady:",
    "body": "Not until my dream became\nLike a child’s legend on the tideless sand.\nWhich the first foam erases half, and half\nLeaves legible. At length I rose, and went,\nVisiting my flowers from pot to pot, and thought                     _155\nTo set new cuttings in the empty urns,\nAnd when I came to that beside the lattice,\nI saw two little dark-green leaves\nLifting the light mould at their birth, and then\nI half-remembered my forgotten dream.                                _160\nAnd day by day, green as a gourd in June,\nThe plant grew fresh and thick, yet no one knew\nWhat plant it was; its stem and tendrils seemed\nLike emerald snakes, mottled and diamonded\nWith azure mail and streaks of woven silver;                         _165\nAnd all the sheaths that folded the dark buds\nRose like the crest of cobra-di-capel,\nUntil the golden eye of the bright flower,\nThrough the dark lashes of those veined lids,\n...disencumbered of their silent sleep,                              _170\nGazed like a star into the morning light.\nIts leaves were delicate, you almost saw\nThe pulses\nWith which the purple velvet flower was fed\nTo overflow, and like a poet’s heart                                 _175\nChanging bright fancy to sweet sentiment,\nChanged half the light to fragrance. It soon fell,\nAnd to a green and dewy embryo-fruit\nLeft all its treasured beauty. Day by day\nI nursed the plant, and on the double flute                          _180\nPlayed to it on the sunny winter days\nSoft melodies, as sweet as April rain\nOn silent leaves, and sang those words in which\nPassion makes Echo taunt the sleeping strings;\nAnd I would send tales of forgotten love                             _185\nLate into the lone night, and sing wild songs\nOf maids deserted in the olden time,\nAnd weep like a soft cloud in April’s bosom\nUpon the sleeping eyelids of the plant,\nSo that perhaps it dreamed that Spring was come,                     _190\nAnd crept abroad into the moonlight air,\nAnd loosened all its limbs, as, noon by noon,\nThe sun averted less his oblique beam.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lady:",
    "body": "It grew;\nAnd went out of the lattice which I left                             _195\nHalf open for it, trailing its quaint spires\nAlong the garden and across the lawn,\nAnd down the slope of moss and through the tufts\nOf wild-flower roots, and stumps of trees o’ergrown\nWith simple lichens, and old hoary stones,                           _200\nOn to the margin of the glassy pool,\nEven to a nook of unblown violets\nAnd lilies-of-the-valley yet unborn,\nUnder a pine with ivy overgrown.\nAnd there its fruit lay like a sleeping lizard                       _205\nUnder the shadows; but when Spring indeed\nCame to unswathe her infants, and the lilies\nPeeped from their bright green masks to wonder at\nThis shape of autumn couched in their recess,\nThen it dilated, and it grew until                                   _210\nOne half lay floating on the fountain wave,\nWhose pulse, elapsed in unlike sympathies,\nKept time\nAmong the snowy water-lily buds.\nIts shape was such as summer melody                                  _215\nOf the south wind in spicy vales might give\nTo some light cloud bound from the golden dawn\nTo fairy isles of evening, and it seemed\nIn hue and form that it had been a mirror\nOf all the hues and forms around it and                              _220\nUpon it pictured by the sunny beams\nWhich, from the bright vibrations of the pool,\nWere thrown upon the rafters and the roof\nOf boughs and leaves, and on the pillared stems\nOf the dark sylvan temple, and reflections                           _225\nOf every infant flower and star of moss\nAnd veined leaf in the azure odorous air.\nAnd thus it lay in the Elysian calm\nOf its own beauty, floating on the line\nWhich, like a film in purest space, divided                          _230\nThe heaven beneath the water from the heaven\nAbove the clouds; and every day I went\nWatching its growth and wondering;\nAnd as the day grew hot, methought I saw\nA glassy vapour dancing on the pool,                                 _235\nAnd on it little quaint and filmy shapes.\nWith dizzy motion, wheel and rise and fall,\nLike clouds of gnats with perfect lineaments.\n\n...\n\nO friend, sleep was a veil uplift from Heaven—\nAs if Heaven dawned upon the world of dream—                        _240\nWhen darkness rose on the extinguished day\nOut of the eastern wilderness.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Charles The First.",
    "body": "[“Charles the First” was designed in 1818, begun towards the close of\n1819 [Medwin, “Life”, 2 page 62], resumed in January, and finally laid\naside by June, 1822. It was published in part in the “Posthumous\nPoems”, 1824, and printed, in its present form (with the addition of\nsome 530 lines), by Mr. W.M. Rossetti, 1870. Further particulars are\ngiven in the Editor’s Notes at the end of Volume 3.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "King Charles I.",
    "body": "QUEEN HENRIETTA.\nLAUD, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.\nWENTWORTH, EARL OF STRAFFORD.\nLORD COTTINGTON.\nLORD WESTON.\nLORD COVENTRY.\nWILLIAMS, BISHOP OF LINCOLN.\nSECRETARY LYTTELTON.\nJUXON.\nST. JOHN.\nARCHY, THE COURT FOOL.\nHAMPDEN.\nPYM.\nCROMWELL.\nCROMWELL’S DAUGHTER.\nSIR HARRY VANE THE YOUNGER.\nLEIGHTON.\nBASTWICK.\nPRYNNE.\nGENTLEMEN OF THE INNS OF COURT, CITIZENS, PURSUIVANTS,\nMARSHALSMEN, LAW STUDENTS, JUDGES, CLERK.\n\nSCENE 1:\nTHE MASQUE OF THE INNS OF COURT.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Second Citizen:",
    "body": "And Hell to Heaven.                                                  _5\nEight years are gone,\nAnd they seem hours, since in this populous street\nI trod on grass made green by summer’s rain,\nFor the red plague kept state within that palace\nWhere now that vanity reigns. In nine years more                     _10\nThe roots will be refreshed with civil blood;\nAnd thank the mercy of insulted Heaven\nThat sin and wrongs wound, as an orphan’s cry,\nThe patience of the great Avenger’s ear.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Youth:",
    "body": "Yet, father, ’tis a happy sight to see,                              _15\nBeautiful, innocent, and unforbidden\nBy God or man;—’tis like the bright procession\nOf skiey visions in a solemn dream\nFrom which men wake as from a Paradise,\nAnd draw new strength to tread the thorns of life.                   _20\nIf God be good, wherefore should this be evil?\nAnd if this be not evil, dost thou not draw\nUnseasonable poison from the flowers\nWhich bloom so rarely in this barren world?\nOh, kill these bitter thoughts which make the present                _25\nDark as the future!—\n\n...\n\nWhen Avarice and Tyranny, vigilant Fear,\nAnd open-eyed Conspiracy lie sleeping\nAs on Hell’s threshold; and all gentle thoughts\nWaken to worship Him who giveth joys                                 _30\nWith His own gift.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Second Citizen:",
    "body": "How young art thou in this old age of time!\nHow green in this gray world? Canst thou discern\nThe signs of seasons, yet perceive no hint\nOf change in that stage-scene in which thou art                      _35\nNot a spectator but an actor? or\nArt thou a puppet moved by [enginery]?\nThe day that dawns in fire will die in storms,\nEven though the noon be calm. My travel’s done,—\nBefore the whirlwind wakes I shall have found                        _40\nMy inn of lasting rest; but thou must still\nBe journeying on in this inclement air.\nWrap thy old cloak about thy back;\nNor leave the broad and plain and beaten road,\nAlthough no flowers smile on the trodden dust,                       _45\nFor the violet paths of pleasure. This Charles the First\nRose like the equinoctial sun,...\nBy vapours, through whose threatening ominous veil\nDarting his altered influence he has gained\nThis height of noon—from which he must decline                      _50\nAmid the darkness of conflicting storms,\nTo dank extinction and to latest night...\nThere goes\nThe apostate Strafford; he whose titles\nwhispered aphorisms                                                  _55\nFrom Machiavel and Bacon: and, if Judas\nHad been as brazen and as bold as he—\n\n_33-_37 Canst...enginery 1870;\n    Canst thou not think\n    Of change in that low scene, in which thou art\n    Not a spectator but an actor?... 1824.\n_43-_57 Wrap...bold as he 1870; omitted 1824.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Second Citizen:",
    "body": "Rather say the Pope:\nLondon will be soon his Rome: he walks\nAs if he trod upon the heads of men:                                 _60\nHe looks elate, drunken with blood and gold;—\nBeside him moves the Babylonian woman\nInvisibly, and with her as with his shadow,\nMitred adulterer! he is joined in sin,\nWhich turns Heaven’s milk of mercy to revenge.                       _65",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Third Citizen [Lifting Up His Eyes]:",
    "body": "Good Lord! rain it down upon him!...\nAmid her ladies walks the papist queen,\nAs if her nice feet scorned our English earth.\nThe Canaanitish Jezebel! I would be\nA dog if I might tear her with my teeth!                             _70\nThere’s old Sir Henry Vane, the Earl of Pembroke,\nLord Essex, and Lord Keeper Coventry,\nAnd others who make base their English breed\nBy vile participation of their honours\nWith papists, atheists, tyrants, and apostates.                      _75\nWhen lawyers masque ’tis time for honest men\nTo strip the vizor from their purposes.\nA seasonable time for masquers this!\nWhen Englishmen and Protestants should sit\ndust on their dishonoured heads                                      _80\nTo avert the wrath of Him whose scourge is felt\nFor the great sins which have drawn down from Heaven\nand foreign overthrow.\nThe remnant of the martyred saints in Rochefort\nHave been abandoned by their faithless allies                        _85\nTo that idolatrous and adulterous torturer\nLewis of France,—the Palatinate is lost—\n[ENTER LEIGHTON (WHO HAS BEEN BRANDED IN THE FACE) AND BASTWICK.]\nCanst thou be—art thou?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Leighton:",
    "body": "I WAS Leighton: what\nI AM thou seest. And yet turn thine eyes,\nAnd with thy memory look on thy friend’s mind,                       _90\nWhich is unchanged, and where is written deep\nThe sentence of my judge.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Second Citizen:",
    "body": "It is said besides                                                   _95\nThat lewd and papist drunkards may profane\nThe Sabbath with their\nAnd has permitted that most heathenish custom\nOf dancing round a pole dressed up with wreaths\nOn May-day.                                                          _100\nA man who thus twice crucifies his God\nMay well ... his brother.—In my mind, friend,\nThe root of all this ill is prelacy.\nI would cut up the root.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Second Citizen:",
    "body": "I learnt it in\nEgyptian bondage, sir. Your worm of Nile\nBetrays not with its flattering tears like they;\nFor, when they cannot kill, they whine and weep.                     _110\nNor is it half so greedy of men’s bodies\nAs they of soul and all; nor does it wallow\nIn slime as they in simony and lies\nAnd close lusts of the flesh.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Law Student:",
    "body": "What thinkest thou\nOf this quaint show of ours, my aged friend?\nEven now we see the redness of the torches\nInflame the night to the eastward, and the clarions                  _120\n[Gasp?] to us on the wind’s wave. It comes!\nAnd their sounds, floating hither round the pageant,\nRouse up the astonished air.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Second Citizen:",
    "body": "As adders cast their skins\nAnd keep their venom, so kings often change;\nCouncils and counsellors hang on one another,\nHiding the loathsome                                                 _130\nLike the base patchwork of a leper’s rags.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Youth:",
    "body": "How glorious! See those thronging chariots\nRolling, like painted clouds before the wind,\nBehind their solemn steeds: how some are shaped\nLike curved sea-shells dyed by the azure depths                      _140\nOf Indian seas; some like the new-born moon;\nAnd some like cars in which the Romans climbed\n(Canopied by Victory’s eagle-wings outspread)\nThe Capitolian—See how gloriously\nThe mettled horses in the torchlight stir                            _145\nTheir gallant riders, while they check their pride,\nLike shapes of some diviner element\nThan English air, and beings nobler than\nThe envious and admiring multitude.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Second Citizen:",
    "body": "Ay, there they are—                                                 _150\nNobles, and sons of nobles, patentees,\nMonopolists, and stewards of this poor farm,\nOn whose lean sheep sit the prophetic crows,\nHere is the pomp that strips the houseless orphan,\nHere is the pride that breaks the desolate heart.                    _155\nThese are the lilies glorious as Solomon,\nWho toil not, neither do they spin,—unless\nIt be the webs they catch poor rogues withal.\nHere is the surfeit which to them who earn\nThe niggard wages of the earth, scarce leaves                        _160\nThe tithe that will support them till they crawl\nBack to her cold hard bosom. Here is health\nFollowed by grim disease, glory by shame,\nWaste by lame famine, wealth by squalid want,\nAnd England’s sin by England’s punishment.                           _165\nAnd, as the effect pursues the cause foregone,\nLo, giving substance to my words, behold\nAt once the sign and the thing signified—\nA troop of cripples, beggars, and lean outcasts,\nHorsed upon stumbling jades, carted with dung,                       _170\nDragged for a day from cellars and low cabins\nAnd rotten hiding-holes, to point the moral\nOf this presentment, and bring up the rear\nOf painted pomp with misery!\n\n_162 her 1870; its 1824.\n_170 jades 1870; shapes 1824.\n_173 presentment 1870; presentiment 1824.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Youth:",
    "body": "’Tis but\nThe anti-masque, and serves as discords do                           _175\nIn sweetest music. Who would love May flowers\nIf they succeeded not to Winter’s flaw;\nOr day unchanged by night; or joy itself\nWithout the touch of sorrow?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "King:",
    "body": "Thanks, gentlemen. I heartily accept\nThis token of your service: your gay masque\nWas performed gallantly. And it shows well\nWhen subjects twine such flowers of [observance?]\nWith the sharp thorns that deck the English crown.                   _5\nA gentle heart enjoys what it confers,\nEven as it suffers that which it inflicts,\nThough Justice guides the stroke.\nAccept my hearty thanks.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Queen:",
    "body": "And gentlemen,\nCall your poor Queen your debtor. Your quaint pageant                _10\nRose on me like the figures of past years,\nTreading their still path back to infancy,\nMore beautiful and mild as they draw nearer\nThe quiet cradle. I could have almost wept\nTo think I was in Paris, where these shows                           _15\nAre well devised—such as I was ere yet\nMy young heart shared a portion of the burthen,\nThe careful weight, of this great monarchy.\nThere, gentlemen, between the sovereign’s pleasure\nAnd that which it regards, no clamour lifts                          _20\nIts proud interposition.\nIn Paris ribald censurers dare not move\nTheir poisonous tongues against these sinless sports;\nAnd HIS smile\nWarms those who bask in it, as ours would do                         _25\nIf ... Take my heart’s thanks: add them, gentlemen,\nTo those good words which, were he King of France,\nMy royal lord would turn to golden deeds.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "St. John:",
    "body": "Madam, the love of Englishmen can make\nThe lightest favour of their lawful king                             _30\nOutweigh a despot’s.—We humbly take our leaves,\nEnriched by smiles which France can never buy.\n\n[EXEUNT ST. JOHN AND THE GENTLEMEN OF THE INNS OF COURT.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Archy:",
    "body": "Yes, pray your Grace look: for, like an unsophisticated [eye] sees\neverything upside down, you who are wise will discern the shadow of an\nidiot in lawn sleeves and a rochet setting springes to catch woodcocks\nin haymaking time. Poor Archy, whose owl-eyes are tempered to the\nerror of his age, and because he is a fool, and by special ordinance\nof God forbidden ever to see himself as he is, sees now in that deep\neye a blindfold devil sitting on the ball, and weighing words out\nbetween king and subjects. One scale is full of promises, and the\nother full of protestations: and then another devil creeps behind the\nfirst out of the dark windings [of a] pregnant lawyer’s brain, and\ntakes the bandage from the other’s eyes, and throws a sword into the\nleft-hand scale, for all the world like my Lord Essex’s there.       _48",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Archy:",
    "body": "When all the fools are whipped, and all the Protestant writers, while\nthe knaves are whipping the fools ever since a thief was set to catch\na thief. If all turncoats were whipped out of palaces, poor Archy\nwould be disgraced in good company. Let the knaves whip the fools, and\nall the fools laugh at it. [Let the] wise and godly slit each other’s\nnoses and ears (having no need of any sense of discernment in their\ncraft); and the knaves, to marshal them, join in a procession to\nBedlam, to entreat the madmen to omit their sublime Platonic\ncontemplations, and manage the state of England. Let all the honest\nmen who lie [pinched?] up at the prisons or the pillories, in custody\nof the pursuivants of the High-Commission Court, marshal them.       _65",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "King [Looking Over The Papers]:",
    "body": "These stiff Scots\nHis Grace of Canterbury must take order\nTo force under the Church’s yoke.—You, Wentworth,\nShall be myself in Ireland, and shall add\nYour wisdom, gentleness, and energy,                                 _70\nTo what in me were wanting.—My Lord Weston,\nLook that those merchants draw not without loss\nTheir bullion from the Tower; and, on the payment\nOf shipmoney, take fullest compensation\nFor violation of our royal forests,                                  _75\nWhose limits, from neglect, have been o’ergrown\nWith cottages and cornfields. The uttermost\nFarthing exact from those who claim exemption\nFrom knighthood: that which once was a reward\nShall thus be made a punishment, that subjects                       _80\nMay know how majesty can wear at will\nThe rugged mood.—My Lord of Coventry,\nLay my command upon the Courts below\nThat bail be not accepted for the prisoners\nUnder the warrant of the Star Chamber.                               _85\nThe people shall not find the stubbornness\nOf Parliament a cheap or easy method\nOf dealing with their rightful sovereign:\nAnd doubt not this, my Lord of Coventry,\nWe will find time and place for fit rebuke.—                        _90\nMy Lord of Canterbury.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "King:",
    "body": "What, my Archy?                                                      _95\nHe mocks and mimics all he sees and hears,\nYet with a quaint and graceful licence—Prithee\nFor this once do not as Prynne would, were he\nPrimate of England. With your Grace’s leave,\nHe lives in his own world; and, like a parrot                        _100\nHung in his gilded prison from the window\nOf a queen’s bower over the public way,\nBlasphemes with a bird’s mind:—his words, like arrows\nWhich know no aim beyond the archer’s wit,\nStrike sometimes what eludes philosophy.—                           _105\n[TO ARCHY.]\nGo, sirrah, and repent of your offence\nTen minutes in the rain; be it your penance\nTo bring news how the world goes there.\n[EXIT ARCHY.]\nPoor Archy!\nHe weaves about himself a world of mirth\nOut of the wreck of ours.                                            _110\n\n_99 With your Grace’s leave 1870; omitted 1824.\n_106-_110 Go...ours spoken by THE QUEEN, 1824.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Queen:",
    "body": "And the lion\nThat wears them must be tamed. My dearest lord,                      _115\nI see the new-born courage in your eye\nArmed to strike dead the Spirit of the Time,\nWhich spurs to rage the many-headed beast.\nDo thou persist: for, faint but in resolve,\nAnd it were better thou hadst still remained                         _120\nThe slave of thine own slaves, who tear like curs\nThe fugitive, and flee from the pursuer;\nAnd Opportunity, that empty wolf,\nFlies at his throat who falls. Subdue thy actions\nEven to the disposition of thy purpose,                              _125\nAnd be that tempered as the Ebro’s steel;\nAnd banish weak-eyed Mercy to the weak,\nWhence she will greet thee with a gift of peace\nAnd not betray thee with a traitor’s kiss,\nAs when she keeps the company of rebels,                             _130\nWho think that she is Fear. This do, lest we\nShould fall as from a glorious pinnacle\nIn a bright dream, and wake as from a dream\nOut of our worshipped state.\n\n_116 your 1824; thine 1870.\n_118 Which...beast 1870; omitted 1824.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "King:",
    "body": "Beloved friend,\nGod is my witness that this weight of power,                         _135\nWhich He sets me my earthly task to wield\nUnder His law, is my delight and pride\nOnly because thou lovest that and me.\nFor a king bears the office of a God\nTo all the under world; and to his God                               _140\nAlone he must deliver up his trust,\nUnshorn of its permitted attributes.\n[It seems] now as the baser elements\nHad mutinied against the golden sun\nThat kindles them to harmony, and quells                             _145\nTheir self-destroying rapine. The wild million\nStrike at the eye that guides them; like as humours\nOf the distempered body that conspire\nAgainst the spirit of life throned in the heart,—\nAnd thus become the prey of one another,                             _150\nAnd last of death—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Strafford:",
    "body": "That which would be ambition in a subject\nIs duty in a sovereign; for on him,\nAs on a keystone, hangs the arch of life,\nWhose safety is its strength. Degree and form,                       _155\nAnd all that makes the age of reasoning man\nMore memorable than a beast’s, depend on this—\nThat Right should fence itself inviolably\nWith Power; in which respect the state of England\nFrom usurpation by the insolent commons                              _160\nCries for reform.\nGet treason, and spare treasure. Fee with coin\nThe loudest murmurers; feed with jealousies\nOpposing factions,—be thyself of none;\nAnd borrow gold of many, for those who lend                          _165\nWill serve thee till thou payest them; and thus\nKeep the fierce spirit of the hour at bay,\nTill time, and its coming generations\nOf nights and days unborn, bring some one chance,\n\n...\n\nOr war or pestilence or Nature’s self,—                             _170\nBy some distemperature or terrible sign,\nBe as an arbiter betwixt themselves.\nNor let your Majesty\nDoubt here the peril of the unseen event.\nHow did your brother Kings, coheritors                               _175\nIn your high interest in the subject earth,\nRise past such troubles to that height of power\nWhere now they sit, and awfully serene\nSmile on the trembling world? Such popular storms\nPhilip the Second of Spain, this Lewis of France,                    _180\nAnd late the German head of many bodies,\nAnd every petty lord of Italy,\nQuelled or by arts or arms. Is England poorer\nOr feebler? or art thou who wield’st her power\nTamer than they? or shall this island be—                           _185\n[Girdled] by its inviolable waters—\nTo the world present and the world to come\nSole pattern of extinguished monarchy?\nNot if thou dost as I would have thee do.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "King:",
    "body": "Your words shall be my deeds:                                        _190\nYou speak the image of my thought. My friend\n(If Kings can have a friend, I call thee so),\nBeyond the large commission which [belongs]\nUnder the great seal of the realm, take this:\nAnd, for some obvious reasons, let there be                          _195\nNo seal on it, except my kingly word\nAnd honour as I am a gentleman.\nBe—as thou art within my heart and mind—\nAnother self, here and in Ireland:\nDo what thou judgest well, take amplest licence,                     _200\nAnd stick not even at questionable means.\nHear me, Wentworth. My word is as a wall\nBetween thee and this world thine enemy—\nThat hates thee, for thou lovest me.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Laud:",
    "body": "Your Majesty has ever interposed,                                    _210\nIn lenity towards your native soil,\nBetween the heavy vengeance of the Church\nAnd Scotland. Mark the consequence of warming\nThis brood of northern vipers in your bosom.\nThe rabble, instructed no doubt                                      _215\nBy London, Lindsay, Hume, and false Argyll\n(For the waves never menace heaven until\nScourged by the wind’s invisible tyranny),\nHave in the very temple of the Lord\nDone outrage to His chosen ministers.                                _220\nThey scorn the liturgy of the Holy Church,\nRefuse to obey her canons, and deny\nThe apostolic power with which the Spirit\nHas filled its elect vessels, even from him\nWho held the keys with power to loose and bind,                      _225\nTo him who now pleads in this royal presence.—\nLet ample powers and new instructions be\nSent to the High Commissioners in Scotland.\nTo death, imprisonment, and confiscation,\nAdd torture, add the ruin of the kindred                             _230\nOf the offender, add the brand of infamy,\nAdd mutilation: and if this suffice not,\nUnleash the sword and fire, that in their thirst\nThey may lick up that scum of schismatics.\nI laugh at those weak rebels who, desiring                           _235\nWhat we possess, still prate of Christian peace,\nAs if those dreadful arbitrating messengers\nWhich play the part of God ’twixt right and wrong,\nShould be let loose against the innocent sleep\nOf templed cities and the smiling fields,                            _240\nFor some poor argument of policy\nWhich touches our own profit or our pride\n(Where it indeed were Christian charity\nTo turn the cheek even to the smiter’s hand):\nAnd, when our great Redeemer, when our God,                          _245\nWhen He who gave, accepted, and retained\nHimself in propitiation of our sins,\nIs scorned in His immediate ministry,\nWith hazard of the inestimable loss\nOf all the truth and discipline which is                             _250\nSalvation to the extremest generation\nOf men innumerable, they talk of peace!\nSuch peace as Canaan found, let Scotland now:\nFor, by that Christ who came to bring a sword,\nNot peace, upon the earth, and gave command                          _255\nTo His disciples at the Passover\nThat each should sell his robe and buy a sword,-\nOnce strip that minister of naked wrath,\nAnd it shall never sleep in peace again\nTill Scotland bend or break.\n\n_134-_232 Beloved...mutilation 1870; omitted 1824.\n_237 arbitrating messengers 1870; messengers of wrath 1824.\n_239 the 1870; omitted 1524.\n_243-_244 Parentheses inserted 1870.\n_246, _247 When He...sins 1870; omitted 1824.\n_248 ministry 1870; ministers 1824.\n_249-52 With...innumerable 1870; omitted 1824.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "King:",
    "body": "My Lord Archbishop,                                                  _260\nDo what thou wilt and what thou canst in this.\nThy earthly even as thy heavenly King\nGives thee large power in his unquiet realm.\nBut we want money, and my mind misgives me\nThat for so great an enterprise, as yet,                             _265\nWe are unfurnished.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cottington:",
    "body": "The expenses\nOf gathering shipmoney, and of distraining\nFor every petty rate (for we encounter\nA desperate opposition inch by inch                                  _270\nIn every warehouse and on every farm),\nHave swallowed up the gross sum of the imposts;\nSo that, though felt as a most grievous scourge\nUpon the land, they stand us in small stead\nAs touches the receipt.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Strafford:",
    "body": "’Tis a conclusion                                                    _275\nMost arithmetical: and thence you infer\nPerhaps the assembling of a parliament.\nNow, if a man should call his dearest enemies\nTo sit in licensed judgement on his life,\nHis Majesty might wisely take that course.                           _280\n[ASIDE TO COTTINGTON.]\nIt is enough to expect from these lean imposts\nThat they perform the office of a scourge,\nWithout more profit.\n[ALOUD.]\nFines and confiscations,\nAnd a forced loan from the refractory city,\nWill fill our coffers: and the golden love                           _285\nOf loyal gentlemen and noble friends\nFor the worshipped father of our common country,\nWith contributions from the catholics,\nWill make Rebellion pale in our excess.\nBe these the expedients until time and wisdom                        _290\nShall frame a settled state of government.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Laud:",
    "body": "Both now grow barren: and I speak it not\nAs loving parliaments, which, as they have been\nIn the right hand of bold bad mighty kings\nThe scourges of the bleeding Church, I hate.\nMethinks they scarcely can deserve our fear.                         _300",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Strafford:",
    "body": "Oh! my dear liege, take back the wealth thou gavest:\nWith that, take all I held, but as in trust\nFor thee, of mine inheritance: leave me but\nThis unprovided body for thy service,\nAnd a mind dedicated to no care                                      _305\nExcept thy safety:—but assemble not\nA parliament. Hundreds will bring, like me,\nTheir fortunes, as they would their blood, before—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "King:",
    "body": "No! thou who judgest them art but one. Alas!\nWe should be too much out of love with Heaven,                       _310\nDid this vile world show many such as thee,\nThou perfect, just, and honourable man!\nNever shall it be said that Charles of England\nStripped those he loved for fear of those he scorns;\nNor will he so much misbecome his throne                             _315\nAs to impoverish those who most adorn\nAnd best defend it. That you urge, dear Strafford,\nInclines me rather—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Queen:",
    "body": "To a parliament?\nIs this thy firmness? and thou wilt preside\nOver a knot of ... censurers,                                        _320\nTo the unswearing of thy best resolves,\nAnd choose the worst, when the worst comes too soon?\nPlight not the worst before the worst must come.\nOh, wilt thou smile whilst our ribald foes,\nDressed in their own usurped authority,                              _325\nSharpen their tongues on Henrietta’s fame?\nIt is enough! Thou lovest me no more!\n[WEEPS.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Laud:",
    "body": "Without delay                                                        _330\nAn army must be sent into the north;\nFollowed by a Commission of the Church,\nWith amplest power to quench in fire and blood,\nAnd tears and terror, and the pity of hell,\nThe intenser wrath of Heresy. God will give                          _335\nVictory; and victory over Scotland give\nThe lion England tamed into our hands.\nThat will lend power, and power bring gold.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Laud:",
    "body": "I am not averse                                                      _340\nFrom the assembling of a parliament.\nStrong actions and smooth words might teach them soon\nThe lesson to obey. And are they not\nA bubble fashioned by the monarch’s mouth,\nThe birth of one light breath? If they serve no purpose,             _345\nA word dissolves them.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Strafford:",
    "body": "The engine of parliaments\nMight be deferred until I can bring over\nThe Irish regiments: they will serve to assure\nThe issue of the war against the Scots.\nAnd, this game won—which if lost, all is lost—                     _350\nGather these chosen leaders of the rebels,\nAnd call them, if you will, a parliament.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "King:",
    "body": "Oh, be our feet still tardy to shed blood.\nGuilty though it may be! I would still spare\nThe stubborn country of my birth, and ward                           _355\nFrom countenances which I loved in youth\nThe wrathful Church’s lacerating hand.\n[TO LAUD.]\nHave you o’erlooked the other articles?\n\n[ENTER ARCHY.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Archy:",
    "body": "New devil’s politics.                                                _365\nHell is the pattern of all commonwealths:\nLucifer was the first republican.\nWill you hear Merlin’s prophecy, how three [posts?]\n‘In one brainless skull, when the whitethorn is full,\nShall sail round the world, and come back again:                     _370\nShall sail round the world in a brainless skull,\nAnd come back again when the moon is at full:’—\nWhen, in spite of the Church,\nThey will hear homilies of whatever length\nOr form they please.                                                 _375\n\n[COTTINGTON?]:\nSo please your Majesty to sign this order\nFor their detention.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Archy:",
    "body": "If your Majesty were tormented night and day by fever, gout,\nrheumatism, and stone, and asthma, etc., and you found these diseases\nhad secretly entered into a conspiracy to abandon you, should you\nthink it necessary to lay an embargo on the port by which they meant\nto dispeople your unquiet kingdom of man?                            _383",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "King:",
    "body": "If fear were made for kings, the Fool mocks wisely;\nBut in this case—[WRITING]. Here, my lord, take the warrant,\nAnd see it duly executed forthwith.—\nThat imp of malice and mockery shall be punished.                    _387\n\n[EXEUNT ALL BUT KING, QUEEN, AND ARCHY.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Archy:",
    "body": "Ay, I am the physician of whom Plato prophesied, who was to be accused\nby the confectioner before a jury of children, who found him guilty\nwithout waiting for the summing-up, and hanged him without benefit of\nclergy. Thus Baby Charles, and the Twelfth-night Queen of Hearts, and\nthe overgrown schoolboy Cottington, and that little urchin Laud—who\nwould reduce a verdict of ‘guilty, death,’ by famine, if it were\nimpregnable by composition—all impannelled against poor Archy for\npresenting them bitter physic the last day of the holidays.          _397",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Archy:",
    "body": "Gloriously as a grave covered with virgin flowers. There’s a rainbow\nin the sky. Let your Majesty look at it, for\n\n‘A rainbow in the morning                                          _407\nIs the shepherd’s warning;’\n\nand the flocks of which you are the pastor are scattered among the\nmountain-tops, where every drop of water is a flake of snow, and the\nbreath of May pierces like a January blast.                          _411",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Archy:",
    "body": "Ay, the salt-water one: but that of tears and blood must yet come\ndown, and that of fire follow, if there be any truth in lies.—The\nrainbow hung over the city with all its shops,...and churches, from\nnorth to south, like a bridge of congregated lightning pieced by the\nmasonry of heaven—like a balance in which the angel that distributes\nthe coming hour was weighing that heavy one whose poise is now felt in\nthe lightest hearts, before it bows the proudest heads under the\nmeanest feet.                                                        _424",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Archy:",
    "body": "A torn leaf out of an old book trampled in the dirt.—But for the\nrainbow. It moved as the sun moved, and...until the top of the\nTower...of a cloud through its left-hand tip, and Lambeth Palace look\nas dark as a rock before the other. Methought I saw a crown figured\nupon one tip, and a mitre on the other. So, as I had heard treasures\nwere found where the rainbow quenches its points upon the earth, I set\noff, and at the Tower— But I shall not tell your Majesty what I found\nclose to the closet-window on which the rainbow had glimmered.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Archy:",
    "body": "Like the season,                                                     _440\nSo blow the winds.—But at the other end of the rainbow, where the\ngray rain was tempered along the grass and leaves by a tender\ninterfusion of violet and gold in the meadows beyond Lambeth, what\nthink you that I found instead of a mitre?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Archy:",
    "body": "Something as vain. I saw a gross vapour hovering in a stinking ditch\nover the carcass of a dead ass, some rotten rags, and broken\ndishes—the wrecks of what once administered to the stuffing-out and\nthe ornament of a worm of worms. His Grace of Canterbury expects to\nenter the New Jerusalem some Palm Sunday in triumph on the ghost of\nthis ass.                                                            _451",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Queen:",
    "body": "MY beloved lord,                                                     _455\nHave you not noted that the Fool of late\nHas lost his careless mirth, and that his words\nSound like the echoes of our saddest fears?\nWhat can it mean? I should be loth to think\nSome factious slave had tutored him.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "King:",
    "body": "Oh, no!                                                              _460\nHe is but Occasion’s pupil. Partly ’tis\nThat our minds piece the vacant intervals\nOf his wild words with their own fashioning,—\nAs in the imagery of summer clouds,\nOr coals of the winter fire, idlers find                             _465\nThe perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts:\nAnd partly, that the terrors of the time\nAre sown by wandering Rumour in all spirits;\nAnd in the lightest and the least, may best\nBe seen the current of the coming wind.                              _470\n\n_460, _461 Oh...pupil 1870; omitted 1824.\n_461 Partly ’tis 1870; It partly is 1824.\n_465 of 1870; in 1824.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Queen:",
    "body": "Your brain is overwrought with these deep thoughts.\nCome, I will sing to you; let us go try\nThese airs from Italy; and, as we pass\nThe gallery, we’ll decide where that Correggio\nShall hang—the Virgin Mother                                        _475\nWith her child, born the King of heaven and earth,\nWhose reign is men’s salvation. And you shall see\nA cradled miniature of yourself asleep,\nStamped on the heart by never-erring love;\nLiker than any Vandyke ever made,                                    _480\nA pattern to the unborn age of thee,\nOver whose sweet beauty I have wept for joy\nA thousand times, and now should weep for sorrow,\nDid I not think that after we were dead\nOur fortunes would spring high in him, and that                      _485\nThe cares we waste upon our heavy crown\nWould make it light and glorious as a wreath\nOf Heaven’s beams for his dear innocent brow.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Clerk:",
    "body": "‘That he pay five thousand\nPounds to the king, lose both his ears, be branded\nWith red-hot iron on the cheek and forehead,\nAnd be imprisoned within Lancaster Castle                            _5\nDuring the pleasure of the Court.’",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Bastwick:",
    "body": "Thus, my lords. If, like the prelates, I                             _10\nWere an invader of the royal power\nA public scorner of the word of God,\nProfane, idolatrous, popish, superstitious,\nImpious in heart and in tyrannic act,\nVoid of wit, honesty, and temperance;                                _15\nIf Satan were my lord, as theirs,—our God\nPattern of all I should avoid to do;\nWere I an enemy of my God and King\nAnd of good men, as ye are;—I should merit\nYour fearful state and gilt prosperity,                              _20\nWhich, when ye wake from the last sleep, shall turn\nTo cowls and robes of everlasting fire.\nBut, as I am, I bid ye grudge me not\nThe only earthly favour ye can yield,\nOr I think worth acceptance at your hands,—                         _25\nScorn, mutilation, and imprisonment.\neven as my Master did,\nUntil Heaven’s kingdom shall descend on earth,\nOr earth be like a shadow in the light\nOf Heaven absorbed—some few tumultuous years                        _30\nWill pass, and leave no wreck of what opposes\nHis will whose will is power.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Juxon:",
    "body": "Stop!                                                                _35\nForbear, my lord! The tongue, which now can speak\nNo terror, would interpret, being dumb,\nHeaven’s thunder to our harm;...\nAnd hands, which now write only their own shame,\nWith bleeding stumps might sign our blood away.                      _40",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Laud:",
    "body": "Much more such ‘mercy’ among men would be,\nDid all the ministers of Heaven’s revenge\nFlinch thus from earthly retribution. I\nCould suffer what I would inflict.\n[EXIT BASTWICK GUARDED.]\nBring up\nThe Lord Bishop of Lincoln.—\n[TO STRAFFORD.]\nKnow you not                                                         _45\nThat, in distraining for ten thousand pounds\nUpon his books and furniture at Lincoln,\nWere found these scandalous and seditious letters\nSent from one Osbaldistone, who is fled?\nI speak it not as touching this poor person;                         _50\nBut of the office which should make it holy,\nWere it as vile as it was ever spotless.\nMark too, my lord, that this expression strikes\nHis Majesty, if I misinterpret not.\n\n[ENTER BISHOP WILLIAMS GUARDED.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Strafford:",
    "body": "’Twere politic and just that Williams taste                          _55\nThe bitter fruit of his connection with\nThe schismatics. But you, my Lord Archbishop,\nWho owed your first promotion to his favour,\nWho grew beneath his smile—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Laud:",
    "body": "Would therefore beg\nThe office of his judge from this High Court,—                      _60\nThat it shall seem, even as it is, that I,\nIn my assumption of this sacred robe,\nHave put aside all worldly preference,\nAll sense of all distinction of all persons,\nAll thoughts but of the service of the Church.—                     _65\nBishop of Lincoln!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hampden:",
    "body": "England, farewell! thou, who hast been my cradle,\nShalt never be my dungeon or my grave!\nI held what I inherited in thee\nAs pawn for that inheritance of freedom\nWhich thou hast sold for thy despoiler’s smile:                      _5\nHow can I call thee England, or my country?—\nDoes the wind hold?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vane:",
    "body": "The vanes sit steady\nUpon the Abbey towers. The silver lightnings\nOf the evening star, spite of the city’s smoke,\nTell that the north wind reigns in the upper air.                    _10\nMark too that flock of fleecy-winged clouds\nSailing athwart St. Margaret’s.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hampden:",
    "body": "Hail, fleet herald\nOf tempest! that rude pilot who shall guide\nHearts free as his, to realms as pure as thee,\nBeyond the shot of tyranny,                                          _15\nBeyond the webs of that swoln spider...\nBeyond the curses, calumnies, and [lies?]\nOf atheist priests! ... And thou\nFair star, whose beam lies on the wide Atlantic,\nAthwart its zones of tempest and of calm,                            _20\nBright as the path to a beloved home\nOh, light us to the isles of the evening land!\nLike floating Edens cradled in the glimmer\nOf sunset, through the distant mist of years\nTouched by departing hope, they gleam! lone regions,                 _25\nWhere Power’s poor dupes and victims yet have never\nPropitiated the savage fear of kings\nWith purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew\nIs yet unstained with tears of those who wake\nTo weep each day the wrongs on which it dawns;                       _30\nWhose sacred silent air owns yet no echo\nOf formal blasphemies; nor impious rites\nWrest man’s free worship, from the God who loves,\nTo the poor worm who envies us His love!\nReceive, thou young ... of Paradise.                                 _35\nThese exiles from the old and sinful world!\n\n...\n\nThis glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights\nDart mitigated influence through their veil\nOf pale blue atmosphere; whose tears keep green\nThe pavement of this moist all-feeding earth;                        _40\nThis vaporous horizon, whose dim round\nIs bastioned by the circumfluous sea,\nRepelling invasion from the sacred towers,\nPresses upon me like a dungeon’s grate,\nA low dark roof, a damp and narrow wall.                             _45\nThe boundless universe\nBecomes a cell too narrow for the soul\nThat owns no master; while the loathliest ward\nOf this wide prison, England, is a nest\nOf cradling peace built on the mountain tops,—                      _50\nTo which the eagle spirits of the free,\nWhich range through heaven and earth, and scorn the storm\nOf time, and gaze upon the light of truth,\nReturn to brood on thoughts that cannot die\nAnd cannot be repelled.                                              _55\nLike eaglets floating in the heaven of time,\nThey soar above their quarry, and shall stoop\nThrough palaces and temples thunderproof.\n\n_13 rude 1870; wild 1824.\n_16-_18 Beyond...priests 1870; omitted 1824.\n_25 Touched 1870; Tinged 1824.\n_34 To the poor 1870; Towards the 1824.\n_38 their 1870; the 1824.\n_46 boundless 1870; mighty 1824.\n_48 owns no 1824; owns a 1870. ward 1870; spot 1824.\n_50 cradling 1870; cradled 1824.\n_54, _55 Return...repelled 1870;\n         Return to brood over the [ ] thoughts\n         That cannot die, and may not be repelled 1824.\n_56-_58 Like...thunderproof 1870; omitted 1824.\n\n\nSCENE 5:",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Archy:",
    "body": "I’ll go live under the ivy that overgrows the terrace, and count the\ntears shed on its old [roots?] as the [wind?] plays the song of\n\n‘A widow bird sate mourning\nUpon a wintry bough.’                                                _5\n[SINGS]\nHeigho! the lark and the owl!\nOne flies the morning, and one lulls the night:—\nOnly the nightingale, poor fond soul,\nSings like the fool through darkness and light.\n\n‘A widow bird sate mourning for her love                             _10\nUpon a wintry bough;\nThe frozen wind crept on above,\nThe freezing stream below.\n\nThere was no leaf upon the forest bare.\nNo flower upon the ground,                                           _15\nAnd little motion in the air\nExcept the mill-wheel’s sound.’",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Triumph Of Life.",
    "body": "[Composed at Lerici on the Gulf of Spezzia in the spring and early\nsummer of 1822—the poem on which Shelley was engaged at the time of\nhis death. Published by Mrs. Shelley in the “Posthumous Poems” of\n1824, pages 73-95. Several emendations, the result of Dr. Garnett’s\nexamination of the Boscombe manuscript, were given to the world by\nMiss Mathilde Blind, “Westminster Review”, July, 1870. The poem was,\nof course, included in the “Poetical Works”, 1839, both editions. See\nEditor’s Notes.]\n\nSwift as a spirit hastening to his task\nOf glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth\nRejoicing in his splendour, and the mask\n\nOf darkness fell from the awakened Earth—\nThe smokeless altars of the mountain snows                           _5\nFlamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth\n\nOf light, the Ocean’s orison arose,\nTo which the birds tempered their matin lay.\nAll flowers in field or forest which unclose\n\nTheir trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,                          _10\nSwinging their censers in the element,\nWith orient incense lit by the new ray\n\nBurned slow and inconsumably, and sent\nTheir odorous sighs up to the smiling air;\nAnd, in succession due, did continent,                               _15\n\nIsle, ocean, and all things that in them wear\nThe form and character of mortal mould,\nRise as the Sun their father rose, to bear\n\nTheir portion of the toil, which he of old\nTook as his own, and then imposed on them:                           _20\nBut I, whom thoughts which must remain untold\n\nHad kept as wakeful as the stars that gem\nThe cone of night, now they were laid asleep\nStretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem\n\nWhich an old chestnut flung athwart the steep                        _25\nOf a green Apennine: before me fled\nThe night; behind me rose the day; the deep\n\nWas at my feet, and Heaven above my head,—\nWhen a strange trance over my fancy grew\nWhich was not slumber, for the shade it spread                       _30\n\nWas so transparent, that the scene came through\nAs clear as when a veil of light is drawn\nO’er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew\n\nThat I had felt the freshness of that dawn\nBathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair,                         _35\nAnd sate as thus upon that slope of lawn\n\nUnder the self-same bough, and heard as there\nThe birds, the fountains and the ocean hold\nSweet talk in music through the enamoured air,\nAnd then a vision on my train was rolled.                            _40\n\n...\n\nAs in that trance of wondrous thought I lay,\nThis was the tenour of my waking dream:—\nMethought I sate beside a public way\n\nThick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream\nOf people there was hurrying to and fro,                             _45\nNumerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,\n\nAll hastening onward, yet none seemed to know\nWhither he went, or whence he came, or why\nHe made one of the multitude, and so\n\nWas borne amid the crowd, as through the sky                         _50\nOne of the million leaves of summer’s bier;\nOld age and youth, manhood and infancy,\n\nMixed in one mighty torrent did appear,\nSome flying from the thing they feared, and some\nSeeking the object of another’s fear;                                _55\n\nAnd others, as with steps towards the tomb,\nPored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,\nAnd others mournfully within the gloom\n\nOf their own shadow walked, and called it death;\nAnd some fled from it as it were a ghost,                            _60\nHalf fainting in the affliction of vain breath:\n\nBut more, with motions which each other crossed,\nPursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw,\nOr birds within the noonday aether lost,\n\nUpon that path where flowers never grew,—\nAnd, weary with vain toil and faint for thirst,\nHeard not the fountains, whose melodious dew\n\nOut of their mossy cells forever burst;\nNor felt the breeze which from the forest told\nOf grassy paths and wood-lawns interspersed                          _70\n\nWith overarching elms and caverns cold,\nAnd violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they\nPursued their serious folly as of old.\n\nAnd as I gazed, methought that in the way\nThe throng grew wilder, as the woods of June                         _75\nWhen the south wind shakes the extinguished day,\n\nAnd a cold glare, intenser than the noon,\nBut icy cold, obscured with blinding light\nThe sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon—\n\nWhen on the sunlit limits of the night                               _80\nHer white shell trembles amid crimson air,\nAnd whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might—\n\nDoth, as the herald of its coming, bear\nThe ghost of its dead mother, whose dim form\nBends in dark aether from her infant’s chair,—                      _85\n\nSo came a chariot on the silent storm\nOf its own rushing splendour, and a Shape\nSo sate within, as one whom years deform,\n\nBeneath a dusky hood and double cape,\nCrouching within the shadow of a tomb;                               _90\nAnd o’er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape\n\nWas bent, a dun and faint aethereal gloom\nTempering the light. Upon the chariot-beam\nA Janus-visaged Shadow did assume\n\nThe guidance of that wonder-winged team;                             _95\nThe shapes which drew it in thick lightenings\nWere lost:—I heard alone on the air’s soft stream\n\nThe music of their ever-moving wings.\nAll the four faces of that Charioteer\nHad their eyes banded; little profit brings                          _100\n\nSpeed in the van and blindness in the rear,\nNor then avail the beams that quench the sun,—\nOr that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere\n\nOf all that is, has been or will be done;\nSo ill was the car guided—but it passed                             _105\nWith solemn speed majestically on.\n\nThe crowd gave way, and I arose aghast,\nOr seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance,\nAnd saw, like clouds upon the thunder-blast,\n\nThe million with fierce song and maniac dance                        _110\nRaging around—such seemed the jubilee\nAs when to greet some conqueror’s advance\n\nImperial Rome poured forth her living sea\nFrom senate-house, and forum, and theatre,\nWhen ... upon the free                                               _115\n\nHad bound a yoke, which soon they stooped to bear.\nNor wanted here the just similitude\nOf a triumphal pageant, for where’er\n\nThe chariot rolled, a captive multitude\nWas driven;—all those who had grown old in power                    _120\nOr misery,—all who had their age subdued\n\nBy action or by suffering, and whose hour\nWas drained to its last sand in weal or woe,\nSo that the trunk survived both fruit and flower;—\n\nAll those whose fame or infamy must grow                             _125\nTill the great winter lay the form and name\nOf this green earth with them for ever low;—\n\nAll but the sacred few who could not tame\nTheir spirits to the conquerors—but as soon\nAs they had touched the world with living flame,                     _130\n\nFled back like eagles to their native noon,\nOr those who put aside the diadem\nOf earthly thrones or gems...\n\nWere there, of Athens or Jerusalem.\nWere neither mid the mighty captives seen,                           _135\nNor mid the ribald crowd that followed them,\n\nNor those who went before fierce and obscene.\nThe wild dance maddens in the van, and those\nWho lead it—fleet as shadows on the green,\n\nOutspeed the chariot, and without repose                             _140\nMix with each other in tempestuous measure\nTo savage music, wilder as it grows,\n\nThey, tortured by their agonizing pleasure,\nConvulsed and on the rapid whirlwinds spun\nOf that fierce Spirit, whose unholy leisure                          _145\n\nWas soothed by mischief since the world begun,\nThrow back their heads and loose their streaming hair;\nAnd in their dance round her who dims the sun,\n\nMaidens and youths fling their wild arms in air\nAs their feet twinkle; they recede, and now                          _150\nBending within each other’s atmosphere,\n\nKindle invisibly—and as they glow,\nLike moths by light attracted and repelled,\nOft to their bright destruction come and go,\n\nTill like two clouds into one vale impelled,                         _155\nThat shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle\nAnd die in rain—the fiery band which held\n\nTheir natures, snaps—while the shock still may tingle\nOne falls and then another in the path\nSenseless—nor is the desolation single,                             _160\n\nYet ere I can say WHERE—the chariot hath\nPassed over them—nor other trace I find\nBut as of foam after the ocean’s wrath\n\nIs spent upon the desert shore;—behind,\nOld men and women foully disarrayed,                                 _165\nShake their gray hairs in the insulting wind,\n\nAnd follow in the dance, with limbs decayed,\nSeeking to reach the light which leaves them still\nFarther behind and deeper in the shade.\n\nBut not the less with impotence of will                              _170\nThey wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose\nRound them and round each other, and fulfil\n\nTheir work, and in the dust from whence they rose\nSink, and corruption veils them as they lie,\nAnd past in these performs what ... in those.                        _175\n\nStruck to the heart by this sad pageantry,\nHalf to myself I said—‘And what is this?\nWhose shape is that within the car? And why—’\n\nI would have added—‘is all here amiss?—’\nBut a voice answered—‘Life!’—I turned, and knew                    _180\n(O Heaven, have mercy on such wretchedness!)\n\nThat what I thought was an old root which grew\nTo strange distortion out of the hill side,\nWas indeed one of those deluded crew,\n\nAnd that the grass, which methought hung so wide                     _185\nAnd white, was but his thin discoloured hair,\nAnd that the holes he vainly sought to hide,\n\nWere or had been eyes:—‘If thou canst forbear\nTo join the dance, which I had well forborne,’\nSaid the grim Feature, of my thought aware,                          _190\n\n‘I will unfold that which to this deep scorn\nLed me and my companions, and relate\nThe progress of the pageant since the morn;\n\n‘If thirst of knowledge shall not then abate,\nFollow it thou even to the night, but I                              _195\nAm weary.’—Then like one who with the weight\n\nOf his own words is staggered, wearily\nHe paused; and ere he could resume, I cried:\n‘First, who art thou?’—‘Before thy memory,\n\n‘I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did and died,                     _200\nAnd if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit\nHad been with purer nutriment supplied,\n\n‘Corruption would not now thus much inherit\nOf what was once Rousseau,—nor this disguise\nStain that which ought to have disdained to wear it;                 _205\n\n‘If I have been extinguished, yet there rise\nA thousand beacons from the spark I bore’—\n‘And who are those chained to the car?’—‘The wise,\n\n‘The great, the unforgotten,—they who wore\nMitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths of light,                    _210\nSigns of thought’s empire over thought—their lore\n\n‘Taught them not this, to know themselves; their might\nCould not repress the mystery within,\nAnd for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night\n\n‘Caught them ere evening.’—‘Who is he with chin                     _215\nUpon his breast, and hands crossed on his chain?’—\n‘The child of a fierce hour; he sought to win\n\n‘The world, and lost all that it did contain\nOf greatness, in its hope destroyed; and more\nOf fame and peace than virtue’s self can gain                        _220\n\n‘Without the opportunity which bore\nHim on its eagle pinions to the peak\nFrom which a thousand climbers have before\n\n‘Fallen, as Napoleon fell.’—I felt my cheek\nAlter, to see the shadow pass away,                                  _225\nWhose grasp had left the giant world so weak\n\nThat every pigmy kicked it as it lay;\nAnd much I grieved to think how power and will\nIn opposition rule our mortal day,\n\nAnd why God made irreconcilable                                      _230\nGood and the means of good; and for despair\nI half disdained mine eyes’ desire to fill\n\nWith the spent vision of the times that were\nAnd scarce have ceased to be.—‘Dost thou behold,’\nSaid my guide, ‘those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire,                    _235\n\n‘Frederick, and Paul, Catherine, and Leopold,\nAnd hoary anarchs, demagogues, and sage—\nnames which the world thinks always old,\n\n‘For in the battle Life and they did wage,\nShe remained conqueror. I was overcome                               _240\nBy my own heart alone, which neither age,\n\n‘Nor tears, nor infamy, nor now the tomb\nCould temper to its object.’—‘Let them pass,’\nI cried, ‘the world and its mysterious doom\n\n‘Is not so much more glorious than it was,                           _245\nThat I desire to worship those who drew\nNew figures on its false and fragile glass\n\n‘As the old faded.’—‘Figures ever new\nRise on the bubble, paint them as you may;\nWe have but thrown, as those before us threw,                        _250\n\n‘Our shadows on it as it passed away.\nBut mark how chained to the triumphal chair\nThe mighty phantoms of an elder day;\n\n‘All that is mortal of great Plato there\nExpiates the joy and woe his master knew not;                        _255\nThe star that ruled his doom was far too fair.\n\n‘And life, where long that flower of Heaven grew not,\nConquered that heart by love, which gold, or pain,\nOr age, or sloth, or slavery could subdue not.\n\n‘And near him walk the ... twain,                                    _260\nThe tutor and his pupil, whom Dominion\nFollowed as tame as vulture in a chain.\n\n‘The world was darkened beneath either pinion\nOf him whom from the flock of conquerors\nFame singled out for her thunder-bearing minion;                     _265\n\n‘The other long outlived both woes and wars,\nThroned in the thoughts of men, and still had kept\nThe jealous key of Truth’s eternal doors,\n\n‘If Bacon’s eagle spirit had not lept\nLike lightning out of darkness—he compelled                         _270\nThe Proteus shape of Nature, as it slept\n\n‘To wake, and lead him to the caves that held\nThe treasure of the secrets of its reign.\nSee the great bards of elder time, who quelled\n\n‘The passions which they sung, as by their strain                    _275\nMay well be known: their living melody\nTempers its own contagion to the vein\n\n‘Of those who are infected with it—I\nHave suffered what I wrote, or viler pain!\nAnd so my words have seeds of misery—                               _180\n\n‘Even as the deeds of others, not as theirs.’\nAnd then he pointed to a company,\n\n‘Midst whom I quickly recognized the heirs\nOf Caesar’s crime, from him to Constantine;\nThe anarch chiefs, whose force and murderous snares                  _285\n\nHad founded many a sceptre-bearing line,\nAnd spread the plague of gold and blood abroad:\nAnd Gregory and John, and men divine,\n\nWho rose like shadows between man and God;\nTill that eclipse, still hanging over heaven,                        _290\nWas worshipped by the world o’er which they strode,\n\nFor the true sun it quenched—‘Their power was given\nBut to destroy,’ replied the leader:—‘I\nAm one of those who have created, even\n\n‘If it be but a world of agony.’—                                   _295\n‘Whence camest thou? and whither goest thou?\nHow did thy course begin?’ I said, ‘and why?\n\n‘Mine eyes are sick of this perpetual flow\nOf people, and my heart sick of one sad thought—\nSpeak!’—‘Whence I am, I partly seem to know,                        _300\n\n‘And how and by what paths I have been brought\nTo this dread pass, methinks even thou mayst guess;—\nWhy this should be, my mind can compass not;\n\n‘Whither the conqueror hurries me, still less;—\nBut follow thou, and from spectator turn                             _305\nActor or victim in this wretchedness,\n\n‘And what thou wouldst be taught I then may learn\nFrom thee. Now listen:—In the April prime,\nWhen all the forest-tips began to burn\n\n‘With kindling green, touched by the azure clime                     _310\nOf the young season, I was laid asleep\nUnder a mountain, which from unknown time\n\n‘Had yawned into a cavern, high and deep;\nAnd from it came a gentle rivulet,\nWhose water, like clear air, in its calm sweep                       _315\n\n‘Bent the soft grass, and kept for ever wet\nThe stems of the sweet flowers, and filled the grove\nWith sounds, which whoso hears must needs forget\n\n‘All pleasure and all pain, all hate and love,\nWhich they had known before that hour of rest;                       _320\nA sleeping mother then would dream not of\n\n‘Her only child who died upon the breast\nAt eventide—a king would mourn no more\nThe crown of which his brows were dispossessed\n\n‘When the sun lingered o’er his ocean floor                          _325\nTo gild his rival’s new prosperity.\n‘Thou wouldst forget thus vainly to deplore\n\n‘Ills, which if ills can find no cure from thee,\nThe thought of which no other sleep will quell,\nNor other music blot from memory,                                    _330\n\n‘So sweet and deep is the oblivious spell;\nAnd whether life had been before that sleep\nThe Heaven which I imagine, or a Hell\n\n‘Like this harsh world in which I woke to weep,\nI know not. I arose, and for a space                                 _335\nThe scene of woods and waters seemed to keep,\n\nThough it was now broad day, a gentle trace\nOf light diviner than the common sun\nSheds on the common earth, and all the place\n\n‘Was filled with magic sounds woven into one                         _340\nOblivious melody, confusing sense\nAmid the gliding waves and shadows dun;\n\n‘And, as I looked, the bright omnipresence\nOf morning through the orient cavern flowed,\nAnd the sun’s image radiantly intense                                _345\n\n‘Burned on the waters of the well that glowed\nLike gold, and threaded all the forest’s maze\nWith winding paths of emerald fire; there stood\n\n‘Amid the sun, as he amid the blaze                                  _350\nOf his own glory, on the vibrating\nFloor of the fountain, paved with flashing rays,\n\n‘A Shape all light, which with one hand did fling\nDew on the earth, as if she were the dawn,\nAnd the invisible rain did ever sing\n\n‘A silver music on the mossy lawn;                                   _355\nAnd still before me on the dusky grass,\nIris her many-coloured scarf had drawn:\n\n‘In her right hand she bore a crystal glass,\nMantling with bright Nepenthe; the fierce splendour\nFell from her as she moved under the mass                            _360\n\n‘Of the deep cavern, and with palms so tender,\nTheir tread broke not the mirror of its billow,\nGlided along the river, and did bend her\n\n‘Head under the dark boughs, till like a willow\nHer fair hair swept the bosom of the stream                          _365\nThat whispered with delight to be its pillow.\n\n‘As one enamoured is upborne in dream\nO’er lily-paven lakes, mid silver mist\nTo wondrous music, so this shape might seem\n\n‘Partly to tread the waves with feet which kissed                    _370\nThe dancing foam; partly to glide along\nThe air which roughened the moist amethyst,\n\n‘Or the faint morning beams that fell among\nThe trees, or the soft shadows of the trees;\nAnd her feet, ever to the ceaseless song                             _375\n\n‘Of leaves, and winds, and waves, and birds, and bees,\nAnd falling drops, moved in a measure new\nYet sweet, as on the summer evening breeze,\n\n‘Up from the lake a shape of golden dew\nBetween two rocks, athwart the rising moon,                          _380\nDances i’ the wind, where never eagle flew;\n\n‘And still her feet, no less than the sweet tune\nTo which they moved, seemed as they moved to blot\nThe thoughts of him who gazed on them; and soon\n\n‘All that was, seemed as if it had been not;                         _385\nAnd all the gazer’s mind was strewn beneath\nHer feet like embers; and she, thought by thought,\n\n‘Trampled its sparks into the dust of death\nAs day upon the threshold of the east\nTreads out the lamps of night, until the breath                      _390\n\n‘Of darkness re-illumine even the least\nOf heaven’s living eyes—like day she came,\nMaking the night a dream; and ere she ceased\n\n‘To move, as one between desire and shame\nSuspended, I said—If, as it doth seem,                              _395\nThou comest from the realm without a name\n\n‘Into this valley of perpetual dream,\nShow whence I came, and where I am, and why—\nPass not away upon the passing stream.\n\n‘Arise and quench thy thirst, was her reply.                         _400\nAnd as a shut lily stricken by the wand\nOf dewy morning’s vital alchemy,\n\n‘I rose; and, bending at her sweet command,\nTouched with faint lips the cup she raised,\nAnd suddenly my brain became as sand                                 _405\n\n‘Where the first wave had more than half erased\nThe track of deer on desert Labrador;\nWhilst the wolf, from which they fled amazed,\n\n‘Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore,\nUntil the second bursts;—so on my sight                             _410\nBurst a new vision, never seen before,\n\n‘And the fair shape waned in the coming light,\nAs veil by veil the silent splendour drops\nFrom Lucifer, amid the chrysolite\n\n‘Of sunrise, ere it tinge the mountain-tops;                         _415\nAnd as the presence of that fairest planet,\nAlthough unseen, is felt by one who hopes\n\n‘That his day’s path may end as he began it,\nIn that star’s smile, whose light is like the scent\nOf a jonquil when evening breezes fan it,                            _420\n\n‘Or the soft note in which his dear lament\nThe Brescian shepherd breathes, or the caress\nThat turned his weary slumber to content;\n\n‘So knew I in that light’s severe excess\nThe presence of that Shape which on the stream                       _425\nMoved, as I moved along the wilderness,\n\n‘More dimly than a day-appearing dream,\nThe host of a forgotten form of sleep;\nA light of heaven, whose half-extinguished beam\n\n‘Through the sick day in which we wake to weep                       _430\nGlimmers, for ever sought, for ever lost;\nSo did that shape its obscure tenour keep\n\n‘Beside my path, as silent as a ghost;\nBut the new Vision, and the cold bright car,\nWith solemn speed and stunning music, crossed                        _435\n\n‘The forest, and as if from some dread war\nTriumphantly returning, the loud million\nFiercely extolled the fortune of her star.\n\n‘A moving arch of victory, the vermilion\nAnd green and azure plumes of Iris had                               _440\nBuilt high over her wind-winged pavilion,\n\n‘And underneath aethereal glory clad\nThe wilderness, and far before her flew\nThe tempest of the splendour, which forbade\n\n‘Shadow to fall from leaf and stone; the crew                        _445\nSeemed in that light, like atomies to dance\nWithin a sunbeam;—some upon the new\n\n‘Embroidery of flowers, that did enhance\nThe grassy vesture of the desert, played,\nForgetful of the chariot’s swift advance;                            _450\n\n‘Others stood gazing, till within the shade\nOf the great mountain its light left them dim;\nOthers outspeeded it; and others made\n\n‘Circles around it, like the clouds that swim\nRound the high moon in a bright sea of air;                          _455\nAnd more did follow, with exulting hymn,\n\n‘The chariot and the captives fettered there:—\nBut all like bubbles on an eddying flood\nFell into the same track at last, and were\n\n‘Borne onward.—I among the multitude                                _460\nWas swept—me, sweetest flowers delayed not long;\nMe, not the shadow nor the solitude;\n\n‘Me, not that falling stream’s Lethean song;\nMe, not the phantom of that early Form\nWhich moved upon its motion—but among                               _465\n\n‘The thickest billows of that living storm\nI plunged, and bared my bosom to the clime\nOf that cold light, whose airs too soon deform.\n\n‘Before the chariot had begun to climb\nThe opposing steep of that mysterious dell,                          _470\nBehold a wonder worthy of the rhyme\n\n‘Of him who from the lowest depths of hell,\nThrough every paradise and through all glory,\nLove led serene, and who returned to tell\n\n‘The words of hate and awe; the wondrous story                       _475\nHow all things are transfigured except Love;\nFor deaf as is a sea, which wrath makes hoary,\n\n‘The world can hear not the sweet notes that move\nThe sphere whose light is melody to lovers—\nA wonder worthy of his rhyme.—The grove                             _480\n\n‘Grew dense with shadows to its inmost covers,\nThe earth was gray with phantoms, and the air\nWas peopled with dim forms, as when there hovers\n\n‘A flock of vampire-bats before the glare\nOf the tropic sun, bringing, ere evening,                            _485\nStrange night upon some Indian isle;—thus were\n\n‘Phantoms diffused around; and some did fling\nShadows of shadows, yet unlike themselves,\nBehind them; some like eaglets on the wing\n\n‘Were lost in the white day; others like elves                       _490\nDanced in a thousand unimagined shapes\nUpon the sunny streams and grassy shelves;\n\n‘And others sate chattering like restless apes\nOn vulgar hands,...\nSome made a cradle of the ermined capes                              _495\n\n‘Of kingly mantles; some across the tiar\nOf pontiffs sate like vultures; others played\nUnder the crown which girt with empire\n\n‘A baby’s or an idiot’s brow, and made\nTheir nests in it. The old anatomies                                 _500\nSate hatching their bare broods under the shade\n\n‘Of daemon wings, and laughed from their dead eyes\nTo reassume the delegated power,\nArrayed in which those worms did monarchize,\n\n‘Who made this earth their charnel. Others more                      _505\nHumble, like falcons, sate upon the fist\nOf common men, and round their heads did soar;\n\nOr like small gnats and flies, as thick as mist\nOn evening marshes, thronged about the brow\nOf lawyers, statesmen, priest and theorist;—                        _510\n\n‘And others, like discoloured flakes of snow\nOn fairest bosoms and the sunniest hair,\nFell, and were melted by the youthful glow\n\n‘Which they extinguished; and, like tears, they were\nA veil to those from whose faint lids they rained                    _515\nIn drops of sorrow. I became aware\n\n‘Of whence those forms proceeded which thus stained\nThe track in which we moved. After brief space,\nFrom every form the beauty slowly waned;\n\n‘From every firmest limb and fairest face                            _520\nThe strength and freshness fell like dust, and left\nThe action and the shape without the grace\n\n‘Of life. The marble brow of youth was cleft\nWith care; and in those eyes where once hope shone,\nDesire, like a lioness bereft                                        _525\n\n‘Of her last cub, glared ere it died; each one\nOf that great crowd sent forth incessantly\nThese shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown\n\n‘In autumn evening from a poplar tree.                               _530\nEach like himself and like each other were\nAt first; but some distorted seemed to be\n\n‘Obscure clouds, moulded by the casual air;\nAnd of this stuff the car’s creative ray\nWrought all the busy phantoms that were there,\n\n‘As the sun shapes the clouds; thus on the way                       _535\nMask after mask fell from the countenance\nAnd form of all; and long before the day\n\n‘Was old, the joy which waked like heaven’s glance\nThe sleepers in the oblivious valley, died;\nAnd some grew weary of the ghastly dance,                            _540\n\n‘And fell, as I have fallen, by the wayside;—\nThose soonest from whose forms most shadows passed,\nAnd least of strength and beauty did abide.\n\n‘Then, what is life? I cried.’—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cancelled Opening Of The Triumph Of Life.",
    "body": "[Published by Miss M. Blind, “Westminster Review”, July, 1870.]\n\nOut of the eastern shadow of the Earth,\nAmid the clouds upon its margin gray\nScattered by Night to swathe in its bright birth\n\nIn gold and fleecy snow the infant Day,\nThe glorious Sun arose: beneath his light,                           _5\nThe earth and all...\n\n\n_10-_17 A widow...sound 1870; omitted here 1824;\n        printed as ‘A Song,’ 1824, page 217.\n_34, _35 dawn Bathe Mrs. Shelley (later editions); dawn, Bathed 1824, 1839.\n_63 shunned Boscombe manuscript; spurned 1824, 1839.\n_70 Of...interspersed Boscombe manuscript;\n    Of grassy paths and wood, lawn-interspersed 1824;\n    wood-lawn-interspersed 1839.\n_84 form]frown 1824.\n_93 light...beam]light upon the chariot beam; 1824.\n_96 it omitted 1824.\n_109 thunder Boscombe manuscript; thunders 1824; thunder’s 1839.\n_112 greet Boscombe manuscript; meet 1824, 1839.\n_129 conqueror or conqueror’s cj. A.C. Bradley.\n_131-_134 See Editor’s Note.\n_158 while Boscombe manuscript; omitted 1824, 1839.\n_167 And...dance 1839 To seek, to [ ], to strain 1824.\n_168 Seeking 1839; Limping 1824.\n_188 canst, Mrs. Shelley 1824, 1839, 1847.\n_189 forborne!’ 1824, 1839, 1847.\n_190 Feature, (of my thought aware); Mrs. Shelley 1847.\n_188-_190 The punctuation is A.C. Bradley’s.\n_202 nutriment Boscombe manuscript; sentiment 1824, 1839.\n_205 Stain]Stained 1824, 1839.\n_235 Said my 1824, 1839; Said then my cj. Forman.\n_238 names which the 1839: name the 1824.\n_252 how]now cj. Forman.\n_260 him 1839; omitted 1824.\n_265 singled for cj. Forman.\n_280 See Editor’s Note.\n_281, _282 Even...then Boscombe manuscript; omitted 1824, 1839.\n_296 camest Boscombe manuscript; comest 1824, 1839.\n_311 season Boscombe manuscript; year’s dawn 1824, 1839.\n_322 the Boscombe manuscript; her 1824, 1839.\n_334 woke cj. A.C. Bradley; wake 1824, 1839. Cf. _296, footnote.\n_361 Of...and Boscombe manuscript; Out of the deep cavern with 1824, 1839.\n_363 Glided Boscombe manuscript; She glided 1824, 1839.\n_377 in Boscombe manuscript; to 1824.\n_422 The favourite song, Stanco di pascolar le pecorelle,\n     is a Brescian national air.—[MRS. SHELLEY’S NOTE.]\n_464 early]aery cj. Forman.\n_475 awe Boscombe manuscript; care 1824.\n_486 isle Boscombe manuscript; vale 1824.\n_497 sate like vultures Boscombe manuscript; rode like demons 1824.\n_515 those]eyes cj. Rossetti.\n_534 Wrought Boscombe manuscript; Wrapt 1824.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragments:",
    "body": "    LOVE THE UNIVERSE TO-DAY.\n    ‘A GENTLE STORY OF TWO LOVERS YOUNG’.\n    LOVE’S TENDER ATMOSPHERE.\n    WEDDED SOULS.\n    ‘IS IT THAT IN SOME BRIGHTER SPHERE’.\n    SUFFICIENT UNTO THE DAY.\n    ‘YE GENTLE VISITATIONS OF CALM THOUGHT’.\n    MUSIC AND SWEET POETRY.\n    THE SEPULCHRE OF MEMORY.\n    ‘WHEN A LOVER CLASPS HIS FAIREST’.\n    ‘WAKE THE SERPENT NOT’.\n    RAIN.\n    A TALE UNTOLD.\n    TO ITALY.\n    WINE OF THE FAIRIES.\n    A ROMAN’S CHAMBER.\n    ROME AND NATURE.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragments:",
    "body": "    THE DESERTS OF DIM SLEEP.\n    ‘THE VIEWLESS AND INVISIBLE CONSEQUENCE’.\n    A SERPENT-FACE.\n    DEATH IN LIFE.\n    ‘SUCH HOPE, AS IS THE SICK DESPAIR OF GOOD’.\n    ‘ALAS THIS IS NOT WHAT I THOUGHT LIFE WAS’.\n    MILTON’S SPIRIT.\n    ‘UNRISEN SPLENDOUR OF THE BRIGHTEST SUN’.\n    PATER OMNIPOTENS.\n    TO THE MIND OF MAN.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragments:",
    "body": "    A WANDERER.\n    LIFE ROUNDED WITH SLEEP.\n    ‘I FAINT, I PERISH WITH MY LOVE’.\n    THE LADY OF THE SOUTH.\n    ZEPHYRUS THE AWAKENER.\n    RAIN.\n    ‘WHEN SOFT WINDS AND SUNNY SKIES’.\n    ‘AND THAT I WALK THUS PROUDLY CROWNED’.\n    ‘THE RUDE WIND IS SINGING’.\n    ‘GREAT SPIRIT’.\n    ‘O THOU IMMORTAL DEITY’.\n    THE FALSE LAUREL AND THE TRUE.\n    MAY THE LIMNER.\n    BEAUTY’S HALO.\n    ‘THE DEATH KNELL IS RINGING’.\n    ‘I STOOD UPON A HEAVEN-CLEAVING TURRET’.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Early Poems [1814, 1815].",
    "body": "[The poems which follow appeared, with a few exceptions, either in the\nvolumes published from time to time by Shelley himself, or in the\n“Posthumous Poems” of 1824, or in the “Poetical Works” of 1839, of\nwhich a second and enlarged edition was published by Mrs. Shelley in\nthe same year. A few made their first appearance in some fugitive\npublication—such as Leigh Hunt’s “Literary Pocket-Book”—and were\nsubsequently incorporated in the collective editions. In every case the\neditio princeps and (where this is possible) the exact date of\ncomposition are indicated below the title.]\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Stanza, Written At Bracknell.",
    "body": "[Composed March, 1814. Published in Hogg’s “Life of Shelley”, 1858.]\n\nThy dewy looks sink in my breast;\nThy gentle words stir poison there;\nThou hast disturbed the only rest\nThat was the portion of despair!\nSubdued to Duty’s hard control,                                      _5\nI could have borne my wayward lot:\nThe chains that bind this ruined soul\nHad cankered then—but crushed it not.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Stanzas.—April, 1814.",
    "body": "[Composed at Bracknell, April, 1814. Published with “Alastor”, 1816.]\n\nAway! the moor is dark beneath the moon,\nRapid clouds have drank the last pale beam of even:\nAway! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon,\nAnd profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven.\n\nPause not! The time is past! Every voice cries, Away!                _5\nTempt not with one last tear thy friend’s ungentle mood:\nThy lover’s eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay:\nDuty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.\n\nAway, away! to thy sad and silent home;\nPour bitter tears on its desolated hearth;                           _10\nWatch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come,\nAnd complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth.\n\nThe leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head:\nThe blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy feet:\nBut thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead, _15\nEre midnight’s frown and morning’s smile, ere thou and peace may meet.\n\nThe cloud shadows of midnight possess their own repose,\nFor the weary winds are silent, or the moon is in the deep:\nSome respite to its turbulence unresting ocean knows;\nWhatever moves, or toils, or grieves, hath its appointed sleep.      _20\n\nThou in the grave shalt rest—yet till the phantoms flee\nWhich that house and heath and garden made dear to thee erewhile,\nThy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings are not free\nFrom the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mutability.",
    "body": "[Published with “Alastor”, 1816.]\n\nWe are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;\nHow restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,\nStreaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soon\nNight closes round, and they are lost for ever:\n\nOr like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings                     _5\nGive various response to each varying blast,\nTo whose frail frame no second motion brings\nOne mood or modulation like the last.\n\nWe rest.—A dream has power to poison sleep;\nWe rise.—One wandering thought pollutes the day;                    _10\nWe feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;\nEmbrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:\n\nIt is the same!—For, be it joy or sorrow,\nThe path of its departure still is free:\nMan’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;                        _15\nNought may endure but Mutability.\n\n_15 may 1816; can Lodore, chapter 49, 1835 (Mrs. Shelley).\n_16 Nought may endure but 1816;\n    Nor aught endure save Lodore, chapter 49, 1835 (Mrs. Shelley).\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "There Is No Work, Nor Device, Nor Knowledge, Nor Wisdom,",
    "body": "IN THE GRAVE, WHITHER THOU GOEST.—Ecclesiastes.\n\nThe pale, the cold, and the moony smile\nWhich the meteor beam of a starless night\nSheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,\nEre the dawning of morn’s undoubted light,\nIs the flame of life so fickle and wan\nThat flits round our steps till their strength is gone.              _5\n\nO man! hold thee on in courage of soul\nThrough the stormy shades of thy worldly way,\nAnd the billows of cloud that around thee roll\nShall sleep in the light of a wondrous day,                          _10\nWhere Hell and Heaven shall leave thee free\nTo the universe of destiny.\n\nThis world is the nurse of all we know,\nThis world is the mother of all we feel,\nAnd the coming of death is a fearful blow                            _15\nTo a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel;\nWhen all that we know, or feel, or see,\nShall pass like an unreal mystery.\n\nThe secret things of the grave are there,\nWhere all but this frame must surely be,                             _20\nThough the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear\nNo longer will live to hear or to see\nAll that is great and all that is strange\nIn the boundless realm of unending change.\n\nWho telleth a tale of unspeaking death?                              _25\nWho lifteth the veil of what is to come?\nWho painteth the shadows that are beneath\nThe wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?\nOr uniteth the hopes of what shall be\nWith the fears and the love for that which we see?                   _30\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lechlade, Gloucestershire.",
    "body": "[Composed September, 1815. Published with “Alastor”, 1816.]\n\nThe wind has swept from the wide atmosphere\nEach vapour that obscured the sunset’s ray;\nAnd pallid Evening twines its beaming hair\nIn duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day:\nSilence and Twilight, unbeloved of men,                              _5\nCreep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.\n\nThey breathe their spells towards the departing day,\nEncompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea;\nLight, sound, and motion own the potent sway,\nResponding to the charm with its own mystery.                        _10\nThe winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass\nKnows not their gentle motions as they pass.\n\nThou too, aereal Pile! whose pinnacles\nPoint from one shrine like pyramids of fire,\nObeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells,                        _15\nClothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire,\nAround whose lessening and invisible height\nGather among the stars the clouds of night.\n\nThe dead are sleeping in their sepulchres:\nAnd, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound,                    _20\nHalf sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs,\nBreathed from their wormy beds all living things around,\nAnd mingling with the still night and mute sky\nIts awful hush is felt inaudibly.\n\nThus solemnized and softened, death is mild                          _25\nAnd terrorless as this serenest night:\nHere could I hope, like some inquiring child\nSporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight\nSweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep\nThat loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.                      _30\n\n***\n\n\nTO —.\n\n[Published with “Alastor”, 1816. See Editor’s Note.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Dakrtsi Dioiso Potmon ‘Apotmon.",
    "body": "Oh! there are spirits of the air,\nAnd genii of the evening breeze,\nAnd gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair\nAs star-beams among twilight trees:—\nSuch lovely ministers to meet                                        _5\nOft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.\n\nWith mountain winds, and babbling springs,\nAnd moonlight seas, that are the voice\nOf these inexplicable things,\nThou didst hold commune, and rejoice                                 _10\nWhen they did answer thee; but they\nCast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.\n\nAnd thou hast sought in starry eyes\nBeams that were never meant for thine,\nAnother’s wealth:—tame sacrifice\nTo a fond faith! still dost thou pine?                               _15\nStill dost thou hope that greeting hands,\nVoice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands?\n\nAh! wherefore didst thou build thine hope\nOn the false earth’s inconstancy?                                    _20\nDid thine own mind afford no scope\nOf love, or moving thoughts to thee?\nThat natural scenes or human smiles\nCould steal the power to wind thee in their wiles?\n\nYes, all the faithless smiles are fled                               _25\nWhose falsehood left thee broken-hearted;\nThe glory of the moon is dead;\nNight’s ghosts and dreams have now departed;\nThine own soul still is true to thee,\nBut changed to a foul fiend through misery.                          _30\n\nThis fiend, whose ghastly presence ever\nBeside thee like thy shadow hangs,\nDream not to chase;—the mad endeavour\nWould scourge thee to severer pangs.\nBe as thou art. Thy settled fate,\nDark as it is, all change would aggravate.                           _35\n\n_1 of 1816; in 1839.\n_8 moonlight 1816; mountain 1839.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Feelings Of A Republican On The Fall Of Bonaparte.",
    "body": "[Published with “Alastor”, 1816.]\n\nI hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan\nTo think that a most unambitious slave,\nLike thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave\nOf Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne\nWhere it had stood even now: thou didst prefer                       _5\nA frail and bloody pomp which Time has swept\nIn fragments towards Oblivion. Massacre,\nFor this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept,\nTreason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust,\nAnd stifled thee, their minister. I know                             _10\nToo late, since thou and France are in the dust,\nThat Virtue owns a more eternal foe\nThan Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime,\nAnd bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lines.",
    "body": "[Published in Hunt’s “Literary Pocket-Book”, 1823, where it is headed\n“November, 1815”. Reprinted in the “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. See\nEditor’s Note.]\n\n1.\nThe cold earth slept below,\nAbove the cold sky shone;\nAnd all around, with a chilling sound,\nFrom caves of ice and fields of snow,\nThe breath of night like death did flow                              _5\nBeneath the sinking moon.\n\n2.\nThe wintry hedge was black,\nThe green grass was not seen,\nThe birds did rest on the bare thorn’s breast,\nWhose roots, beside the pathway track,                               _10\nHad bound their folds o’er many a crack\nWhich the frost had made between.\n\n3.\nThine eyes glowed in the glare\nOf the moon’s dying light;\nAs a fen-fire’s beam on a sluggish stream                            _15\nGleams dimly, so the moon shone there,\nAnd it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair,\nThat shook in the wind of night.\n\n4.\nThe moon made thy lips pale, beloved—\nThe wind made thy bosom chill—                                      _20\nThe night did shed on thy dear head\nIts frozen dew, and thou didst lie\nWhere the bitter breath of the naked sky\nMight visit thee at will.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On The Early Poems, By Mrs. Shelley.",
    "body": "The remainder of Shelley’s Poems will be arranged in the order in which\nthey were written. Of course, mistakes will occur in placing some of\nthe shorter ones; for, as I have said, many of these were thrown aside,\nand I never saw them till I had the misery of looking over his writings\nafter the hand that traced them was dust; and some were in the hands of\nothers, and I never saw them till now. The subjects of the poems are\noften to me an unerring guide; but on other occasions I can only guess,\nby finding them in the pages of the same manuscript book that contains\npoems with the date of whose composition I am fully conversant. In the\npresent arrangement all his poetical translations will be placed\ntogether at the end.\n\nThe loss of his early papers prevents my being able to give any of the\npoetry of his boyhood. Of the few I give as “Early Poems”, the greater\npart were published with “Alastor”; some of them were written\npreviously, some at the same period. The poem beginning ‘Oh, there are\nspirits in the air’ was addressed in idea to Coleridge, whom he never\nknew; and at whose character he could only guess imperfectly, through\nhis writings, and accounts he heard of him from some who knew him well.\nHe regarded his change of opinions as rather an act of will than\nconviction, and believed that in his inner heart he would be haunted by\nwhat Shelley considered the better and holier aspirations of his youth.\nThe summer evening that suggested to him the poem written in the\nchurchyard of Lechlade occurred during his voyage up the Thames in\n1815. He had been advised by a physician to live as much as possible in\nthe open air; and a fortnight of a bright warm July was spent in\ntracing the Thames to its source. He never spent a season more\ntranquilly than the summer of 1815. He had just recovered from a severe\npulmonary attack; the weather was warm and pleasant. He lived near\nWindsor Forest; and his life was spent under its shades or on the\nwater, meditating subjects for verse. Hitherto, he had chiefly aimed at\nextending his political doctrines, and attempted so to do by appeals in\nprose essays to the people, exhorting them to claim their rights; but\nhe had now begun to feel that the time for action was not ripe in\nEngland, and that the pen was the only instrument wherewith to prepare\nthe way for better things.\n\nIn the scanty journals kept during those years I find a record of the\nbooks that Shelley read during several years. During the years of 1814\nand 1815 the list is extensive. It includes, in Greek, Homer, Hesiod,\nTheocritus, the histories of Thucydides and Herodotus, and Diogenes\nLaertius. In Latin, Petronius, Suetonius, some of the works of Cicero,\na large proportion of those of Seneca and Livy. In English, Milton’s\npoems, Wordsworth’s “Excursion”, Southey’s “Madoc” and “Thalaba”, Locke\n“On the Human Understanding”, Bacon’s “Novum Organum”. In Italian,\nAriosto, Tasso, and Alfieri. In French, the “Reveries d’un Solitaire”\nof Rousseau. To these may be added several modern books of travel. He\nread few novels.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Sunset.",
    "body": "[Written at Bishopsgate, 1816 (spring). Published in full in the\n“Posthumous Poems”, 1824. Lines 9-20, and 28-42, appeared in Hunt’s\n“Literary Pocket-Book”, 1823, under the titles, respectively, of\n“Sunset. From an Unpublished Poem”, And “Grief. A Fragment”.]\n\nThere late was One within whose subtle being,\nAs light and wind within some delicate cloud\nThat fades amid the blue noon’s burning sky,\nGenius and death contended. None may know\nThe sweetness of the joy which made his breath                       _5\nFail, like the trances of the summer air,\nWhen, with the Lady of his love, who then\nFirst knew the unreserve of mingled being,\nHe walked along the pathway of a field\nWhich to the east a hoar wood shadowed o’er,                         _10\nBut to the west was open to the sky.\nThere now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold\nHung on the ashen clouds, and on the points\nOf the far level grass and nodding flowers\nAnd the old dandelion’s hoary beard,                                 _15\nAnd, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay\nOn the brown massy woods—and in the east\nThe broad and burning moon lingeringly rose\nBetween the black trunks of the crowded trees,\nWhile the faint stars were gathering overhead.—                     _20\n‘Is it not strange, Isabel,’ said the youth,\n‘I never saw the sun? We will walk here\nTo-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me.’\n\nThat night the youth and lady mingled lay\nIn love and sleep—but when the morning came                         _25\nThe lady found her lover dead and cold.\nLet none believe that God in mercy gave\nThat stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild,\nBut year by year lived on—in truth I think\nHer gentleness and patience and sad smiles,                          _30\nAnd that she did not die, but lived to tend\nHer aged father, were a kind of madness,\nIf madness ’tis to be unlike the world.\nFor but to see her were to read the tale\nWoven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts                     _35\nDissolve away in wisdom-working grief;—\nHer eyes were black and lustreless and wan:\nHer eyelashes were worn away with tears,\nHer lips and cheeks were like things dead—so pale;\nHer hands were thin, and through their wandering veins               _40\nAnd weak articulations might be seen\nDay’s ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self\nWhich one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day,\nIs all, lost child, that now remains of thee!\n\n‘Inheritor of more than earth can give,                              _45\nPassionless calm and silence unreproved,\nWhether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,\nAnd are the uncomplaining things they seem,\nOr live, or drop in the deep sea of Love;\nOh, that like thine, mine epitaph were—Peace!’                      _50\nThis was the only moan she ever made.\n\n_4 death 1839; youth 1824.\n_22 sun? We will walk 1824; sunrise? We will wake cj. Forman.\n_37 Her eyes...wan Hunt, 1823; omitted 1824, 1839.\n_38 worn 1824; torn 1839.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hymn To Intellectual Beauty.",
    "body": "[Composed, probably, in Switzerland, in the summer of 1816. Published\nin Hunt’s “Examiner”, January 19, 1817, and with “Rosalind and Helen”,\n1819.]\n\n1.\nThe awful shadow of some unseen Power\nFloats though unseen among us,—visiting\nThis various world with as inconstant wing\nAs summer winds that creep from flower to flower,—\nLike moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,                _5\nIt visits with inconstant glance\nEach human heart and countenance;\nLike hues and harmonies of evening,—\nLike clouds in starlight widely spread,—\nLike memory of music fled,—                                         _10\nLike aught that for its grace may be\nDear, and yet dearer for its mystery.\n\n2.\nSpirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate\nWith thine own hues all thou dost shine upon\nOf human thought or form,—where art thou gone?                      _15\nWhy dost thou pass away and leave our state,\nThis dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?\nAsk why the sunlight not for ever\nWeaves rainbows o’er yon mountain-river,\nWhy aught should fail and fade that once is shown,                   _20\nWhy fear and dream and death and birth\nCast on the daylight of this earth\nSuch gloom,—why man has such a scope\nFor love and hate, despondency and hope?\n\n3.\nNo voice from some sublimer world hath ever                          _25\nTo sage or poet these responses given—\nTherefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven.\nRemain the records of their vain endeavour,\nFrail spells—whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,\nFrom all we hear and all we see,                                     _30\nDoubt, chance, and mutability.\nThy light alone—like mist o’er mountains driven,\nOr music by the night-wind sent\nThrough strings of some still instrument,\nOr moonlight on a midnight stream,                                   _35\nGives grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream.\n\n4.\nLove, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart\nAnd come, for some uncertain moments lent.\nMan were immortal, and omnipotent,\nDidst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,                           _40\nKeep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.\nThou messenger of sympathies,\nThat wax and wane in lovers’ eyes—\nThou—that to human thought art nourishment,\nLike darkness to a dying flame!                                      _45\nDepart not as thy shadow came\nDepart not—lest the grave should be,\nLike life and fear, a dark reality.\n\n5.\nWhile yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped\nThrough many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,                     _50\nAnd starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing\nHopes of high talk with the departed dead.\nI called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;\nI was not heard—I saw them not—\nWhen musing deeply on the lot                                        _55\nOf life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing\nAll vital things that wake to bring\nNews of birds and blossoming,—\nSudden, thy shadow fell on me;\nI shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!                         _60\n\n6.\nI vowed that I would dedicate my powers\nTo thee and thine—have I not kept the vow?\nWith beating heart and streaming eyes, even now\nI call the phantoms of a thousand hours\nEach from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers          _65\nOf studious zeal or love’s delight\nOutwatched with me the envious night—\nThey know that never joy illumed my brow\nUnlinked with hope that thou wouldst free\nThis world from its dark slavery,                                    _70\nThat thou—O awful LOVELINESS,\nWouldst give whate’er these words cannot express.\n\n7.\nThe day becomes more solemn and serene\nWhen noon is past—there is a harmony\nIn autumn, and a lustre in its sky,                                  _75\nWhich through the summer is not heard or seen,\nAs if it could not be, as if it had not been!\nThus let thy power, which like the truth\nOf nature on my passive youth\nDescended, to my onward life supply                                  _80\nIts calm—to one who worships thee,\nAnd every form containing thee,\nWhom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind\nTo fear himself, and love all human kind.\n\n_2 among 1819; amongst 1817.\n_14 dost 1819; doth 1817.\n_21 fear and dream 1819; care and pain Boscombe manuscript.\n_37-_48 omitted Boscombe manuscript.\n_44 art 1817; are 1819.\n_76 or 1819; nor 1839.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lines Written In The Vale Of Chamouni.",
    "body": "[Composed in Switzerland, July, 1816 (see date below). Printed at the\nend of the “History of a Six Weeks’ Tour” published by Shelley in 1817,\nand reprinted with “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. Amongst the Boscombe\nmanuscripts is a draft of this Ode, mainly in pencil, which has been\ncollated by Dr. Garnett.]\n\n1.\nThe everlasting universe of things\nFlows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,\nNow dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom—\nNow lending splendour, where from secret springs\nThe source of human thought its tribute brings                       _5\nOf waters,—with a sound but half its own,\nSuch as a feeble brook will oft assume\nIn the wild woods, among the mountains lone,\nWhere waterfalls around it leap for ever,\nWhere woods and winds contend, and a vast river                      _10\nOver its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.\n\n2.\nThus thou, Ravine of Arve—dark, deep Ravine—\nThou many-coloured, many-voiced vale,\nOver whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail\nFast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene,                        _15\nWhere Power in likeness of the Arve comes down\nFrom the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,\nBursting through these dark mountains like the flame\nOf lightning through the tempest;—thou dost lie,\nThy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,                       _20\nChildren of elder time, in whose devotion\nThe chainless winds still come and ever came\nTo drink their odours, and their mighty swinging\nTo hear—an old and solemn harmony;\nThine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep                    _25\nOf the ethereal waterfall, whose veil\nRobes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep\nWhich when the voices of the desert fail\nWraps all in its own deep eternity;—\nThy caverns echoing to the Arve’s commotion,                         _30\nA loud, lone sound no other sound can tame;\nThou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion,\nThou art the path of that unresting sound—\nDizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee\nI seem as in a trance sublime and strange                            _35\nTo muse on my own separate fantasy,\nMy own, my human mind, which passively\nNow renders and receives fast influencings,\nHolding an unremitting interchange\nWith the clear universe of things around;                            _40\nOne legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings\nNow float above thy darkness, and now rest\nWhere that or thou art no unbidden guest,\nIn the still cave of the witch Poesy,\nSeeking among the shadows that pass by                               _45\nGhosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,\nSome phantom, some faint image; till the breast\nFrom which they fled recalls them, thou art there!\n\n3.\nSome say that gleams of a remoter world\nVisit the soul in sleep,—that death is slumber,                     _50\nAnd that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber\nOf those who wake and live.—I look on high;\nHas some unknown omnipotence unfurled\nThe veil of life and death? or do I lie\nIn dream, and does the mightier world of sleep                       _55\nSpread far around and inaccessibly\nIts circles? For the very spirit fails,\nDriven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep\nThat vanishes among the viewless gales!\nFar, far above, piercing the infinite sky,                           _60\nMont Blanc appears,—still, snowy, and serene—\nIts subject mountains their unearthly forms\nPile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between\nOf frozen floods, unfathomable deeps,\nBlue as the overhanging heaven, that spread                          _65\nAnd wind among the accumulated steeps;\nA desert peopled by the storms alone,\nSave when the eagle brings some hunter’s bone,\nAnd the wolf tracts her there—how hideously\nIts shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high,                  _70\nGhastly, and scarred, and riven.—Is this the scene\nWhere the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young\nRuin? Were these their toys? or did a sea\nOf fire envelope once this silent snow?\nNone can reply—all seems eternal now.                               _75\nThe wilderness has a mysterious tongue\nWhich teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,\nSo solemn, so serene, that man may be,\nBut for such faith, with nature reconciled;\nThou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal                         _80\nLarge codes of fraud and woe; not understood\nBy all, but which the wise, and great, and good\nInterpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.\n\n4.\nThe fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,\nOcean, and all the living things that dwell                          _85\nWithin the daedal earth; lightning, and rain,\nEarthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane,\nThe torpor of the year when feeble dreams\nVisit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep\nHolds every future leaf and flower;—the bound                       _90\nWith which from that detested trance they leap;\nThe works and ways of man, their death and birth,\nAnd that of him and all that his may be;\nAll things that move and breathe with toil and sound\nAre born and die; revolve, subside, and swell.                       _95\nPower dwells apart in its tranquillity,\nRemote, serene, and inaccessible:\nAnd THIS, the naked countenance of earth,\nOn which I gaze, even these primaeval mountains\nTeach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep                         _100\nLike snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,\nSlow rolling on; there, many a precipice,\nFrost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power\nHave piled: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,\nA city of death, distinct with many a tower                          _105\nAnd wall impregnable of beaming ice.\nYet not a city, but a flood of ruin\nIs there, that from the boundaries of the sky\nRolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing\nIts destined path, or in the mangled soil                            _110\nBranchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down\nFrom yon remotest waste, have overthrown\nThe limits of the dead and living world,\nNever to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place\nOf insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil;                    _115\nTheir food and their retreat for ever gone,\nSo much of life and joy is lost. The race\nOf man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling\nVanish, like smoke before the tempest’s stream,\nAnd their place is not known. Below, vast caves                      _120\nShine in the rushing torrents’ restless gleam,\nWhich from those secret chasms in tumult welling\nMeet in the vale, and one majestic River,\nThe breath and blood of distant lands, for ever\nRolls its loud waters to the ocean waves,                            _125\nBreathes its swift vapours to the circling air.\n\n5.\nMont Blanc yet gleams on high—the power is there,\nThe still and solemn power of many sights,\nAnd many sounds, and much of life and death.\nIn the calm darkness of the moonless nights,                         _130\nIn the lone glare of day, the snows descend\nUpon that Mountain; none beholds them there,\nNor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,\nOr the star-beams dart through them:—Winds contend\nSilently there, and heap the snow with breath                        _135\nRapid and strong, but silently! Its home\nThe voiceless lightning in these solitudes\nKeeps innocently, and like vapour broods\nOver the snow. The secret strength of things\nWhich governs thought, and to the infinite dome                      _140\nOf heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!\nAnd what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,\nIf to the human mind’s imaginings\nSilence and solitude were vacancy?\n\nJuly 23, 1816.\n\n_15 cloud-shadows]cloud shadows 1817;\n    cloud, shadows 1824; clouds, shadows 1839.\n_20 Thy 1824; The 1839.\n_53 unfurled]upfurled cj. James Thomson (‘B.V.’).\n_56 Spread 1824; Speed 1839.\n_69 tracks her there 1824; watches her Boscombe manuscript.\n_79 But for such 1824; In such a Boscombe manuscript.\n_108 boundaries of the sky]boundary of the skies cj. Rossetti\n     (cf. lines 102, 106).\n_121 torrents’]torrent’s 1817, 1824, 1839.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cancelled Passage Of Mont Blanc.",
    "body": "[Published by Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\nThere is a voice, not understood by all,\nSent from these desert-caves. It is the roar\nOf the rent ice-cliff which the sunbeams call,\nPlunging into the vale—it is the blast\nDescending on the pines—the torrents pour...                        _5\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment Of A Ghost Story.",
    "body": "[Published by Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\nA shovel of his ashes took\nFrom the hearth’s obscurest nook,\nMuttering mysteries as she went.\nHelen and Henry knew that Granny\nWas as much afraid of Ghosts as any,                                 _5\nAnd so they followed hard—\nBut Helen clung to her brother’s arm,\nAnd her own spasm made her shake.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On Poems Of 1816, By Mrs. Shelley.",
    "body": "Shelley wrote little during this year. The poem entitled “The Sunset”\nwas written in the spring of the year, while still residing at\nBishopsgate. He spent the summer on the shores of the Lake of Geneva.\nThe “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” was conceived during his voyage round\nthe lake with Lord Byron. He occupied himself during this voyage by\nreading the “Nouvelle Heloise” for the first time. The reading it on\nthe very spot where the scenes are laid added to the interest; and he\nwas at once surprised and charmed by the passionate eloquence and\nearnest enthralling interest that pervade this work. There was\nsomething in the character of Saint-Preux, in his abnegation of self,\nand in the worship he paid to Love, that coincided with Shelley’s own\ndisposition; and, though differing in many of the views and shocked by\nothers, yet the effect of the whole was fascinating and delightful.\n\n“Mont Blanc” was inspired by a view of that mountain and its\nsurrounding peaks and valleys, as he lingered on the Bridge of Arve on\nhis way through the Valley of Chamouni. Shelley makes the following\nmention of this poem in his publication of the “History of a Six Weeks’\nTour, and Letters from Switzerland”: ‘The poem entitled “Mont Blanc” is\nwritten by the author of the two letters from Chamouni and Vevai. It\nwas composed under the immediate impression of the deep and powerful\nfeelings excited by the objects which it attempts to describe; and, as\nan undisciplined overflowing of the soul, rests its claim to\napprobation on an attempt to imitate the untamable wildness and\ninaccessible solemnity from which those feelings sprang.’\n\nThis was an eventful year, and less time was given to study than usual.\nIn the list of his reading I find, in Greek, Theocritus, the\n“Prometheus” of Aeschylus, several of Plutarch’s “Lives”, and the works\nof Lucian. In Latin, Lucretius, Pliny’s “Letters”, the “Annals” and\n“Germany” of Tacitus. In French, the “History of the French Revolution”\nby Lacretelle. He read for the first time, this year, Montaigne’s\n“Essays”, and regarded them ever after as one of the most delightful\nand instructive books in the world. The list is scanty in English\nworks: Locke’s “Essay”, “Political Justice”, and Coleridge’s “Lay\nSermon”, form nearly the whole. It was his frequent habit to read aloud\nto me in the evening; in this way we read, this year, the New\nTestament, “Paradise Lost”, Spenser’s “Faery Queen”, and “Don Quixote”.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Marianne’S Dream.",
    "body": "[Composed at Marlow, 1817. Published in Hunt’s “Literary Pocket-Book”,\n1819, and reprinted in “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\n1.\nA pale Dream came to a Lady fair,\nAnd said, A boon, a boon, I pray!\nI know the secrets of the air,\nAnd things are lost in the glare of day,\nWhich I can make the sleeping see,                                   _5\nIf they will put their trust in me.\n\n2.\nAnd thou shalt know of things unknown,\nIf thou wilt let me rest between\nThe veiny lids, whose fringe is thrown\nOver thine eyes so dark and sheen:                                   _10\nAnd half in hope, and half in fright,\nThe Lady closed her eyes so bright.\n\n3.\nAt first all deadly shapes were driven\nTumultuously across her sleep,\nAnd o’er the vast cope of bending heaven                             _15\nAll ghastly-visaged clouds did sweep;\nAnd the Lady ever looked to spy\nIf the golden sun shone forth on high.\n\n4.\nAnd as towards the east she turned,\nShe saw aloft in the morning air,                                    _20\nWhich now with hues of sunrise burned,\nA great black Anchor rising there;\nAnd wherever the Lady turned her eyes,\nIt hung before her in the skies.\n\n5.\nThe sky was blue as the summer sea,                                  _25\nThe depths were cloudless overhead,\nThe air was calm as it could be,\nThere was no sight or sound of dread,\nBut that black Anchor floating still\nOver the piny eastern hill.                                          _30\n\n6.\nThe Lady grew sick with a weight of fear\nTo see that Anchor ever hanging,\nAnd veiled her eyes; she then did hear\nThe sound as of a dim low clanging,\nAnd looked abroad if she might know                                  _35\nWas it aught else, or but the flow\nOf the blood in her own veins, to and fro.\n\n7.\nThere was a mist in the sunless air,\nWhich shook as it were with an earthquake’s shock,\nBut the very weeds that blossomed there                              _40\nWere moveless, and each mighty rock\nStood on its basis steadfastly;\nThe Anchor was seen no more on high.\n\n8.\nBut piled around, with summits hid\nIn lines of cloud at intervals,                                      _45\nStood many a mountain pyramid\nAmong whose everlasting walls\nTwo mighty cities shone, and ever\nThrough the red mist their domes did quiver.\n\n9.\nOn two dread mountains, from whose crest,                            _50\nMight seem, the eagle, for her brood,\nWould ne’er have hung her dizzy nest,\nThose tower-encircled cities stood.\nA vision strange such towers to see,\nSculptured and wrought so gorgeously,                                _55\nWhere human art could never be.\n\n10.\nAnd columns framed of marble white,\nAnd giant fanes, dome over dome\nPiled, and triumphant gates, all bright\nWith workmanship, which could not come                               _60\nFrom touch of mortal instrument,\nShot o’er the vales, or lustre lent\nFrom its own shapes magnificent.\n\n11.\nBut still the Lady heard that clang\nFilling the wide air far away;                                       _65\nAnd still the mist whose light did hang\nAmong the mountains shook alway,\nSo that the Lady’s heart beat fast,\nAs half in joy, and half aghast,\nOn those high domes her look she cast.                               _70\n\n12.\nSudden, from out that city sprung\nA light that made the earth grow red;\nTwo flames that each with quivering tongue\nLicked its high domes, and overhead\nAmong those mighty towers and fanes                                  _75\nDropped fire, as a volcano rains\nIts sulphurous ruin on the plains.\n\n13.\nAnd hark! a rush as if the deep\nHad burst its bonds; she looked behind\nAnd saw over the western steep                                       _80\nA raging flood descend, and wind\nThrough that wide vale; she felt no fear,\nBut said within herself, ’Tis clear\nThese towers are Nature’s own, and she\nTo save them has sent forth the sea.                                 _85\n\n14.\nAnd now those raging billows came\nWhere that fair Lady sate, and she\nWas borne towards the showering flame\nBy the wild waves heaped tumultuously.\nAnd, on a little plank, the flow                                     _90\nOf the whirlpool bore her to and fro.\n\n15.\nThe flames were fiercely vomited\nFrom every tower and every dome,\nAnd dreary light did widely shed\nO’er that vast flood’s suspended foam,                               _95\nBeneath the smoke which hung its night\nOn the stained cope of heaven’s light.\n\n16.\nThe plank whereon that Lady sate\nWas driven through the chasms, about and about,\nBetween the peaks so desolate                                        _100\nOf the drowning mountains, in and out,\nAs the thistle-beard on a whirlwind sails—\nWhile the flood was filling those hollow vales.\n\n17.\nAt last her plank an eddy crossed,\nAnd bore her to the city’s wall,                                     _105\nWhich now the flood had reached almost;\nIt might the stoutest heart appal\nTo hear the fire roar and hiss\nThrough the domes of those mighty palaces.\n\n18.\nThe eddy whirled her round and round                                 _110\nBefore a gorgeous gate, which stood\nPiercing the clouds of smoke which bound\nIts aery arch with light like blood;\nShe looked on that gate of marble clear,\nWith wonder that extinguished fear.                                  _115\n\n19.\nFor it was filled with sculptures rarest,\nOf forms most beautiful and strange,\nLike nothing human, but the fairest\nOf winged shapes, whose legions range\nThroughout the sleep of those that are,                              _120\nLike this same Lady, good and fair.\n\n20.\nAnd as she looked, still lovelier grew\nThose marble forms;—the sculptor sure\nWas a strong spirit, and the hue\nOf his own mind did there endure                                     _125\nAfter the touch, whose power had braided\nSuch grace, was in some sad change faded.\n\n21.\nShe looked, the flames were dim, the flood\nGrew tranquil as a woodland river\nWinding through hills in solitude;                                   _130\nThose marble shapes then seemed to quiver,\nAnd their fair limbs to float in motion,\nLike weeds unfolding in the ocean.\n\n22.\nAnd their lips moved; one seemed to speak,\nWhen suddenly the mountains cracked,                                 _135\nAnd through the chasm the flood did break\nWith an earth-uplifting cataract:\nThe statues gave a joyous scream,\nAnd on its wings the pale thin Dream\nLifted the Lady from the stream.                                     _140\n\n23.\nThe dizzy flight of that phantom pale\nWaked the fair Lady from her sleep,\nAnd she arose, while from the veil\nOf her dark eyes the Dream did creep,\nAnd she walked about as one who knew                                 _145\nThat sleep has sights as clear and true\nAs any waking eyes can view.\n\n_18 golden 1819; gold 1824, 1839.\n_28 or 1824; nor 1839.\n_62 or]a cj. Rossetti.\n_63 its]their cj. Rossetti.\n_92 flames cj. Rossetti; waves 1819, 1824, 1839.\n_101 mountains 1819; mountain 1824, 1839.\n_106 flood]flames cj. James Thomson (‘B.V.’).\n_120 that 1819, 1824; who 1839.\n_135 mountains 1819; mountain 1824, 1839.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Stanzas 1 And 2.",
    "body": "As restored by Mr. C.D. Locock.\n\n1.\nCease, cease—for such wild lessons madmen learn\nThus to be lost, and thus to sink and die\nPerchance were death indeed!—Constantia turn\nIn thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie\nEven though the sounds its voice that were                           _5\nBetween [thy] lips are laid to sleep:\nWithin thy breath, and on thy hair\nLike odour, it is [lingering] yet\nAnd from thy touch like fire doth leap—\nEven while I write, my burning cheeks are wet—                      _10\nAlas, that the torn heart can bleed but not forget.\n\n2.\n[A deep and] breathless awe like the swift change\nOf dreams unseen but felt in youthful slumbers\nWild sweet yet incommunicably strange\nThou breathest now in fast ascending numbers...                      _15\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: To One Singing.",
    "body": "[Dated 1817 by Mrs. Shelley, and published in the “Poetical Works”,\n1839, 1st edition. The manuscript original, by which Mr. Locock has\nrevised and (by one line) enlarged the text, is amongst the Shelley\nmanuscripts at the Bodleian. The metre, as Mr. Locock (“Examination”,\netc., 1903, page 63) points out, is terza rima.]\n\nMy spirit like a charmed bark doth swim\nUpon the liquid waves of thy sweet singing,\nFar far away into the regions dim\n\nOf rapture—as a boat, with swift sails winging\nIts way adown some many-winding river,                               _5\nSpeeds through dark forests o’er the waters swinging...\n\n_3 Far far away B.; Far away 1839.\n_6 Speeds...swinging B.; omitted 1839.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Fragment: To Music.",
    "body": "[Published in “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.\nDated 1817 (Mrs. Shelley).]\n\nSilver key of the fountain of tears,\nWhere the spirit drinks till the brain is wild;\nSoftest grave of a thousand fears,\nWhere their mother, Care, like a drowsy child,\nIs laid asleep in flowers.                                           _5\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Another Fragment: To Music.",
    "body": "[Published in “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.\nDated 1817 (Mrs. Shelley).]\n\nNo, Music, thou art not the ‘food of Love.’\nUnless Love feeds upon its own sweet self,\nTill it becomes all Music murmurs of.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Supposed To Be Addressed To William Godwin.",
    "body": "[Published in 1882 (“Poetical Works of P. B. S.”) by Mr. H. Buxton\nForman, C.B., by whom it is dated 1817.]\n\nMighty eagle! thou that soarest\nO’er the misty mountain forest,\nAnd amid the light of morning\nLike a cloud of glory hiest,\nAnd when night descends defiest                                      _5\nThe embattled tempests’ warning!\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "From The Original Draft Of The Poem To William Shelley.",
    "body": "[Published in Dr. Garnett’s “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\n1.\nThe world is now our dwelling-place;\nWhere’er the earth one fading trace\nOf what was great and free does keep,\nThat is our home!...\nMild thoughts of man’s ungentle race                                 _5\nShall our contented exile reap;\nFor who that in some happy place\nHis own free thoughts can freely chase\nBy woods and waves can clothe his face\nIn cynic smiles? Child! we shall weep.                               _10\n\n2.\nThis lament,\nThe memory of thy grievous wrong\nWill fade...\nBut genius is omnipotent\nTo hallow...                                                         _15\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "On Fanny Godwin.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, among the poems of 1817, in “Poetical\nWorks”, 1839, 1st edition.]\n\nHer voice did quiver as we parted,\nYet knew I not that heart was broken\nFrom which it came, and I departed\nHeeding not the words then spoken.\nMisery—O Misery,                                                    _5\nThis world is all too wide for thee.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lines.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley with the date ‘November 5th, 1817,’ in\n“Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\n1.\nThat time is dead for ever, child!\nDrowned, frozen, dead for ever!\nWe look on the past\nAnd stare aghast\nAt the spectres wailing, pale and ghast,                             _5\nOf hopes which thou and I beguiled\nTo death on life’s dark river.\n\n2.\nThe stream we gazed on then rolled by;\nIts waves are unreturning;\nBut we yet stand                                                     _10\nIn a lone land,\nLike tombs to mark the memory\nOf hopes and fears, which fade and flee\nIn the light of life’s dim morning.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Death.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley in “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\n1.\nThey die—the dead return not—Misery\nSits near an open grave and calls them over,\nA Youth with hoary hair and haggard eye—\nThey are the names of kindred, friend and lover,\nWhich he so feebly calls—they all are gone—                        _5\nFond wretch, all dead! those vacant names alone,\nThis most familiar scene, my pain—\nThese tombs—alone remain.\n\n2.\nMisery, my sweetest friend—oh, weep no more!\nThou wilt not be consoled—I wonder not!                             _10\nFor I have seen thee from thy dwelling’s door\nWatch the calm sunset with them, and this spot\nWas even as bright and calm, but transitory,\nAnd now thy hopes are gone, thy hair is hoary;\nThis most familiar scene, my pain—                                  _15\nThese tombs—alone remain.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Otho.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]\n\n1.\nThou wert not, Cassius, and thou couldst not be,\nLast of the Romans, though thy memory claim\nFrom Brutus his own glory—and on thee\nRests the full splendour of his sacred fame:\nNor he who dared make the foul tyrant quail                          _5\nAmid his cowering senate with thy name,\nThough thou and he were great—it will avail\nTo thine own fame that Otho’s should not fail.\n\n2.\n‘Twill wrong thee not—thou wouldst, if thou couldst feel,\nAbjure such envious fame—great Otho died                            _10\nLike thee—he sanctified his country’s steel,\nAt once the tyrant and tyrannicide,\nIn his own blood—a deed it was to bring\nTears from all men—though full of gentle pride,\nSuch pride as from impetuous love may spring,                        _15\nThat will not be refused its offering.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragments Supposed To Be Parts Of Otho.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862,—where, however,\nonly the fragment numbered 2 is assigned to “Otho”. Forman (1876)\nconnects all three fragments with that projected poem.]\n\n1.\nThose whom nor power, nor lying faith, nor toil,\nNor custom, queen of many slaves, makes blind,\nHave ever grieved that man should be the spoil\nOf his own weakness, and with earnest mind\nFed hopes of its redemption; these recur                             _5\nChastened by deathful victory now, and find\nFoundations in this foulest age, and stir\nMe whom they cheer to be their minister.\n\n2.\nDark is the realm of grief: but human things\nThose may not know who cannot weep for them.                         _10\n\n...\n\n3.\nOnce more descend\nThe shadows of my soul upon mankind,\nFor to those hearts with which they never blend,\nThoughts are but shadows which the flashing mind\nFrom the swift clouds which track its flight of fire,                _15\nCasts on the gloomy world it leaves behind.\n\n...\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "‘O That A Chariot Of Cloud Were Mine’.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\nO that a chariot of cloud were mine!\nOf cloud which the wild tempest weaves in air,\nWhen the moon over the ocean’s line\nIs spreading the locks of her bright gray hair.\nO that a chariot of cloud were mine!                                 _5\nI would sail on the waves of the billowy wind\nTo the mountain peak and the rocky lake,\nAnd the...\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: To A Friend Released From Prison.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\nFor me, my friend, if not that tears did tremble\nIn my faint eyes, and that my heart beat fast\nWith feelings which make rapture pain resemble,\nYet, from thy voice that falsehood starts aghast,\nI thank thee—let the tyrant keep                                    _5\nHis chains and tears, yea, let him weep\nWith rage to see thee freshly risen,\nLike strength from slumber, from the prison,\nIn which he vainly hoped the soul to bind\nWhich on the chains must prey that fetter humankind.                 _10",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: Satan Broken Loose.",
    "body": "[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.]\n\nA golden-winged Angel stood\nBefore the Eternal Judgement-seat:\nHis looks were wild, and Devils’ blood\nStained his dainty hands and feet.\nThe Father and the Son                                               _5\nKnew that strife was now begun.\nThey knew that Satan had broken his chain,\nAnd with millions of daemons in his train,\nWas ranging over the world again.\nBefore the Angel had told his tale,                                  _10\nA sweet and a creeping sound\nLike the rushing of wings was heard around;\nAnd suddenly the lamps grew pale—\nThe lamps, before the Archangels seven,\nThat burn continually in Heaven.                                     _15\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: “Igniculus Desiderii”.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition. This\nfragment is amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian. See Mr.\nC.D. Locock’s “Examination”, etc., 1903, page 63.]\n\nTo thirst and find no fill—to wail and wander\nWith short unsteady steps—to pause and ponder—\nTo feel the blood run through the veins and tingle\nWhere busy thought and blind sensation mingle;\nTo nurse the image of unfelt caresses                                _5\nTill dim imagination just possesses\nThe half-created shadow, then all the night\nSick...\n\n_2 unsteady B.; uneasy 1839, 1st edition.\n_7, _8 then...Sick B.; wanting, 1839, 1st edition.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: “Amor Aeternus”.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]\n\nWealth and dominion fade into the mass\nOf the great sea of human right and wrong,\nWhen once from our possession they must pass;\nBut love, though misdirected, is among\nThe things which are immortal, and surpass                           _5\nAll that frail stuff which will be—or which was.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: Thoughts Come And Go In Solitude.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]\n\nMy thoughts arise and fade in solitude,\nThe verse that would invest them melts away\nLike moonlight in the heaven of spreading day:\nHow beautiful they were, how firm they stood,\nFlecking the starry sky like woven pearl!                            _5\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Hate-Song.",
    "body": "[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.]\n\nA hater he came and sat by a ditch,\nAnd he took an old cracked lute;\nAnd he sang a song which was more of a screech\n’Gainst a woman that was a brute.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lines To A Critic.",
    "body": "[Published by Hunt in “The Liberal”, No. 3, 1823. Reprinted in\n“Posthumous Poems”, 1824, where it is dated December, 1817.]\n\n1.\nHoney from silkworms who can gather,\nOr silk from the yellow bee?\nThe grass may grow in winter weather\nAs soon as hate in me.\n\n2.\nHate men who cant, and men who pray,                                 _5\nAnd men who rail like thee;\nAn equal passion to repay\nThey are not coy like me.\n\n3.\nOr seek some slave of power and gold\nTo be thy dear heart’s mate;                                         _10\nThy love will move that bigot cold\nSooner than me, thy hate.\n\n4.\nA passion like the one I prove\nCannot divided be;\nI hate thy want of truth and love—                                  _15\nHow should I then hate thee?\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ozymandias.",
    "body": "[Published by Hunt in “The Examiner”, January, 1818. Reprinted with\n“Rosalind and Helen”, 1819. There is a copy amongst the Shelley\nmanuscripts at the Bodleian Library. See Mr. C.D. Locock’s\n“Examination”, etc., 1903, page 46.]\n\nI met a traveller from an antique land\nWho said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone\nStand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,\nHalf sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,\nAnd wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,                         _5\nTell that its sculptor well those passions read\nWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,\nThe hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:\nAnd on the pedestal these words appear:\n‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:                               _10\nLook on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’\nNothing beside remains. Round the decay\nOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare\nThe lone and level sands stretch far away.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On Poems Of 1817, By Mrs. Shelley.",
    "body": "The very illness that oppressed, and the aspect of death which had\napproached so near Shelley, appear to have kindled to yet keener life\nthe Spirit of Poetry in his heart. The restless thoughts kept awake by\npain clothed themselves in verse. Much was composed during this year.\nThe “Revolt of Islam”, written and printed, was a great\neffort—“Rosalind and Helen” was begun—and the fragments and poems I\ncan trace to the same period show how full of passion and reflection\nwere his solitary hours.\n\nIn addition to such poems as have an intelligible aim and shape, many a\nstray idea and transitory emotion found imperfect and abrupt\nexpression, and then again lost themselves in silence. As he never\nwandered without a book and without implements of writing, I find many\nsuch, in his manuscript books, that scarcely bear record; while some of\nthem, broken and vague as they are, will appear valuable to those who\nlove Shelley’s mind, and desire to trace its workings.\n\nHe projected also translating the “Hymns” of Homer; his version of\nseveral of the shorter ones remains, as well as that to Mercury already\npublished in the “Posthumous Poems”. His readings this year were\nchiefly Greek. Besides the “Hymns” of Homer and the “Iliad”, he read\nthe dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles, the “Symposium” of Plato, and\nArrian’s “Historia Indica”. In Latin, Apuleius alone is named. In\nEnglish, the Bible was his constant study; he read a great portion of\nit aloud in the evening. Among these evening readings I find also\nmentioned the “Faerie Queen”; and other modern works, the production of\nhis contemporaries, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Moore and Byron.\n\nHis life was now spent more in thought than action—he had lost the\neager spirit which believed it could achieve what it projected for the\nbenefit of mankind. And yet in the converse of daily life Shelley was\nfar from being a melancholy man. He was eloquent when philosophy or\npolitics or taste were the subjects of conversation. He was playful;\nand indulged in the wild spirit that mocked itself and others—not in\nbitterness, but in sport. The author of “Nightmare Abbey” seized on\nsome points of his character and some habits of his life when he\npainted Scythrop. He was not addicted to ‘port or madeira,’ but in\nyouth he had read of ‘Illuminati and Eleutherarchs,’ and believed that\nhe possessed the power of operating an immediate change in the minds of\nmen and the state of society. These wild dreams had faded; sorrow and\nadversity had struck home; but he struggled with despondency as he did\nwith physical pain. There are few who remember him sailing paper boats,\nand watching the navigation of his tiny craft with eagerness—or\nrepeating with wild energy “The Ancient Mariner”, and Southey’s “Old\nWoman of Berkeley”; but those who do will recollect that it was in\nsuch, and in the creations of his own fancy when that was most daring\nand ideal, that he sheltered himself from the storms and\ndisappointments, the pain and sorrow, that beset his life.\n\nNo words can express the anguish he felt when his elder children were\ntorn from him. In his first resentment against the Chancellor, on the\npassing of the decree, he had written a curse, in which there breathes,\nbesides haughty indignation, all the tenderness of a father’s love,\nwhich could imagine and fondly dwell upon its loss and the\nconsequences.\n\nAt one time, while the question was still pending, the Chancellor had\nsaid some words that seemed to intimate that Shelley should not be\npermitted the care of any of his children, and for a moment he feared\nthat our infant son would be torn from us. He did not hesitate to\nresolve, if such were menaced, to abandon country, fortune, everything,\nand to escape with his child; and I find some unfinished stanzas\naddressed to this son, whom afterwards we lost at Rome, written under\nthe idea that we might suddenly be forced to cross the sea, so to\npreserve him. This poem, as well as the one previously quoted, were not\nwritten to exhibit the pangs of distress to the public; they were the\nspontaneous outbursts of a man who brooded over his wrongs and woes,\nand was impelled to shed the grace of his genius over the\nuncontrollable emotions of his heart. I ought to observe that the\nfourth verse of this effusion is introduced in “Rosalind and Helen”.\nWhen afterwards this child died at Rome, he wrote, a propos of the\nEnglish burying-ground in that city: ‘This spot is the repository of a\nsacred loss, of which the yearnings of a parent’s heart are now\nprophetic; he is rendered immortal by love, as his memory is by death.\nMy beloved child lies buried here. I envy death the body far less than\nthe oppressors the minds of those whom they have torn from me. The one\ncan only kill the body, the other crushes the affections.’\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Passage Of The Apennines.",
    "body": "[Composed May 4, 1818. Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”,\n1824. There is a copy amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian\nLibrary, which supplies the last word of the fragment.]\n\nListen, listen, Mary mine,\nTo the whisper of the Apennine,\nIt bursts on the roof like the thunder’s roar,\nOr like the sea on a northern shore,\nHeard in its raging ebb and flow                                     _5\nBy the captives pent in the cave below.\nThe Apennine in the light of day\nIs a mighty mountain dim and gray,\nWhich between the earth and sky doth lay;\nBut when night comes, a chaos dread                                  _10\nOn the dim starlight then is spread,\nAnd the Apennine walks abroad with the storm,\nShrouding...\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Past.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\n1.\nWilt thou forget the happy hours\nWhich we buried in Love’s sweet bowers,\nHeaping over their corpses cold\nBlossoms and leaves, instead of mould?\nBlossoms which were the joys that fell,                              _5\nAnd leaves, the hopes that yet remain.\n\n2.\nForget the dead, the past? Oh, yet\nThere are ghosts that may take revenge for it,\nMemories that make the heart a tomb,\nRegrets which glide through the spirit’s gloom,                      _10\nAnd with ghastly whispers tell\nThat joy, once lost, is pain.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "On A Faded Violet.",
    "body": "[Published by Hunt, “Literary Pocket-Book”, 1821. Reprinted by Mrs.\nShelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. Again reprinted, with several\nvariants, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition. Our text is that of the\neditio princeps, 1821. A transcript is extant in a letter from Shelley\nto Sophia Stacey, dated March 7, 1820.]\n\n1.\nThe odour from the flower is gone\nWhich like thy kisses breathed on me;\nThe colour from the flower is flown\nWhich glowed of thee and only thee!\n\n2.\nA shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form,                                 _5\nIt lies on my abandoned breast,\nAnd mocks the heart which yet is warm,\nWith cold and silent rest.\n\n3.\nI weep,—my tears revive it not!\nI sigh,—it breathes no more on me;                                  _10\nIts mute and uncomplaining lot\nIs such as mine should be.\n\n_1 odour]colour 1839.\n_2 kisses breathed]sweet eyes smiled 1839.\n_3 colour]odour 1839.\n_4 glowed]breathed 1839.\n_5 shrivelled]withered 1839.\n_8 cold and silent all editions; its cold, silent Stacey manuscript.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "October, 1818.",
    "body": "[Composed at Este, October, 1818. Published with “Rosalind and Helen”,\n1819. Amongst the late Mr. Fredk. Locker-Lampson’s collections at\nRowfant there is a manuscript of the lines (167-205) on Byron,\ninterpolated after the completion of the poem.]\n\nMany a green isle needs must be\nIn the deep wide sea of Misery,\nOr the mariner, worn and wan,\nNever thus could voyage on—\nDay and night, and night and day,                                    _5\nDrifting on his dreary way,\nWith the solid darkness black\nClosing round his vessel’s track:\nWhilst above the sunless sky,\nBig with clouds, hangs heavily,                                      _10\nAnd behind the tempest fleet\nHurries on with lightning feet,\nRiving sail, and cord, and plank,\nTill the ship has almost drank\nDeath from the o’er-brimming deep;                                   _15\nAnd sinks down, down, like that sleep\nWhen the dreamer seems to be\nWeltering through eternity;\nAnd the dim low line before\nOf a dark and distant shore                                          _20\nStill recedes, as ever still\nLonging with divided will,\nBut no power to seek or shun,\nHe is ever drifted on\nO’er the unreposing wave                                             _25\nTo the haven of the grave.\nWhat, if there no friends will greet;\nWhat, if there no heart will meet\nHis with love’s impatient beat;\nWander wheresoe’er he may,                                           _30\nCan he dream before that day\nTo find refuge from distress\nIn friendship’s smile, in love’s caress?\nThen ‘twill wreak him little woe\nWhether such there be or no:                                         _35\nSenseless is the breast, and cold,\nWhich relenting love would fold;\nBloodless are the veins and chill\nWhich the pulse of pain did fill;\nEvery little living nerve                                            _40\nThat from bitter words did swerve\nRound the tortured lips and brow,\nAre like sapless leaflets now\nFrozen upon December’s bough.\n\nOn the beach of a northern sea                                       _45\nWhich tempests shake eternally,\nAs once the wretch there lay to sleep,\nLies a solitary heap,\nOne white skull and seven dry bones,\nOn the margin of the stones,                                         _50\nWhere a few gray rushes stand,\nBoundaries of the sea and land:\nNor is heard one voice of wail\nBut the sea-mews, as they sail\nO’er the billows of the gale;                                        _55\nOr the whirlwind up and down\nHowling, like a slaughtered town,\nWhen a king in glory rides\nThrough the pomp of fratricides:\nThose unburied bones around                                          _60\nThere is many a mournful sound;\nThere is no lament for him,\nLike a sunless vapour, dim,\nWho once clothed with life and thought\nWhat now moves nor murmurs not.                                      _65\n\nAy, many flowering islands lie\nIn the waters of wide Agony:\nTo such a one this morn was led,\nMy bark by soft winds piloted:\n‘Mid the mountains Euganean                                          _70\nI stood listening to the paean\nWith which the legioned rooks did hail\nThe sun’s uprise majestical;\nGathering round with wings all hoar,\nThrough the dewy mist they soar                                      _75\nLike gray shades, till the eastern heaven\nBursts, and then, as clouds of even,\nFlecked with fire and azure, lie\nIn the unfathomable sky,\nSo their plumes of purple grain,                                     _80\nStarred with drops of golden rain,\nGleam above the sunlight woods,\nAs in silent multitudes\nOn the morning’s fitful gale\nThrough the broken mist they sail,                                   _85\nAnd the vapours cloven and gleaming\nFollow, down the dark steep streaming,\nTill all is bright, and clear, and still,\nRound the solitary hill.\n\nBeneath is spread like a green sea                                   _90\nThe waveless plain of Lombardy,\nBounded by the vaporous air,\nIslanded by cities fair;\nUnderneath Day’s azure eyes\nOcean’s nursling, Venice lies,                                       _95\nA peopled labyrinth of walls,\nAmphitrite’s destined halls,\nWhich her hoary sire now paves\nWith his blue and beaming waves.\nLo! the sun upsprings behind,                                        _100\nBroad, red, radiant, half-reclined\nOn the level quivering line\nOf the waters crystalline;\nAnd before that chasm of light,\nAs within a furnace bright,                                          _105\nColumn, tower, and dome, and spire,\nShine like obelisks of fire,\nPointing with inconstant motion\nFrom the altar of dark ocean\nTo the sapphire-tinted skies;                                        _110\nAs the flames of sacrifice\nFrom the marble shrines did rise,\nAs to pierce the dome of gold\nWhere Apollo spoke of old.\n\nSun-girt City, thou hast been                                        _115\nOcean’s child, and then his queen;\nNow is come a darker day,\nAnd thou soon must be his prey,\nIf the power that raised thee here\nHallow so thy watery bier.                                           _120\nA less drear ruin then than now,\nWith thy conquest-branded brow\nStooping to the slave of slaves\nFrom thy throne, among the waves\nWilt thou be, when the sea-mew                                       _125\nFlies, as once before it flew,\nO’er thine isles depopulate,\nAnd all is in its ancient state,\nSave where many a palace gate                                        _130\nWith green sea-flowers overgrown\nLike a rock of Ocean’s own,\nTopples o’er the abandoned sea\nAs the tides change sullenly.\nThe fisher on his watery way,\nWandering at the close of day,                                       _135\nWill spread his sail and seize his oar\nTill he pass the gloomy shore,\nLest thy dead should, from their sleep\nBursting o’er the starlight deep,\nLead a rapid masque of death                                         _140\nO’er the waters of his path.\n\nThose who alone thy towers behold\nQuivering through aereal gold,\nAs I now behold them here,\nWould imagine not they were                                          _145\nSepulchres, where human forms,\nLike pollution-nourished worms,\nTo the corpse of greatness cling,\nMurdered, and now mouldering:\nBut if Freedom should awake                                          _150\nIn her omnipotence, and shake\nFrom the Celtic Anarch’s hold\nAll the keys of dungeons cold,\nWhere a hundred cities lie\nChained like thee, ingloriously,                                     _155\nThou and all thy sister band\nMight adorn this sunny land,\nTwining memories of old time\nWith new virtues more sublime;\nIf not, perish thou and they!—                                      _160\nClouds which stain truth’s rising day\nBy her sun consumed away—\nEarth can spare ye: while like flowers,\nIn the waste of years and hours,\nFrom your dust new nations spring                                    _165\nWith more kindly blossoming.\n\nPerish—let there only be\nFloating o’er thy hearthless sea\nAs the garment of thy sky\nClothes the world immortally,                                        _170\nOne remembrance, more sublime\nThan the tattered pall of time,\nWhich scarce hides thy visage wan;—\nThat a tempest-cleaving Swan\nOf the songs of Albion,                                              _175\nDriven from his ancestral streams\nBy the might of evil dreams,\nFound a nest in thee; and Ocean\nWelcomed him with such emotion\nThat its joy grew his, and sprung                                    _180\nFrom his lips like music flung\nO’er a mighty thunder-fit,\nChastening terror:—what though yet\nPoesy’s unfailing River,\nWhich through Albion winds forever                                   _185\nLashing with melodious wave\nMany a sacred Poet’s grave,\nMourn its latest nursling fled?\nWhat though thou with all thy dead\nScarce can for this fame repay                                       _190\nAught thine own? oh, rather say\nThough thy sins and slaveries foul\nOvercloud a sunlike soul?\nAs the ghost of Homer clings\nRound Scamander’s wasting springs;                                   _195\nAs divinest Shakespeare’s might\nFills Avon and the world with light\nLike omniscient power which he\nImaged ‘mid mortality;\nAs the love from Petrarch’s urn,                                     _200\nYet amid yon hills doth burn,\nA quenchless lamp by which the heart\nSees things unearthly;—so thou art,\nMighty spirit—so shall be\nThe City that did refuge thee.                                       _205\n\nLo, the sun floats up the sky\nLike thought-winged Liberty,\nTill the universal light\nSeems to level plain and height;\nFrom the sea a mist has spread,                                      _210\nAnd the beams of morn lie dead\nOn the towers of Venice now,\nLike its glory long ago.\nBy the skirts of that gray cloud\nMany-domed Padua proud                                               _215\nStands, a peopled solitude,\n‘Mid the harvest-shining plain,\nWhere the peasant heaps his grain\nIn the garner of his foe,\nAnd the milk-white oxen slow                                         _220\nWith the purple vintage strain,\nHeaped upon the creaking wain,\nThat the brutal Celt may swill\nDrunken sleep with savage will;\nAnd the sickle to the sword                                          _225\nLies unchanged, though many a lord,\nLike a weed whose shade is poison,\nOvergrows this region’s foison,\nSheaves of whom are ripe to come\nTo destruction’s harvest-home:                                       _230\nMen must reap the things they sow,\nForce from force must ever flow,\nOr worse; but ’tis a bitter woe\nThat love or reason cannot change\nThe despot’s rage, the slave’s revenge.                              _235\n\nPadua, thou within whose walls\nThose mute guests at festivals,\nSon and Mother, Death and Sin,\nPlayed at dice for Ezzelin,\nTill Death cried, “I win, I win!”                                    _240\nAnd Sin cursed to lose the wager,\nBut Death promised, to assuage her,\nThat he would petition for\nHer to be made Vice-Emperor,\nWhen the destined years were o’er,                                   _245\nOver all between the Po\nAnd the eastern Alpine snow,\nUnder the mighty Austrian.\nSin smiled so as Sin only can,\nAnd since that time, ay, long before,                                _250\nBoth have ruled from shore to shore,—\nThat incestuous pair, who follow\nTyrants as the sun the swallow,\nAs Repentance follows Crime,\nAnd as changes follow Time.                                          _255\n\nIn thine halls the lamp of learning,\nPadua, now no more is burning;\nLike a meteor, whose wild way\nIs lost over the grave of day,\nIt gleams betrayed and to betray:                                    _260\nOnce remotest nations came\nTo adore that sacred flame,\nWhen it lit not many a hearth\nOn this cold and gloomy earth:\nNow new fires from antique light                                     _265\nSpring beneath the wide world’s might;\nBut their spark lies dead in thee,\nTrampled out by Tyranny.\nAs the Norway woodman quells,\nIn the depth of piny dells,                                          _270\nOne light flame among the brakes,\nWhile the boundless forest shakes,\nAnd its mighty trunks are torn\nBy the fire thus lowly born:\nThe spark beneath his feet is dead,                                  _275\nHe starts to see the flames it fed\nHowling through the darkened sky\nWith a myriad tongues victoriously,\nAnd sinks down in fear: so thou,\nO Tyranny, beholdest now                                             _280\nLight around thee, and thou hearest\nThe loud flames ascend, and fearest:\nGrovel on the earth; ay, hide\nIn the dust thy purple pride!\n\nNoon descends around me now:                                         _285\n’Tis the noon of autumn’s glow,\nWhen a soft and purple mist\nLike a vaporous amethyst,\nOr an air-dissolved star\nMingling light and fragrance, far                                    _290\nFrom the curved horizon’s bound\nTo the point of Heaven’s profound,\nFills the overflowing sky;\nAnd the plains that silent lie\nUnderneath, the leaves unsodden                                      _295\nWhere the infant Frost has trodden\nWith his morning-winged feet,\nWhose bright print is gleaming yet;\nAnd the red and golden vines,\nPiercing with their trellised lines                                  _300\nThe rough, dark-skirted wilderness;\nThe dun and bladed grass no less,\nPointing from this hoary tower\nIn the windless air; the flower\nGlimmering at my feet; the line                                      _305\nOf the olive-sandalled Apennine\nIn the south dimly islanded;\nAnd the Alps, whose snows are spread\nHigh between the clouds and sun;\nAnd of living things each one;                                       _310\nAnd my spirit which so long\nDarkened this swift stream of song,—\nInterpenetrated lie\nBy the glory of the sky:\nBe it love, light, harmony,                                          _315\nOdour, or the soul of all\nWhich from Heaven like dew doth fall,\nOr the mind which feeds this verse\nPeopling the lone universe.\n\nNoon descends, and after noon                                        _320\nAutumn’s evening meets me soon,\nLeading the infantine moon,\nAnd that one star, which to her\nAlmost seems to minister\nHalf the crimson light she brings                                    _325\nFrom the sunset’s radiant springs:\nAnd the soft dreams of the morn\n(Which like winged winds had borne\nTo that silent isle, which lies\nMid remembered agonies,                                              _330\nThe frail bark of this lone being)\nPass, to other sufferers fleeing,\nAnd its ancient pilot, Pain,\nSits beside the helm again.\n\nOther flowering isles must be                                        _335\nIn the sea of Life and Agony:\nOther spirits float and flee\nO’er that gulf: even now, perhaps,\nOn some rock the wild wave wraps,\nWith folded wings they waiting sit                                   _340\nFor my bark, to pilot it\nTo some calm and blooming cove,\nWhere for me, and those I love,\nMay a windless bower be built,\nFar from passion, pain, and guilt,                                   _345\nIn a dell mid lawny hills,\nWhich the wild sea-murmur fills,\nAnd soft sunshine, and the sound\nOf old forests echoing round,\nAnd the light and smell divine                                       _350\nOf all flowers that breathe and shine:\nWe may live so happy there,\nThat the Spirits of the Air,\nEnvying us, may even entice\nTo our healing Paradise                                              _355\nThe polluting multitude;\nBut their rage would be subdued\nBy that clime divine and calm,\nAnd the winds whose wings rain balm\nOn the uplifted soul, and leaves                                     _360\nUnder which the bright sea heaves;\nWhile each breathless interval\nIn their whisperings musical\nThe inspired soul supplies\nWith its own deep melodies;                                          _365\nAnd the love which heals all strife\nCircling, like the breath of life,\nAll things in that sweet abode\nWith its own mild brotherhood,\nThey, not it, would change; and soon                                 _370\nEvery sprite beneath the moon\nWould repent its envy vain,\nAnd the earth grow young again.\n\n_54 seamews 1819; seamew’s Rossetti.\n_115 Sun-girt]Sea-girt cj. Palgrave.\n_165 From your dust new 1819;\n     From thy dust shall Rowfant manuscript (heading of lines 167-205).\n_175 songs 1819; sons cj. Forman.\n_278 a 1819; wanting, 1839.\n\n***\n\n\nSCENE FROM ‘TASSO’.\n\n[Composed, 1818. Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Albano:",
    "body": "In truth I told her, and she smiled and said,\n‘If I am Venus, thou, coy Poesy,                                     _10\nArt the Adonis whom I love, and he\nThe Erymanthian boar that wounded him.’\nO trust to me, Signor Malpiglio,\nThose nods and smiles were favours worth the zechin.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Albano:",
    "body": "Buried in some strange talk. The Duke was leaning,\nHis finger on his brow, his lips unclosed.\nThe Princess sate within the window-seat,                            _20\nAnd so her face was hid; but on her knee\nHer hands were clasped, veined, and pale as snow,\nAnd quivering—young Tasso, too, was there.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song For ‘Tasso’.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\n1.\nI loved—alas! our life is love;\nBut when we cease to breathe and move\nI do suppose love ceases too.\nI thought, but not as now I do,\nKeen thoughts and bright of linked lore,                             _5\nOf all that men had thought before.\nAnd all that Nature shows, and more.\n\n2.\nAnd still I love and still I think,\nBut strangely, for my heart can drink\nThe dregs of such despair, and live,                                 _10\nAnd love;...\nAnd if I think, my thoughts come fast,\nI mix the present with the past,\nAnd each seems uglier than the last.\n\n3.\nSometimes I see before me flee                                       _15\nA silver spirit’s form, like thee,\nO Leonora, and I sit\n...still watching it,\nTill by the grated casement’s ledge\nIt fades, with such a sigh, as sedge                                 _20\nBreathes o’er the breezy streamlet’s edge.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Invocation To Misery.",
    "body": "[Published by Medwin, “The Athenaeum”, September 8, 1832. Reprinted (as\n“Misery, a Fragment”) by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st\nedition. Our text is that of 1839. A pencil copy of this poem is\namongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian Library. See Mr. C.D.\nLocock’s “Examination”, etc., 1903, page 38. The readings of this copy\nare indicated by the letter B. in the footnotes.]\n\n1.\nCome, be happy!—sit near me,\nShadow-vested Misery:\nCoy, unwilling, silent bride,\nMourning in thy robe of pride,\nDesolation—deified!                                                 _5\n\n2.\nCome, be happy!—sit near me:\nSad as I may seem to thee,\nI am happier far than thou,\nLady, whose imperial brow\nIs endiademed with woe.                                              _10\n\n3.\nMisery! we have known each other,\nLike a sister and a brother\nLiving in the same lone home,\nMany years—we must live some\nHours or ages yet to come.                                           _15\n\n4.\n’Tis an evil lot, and yet\nLet us make the best of it;\nIf love can live when pleasure dies,\nWe two will love, till in our eyes\nThis heart’s Hell seem Paradise.                                     _20\n\n5.\nCome, be happy!—lie thee down\nOn the fresh grass newly mown,\nWhere the Grasshopper doth sing\nMerrily—one joyous thing\nIn a world of sorrowing!                                             _25\n\n6.\nThere our tent shall be the willow,\nAnd mine arm shall be thy pillow;\nSounds and odours, sorrowful\nBecause they once were sweet, shall lull\nUs to slumber, deep and dull.                                        _30\n\n7.\nHa! thy frozen pulses flutter\nWith a love thou darest not utter.\nThou art murmuring—thou art weeping—\nIs thine icy bosom leaping\nWhile my burning heart lies sleeping?                                _35\n\n8.\nKiss me;—oh! thy lips are cold:\nRound my neck thine arms enfold—\nThey are soft, but chill and dead;\nAnd thy tears upon my head\nBurn like points of frozen lead.                                     _40\n\n9.\nHasten to the bridal bed—\nUnderneath the grave ’tis spread:\nIn darkness may our love be hid,\nOblivion be our coverlid—\nWe may rest, and none forbid.                                        _45\n\n10.\nClasp me till our hearts be grown\nLike two shadows into one;\nTill this dreadful transport may\nLike a vapour fade away,\nIn the sleep that lasts alway.                                       _50\n\n11.\nWe may dream, in that long sleep,\nThat we are not those who weep;\nE’en as Pleasure dreams of thee,\nLife-deserting Misery,\nThou mayst dream of her with me.                                     _55\n\n12.\nLet us laugh, and make our mirth,\nAt the shadows of the earth,\nAs dogs bay the moonlight clouds,\nWhich, like spectres wrapped in shrouds,\nPass o’er night in multitudes.                                       _60\n\n13.\nAll the wide world, beside us,\nShow like multitudinous\nPuppets passing from a scene;\nWhat but mockery can they mean,\nWhere I am—where thou hast been?                                    _65\n\n_1 near B., 1839; by 1832.\n_8 happier far]merrier yet B.\n_15 Hours or]Years and 1832.\n_17 best]most 1832.\n_19 We two will]We will 1832.\n_27 mine arm shall be thy B., 1839; thine arm shall be my 1832.\n_33 represented by asterisks, 1832.\n_34, _35 Thou art murmuring, thou art weeping,\n         Whilst my burning bosom’s leaping 1832;\n         Was thine icy bosom leaping\n         While my burning heart was sleeping B.\n_40 frozen 1832, 1839, B.; molten cj. Forman.\n_44 be]is B.\n_47 shadows]lovers 1832, B.\n_59 which B., 1839; that 1832.\n_62 Show]Are 1832, B.\n_63 Puppets passing]Shadows shifting 1832; Shadows passing B.\n_64, _65 So B.: What but mockery may they mean?\n                Where am I?—Where thou hast been 1832.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Stanzas Written In Dejection, Near Naples.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, where it is dated\n‘December, 1818.’ A draft of stanza 1 is amongst the Boscombe\nmanuscripts. (Garnett).]\n\n1.\nThe sun is warm, the sky is clear,\nThe waves are dancing fast and bright,\nBlue isles and snowy mountains wear\nThe purple noon’s transparent might,\nThe breath of the moist earth is light,                              _5\nAround its unexpanded buds;\nLike many a voice of one delight,\nThe winds, the birds, the ocean floods,\nThe City’s voice itself, is soft like Solitude’s.\n\n2.\nI see the Deep’s untrampled floor                                    _10\nWith green and purple seaweeds strown;\nI see the waves upon the shore,\nLike light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:\nI sit upon the sands alone,—\nThe lightning of the noontide ocean                                  _15\nIs flashing round me, and a tone\nArises from its measured motion,\nHow sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.\n\n3.\nAlas! I have nor hope nor health,\nNor peace within nor calm around,                                    _20\nNor that content surpassing wealth\nThe sage in meditation found,\nAnd walked with inward glory crowned—\nNor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.\nOthers I see whom these surround—                                   _25\nSmiling they live, and call life pleasure;—\nTo me that cup has been dealt in another measure.\n\n4.\nYet now despair itself is mild,\nEven as the winds and waters are;\nI could lie down like a tired child,                                 _30\nAnd weep away the life of care\nWhich I have borne and yet must bear,\nTill death like sleep might steal on me,\nAnd I might feel in the warm air\nMy cheek grow cold, and hear the sea                                 _35\nBreathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony.\n\n5.\nSome might lament that I were cold,\nAs I, when this sweet day is gone,\nWhich my lost heart, too soon grown old,\nInsults with this untimely moan;                                     _40\nThey might lament—for I am one\nWhom men love not,—and yet regret,\nUnlike this day, which, when the sun\nShall on its stainless glory set,\nWill linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.                 _45\n\n_4 might Boscombe manuscript, Medwin 1847; light 1824, 1839.\n_5 The...light Boscombe manuscript, 1839, Medwin 1847;\n    omitted, 1824. moist earth Boscombe manuscript;\n    moist air 1839; west wind Medwin 1847.\n_17 measured 1824; mingled 1847.\n_18 did any heart now 1824; if any heart could Medwin 1847.\n_31 the 1824; this Medwin 1847.\n_36 dying 1824; outworn Medwin 1847.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Woodman And The Nightingale.",
    "body": "[Published in part (1-67) by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824;\nthe remainder (68-70) by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\nA woodman whose rough heart was out of tune\n(I think such hearts yet never came to good)\nHated to hear, under the stars or moon,\n\nOne nightingale in an interfluous wood\nSatiate the hungry dark with melody;—                               _5\nAnd as a vale is watered by a flood,\n\nOr as the moonlight fills the open sky\nStruggling with darkness—as a tuberose\nPeoples some Indian dell with scents which lie\n\nLike clouds above the flower from which they rose,                   _10\nThe singing of that happy nightingale\nIn this sweet forest, from the golden close\n\nOf evening till the star of dawn may fail,\nWas interfused upon the silentness;\nThe folded roses and the violets pale                                _15\n\nHeard her within their slumbers, the abyss\nOf heaven with all its planets; the dull ear\nOf the night-cradled earth; the loneliness\n\nOf the circumfluous waters,—every sphere\nAnd every flower and beam and cloud and wave,                        _20\nAnd every wind of the mute atmosphere,\n\nAnd every beast stretched in its rugged cave,\nAnd every bird lulled on its mossy bough,\nAnd every silver moth fresh from the grave\n\nWhich is its cradle—ever from below                                 _25\nAspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,\nTo be consumed within the purest glow\n\nOf one serene and unapproached star,\nAs if it were a lamp of earthly light,\nUnconscious, as some human lovers are,                               _30\n\nItself how low, how high beyond all height\nThe heaven where it would perish!—and every form\nThat worshipped in the temple of the night\n\nWas awed into delight, and by the charm\nGirt as with an interminable zone,                                   _35\nWhilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm\n\nOf sound, shook forth the dull oblivion\nOut of their dreams; harmony became love\nIn every soul but one.\n\n...\n\nAnd so this man returned with axe and saw                            _40\nAt evening close from killing the tall treen,\nThe soul of whom by Nature’s gentle law\n\nWas each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green\nThe pavement and the roof of the wild copse,\nChequering the sunlight of the blue serene                           _45\n\nWith jagged leaves,—and from the forest tops\nSinging the winds to sleep—or weeping oft\nFast showers of aereal water-drops\n\nInto their mother’s bosom, sweet and soft,\nNature’s pure tears which have no bitterness;—                      _50\nAround the cradles of the birds aloft\n\nThey spread themselves into the loveliness\nOf fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers\nHang like moist clouds:—or, where high branches kiss,\n\nMake a green space among the silent bowers,                          _55\nLike a vast fane in a metropolis,\nSurrounded by the columns and the towers\n\nAll overwrought with branch-like traceries\nIn which there is religion—and the mute\nPersuasion of unkindled melodies,                                    _60\n\nOdours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute\nOf the blind pilot-spirit of the blast\nStirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,\n\nWakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed\nTo such brief unison as on the brain                                 _65\nOne tone, which never can recur, has cast,\nOne accent never to return again.\n\n...\n\nThe world is full of Woodmen who expel\nLove’s gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,\nAnd vex the nightingales in every dell.                              _70",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Sonnet.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.\nOur text is that of the “Poetical Works”, 1839.]\n\nLift not the painted veil which those who live\nCall Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,\nAnd it but mimic all we would believe\nWith colours idly spread,—behind, lurk Fear\nAnd Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave                             _5\nTheir shadows, o’er the chasm, sightless and drear.\nI knew one who had lifted it—he sought,\nFor his lost heart was tender, things to love\nBut found them not, alas! nor was there aught\nThe world contains, the which he could approve.                      _10\nThrough the unheeding many he did move,\nA splendour among shadows, a bright blot\nUpon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove\nFor truth, and like the Preacher found it not.\n\n_6 Their...drear 1839;\n   The shadows, which the world calls substance, there 1824.\n_7 who had lifted 1839; who lifted 1824.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: Apostrophe To Silence.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862. A transcript by\nMrs. Shelley, given to Charles Cowden Clarke, presents one or two\nvariants.]\n\nSilence! Oh, well are Death and Sleep and Thou\nThree brethren named, the guardians gloomy-winged\nOf one abyss, where life, and truth, and joy\nAre swallowed up—yet spare me, Spirit, pity me,\nUntil the sounds I hear become my soul,                              _5\nAnd it has left these faint and weary limbs,\nTo track along the lapses of the air\nThis wandering melody until it rests\nAmong lone mountains in some...\n\n_4 Spirit 1862; O Spirit C.C.C. manuscript.\n_8 This wandering melody 1862;\n   These wandering melodies... C.C.C. manuscript.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: The Lake’S Margin.",
    "body": "[Published by W.M. Rossetti, 1870.]\n\nThe fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses\nTrack not the steps of him who drinks of it;\nFor the light breezes, which for ever fleet\nAround its margin, heap the sand thereon.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘My Head Is Wild With Weeping’.",
    "body": "[Published by W.M. Rossetti, 1870.]\n\nMy head is wild with weeping for a grief\nWhich is the shadow of a gentle mind.\nI walk into the air (but no relief\nTo seek,—or haply, if I sought, to find;\nIt came unsought);—to wonder that a chief                           _5\nAmong men’s spirits should be cold and blind.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: The Vine-Shroud.",
    "body": "[Published by W.M. Rossetti, 1870.]\n\nFlourishing vine, whose kindling clusters glow\nBeneath the autumnal sun, none taste of thee;\nFor thou dost shroud a ruin, and below\nThe rotting bones of dead antiquity.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On Poems Of 1818, By Mrs. Shelley.",
    "body": "We often hear of persons disappointed by a first visit to Italy. This\nwas not Shelley’s case. The aspect of its nature, its sunny sky, its\nmajestic storms, of the luxuriant vegetation of the country, and the\nnoble marble-built cities, enchanted him. The sight of the works of art\nwas full enjoyment and wonder. He had not studied pictures or statues\nbefore; he now did so with the eye of taste, that referred not to the\nrules of schools, but to those of Nature and truth. The first entrance\nto Rome opened to him a scene of remains of antique grandeur that far\nsurpassed his expectations; and the unspeakable beauty of Naples and\nits environs added to the impression he received of the transcendent\nand glorious beauty of Italy.\n\nOur winter was spent at Naples. Here he wrote the fragments of\n“Marenghi” and “The Woodman and the Nightingale”, which he afterwards\nthrew aside. At this time, Shelley suffered greatly in health. He put\nhimself under the care of a medical man, who promised great things, and\nmade him endure severe bodily pain, without any good results. Constant\nand poignant physical suffering exhausted him; and though he preserved\nthe appearance of cheerfulness, and often greatly enjoyed our\nwanderings in the environs of Naples, and our excursions on its sunny\nsea, yet many hours were passed when his thoughts, shadowed by illness,\nbecame gloomy,—and then he escaped to solitude, and in verses, which\nhe hid from fear of wounding me, poured forth morbid but too natural\nbursts of discontent and sadness. One looks back with unspeakable\nregret and gnawing remorse to such periods; fancying that, had one been\nmore alive to the nature of his feelings, and more attentive to soothe\nthem, such would not have existed. And yet, enjoying as he appeared to\ndo every sight or influence of earth or sky, it was difficult to\nimagine that any melancholy he showed was aught but the effect of the\nconstant pain to which he was a martyr.\n\nWe lived in utter solitude. And such is often not the nurse of\ncheerfulness; for then, at least with those who have been exposed to\nadversity, the mind broods over its sorrows too intently; while the\nsociety of the enlightened, the witty, and the wise, enables us to\nforget ourselves by making us the sharers of the thoughts of others,\nwhich is a portion of the philosophy of happiness. Shelley never liked\nsociety in numbers,—it harassed and wearied him; but neither did he\nlike loneliness, and usually, when alone, sheltered himself against\nmemory and reflection in a book. But, with one or two whom he loved, he\ngave way to wild and joyous spirits, or in more serious conversation\nexpounded his opinions with vivacity and eloquence. If an argument\narose, no man ever argued better. He was clear, logical, and earnest,\nin supporting his own views; attentive, patient, and impartial, while\nlistening to those on the adverse side. Had not a wall of prejudice\nbeen raised at this time between him and his countrymen, how many would\nhave sought the acquaintance of one whom to know was to love and to\nrevere! How many of the more enlightened of his contemporaries have\nsince regretted that they did not seek him! how very few knew his worth\nwhile he lived! and, of those few, several were withheld by timidity or\nenvy from declaring their sense of it. But no man was ever more\nenthusiastically loved—more looked up to, as one superior to his\nfellows in intellectual endowments and moral worth, by the few who knew\nhim well, and had sufficient nobleness of soul to appreciate his\nsuperiority. His excellence is now acknowledged; but, even while\nadmitted, not duly appreciated. For who, except those who were\nacquainted with him, can imagine his unwearied benevolence, his\ngenerosity, his systematic forbearance? And still less is his vast\nsuperiority in intellectual attainments sufficiently understood—his\nsagacity, his clear understanding, his learning, his prodigious memory.\nAll these as displayed in conversation, were known to few while he\nlived, and are now silent in the tomb:\n\n‘Ahi orbo mondo ingrato!\nGran cagion hai di dever pianger meco;\nChe quel ben ch’ era in te, perdut’ hai seco.’\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lines Written During The Castlereagh Administration.",
    "body": "[Published by Medwin, “The Athenaeum”, December 8, 1832; reprinted,\n“Poetical Works”, 1839. There is a transcript amongst the Harvard\nmanuscripts, and another in the possession of Mr. C.W. Frederickson of\nBrooklyn. Variants from these two sources are given by Professor\nWoodberry, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, Centenary Edition,\n1893, volume 3 pages 225, 226. The transcripts are referred to in our\nfootnotes as Harvard and Fred. respectively.]\n\n1.\nCorpses are cold in the tomb;\nStones on the pavement are dumb;\nAbortions are dead in the womb,\nAnd their mothers look pale—like the death-white shore\nOf Albion, free no more.                                             _5\n\n2.\nHer sons are as stones in the way—\nThey are masses of senseless clay—\nThey are trodden, and move not away,—\nThe abortion with which SHE travaileth\nIs Liberty, smitten to death.                                        _10\n\n3.\nThen trample and dance, thou Oppressor!\nFor thy victim is no redresser;\nThou art sole lord and possessor\nOf her corpses, and clods, and abortions—they pave\nThy path to the grave.                                               _15\n\n4.\nHearest thou the festival din\nOf Death, and Destruction, and Sin,\nAnd Wealth crying “Havoc!” within?\n’Tis the bacchanal triumph that makes Truth dumb,\nThine Epithalamium.                                                  _20\n\n5.\nAy, marry thy ghastly wife!\nLet Fear and Disquiet and Strife\nSpread thy couch in the chamber of Life!\nMarry Ruin, thou Tyrant! and Hell be thy guide\nTo the bed of the bride!                                             _25\n\n_4 death-white Harvard, Fred.; white 1832, 1839.\n_16 festival Harvard, Fred., 1839; festal 1832.\n_19 that Fred.; which Harvard 1832.\n_22 Disquiet Harvard, Fred., 1839; Disgust 1832.\n_24 Hell Fred.; God Harvard, 1832, 1839.\n_25 the bride Harvard, Fred., 1839; thy bride 1832.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song To The Men Of England.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]\n\n1.\nMen of England, wherefore plough\nFor the lords who lay ye low?\nWherefore weave with toil and care\nThe rich robes your tyrants wear?\n\n2.\nWherefore feed, and clothe, and save,                                _5\nFrom the cradle to the grave,\nThose ungrateful drones who would\nDrain your sweat—nay, drink your blood?\n\n3.\nWherefore, Bees of England, forge\nMany a weapon, chain, and scourge,                                   _10\nThat these stingless drones may spoil\nThe forced produce of your toil?\n\n4.\nHave ye leisure, comfort, calm,\nShelter, food, love’s gentle balm?\nOr what is it ye buy so dear                                         _15\nWith your pain and with your fear?\n\n5.\nThe seed ye sow, another reaps;\nThe wealth ye find, another keeps;\nThe robes ye weave, another wears;\nThe arms ye forge; another bears.                                    _20\n\n6.\nSow seed,—but let no tyrant reap;\nFind wealth,—let no impostor heap;\nWeave robes,—let not the idle wear;\nForge arms,—in your defence to bear.\n\n7.\nShrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;                            _25\nIn halls ye deck another dwells.\nWhy shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see\nThe steel ye tempered glance on ye.\n\n8.\nWith plough and spade, and hoe and loom,\nTrace your grave, and build your tomb,                               _30\nAnd weave your winding-sheet, till fair\nEngland be your sepulchre.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Similes For Two Political Characters Of 1819.",
    "body": "[Published by Medwin, “The Athenaeum”, August 25, 1832; reprinted by\nMrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839. Our title is that of 1839, 2nd\nedition. The poem is found amongst the Harvard manuscripts, headed “To\nS—th and O—gh”.]\n\n1.\nAs from an ancestral oak\nTwo empty ravens sound their clarion,\nYell by yell, and croak by croak,\nWhen they scent the noonday smoke\nOf fresh human carrion:—                                            _5\n\n2.\nAs two gibbering night-birds flit\nFrom their bowers of deadly yew\nThrough the night to frighten it,\nWhen the moon is in a fit,\nAnd the stars are none, or few:—                                    _10\n\n3.\nAs a shark and dog-fish wait\nUnder an Atlantic isle,\nFor the negro-ship, whose freight\nIs the theme of their debate,\nWrinkling their red gills the while—                                _15\n\n4.\nAre ye, two vultures sick for battle,\nTwo scorpions under one wet stone,\nTwo bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle,\nTwo crows perched on the murrained cattle,\nTwo vipers tangled into one.                                         _20",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: To The People Of England.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\nPeople of England, ye who toil and groan,\nWho reap the harvests which are not your own,\nWho weave the clothes which your oppressors wear,\nAnd for your own take the inclement air;\nWho build warm houses...                                             _5\nAnd are like gods who give them all they have,\nAnd nurse them from the cradle to the grave...\n\n...\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘What Men Gain Fairly’.",
    "body": "(Perhaps connected with that immediately preceding (Forman).—ED.)\n\n[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]\n\nWhat men gain fairly—that they should possess,\nAnd children may inherit idleness,\nFrom him who earns it—This is understood;\nPrivate injustice may be general good.\nBut he who gains by base and armed wrong,                            _5\nOr guilty fraud, or base compliances,\nMay be despoiled; even as a stolen dress\nIs stripped from a convicted thief; and he\nLeft in the nakedness of infamy.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A New National Anthem.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]\n\n1.\nGod prosper, speed, and save,\nGod raise from England’s grave\nHer murdered Queen!\nPave with swift victory\nThe steps of Liberty,                                                _5\nWhom Britons own to be\nImmortal Queen.\n\n2.\nSee, she comes throned on high,\nOn swift Eternity!\nGod save the Queen!                                                  _10\nMillions on millions wait,\nFirm, rapid, and elate,\nOn her majestic state!\nGod save the Queen!\n\n3.\nShe is Thine own pure soul                                           _15\nMoulding the mighty whole,—\nGod save the Queen!\nShe is Thine own deep love\nRained down from Heaven above,—\nWherever she rest or move,                                           _20\nGod save our Queen!\n\n4.\n‘Wilder her enemies\nIn their own dark disguise,—\nGod save our Queen!\nAll earthly things that dare                                         _25\nHer sacred name to bear,\nStrip them, as kings are, bare;\nGod save the Queen!\n\n5.\nBe her eternal throne\nBuilt in our hearts alone—                                          _30\nGod save the Queen!\nLet the oppressor hold\nCanopied seats of gold;\nShe sits enthroned of old\nO’er our hearts Queen.                                               _35\n\n6.\nLips touched by seraphim\nBreathe out the choral hymn\n‘God save the Queen!’\nSweet as if angels sang,\nLoud as that trumpet’s clang                                         _40\nWakening the world’s dead gang,—\nGod save the Queen!\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Sonnet: England In 1819.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]\n\nAn old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,—\nPrinces, the dregs of their dull race, who flow\nThrough public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring,—\nRulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,\nBut leech-like to their fainting country cling,                      _5\nTill they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,—\nA people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,—\nAn army, which liberticide and prey\nMakes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,—\nGolden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;                       _10\nReligion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;\nA Senate,—Time’s worst statute, unrepealed,—\nAre graves from which a glorious Phantom may\nBurst, to illumine our tempestuous day.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "An Ode, Written October, 1819,",
    "body": "BEFORE THE SPANIARDS HAD RECOVERED THEIR LIBERTY.\n\n[Published with “Prometheus Unbound”, 1820.]\n\nArise, arise, arise!\nThere is blood on the earth that denies ye bread;\nBe your wounds like eyes\nTo weep for the dead, the dead, the dead.\nWhat other grief were it just to pay?                                _5\nYour sons, your wives, your brethren, were they;\nWho said they were slain on the battle day?\n\nAwaken, awaken, awaken!\nThe slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes;\nBe the cold chains shaken                                            _10\nTo the dust where your kindred repose, repose:\nTheir bones in the grave will start and move,\nWhen they hear the voices of those they love,\nMost loud in the holy combat above.\n\nWave, wave high the banner!                                          _15\nWhen Freedom is riding to conquest by:\nThough the slaves that fan her\nBe Famine and Toil, giving sigh for sigh.\nAnd ye who attend her imperial car,\nLift not your hands in the banded war,                               _20\nBut in her defence whose children ye are.\n\nGlory, glory, glory,\nTo those who have greatly suffered and done!\nNever name in story\nWas greater than that which ye shall have won.                       _25\nConquerors have conquered their foes alone,\nWhose revenge, pride, and power they have overthrown\nRide ye, more victorious, over your own.\n\nBind, bind every brow\nWith crownals of violet, ivy, and pine:                              _30\nHide the blood-stains now\nWith hues which sweet Nature has made divine:\nGreen strength, azure hope, and eternity:\nBut let not the pansy among them be;\nYe were injured, and that means memory.                              _35\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cancelled Stanza.",
    "body": "[Published in “The Times” (Rossetti).]\n\nGather, O gather,\nFoeman and friend in love and peace!\nWaves sleep together\nWhen the blasts that called them to battle, cease.\nFor fangless Power grown tame and mild                               _5\nIs at play with Freedom’s fearless child—\nThe dove and the serpent reconciled!\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ode To Heaven.",
    "body": "[Published with “Prometheus Unbound”, 1820. Dated ‘Florence, December,\n1819’ in Harvard manuscript (Woodberry). A transcript exists amongst\nthe Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian Library. See Mr. C.D. Locock’s\n“Examination”, etc., page 39.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "First Spirit:",
    "body": "Palace-roof of cloudless nights!\nParadise of golden lights!\nDeep, immeasurable, vast,\nWhich art now, and which wert then\nOf the Present and the Past,                                         _5\nOf the eternal Where and When,\nPresence-chamber, temple, home,\nEver-canopying dome,\nOf acts and ages yet to come!\n\nGlorious shapes have life in thee,                                   _10\nEarth, and all earth’s company;\nLiving globes which ever throng\nThy deep chasms and wildernesses;\nAnd green worlds that glide along;\nAnd swift stars with flashing tresses;                               _15\nAnd icy moons most cold and bright,\nAnd mighty suns beyond the night,\nAtoms of intensest light.\n\nEven thy name is as a god,\nHeaven! for thou art the abode                                       _20\nOf that Power which is the glass\nWherein man his nature sees.\nGenerations as they pass\nWorship thee with bended knees.\nTheir unremaining gods and they                                      _25\nLike a river roll away:\nThou remainest such—alway!—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Second Spirit:",
    "body": "Thou art but the mind’s first chamber,\nRound which its young fancies clamber,\nLike weak insects in a cave,                                         _30\nLighted up by stalactites;\nBut the portal of the grave,\nWhere a world of new delights\nWill make thy best glories seem\nBut a dim and noonday gleam                                          _35\nFrom the shadow of a dream!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Third Spirit:",
    "body": "Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn\nAt your presumption, atom-born!\nWhat is Heaven? and what are ye\nWho its brief expanse inherit?                                       _40\nWhat are suns and spheres which flee\nWith the instinct of that Spirit\nOf which ye are but a part?\nDrops which Nature’s mighty heart\nDrives through thinnest veins! Depart!                               _45\n\nWhat is Heaven? a globe of dew,\nFilling in the morning new\nSome eyed flower whose young leaves waken\nOn an unimagined world:\nConstellated suns unshaken,                                          _50\nOrbits measureless, are furled\nIn that frail and fading sphere,\nWith ten millions gathered there,\nTo tremble, gleam, and disappear.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cancelled Fragments Of The Ode To Heaven.",
    "body": "[Published by Mr. C.D. Locock, “Examination”, etc., 1903.]\n\nThe [living frame which sustains my soul]\nIs [sinking beneath the fierce control]\nDown through the lampless deep of song\nI am drawn and driven along—\n\nWhen a Nation screams aloud                                          _5\nLike an eagle from the cloud\nWhen a...\n\n...\n\nWhen the night...\n\n...\n\nWatch the look askance and old—\nSee neglect, and falsehood fold...                                   _10\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ode To The West Wind.",
    "body": "(This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the\nArno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose\ntemperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours\nwhich pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset\nwith a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent\nthunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions.\n\nThe phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well\nknown to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of\nrivers, and of lakes, sympathizes with that of the land in the change\nof seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce\nit.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])\n\n[Published with “Prometheus Unbound”, 1820.]\n\n1.\nO wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,\nThou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead\nAre driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,\n\nYellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,\nPestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,                              _5\nWho chariotest to their dark wintry bed\n\nThe winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,\nEach like a corpse within its grave, until\nThine azure sister of the Spring shall blow\n\nHer clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill                        _10\n(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)\nWith living hues and odours plain and hill:\n\nWild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;\nDestroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!\n\n2.\nThou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion,                 _15\nLoose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,\nShook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,\n\nAngels of rain and lightning: there are spread\nOn the blue surface of thine aery surge,\nLike the bright hair uplifted from the head                          _20\n\nOf some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge\nOf the horizon to the zenith’s height,\nThe locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge\n\nOf the dying year, to which this closing night\nWill be the dome of a vast sepulchre,                                _25\nVaulted with all thy congregated might\n\nOf vapours, from whose solid atmosphere\nBlack rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!\n\n3.\nThou who didst waken from his summer dreams\nThe blue Mediterranean, where he lay,                                _30\nLulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,\n\nBeside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,\nAnd saw in sleep old palaces and towers\nQuivering within the wave’s intenser day,\n\nAll overgrown with azure moss and flowers                            _35\nSo sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou\nFor whose path the Atlantic’s level powers\n\nCleave themselves into chasms, while far below\nThe sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear\nThe sapless foliage of the ocean, know                               _40\n\nThy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,\nAnd tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!\n\n4.\nIf I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;\nIf I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;\nA wave to pant beneath thy power, and share                          _45\n\nThe impulse of thy strength, only less free\nThan thou, O uncontrollable! If even\nI were as in my boyhood, and could be\n\nThe comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,\nAs then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed                            _50\nScarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven\n\nAs thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.\nOh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!\nI fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!\n\nA heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed                        _55\nOne too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.\n\n5.\nMake me thy lyre, even as the forest is:\nWhat if my leaves are falling like its own!\nThe tumult of thy mighty harmonies\n\nWill take from both a deep, autumnal tone,                           _60\nSweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,\nMy spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!\n\nDrive my dead thoughts over the universe\nLike withered leaves to quicken a new birth!\nAnd, by the incantation of this verse,                               _65\n\nScatter, as from an unextinguished hearth\nAshes and sparks, my words among mankind!\nBe through my lips to unawakened earth\n\nThe trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,\nIf Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?                           _70\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "An Exhortation.",
    "body": "[Published with “Prometheus Unbound”, 1820. Dated ‘Pisa, April, 1820’\nin Harvard manuscript (Woodberry), but assigned by Mrs. Shelley to\n1819.]\n\nChameleons feed on light and air:\nPoets’ food is love and fame:\nIf in this wide world of care\nPoets could but find the same\nWith as little toil as they,                                         _5\nWould they ever change their hue\nAs the light chameleons do,\nSuiting it to every ray\nTwenty times a day?\n\nPoets are on this cold earth,                                        _10\nAs chameleons might be,\nHidden from their early birth\nin a cave beneath the sea;\nWhere light is, chameleons change:\nWhere love is not, poets do:                                         _15\nFame is love disguised: if few\nFind either, never think it strange\nThat poets range.\n\nYet dare not stain with wealth or power\nA poet’s free and heavenly mind:                                     _20\nIf bright chameleons should devour\nAny food but beams and wind,\nThey would grow as earthly soon\nAs their brother lizards are.\nChildren of a sunnier star,                                          _25\nSpirits from beyond the moon,\nOh, refuse the boon!\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Indian Serenade.",
    "body": "[Published, with the title, “Song written for an Indian Air”, in “The\nLiberal”, 2, 1822. Reprinted (“Lines to an Indian Air”) by Mrs.\nShelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. The poem is included in the Harvard\nmanuscript book, and there is a description by Robert Browning of an\nautograph copy presenting some variations from the text of 1824. See\nLeigh Hunt’s “Correspondence”, 2, pages 264-8.]\n\n1.\nI arise from dreams of thee\nIn the first sweet sleep of night,\nWhen the winds are breathing low,\nAnd the stars are shining bright:\nI arise from dreams of thee,                                         _5\nAnd a spirit in my feet\nHath led me—who knows how?\nTo thy chamber window, Sweet!\n\n2.\nThe wandering airs they faint\nOn the dark, the silent stream—                                     _10\nThe Champak odours fail\nLike sweet thoughts in a dream;\nThe nightingale’s complaint,\nIt dies upon her heart;—\nAs I must on thine,                                                  _15\nOh, beloved as thou art!\n\n3.\nOh lift me from the grass!\nI die! I faint! I fail!\nLet thy love in kisses rain\nOn my lips and eyelids pale.                                         _20\nMy cheek is cold and white, alas!\nMy heart beats loud and fast;—\nOh! press it to thine own again,\nWhere it will break at last.\n\n_3 Harvard manuscript omits When.\n_4 shining]burning Harvard manuscript, 1822.\n_7 Hath led Browning manuscript, 1822;\n   Has borne Harvard manuscript; Has led 1824.\n_11 The Champak Harvard manuscript, 1822, 1824;\n    And the Champak’s Browning manuscript.\n_15 As I must on 1822, 1824;\n    As I must die on Harvard manuscript, 1839, 1st edition.\n_16 Oh, beloved Browning manuscript, Harvard manuscript, 1839, 1st edition;\n    Beloved 1822, 1824.\n_23 press it to thine own Browning manuscript;\n    press it close to thine Harvard manuscript, 1824, 1839, 1st edition;\n    press me to thine own, 1822.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "On The Medusa Of Leonardo Da Vinci In The Florentine Gallery.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\n1.\nIt lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,\nUpon the cloudy mountain-peak supine;\nBelow, far lands are seen tremblingly;\nIts horror and its beauty are divine.\nUpon its lips and eyelids seems to lie                               _5\nLoveliness like a shadow, from which shine,\nFiery and lurid, struggling underneath,\nThe agonies of anguish and of death.\n\n2.\nYet it is less the horror than the grace\nWhich turns the gazer’s spirit into stone,                           _10\nWhereon the lineaments of that dead face\nAre graven, till the characters be grown\nInto itself, and thought no more can trace;\n’Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown\nAthwart the darkness and the glare of pain,\nWhich humanize and harmonize the strain.                             _15\n\n3.\nAnd from its head as from one body grow,\nAs ... grass out of a watery rock,\nHairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow\nAnd their long tangles in each other lock,                           _20\nAnd with unending involutions show\nTheir mailed radiance, as it were to mock\nThe torture and the death within, and saw\nThe solid air with many a ragged jaw.\n\n4.\nAnd, from a stone beside, a poisonous eft                            _25\nPeeps idly into those Gorgonian eyes;\nWhilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft\nOf sense, has flitted with a mad surprise\nOut of the cave this hideous light had cleft,\nAnd he comes hastening like a moth that hies                         _30\nAfter a taper; and the midnight sky\nFlares, a light more dread than obscurity.\n\n5.\n’Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror;\nFor from the serpents gleams a brazen glare\nKindled by that inextricable error,                                  _35\nWhich makes a thrilling vapour of the air\nBecome a ... and ever-shifting mirror\nOf all the beauty and the terror there—\nA woman’s countenance, with serpent-locks,\nGazing in death on Heaven from those wet rocks.                      _40\n\n_5 seems 1839; seem 1824.\n_6 shine]shrine 1824, 1839.\n_26 those 1824; these 1839.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Love’S Philosophy.",
    "body": "[Published by Leigh Hunt, “The Indicator”, December 22, 1819. Reprinted\nby Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. Included in the Harvard\nmanuscript book, where it is headed “An Anacreontic”, and dated\n‘January, 1820.’ Written by Shelley in a copy of Hunt’s “Literary\nPocket-Book”, 1819, and presented to Sophia Stacey, December 29, 1820.]\n\n1.\nThe fountains mingle with the river\nAnd the rivers with the Ocean,\nThe winds of Heaven mix for ever\nWith a sweet emotion;\nNothing in the world is single;                                      _5\nAll things by a law divine\nIn one spirit meet and mingle.\nWhy not I with thine?—\n\n2.\nSee the mountains kiss high Heaven\nAnd the waves clasp one another;                                     _10\nNo sister-flower would be forgiven\nIf it disdained its brother;\nAnd the sunlight clasps the earth\nAnd the moonbeams kiss the sea:\nWhat is all this sweet work worth                                    _15\nIf thou kiss not me?\n\n_3 mix for ever 1819, Stacey manuscript;\n   meet together, Harvard manuscript.\n_7 In one spirit meet and Stacey manuscript;\n   In one another’s being 1819, Harvard manuscript.\n_11 No sister 1824, Harvard and Stacey manuscripts; No leaf or 1819.\n_12 disdained its 1824, Harvard and Stacey manuscripts;\n    disdained to kiss its 1819.\n_15 is all this sweet work Stacey manuscript;\n    were these examples Harvard manuscript;\n    are all these kissings 1819, 1824.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘Follow To The Deep Wood’S Weeds’.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\nFollow to the deep wood’s weeds,\nFollow to the wild-briar dingle,\nWhere we seek to intermingle,\nAnd the violet tells her tale\nTo the odour-scented gale,                                           _5\nFor they two have enough to do\nOf such work as I and you.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Birth Of Pleasure.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\nAt the creation of the Earth\nPleasure, that divinest birth,\nFrom the soil of Heaven did rise,\nWrapped in sweet wild melodies—\nLike an exhalation wreathing                                         _5\nTo the sound of air low-breathing\nThrough Aeolian pines, which make\nA shade and shelter to the lake\nWhence it rises soft and slow;\nHer life-breathing [limbs] did flow                                  _10\nIn the harmony divine\nOf an ever-lengthening line\nWhich enwrapped her perfect form\nWith a beauty clear and warm.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: Love The Universe To-Day.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]\n\nAnd who feels discord now or sorrow?\nLove is the universe to-day—\nThese are the slaves of dim to-morrow,\nDarkening Life’s labyrinthine way.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘A Gentle Story Of Two Lovers Young’.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]\n\nA gentle story of two lovers young,\nWho met in innocence and died in sorrow,\nAnd of one selfish heart, whose rancour clung\nLike curses on them; are ye slow to borrow\nThe lore of truth from such a tale?                                  _5\nOr in this world’s deserted vale,\nDo ye not see a star of gladness\nPierce the shadows of its sadness,—\nWhen ye are cold, that love is a light sent\nFrom Heaven, which none shall quench, to cheer the innocent?         _10",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: Love’S Tender Atmosphere.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]\n\nThere is a warm and gentle atmosphere\nAbout the form of one we love, and thus\nAs in a tender mist our spirits are\nWrapped in the ... of that which is to us\nThe health of life’s own life—                                      _5\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: Wedded Souls.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\nI am as a spirit who has dwelt\nWithin his heart of hearts, and I have felt\nHis feelings, and have thought his thoughts, and known\nThe inmost converse of his soul, the tone\nUnheard but in the silence of his blood,                             _5\nWhen all the pulses in their multitude\nImage the trembling calm of summer seas.\nI have unlocked the golden melodies\nOf his deep soul, as with a master-key,\nAnd loosened them and bathed myself therein—                        _10\nEven as an eagle in a thunder-mist\nClothing his wings with lightning.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘Is It That In Some Brighter Sphere’.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\nIs it that in some brighter sphere\nWe part from friends we meet with here?\nOr do we see the Future pass\nOver the Present’s dusky glass?\nOr what is that that makes us seem                                   _5\nTo patch up fragments of a dream,\nPart of which comes true, and part\nBeats and trembles in the heart?\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: Sufficient Unto The Day.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\nIs not to-day enough? Why do I peer\nInto the darkness of the day to come?\nIs not to-morrow even as yesterday?\nAnd will the day that follows change thy doom?\nFew flowers grow upon thy wintry way;                                _5\nAnd who waits for thee in that cheerless home\nWhence thou hast fled, whither thou must return\nCharged with the load that makes thee faint and mourn?\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘Ye Gentle Visitations Of Calm Thought’.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]\n\nYe gentle visitations of calm thought—\nMoods like the memories of happier earth,\nWhich come arrayed in thoughts of little worth,\nLike stars in clouds by the weak winds enwrought,—\nBut that the clouds depart and stars remain,                         _5\nWhile they remain, and ye, alas, depart!\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: Music And Sweet Poetry.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]\n\nHow sweet it is to sit and read the tales\nOf mighty poets and to hear the while\nSweet music, which when the attention fails\nFills the dim pause—\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: The Sepulchre Of Memory.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]\n\nAnd where is truth? On tombs? for such to thee\nHas been my heart—and thy dead memory\nHas lain from childhood, many a changeful year,\nUnchangingly preserved and buried there.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘When A Lover Clasps His Fairest’.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]\n\n1.\nWhen a lover clasps his fairest,\nThen be our dread sport the rarest.\nTheir caresses were like the chaff\nIn the tempest, and be our laugh\nHis despair—her epitaph!                                            _5\n\n2.\nWhen a mother clasps her child,\nWatch till dusty Death has piled\nHis cold ashes on the clay;\nShe has loved it many a day—\nShe remains,—it fades away.                                         _10\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘Wake The Serpent Not’.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]\n\nWake the serpent not—lest he\nShould not know the way to go,—\nLet him crawl which yet lies sleeping\nThrough the deep grass of the meadow!\nNot a bee shall hear him creeping,                                   _5\nNot a may-fly shall awaken\nFrom its cradling blue-bell shaken,\nNot the starlight as he’s sliding\nThrough the grass with silent gliding.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: Rain.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]\n\nThe fitful alternations of the rain,\nWhen the chill wind, languid as with pain\nOf its own heavy moisture, here and there\nDrives through the gray and beamless atmosphere.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: A Tale Untold.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]\n\nOne sung of thee who left the tale untold,\nLike the false dawns which perish in the bursting;\nLike empty cups of wrought and daedal gold,\nWhich mock the lips with air, when they are thirsting.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: To Italy.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\nAs the sunrise to the night,\nAs the north wind to the clouds,\nAs the earthquake’s fiery flight,\nRuining mountain solitudes,\nEverlasting Italy,                                                   _5\nBe those hopes and fears on thee.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: Wine Of The Fairies.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]\n\nI am drunk with the honey wine\nOf the moon-unfolded eglantine,\nWhich fairies catch in hyacinth bowls.\nThe bats, the dormice, and the moles\nSleep in the walls or under the sward                                _5\nOf the desolate castle yard;\nAnd when ’tis spilt on the summer earth\nOr its fumes arise among the dew,\nTheir jocund dreams are full of mirth,\nThey gibber their joy in sleep; for few                              _10\nOf the fairies bear those bowls so new!\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: A Roman’S Chamber.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]\n\n1.\nIn the cave which wild weeds cover\nWait for thine aethereal lover;\nFor the pallid moon is waning,\nO’er the spiral cypress hanging\nAnd the moon no cloud is staining.                                   _5\n\n2.\nIt was once a Roman’s chamber,\nWhere he kept his darkest revels,\nAnd the wild weeds twine and clamber;\nIt was then a chasm for devils.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "(“Prometheus Unbound”, Act 4.)",
    "body": "As a violet’s gentle eye\nGazes on the azure sky\nUntil its hue grows like what it beholds;\nAs a gray and empty mist\nLies like solid amethyst                                             _5\nOver the western mountain it enfolds,\nWhen the sunset sleeps\nUpon its snow;\nAs a strain of sweetest sound\nWraps itself the wind around                                         _10\nUntil the voiceless wind be music too;\nAs aught dark, vain, and dull,\nBasking in what is beautiful,\nIs full of light and love—\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On Poems Of 1819, By Mrs. Shelley.",
    "body": "Shelley loved the People; and respected them as often more virtuous, as\nalways more suffering, and therefore more deserving of sympathy, than\nthe great. He believed that a clash between the two classes of society\nwas inevitable, and he eagerly ranged himself on the people’s side. He\nhad an idea of publishing a series of poems adapted expressly to\ncommemorate their circumstances and wrongs. He wrote a few; but, in\nthose days of prosecution for libel, they could not be printed. They\nare not among the best of his productions, a writer being always\nshackled when he endeavours to write down to the comprehension of those\nwho could not understand or feel a highly imaginative style; but they\nshow his earnestness, and with what heart-felt compassion he went home\nto the direct point of injury—that oppression is detestable as being\nthe parent of starvation, nakedness, and ignorance. Besides these\noutpourings of compassion and indignation, he had meant to adorn the\ncause he loved with loftier poetry of glory and triumph: such is the\nscope of the “Ode to the Assertors of Liberty”. He sketched also a new\nversion of our national anthem, as addressed to Liberty.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Sensitive Plant.",
    "body": "[Composed at Pisa, early in 1820 (dated ‘March, 1820,’ in Harvard\nmanuscript), and published, with “Prometheus Unbound”, the same year:\nincluded in the Harvard College manuscript book. Reprinted in the\n“Poetical Works”, 1839, both editions.]\n\nPART 1.\n\nA Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,\nAnd the young winds fed it with silver dew,\nAnd it opened its fan-like leaves to the light.\nAnd closed them beneath the kisses of Night.\n\nAnd the Spring arose on the garden fair,                             _5\nLike the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;\nAnd each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast\nRose from the dreams of its wintry rest.\n\nBut none ever trembled and panted with bliss\nIn the garden, the field, or the wilderness,                         _10\nLike a doe in the noontide with love’s sweet want,\nAs the companionless Sensitive Plant.\n\nThe snowdrop, and then the violet,\nArose from the ground with warm rain wet,\nAnd their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent                    _15\nFrom the turf, like the voice and the instrument.\n\nThen the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall,\nAnd narcissi, the fairest among them all,\nWho gaze on their eyes in the stream’s recess,\nTill they die of their own dear loveliness;                          _20\n\nAnd the Naiad-like lily of the vale,\nWhom youth makes so fair and passion so pale\nThat the light of its tremulous bells is seen\nThrough their pavilions of tender green;\n\nAnd the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue,                        _25\nWhich flung from its bells a sweet peal anew\nOf music so delicate, soft, and intense,\nIt was felt like an odour within the sense;\n\nAnd the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed,\nWhich unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,                      _30\nTill, fold after fold, to the fainting air\nThe soul of her beauty and love lay bare:\n\nAnd the wand-like lily, which lifted up,\nAs a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup,\nTill the fiery star, which is its eye,\nGazed through clear dew on the tender sky;                           _35\n\nAnd the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,\nThe sweetest flower for scent that blows;\nAnd all rare blossoms from every clime\nGrew in that garden in perfect prime.                                _40\n\nAnd on the stream whose inconstant bosom\nWas pranked, under boughs of embowering blossom,\nWith golden and green light, slanting through\nTheir heaven of many a tangled hue,\n\nBroad water-lilies lay tremulously,                                  _45\nAnd starry river-buds glimmered by,\nAnd around them the soft stream did glide and dance\nWith a motion of sweet sound and radiance.\n\nAnd the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss,\nWhich led through the garden along and across,                       _50\nSome open at once to the sun and the breeze,\nSome lost among bowers of blossoming trees,\n\nWere all paved with daisies and delicate bells\nAs fair as the fabulous asphodels,\nAnd flow’rets which, drooping as day drooped too,                    _55\nFell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue,\nTo roof the glow-worm from the evening dew.\n\nAnd from this undefiled Paradise\nThe flowers (as an infant’s awakening eyes\nSmile on its mother, whose singing sweet                             _60\nCan first lull, and at last must awaken it),\n\nWhen Heaven’s blithe winds had unfolded them,\nAs mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem,\nShone smiling to Heaven, and every one                               _65\nShared joy in the light of the gentle sun;\n\nFor each one was interpenetrated\nWith the light and the odour its neighbour shed,\nLike young lovers whom youth and love make dear\nWrapped and filled by their mutual atmosphere.\n\nBut the Sensitive Plant which could give small fruit                 _70\nOf the love which it felt from the leaf to the root,\nReceived more than all, it loved more than ever,\nWhere none wanted but it, could belong to the giver,—\n\nFor the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower;\nRadiance and odour are not its dower;                                _75\nIt loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full,\nIt desires what it has not, the Beautiful!\n\nThe light winds which from unsustaining wings\nShed the music of many murmurings;\nThe beams which dart from many a star                                _80\nOf the flowers whose hues they bear afar;\n\nThe plumed insects swift and free,\nLike golden boats on a sunny sea,\nLaden with light and odour, which pass\nOver the gleam of the living grass;                                  _85\n\nThe unseen clouds of the dew, which lie\nLike fire in the flowers till the sun rides high,\nThen wander like spirits among the spheres,\nEach cloud faint with the fragrance it bears;\n\nThe quivering vapours of dim noontide,                               _90\nWhich like a sea o’er the warm earth glide,\nIn which every sound, and odour, and beam,\nMove, as reeds in a single stream;\n\nEach and all like ministering angels were\nFor the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear,                           _95\nWhilst the lagging hours of the day went by\nLike windless clouds o’er a tender sky.\n\nAnd when evening descended from Heaven above,\nAnd the Earth was all rest, and the air was all love,\nAnd delight, though less bright, was far more deep,                  _100\nAnd the day’s veil fell from the world of sleep,\n\nAnd the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned\nIn an ocean of dreams without a sound;\nWhose waves never mark, though they ever impress\nThe light sand which paves it, consciousness;                        _105\n\n(Only overhead the sweet nightingale\nEver sang more sweet as the day might fail,\nAnd snatches of its Elysian chant\nWere mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant);—\n\nThe Sensitive Plant was the earliest                                 _110\nUpgathered into the bosom of rest;\nA sweet child weary of its delight,\nThe feeblest and yet the favourite,\nCradled within the embrace of Night.\n\n_6 Like the Spirit of Love felt 1820;\n   And the Spirit of Love felt 1839, 1st edition;\n   And the Spirit of Love fell 1839, 2nd edition.\n_49 and of moss]and moss Harvard manuscript.\n_82 The]And the Harvard manuscript.\n\n\nPART 2.\n\nThere was a Power in this sweet place,\nAn Eve in this Eden; a ruling Grace\nWhich to the flowers, did they waken or dream,\nWas as God is to the starry scheme.\n\nA Lady, the wonder of her kind,                                      _5\nWhose form was upborne by a lovely mind\nWhich, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion\nLike a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean,\n\nTended the garden from morn to even:\nAnd the meteors of that sublunar Heaven,                             _10\nLike the lamps of the air when Night walks forth,\nLaughed round her footsteps up from the Earth!\n\nShe had no companion of mortal race,\nBut her tremulous breath and her flushing face\nTold, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes,                _15\nThat her dreams were less slumber than Paradise:\n\nAs if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake\nHad deserted Heaven while the stars were awake,\nAs if yet around her he lingering were,\nThough the veil of daylight concealed him from her.                  _20\n\nHer step seemed to pity the grass it pressed;\nYou might hear by the heaving of her breast,\nThat the coming and going of the wind\nBrought pleasure there and left passion behind.\n\nAnd wherever her aery footstep trod,                                 _25\nHer trailing hair from the grassy sod\nErased its light vestige, with shadowy sweep,\nLike a sunny storm o’er the dark green deep.\n\nI doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet\nRejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet;                            _30\nI doubt not they felt the spirit that came\nFrom her glowing fingers through all their frame.\n\nShe sprinkled bright water from the stream\nOn those that were faint with the sunny beam;\nAnd out of the cups of the heavy flowers                             _35\nShe emptied the rain of the thunder-showers.\n\nShe lifted their heads with her tender hands,\nAnd sustained them with rods and osier-bands;\nIf the flowers had been her own infants, she\nCould never have nursed them more tenderly.                          _40\n\nAnd all killing insects and gnawing worms,\nAnd things of obscene and unlovely forms,\nShe bore, in a basket of Indian woof,\nInto the rough woods far aloof,—\n\nIn a basket, of grasses and wild-flowers full,                       _45\nThe freshest her gentle hands could pull\nFor the poor banished insects, whose intent,\nAlthough they did ill, was innocent.\n\nBut the bee and the beamlike ephemeris\nWhose path is the lightning’s, and soft moths that kiss              _50\nThe sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she\nMake her attendant angels be.\n\nAnd many an antenatal tomb,\nWhere butterflies dream of the life to come,\nShe left clinging round the smooth and dark                          _55\nEdge of the odorous cedar bark.\n\nThis fairest creature from earliest Spring\nThus moved through the garden ministering\nMid the sweet season of Summertide,\nAnd ere the first leaf looked brown—she died!                       _60\n\n_15 morn Harvard manuscript, 1839; moon 1820.\n_23 and going 1820; and the going Harvard manuscript, 1839.\n_59 All 1820, 1839; Through all Harvard manuscript.\n\nPART 3.\n\nThree days the flowers of the garden fair,\nLike stars when the moon is awakened, were,\nOr the waves of Baiae, ere luminous\nShe floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius.\n\nAnd on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant                               _5\nFelt the sound of the funeral chant,\nAnd the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow,\nAnd the sobs of the mourners, deep and low;\n\nThe weary sound and the heavy breath,\nAnd the silent motions of passing death,                             _10\nAnd the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank,\nSent through the pores of the coffin-plank;\n\nThe dark grass, and the flowers among the grass,\nWere bright with tears as the crowd did pass;\nFrom their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone,                    _15\nAnd sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan.\n\nThe garden, once fair, became cold and foul,\nLike the corpse of her who had been its soul,\nWhich at first was lovely as if in sleep,\nThen slowly changed, till it grew a heap                             _20\nTo make men tremble who never weep.\n\nSwift Summer into the Autumn flowed,\nAnd frost in the mist of the morning rode,\nThough the noonday sun looked clear and bright,\nMocking the spoil of the secret night.                               _25\n\nThe rose-leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,\nPaved the turf and the moss below.\nThe lilies were drooping, and white, and wan,\nLike the head and the skin of a dying man.\n\nAnd Indian plants, of scent and hue                                  _30\nThe sweetest that ever were fed on dew,\nLeaf by leaf, day after day,\nWere massed into the common clay.\n\nAnd the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, and red,\nAnd white with the whiteness of what is dead,                        _35\nLike troops of ghosts on the dry wind passed;\nTheir whistling noise made the birds aghast.\n\nAnd the gusty winds waked the winged seeds,\nOut of their birthplace of ugly weeds,\nTill they clung round many a sweet flower’s stem,                    _40\nWhich rotted into the earth with them.\n\nThe water-blooms under the rivulet\nFell from the stalks on which they were set;\nAnd the eddies drove them here and there,\nAs the winds did those of the upper air.                             _45\n\nThen the rain came down, and the broken stalks\nWere bent and tangled across the walks;\nAnd the leafless network of parasite bowers\nMassed into ruin; and all sweet flowers.\n\nBetween the time of the wind and the snow                            _50\nAll loathliest weeds began to grow,\nWhose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck,\nLike the water-snake’s belly and the toad’s back.\n\nAnd thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank,\nAnd the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank,                         _55\nStretched out its long and hollow shank,\nAnd stifled the air till the dead wind stank.\n\nAnd plants, at whose names the verse feels loath,\nFilled the place with a monstrous undergrowth,\nPrickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue,                      _60\nLivid, and starred with a lurid dew.\n\nAnd agarics, and fungi, with mildew and mould\nStarted like mist from the wet ground cold;\nPale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead\nWith a spirit of growth had been animated!                           _65\n\nSpawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum,\nMade the running rivulet thick and dumb,\nAnd at its outlet flags huge as stakes\nDammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes.\n\nAnd hour by hour, when the air was still,                            _70\nThe vapours arose which have strength to kill;\nAt morn they were seen, at noon they were felt,\nAt night they were darkness no star could melt.\n\nAnd unctuous meteors from spray to spray\nCrept and flitted in broad noonday                                   _75\nUnseen; every branch on which they alit\nBy a venomous blight was burned and bit.\n\nThe Sensitive Plant, like one forbid,\nWept, and the tears within each lid\nOf its folded leaves, which together grew,                           _80\nWere changed to a blight of frozen glue.\n\nFor the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon\nBy the heavy axe of the blast were hewn;\nThe sap shrank to the root through every pore\nAs blood to a heart that will beat no more.                          _85\n\nFor Winter came: the wind was his whip:\nOne choppy finger was on his lip:\nHe had torn the cataracts from the hills\nAnd they clanked at his girdle like manacles;\n\nHis breath was a chain which without a sound                         _90\nThe earth, and the air, and the water bound;\nHe came, fiercely driven, in his chariot-throne\nBy the tenfold blasts of the Arctic zone.\n\nThen the weeds which were forms of living death\nFled from the frost to the earth beneath.                            _95\nTheir decay and sudden flight from frost\nWas but like the vanishing of a ghost!\n\nAnd under the roots of the Sensitive Plant\nThe moles and the dormice died for want:\nThe birds dropped stiff from the frozen air                          _100\nAnd were caught in the branches naked and bare.\n\nFirst there came down a thawing rain\nAnd its dull drops froze on the boughs again;\nThen there steamed up a freezing dew\nWhich to the drops of the thaw-rain grew;                            _105\n\nAnd a northern whirlwind, wandering about\nLike a wolf that had smelt a dead child out,\nShook the boughs thus laden, and heavy, and stiff,\nAnd snapped them off with his rigid griff.\n\nWhen Winter had gone and Spring came back                            _110\nThe Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck;\nBut the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and darnels,\nRose like the dead from their ruined charnels.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Conclusion.",
    "body": "Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that\nWhich within its boughs like a Spirit sat,                           _115\nEre its outward form had known decay,\nNow felt this change, I cannot say.\n\nWhether that Lady’s gentle mind,\nNo longer with the form combined\nWhich scattered love, as stars do light,                             _120\nFound sadness, where it left delight,\n\nI dare not guess; but in this life\nOf error, ignorance, and strife,\nWhere nothing is, but all things seem,\nAnd we the shadows of the dream,                                     _125\n\nIt is a modest creed, and yet\nPleasant if one considers it,\nTo own that death itself must be,\nLike all the rest, a mockery.\n\nThat garden sweet, that lady fair,                                   _130\nAnd all sweet shapes and odours there,\nIn truth have never passed away:\n’Tis we, ’tis ours, are changed; not they.\n\nFor love, and beauty, and delight,\nThere is no death nor change: their might                            _135\nExceeds our organs, which endure\nNo light, being themselves obscure.\n\n_19 lovely Harvard manuscript, 1839; lively 1820.\n_23 of the morning 1820, 1839; of morning Harvard manuscript.\n_26 snow Harvard manuscript, 1839; now 1820.\n_28 And lilies were drooping, white and wan Harvard manuscript.\n_32 Leaf by leaf, day after day Harvard manuscript;\n    Leaf after leaf, day after day 1820;\n    Leaf after leaf, day by day 1839.\n_63 mist]mists Harvard manuscript.\n_96 and sudden flight]and their sudden flight the Harvard manuscript.\n_98 And under]Under Harvard manuscript.\n_114 Whether]And if Harvard manuscript.\n_118 Whether]Or if Harvard manuscript.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cancelled Passage.",
    "body": "[This stanza followed 3, 62-65 in the editio princeps, 1820, but was\nomitted by Mrs. Shelley from all editions from 1839 onwards. It is\ncancelled in the Harvard manuscript.]\n\nTheir moss rotted off them, flake by flake,\nTill the thick stalk stuck like a murderer’s stake,\nWhere rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high,\nInfecting the winds that wander by.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Vision Of The Sea.",
    "body": "[Composed at Pisa early in 1820, and published with “Prometheus\nUnbound” in the same year. A transcript in Mrs. Shelley’s handwriting\nis included in the Harvard manuscript book, where it is dated ‘April,\n1820.’]\n\n’Tis the terror of tempest. The rags of the sail\nAre flickering in ribbons within the fierce gale:\nFrom the stark night of vapours the dim rain is driven,\nAnd when lightning is loosed, like a deluge from Heaven,\nShe sees the black trunks of the waterspouts spin                    _5\nAnd bend, as if Heaven was ruining in,\nWhich they seemed to sustain with their terrible mass\nAs if ocean had sunk from beneath them: they pass\nTo their graves in the deep with an earthquake of sound,\nAnd the waves and the thunders, made silent around,                  _10\nLeave the wind to its echo. The vessel, now tossed\nThrough the low-trailing rack of the tempest, is lost\nIn the skirts of the thunder-cloud: now down the sweep\nOf the wind-cloven wave to the chasm of the deep\nIt sinks, and the walls of the watery vale                           _15\nWhose depths of dread calm are unmoved by the gale,\nDim mirrors of ruin, hang gleaming about;\nWhile the surf, like a chaos of stars, like a rout\nOf death-flames, like whirlpools of fire-flowing iron,\nWith splendour and terror the black ship environ,                    _20\nOr like sulphur-flakes hurled from a mine of pale fire\nIn fountains spout o’er it. In many a spire\nThe pyramid-billows with white points of brine\nIn the cope of the lightning inconstantly shine,\nAs piercing the sky from the floor of the sea.                       _25\nThe great ship seems splitting! it cracks as a tree,\nWhile an earthquake is splintering its root, ere the blast\nOf the whirlwind that stripped it of branches has passed.\nThe intense thunder-balls which are raining from Heaven\nHave shattered its mast, and it stands black and riven.              _30\nThe chinks suck destruction. The heavy dead hulk\nOn the living sea rolls an inanimate bulk,\nLike a corpse on the clay which is hungering to fold\nIts corruption around it. Meanwhile, from the hold,\nOne deck is burst up by the waters below,                            _35\nAnd it splits like the ice when the thaw-breezes blow\nO’er the lakes of the desert! Who sit on the other?\nIs that all the crew that lie burying each other,\nLike the dead in a breach, round the foremast? Are those\nTwin tigers, who burst, when the waters arose,                       _40\nIn the agony of terror, their chains in the hold;\n(What now makes them tame, is what then made them bold;)\nWho crouch, side by side, and have driven, like a crank,\nThe deep grip of their claws through the vibrating plank\nAre these all? Nine weeks the tall vessel had lain                   _45\nOn the windless expanse of the watery plain,\nWhere the death-darting sun cast no shadow at noon,\nAnd there seemed to be fire in the beams of the moon,\nTill a lead-coloured fog gathered up from the deep,\nWhose breath was quick pestilence; then, the cold sleep              _50\nCrept, like blight through the ears of a thick field of corn,\nO’er the populous vessel. And even and morn,\nWith their hammocks for coffins the seamen aghast\nLike dead men the dead limbs of their comrades cast\nDown the deep, which closed on them above and around,                _55\nAnd the sharks and the dogfish their grave-clothes unbound,\nAnd were glutted like Jews with this manna rained down\nFrom God on their wilderness. One after one\nThe mariners died; on the eve of this day,\nWhen the tempest was gathering in cloudy array,                      _60\nBut seven remained. Six the thunder has smitten,\nAnd they lie black as mummies on which Time has written\nHis scorn of the embalmer; the seventh, from the deck\nAn oak-splinter pierced through his breast and his back,\nAnd hung out to the tempest, a wreck on the wreck.                   _65\nNo more? At the helm sits a woman more fair\nThan Heaven, when, unbinding its star-braided hair,\nIt sinks with the sun on the earth and the sea.\nShe clasps a bright child on her upgathered knee;\nIt laughs at the lightning, it mocks the mixed thunder               _70\nOf the air and the sea, with desire and with wonder\nIt is beckoning the tigers to rise and come near,\nIt would play with those eyes where the radiance of fear\nIs outshining the meteors; its bosom beats high,\nThe heart-fire of pleasure has kindled its eye,                      _75\nWhile its mother’s is lustreless. ‘Smile not, my child,\nBut sleep deeply and sweetly, and so be beguiled\nOf the pang that awaits us, whatever that be,\nSo dreadful since thou must divide it with me!\nDream, sleep! This pale bosom, thy cradle and bed,                   _80\nWill it rock thee not, infant? ’Tis beating with dread!\nAlas! what is life, what is death, what are we,\nThat when the ship sinks we no longer may be?\nWhat! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no more?\nTo be after life what we have been before?                           _85\nNot to touch those sweet hands? Not to look on those eyes,\nThose lips, and that hair,—all the smiling disguise\nThou yet wearest, sweet Spirit, which I, day by day,\nHave so long called my child, but which now fades away\nLike a rainbow, and I the fallen shower?’—Lo! the ship              _90\nIs settling, it topples, the leeward ports dip;\nThe tigers leap up when they feel the slow brine\nCrawling inch by inch on them; hair, ears, limbs, and eyne,\nStand rigid with horror; a loud, long, hoarse cry\nBursts at once from their vitals tremendously,                       _95\nAnd ’tis borne down the mountainous vale of the wave,\nRebounding, like thunder, from crag to cave,\nMixed with the clash of the lashing rain,\nHurried on by the might of the hurricane:\nThe hurricane came from the west, and passed on                      _100\nBy the path of the gate of the eastern sun,\nTransversely dividing the stream of the storm;\nAs an arrowy serpent, pursuing the form\nOf an elephant, bursts through the brakes of the waste.\nBlack as a cormorant the screaming blast,                            _105\nBetween Ocean and Heaven, like an ocean, passed,\nTill it came to the clouds on the verge of the world\nWhich, based on the sea and to Heaven upcurled,\nLike columns and walls did surround and sustain\nThe dome of the tempest; it rent them in twain,                      _110\nAs a flood rends its barriers of mountainous crag:\nAnd the dense clouds in many a ruin and rag,\nLike the stones of a temple ere earthquake has passed,\nLike the dust of its fall, on the whirlwind are cast;\nThey are scattered like foam on the torrent; and where               _115\nThe wind has burst out through the chasm, from the air\nOf clear morning the beams of the sunrise flow in,\nUnimpeded, keen, golden, and crystalline,\nBanded armies of light and of air; at one gate\nThey encounter, but interpenetrate.                                  _120\nAnd that breach in the tempest is widening away,\nAnd the caverns of cloud are torn up by the day,\nAnd the fierce winds are sinking with weary wings,\nLulled by the motion and murmurings\nAnd the long glassy heave of the rocking sea,                        _125\nAnd overhead glorious, but dreadful to see,\nThe wrecks of the tempest, like vapours of gold,\nAre consuming in sunrise. The heaped waves behold\nThe deep calm of blue Heaven dilating above,\nAnd, like passions made still by the presence of Love,               _130\nBeneath the clear surface reflecting it slide\nTremulous with soft influence; extending its tide\nFrom the Andes to Atlas, round mountain and isle,\nRound sea-birds and wrecks, paved with Heaven’s azure smile,\nThe wide world of waters is vibrating. Where                         _135\nIs the ship? On the verge of the wave where it lay\nOne tiger is mingled in ghastly affray\nWith a sea-snake. The foam and the smoke of the battle\nStain the clear air with sunbows; the jar, and the rattle\nOf solid bones crushed by the infinite stress                        _140\nOf the snake’s adamantine voluminousness;\nAnd the hum of the hot blood that spouts and rains\nWhere the gripe of the tiger has wounded the veins\nSwollen with rage, strength, and effort; the whirl and the splash\nAs of some hideous engine whose brazen teeth smash                   _145\nThe thin winds and soft waves into thunder; the screams\nAnd hissings crawl fast o’er the smooth ocean-streams,\nEach sound like a centipede. Near this commotion,\nA blue shark is hanging within the blue ocean,\nThe fin-winged tomb of the victor. The other                         _150\nIs winning his way from the fate of his brother\nTo his own with the speed of despair. Lo! a boat\nAdvances; twelve rowers with the impulse of thought\nUrge on the keen keel,—the brine foams. At the stern\nThree marksmen stand levelling. Hot bullets burn                     _155\nIn the breast of the tiger, which yet bears him on\nTo his refuge and ruin. One fragment alone,—\n’Tis dwindling and sinking, ’tis now almost gone,—\nOf the wreck of the vessel peers out of the sea.\nWith her left hand she grasps it impetuously.                        _160\nWith her right she sustains her fair infant. Death, Fear,\nLove, Beauty, are mixed in the atmosphere,\nWhich trembles and burns with the fervour of dread\nAround her wild eyes, her bright hand, and her head,\nLike a meteor of light o’er the waters! her child                    _165\nIs yet smiling, and playing, and murmuring; so smiled\nThe false deep ere the storm. Like a sister and brother\nThe child and the ocean still smile on each other,\nWhilst—\n\n_6 ruining Harvard manuscript, 1839; raining 1820.\n_8 sunk Harvard manuscript, 1839; sank 1820.\n_35 by Harvard manuscript; from 1820, 1839.\n_61 has 1820; had 1839.\n_87 all the Harvard manuscript; all that 1820, 1839.\n_116 through Harvard manuscript; from 1820, 1839.\n_121 away]alway cj. A.C. Bradley.\n_122 cloud Harvard manuscript, 1839; clouds 1820.\n_160 impetuously 1820, 1839; convulsively Harvard manuscript.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Cloud.",
    "body": "[Published with “Prometheus Unbound”, 1820.]\n\nI bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,\nFrom the seas and the streams;\nI bear light shade for the leaves when laid\nIn their noonday dreams.\nFrom my wings are shaken the dews that waken                         _5\nThe sweet buds every one,\nWhen rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,\nAs she dances about the sun.\nI wield the flail of the lashing hail,\nAnd whiten the green plains under,                                   _10\nAnd then again I dissolve it in rain,\nAnd laugh as I pass in thunder.\n\nI sift the snow on the mountains below,\nAnd their great pines groan aghast;\nAnd all the night ’tis my pillow white,                              _15\nWhile I sleep in the arms of the blast.\nSublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,\nLightning my pilot sits;\nIn a cavern under is fettered the thunder,\nIt struggles and howls at fits;                                      _20\nOver earth and ocean, with gentle motion,\nThis pilot is guiding me,\nLured by the love of the genii that move\nIn the depths of the purple sea;\nOver the rills, and the crags, and the hills.                        _25\nOver the lakes and the plains,\nWherever he dream, under mountain or stream,\nThe Spirit he loves remains;\nAnd I all the while bask in Heaven’s blue smile,\nWhilst he is dissolving in rains.                                    _30\n\nThe sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,\nAnd his burning plumes outspread,\nLeaps on the back of my sailing rack,\nWhen the morning star shines dead;\nAs on the jag of a mountain crag,                                    _35\nWhich an earthquake rocks and swings,\nAn eagle alit one moment may sit\nIn the light of its golden wings.\nAnd when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,\nIts ardours of rest and of love,                                     _40\nAnd the crimson pall of eve may fall\nFrom the depth of Heaven above.\nWith wings folded I rest, on mine aery nest,\nAs still as a brooding dove.\n\nThat orbed maiden with white fire laden,                             _45\nWhom mortals call the Moon,\nGlides glimmering o’er my fleece-like floor,\nBy the midnight breezes strewn;\nAnd wherever the beat of her unseen feet,\nWhich only the angels hear,                                          _50\nMay have broken the woof of my tent’s thin roof.\nThe stars peep behind her and peer;\nAnd I laugh to see them whirl and flee,\nLike a swarm of golden bees.\nWhen I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,                         _55\nTill the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,\nLike strips of the sky fallen through me on high,\nAre each paved with the moon and these.\n\nI bind the Sun’s throne with a burning zone,\nAnd the Moon’s with a girdle of pearl;                               _60\nThe volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,\nWhen the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.\nFrom cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,\nOver a torrent sea,\nSunbeam-proof, I hand like a roof,—                                 _65\nThe mountains its columns be.\nThe triumphal arch through which I march\nWith hurricane, fire, and snow,\nWhen the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,\nIs the million-coloured bow;                                         _70\nThe sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,\nWhile the moist Earth was laughing below.\n\nI am the daughter of Earth and Water,\nAnd the nursling of the Sky;\nI pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;                    _75\nI change, but I cannot die.\nFor after the rain when with never a stain\nThe pavilion of Heaven is bare,\nAnd the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams\nBuild up the blue dome of air,                                       _80\nI silently laugh at my own cenotaph,\nAnd out of the caverns of rain,\nLike a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,\nI arise and unbuild it again.\n\n_3 shade 1820; shades 1839.\n_6 buds 1839; birds 1820.\n_59 with a 1820; with the 1830.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ode To Liberty.",
    "body": "[Composed early in 1820, and published, with “Prometheus Unbound”, in\nthe same year. A transcript in Shelley’s hand of lines 1-21 is included\nin the Harvard manuscript book, and amongst the Boscombe manuscripts\nthere is a fragment of a rough draft (Garnett). For further particulars\nconcerning the text see Editor’s Notes.]\n\nYet, Freedom, yet, thy banner, torn but flying,\nStreams like a thunder-storm against the wind.—BYRON.\n\n1.\nA glorious people vibrated again\nThe lightning of the nations: Liberty\nFrom heart to heart, from tower to tower, o’er Spain,\nScattering contagious fire into the sky,\nGleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay,                   _5\nAnd in the rapid plumes of song\nClothed itself, sublime and strong;\nAs a young eagle soars the morning clouds among,\nHovering inverse o’er its accustomed prey;\nTill from its station in the Heaven of fame                          _10\nThe Spirit’s whirlwind rapped it, and the ray\nOf the remotest sphere of living flame\nWhich paves the void was from behind it flung,\nAs foam from a ship’s swiftness, when there came\nA voice out of the deep: I will record the same.                     _15\n\n2.\nThe Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth:\nThe burning stars of the abyss were hurled\nInto the depths of Heaven. The daedal earth,\nThat island in the ocean of the world,\nHung in its cloud of all-sustaining air:                             _20\nBut this divinest universe\nWas yet a chaos and a curse,\nFor thou wert not: but, power from worst producing worse,\nThe spirit of the beasts was kindled there,\nAnd of the birds, and of the watery forms,                           _25\nAnd there was war among them, and despair\nWithin them, raging without truce or terms:\nThe bosom of their violated nurse\nGroaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms on worms,\nAnd men on men; each heart was as a hell of storms.                  _30\n\n3.\nMan, the imperial shape, then multiplied\nHis generations under the pavilion\nOf the Sun’s throne: palace and pyramid,\nTemple and prison, to many a swarming million\nWere, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves.                      _35\nThis human living multitude\nWas savage, cunning, blind, and rude,\nFor thou wert not; but o’er the populous solitude,\nLike one fierce cloud over a waste of waves,\nHung Tyranny; beneath, sate deified                                  _40\nThe sister-pest, congregator of slaves;\nInto the shadow of her pinions wide\nAnarchs and priests, who feed on gold and blood\nTill with the stain their inmost souls are dyed,\nDrove the astonished herds of men from every side.                   _45\n\n4.\nThe nodding promontories, and blue isles,\nAnd cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves\nOf Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles\nOf favouring Heaven: from their enchanted caves\nProphetic echoes flung dim melody.                                   _50\nOn the unapprehensive wild\nThe vine, the corn, the olive mild,\nGrew savage yet, to human use unreconciled;\nAnd, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea,\nLike the man’s thought dark in the infant’s brain,                   _55\nLike aught that is which wraps what is to be,\nArt’s deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein\nOf Parian stone; and, yet a speechless child,\nVerse murmured, and Philosophy did strain\nHer lidless eyes for thee; when o’er the Aegean main                 _60\n\n5.\nAthens arose: a city such as vision\nBuilds from the purple crags and silver towers\nOf battlemented cloud, as in derision\nOf kingliest masonry: the ocean-floors\nPave it; the evening sky pavilions it;                               _65\nIts portals are inhabited\nBy thunder-zoned winds, each head\nWithin its cloudy wings with sun-fire garlanded,—\nA divine work! Athens, diviner yet,\nGleamed with its crest of columns, on the will                       _70\nOf man, as on a mount of diamond, set;\nFor thou wert, and thine all-creative skill\nPeopled, with forms that mock the eternal dead\nIn marble immortality, that hill\nWhich was thine earliest throne and latest oracle.                   _75\n\n6.\nWithin the surface of Time’s fleeting river\nIts wrinkled image lies, as then it lay\nImmovably unquiet, and for ever\nIt trembles, but it cannot pass away!\nThe voices of thy bards and sages thunder                            _80\nWith an earth-awakening blast\nThrough the caverns of the past:\n(Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast:)\nA winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder,\nWhich soars where Expectation never flew,                            _85\nRending the veil of space and time asunder!\nOne ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew;\nOne Sun illumines Heaven; one Spirit vast\nWith life and love makes chaos ever new,\nAs Athens doth the world with thy delight renew.                     _90\n\n7.\nThen Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest,\nLike a wolf-cub from a Cadmaean Maenad,\nShe drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest\nFrom that Elysian food was yet unweaned;\nAnd many a deed of terrible uprightness                              _95\nBy thy sweet love was sanctified;\nAnd in thy smile, and by thy side,\nSaintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died.\nBut when tears stained thy robe of vestal-whiteness,\nAnd gold profaned thy Capitolian throne,                             _100\nThou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness,\nThe senate of the tyrants: they sunk prone\nSlaves of one tyrant: Palatinus sighed\nFaint echoes of Ionian song; that tone\nThou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown                        _105\n\n8.\nFrom what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill,\nOr piny promontory of the Arctic main,\nOr utmost islet inaccessible,\nDidst thou lament the ruin of thy reign,\nTeaching the woods and waves, and desert rocks,                      _110\nAnd every Naiad’s ice-cold urn,\nTo talk in echoes sad and stern\nOf that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn?\nFor neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks\nOf the Scald’s dreams, nor haunt the Druid’s sleep.                  _115\nWhat if the tears rained through thy shattered locks\nWere quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not weep,\nWhen from its sea of death, to kill and burn,\nThe Galilean serpent forth did creep,\nAnd made thy world an undistinguishable heap.                        _120\n\n9.\nA thousand years the Earth cried, ‘Where art thou?’\nAnd then the shadow of thy coming fell\nOn Saxon Alfred’s olive-cinctured brow:\nAnd many a warrior-peopled citadel.\nLike rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep,                    _125\nArose in sacred Italy,\nFrowning o’er the tempestuous sea\nOf kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty;\nThat multitudinous anarchy did sweep\nAnd burst around their walls, like idle foam,                        _130\nWhilst from the human spirit’s deepest deep\nStrange melody with love and awe struck dumb\nDissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die,\nWith divine wand traced on our earthly home\nFit imagery to pave Heaven’s everlasting dome.                       _135\n\n10.\nThou huntress swifter than the Moon! thou terror\nOf the world’s wolves! thou bearer of the quiver,\nWhose sunlike shafts pierce tempest-winged Error,\nAs light may pierce the clouds when they dissever\nIn the calm regions of the orient day!                               _140\nLuther caught thy wakening glance;\nLike lightning, from his leaden lance\nReflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance\nIn which, as in a tomb, the nations lay;\nAnd England’s prophets hailed thee as their queen,                   _145\nIn songs whose music cannot pass away,\nThough it must flow forever: not unseen\nBefore the spirit-sighted countenance\nOf Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene\nBeyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien.                     _150\n\n11.\nThe eager hours and unreluctant years\nAs on a dawn-illumined mountain stood.\nTrampling to silence their loud hopes and fears,\nDarkening each other with their multitude,\nAnd cried aloud, ‘Liberty!’ Indignation                              _155\nAnswered Pity from her cave;\nDeath grew pale within the grave,\nAnd Desolation howled to the destroyer, Save!\nWhen like Heaven’s Sun girt by the exhalation\nOf its own glorious light, thou didst arise.                         _160\nChasing thy foes from nation unto nation\nLike shadows: as if day had cloven the skies\nAt dreaming midnight o’er the western wave,\nMen started, staggering with a glad surprise,\nUnder the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes.                       _165\n\n12.\nThou Heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee then\nIn ominous eclipse? a thousand years\nBred from the slime of deep Oppression’s den.\nDyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears.\nTill thy sweet stars could weep the stain away;                      _170\nHow like Bacchanals of blood\nRound France, the ghastly vintage, stood\nDestruction’s sceptred slaves, and Folly’s mitred brood!\nWhen one, like them, but mightier far than they,\nThe Anarch of thine own bewildered powers,                           _175\nRose: armies mingled in obscure array,\nLike clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowers\nOf serene Heaven. He, by the past pursued,\nRests with those dead, but unforgotten hours,\nWhose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers.           _180\n\n13.\nEngland yet sleeps: was she not called of old?\nSpain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder\nVesuvius wakens Aetna, and the cold\nSnow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder:\nO’er the lit waves every Aeolian isle                                _185\nFrom Pithecusa to Pelorus\nHowls, and leaps, and glares in chorus:\nThey cry, ‘Be dim; ye lamps of Heaven suspended o’er us!’\nHer chains are threads of gold, she need but smile\nAnd they dissolve; but Spain’s were links of steel,                  _190\nTill bit to dust by virtue’s keenest file.\nTwins of a single destiny! appeal\nTo the eternal years enthroned before us\nIn the dim West; impress us from a seal,\nAll ye have thought and done! Time cannot dare conceal.              _195\n\n14.\nTomb of Arminius! render up thy dead\nTill, like a standard from a watch-tower’s staff,\nHis soul may stream over the tyrant’s head;\nThy victory shall be his epitaph,\nWild Bacchanal of truth’s mysterious wine,                           _200\nKing-deluded Germany,\nHis dead spirit lives in thee.\nWhy do we fear or hope? thou art already free!\nAnd thou, lost Paradise of this divine\nAnd glorious world! thou flowery wilderness!                         _205\nThou island of eternity! thou shrine\nWhere Desolation, clothed with loveliness,\nWorships the thing thou wert! O Italy,\nGather thy blood into thy heart; repress\nThe beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces.                   _210\n\n15.\nOh, that the free would stamp the impious name\nOf KING into the dust! or write it there,\nSo that this blot upon the page of fame\nWere as a serpent’s path, which the light air\nErases, and the flat sands close behind!                             _215\nYe the oracle have heard:\nLift the victory-flashing sword.\nAnd cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word,\nWhich, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind\nInto a mass, irrefragably firm,                                      _220\nThe axes and the rods which awe mankind;\nThe sound has poison in it, ’tis the sperm\nOf what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred;\nDisdain not thou, at thine appointed term,\nTo set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm.                      _225\n\n16.\nOh, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle\nSuch lamps within the dome of this dim world,\nThat the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle\nInto the hell from which it first was hurled,\nA scoff of impious pride from fiends impure;                         _230\nTill human thoughts might kneel alone,\nEach before the judgement-throne\nOf its own aweless soul, or of the Power unknown!\nOh, that the words which make the thoughts obscure\nFrom which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew                  _235\nFrom a white lake blot Heaven’s blue portraiture,\nWere stripped of their thin masks and various hue\nAnd frowns and smiles and splendours not their own,\nTill in the nakedness of false and true\nThey stand before their Lord, each to receive its due!               _240\n\n17.\nHe who taught man to vanquish whatsoever\nCan be between the cradle and the grave\nCrowned him the King of Life. Oh, vain endeavour!\nIf on his own high will, a willing slave,\nHe has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor                    _245\nWhat if earth can clothe and feed\nAmplest millions at their need,\nAnd power in thought be as the tree within the seed?\nOr what if Art, an ardent intercessor,\nDriving on fiery wings to Nature’s throne,                           _250\nChecks the great mother stooping to caress her,\nAnd cries: ‘Give me, thy child, dominion\nOver all height and depth’? if Life can breed\nNew wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan,\nRend of thy gifts and hers a thousandfold for one!                   _255\n\n18.\nCome thou, but lead out of the inmost cave\nOf man’s deep spirit, as the morning-star\nBeckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,\nWisdom. I hear the pennons of her car\nSelf-moving, like cloud charioted by flame;                          _260\nComes she not, and come ye not,\nRulers of eternal thought,\nTo judge, with solemn truth, life’s ill-apportioned lot?\nBlind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame\nOf what has been, the Hope of what will be?                          _265\nO Liberty! if such could be thy name\nWert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee:\nIf thine or theirs were treasures to be bought\nBy blood or tears, have not the wise and free\nWept tears, and blood like tears?—The solemn harmony                _270\n\n19.\nPaused, and the Spirit of that mighty singing\nTo its abyss was suddenly withdrawn;\nThen, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging\nIts path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn,\nSinks headlong through the aereal golden light                       _275\nOn the heavy-sounding plain,\nWhen the bolt has pierced its brain;\nAs summer clouds dissolve, unburthened of their rain;\nAs a far taper fades with fading night,\nAs a brief insect dies with dying day,—                             _280\nMy song, its pinions disarrayed of might,\nDrooped; o’er it closed the echoes far away\nOf the great voice which did its flight sustain,\nAs waves which lately paved his watery way\nHiss round a drowner’s head in their tempestuous play.               _285\n\n_4 into]unto Harvard manuscript.\n_9 inverse cj. Rossetti; in verse 1820.\n_92 See the Bacchae of Euripides—[SHELLEY’S NOTE].\n_113 lore 1839; love 1820.\n_116 shattered]scattered cj. Rossetti.\n_134 wand 1820; want 1830.\n_194 us]as cj. Forman.\n_212 KING Boscombe manuscript; **** 1820, 1839; CHRIST cj. Swinburne.\n_249 Or 1839; O, 1820.\n_250 Driving 1820; Diving 1839.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cancelled Passage Of The Ode To Liberty.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\nWithin a cavern of man’s trackless spirit\nIs throned an Image, so intensely fair\nThat the adventurous thoughts that wander near it\nWorship, and as they kneel, tremble and wear\nThe splendour of its presence, and the light                         _5\nPenetrates their dreamlike frame\nTill they become charged with the strength of flame.\n\n***\n\n\nTO —.\n\n[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\n1.\nI fear thy kisses, gentle maiden,\nThou needest not fear mine;\nMy spirit is too deeply laden\nEver to burthen thine.\n\n2.\nI fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion,                              _5\nThou needest not fear mine;\nInnocent is the heart’s devotion\nWith which I worship thine.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Arethusa.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, and dated by her\n‘Pisa, 1820.’ There is a fair draft amongst the Shelley manuscripts at\nthe Bodleian Library. See Mr. C.D. Locock’s “Examination”, etc., 1903,\npage 24.]\n\n1.\nArethusa arose\nFrom her couch of snows\nIn the Acroceraunian mountains,—\nFrom cloud and from crag,\nWith many a jag,                                                     _5\nShepherding her bright fountains.\nShe leapt down the rocks,\nWith her rainbow locks\nStreaming among the streams;—\nHer steps paved with green                                           _10\nThe downward ravine\nWhich slopes to the western gleams;\nAnd gliding and springing\nShe went, ever singing,\nIn murmurs as soft as sleep;                                         _15\nThe Earth seemed to love her,\nAnd Heaven smiled above her,\nAs she lingered towards the deep.\n\n2.\nThen Alpheus bold,\nOn his glacier cold,                                                 _20\nWith his trident the mountains strook;\nAnd opened a chasm\nIn the rocks—with the spasm\nAll Erymanthus shook.\nAnd the black south wind                                             _25\nIt unsealed behind\nThe urns of the silent snow,\nAnd earthquake and thunder\nDid rend in sunder\nThe bars of the springs below.                                       _30\nAnd the beard and the hair\nOf the River-god were\nSeen through the torrent’s sweep,\nAs he followed the light\nOf the fleet nymph’s flight                                          _35\nTo the brink of the Dorian deep.\n\n3.\n‘Oh, save me! Oh, guide me!\nAnd bid the deep hide me,\nFor he grasps me now by the hair!’\nThe loud Ocean heard,                                                _40\nTo its blue depth stirred,\nAnd divided at her prayer;\nAnd under the water\nThe Earth’s white daughter\nFled like a sunny beam;                                              _45\nBehind her descended\nHer billows, unblended\nWith the brackish Dorian stream:—\nLike a gloomy stain\nOn the emerald main                                                  _50\nAlpheus rushed behind,—\nAs an eagle pursuing\nA dove to its ruin\nDown the streams of the cloudy wind.\n\n4.\nUnder the bowers                                                     _55\nWhere the Ocean Powers\nSit on their pearled thrones;\nThrough the coral woods\nOf the weltering floods,\nOver heaps of unvalued stones;                                       _60\nThrough the dim beams\nWhich amid the streams\nWeave a network of coloured light;\nAnd under the caves,\nWhere the shadowy waves                                              _65\nAre as green as the forest’s night:—\nOutspeeding the shark,\nAnd the sword-fish dark,\nUnder the Ocean’s foam,\nAnd up through the rifts                                             _70\nOf the mountain clifts\nThey passed to their Dorian home.\n\n5.\nAnd now from their fountains\nIn Enna’s mountains,\nDown one vale where the morning basks,                               _75\nLike friends once parted\nGrown single-hearted,\nThey ply their watery tasks.\nAt sunrise they leap\nFrom their cradles steep                                             _80\nIn the cave of the shelving hill;\nAt noontide they flow\nThrough the woods below\nAnd the meadows of asphodel;\nAnd at night they sleep                                              _85\nIn the rocking deep\nBeneath the Ortygian shore;—\nLike spirits that lie\nIn the azure sky\nWhen they love but live no more.                                     _90\n\n_6 unsealed B.; concealed 1824.\n_31 And the B.; The 1824.\n_69 Ocean’s B.; ocean 1824.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song Of Proserpine While Gathering Flowers On The Plain Of Enna.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition. There\nis a fair draft amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian\nLibrary. See Mr. C.D. Locock’s “Examination,” etc., 1903, page 24.]\n\n1.\nSacred Goddess, Mother Earth,\nThou from whose immortal bosom\nGods, and men, and beasts have birth,\nLeaf and blade, and bud and blossom,\nBreathe thine influence most divine                                  _5\nOn thine own child, Proserpine.\n\n2.\nIf with mists of evening dew\nThou dost nourish these young flowers\nTill they grow, in scent and hue,\nFairest children of the Hours,                                       _10\nBreathe thine influence most divine\nOn thine own child, Proserpine.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hymn Of Apollo.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. There is a fair\ndraft amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian. See Mr. C.D.\nLocock’s “Examination”, etc., 1903, page 25.]\n\n1.\nThe sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,\nCurtained with star-inwoven tapestries\nFrom the broad moonlight of the sky,\nFanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,—\nWaken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn,                           _5\nTells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.\n\n2.\nThen I arise, and climbing Heaven’s blue dome,\nI walk over the mountains and the waves,\nLeaving my robe upon the ocean foam;\nMy footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves                    _10\nAre filled with my bright presence, and the air\nLeaves the green Earth to my embraces bare.\n\n3.\nThe sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill\nDeceit, that loves the night and fears the day;\nAll men who do or even imagine ill                                   _15\nFly me, and from the glory of my ray\nGood minds and open actions take new might,\nUntil diminished by the reign of Night.\n\n4.\nI feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers\nWith their aethereal colours; the moon’s globe                       _20\nAnd the pure stars in their eternal bowers\nAre cinctured with my power as with a robe;\nWhatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine\nAre portions of one power, which is mine.\n\n5.\nI stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven,                             _25\nThen with unwilling steps I wander down\nInto the clouds of the Atlantic even;\nFor grief that I depart they weep and frown:\nWhat look is more delightful than the smile\nWith which I soothe them from the western isle?                      _30\n\n6.\nI am the eye with which the Universe\nBeholds itself and knows itself divine;\nAll harmony of instrument or verse,\nAll prophecy, all medicine is mine,\nAll light of art or nature;—to my song                              _35\nVictory and praise in its own right belong.\n\n_32 itself divine]it is divine B.\n_34 is B.; are 1824.\n_36 its cj. Rossetti, 1870, B.; their 1824.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hymn Of Pan.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. There is a fair\ndraft amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian. See Mr. C.D.\nLocock’s “Examination”, etc., 1903, page 25.]\n\n1.\nFrom the forests and highlands\nWe come, we come;\nFrom the river-girt islands,\nWhere loud waves are dumb\nListening to my sweet pipings.                                       _5\nThe wind in the reeds and the rushes,\nThe bees on the bells of thyme,\nThe birds on the myrtle bushes,\nThe cicale above in the lime,\nAnd the lizards below in the grass,                                  _10\nWere as silent as ever old Tmolus was,\nListening to my sweet pipings.\n\n2.\nLiquid Peneus was flowing,\nAnd all dark Tempe lay\nIn Pelion’s shadow, outgrowing                                       _15\nThe light of the dying day,\nSpeeded by my sweet pipings.\nThe Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,\nAnd the Nymphs of the woods and the waves,\nTo the edge of the moist river-lawns,                                _20\nAnd the brink of the dewy caves,\nAnd all that did then attend and follow,\nWere silent with love, as you now, Apollo,\nWith envy of my sweet pipings.\n\n3.\nI sang of the dancing stars,                                         _25\nI sang of the daedal Earth,\nAnd of Heaven—and the giant wars,\nAnd Love, and Death, and Birth,—\nAnd then I changed my pipings,—\nSinging how down the vale of Maenalus                                _30\nI pursued a maiden and clasped a reed.\nGods and men, we are all deluded thus!\nIt breaks in our bosom and then we bleed:\nAll wept, as I think both ye now would,\nIf envy or age had not frozen your blood,                            _35\nAt the sorrow of my sweet pipings.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Question.",
    "body": "[Published by Leigh Hunt (with the signature Sigma) in “The Literary\nPocket-Book”, 1822. Reprinted by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”,\n1824. Copies exist in the Harvard manuscript book, amongst the Boscombe\nmanuscripts, and amongst Ollier manuscripts.]\n\n1.\nI dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,\nBare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,\nAnd gentle odours led my steps astray,\nMixed with a sound of waters murmuring\nAlong a shelving bank of turf, which lay                             _5\nUnder a copse, and hardly dared to fling\nIts green arms round the bosom of the stream,\nBut kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.\n\n2.\nThere grew pied wind-flowers and violets,\nDaisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,                         _10\nThe constellated flower that never sets;\nFaint oxslips; tender bluebells, at whose birth\nThe sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets—\nLike a child, half in tenderness and mirth—\nIts mother’s face with Heaven’s collected tears,                     _15\nWhen the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.\n\n3.\nAnd in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,\nGreen cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may,\nAnd cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine\nWas the bright dew, yet drained not by the day;                      _20\nAnd wild roses, and ivy serpentine,\nWith its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;\nAnd flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,\nFairer than any wakened eyes behold.\n\n4.\nAnd nearer to the river’s trembling edge                             _25\nThere grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white.\nAnd starry river buds among the sedge,\nAnd floating water-lilies, broad and bright,\nWhich lit the oak that overhung the hedge\nWith moonlight beams of their own watery light;                      _30\nAnd bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green\nAs soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.\n\n5.\nMethought that of these visionary flowers\nI made a nosegay, bound in such a way\nThat the same hues, which in their natural bowers                    _35\nWere mingled or opposed, the like array\nKept these imprisoned children of the Hours\nWithin my hand,—and then, elate and gay,\nI hastened to the spot whence I had come,\nThat I might there present it!—Oh! to whom?                         _40\n\n_14 Like...mirth Harvard manuscript, Boscombe manuscript;\n    wanting in Ollier manuscript, 1822, 1824, 1839.\n_15 Heaven’s collected Harvard manuscript, Ollier manuscript, 1822;\n    Heaven-collected 1824, 1839.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "First Spirit:",
    "body": "O thou, who plumed with strong desire\nWouldst float above the earth, beware!\nA Shadow tracks thy flight of fire—\nNight is coming!\nBright are the regions of the air,                                   _5\nAnd among the winds and beams\nIt were delight to wander there—\nNight is coming!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Second Spirit:",
    "body": "The deathless stars are bright above;\nIf I would cross the shade of night,                                 _10\nWithin my heart is the lamp of love,\nAnd that is day!\nAnd the moon will smile with gentle light\nOn my golden plumes where’er they move;\nThe meteors will linger round my flight,                             _15\nAnd make night day.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "First Spirit:",
    "body": "But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken\nHail, and lightning, and stormy rain;\nSee, the bounds of the air are shaken—\nNight is coming!                                                     _20\nThe red swift clouds of the hurricane\nYon declining sun have overtaken,\nThe clash of the hail sweeps over the plain—\nNight is coming!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Second Spirit:",
    "body": "I see the light, and I hear the sound;                               _25\nI’ll sail on the flood of the tempest dark\nWith the calm within and the light around\nWhich makes night day:\nAnd thou, when the gloom is deep and stark,\nLook from thy dull earth, slumber-bound,                             _30\nMy moon-like flight thou then mayst mark\nOn high, far away.\n\n...\n\nSome say there is a precipice\nWhere one vast pine is frozen to ruin\nO’er piles of snow and chasms of ice                                 _35\nMid Alpine mountains;\nAnd that the languid storm pursuing\nThat winged shape, for ever flies\nRound those hoar branches, aye renewing\nIts aery fountains.                                                  _40\n\nSome say when nights are dry and clear,\nAnd the death-dews sleep on the morass,\nSweet whispers are heard by the traveller,\nWhich make night day:\nAnd a silver shape like his early love doth pass                     _45\nUpborne by her wild and glittering hair,\nAnd when he awakes on the fragrant grass,\nHe finds night day.\n\n_2 Wouldst 1839; Would 1824.\n_31 moon-like 1824; moonlight 1839.\n_44 make]makes 1824, 1839.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ode To Naples.",
    "body": "(The Author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii\nand Baiae with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the\nproclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples. This has given a\ntinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes\nwhich depicture these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings\npermanently connected with the scene of this animating\nevent.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])\n\n[Composed at San Juliano di Pisa, August 17-25, 1820; published in\n“Posthumous Poems”, 1824. There is a copy, ‘for the most part neat and\nlegible,’ amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian Library. See\nMr. C.D. Locock’s “Examination”, etc., 1903, pages 14-18.]\n\nEPODE 1a.\n\nI stood within the City disinterred;\nAnd heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls\nOf spirits passing through the streets; and heard\nThe Mountain’s slumberous voice at intervals\nThrill through those roofless halls;                                 _5\nThe oracular thunder penetrating shook\nThe listening soul in my suspended blood;\nI felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke—\nI felt, but heard not:—through white columns glowed\nThe isle-sustaining ocean-flood,                                     _10\nA plane of light between two heavens of azure!\nAround me gleamed many a bright sepulchre\nOf whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure\nWere to spare Death, had never made erasure;\nBut every living lineament was clear                                 _15\nAs in the sculptor’s thought; and there\nThe wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy, and pine,\nLike winter leaves o’ergrown by moulded snow,\nSeemed only not to move and grow\nBecause the crystal silence of the air                               _20\nWeighed on their life; even as the Power divine\nWhich then lulled all things, brooded upon mine.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Strophe 1.",
    "body": "Naples! thou Heart of men which ever pantest\nNaked, beneath the lidless eye of Heaven!\nElysian City, which to calm enchantest\nThe mutinous air and sea! they round thee, even                      _55\nAs sleep round Love, are driven!\nMetropolis of a ruined Paradise\nLong lost, late won, and yet but half regained!\nBright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice\nWhich armed Victory offers up unstained                              _60\nTo Love, the flower-enchained!\nThou which wert once, and then didst cease to be,\nNow art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free,\nIf Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail,—\nHail, hail, all hail!                                                _65",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Strophe 2.",
    "body": "Thou youngest giant birth\nWhich from the groaning earth\nLeap’st, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale!\nLast of the Intercessors!\nWho ’gainst the Crowned Transgressors                                _70\nPleadest before God’s love! Arrayed in Wisdom’s mail,\nWave thy lightning lance in mirth\nNor let thy high heart fail,\nThough from their hundred gates the leagued Oppressors\nWith hurried legions move!                                           _75\nHail, hail, all hail!\n\nANTISTROPHE 1a.\n\nWhat though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme\nFreedom and thee? thy shield is as a mirror\nTo make their blind slaves see, and with fierce gleam\nTo turn his hungry sword upon the wearer;                            _80\nA new Actaeon’s error\nShall theirs have been—devoured by their own hounds!\nBe thou like the imperial Basilisk\nKilling thy foe with unapparent wounds!\nGaze on Oppression, till at that dread risk                          _85\nAghast she pass from the Earth’s disk:\nFear not, but gaze—for freemen mightier grow,\nAnd slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe:—\nIf Hope, and Truth, and Justice may avail,\nThou shalt be great—All hail!                                       _90\n\nANTISTROPHE 2a.\n\nFrom Freedom’s form divine,\nFrom Nature’s inmost shrine,\nStrip every impious gawd, rend\nError veil by veil;\nO’er Ruin desolate,\nO’er Falsehood’s fallen state,                                       _95\nSit thou sublime, unawed; be the Destroyer pale!\nAnd equal laws be thine,\nAnd winged words let sail,\nFreighted with truth even from the throne of God:\nThat wealth, surviving fate,                                         _100\nBe thine.—All hail!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Autumn: A Dirge.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\n1.\nThe warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,\nThe bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,\nAnd the Year\nOn the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,\nIs lying.                                                            _5\nCome, Months, come away,\nFrom November to May,\nIn your saddest array;\nFollow the bier\nOf the dead cold Year,                                               _10\nAnd like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.\n\n2.\nThe chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling,\nThe rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling\nFor the Year;\nThe blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone             _15\nTo his dwelling;\nCome, Months, come away;\nPut on white, black, and gray;\nLet your light sisters play—\nYe, follow the bier                                                  _20\nOf the dead cold Year,\nAnd make her grave green with tear on tear.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Waning Moon.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\nAnd like a dying lady, lean and pale,\nWho totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil,\nOut of her chamber, led by the insane\nAnd feeble wanderings of her fading brain,\nThe moon arose up in the murky East,                                 _5\nA white and shapeless mass—\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Death.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\n1.\nDeath is here and death is there,\nDeath is busy everywhere,\nAll around, within, beneath,\nAbove is death—and we are death.\n\n2.\nDeath has set his mark and seal                                      _5\nOn all we are and all we feel,\nOn all we know and all we fear,\n\n...\n\n3.\nFirst our pleasures die—and then\nOur hopes, and then our fears—and when\nThese are dead, the debt is due,                                     _10\nDust claims dust—and we die too.\n\n4.\nAll things that we love and cherish,\nLike ourselves must fade and perish;\nSuch is our rude mortal lot—\nLove itself would, did they not.                                     _15\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Liberty.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\n1.\nThe fiery mountains answer each other;\nTheir thunderings are echoed from zone to zone;\nThe tempestuous oceans awake one another,\nAnd the ice-rocks are shaken round Winter’s throne,\nWhen the clarion of the Typhoon is blown.                            _5\n\n2.\nFrom a single cloud the lightening flashes,\nWhilst a thousand isles are illumined around,\nEarthquake is trampling one city to ashes,\nAn hundred are shuddering and tottering; the sound\nIs bellowing underground.                                            _10\n\n3.\nBut keener thy gaze than the lightening’s glare,\nAnd swifter thy step than the earthquake’s tramp;\nThou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare\nMakes blind the volcanoes; the sun’s bright lamp\nTo thine is a fen-fire damp.                                         _15\n\n4.\nFrom billow and mountain and exhalation\nThe sunlight is darted through vapour and blast;\nFrom spirit to spirit, from nation to nation,\nFrom city to hamlet thy dawning is cast,—\nAnd tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night                     _20\nIn the van of the morning light.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Summer And Winter.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley in “The Keepsake”, 1829. Mr. C.W.\nFrederickson of Brooklyn possesses a transcript in Mrs. Shelley’s\nhandwriting.]\n\nIt was a bright and cheerful afternoon,\nTowards the end of the sunny month of June,\nWhen the north wind congregates in crowds\nThe floating mountains of the silver clouds\nFrom the horizon—and the stainless sky                              _5\nOpens beyond them like eternity.\nAll things rejoiced beneath the sun; the weeds,\nThe river, and the corn-fields, and the reeds;\nThe willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze,\nAnd the firm foliage of the larger trees.                            _10\n\nIt was a winter such as when birds die\nIn the deep forests; and the fishes lie\nStiffened in the translucent ice, which makes\nEven the mud and slime of the warm lakes\nA wrinkled clod as hard as brick; and when,                          _15\nAmong their children, comfortable men\nGather about great fires, and yet feel cold:\nAlas, then, for the homeless beggar old!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Tower Of Famine.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley in “The Keepsake”, 1829. Mr. C.W.\nFrederickson of Brooklyn possesses a transcript in Mrs. Shelley’s\nhandwriting.]\n\nAmid the desolation of a city,\nWhich was the cradle, and is now the grave\nOf an extinguished people,—so that Pity\n\nWeeps o’er the shipwrecks of Oblivion’s wave,\nThere stands the Tower of Famine. It is built                        _5\nUpon some prison-homes, whose dwellers rave\n\nFor bread, and gold, and blood: Pain, linked to Guilt,\nAgitates the light flame of their hours,\nUntil its vital oil is spent or spilt.\n\nThere stands the pile, a tower amid the towers                       _10\nAnd sacred domes; each marble-ribbed roof,\nThe brazen-gated temples, and the bowers\n\nOf solitary wealth,—the tempest-proof\nPavilions of the dark Italian air,—\nAre by its presence dimmed—they stand aloof,                        _15\n\nAnd are withdrawn—so that the world is bare;\nAs if a spectre wrapped in shapeless terror\nAmid a company of ladies fair\n\nShould glide and glow, till it became a mirror\nOf all their beauty, and their hair and hue,                         _20\nThe life of their sweet eyes, with all its error,\nShould be absorbed, till they to marble grew.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "An Allegory.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\n1.\nA portal as of shadowy adamant\nStands yawning on the highway of the life\nWhich we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt;\nAround it rages an unceasing strife\nOf shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt                      _5\nThe gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high\nInto the whirlwinds of the upper sky.\n\n2.\nAnd many pass it by with careless tread,\nNot knowing that a shadowy ...\nTracks every traveller even to where the dead                        _10\nWait peacefully for their companion new;\nBut others, by more curious humour led,\nPause to examine;—these are very few,\nAnd they learn little there, except to know\nThat shadows follow them where’er they go.                           _15",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The World’S Wanderers.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\n1.\nTell me, thou Star, whose wings of light\nSpeed thee in thy fiery flight,\nIn what cavern of the night\nWill thy pinions close now?\n\n2.\nTell me, Moon, thou pale and gray                                    _5\nPilgrim of Heaven’s homeless way,\nIn what depth of night or day\nSeekest thou repose now?\n\n3.\nWeary Wind, who wanderest\nLike the world’s rejected guest,                                     _10\nHast thou still some secret nest\nOn the tree or billow?\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Sonnet.",
    "body": "[Published by Leigh Hunt, “The Literary Pocket-Book”, 1823. There is a\ntranscript amongst the Ollier manuscripts, and another in the Harvard\nmanuscript book.]\n\nYe hasten to the grave! What seek ye there,\nYe restless thoughts and busy purposes\nOf the idle brain, which the world’s livery wear?\nO thou quick heart, which pantest to possess\nAll that pale Expectation feigneth fair!                             _5\nThou vainly curious mind which wouldest guess\nWhence thou didst come, and whither thou must go,\nAnd all that never yet was known would know—\nOh, whither hasten ye, that thus ye press,\nWith such swift feet life’s green and pleasant path,                 _10\nSeeking, alike from happiness and woe,\nA refuge in the cavern of gray death?\nO heart, and mind, and thoughts! what thing do you\nHope to inherit in the grave below?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lines To A Reviewer.",
    "body": "[Published by Leigh Hunt, “The Literary Pocket-Book”, 1823. These\nlines, and the “Sonnet” immediately preceding, are signed Sigma in the\n“Literary Pocket-Book”.]\n\nAlas, good friend, what profit can you see\nIn hating such a hateless thing as me?\nThere is no sport in hate where all the rage\nIs on one side: in vain would you assuage\nYour frowns upon an unresisting smile,                               _5\nIn which not even contempt lurks to beguile\nYour heart, by some faint sympathy of hate.\nOh, conquer what you cannot satiate!\nFor to your passion I am far more coy\nThan ever yet was coldest maid or boy                                _10\nIn winter noon. Of your antipathy\nIf I am the Narcissus, you are free\nTo pine into a sound with hating me.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment Of A Satire On Satire.",
    "body": "[Published by Edward Dowden, “Correspondence of Robert Southey and\nCaroline Bowles”, 1880.]\n\nIf gibbets, axes, confiscations, chains,\nAnd racks of subtle torture, if the pains\nOf shame, of fiery Hell’s tempestuous wave,\nSeen through the caverns of the shadowy grave,\nHurling the damned into the murky air                                _5\nWhile the meek blest sit smiling; if Despair\nAnd Hate, the rapid bloodhounds with which Terror\nHunts through the world the homeless steps of Error,\nAre the true secrets of the commonweal\nTo make men wise and just;...                                        _10\nAnd not the sophisms of revenge and fear,\nBloodier than is revenge...\nThen send the priests to every hearth and home\nTo preach the burning wrath which is to come,\nIn words like flakes of sulphur, such as thaw                        _15\nThe frozen tears...\nIf Satire’s scourge could wake the slumbering hounds\nOf Conscience, or erase the deeper wounds,\nThe leprous scars of callous Infamy;\nIf it could make the present not to be,                              _20\nOr charm the dark past never to have been,\nOr turn regret to hope; who that has seen\nWhat Southey is and was, would not exclaim,\n‘Lash on!’ ... be the keen verse dipped in flame;\nFollow his flight with winged words, and urge                        _25\nThe strokes of the inexorable scourge\nUntil the heart be naked, till his soul\nSee the contagion’s spots ... foul;\nAnd from the mirror of Truth’s sunlike shield,\nFrom which his Parthian arrow...                                     _30\nFlash on his sight the spectres of the past,\nUntil his mind’s eye paint thereon—\nLet scorn like ... yawn below,\nAnd rain on him like flakes of fiery snow.\nThis cannot be, it ought not, evil still—                           _35\nSuffering makes suffering, ill must follow ill.\nRough words beget sad thoughts, ... and, beside,\nMen take a sullen and a stupid pride\nIn being all they hate in others’ shame,\nBy a perverse antipathy of fame.                                     _40\n’Tis not worth while to prove, as I could, how\nFrom the sweet fountains of our Nature flow\nThese bitter waters; I will only say,\nIf any friend would take Southey some day,\nAnd tell him, in a country walk alone,                               _45\nSoftening harsh words with friendship’s gentle tone,\nHow incorrect his public conduct is,\nAnd what men think of it, ’twere not amiss.\nFar better than to make innocent ink—\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Good-Night.",
    "body": "[Published by Leigh Hunt over the signature Sigma, “The Literary\nPocket-Book”, 1822. It is included in the Harvard manuscript book, and\nthere is a transcript by Shelley in a copy of “The Literary\nPocket-Book”, 1819, presented by him to Miss Sophia Stacey, December\n29, 1820. (See “Love’s Philosophy” and “Time Long Past”.) Our text is\nthat of the editio princeps, 1822, with which the Harvard manuscript\nand “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, agree. The variants of the Stacey\nmanuscript, 1820, are given in the footnotes.]\n\n1.\nGood-night? ah! no; the hour is ill\nWhich severs those it should unite;\nLet us remain together still,\nThen it will be GOOD night.\n\n2.\nHow can I call the lone night good,                                  _5\nThough thy sweet wishes wing its flight?\nBe it not said, thought, understood—\nThen it will be—GOOD night.\n\n3.\nTo hearts which near each other move\nFrom evening close to morning light,                                 _10\nThe night is good; because, my love,\nThey never SAY good-night.\n\n_1 Good-night? no, love! the night is ill Stacey manuscript.\n_5 How were the night without thee good Stacey manuscript.\n_9 The hearts that on each other beat Stacey manuscript.\n_11 Have nights as good as they are sweet Stacey manuscript.\n_12 But never SAY good night Stacey manuscript.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Buona Notte.",
    "body": "[Published by Medwin, “The Angler in Wales, or Days and Nights of\nSportsmen”, 1834. The text is revised by Rossetti from the Boscombe\nmanuscript.]\n\n1.\n‘Buona notte, buona notte!’—Come mai\nLa notte sara buona senza te?\nNon dirmi buona notte,—che tu sai,\nLa notte sa star buona da per se.\n\n2.\nSolinga, scura, cupa, senza speme,                                   _5\nLa notte quando Lilla m’abbandona;\nPei cuori chi si batton insieme\nOgni notte, senza dirla, sara buona.\n\n3.\nCome male buona notte ci suona\nCon sospiri e parole interrotte!—                                   _10\nIl modo di aver la notte buona\nE mai non di dir la buona notte.\n\n_2 sara]sia 1834.\n_4 buona]bene 1834.\n_9 Come]Quanto 1834.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orpheus.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862; revised and\nenlarged by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.]\n\nA:\nNot far from hence. From yonder pointed hill,\nCrowned with a ring of oaks, you may behold\nA dark and barren field, through which there flows,\nSluggish and black, a deep but narrow stream,\nWhich the wind ripples not, and the fair moon                        _5\nGazes in vain, and finds no mirror there.\nFollow the herbless banks of that strange brook\nUntil you pause beside a darksome pond,\nThe fountain of this rivulet, whose gush\nCannot be seen, hid by a rayless night                               _10\nThat lives beneath the overhanging rock\nThat shades the pool—an endless spring of gloom,\nUpon whose edge hovers the tender light,\nTrembling to mingle with its paramour,—\nBut, as Syrinx fled Pan, so night flies day,                         _15\nOr, with most sullen and regardless hate,\nRefuses stern her heaven-born embrace.\nOn one side of this jagged and shapeless hill\nThere is a cave, from which there eddies up\nA pale mist, like aereal gossamer,                                   _20\nWhose breath destroys all life—awhile it veils\nThe rock—then, scattered by the wind, it flies\nAlong the stream, or lingers on the clefts,\nKilling the sleepy worms, if aught bide there.\nUpon the beetling edge of that dark rock                             _25\nThere stands a group of cypresses; not such\nAs, with a graceful spire and stirring life,\nPierce the pure heaven of your native vale,\nWhose branches the air plays among, but not\nDisturbs, fearing to spoil their solemn grace;                       _30\nBut blasted and all wearily they stand,\nOne to another clinging; their weak boughs\nSigh as the wind buffets them, and they shake\nBeneath its blasts—a weatherbeaten crew!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "What wondrous sound is that, mournful and faint,                     _35\nBut more melodious than the murmuring wind\nWhich through the columns of a temple glides?\n\nA:\nIt is the wandering voice of Orpheus’ lyre,\nBorne by the winds, who sigh that their rude king\nHurries them fast from these air-feeding notes;                      _40\nBut in their speed they bear along with them\nThe waning sound, scattering it like dew\nUpon the startled sense.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "Does he still sing?\nMethought he rashly cast away his harp\nWhen he had lost Eurydice.\n\nA:\nAh, no!                                                              _45\nAwhile he paused. As a poor hunted stag\nA moment shudders on the fearful brink\nOf a swift stream—the cruel hounds press on\nWith deafening yell, the arrows glance and wound,—\nHe plunges in: so Orpheus, seized and torn                           _50\nBy the sharp fangs of an insatiate grief,\nMaenad-like waved his lyre in the bright air,\nAnd wildly shrieked ‘Where she is, it is dark!’\nAnd then he struck from forth the strings a sound\nOf deep and fearful melody. Alas!                                    _55\nIn times long past, when fair Eurydice\nWith her bright eyes sat listening by his side,\nHe gently sang of high and heavenly themes.\nAs in a brook, fretted with little waves\nBy the light airs of spring—each riplet makes                       _60\nA many-sided mirror for the sun,\nWhile it flows musically through green banks,\nCeaseless and pauseless, ever clear and fresh,\nSo flowed his song, reflecting the deep joy\nAnd tender love that fed those sweetest notes,                       _65\nThe heavenly offspring of ambrosial food.\nBut that is past. Returning from drear Hell,\nHe chose a lonely seat of unhewn stone,\nBlackened with lichens, on a herbless plain.\nThen from the deep and overflowing spring                            _70\nOf his eternal ever-moving grief\nThere rose to Heaven a sound of angry song.\n’Tis as a mighty cataract that parts\nTwo sister rocks with waters swift and strong,                       _75\nAnd casts itself with horrid roar and din\nAdown a steep; from a perennial source\nIt ever flows and falls, and breaks the air\nWith loud and fierce, but most harmonious roar,\nAnd as it falls casts up a vaporous spray\nWhich the sun clothes in hues of Iris light.                         _80\nThus the tempestuous torrent of his grief\nIs clothed in sweetest sounds and varying words\nOf poesy. Unlike all human works,\nIt never slackens, and through every change\nWisdom and beauty and the power divine                               _85\nOf mighty poesy together dwell,\nMingling in sweet accord. As I have seen\nA fierce south blast tear through the darkened sky,\nDriving along a rack of winged clouds,\nWhich may not pause, but ever hurry on,                              _90\nAs their wild shepherd wills them, while the stars,\nTwinkling and dim, peep from between the plumes.\nAnon the sky is cleared, and the high dome\nOf serene Heaven, starred with fiery flowers,\nShuts in the shaken earth; or the still moon                         _95\nSwiftly, yet gracefully, begins her walk,\nRising all bright behind the eastern hills.\nI talk of moon, and wind, and stars, and not\nOf song; but, would I echo his high song,\nNature must lend me words ne’er used before,                         _100\nOr I must borrow from her perfect works,\nTo picture forth his perfect attributes.\nHe does no longer sit upon his throne\nOf rock upon a desert herbless plain,\nFor the evergreen and knotted ilexes,                                _105\nAnd cypresses that seldom wave their boughs,\nAnd sea-green olives with their grateful fruit,\nAnd elms dragging along the twisted vines,\nWhich drop their berries as they follow fast,\nAnd blackthorn bushes with their infant race                         _110\nOf blushing rose-blooms; beeches, to lovers dear,\nAnd weeping willow trees; all swift or slow,\nAs their huge boughs or lighter dress permit,\nHave circled in his throne, and Earth herself\nHas sent from her maternal breast a growth                           _115\nOf starlike flowers and herbs of odour sweet,\nTo pave the temple that his poesy\nHas framed, while near his feet grim lions couch,\nAnd kids, fearless from love, creep near his lair.\nEven the blind worms seem to feel the sound.                         _120\nThe birds are silent, hanging down their heads,\nPerched on the lowest branches of the trees;\nNot even the nightingale intrudes a note\nIn rivalry, but all entranced she listens.\n\n_16, _17, _24 1870 only.\n_45-_55 Ah, no!... melody 1870 only.\n_66 1870 only.\n_112 trees 1870; too 1862.\n_113 huge 1870; long 1862.\n_116 starlike 1870; starry 1862. odour 1862; odours 1870.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fiordispina.",
    "body": "[Published in part (lines 11-30) by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”,\n1824; in full (from the Boscombe manuscript) by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of\nShelley”, 1862.]\n\nThe season was the childhood of sweet June,\nWhose sunny hours from morning until noon\nWent creeping through the day with silent feet,\nEach with its load of pleasure; slow yet sweet;\nLike the long years of blest Eternity                                _5\nNever to be developed. Joy to thee,\nFiordispina and thy Cosimo,\nFor thou the wonders of the depth canst know\nOf this unfathomable flood of hours,\nSparkling beneath the heaven which embowers—                        _10\n\n...\n\nThey were two cousins, almost like to twins,\nExcept that from the catalogue of sins\nNature had rased their love—which could not be\nBut by dissevering their nativity.\nAnd so they grew together like two flowers                           _15\nUpon one stem, which the same beams and showers\nLull or awaken in their purple prime,\nWhich the same hand will gather—the same clime\nShake with decay. This fair day smiles to see\nAll those who love—and who e’er loved like thee,                    _20\nFiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo,\nWithin whose bosom and whose brain now glow\nThe ardours of a vision which obscure\nThe very idol of its portraiture.\nHe faints, dissolved into a sea of love;                             _25\nBut thou art as a planet sphered above;\nBut thou art Love itself—ruling the motion\nOf his subjected spirit: such emotion\nMust end in sin and sorrow, if sweet May\nHad not brought forth this morn—your wedding-day.                   _30\n\n...\n\n‘Lie there; sleep awhile in your own dew,\nYe faint-eyed children of the ... Hours,’\nFiordispina said, and threw the flowers\nWhich she had from the breathing—\n\n...\n\nA table near of polished porphyry.                                   _35\nThey seemed to wear a beauty from the eye\nThat looked on them—a fragrance from the touch\nWhose warmth ... checked their life; a light such\nAs sleepers wear, lulled by the voice they love, which did reprove   _40\nThe childish pity that she felt for them,\nAnd a ... remorse that from their stem\nShe had divided such fair shapes ... made\nA feeling in the ... which was a shade\nOf gentle beauty on the flowers: there lay                           _45\nAll gems that make the earth’s dark bosom gay.\n... rods of myrtle-buds and lemon-blooms,\nAnd that leaf tinted lightly which assumes\nThe livery of unremembered snow—\nViolets whose eyes have drunk—                                      _50\n\n...\n\nFiordispina and her nurse are now\nUpon the steps of the high portico,\nUnder the withered arm of Media\nShe flings her glowing arm\n\n...\n\n... step by step and stair by stair,                                 _55\nThat withered woman, gray and white and brown—\nMore like a trunk by lichens overgrown\nThan anything which once could have been human.\nAnd ever as she goes the palsied woman\n\n...\n\n‘How slow and painfully you seem to walk,                            _60\nPoor Media! you tire yourself with talk.’\n‘And well it may,\nFiordispina, dearest—well-a-day!\nYou are hastening to a marriage-bed;\nI to the grave!’—‘And if my love were dead,                         _65\nUnless my heart deceives me, I would lie\nBeside him in my shroud as willingly\nAs now in the gay night-dress Lilla wrought.’\n‘Fie, child! Let that unseasonable thought\nNot be remembered till it snows in June;                             _70\nSuch fancies are a music out of tune\nWith the sweet dance your heart must keep to-night.\nWhat! would you take all beauty and delight\nBack to the Paradise from which you sprung,\nAnd leave to grosser mortals?—                                      _75\nAnd say, sweet lamb, would you not learn the sweet\nAnd subtle mystery by which spirits meet?\nWho knows whether the loving game is played,\nWhen, once of mortal [vesture] disarrayed,\nThe naked soul goes wandering here and there                         _80\nThrough the wide deserts of Elysian air?\nThe violet dies not till it’—\n\n_11 to 1824; two editions 1839.\n_20 e’er 1862; ever editions 1824, 1839.\n_25 sea edition 1862; sense editions 1824, 1839.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Time Long Past.",
    "body": "[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.\nThis is one of three poems (cf. “Love’s Philosophy” and “Good-Night”)\ntranscribed by Shelley in a copy of Leigh Hunt’s “Literary Pocket-Book”\nfor 1819 presented by him to Miss Sophia Stacey, December 29, 1820.]\n\n1.\nLike the ghost of a dear friend dead\nIs Time long past.\nA tone which is now forever fled,\nA hope which is now forever past,\nA love so sweet it could not last,                                   _5\nWas Time long past.\n\n2.\nThere were sweet dreams in the night\nOf Time long past:\nAnd, was it sadness or delight,\nEach day a shadow onward cast                                        _10\nWhich made us wish it yet might last—\nThat Time long past.\n\n3.\nThere is regret, almost remorse,\nFor Time long past.\n’Tis like a child’s beloved corse                                    _15\nA father watches, till at last\nBeauty is like remembrance, cast\nFrom Time long past.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: The Deserts Of Dim Sleep.",
    "body": "[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.]\n\nI went into the deserts of dim sleep—\nThat world which, like an unknown wilderness,\nBounds this with its recesses wide and deep—\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘The Viewless And Invisible Consequence’.",
    "body": "[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.]\n\nThe viewless and invisible Consequence\nWatches thy goings-out, and comings-in,\nAnd...hovers o’er thy guilty sleep,\nUnveiling every new-born deed, and thoughts\nMore ghastly than those deeds—                                      _5\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘Such Hope, As Is The Sick Despair Of Good’.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\nSuch hope, as is the sick despair of good,\nSuch fear, as is the certainty of ill,\nSuch doubt, as is pale Expectation’s food\nTurned while she tastes to poison, when the will\nIs powerless, and the spirit...                                      _5\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘Alas! This Is Not What I Thought Life Was’.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition. This\nfragment is joined by Forman with that immediately preceding.]\n\nAlas! this is not what I thought life was.\nI knew that there were crimes and evil men,\nMisery and hate; nor did I hope to pass\nUntouched by suffering, through the rugged glen.\nIn mine own heart I saw as in a glass                                _5\nThe hearts of others ... And when\nI went among my kind, with triple brass\nOf calm endurance my weak breast I armed,\nTo bear scorn, fear, and hate, a woful mass!\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: Milton’S Spirit.",
    "body": "[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.]\n\nI dreamed that Milton’s spirit rose, and took\nFrom life’s green tree his Uranian lute;\nAnd from his touch sweet thunder flowed, and shook\nAll human things built in contempt of man,—\nAnd sanguine thrones and impious altars quaked,                      _5\nPrisons and citadels...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘Unrisen Splendour Of The Brightest Sun’.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\nUnrisen splendour of the brightest sun,\nTo rise upon our darkness, if the star\nNow beckoning thee out of thy misty throne\nCould thaw the clouds which wage an obscure war\nWith thy young brightness!                                           _5\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: Pater Omnipotens.",
    "body": "[Edited from manuscript Shelley E 4 in the Bodleian Library, and\npublished by Mr. C.D. Locock, “Examination” etc., Oxford, Clarendon\nPress, 1903. Here placed conjecturally amongst the compositions of\n1820, but of uncertain date, and belonging possibly to 1819 or a still\nearlier year.]\n\nSerene in his unconquerable might\nEndued[,] the Almighty King, his steadfast throne\nEncompassed unapproachably with power\nAnd darkness and deep solitude an awe\nStood like a black cloud on some aery cliff                          _5\nEmbosoming its lightning—in his sight\nUnnumbered glorious spirits trembling stood\nLike slaves before their Lord—prostrate around\nHeaven’s multitudes hymned everlasting praise.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: To The Mind Of Man.",
    "body": "[Edited, published and here placed as the preceding.]\n\nThou living light that in thy rainbow hues\nClothest this naked world; and over Sea\nAnd Earth and air, and all the shapes that be\nIn peopled darkness of this wondrous world\nThe Spirit of thy glory dost diffuse                                 _5\n... truth ... thou Vital Flame\nMysterious thought that in this mortal frame\nOf things, with unextinguished lustre burnest\nNow pale and faint now high to Heaven upcurled\nThat eer as thou dost languish still returnest                       _10\nAnd ever\nBefore the ... before the Pyramids\n\nSo soon as from the Earth formless and rude\nOne living step had chased drear Solitude\nThou wert, Thought; thy brightness charmed the lids                  _15\nOf the vast snake Eternity, who kept\nThe tree of good and evil.—\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On Poems Of 1820, By Mrs. Shelley.",
    "body": "We spent the latter part of the year 1819 in Florence, where Shelley\npassed several hours daily in the Gallery, and made various notes on\nits ancient works of art. His thoughts were a good deal taken up also\nby the project of a steamboat, undertaken by a friend, an engineer, to\nply between Leghorn and Marseilles, for which he supplied a sum of\nmoney. This was a sort of plan to delight Shelley, and he was greatly\ndisappointed when it was thrown aside.\n\nThere was something in Florence that disagreed excessively with his\nhealth, and he suffered far more pain than usual; so much so that we\nleft it sooner than we intended, and removed to Pisa, where we had some\nfriends, and, above all, where we could consult the celebrated Vacca as\nto the cause of Shelley’s sufferings. He, like every other medical man,\ncould only guess at that, and gave little hope of immediate relief; he\nenjoined him to abstain from all physicians and medicine, and to leave\nhis complaint to Nature. As he had vainly consulted medical men of the\nhighest repute in England, he was easily persuaded to adopt this\nadvice. Pain and ill-health followed him to the end; but the residence\nat Pisa agreed with him better than any other, and there in consequence\nwe remained.\n\nIn the Spring we spent a week or two near Leghorn, borrowing the house\nof some friends who were absent on a journey to England. It was on a\nbeautiful summer evening, while wandering among the lanes whose\nmyrtle-hedges were the bowers of the fire-flies, that we heard the\ncarolling of the skylark which inspired one of the most beautiful of\nhis poems. He addressed the letter to Mrs. Gisborne from this house,\nwhich was hers: he had made his study of the workshop of her son, who\nwas an engineer. Mrs. Gisborne had been a friend of my father in her\nyounger days. She was a lady of great accomplishments, and charming\nfrom her frank and affectionate nature. She had the most intense love\nof knowledge, a delicate and trembling sensibility, and preserved\nfreshness of mind after a life of considerable adversity. As a\nfavourite friend of my father, we had sought her with eagerness; and\nthe most open and cordial friendship was established between us.\n\nOur stay at the Baths of San Giuliano was shortened by an accident. At\nthe foot of our garden ran the canal that communicated between the\nSerchio and the Arno. The Serchio overflowed its banks, and, breaking\nits bounds, this canal also overflowed; all this part of the country is\nbelow the level of its rivers, and the consequence was that it was\nspeedily flooded. The rising waters filled the Square of the Baths, in\nthe lower part of which our house was situated. The canal overflowed in\nthe garden behind; the rising waters on either side at last burst open\nthe doors, and, meeting in the house, rose to the height of six feet.\nIt was a picturesque sight at night to see the peasants driving the\ncattle from the plains below to the hills above the Baths. A fire was\nkept up to guide them across the ford; and the forms of the men and the\nanimals showed in dark relief against the red glare of the flame, which\nwas reflected again in the waters that filled the Square.\n\nWe then removed to Pisa, and took up our abode there for the winter.\nThe extreme mildness of the climate suited Shelley, and his solitude\nwas enlivened by an intercourse with several intimate friends. Chance\ncast us strangely enough on this quiet half-unpeopled town; but its\nvery peace suited Shelley. Its river, the near mountains, and not\ndistant sea, added to its attractions, and were the objects of many\ndelightful excursions. We feared the south of Italy, and a hotter\nclimate, on account of our child; our former bereavement inspiring us\nwith terror. We seemed to take root here, and moved little afterwards;\noften, indeed, entertaining projects for visiting other parts of Italy,\nbut still delaying. But for our fears on account of our child, I\nbelieve we should have wandered over the world, both being passionately\nfond of travelling. But human life, besides its great unalterable\nnecessities, is ruled by a thousand lilliputian ties that shackle at\nthe time, although it is difficult to account afterwards for their\ninfluence over our destiny.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Dirge For The Year.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, and dated\nJanuary 1, 1821.]\n\n1.\nOrphan Hours, the Year is dead,\nCome and sigh, come and weep!\nMerry Hours, smile instead,\nFor the Year is but asleep.\nSee, it smiles as it is sleeping,                                    _5\nMocking your untimely weeping.\n\n2.\nAs an earthquake rocks a corse\nIn its coffin in the clay,\nSo White Winter, that rough nurse,\nRocks the death-cold Year to-day;                                    _10\nSolemn Hours! wail aloud\nFor your mother in her shroud.\n\n3.\nAs the wild air stirs and sways\nThe tree-swung cradle of a child,\nSo the breath of these rude days                                     _15\nRocks the Year:—be calm and mild,\nTrembling Hours, she will arise\nWith new love within her eyes.\n\n4.\nJanuary gray is here,\nLike a sexton by her grave;                                          _20\nFebruary bears the bier,\nMarch with grief doth howl and rave,\nAnd April weeps—but, O ye Hours!\nFollow with May’s fairest flowers.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Time.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\nUnfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,\nOcean of Time, whose waters of deep woe\nAre brackish with the salt of human tears!\nThou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow\nClaspest the limits of mortality,                                    _5\nAnd sick of prey, yet howling on for more,\nVomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;\nTreacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,\nWho shall put forth on thee,\nUnfathomable Sea?                                                    _10\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lines.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\n1.\nFar, far away, O ye\nHalcyons of Memory,\nSeek some far calmer nest\nThan this abandoned breast!\nNo news of your false spring                                         _5\nTo my heart’s winter bring,\nOnce having gone, in vain\nYe come again.\n\n2.\nVultures, who build your bowers\nHigh in the Future’s towers,                                         _10\nWithered hopes on hopes are spread!\nDying joys, choked by the dead,\nWill serve your beaks for prey\nMany a day.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "From The Arabic: An Imitation.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. There is an\nintermediate draft amongst the Bodleian manuscripts. See Locock,\n“Examination”, etc., 1903, page 13.]\n\n1.\nMy faint spirit was sitting in the light\nOf thy looks, my love;\nIt panted for thee like the hind at noon\nFor the brooks, my love.\nThy barb whose hoofs outspeed the tempest’s flight                   _5\nBore thee far from me;\nMy heart, for my weak feet were weary soon,\nDid companion thee.\n\n2.\nAh! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed\nOr the death they bear,                                              _10\nThe heart which tender thought clothes like a dove\nWith the wings of care;\nIn the battle, in the darkness, in the need,\nShall mine cling to thee,\nNor claim one smile for all the comfort, love,                       _15\nIt may bring to thee.\n\n_3 hoofs]feet B.\n_7 were]grew B.\n_9 Ah!]O B.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Fugitives.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”. 1824.]\n\n1.\nThe waters are flashing,\nThe white hail is dashing,\nThe lightnings are glancing,\nThe hoar-spray is dancing—\nAway!                                                                _5\n\nThe whirlwind is rolling,\nThe thunder is tolling,\nThe forest is swinging,\nThe minster bells ringing—\nCome away!                                                           _10\n\nThe Earth is like Ocean,\nWreck-strewn and in motion:\nBird, beast, man and worm\nHave crept out of the storm—\nCome away!                                                           _15\n\n2.\n‘Our boat has one sail\nAnd the helmsman is pale;—\nA bold pilot I trow,\nWho should follow us now,’—\nShouted he—                                                         _20\n\nAnd she cried: ‘Ply the oar!\nPut off gaily from shore!’—\nAs she spoke, bolts of death\nMixed with hail, specked their path\nO’er the sea.                                                        _25\n\nAnd from isle, tower and rock,\nThe blue beacon-cloud broke,\nAnd though dumb in the blast,\nThe red cannon flashed fast\nFrom the lee.                                                        _30\n\n3.\nAnd ‘Fear’st thou?’ and ‘Fear’st thou?’\nAnd Seest thou?’ and ‘Hear’st thou?’\nAnd ‘Drive we not free\nO’er the terrible sea,\nI and thou?’                                                         _35\n\nOne boat-cloak did cover\nThe loved and the lover—\nTheir blood beats one measure,\nThey murmur proud pleasure\nSoft and low;—                                                      _40\n\nWhile around the lashed Ocean,\nLike mountains in motion,\nIs withdrawn and uplifted,\nSunk, shattered and shifted\nTo and fro.                                                          _45\n\n4.\nIn the court of the fortress\nBeside the pale portress,\nLike a bloodhound well beaten\nThe bridegroom stands, eaten\nBy shame;                                                            _50\n\nOn the topmost watch-turret,\nAs a death-boding spirit\nStands the gray tyrant father,\nTo his voice the mad weather\nSeems tame;                                                          _55\n\nAnd with curses as wild\nAs e’er clung to child,\nHe devotes to the blast,\nThe best, loveliest and last\nOf his name!                                                         _60\n\n_28 And though]Though editions 1839.\n_57 clung]cling editions 1839.\n\n***\n\n\nTO —.\n\n[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\nMusic, when soft voices die,\nVibrates in the memory—\nOdours, when sweet violets sicken,\nLive within the sense they quicken.\n\nRose leaves, when the rose is dead,                                  _5\nAre heaped for the beloved’s bed;\nAnd so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,\nLove itself shall slumber on.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.\nThere is a transcript in the Harvard manuscript book.]\n\n1.\nRarely, rarely, comest thou,\nSpirit of Delight!\nWherefore hast thou left me now\nMany a day and night?\nMany a weary night and day                                           _5\n’Tis since thou art fled away.\n\n2.\nHow shall ever one like me\nWin thee back again?\nWith the joyous and the free\nThou wilt scoff at pain.                                             _10\nSpirit false! thou hast forgot\nAll but those who need thee not.\n\n3.\nAs a lizard with the shade\nOf a trembling leaf,\nThou with sorrow art dismayed;                                       _15\nEven the sighs of grief\nReproach thee, that thou art not near,\nAnd reproach thou wilt not hear.\n\n4.\nLet me set my mournful ditty\nTo a merry measure;                                                  _20\nThou wilt never come for pity,\nThou wilt come for pleasure;\nPity then will cut away\nThose cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.\n\n5.\nI love all that thou lovest,                                         _25\nSpirit of Delight!\nThe fresh Earth in new leaves dressed,\nAnd the starry night;\nAutumn evening, and the morn\nWhen the golden mists are born.                                      _30\n\n6.\nI love snow, and all the forms\nOf the radiant frost;\nI love waves, and winds, and storms,\nEverything almost\nWhich is Nature’s, and may be                                        _35\nUntainted by man’s misery.\n\n7.\nI love tranquil solitude,\nAnd such society\nAs is quiet, wise, and good\nBetween thee and me                                                  _40\nWhat difference? but thou dost possess\nThe things I seek, not love them less.\n\n8.\nI love Love—though he has wings,\nAnd like light can flee,\nBut above all other things,                                          _45\nSpirit, I love thee—\nThou art love and life! Oh, come,\nMake once more my heart thy home.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mutability.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.\nThere is a fair draft amongst the Boscombe manuscripts.]\n\n1.\nThe flower that smiles to-day\nTo-morrow dies;\nAll that we wish to stay\nTempts and then flies.\nWhat is this world’s delight?                                        _5\nLightning that mocks the night,\nBrief even as bright.\n\n2.\nVirtue, how frail it is!\nFriendship how rare!\nLove, how it sells poor bliss                                        _10\nFor proud despair!\nBut we, though soon they fall,\nSurvive their joy, and all\nWhich ours we call.\n\n3.\nWhilst skies are blue and bright,                                    _15\nWhilst flowers are gay,\nWhilst eyes that change ere night\nMake glad the day;\nWhilst yet the calm hours creep,\nDream thou—and from thy sleep                                       _20\nThen wake to weep.\n\n_9 how Boscombe manuscript; too editions 1824, 1839.\n_12 though soon they fall]though soon we or so soon they cj. Rossetti.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lines Written On Hearing The News Of The Death Of Napoleon.",
    "body": "[Published with “Hellas”, 1821.]\n\nWhat! alive and so bold, O Earth?\nArt thou not overbold?\nWhat! leapest thou forth as of old\nIn the light of thy morning mirth,\nThe last of the flock of the starry fold?                            _5\nHa! leapest thou forth as of old?\nAre not the limbs still when the ghost is fled,\nAnd canst thou move, Napoleon being dead?\n\nHow! is not thy quick heart cold?\nWhat spark is alive on thy hearth?                                   _10\nHow! is not HIS death-knell knolled?\nAnd livest THOU still, Mother Earth?\nThou wert warming thy fingers old\nO’er the embers covered and cold\nOf that most fiery spirit, when it fled—                            _15\nWhat, Mother, do you laugh now he is dead?\n\n‘Who has known me of old,’ replied Earth,\n‘Or who has my story told?\nIt is thou who art overbold.’\nAnd the lightning of scorn laughed forth                             _20\nAs she sung, ‘To my bosom I fold\nAll my sons when their knell is knolled,\nAnd so with living motion all are fed,\nAnd the quick spring like weeds out of the dead.\n\n‘Still alive and still bold,’ shouted Earth,                         _25\n‘I grow bolder and still more bold.\nThe dead fill me ten thousandfold\nFuller of speed, and splendour, and mirth.\nI was cloudy, and sullen, and cold,\nLike a frozen chaos uprolled,                                        _30\nTill by the spirit of the mighty dead\nMy heart grew warm. I feed on whom I fed.\n\n‘Ay, alive and still bold.’ muttered Earth,\n‘Napoleon’s fierce spirit rolled,\nIn terror and blood and gold,                                        _35\nA torrent of ruin to death from his birth.\nLeave the millions who follow to mould\nThe metal before it be cold;\nAnd weave into his shame, which like the dead\nShrouds me, the hopes that from his glory fled.’                     _40\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Sonnet: Political Greatness.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. There is a\ntranscript, headed “Sonnet to the Republic of Benevento”, in the\nHarvard manuscript book.]\n\nNor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,\nNor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts,\nShepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame;\nVerse echoes not one beating of their hearts,\nHistory is but the shadow of their shame,                            _5\nArt veils her glass, or from the pageant starts\nAs to oblivion their blind millions fleet,\nStaining that Heaven with obscene imagery\nOf their own likeness. What are numbers knit\nBy force or custom? Man who man would be,                            _10\nMust rule the empire of himself; in it\nMust be supreme, establishing his throne\nOn vanquished will, quelling the anarchy\nOf hopes and fears, being himself alone.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Aziola.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley in “The Keepsake”, 1829.]\n\n1.\n‘Do you not hear the Aziola cry?\nMethinks she must be nigh,’\nSaid Mary, as we sate\nIn dusk, ere stars were lit, or candles brought;\nAnd I, who thought                                                   _5\nThis Aziola was some tedious woman,\nAsked, ‘Who is Aziola?’ How elate\nI felt to know that it was nothing human,\nNo mockery of myself to fear or hate:\nAnd Mary saw my soul,                                                _10\nAnd laughed, and said, ‘Disquiet yourself not;\n’Tis nothing but a little downy owl.’\n\n2.\nSad Aziola! many an eventide\nThy music I had heard\nBy wood and stream, meadow and mountain-side,                        _15\nAnd fields and marshes wide,—\nSuch as nor voice, nor lute, nor wind, nor bird,\nThe soul ever stirred;\nUnlike and far sweeter than them all.\nSad Aziola! from that moment I                                       _20\nLoved thee and thy sad cry.\n\n_4 ere stars]ere the stars editions 1839.\n_9 or]and editions 1839.\n_19 them]they editions 1839.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Lament.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\n1.\nO world! O life! O time!\nOn whose last steps I climb,\nTrembling at that where I had stood before;\nWhen will return the glory of your prime?\nNo more—Oh, never more!                                             _5\n\n2.\nOut of the day and night\nA joy has taken flight;\nFresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,\nMove my faint heart with grief, but with delight\nNo more—Oh, never more!                                             _10\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Remembrance.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, where it is\nentitled “A Lament”. Three manuscript copies are extant: The Trelawny\nmanuscript (“Remembrance”), the Harvard manuscript (“Song”) and the\nHoughton manuscript—the last written by Shelley on a flyleaf of a copy\nof “Adonais”.]\n\n1.\nSwifter far than summer’s flight—\nSwifter far than youth’s delight—\nSwifter far than happy night,\nArt thou come and gone—\nAs the earth when leaves are dead,                                   _5\nAs the night when sleep is sped,\nAs the heart when joy is fled,\nI am left lone, alone.\n\n2.\nThe swallow summer comes again—\nThe owlet night resumes her reign—                                  _10\nBut the wild-swan youth is fain\nTo fly with thee, false as thou.—\nMy heart each day desires the morrow;\nSleep itself is turned to sorrow;\nVainly would my winter borrow                                        _15\nSunny leaves from any bough.\n\n3.\nLilies for a bridal bed—\nRoses for a matron’s head—\nViolets for a maiden dead—\nPansies let MY flowers be:                                           _20\nOn the living grave I bear\nScatter them without a tear—\nLet no friend, however dear,\nWaste one hope, one fear for me.\n\n_5-_7 So editions 1824, 1839, Trelawny manuscript, Harvard manuscript;\n    As the wood when leaves are shed,\n    As the night when sleep is fled,\n    As the heart when joy is dead Houghton manuscript.\n_13 So editions 1824, 1839, Harvard manuscript, Houghton manuscript.\n    My heart to-day desires to-morrow Trelawny manuscript.\n_20 So editions 1824, 1839, Harvard manuscript, Houghton manuscript.\n    Sadder flowers find for me Trelawny manuscript.\n_24 one hope, one fear]a hope, a fear Trelawny manuscript.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Bridal Song.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\n1.\nThe golden gates of Sleep unbar\nWhere Strength and Beauty, met together,\nKindle their image like a star\nIn a sea of glassy weather!\nNight, with all thy stars look down,—                               _5\nDarkness, weep thy holiest dew,—\nNever smiled the inconstant moon\nOn a pair so true.\nLet eyes not see their own delight;—\nHaste, swift Hour, and thy flight                                    _10\nOft renew.\n\n2.\nFairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!\nHoly stars, permit no wrong!\nAnd return to wake the sleeper,\nDawn,—ere it be long!                                               _15\nO joy! O fear! what will be done\nIn the absence of the sun!\nCome along!\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Another Version Of The Preceding.",
    "body": "[Published by Medwin, “Life of Shelley”, 1847.]\n\nNight, with all thine eyes look down!\nDarkness shed its holiest dew!\nWhen ever smiled the inconstant moon\nOn a pair so true?\nHence, coy hour! and quench thy light,                               _5\nLest eyes see their own delight!\nHence, swift hour! and thy loved flight\nOft renew.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Boys:",
    "body": "O joy! O fear! what may be done\nIn the absence of the sun?                                           _10\nCome along!\nThe golden gates of sleep unbar!\nWhen strength and beauty meet together,\nKindles their image like a star\nIn a sea of glassy weather.                                          _15\nHence, coy hour! and quench thy light,\nLest eyes see their own delight!\nHence, swift hour! and thy loved flight\nOft renew.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Girls:",
    "body": "O joy! O fear! what may be done                                      _20\nIn the absence of the sun?\nCome along!\nFairies! sprites! and angels, keep her!\nHoliest powers, permit no wrong!\nAnd return, to wake the sleeper,                                     _25\nDawn, ere it be long.\nHence, swift hour! and quench thy light,\nLest eyes see their own delight!\nHence, coy hour! and thy loved flight\nOft renew.                                                           _30",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Boys Sing:",
    "body": "Night! with all thine eyes look down!\nDarkness! weep thy holiest dew!\nNever smiled the inconstant moon\nOn a pair so true.\nHaste, coy hour! and quench all light,                               _5\nLest eyes see their own delight!\nHaste, swift hour! and thy loved flight\nOft renew!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Girls Sing:",
    "body": "Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!\nHoly stars! permit no wrong!                                         _10\nAnd return, to wake the sleeper,\nDawn, ere it be long!\nO joy! O fear! there is not one\nOf us can guess what may be done\nIn the absence of the sun:—                                         _15\nCome along!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "The golden gate of Sleep unbar,\nWhen Strength and Beauty, met together,\nKindle their image, like a star                                      _25\nIn a sea of glassy weather.\nMay the purple mist of love\nRound them rise, and with them move,\nNourishing each tender gem\nWhich, like flowers, will burst from them.                           _30\nAs the fruit is to the tree\nMay their children ever be!\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Love, Hope, Desire, And Fear.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862. ‘A very free\ntranslation of Brunetto Latini’s “Tesoretto”, lines 81-154.’—A.C.\nBradley.]\n\n...\n\nAnd many there were hurt by that strong boy,\nHis name, they said, was Pleasure,\nAnd near him stood, glorious beyond measure\nFour Ladies who possess all empery\nIn earth and air and sea,                                            _5\nNothing that lives from their award is free.\nTheir names will I declare to thee,\nLove, Hope, Desire, and Fear,\nAnd they the regents are\nOf the four elements that frame the heart,                           _10\nAnd each diversely exercised her art\nBy force or circumstance or sleight\nTo prove her dreadful might\nUpon that poor domain.\nDesire presented her [false] glass, and then                         _15\nThe spirit dwelling there\nWas spellbound to embrace what seemed so fair\nWithin that magic mirror,\nAnd dazed by that bright error,\nIt would have scorned the [shafts] of the avenger                    _20\nAnd death, and penitence, and danger,\nHad not then silent Fear\nTouched with her palsying spear,\nSo that as if a frozen torrent\nThe blood was curdled in its current;                                _25\nIt dared not speak, even in look or motion,\nBut chained within itself its proud devotion.\nBetween Desire and Fear thou wert\nA wretched thing, poor heart!\nSad was his life who bore thee in his breast,                        _30\nWild bird for that weak nest.\nTill Love even from fierce Desire it bought,\nAnd from the very wound of tender thought\nDrew solace, and the pity of sweet eyes\nGave strength to bear those gentle agonies,                          _35\nSurmount the loss, the terror, and the sorrow.\nThen Hope approached, she who can borrow\nFor poor to-day, from rich tomorrow,\nAnd Fear withdrew, as night when day\nDescends upon the orient ray,                                        _40\nAnd after long and vain endurance\nThe poor heart woke to her assurance.\n—At one birth these four were born\nWith the world’s forgotten morn,\nAnd from Pleasure still they hold                                    _45\nAll it circles, as of old.\nWhen, as summer lures the swallow,\nPleasure lures the heart to follow—\nO weak heart of little wit!\nThe fair hand that wounded it,                                       _50\nSeeking, like a panting hare,\nRefuge in the lynx’s lair,\nLove, Desire, Hope, and Fear,\nEver will be near.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragments Written For Hellas.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\n1.\nFairest of the Destinies,\nDisarray thy dazzling eyes:\nKeener far thy lightnings are\nThan the winged [bolts] thou bearest,\nAnd the smile thou wearest                                           _5\nWraps thee as a star\nIs wrapped in light.\n\n2.\nCould Arethuse to her forsaken urn\nFrom Alpheus and the bitter Doris run,\nOr could the morning shafts of purest light                          _10\nAgain into the quivers of the Sun\nBe gathered—could one thought from its wild flight\nReturn into the temple of the brain\nWithout a change, without a stain,—\nCould aught that is, ever again                                      _15\nBe what it once has ceased to be,\nGreece might again be free!\n\n3.\nA star has fallen upon the earth\nMid the benighted nations,\nA quenchless atom of immortal light,                                 _20\nA living spark of Night,\nA cresset shaken from the constellations.\nSwifter than the thunder fell\nTo the heart of Earth, the well\nWhere its pulses flow and beat,                                      _25\nAnd unextinct in that cold source\nBurns, and on ... course\nGuides the sphere which is its prison,\nLike an angelic spirit pent\nIn a form of mortal birth,                                           _30\nTill, as a spirit half-arisen\nShatters its charnel, it has rent,\nIn the rapture of its mirth,\nThe thin and painted garment of the Earth,\nRuining its chaos—a fierce breath                                   _35\nConsuming all its forms of living death.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘I Would Not Be A King’.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]\n\nI would not be a king—enough\nOf woe it is to love;\nThe path to power is steep and rough,\nAnd tempests reign above.\nI would not climb the imperial throne;                               _5\n’Tis built on ice which fortune’s sun\nThaws in the height of noon.\nThen farewell, king, yet were I one,\nCare would not come so soon.\nWould he and I were far away                                         _10\nKeeping flocks on Himalay!\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ginevra.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824,\nand dated ‘Pisa, 1821.’]\n\nWild, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one\nWho staggers forth into the air and sun\nFrom the dark chamber of a mortal fever,\nBewildered, and incapable, and ever\nFancying strange comments in her dizzy brain                         _5\nOf usual shapes, till the familiar train\nOf objects and of persons passed like things\nStrange as a dreamer’s mad imaginings,\nGinevra from the nuptial altar went;\nThe vows to which her lips had sworn assent                          _10\nRung in her brain still with a jarring din,\nDeafening the lost intelligence within.\n\nAnd so she moved under the bridal veil,\nWhich made the paleness of her cheek more pale,\nAnd deepened the faint crimson of her mouth,                         _15\nAnd darkened her dark locks, as moonlight doth,—\nAnd of the gold and jewels glittering there\nShe scarce felt conscious,—but the weary glare\nLay like a chaos of unwelcome light,\nVexing the sense with gorgeous undelight,                            _20\nA moonbeam in the shadow of a cloud\nWas less heavenly fair—her face was bowed,\nAnd as she passed, the diamonds in her hair\nWere mirrored in the polished marble stair\nWhich led from the cathedral to the street;                          _25\nAnd ever as she went her light fair feet\nErased these images.\n\nThe bride-maidens who round her thronging came,\nSome with a sense of self-rebuke and shame,\nEnvying the unenviable; and others\nMaking the joy which should have been another’s                      _30\nTheir own by gentle sympathy; and some\nSighing to think of an unhappy home:\nSome few admiring what can ever lure\nMaidens to leave the heaven serene and pure\nOf parents’ smiles for life’s great cheat; a thing                   _35\nBitter to taste, sweet in imagining.\n\nBut they are all dispersed—and, lo! she stands\nLooking in idle grief on her white hands,\nAlone within the garden now her own;                                 _40\nAnd through the sunny air, with jangling tone,\nThe music of the merry marriage-bells,\nKilling the azure silence, sinks and swells;—\nAbsorbed like one within a dream who dreams\nThat he is dreaming, until slumber seems                             _45\nA mockery of itself—when suddenly\nAntonio stood before her, pale as she.\nWith agony, with sorrow, and with pride,\nHe lifted his wan eyes upon the bride,\nAnd said—‘Is this thy faith?’ and then as one                       _50\nWhose sleeping face is stricken by the sun\nWith light like a harsh voice, which bids him rise\nAnd look upon his day of life with eyes\nWhich weep in vain that they can dream no more,\nGinevra saw her lover, and forbore                                   _55\nTo shriek or faint, and checked the stifling blood\nRushing upon her heart, and unsubdued\nSaid—‘Friend, if earthly violence or ill,\nSuspicion, doubt, or the tyrannic will\nOf parents, chance or custom, time or change,                        _60\nOr circumstance, or terror, or revenge,\nOr wildered looks, or words, or evil speech,\nWith all their stings and venom can impeach\nOur love,—we love not:—if the grave which hides\nThe victim from the tyrant, and divides                              _65\nThe cheek that whitens from the eyes that dart\nImperious inquisition to the heart\nThat is another’s, could dissever ours,\nWe love not.’—‘What! do not the silent hours\nBeckon thee to Gherardi’s bridal bed?                                _70\nIs not that ring’—a pledge, he would have said,\nOf broken vows, but she with patient look\nThe golden circle from her finger took,\nAnd said—‘Accept this token of my faith,\nThe pledge of vows to be absolved by death;                          _75\nAnd I am dead or shall be soon—my knell\nWill mix its music with that merry bell,\nDoes it not sound as if they sweetly said\n“We toll a corpse out of the marriage-bed”?\nThe flowers upon my bridal chamber strewn                            _80\nWill serve unfaded for my bier—so soon\nThat even the dying violet will not die\nBefore Ginevra.’ The strong fantasy\nHad made her accents weaker and more weak,\nAnd quenched the crimson life upon her cheek,                        _85\nAnd glazed her eyes, and spread an atmosphere\nRound her, which chilled the burning noon with fear,\nMaking her but an image of the thought\nWhich, like a prophet or a shadow, brought\nNews of the terrors of the coming time.                              _90\nLike an accuser branded with the crime\nHe would have cast on a beloved friend,\nWhose dying eyes reproach not to the end\nThe pale betrayer—he then with vain repentance\nWould share, he cannot now avert, the sentence—                     _95\nAntonio stood and would have spoken, when\nThe compound voice of women and of men\nWas heard approaching; he retired, while she\nWas led amid the admiring company\nBack to the palace,—and her maidens soon                            _100\nChanged her attire for the afternoon,\nAnd left her at her own request to keep\nAn hour of quiet rest:—like one asleep\nWith open eyes and folded hands she lay,\nPale in the light of the declining day.                              _105\n\nMeanwhile the day sinks fast, the sun is set,\nAnd in the lighted hall the guests are met;\nThe beautiful looked lovelier in the light\nOf love, and admiration, and delight\nReflected from a thousand hearts and eyes,                           _110\nKindling a momentary Paradise.\nThis crowd is safer than the silent wood,\nWhere love’s own doubts disturb the solitude;\nOn frozen hearts the fiery rain of wine\nFalls, and the dew of music more divine                              _115\nTempers the deep emotions of the time\nTo spirits cradled in a sunny clime:—\nHow many meet, who never yet have met,\nTo part too soon, but never to forget.\nHow many saw the beauty, power and wit                               _120\nOf looks and words which ne’er enchanted yet;\nBut life’s familiar veil was now withdrawn,\nAs the world leaps before an earthquake’s dawn,\nAnd unprophetic of the coming hours,\nThe matin winds from the expanded flowers                            _125\nScatter their hoarded incense, and awaken\nThe earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken\nFrom every living heart which it possesses,\nThrough seas and winds, cities and wildernesses,\nAs if the future and the past were all                               _130\nTreasured i’ the instant;—so Gherardi’s hall\nLaughed in the mirth of its lord’s festival,\nTill some one asked—‘Where is the Bride?’ And then\nA bridesmaid went,—and ere she came again\nA silence fell upon the guests—a pause                              _135\nOf expectation, as when beauty awes\nAll hearts with its approach, though unbeheld;\nThen wonder, and then fear that wonder quelled;—\nFor whispers passed from mouth to ear which drew\nThe colour from the hearer’s cheeks, and flew                        _140\nLouder and swifter round the company;\nAnd then Gherardi entered with an eye\nOf ostentatious trouble, and a crowd\nSurrounded him, and some were weeping loud.\n\nThey found Ginevra dead! if it be death                              _145\nTo lie without motion, or pulse, or breath,\nWith waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, and white,\nAnd open eyes, whose fixed and glassy light\nMocked at the speculation they had owned.\nIf it be death, when there is felt around                            _150\nA smell of clay, a pale and icy glare,\nAnd silence, and a sense that lifts the hair\nFrom the scalp to the ankles, as it were\nCorruption from the spirit passing forth,\nAnd giving all it shrouded to the earth,                             _155\nAnd leaving as swift lightning in its flight\nAshes, and smoke, and darkness: in our night\nOf thought we know thus much of death,—no more\nThan the unborn dream of our life before\nTheir barks are wrecked on its inhospitable shore.                   _160\nThe marriage feast and its solemnity\nWas turned to funeral pomp—the company,\nWith heavy hearts and looks, broke up; nor they\nWho loved the dead went weeping on their way\nAlone, but sorrow mixed with sad surprise                            _165\nLoosened the springs of pity in all eyes,\nOn which that form, whose fate they weep in vain,\nWill never, thought they, kindle smiles again.\nThe lamps which, half extinguished in their haste,\nGleamed few and faint o’er the abandoned feast,                      _170\nShowed as it were within the vaulted room\nA cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloom\nHad passed out of men’s minds into the air.\nSome few yet stood around Gherardi there,\nFriends and relations of the dead,—and he,                          _175\nA loveless man, accepted torpidly\nThe consolation that he wanted not;\nAwe in the place of grief within him wrought.\nTheir whispers made the solemn silence seem\nMore still—some wept,...                                            _180\nSome melted into tears without a sob,\nAnd some with hearts that might be heard to throb\nLeaned on the table and at intervals\nShuddered to hear through the deserted halls\nAnd corridors the thrilling shrieks which came                       _185\nUpon the breeze of night, that shook the flame\nOf every torch and taper as it swept\nFrom out the chamber where the women kept;—\nTheir tears fell on the dear companion cold\nOf pleasures now departed; then was knolled                          _190\nThe bell of death, and soon the priests arrived,\nAnd finding Death their penitent had shrived,\nReturned like ravens from a corpse whereon\nA vulture has just feasted to the bone.\nAnd then the mourning women came.—                                  _195\n\n...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Dirge.",
    "body": "Old winter was gone\nIn his weakness back to the mountains hoar,\nAnd the spring came down\nFrom the planet that hovers upon the shore\n\nWhere the sea of sunlight encroaches                                 _200\nOn the limits of wintry night;—\nIf the land, and the air, and the sea,\nRejoice not when spring approaches,\nWe did not rejoice in thee,\nGinevra!                                                             _205\n\nShe is still, she is cold\nOn the bridal couch,\nOne step to the white deathbed,\nAnd one to the bier,\nAnd one to the charnel—and one, oh where?                           _210\nThe dark arrow fled\nIn the noon.\n\nEre the sun through heaven once more has rolled,\nThe rats in her heart\nWill have made their nest,                                           _215\nAnd the worms be alive in her golden hair,\nWhile the Spirit that guides the sun,\nSits throned in his flaming chair,\nShe shall sleep.\n\n22 Was]Were cj. Rossetti.old\n26 ever 1824; even editions 1839.\n_37 Bitter editions 1839; Better 1824.\n_63 wanting in 1824.\n_103 quiet rest cj. A.C. Bradley; quiet and rest 1824.\n_129 winds]lands cj. Forman; waves, sands or strands cj. Rossetti.\n_167 On]In cj. Rossetti.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Evening: Ponte Al Mare, Pisa",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.\nThere is a draft amongst the Boscombe manuscripts.]\n\n1.\nThe sun is set; the swallows are asleep;\nThe bats are flitting fast in the gray air;\nThe slow soft toads out of damp corners creep,\nAnd evening’s breath, wandering here and there\nOver the quivering surface of the stream,                            _5\nWakes not one ripple from its summer dream.\n\n2.\nThere is no dew on the dry grass to-night,\nNor damp within the shadow of the trees;\nThe wind is intermitting, dry, and light;\nAnd in the inconstant motion of the breeze                           _10\nThe dust and straws are driven up and down,\nAnd whirled about the pavement of the town.\n\n3.\nWithin the surface of the fleeting river\nThe wrinkled image of the city lay,\nImmovably unquiet, and forever                                       _15\nIt trembles, but it never fades away;\nGo to the...\nYou, being changed, will find it then as now.\n\n4.\nThe chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut\nBy darkest barriers of cinereous cloud,                              _20\nLike mountain over mountain huddled—but\nGrowing and moving upwards in a crowd,\nAnd over it a space of watery blue,\nWhich the keen evening star is shining through..\n\n_6 summer 1839, 2nd edition; silent 1824, 1839, 1st edition.\n_20 cinereous Boscombe manuscript; enormous editions 1824, 1839.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Boat On The Serchio.",
    "body": "[Published in part (lines 1-61, 88-118) by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous\nPoems”, 1824; revised and enlarged by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical\nWorks of P. B. S.”, 1870.]\n\nOur boat is asleep on Serchio’s stream,\nIts sails are folded like thoughts in a dream,\nThe helm sways idly, hither and thither;\nDominic, the boatman, has brought the mast,\nAnd the oars, and the sails; but ’tis sleeping fast,                 _5\nLike a beast, unconscious of its tether.\n\nThe stars burnt out in the pale blue air,\nAnd the thin white moon lay withering there;\nTo tower, and cavern, and rift, and tree,\nThe owl and the bat fled drowsily.                                   _10\nDay had kindled the dewy woods,\nAnd the rocks above and the stream below,\nAnd the vapours in their multitudes,\nAnd the Apennine’s shroud of summer snow,\nAnd clothed with light of aery gold                                  _15\nThe mists in their eastern caves uprolled.\n\nDay had awakened all things that be,\nThe lark and the thrush and the swallow free,\nAnd the milkmaid’s song and the mower’s scythe\nAnd the matin-bell and the mountain bee:                             _20\nFireflies were quenched on the dewy corn,\nGlow-worms went out on the river’s brim,\nLike lamps which a student forgets to trim:\nThe beetle forgot to wind his horn,\nThe crickets were still in the meadow and hill:                      _25\nLike a flock of rooks at a farmer’s gun\nNight’s dreams and terrors, every one,\nFled from the brains which are their prey\nFrom the lamp’s death to the morning ray.\n\nAll rose to do the task He set to each,                              _30\nWho shaped us to His ends and not our own;\nThe million rose to learn, and one to teach\nWhat none yet ever knew or can be known.\nAnd many rose\nWhose woe was such that fear became desire;—                        _35\nMelchior and Lionel were not among those;\nThey from the throng of men had stepped aside,\nAnd made their home under the green hill-side.\nIt was that hill, whose intervening brow\nScreens Lucca from the Pisan’s envious eye,                          _40\nWhich the circumfluous plain waving below,\nLike a wide lake of green fertility,\nWith streams and fields and marshes bare,\nDivides from the far Apennines—which lie\nIslanded in the immeasurable air.                                    _45\n\n‘What think you, as she lies in her green cove,\nOur little sleeping boat is dreaming of?’\n‘If morning dreams are true, why I should guess\nThat she was dreaming of our idleness,\nAnd of the miles of watery way                                       _50\nWe should have led her by this time of day.’-\n\n‘Never mind,’ said Lionel,\n‘Give care to the winds, they can bear it well\nAbout yon poplar-tops; and see\nThe white clouds are driving merrily,                                _55\nAnd the stars we miss this morn will light\nMore willingly our return to-night.—\nHow it whistles, Dominic’s long black hair!\nList, my dear fellow; the breeze blows fair:\nHear how it sings into the air—’                                    _60\n\n—‘Of us and of our lazy motions,’\nImpatiently said Melchior,\n‘If I can guess a boat’s emotions;\nAnd how we ought, two hours before,\nTo have been the devil knows where.’                                 _65\nAnd then, in such transalpine Tuscan\nAs would have killed a Della-Cruscan,\n\n...\n\nSo, Lionel according to his art\nWeaving his idle words, Melchior said:\n‘She dreams that we are not yet out of bed;                          _70\nWe’ll put a soul into her, and a heart\nWhich like a dove chased by a dove shall beat.’\n\n...\n\n‘Ay, heave the ballast overboard,\nAnd stow the eatables in the aft locker.’\n‘Would not this keg be best a little lowered?’                       _75\n‘No, now all’s right.’ ‘Those bottles of warm tea—\n(Give me some straw)—must be stowed tenderly;\nSuch as we used, in summer after six,\nTo cram in greatcoat pockets, and to mix\nHard eggs and radishes and rolls at Eton,                            _80\nAnd, couched on stolen hay in those green harbours\nFarmers called gaps, and we schoolboys called arbours,\nWould feast till eight.’\n\n...\n\nWith a bottle in one hand,\nAs if his very soul were at a stand                                  _85\nLionel stood—when Melchior brought him steady:—\n‘Sit at the helm—fasten this sheet—all ready!’\n\nThe chain is loosed, the sails are spread,\nThe living breath is fresh behind,\nAs with dews and sunrise fed,                                        _90\nComes the laughing morning wind;—\nThe sails are full, the boat makes head\nAgainst the Serchio’s torrent fierce,\nThen flags with intermitting course,\nAnd hangs upon the wave, and stems                                   _95\nThe tempest of the...\nWhich fervid from its mountain source\nShallow, smooth and strong doth come,—\nSwift as fire, tempestuously\nIt sweeps into the affrighted sea;                                   _100\nIn morning’s smile its eddies coil,\nIts billows sparkle, toss and boil,\nTorturing all its quiet light\nInto columns fierce and bright.\n\nThe Serchio, twisting forth                                          _105\nBetween the marble barriers which it clove\nAt Ripafratta, leads through the dread chasm\nThe wave that died the death which lovers love,\nLiving in what it sought; as if this spasm\nHad not yet passed, the toppling mountains cling,                    _110\nBut the clear stream in full enthusiasm\nPours itself on the plain, then wandering\nDown one clear path of effluence crystalline\nSends its superfluous waves, that they may fling\nAt Arno’s feet tribute of corn and wine;\nThen, through the pestilential deserts wild\nOf tangled marsh and woods of stunted pine,\nIt rushes to the Ocean.\n\n_58-_61 List, my dear fellow, the breeze blows fair;\nHow it scatters Dominic’s long black hair!\nSinging of us, and our lazy motions,\nIf I can guess a boat’s emotions.’—editions 1824, 1839.\n_61-_67 Rossetti places these lines conjecturally between lines 51 and 52.\n_61-_65 ‘are evidently an alternative version of 48-51’ (A.C. Bradley).\n_95, _96 and stems The tempest of the wanting in editions 1824, 1839.\n_112 then Boscombe manuscript; until editions 1824, 1839\n_114 superfluous Boscombe manuscript; clear editions 1824, 1839.\n_117 pine Boscombe manuscript; fir editions 1824, 1839.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Music.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\n1.\nI pant for the music which is divine,\nMy heart in its thirst is a dying flower;\nPour forth the sound like enchanted wine,\nLoosen the notes in a silver shower;\nLike a herbless plain, for the gentle rain,                          _5\nI gasp, I faint, till they wake again.\n\n2.\nLet me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound,\nMore, oh more,—I am thirsting yet;\nIt loosens the serpent which care has bound\nUpon my heart to stifle it;                                          _10\nThe dissolving strain, through every vein,\nPasses into my heart and brain.\n\n3.\nAs the scent of a violet withered up,\nWhich grew by the brink of a silver lake,\nWhen the hot noon has drained its dewy cup,                          _15\nAnd mist there was none its thirst to slake—\nAnd the violet lay dead while the odour flew\nOn the wings of the wind o’er the waters blue—\n\n4.\nAs one who drinks from a charmed cup\nOf foaming, and sparkling, and murmuring wine,                       _20\nWhom, a mighty Enchantress filling up,\nInvites to love with her kiss divine...\n\n_16 mist 1824; tank 1839, 2nd edition.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Sonnet To Byron.",
    "body": "[Published by Medwin, “The Shelley Papers”, 1832 (lines 1-7), and “Life\nof Shelley”, 1847 (lines 1-9, 12-14). Revised and completed from the\nBoscombe manuscript by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”,\n1870.]\n\n[I am afraid these verses will not please you, but]\nIf I esteemed you less, Envy would kill\nPleasure, and leave to Wonder and Despair\nThe ministration of the thoughts that fill\nThe mind which, like a worm whose life may share\nA portion of the unapproachable,                                     _5\nMarks your creations rise as fast and fair\nAs perfect worlds at the Creator’s will.\n\nBut such is my regard that nor your power\nTo soar above the heights where others [climb],\nNor fame, that shadow of the unborn hour                             _10\nCast from the envious future on the time,\nMove one regret for his unhonoured name\nWho dares these words:—the worm beneath the sod\nMay lift itself in homage of the God.\n\n_1 you edition 1870; him 1832; thee 1847.\n_4 So edition 1870; My soul which as a worm may haply share 1832;\n   My soul which even as a worm may share 1847.\n_6 your edition 1870; his 1832; thy 1847.\n_8, _9 So edition 1870 wanting 1832 -\n    But not the blessings of thy happier lot,\n    Nor thy well-won prosperity, and fame 1847.\n_10, _11 So edition 1870; wanting 1832, 1847.\n_12-_14 So 1847, edition 1870; wanting 1832.\n\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "On Keats, Who Desired That On His Tomb Should Be Inscribed—",
    "body": "‘Here lieth One whose name was writ on water.\nBut, ere the breath that could erase it blew,\nDeath, in remorse for that fell slaughter,\nDeath, the immortalizing winter, flew\nAthwart the stream,—and time’s printless torrent grew               _5\nA scroll of crystal, blazoning the name\nOf Adonais!\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘Methought I Was A Billow In The Crowd’.",
    "body": "[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.]\n\nMethought I was a billow in the crowd\nOf common men, that stream without a shore,\nThat ocean which at once is deaf and loud;\nThat I, a man, stood amid many more\nBy a wayside..., which the aspect bore                               _5\nOf some imperial metropolis,\nWhere mighty shapes—pyramid, dome, and tower—\nGleamed like a pile of crags—\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "To-Morrow.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\nWhere art thou, beloved To-morrow?\nWhen young and old, and strong and weak,\nRich and poor, through joy and sorrow,\nThy sweet smiles we ever seek,—\nIn thy place—ah! well-a-day!                                        _5\nWe find the thing we fled—To-day.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Stanza.",
    "body": "[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.\nConnected by Dowden with the preceding.]\n\nIf I walk in Autumn’s even\nWhile the dead leaves pass,\nIf I look on Spring’s soft heaven,—\nSomething is not there which was\nWinter’s wondrous frost and snow,                                    _5\nSummer’s clouds, where are they now?\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: A Wanderer.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]\n\nHe wanders, like a day-appearing dream,\nThrough the dim wildernesses of the mind;\nThrough desert woods and tracts, which seem\nLike ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘I Faint, I Perish With My Love!‘.",
    "body": "[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.]\n\nI faint, I perish with my love! I grow\nFrail as a cloud whose [splendours] pale\nUnder the evening’s ever-changing glow:\nI die like mist upon the gale,\nAnd like a wave under the calm I fail.                               _5\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: The Lady Of The South.",
    "body": "[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.]\n\nFaint with love, the Lady of the South\nLay in the paradise of Lebanon\nUnder a heaven of cedar boughs: the drouth\nOf love was on her lips; the light was gone\nOut of her eyes—                                                    _5\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: Zephyrus The Awakener.",
    "body": "[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.]\n\nCome, thou awakener of the spirit’s ocean,\nZephyr, whom to thy cloud or cave\nNo thought can trace! speed with thy gentle motion!\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘When Soft Winds And Sunny Skies’.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]\n\nWhen soft winds and sunny skies\nWith the green earth harmonize,\nAnd the young and dewy dawn,\nBold as an unhunted fawn,\nUp the windless heaven is gone,—                                    _5\nLaugh—for ambushed in the day,—\nClouds and whirlwinds watch their prey.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘And That I Walk Thus Proudly Crowned’.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]\n\nAnd that I walk thus proudly crowned withal\nIs that ’tis my distinction; if I fall,\nI shall not weep out of the vital day,\nTo-morrow dust, nor wear a dull decay.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘Great Spirit’.",
    "body": "[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.]\n\nGreat Spirit whom the sea of boundless thought\nNurtures within its unimagined caves,\nIn which thou sittest sole, as in my mind,\nGiving a voice to its mysterious waves—\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘O Thou Immortal Deity’.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]\n\nO thou immortal deity\nWhose throne is in the depth of human thought,\nI do adjure thy power and thee\nBy all that man may be, by all that he is not,\nBy all that he has been and yet must be!                             _5\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: The False Laurel And The True.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]\n\n‘What art thou, Presumptuous, who profanest\nThe wreath to mighty poets only due,\nEven whilst like a forgotten moon thou wanest?\nTouch not those leaves which for the eternal few\nWho wander o’er the Paradise of fame,                                _5\nIn sacred dedication ever grew:\nOne of the crowd thou art without a name.’\n‘Ah, friend, ’tis the false laurel that I wear;\nBright though it seem, it is not the same\nAs that which bound Milton’s immortal hair;                          _10\nIts dew is poison; and the hopes that quicken\nUnder its chilling shade, though seeming fair,\nAre flowers which die almost before they sicken.’\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: May The Limner.",
    "body": "[This and the three following Fragments were edited from manuscript\nShelley D1 at the Bodleian Library and published by Mr. C.D. Locock,\n“Examination”, etc., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1903. They are printed\nhere as belonging probably to the year 1821.]\n\nWhen May is painting with her colours gay\nThe landscape sketched by April her sweet twin...\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘The Death Knell Is Ringing’.",
    "body": "(‘This reads like a study for “Autumn, A Dirge”’ (Locock). Might it not\nbe part of a projected Fit v. of “The Fugitives”?—ED.)\n\n[Published by Mr. C.D. Locock, “Examination”, etc., 1903.]\n\nThe death knell is ringing\nThe raven is singing\nThe earth worm is creeping\nThe mourners are weeping\nDing dong, bell—                                                    _5\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: ‘I Stood Upon A Heaven-Cleaving Turret’.",
    "body": "I stood upon a heaven-cleaving turret\nWhich overlooked a wide Metropolis—\nAnd in the temple of my heart my Spirit\nLay prostrate, and with parted lips did kiss\nThe dust of Desolations [altar] hearth—                             _5\nAnd with a voice too faint to falter\nIt shook that trembling fane with its weak prayer\n’Twas noon,—the sleeping skies were blue\nThe city\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On Poems Of 1821, By Mrs. Shelley.",
    "body": "My task becomes inexpressibly painful as the year draws near that which\nsealed our earthly fate, and each poem, and each event it records, has\na real or mysterious connection with the fatal catastrophe. I feel that\nI am incapable of putting on paper the history of those times. The\nheart of the man, abhorred of the poet, who could\n\n    ‘peep and botanize\n    Upon his mother’s grave,’\n\ndoes not appear to me more inexplicably framed than that of one who can\ndissect and probe past woes, and repeat to the public ear the groans\ndrawn from them in the throes of their agony.\n\nThe year 1821 was spent in Pisa, or at the Baths of San Giuliano. We\nwere not, as our wont had been, alone; friends had gathered round us.\nNearly all are dead, and, when Memory recurs to the past, she wanders\namong tombs. The genius, with all his blighting errors and mighty\npowers; the companion of Shelley’s ocean-wanderings, and the sharer of\nhis fate, than whom no man ever existed more gentle, generous, and\nfearless; and others, who found in Shelley’s society, and in his great\nknowledge and warm sympathy, delight, instruction, and solace; have\njoined him beyond the grave. A few survive who have felt life a desert\nsince he left it. What misfortune can equal death? Change can convert\nevery other into a blessing, or heal its sting—death alone has no\ncure. It shakes the foundations of the earth on which we tread; it\ndestroys its beauty; it casts down our shelter; it exposes us bare to\ndesolation. When those we love have passed into eternity, ‘life is the\ndesert and the solitude’ in which we are forced to linger—but never\nfind comfort more.\n\nThere is much in the “Adonais” which seems now more applicable to\nShelley himself than to the young and gifted poet whom he mourned. The\npoetic view he takes of death, and the lofty scorn he displays towards\nhis calumniators, are as a prophecy on his own destiny when received\namong immortal names, and the poisonous breath of critics has vanished\ninto emptiness before the fame he inherits.\n\nShelley’s favourite taste was boating; when living near the Thames or\nby the Lake of Geneva, much of his life was spent on the water. On the\nshore of every lake or stream or sea near which he dwelt, he had a boat\nmoored. He had latterly enjoyed this pleasure again. There are no\npleasure-boats on the Arno; and the shallowness of its waters (except\nin winter-time, when the stream is too turbid and impetuous for\nboating) rendered it difficult to get any skiff light enough to float.\nShelley, however, overcame the difficulty; he, together with a friend,\ncontrived a boat such as the huntsmen carry about with them in the\nMaremma, to cross the sluggish but deep streams that intersect the\nforests,—a boat of laths and pitched canvas. It held three persons;\nand he was often seen on the Arno in it, to the horror of the Italians,\nwho remonstrated on the danger, and could not understand how anyone\ncould take pleasure in an exercise that risked life. ‘Ma va per la\nvita!’ they exclaimed. I little thought how true their words would\nprove. He once ventured, with a friend, on the glassy sea of a calm\nday, down the Arno and round the coast to Leghorn, which, by keeping\nclose in shore, was very practicable. They returned to Pisa by the\ncanal, when, missing the direct cut, they got entangled among weeds,\nand the boat upset; a wetting was all the harm done, except that the\nintense cold of his drenched clothes made Shelley faint. Once I went\ndown with him to the mouth of the Arno, where the stream, then high and\nswift, met the tideless sea, and disturbed its sluggish waters. It was\na waste and dreary scene; the desert sand stretched into a point\nsurrounded by waves that broke idly though perpetually around; it was a\nscene very similar to Lido, of which he had said—\n\n    ‘I love all waste\n    And solitary places; where we taste\n    The pleasure of believing what we see\n    Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:\n    And such was this wide ocean, and this shore\n    More barren than its billows.’\n\nOur little boat was of greater use, unaccompanied by any danger, when\nwe removed to the Baths. Some friends lived at the village of Pugnano,\nfour miles off, and we went to and fro to see them, in our boat, by the\ncanal; which, fed by the Serchio, was, though an artificial, a full and\npicturesque stream, making its way under verdant banks, sheltered by\ntrees that dipped their boughs into the murmuring waters. By day,\nmultitudes of Ephemera darted to and fro on the surface; at night, the\nfireflies came out among the shrubs on the banks; the cicale at\nnoon-day kept up their hum; the aziola cooed in the quiet evening. It\nwas a pleasant summer, bright in all but Shelley’s health and\ninconstant spirits; yet he enjoyed himself greatly, and became more and\nmore attached to the part of the country where chance appeared to cast\nus. Sometimes he projected taking a farm situated on the height of one\nof the near hills, surrounded by chestnut and pine woods, and\noverlooking a wide extent of country: or settling still farther in the\nmaritime Apennines, at Massa. Several of his slighter and unfinished\npoems were inspired by these scenes, and by the companions around us.\nIt is the nature of that poetry, however, which overflows from the soul\noftener to express sorrow and regret than joy; for it is when oppressed\nby the weight of life, and away from those he loves, that the poet has\nrecourse to the solace of expression in verse.\n\nStill, Shelley’s passion was the ocean; and he wished that our summers,\ninstead of being passed among the hills near Pisa, should be spent on\nthe shores of the sea. It was very difficult to find a spot. We shrank\nfrom Naples from a fear that the heats would disagree with Percy:\nLeghorn had lost its only attraction, since our friends who had resided\nthere were returned to England; and, Monte Nero being the resort of\nmany English, we did not wish to find ourselves in the midst of a\ncolony of chance travellers. No one then thought it possible to reside\nat Via Reggio, which latterly has become a summer resort. The low lands\nand bad air of Maremma stretch the whole length of the western shores\nof the Mediterranean, till broken by the rocks and hills of Spezia. It\nwas a vague idea, but Shelley suggested an excursion to Spezia, to see\nwhether it would be feasible to spend a summer there. The beauty of the\nbay enchanted him. We saw no house to suit us; but the notion took\nroot, and many circumstances, enchained as by fatality, occurred to\nurge him to execute it.\n\nHe looked forward this autumn with great pleasure to the prospect of a\nvisit from Leigh Hunt. When Shelley visited Lord Byron at Ravenna, the\nlatter had suggested his coming out, together with the plan of a\nperiodical work in which they should all join. Shelley saw a prospect\nof good for the fortunes of his friend, and pleasure in his society;\nand instantly exerted himself to have the plan executed. He did not\nintend himself joining in the work: partly from pride, not wishing to\nhave the air of acquiring readers for his poetry by associating it with\nthe compositions of more popular writers; and also because he might\nfeel shackled in the free expression of his opinions, if any friends\nwere to be compromised. By those opinions, carried even to their\noutermost extent, he wished to live and die, as being in his conviction\nnot only true, but such as alone would conduce to the moral improvement\nand happiness of mankind. The sale of the work might meanwhile, either\nreally or supposedly, be injured by the free expression of his\nthoughts; and this evil he resolved to avoid.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Zucca.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, and dated\n‘January, 1822.’ There is a copy amongst the Boscombe manuscripts.]\n\n1.\nSummer was dead and Autumn was expiring,\nAnd infant Winter laughed upon the land\nAll cloudlessly and cold;—when I, desiring\nMore in this world than any understand,\nWept o’er the beauty, which, like sea retiring,                      _5\nHad left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand\nOf my lorn heart, and o’er the grass and flowers\nPale for the falsehood of the flattering Hours.\n\n2.\nSummer was dead, but I yet lived to weep\nThe instability of all but weeping;                                  _10\nAnd on the Earth lulled in her winter sleep\nI woke, and envied her as she was sleeping.\nToo happy Earth! over thy face shall creep\nThe wakening vernal airs, until thou, leaping\nFrom unremembered dreams, shalt ... see                              _15\nNo death divide thy immortality.\n\n3.\nI loved—oh, no, I mean not one of ye,\nOr any earthly one, though ye are dear\nAs human heart to human heart may be;—\nI loved, I know not what—but this low sphere                        _20\nAnd all that it contains, contains not thee,\nThou, whom, seen nowhere, I feel everywhere.\nFrom Heaven and Earth, and all that in them are,\nVeiled art thou, like a ... star.\n\n4.\nBy Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou flowest,             _25\nNeither to be contained, delayed, nor hidden;\nMaking divine the loftiest and the lowest,\nWhen for a moment thou art not forbidden\nTo live within the life which thou bestowest;\nAnd leaving noblest things vacant and chidden,                       _30\nCold as a corpse after the spirit’s flight\nBlank as the sun after the birth of night.\n\n5.\nIn winds, and trees, and streams, and all things common,\nIn music and the sweet unconscious tone\nOf animals, and voices which are human,                              _35\nMeant to express some feelings of their own;\nIn the soft motions and rare smile of woman,\nIn flowers and leaves, and in the grass fresh-shown,\nOr dying in the autumn, I the most\nAdore thee present or lament thee lost.                              _40\n\n6.\nAnd thus I went lamenting, when I saw\nA plant upon the river’s margin lie\nLike one who loved beyond his nature’s law,\nAnd in despair had cast him down to die;\nIts leaves, which had outlived the frost, the thaw                   _45\nHad blighted; like a heart which hatred’s eye\nCan blast not, but which pity kills; the dew\nLay on its spotted leaves like tears too true.\n\n7.\nThe Heavens had wept upon it, but the Earth\nHad crushed it on her maternal breast                                _50\n\n...\n\n8.\nI bore it to my chamber, and I planted\nIt in a vase full of the lightest mould;\nThe winter beams which out of Heaven slanted\nFell through the window-panes, disrobed of cold,\nUpon its leaves and flowers; the stars which panted                  _55\nIn evening for the Day, whose car has rolled\nOver the horizon’s wave, with looks of light\nSmiled on it from the threshold of the night.\n\n9.\nThe mitigated influences of air\nAnd light revived the plant, and from it grew                        _60\nStrong leaves and tendrils, and its flowers fair,\nFull as a cup with the vine’s burning dew,\nO’erflowed with golden colours; an atmosphere\nOf vital warmth enfolded it anew,\nAnd every impulse sent to every part\nThe unbeheld pulsations of its heart.                                _65\n\n10.\nWell might the plant grow beautiful and strong,\nEven if the air and sun had smiled not on it;\nFor one wept o’er it all the winter long\nTears pure as Heaven’s rain, which fell upon it                      _70\nHour after hour; for sounds of softest song\nMixed with the stringed melodies that won it\nTo leave the gentle lips on which it slept,\nHad loosed the heart of him who sat and wept.\n\n11.\nHad loosed his heart, and shook the leaves and flowers               _75\nOn which he wept, the while the savage storm\nWaked by the darkest of December’s hours\nWas raving round the chamber hushed and warm;\nThe birds were shivering in their leafless bowers,\nThe fish were frozen in the pools, the form                          _80\nOf every summer plant was dead\nWhilst this....\n\n...\n\n_7 lorn Boscombe manuscript; poor edition 1824.\n_23 So Boscombe manuscript; Dim object of soul’s idolatry edition 1824.\n_24 star Boscombe manuscript; wanting edition 1824.\n_38 grass fresh Boscombe manuscript; fresh grass edition 1824.\n_46 like Boscombe manuscript; as edition 1824.\n_68 air and sun Boscombe manuscript; sun and air edition 1824.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Magnetic Lady To Her Patient.",
    "body": "[Published by Medwin, “The Athenaeum”, August 11, 1832.\nThere is a copy amongst the Trelawny manuscripts.]\n\n1.\n‘Sleep, sleep on! forget thy pain;\nMy hand is on thy brow,\nMy spirit on thy brain;\nMy pity on thy heart, poor friend;\nAnd from my fingers flow                                             _5\nThe powers of life, and like a sign,\nSeal thee from thine hour of woe;\nAnd brood on thee, but may not blend\nWith thine.\n\n2.\n‘Sleep, sleep on! I love thee not;                                   _10\nBut when I think that he\nWho made and makes my lot\nAs full of flowers as thine of weeds,\nMight have been lost like thee;\nAnd that a hand which was not mine                                   _15\nMight then have charmed his agony\nAs I another’s—my heart bleeds\nFor thine.\n\n3.\n‘Sleep, sleep, and with the slumber of\nThe dead and the unborn                                              _20\nForget thy life and love;\nForget that thou must wake forever;\nForget the world’s dull scorn;\nForget lost health, and the divine\nFeelings which died in youth’s brief morn;                           _25\nAnd forget me, for I can never\nBe thine.\n\n4.\n‘Like a cloud big with a May shower,\nMy soul weeps healing rain\nOn thee, thou withered flower!                                       _30\nIt breathes mute music on thy sleep\nIts odour calms thy brain!\nIts light within thy gloomy breast\nSpreads like a second youth again.\nBy mine thy being is to its deep                                     _35\nPossessed.\n\n5.\n‘The spell is done. How feel you now?’\n‘Better—Quite well,’ replied\nThe sleeper.—‘What would do                                         _39\nYou good when suffering and awake?\nWhat cure your head and side?—’\n‘What would cure, that would kill me, Jane:\nAnd as I must on earth abide\nAwhile, yet tempt me not to break\nMy chain.’                                                           _45\n\n_1, _10 Sleep Trelawny manuscript, 1839, 2nd edition;\n        Sleep on 1832, 1839, 1st edition.\n_16 charmed Trelawny manuscript;\n    chased 1832, editions 1839.\n_21 love]woe 1832.\n_42 so Trelawny manuscript\n    ’Twould kill me what would cure my pain 1832, editions 1839.\n_44 Awhile yet, cj. A.C. Bradley.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lines: ‘When The Lamp Is Shattered’.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.\nThere is a copy amongst the Trelawny manuscripts.]\n\n1.\nWhen the lamp is shattered\nThe light in the dust lies dead—\nWhen the cloud is scattered\nThe rainbow’s glory is shed.\nWhen the lute is broken,                                             _5\nSweet tones are remembered not;\nWhen the lips have spoken,\nLoved accents are soon forgot.\n\n2.\nAs music and splendour\nSurvive not the lamp and the lute,                                   _10\nThe heart’s echoes render\nNo song when the spirit is mute:—\nNo song but sad dirges,\nLike the wind through a ruined cell,\nOr the mournful surges                                               _15\nThat ring the dead seaman’s knell.\n\n3.\nWhen hearts have once mingled\nLove first leaves the well-built nest;\nThe weak one is singled\nTo endure what it once possessed.                                    _20\nO Love! who bewailest\nThe frailty of all things here,\nWhy choose you the frailest\nFor your cradle, your home, and your bier?\n\n4.\nIts passions will rock thee                                          _25\nAs the storms rock the ravens on high;\nBright reason will mock thee,\nLike the sun from a wintry sky.\nFrom thy nest every rafter\nWill rot, and thine eagle home                                       _30\nLeave thee naked to laughter,\nWhen leaves fall and cold winds come.\n\n_6 tones edition 1824; notes Trelawny manuscript.\n_14 through edition 1824; in Trelawny manuscript.\n_16 dead edition 1824; lost Trelawny manuscript.\n_23 choose edition 1824; chose Trelawny manuscript.\n_25-_32 wanting Trelawny manuscript.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Pine Forest Of The Cascine Near Pisa.",
    "body": "[This, the first draft of “To Jane: The Invitation, The Recollection”,\nwas published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, and reprinted,\n“Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition. See Editor’s Prefatory Note to\n“The Invitation”, above.]\n\nDearest, best and brightest,\nCome away,\nTo the woods and to the fields!\nDearer than this fairest day\nWhich, like thee to those in sorrow,                                 _5\nComes to bid a sweet good-morrow\nTo the rough Year just awake\nIn its cradle in the brake.\nThe eldest of the Hours of Spring,\nInto the Winter wandering,                                           _10\nLooks upon the leafless wood,\nAnd the banks all bare and rude;\nFound, it seems, this halcyon Morn\nIn February’s bosom born,\nBending from Heaven, in azure mirth,                                 _15\nKissed the cold forehead of the Earth,\nAnd smiled upon the silent sea,\nAnd bade the frozen streams be free;\nAnd waked to music all the fountains,\nAnd breathed upon the rigid mountains,                               _20\nAnd made the wintry world appear\nLike one on whom thou smilest, Dear.\n\nRadiant Sister of the Day,\nAwake! arise! and come away!\nTo the wild woods and the plains,                                    _25\nTo the pools where winter rains\nImage all the roof of leaves,\nWhere the pine its garland weaves\nSapless, gray, and ivy dun\nRound stems that never kiss the sun—                                _30\nTo the sandhills of the sea,\nWhere the earliest violets be.\n\nNow the last day of many days,\nAll beautiful and bright as thou,\nThe loveliest and the last, is dead,                                 _35\nRise, Memory, and write its praise!\nAnd do thy wonted work and trace\nThe epitaph of glory fled;\nFor now the Earth has changed its face,\nA frown is on the Heaven’s brow.                                     _40\n\nWe wandered to the Pine Forest\nThat skirts the Ocean’s foam,\nThe lightest wind was in its nest,\nThe tempest in its home.\n\nThe whispering waves were half asleep,                               _45\nThe clouds were gone to play,\nAnd on the woods, and on the deep\nThe smile of Heaven lay.\n\nIt seemed as if the day were one\nSent from beyond the skies,                                          _50\nWhich shed to earth above the sun\nA light of Paradise.\n\nWe paused amid the pines that stood,\nThe giants of the waste,\nTortured by storms to shapes as rude                                 _55\nWith stems like serpents interlaced.\n\nHow calm it was—the silence there\nBy such a chain was bound,\nThat even the busy woodpecker\nMade stiller by her sound                                            _60\n\nThe inviolable quietness;\nThe breath of peace we drew\nWith its soft motion made not less\nThe calm that round us grew.\n\nIt seemed that from the remotest seat                                _65\nOf the white mountain’s waste\nTo the bright flower beneath our feet,\nA magic circle traced;—\n\nA spirit interfused around,\nA thinking, silent life;                                             _70\nTo momentary peace it bound\nOur mortal nature’s strife;—\n\nAnd still, it seemed, the centre of\nThe magic circle there,\nWas one whose being filled with love                                 _75\nThe breathless atmosphere.\n\nWere not the crocuses that grew\nUnder that ilex-tree\nAs beautiful in scent and hue\nAs ever fed the bee?                                                 _80\n\nWe stood beneath the pools that lie\nUnder the forest bough,\nAnd each seemed like a sky\nGulfed in a world below;\n\nA purple firmament of light                                          _85\nWhich in the dark earth lay,\nMore boundless than the depth of night,\nAnd clearer than the day—\n\nIn which the massy forests grew\nAs in the upper air,                                                 _90\nMore perfect both in shape and hue\nThan any waving there.\n\nLike one beloved the scene had lent\nTo the dark water’s breast\nIts every leaf and lineament                                         _95\nWith that clear truth expressed;\n\nThere lay far glades and neighbouring lawn,\nAnd through the dark green crowd\nThe white sun twinkling like the dawn\nUnder a speckled cloud.                                              _100\n\nSweet views, which in our world above\nCan never well be seen,\nWere imaged by the water’s love\nOf that fair forest green.\n\nAnd all was interfused beneath                                       _105\nWith an Elysian air,\nAn atmosphere without a breath,\nA silence sleeping there.\n\nUntil a wandering wind crept by,\nLike an unwelcome thought,                                           _110\nWhich from my mind’s too faithful eye\nBlots thy bright image out.\n\nFor thou art good and dear and kind,\nThe forest ever green,\nBut less of peace in S—‘s mind,\nThan calm in waters, seen.                                           _116.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "With A Guitar, To Jane.",
    "body": "[Published by Medwin, “The Athenaeum”, October 20, 1832; “Frazer’s\nMagazine”, January 1833. There is a copy amongst the Trelawny\nmanuscripts.]\n\nAriel to Miranda:—Take\nThis slave of Music, for the sake\nOf him who is the slave of thee,\nAnd teach it all the harmony\nIn which thou canst, and only thou,                                  _5\nMake the delighted spirit glow,\nTill joy denies itself again,\nAnd, too intense, is turned to pain;\nFor by permission and command\nOf thine own Prince Ferdinand,                                       _10\nPoor Ariel sends this silent token\nOf more than ever can be spoken;\nYour guardian spirit, Ariel, who,\nFrom life to life, must still pursue\nYour happiness;—for thus alone                                      _15\nCan Ariel ever find his own.\nFrom Prospero’s enchanted cell,\nAs the mighty verses tell,\nTo the throne of Naples, he\nLit you o’er the trackless sea,                                      _20\nFlitting on, your prow before,\nLike a living meteor.\nWhen you die, the silent Moon,\nIn her interlunar swoon,\nIs not sadder in her cell\nThan deserted Ariel.\nWhen you live again on earth,\nLike an unseen star of birth,\nAriel guides you o’er the sea\nOf life from your nativity.                                          _30\nMany changes have been run\nSince Ferdinand and you begun\nYour course of love, and Ariel still\nHas tracked your steps, and served your will;\nNow, in humbler, happier lot,                                        _35\nThis is all remembered not;\nAnd now, alas! the poor sprite is\nImprisoned, for some fault of his,\nIn a body like a grave;—\nFrom you he only dares to crave,                                     _40\nFor his service and his sorrow,\nA smile today, a song tomorrow.\n\nThe artist who this idol wrought,\nTo echo all harmonious thought,\nFelled a tree, while on the steep                                    _45\nThe woods were in their winter sleep,\nRocked in that repose divine\nOn the wind-swept Apennine;\nAnd dreaming, some of Autumn past,\nAnd some of Spring approaching fast,                                 _50\nAnd some of April buds and showers,\nAnd some of songs in July bowers,\nAnd all of love; and so this tree,—\nO that such our death may be!—\nDied in sleep, and felt no pain,                                     _55\nTo live in happier form again:\nFrom which, beneath Heaven’s fairest star,\nThe artist wrought this loved Guitar,\nAnd taught it justly to reply,\nTo all who question skilfully,                                       _60\nIn language gentle as thine own;\nWhispering in enamoured tone\nSweet oracles of woods and dells,\nAnd summer winds in sylvan cells;\nFor it had learned all harmonies                                     _65\nOf the plains and of the skies,\nOf the forests and the mountains,\nAnd the many-voiced fountains;\nThe clearest echoes of the hills,\nThe softest notes of falling rills,                                  _70\nThe melodies of birds and bees,\nThe murmuring of summer seas,\nAnd pattering rain, and breathing dew,\nAnd airs of evening; and it knew\nThat seldom-heard mysterious sound,                                  _75\nWhich, driven on its diurnal round,\nAs it floats through boundless day,\nOur world enkindles on its way.—\nAll this it knows, but will not tell\nTo those who cannot question well                                    _80\nThe Spirit that inhabits it;\nIt talks according to the wit\nOf its companions; and no more\nIs heard than has been felt before,\nBy those who tempt it to betray                                      _85\nThese secrets of an elder day:\nBut, sweetly as its answers will\nFlatter hands of perfect skill,\nIt keeps its highest, holiest tone\nFor our beloved Jane alone.                                          _90\n\n_12 Of more than ever]Of love that never 1833.\n_46 woods Trelawny manuscript, 1839, 2nd edition;\n    winds 1832, 1833, 1839, 1st edition.\n_58 this Trelawny manuscript, 1839, 2nd edition;\n    that 1832, 1833, 1839, 1st edition.\n_61 thine own Trelawny manuscript, 1839, 2nd edition;\n    its own 1832, 1833, 1839, 1st edition.\n_76 on Trelawny manuscript, 1839, 2nd edition;\n    in 1832, 1833, 1839, 1st edition.\n_90 Jane Trelawny manuscript; friend 1832, 1833, editions 1839.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Dirge.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\nRough wind, that moanest loud\nGrief too sad for song;\nWild wind, when sullen cloud\nKnells all the night long;\nSad storm whose tears are vain,                                      _5\nBare woods, whose branches strain,\nDeep caves and dreary main,—\nWail, for the world’s wrong!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lines Written In The Bay Of Lerici.",
    "body": "[Published from the Boscombe manuscripts by Dr. Garnett, “Macmillan’s\nMagazine”, June, 1862; reprinted, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\nShe left me at the silent time\nWhen the moon had ceased to climb\nThe azure path of Heaven’s steep,\nAnd like an albatross asleep,\nBalanced on her wings of light,                                      _5\nHovered in the purple night,\nEre she sought her ocean nest\nIn the chambers of the West.\nShe left me, and I stayed alone\nThinking over every tone                                             _10\nWhich, though silent to the ear,\nThe enchanted heart could hear,\nLike notes which die when born, but still\nHaunt the echoes of the hill;\nAnd feeling ever—oh, too much!—                                    _15\nThe soft vibration of her touch,\nAs if her gentle hand, even now,\nLightly trembled on my brow;\nAnd thus, although she absent were,\nMemory gave me all of her                                            _20\nThat even Fancy dares to claim:—\nHer presence had made weak and tame\nAll passions, and I lived alone\nIn the time which is our own;\nThe past and future were forgot,                                     _25\nAs they had been, and would be, not.\nBut soon, the guardian angel gone,\nThe daemon reassumed his throne\nIn my faint heart. I dare not speak\nMy thoughts, but thus disturbed and weak                             _30\nI sat and saw the vessels glide\nOver the ocean bright and wide,\nLike spirit-winged chariots sent\nO’er some serenest element\nFor ministrations strange and far;                                   _35\nAs if to some Elysian star\nSailed for drink to medicine\nSuch sweet and bitter pain as mine.\nAnd the wind that winged their flight\nFrom the land came fresh and light,                                  _40\nAnd the scent of winged flowers,\nAnd the coolness of the hours\nOf dew, and sweet warmth left by day,\nWere scattered o’er the twinkling bay.\nAnd the fisher with his lamp                                         _45\nAnd spear about the low rocks damp\nCrept, and struck the fish which came\nTo worship the delusive flame.\nToo happy they, whose pleasure sought\nExtinguishes all sense and thought                                   _50\nOf the regret that pleasure leaves,\nDestroying life alone, not peace!\n\n_11 though silent Relics 1862; though now silent Mac. Mag. 1862.\n_31 saw Relics 1862; watched Mac. Mag. 1862.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lines: ‘We Meet Not As We Parted’.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\n1.\nWe meet not as we parted,\nWe feel more than all may see;\nMy bosom is heavy-hearted,\nAnd thine full of doubt for me:—\nOne moment has bound the free.                                       _5\n\n2.\nThat moment is gone for ever,\nLike lightning that flashed and died—\nLike a snowflake upon the river—\nLike a sunbeam upon the tide,\nWhich the dark shadows hide.                                         _10\n\n3.\nThat moment from time was singled\nAs the first of a life of pain;\nThe cup of its joy was mingled\n—Delusion too sweet though vain!\nToo sweet to be mine again.                                          _15\n\n4.\nSweet lips, could my heart have hidden\nThat its life was crushed by you,\nYe would not have then forbidden\nThe death which a heart so true\nSought in your briny dew.                                            _20\n\n5.\n...\n...\n...\nMethinks too little cost\nFor a moment so found, so lost!                                      _25\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Isle.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\nThere was a little lawny islet\nBy anemone and violet,\nLike mosaic, paven:\nAnd its roof was flowers and leaves\nWhich the summer’s breath enweaves,                                  _5\nWhere nor sun nor showers nor breeze\nPierce the pines and tallest trees,\nEach a gem engraven;—\nGirt by many an azure wave\nWith which the clouds and mountains pave                             _10\nA lake’s blue chasm.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: To The Moon.",
    "body": "[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]\n\nBright wanderer, fair coquette of Heaven,\nTo whom alone it has been given\nTo change and be adored for ever,\nEnvy not this dim world, for never\nBut once within its shadow grew                                      _5\nOne fair as—\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Epitaph.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]\n\nThese are two friends whose lives were undivided;\nSo let their memory be, now they have glided\nUnder the grave; let not their bones be parted,\nFor their two hearts in life were single-hearted.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On Poems Of 1822, By Mrs. Shelley.",
    "body": "    This morn thy gallant bark\n    Sailed on a sunny sea:\n    ’Tis noon, and tempests dark\n    Have wrecked it on the lee.\n    Ah woe! ah woe!\n    By Spirits of the deep\n    Thou’rt cradled on the billow\n    To thy eternal sleep.\n\n    Thou sleep’st upon the shore\n    Beside the knelling surge,\n    And Sea-nymphs evermore\n    Shall sadly chant thy dirge.\n    They come, they come,\n    The Spirits of the deep,—\n    While near thy seaweed pillow\n    My lonely watch I keep.\n\n    From far across the sea\n    I hear a loud lament,\n    By Echo’s voice for thee\n    From Ocean’s caverns sent.\n    O list! O list!\n    The Spirits of the deep!\n    They raise a wail of sorrow,\n    While I forever weep.\n\nWith this last year of the life of Shelley these Notes end. They are\nnot what I intended them to be. I began with energy, and a burning\ndesire to impart to the world, in worthy language, the sense I have of\nthe virtues and genius of the beloved and the lost; my strength has\nfailed under the task. Recurrence to the past, full of its own deep and\nunforgotten joys and sorrows, contrasted with succeeding years of\npainful and solitary struggle, has shaken my health. Days of great\nsuffering have followed my attempts to write, and these again produced\na weakness and languor that spread their sinister influence over these\nnotes. I dislike speaking of myself, but cannot help apologizing to the\ndead, and to the public, for not having executed in the manner I\ndesired the history I engaged to give of Shelley’s writings. (I at one\ntime feared that the correction of the press might be less exact\nthrough my illness; but I believe that it is nearly free from error.\nSome asterisks occur in a few pages, as they did in the volume of\n“Posthumous Poems”, either because they refer to private concerns, or\nbecause the original manuscript was left imperfect. Did any one see the\npapers from which I drew that volume, the wonder would be how any eyes\nor patience were capable of extracting it from so confused a mass,\ninterlined and broken into fragments, so that the sense could only be\ndeciphered and joined by guesses which might seem rather intuitive than\nfounded on reasoning. Yet I believe no mistake was made.)\n\nThe winter of 1822 was passed in Pisa, if we might call that season\nwinter in which autumn merged into spring after the interval of but few\ndays of bleaker weather. Spring sprang up early, and with extreme\nbeauty. Shelley had conceived the idea of writing a tragedy on the\nsubject of Charles I. It was one that he believed adapted for a drama;\nfull of intense interest, contrasted character, and busy passion. He\nhad recommended it long before, when he encouraged me to attempt a\nplay. Whether the subject proved more difficult than he anticipated, or\nwhether in fact he could not bend his mind away from the broodings and\nwanderings of thought, divested from human interest, which he best\nloved, I cannot tell; but he proceeded slowly, and threw it aside for\none of the most mystical of his poems, the “Triumph of Life”, on which\nhe was employed at the last.\n\nHis passion for boating was fostered at this time by having among our\nfriends several sailors. His favourite companion, Edward Ellerker\nWilliams, of the 8th Light Dragoons, had begun his life in the navy,\nand had afterwards entered the army; he had spent several years in\nIndia, and his love for adventure and manly exercises accorded with\nShelley’s taste. It was their favourite plan to build a boat such as\nthey could manage themselves, and, living on the sea-coast, to enjoy at\nevery hour and season the pleasure they loved best. Captain Roberts,\nR.N., undertook to build the boat at Genoa, where he was also occupied\nin building the “Bolivar” for Lord Byron. Ours was to be an open boat,\non a model taken from one of the royal dockyards. I have since heard\nthat there was a defect in this model, and that it was never seaworthy.\nIn the month of February, Shelley and his friend went to Spezia to seek\nfor houses for us. Only one was to be found at all suitable; however, a\ntrifle such as not finding a house could not stop Shelley; the one\nfound was to serve for all. It was unfurnished; we sent our furniture\nby sea, and with a good deal of precipitation, arising from his\nimpatience, made our removal. We left Pisa on the 26th of April.\n\nThe Bay of Spezia is of considerable extent, and divided by a rocky\npromontory into a larger and smaller one. The town of Lerici is\nsituated on the eastern point, and in the depth of the smaller bay,\nwhich bears the name of this town, is the village of San Terenzo. Our\nhouse, Casa Magni, was close to this village; the sea came up to the\ndoor, a steep hill sheltered it behind. The proprietor of the estate on\nwhich it was situated was insane; he had begun to erect a large house\nat the summit of the hill behind, but his malady prevented its being\nfinished, and it was falling into ruin. He had (and this to the\nItalians had seemed a glaring symptom of very decided madness) rooted\nup the olives on the hillside, and planted forest trees. These were\nmostly young, but the plantation was more in English taste than I ever\nelsewhere saw in Italy; some fine walnut and ilex trees intermingled\ntheir dark massy foliage, and formed groups which still haunt my\nmemory, as then they satiated the eye with a sense of loveliness. The\nscene was indeed of unimaginable beauty. The blue extent of waters, the\nalmost landlocked bay, the near castle of Lerici shutting it in to the\neast, and distant Porto Venere to the west; the varied forms of the\nprecipitous rocks that bound in the beach, over which there was only a\nwinding rugged footpath towards Lerici, and none on the other side; the\ntideless sea leaving no sands nor shingle, formed a picture such as one\nsees in Salvator Rosa’s landscapes only. Sometimes the sunshine\nvanished when the sirocco raged—the ‘ponente’ the wind was called on\nthat shore. The gales and squalls that hailed our first arrival\nsurrounded the bay with foam; the howling wind swept round our exposed\nhouse, and the sea roared unremittingly, so that we almost fancied\nourselves on board ship. At other times sunshine and calm invested sea\nand sky, and the rich tints of Italian heaven bathed the scene in\nbright and ever-varying tints.\n\nThe natives were wilder than the place. Our near neighbours of San\nTerenzo were more like savages than any people I ever before lived\namong. Many a night they passed on the beach, singing, or rather\nhowling; the women dancing about among the waves that broke at their\nfeet, the men leaning against the rocks and joining in their loud wild\nchorus. We could get no provisions nearer than Sarzana, at a distance\nof three miles and a half off, with the torrent of the Magra between;\nand even there the supply was very deficient. Had we been wrecked on an\nisland of the South Seas, we could scarcely have felt ourselves farther\nfrom civilisation and comfort; but, where the sun shines, the latter\nbecomes an unnecessary luxury, and we had enough society among\nourselves. Yet I confess housekeeping became rather a toilsome task,\nespecially as I was suffering in my health, and could not exert myself\nactively.\n\nAt first the fatal boat had not arrived, and was expected with great\nimpatience. On Monday, 12th May, it came. Williams records the\nlong-wished-for fact in his journal: ‘Cloudy and threatening weather.\nM. Maglian called; and after dinner, and while walking with him on the\nterrace, we discovered a strange sail coming round the point of Porto\nVenere, which proved at length to be Shelley’s boat. She had left Genoa\non Thursday last, but had been driven back by the prevailing bad winds.\nA Mr. Heslop and two English seamen brought her round, and they speak\nmost highly of her performances. She does indeed excite my surprise and\nadmiration. Shelley and I walked to Lerici, and made a stretch off the\nland to try her: and I find she fetches whatever she looks at. In\nshort, we have now a perfect plaything for the summer.’—It was thus\nthat short-sighted mortals welcomed Death, he having disguised his grim\nform in a pleasing mask! The time of the friends was now spent on the\nsea; the weather became fine, and our whole party often passed the\nevenings on the water when the wind promised pleasant sailing. Shelley\nand Williams made longer excursions; they sailed several times to\nMassa. They had engaged one of the seamen who brought her round, a boy,\nby name Charles Vivian; and they had not the slightest apprehension of\ndanger. When the weather was unfavourable, they employed themselves\nwith alterations in the rigging, and by building a boat of canvas and\nreeds, as light as possible, to have on board the other for the\nconvenience of landing in waters too shallow for the larger vessel.\nWhen Shelley was on board, he had his papers with him; and much of the\n“Triumph of Life” was written as he sailed or weltered on that sea\nwhich was soon to engulf him.\n\nThe heats set in in the middle of June; the days became excessively\nhot. But the sea-breeze cooled the air at noon, and extreme heat always\nput Shelley in spirits. A long drought had preceded the heat; and\nprayers for rain were being put up in the churches, and processions of\nrelics for the same effect took place in every town. At this time we\nreceived letters announcing the arrival of Leigh Hunt at Genoa. Shelley\nwas very eager to see him. I was confined to my room by severe illness,\nand could not move; it was agreed that Shelley and Williams should go\nto Leghorn in the boat. Strange that no fear of danger crossed our\nminds! Living on the sea-shore, the ocean became as a plaything: as a\nchild may sport with a lighted stick, till a spark inflames a forest,\nand spreads destruction over all, so did we fearlessly and blindly\ntamper with danger, and make a game of the terrors of the ocean. Our\nItalian neighbours, even, trusted themselves as far as Massa in the\nskiff; and the running down the line of coast to Leghorn gave no more\nnotion of peril than a fair-weather inland navigation would have done\nto those who had never seen the sea. Once, some months before, Trelawny\nhad raised a warning voice as to the difference of our calm bay and the\nopen sea beyond; but Shelley and his friend, with their one sailor-boy,\nthought themselves a match for the storms of the Mediterranean, in a\nboat which they looked upon as equal to all it was put to do.\n\nOn the 1st of July they left us. If ever shadow of future ill darkened\nthe present hour, such was over my mind when they went. During the\nwhole of our stay at Lerici, an intense presentiment of coming evil\nbrooded over my mind, and covered this beautiful place and genial\nsummer with the shadow of coming misery. I had vainly struggled with\nthese emotions—they seemed accounted for by my illness; but at this\nhour of separation they recurred with renewed violence. I did not\nanticipate danger for them, but a vague expectation of evil shook me to\nagony, and I could scarcely bring myself to let them go. The day was\ncalm and clear; and, a fine breeze rising at twelve, they weighed for\nLeghorn. They made the run of about fifty miles in seven hours and a\nhalf. The “Bolivar” was in port; and, the regulations of the\nHealth-office not permitting them to go on shore after sunset, they\nborrowed cushions from the larger vessel, and slept on board their\nboat.\n\nThey spent a week at Pisa and Leghorn. The want of rain was severely\nfelt in the country. The weather continued sultry and fine. I have\nheard that Shelley all this time was in brilliant spirits. Not long\nbefore, talking of presentiment, he had said the only one that he ever\nfound infallible was the certain advent of some evil fortune when he\nfelt peculiarly joyous. Yet, if ever fate whispered of coming disaster,\nsuch inaudible but not unfelt prognostics hovered around us. The beauty\nof the place seemed unearthly in its excess: the distance we were at\nfrom all signs of civilization, the sea at our feet, its murmurs or its\nroaring for ever in our ears,—all these things led the mind to brood\nover strange thoughts, and, lifting it from everyday life, caused it to\nbe familiar with the unreal. A sort of spell surrounded us; and each\nday, as the voyagers did not return, we grew restless and disquieted,\nand yet, strange to say, we were not fearful of the most apparent\ndanger.\n\nThe spell snapped; it was all over; an interval of agonizing doubt—of\ndays passed in miserable journeys to gain tidings, of hopes that took\nfirmer root even as they were more baseless—was changed to the\ncertainty of the death that eclipsed all happiness for the survivors\nfor evermore.\n\nThere was something in our fate peculiarly harrowing. The remains of\nthose we lost were cast on shore; but, by the quarantine-laws of the\ncoast, we were not permitted to have possession of them—the law with\nrespect to everything cast on land by the sea being that such should be\nburned, to prevent the possibility of any remnant bringing the plague\ninto Italy; and no representation could alter the law. At length,\nthrough the kind and unwearied exertions of Mr. Dawkins, our Charge\nd’Affaires at Florence, we gained permission to receive the ashes after\nthe bodies were consumed. Nothing could equal the zeal of Trelawny in\ncarrying our wishes into effect. He was indefatigable in his exertions,\nand full of forethought and sagacity in his arrangements. It was a\nfearful task; he stood before us at last, his hands scorched and\nblistered by the flames of the funeral-pyre, and by touching the burnt\nrelics as he placed them in the receptacles prepared for the purpose.\nAnd there, in compass of that small case, was gathered all that\nremained on earth of him whose genius and virtue were a crown of glory\nto the world—whose love had been the source of happiness, peace, and\ngood,—to be buried with him!\n\nThe concluding stanzas of the “Adonais” pointed out where the remains\nought to be deposited; in addition to which our beloved child lay\nburied in the cemetery at Rome. Thither Shelley’s ashes were conveyed;\nand they rest beneath one of the antique weed-grown towers that recur\nat intervals in the circuit of the massy ancient wall of Rome. He\nselected the hallowed place himself; there is\n\n    ‘the sepulchre,\n    Oh, not of him, but of our joy!—\n    ...\n    And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time\n    Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;\n    And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,\n    Pavilioning the dust of him who planned\n    This refuge for his memory, doth stand\n    Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath,\n    A field is spread, on which a newer band\n    Have pitched in Heaven’s smile their camp of death,\n    Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.’\n\nCould sorrow for the lost, and shuddering anguish at the vacancy left\nbehind, be soothed by poetic imaginations, there was something in\nShelley’s fate to mitigate pangs which yet, alas! could not be so\nmitigated; for hard reality brings too miserably home to the mourner\nall that is lost of happiness, all of lonely unsolaced struggle that\nremains. Still, though dreams and hues of poetry cannot blunt grief, it\ninvests his fate with a sublime fitness, which those less nearly allied\nmay regard with complacency. A year before he had poured into verse all\nsuch ideas about death as give it a glory of its own. He had, as it now\nseems, almost anticipated his own destiny; and, when the mind figures\nhis skiff wrapped from sight by the thunder-storm, as it was last seen\nupon the purple sea, and then, as the cloud of the tempest passed away,\nno sign remained of where it had been (Captain Roberts watched the\nvessel with his glass from the top of the lighthouse of Leghorn, on its\nhomeward track. They were off Via Reggio, at some distance from shore,\nwhen a storm was driven over the sea. It enveloped them and several\nlarger vessels in darkness. When the cloud passed onwards, Roberts\nlooked again, and saw every other vessel sailing on the ocean except\ntheir little schooner, which had vanished. From that time he could\nscarcely doubt the fatal truth; yet we fancied that they might have\nbeen driven towards Elba or Corsica, and so be saved. The observation\nmade as to the spot where the boat disappeared caused it to be found,\nthrough the exertions of Trelawny for that effect. It had gone down in\nten fathom water; it had not capsized, and, except such things as had\nfloated from her, everything was found on board exactly as it had been\nplaced when they sailed. The boat itself was uninjured. Roberts\npossessed himself of her, and decked her; but she proved not seaworthy,\nand her shattered planks now lie rotting on the shore of one of the\nIonian islands, on which she was wrecked.)—who but will regard as a\nprophecy the last stanza of the “Adonais”?\n\n    ‘The breath whose might I have invoked in song\n    Descends on me; my spirit’s bark is driven,\n    Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng\n    Whose sails were never to the tempest given;\n    The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!\n    I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;\n    Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,\n    The soul of Adonais, like a star,\n    Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.’\n\nPutney, May 1, 1839.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Original Poetry By Victor And Cazire.",
    "body": "1. ‘HERE I SIT WITH MY PAPER, MY PEN AND MY INK’.\n\n2. TO MISS — — [HARRIET GROVE] FROM MISS — — [ELIZABETH SHELLEY].\n\n3. SONG: ‘COLD, COLD IS THE BLAST’.\n\n4. SONG: ‘COME [HARRIET]! SWEET IS THE HOUR’.\n\n5. SONG: DESPAIR.\n\n6. SONG: SORROW.\n\n7. SONG: HOPE.\n\n8. SONG: TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN.\n\n9. SONG: TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN.\n\n10. THE IRISHMAN’S SONG.\n\n11. SONG: ‘FIERCE ROARS THE MIDNIGHT STORM’.\n\n12. SONG: TO — [HARRIET].\n\n13. SONG: TO — [HARRIET].\n\n14. SAINT EDMOND’S EVE.\n\n15. REVENGE.\n\n16. GHASTA; OR, THE AVENGING DEMON.\n\n17. FRAGMENT; OR, THE TRIUMPH OF CONSCIENCE.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Translations.",
    "body": "[Of the Translations that follow a few were published by Shelley\nhimself, others by Mrs. Shelley in the “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, or the\n“Poetical Works”, 1839, and the remainder by Medwin (1834, 1847),\nGarnett (1862), Rossetti (1870), Forman (1876) and Locock (1903) from\nthe manuscript originals. Shelley’s “Translations” fall between the\nyears 1818 and 1822.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Translated From The Greek Of Homer.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. This alone of the\n“Translations” is included in the Harvard manuscript book. ‘Fragments of\nthe drafts of this and the other Hymns of Homer exist among the Boscombe\nmanuscripts’ (Forman).]\n\n1.\nSing, Muse, the son of Maia and of Jove,\nThe Herald-child, king of Arcadia\nAnd all its pastoral hills, whom in sweet love\nHaving been interwoven, modest May\nBore Heaven’s dread Supreme. An antique grove                        _5\nShadowed the cavern where the lovers lay\nIn the deep night, unseen by Gods or Men,\nAnd white-armed Juno slumbered sweetly then.\n\n2.\nNow, when the joy of Jove had its fulfilling,\nAnd Heaven’s tenth moon chronicled her relief,                       _10\nShe gave to light a babe all babes excelling,\nA schemer subtle beyond all belief;\nA shepherd of thin dreams, a cow-stealing,\nA night-watching, and door-waylaying thief,\nWho ‘mongst the Gods was soon about to thieve,                       _15\nAnd other glorious actions to achieve.\n\n3.\nThe babe was born at the first peep of day;\nHe began playing on the lyre at noon,\nAnd the same evening did he steal away\nApollo’s herds;—the fourth day of the moon                          _20\nOn which him bore the venerable May,\nFrom her immortal limbs he leaped full soon,\nNor long could in the sacred cradle keep,\nBut out to seek Apollo’s herds would creep.\n\n4.\nOut of the lofty cavern wandering                                    _25\nHe found a tortoise, and cried out—‘A treasure!’\n(For Mercury first made the tortoise sing)\nThe beast before the portal at his leisure\nThe flowery herbage was depasturing,\nMoving his feet in a deliberate measure                              _30\nOver the turf. Jove’s profitable son\nEying him laughed, and laughing thus begun:—\n\n5.\n‘A useful godsend are you to me now,\nKing of the dance, companion of the feast,\nLovely in all your nature! Welcome, you                              _35\nExcellent plaything! Where, sweet mountain-beast,\nGot you that speckled shell? Thus much I know,\nYou must come home with me and be my guest;\nYou will give joy to me, and I will do\nAll that is in my power to honour you.                               _40\n\n6.\n‘Better to be at home than out of door,\nSo come with me; and though it has been said\nThat you alive defend from magic power,\nI know you will sing sweetly when you’re dead.’\nThus having spoken, the quaint infant bore,                          _45\nLifting it from the grass on which it fed\nAnd grasping it in his delighted hold,\nHis treasured prize into the cavern old.\n\n7.\nThen scooping with a chisel of gray steel,\nHe bored the life and soul out of the beast.—                       _50\nNot swifter a swift thought of woe or weal\nDarts through the tumult of a human breast\nWhich thronging cares annoy—not swifter wheel\nThe flashes of its torture and unrest\nOut of the dizzy eyes—than Maia’s son                               _55\nAll that he did devise hath featly done.\n\n8.\n...\nAnd through the tortoise’s hard stony skin\nAt proper distances small holes he made,\nAnd fastened the cut stems of reeds within,\nAnd with a piece of leather overlaid                                 _60\nThe open space and fixed the cubits in,\nFitting the bridge to both, and stretched o’er all\nSymphonious cords of sheep-gut rhythmical.\n\n9.\nWhen he had wrought the lovely instrument,\nHe tried the chords, and made division meet,                         _65\nPreluding with the plectrum, and there went\nUp from beneath his hand a tumult sweet\nOf mighty sounds, and from his lips he sent\nA strain of unpremeditated wit\nJoyous and wild and wanton—such you may                             _70\nHear among revellers on a holiday.\n\n10.\nHe sung how Jove and May of the bright sandal\nDallied in love not quite legitimate;\nAnd his own birth, still scoffing at the scandal,\nAnd naming his own name, did celebrate;                              _75\nHis mother’s cave and servant maids he planned all\nIn plastic verse, her household stuff and state,\nPerennial pot, trippet, and brazen pan,—\nBut singing, he conceived another plan.\n\n11.\n...\nSeized with a sudden fancy for fresh meat,                           _80\nHe in his sacred crib deposited\nThe hollow lyre, and from the cavern sweet\nRushed with great leaps up to the mountain’s head,\nRevolving in his mind some subtle feat\nOf thievish craft, such as a swindler might                          _85\nDevise in the lone season of dun night.\n\n12.\nLo! the great Sun under the ocean’s bed has\nDriven steeds and chariot—the child meanwhile strode\nO’er the Pierian mountains clothed in shadows,\nWhere the immortal oxen of the God                                   _90\nAre pastured in the flowering unmown meadows,\nAnd safely stalled in a remote abode.—\nThe archer Argicide, elate and proud,\nDrove fifty from the herd, lowing aloud.\n\n13.\nHe drove them wandering o’er the sandy way,                          _95\nBut, being ever mindful of his craft,\nBackward and forward drove he them astray,\nSo that the tracks which seemed before, were aft;\nHis sandals then he threw to the ocean spray,\nAnd for each foot he wrought a kind of raft                          _100\nOf tamarisk, and tamarisk-like sprigs,\nAnd bound them in a lump with withy twigs.\n\n14.\nAnd on his feet he tied these sandals light,\nThe trail of whose wide leaves might not betray\nHis track; and then, a self-sufficing wight,                         _105\nLike a man hastening on some distant way,\nHe from Pieria’s mountain bent his flight;\nBut an old man perceived the infant pass\nDown green Onchestus heaped like beds with grass.\n\n15.\nThe old man stood dressing his sunny vine:                           _110\n‘Halloo! old fellow with the crooked shoulder!\nYou grub those stumps? before they will bear wine\nMethinks even you must grow a little older:\nAttend, I pray, to this advice of mine,\nAs you would ‘scape what might appal a bolder—                      _115\nSeeing, see not—and hearing, hear not—and—\nIf you have understanding—understand.’\n\n16.\nSo saying, Hermes roused the oxen vast;\nO’er shadowy mountain and resounding dell,\nAnd flower-paven plains, great Hermes passed;                        _120\nTill the black night divine, which favouring fell\nAround his steps, grew gray, and morning fast\nWakened the world to work, and from her cell\nSea-strewn, the Pallantean Moon sublime\nInto her watch-tower just began to climb.                            _125\n\n17.\nNow to Alpheus he had driven all\nThe broad-foreheaded oxen of the Sun;\nThey came unwearied to the lofty stall\nAnd to the water-troughs which ever run\nThrough the fresh fields—and when with rushgrass tall,              _130\nLotus and all sweet herbage, every one\nHad pastured been, the great God made them move\nTowards the stall in a collected drove.\n\n18.\nA mighty pile of wood the God then heaped,\nAnd having soon conceived the mystery                                _135\nOf fire, from two smooth laurel branches stripped\nThe bark, and rubbed them in his palms;—on high\nSuddenly forth the burning vapour leaped\nAnd the divine child saw delightedly.—\nMercury first found out for human weal                               _140\nTinder-box, matches, fire-irons, flint and steel.\n\n19.\nAnd fine dry logs and roots innumerous\nHe gathered in a delve upon the ground—\nAnd kindled them—and instantaneous\nThe strength of the fierce flame was breathed around:                _145\nAnd whilst the might of glorious Vulcan thus\nWrapped the great pile with glare and roaring sound,\nHermes dragged forth two heifers, lowing loud,\nClose to the fire—such might was in the God.\n\n20.\nAnd on the earth upon their backs he threw                           _150\nThe panting beasts, and rolled them o’er and o’er,\nAnd bored their lives out. Without more ado\nHe cut up fat and flesh, and down before\nThe fire, on spits of wood he placed the two,\nToasting their flesh and ribs, and all the gore                      _155\nPursed in the bowels; and while this was done\nHe stretched their hides over a craggy stone.\n\n21.\nWe mortals let an ox grow old, and then\nCut it up after long consideration,—\nBut joyous-minded Hermes from the glen                               _160\nDrew the fat spoils to the more open station\nOf a flat smooth space, and portioned them; and when\nHe had by lot assigned to each a ration\nOf the twelve Gods, his mind became aware\nOf all the joys which in religion are.                               _165\n\n22.\nFor the sweet savour of the roasted meat\nTempted him though immortal. Natheless\nHe checked his haughty will and did not eat,\nThough what it cost him words can scarce express,\nAnd every wish to put such morsels sweet                             _170\nDown his most sacred throat, he did repress;\nBut soon within the lofty portalled stall\nHe placed the fat and flesh and bones and all.\n\n23.\nAnd every trace of the fresh butchery\nAnd cooking, the God soon made disappear,                            _175\nAs if it all had vanished through the sky;\nHe burned the hoofs and horns and head and hair,—\nThe insatiate fire devoured them hungrily;—\nAnd when he saw that everything was clear,\nHe quenched the coal, and trampled the black dust,                   _180\nAnd in the stream his bloody sandals tossed.\n\n24.\nAll night he worked in the serene moonshine—\nBut when the light of day was spread abroad\nHe sought his natal mountain-peaks divine.\nOn his long wandering, neither Man nor God                           _185\nHad met him, since he killed Apollo’s kine,\nNor house-dog had barked at him on his road;\nNow he obliquely through the keyhole passed,\nLike a thin mist, or an autumnal blast.\n\n25.\nRight through the temple of the spacious cave                        _190\nHe went with soft light feet—as if his tread\nFell not on earth; no sound their falling gave;\nThen to his cradle he crept quick, and spread\nThe swaddling-clothes about him; and the knave\nLay playing with the covering of the bed                             _195\nWith his left hand about his knees—the right\nHeld his beloved tortoise-lyre tight.\n\n26.\nThere he lay innocent as a new-born child,\nAs gossips say; but though he was a God,\nThe Goddess, his fair mother, unbeguiled,                            _200\nKnew all that he had done being abroad:\n‘Whence come you, and from what adventure wild,\nYou cunning rogue, and where have you abode\nAll the long night, clothed in your impudence?\nWhat have you done since you departed hence?                         _205\n\n27.\n‘Apollo soon will pass within this gate\nAnd bind your tender body in a chain\nInextricably tight, and fast as fate,\nUnless you can delude the God again,\nEven when within his arms—ah, runagate!                             _210\nA pretty torment both for Gods and Men\nYour father made when he made you!’—‘Dear mother,’\nReplied sly Hermes, ‘wherefore scold and bother?\n\n28.\n‘As if I were like other babes as old,\nAnd understood nothing of what is what;                              _215\nAnd cared at all to hear my mother scold.\nI in my subtle brain a scheme have got,\nWhich whilst the sacred stars round Heaven are rolled\nWill profit you and me—nor shall our lot\nBe as you counsel, without gifts or food,                            _220\nTo spend our lives in this obscure abode.\n\n29\n‘But we will leave this shadow-peopled cave\nAnd live among the Gods, and pass each day\nIn high communion, sharing what they have\nOf profuse wealth and unexhausted prey;                              _225\nAnd from the portion which my father gave\nTo Phoebus, I will snatch my share away,\nWhich if my father will not—natheless I,\nWho am the king of robbers, can but try.\n\n30.\n‘And, if Latona’s son should find me out,                            _230\nI’ll countermine him by a deeper plan;\nI’ll pierce the Pythian temple-walls, though stout,\nAnd sack the fane of everything I can—\nCaldrons and tripods of great worth no doubt,\nEach golden cup and polished brazen pan,                             _235\nAll the wrought tapestries and garments gay.’—\nSo they together talked;—meanwhile the Day\n\n31.\nAethereal born arose out of the flood\nOf flowing Ocean, bearing light to men.\nApollo passed toward the sacred wood,                                _240\nWhich from the inmost depths of its green glen\nEchoes the voice of Neptune,—and there stood\nOn the same spot in green Onchestus then\nThat same old animal, the vine-dresser,\nWho was employed hedging his vineyard there.                         _245\n\n32.\nLatona’s glorious Son began:—‘I pray\nTell, ancient hedger of Onchestus green,\nWhether a drove of kine has passed this way,\nAll heifers with crooked horns? for they have been\nStolen from the herd in high Pieria,                                 _250\nWhere a black bull was fed apart, between\nTwo woody mountains in a neighbouring glen,\nAnd four fierce dogs watched there, unanimous as men.\n\n33.\n‘And what is strange, the author of this theft\nHas stolen the fatted heifers every one,                             _255\nBut the four dogs and the black bull are left:—\nStolen they were last night at set of sun,\nOf their soft beds and their sweet food bereft.—\nNow tell me, man born ere the world begun,\nHave you seen any one pass with the cows?’—                         _260\nTo whom the man of overhanging brows:\n\n34.\n‘My friend, it would require no common skill\nJustly to speak of everything I see:\nOn various purposes of good or ill\nMany pass by my vineyard,—and to me                                 _265\n’Tis difficult to know the invisible\nThoughts, which in all those many minds may be:—\nThus much alone I certainly can say,\nI tilled these vines till the decline of day,\n\n35.\n‘And then I thought I saw, but dare not speak                        _270\nWith certainty of such a wondrous thing,\nA child, who could not have been born a week,\nThose fair-horned cattle closely following,\nAnd in his hand he held a polished stick:\nAnd, as on purpose, he walked wavering                               _275\nFrom one side to the other of the road,\nAnd with his face opposed the steps he trod.’\n\n36.\nApollo hearing this, passed quickly on—\nNo winged omen could have shown more clear\nThat the deceiver was his father’s son.                              _280\nSo the God wraps a purple atmosphere\nAround his shoulders, and like fire is gone\nTo famous Pylos, seeking his kine there,\nAnd found their track and his, yet hardly cold,\nAnd cried—‘What wonder do mine eyes behold!                         _285\n\n37.\n‘Here are the footsteps of the horned herd\nTurned back towards their fields of asphodel;—\nBut THESE are not the tracks of beast or bird,\nGray wolf, or bear, or lion of the dell,\nOr maned Centaur—sand was never stirred                             _290\nBy man or woman thus! Inexplicable!\nWho with unwearied feet could e’er impress\nThe sand with such enormous vestiges?\n\n38.\n‘That was most strange—but this is stranger still!’\nThus having said, Phoebus impetuously                                _295\nSought high Cyllene’s forest-cinctured hill,\nAnd the deep cavern where dark shadows lie,\nAnd where the ambrosial nymph with happy will\nBore the Saturnian’s love-child, Mercury—\nAnd a delightful odour from the dew                                  _300\nOf the hill pastures, at his coming, flew.\n\n39.\nAnd Phoebus stooped under the craggy roof\nArched over the dark cavern:—Maia’s child\nPerceived that he came angry, far aloof,\nAbout the cows of which he had been beguiled;                        _305\nAnd over him the fine and fragrant woof\nOf his ambrosial swaddling-clothes he piled—\nAs among fire-brands lies a burning spark\nCovered, beneath the ashes cold and dark.\n\n40.\nThere, like an infant who had sucked his fill                        _310\nAnd now was newly washed and put to bed,\nAwake, but courting sleep with weary will,\nAnd gathered in a lump, hands, feet, and head,\nHe lay, and his beloved tortoise still\nHe grasped and held under his shoulder-blade.                        _315\nPhoebus the lovely mountain-goddess knew,\nNot less her subtle, swindling baby, who\n\n41.\nLay swathed in his sly wiles. Round every crook\nOf the ample cavern, for his kine, Apollo\nLooked sharp; and when he saw them not, he took                      _320\nThe glittering key, and opened three great hollow\nRecesses in the rock—where many a nook\nWas filled with the sweet food immortals swallow,\nAnd mighty heaps of silver and of gold\nWere piled within—a wonder to behold!                               _325\n\n42.\nAnd white and silver robes, all overwrought\nWith cunning workmanship of tracery sweet—\nExcept among the Gods there can be nought\nIn the wide world to be compared with it.\nLatona’s offspring, after having sought                              _330\nHis herds in every corner, thus did greet\nGreat Hermes:—‘Little cradled rogue, declare\nOf my illustrious heifers, where they are!\n\n43.\n‘Speak quickly! or a quarrel between us\nMust rise, and the event will be, that I                             _335\nShall hurl you into dismal Tartarus,\nIn fiery gloom to dwell eternally;\nNor shall your father nor your mother loose\nThe bars of that black dungeon—utterly\nYou shall be cast out from the light of day,                         _340\nTo rule the ghosts of men, unblessed as they.\n\n44.\nTo whom thus Hermes slily answered:—‘Son\nOf great Latona, what a speech is this!\nWhy come you here to ask me what is done\nWith the wild oxen which it seems you miss?                          _345\nI have not seen them, nor from any one\nHave heard a word of the whole business;\nIf you should promise an immense reward,\nI could not tell more than you now have heard.\n\n45.\n‘An ox-stealer should be both tall and strong,                       _350\nAnd I am but a little new-born thing,\nWho, yet at least, can think of nothing wrong:—\nMy business is to suck, and sleep, and fling\nThe cradle-clothes about me all day long,—\nOr half asleep, hear my sweet mother sing,                           _355\nAnd to be washed in water clean and warm,\nAnd hushed and kissed and kept secure from harm.\n\n46.\n‘O, let not e’er this quarrel be averred!\nThe astounded Gods would laugh at you, if e’er\nYou should allege a story so absurd                                  _360\nAs that a new-born infant forth could fare\nOut of his home after a savage herd.\nI was born yesterday—my small feet are\nToo tender for the roads so hard and rough:—\nAnd if you think that this is not enough,                            _365\n\n47.\nI swear a great oath, by my father’s head,\nThat I stole not your cows, and that I know\nOf no one else, who might, or could, or did.—\nWhatever things cows are, I do not know,\nFor I have only heard the name.’—This said                          _370\nHe winked as fast as could be, and his brow\nWas wrinkled, and a whistle loud gave he,\nLike one who hears some strange absurdity.\n\n48.\nApollo gently smiled and said:—‘Ay, ay,—\nYou cunning little rascal, you will bore                             _375\nMany a rich man’s house, and your array\nOf thieves will lay their siege before his door,\nSilent as night, in night; and many a day\nIn the wild glens rough shepherds will deplore\nThat you or yours, having an appetite,                               _380\nMet with their cattle, comrade of the night!\n\n49.\n‘And this among the Gods shall be your gift,\nTo be considered as the lord of those\nWho swindle, house-break, sheep-steal, and shop-lift;—\nBut now if you would not your last sleep doze;                       _385\nCrawl out!’—Thus saying, Phoebus did uplift\nThe subtle infant in his swaddling clothes,\nAnd in his arms, according to his wont,\nA scheme devised the illustrious Argiphont.\n\n50.\n...\n...\nAnd sneezed and shuddered—Phoebus on the grass                      _390\nHim threw, and whilst all that he had designed\nHe did perform—eager although to pass,\nApollo darted from his mighty mind\nTowards the subtle babe the following scoff:—\n‘Do not imagine this will get you off,                               _395\n\n51.\n‘You little swaddled child of Jove and May!\nAnd seized him:—‘By this omen I shall trace\nMy noble herds, and you shall lead the way.’—\nCyllenian Hermes from the grassy place,\nLike one in earnest haste to get away,                               _400\nRose, and with hands lifted towards his face\nRound both his ears up from his shoulders drew\nHis swaddling clothes, and—‘What mean you to do\n\n52.\n‘With me, you unkind God?’—said Mercury:\n‘Is it about these cows you tease me so?                             _405\nI wish the race of cows were perished!—I\nStole not your cows—I do not even know\nWhat things cows are. Alas! I well may sigh\nThat since I came into this world of woe,\nI should have ever heard the name of one—                           _410\nBut I appeal to the Saturnian’s throne.’\n\n53.\nThus Phoebus and the vagrant Mercury\nTalked without coming to an explanation,\nWith adverse purpose. As for Phoebus, he\nSought not revenge, but only information,                            _415\nAnd Hermes tried with lies and roguery\nTo cheat Apollo.—But when no evasion\nServed—for the cunning one his match had found—\nHe paced on first over the sandy ground.\n\n54.\n...\nHe of the Silver Bow the child of Jove                               _420\nFollowed behind, till to their heavenly Sire\nCame both his children, beautiful as Love,\nAnd from his equal balance did require\nA judgement in the cause wherein they strove.\nO’er odorous Olympus and its snows                                   _425\nA murmuring tumult as they came arose,—\n\n55.\nAnd from the folded depths of the great Hill,\nWhile Hermes and Apollo reverent stood\nBefore Jove’s throne, the indestructible\nImmortals rushed in mighty multitude;                                _430\nAnd whilst their seats in order due they fill,\nThe lofty Thunderer in a careless mood\nTo Phoebus said:—‘Whence drive you this sweet prey,\nThis herald-baby, born but yesterday?—\n\n56.\n‘A most important subject, trifler, this                             _435\nTo lay before the Gods!’—‘Nay, Father, nay,\nWhen you have understood the business,\nSay not that I alone am fond of prey.\nI found this little boy in a recess\nUnder Cyllene’s mountains far away—                                 _440\nA manifest and most apparent thief,\nA scandalmonger beyond all belief.\n\n57.\n‘I never saw his like either in Heaven\nOr upon earth for knavery or craft:—\nOut of the field my cattle yester-even,                              _445\nBy the low shore on which the loud sea laughed,\nHe right down to the river-ford had driven;\nAnd mere astonishment would make you daft\nTo see the double kind of footsteps strange\nHe has impressed wherever he did range.                              _450\n\n58.\n‘The cattle’s track on the black dust, full well\nIs evident, as if they went towards\nThe place from which they came—that asphodel\nMeadow, in which I feed my many herds,—\nHIS steps were most incomprehensible—                               _455\nI know not how I can describe in words\nThose tracks—he could have gone along the sands\nNeither upon his feet nor on his hands;—\n\n59.\n‘He must have had some other stranger mode\nOf moving on: those vestiges immense,                                _460\nFar as I traced them on the sandy road,\nSeemed like the trail of oak-toppings:—but thence\nNo mark nor track denoting where they trod\nThe hard ground gave:—but, working at his fence,\nA mortal hedger saw him as he passed                                 _465\nTo Pylos, with the cows, in fiery haste.\n\n60.\n‘I found that in the dark he quietly\nHad sacrificed some cows, and before light\nHad thrown the ashes all dispersedly\nAbout the road—then, still as gloomy night,                         _470\nHad crept into his cradle, either eye\nRubbing, and cogitating some new sleight.\nNo eagle could have seen him as he lay\nHid in his cavern from the peering day.\n\n61.\n‘I taxed him with the fact, when he averred                          _475\nMost solemnly that he did neither see\nNor even had in any manner heard\nOf my lost cows, whatever things cows be;\nNor could he tell, though offered a reward,\nNot even who could tell of them to me.’                              _480\nSo speaking, Phoebus sate; and Hermes then\nAddressed the Supreme Lord of Gods and Men:—\n\n62.\n‘Great Father, you know clearly beforehand\nThat all which I shall say to you is sooth;\nI am a most veracious person, and                                    _485\nTotally unacquainted with untruth.\nAt sunrise Phoebus came, but with no band\nOf Gods to bear him witness, in great wrath,\nTo my abode, seeking his heifers there,\nAnd saying that I must show him where they are,                      _490\n\n63.\n‘Or he would hurl me down the dark abyss.\nI know that every Apollonian limb\nIs clothed with speed and might and manliness,\nAs a green bank with flowers—but unlike him\nI was born yesterday, and you may guess                              _495\nHe well knew this when he indulged the whim\nOf bullying a poor little new-born thing\nThat slept, and never thought of cow-driving.\n\n64.\n‘Am I like a strong fellow who steals kine?\nBelieve me, dearest Father—such you are—                           _500\nThis driving of the herds is none of mine;\nAcross my threshold did I wander ne’er,\nSo may I thrive! I reverence the divine\nSun and the Gods, and I love you, and care\nEven for this hard accuser—who must know                            _505\nI am as innocent as they or you.\n\n65.\n‘I swear by these most gloriously-wrought portals\n(It is, you will allow, an oath of might)\nThrough which the multitude of the Immortals\nPass and repass forever, day and night,                              _510\nDevising schemes for the affairs of mortals—\nI am guiltless; and I will requite,\nAlthough mine enemy be great and strong,\nHis cruel threat—do thou defend the young!’\n\n66.\nSo speaking, the Cyllenian Argiphont                                 _515\nWinked, as if now his adversary was fitted:—\nAnd Jupiter, according to his wont,\nLaughed heartily to hear the subtle-witted\nInfant give such a plausible account,\nAnd every word a lie. But he remitted                                _520\nJudgement at present—and his exhortation\nWas, to compose the affair by arbitration.\n\n67.\nAnd they by mighty Jupiter were bidden\nTo go forth with a single purpose both,\nNeither the other chiding nor yet chidden:                           _525\nAnd Mercury with innocence and truth\nTo lead the way, and show where he had hidden\nThe mighty heifers.—Hermes, nothing loth,\nObeyed the Aegis-bearer’s will—for he\nIs able to persuade all easily.                                      _530\n\n68.\nThese lovely children of Heaven’s highest Lord\nHastened to Pylos and the pastures wide\nAnd lofty stalls by the Alphean ford,\nWhere wealth in the mute night is multiplied\nWith silent growth. Whilst Hermes drove the herd                     _535\nOut of the stony cavern, Phoebus spied\nThe hides of those the little babe had slain,\nStretched on the precipice above the plain.\n\n69.\n‘How was it possible,’ then Phoebus said,\n‘That you, a little child, born yesterday,                           _540\nA thing on mother’s milk and kisses fed,\nCould two prodigious heifers ever flay?\nEven I myself may well hereafter dread\nYour prowess, offspring of Cyllenian May,\nWhen you grow strong and tall.’—He spoke, and bound                 _545\nStiff withy bands the infant’s wrists around.\n\n70.\nHe might as well have bound the oxen wild;\nThe withy bands, though starkly interknit,\nFell at the feet of the immortal child,\nLoosened by some device of his quick wit.                            _550\nPhoebus perceived himself again beguiled,\nAnd stared—while Hermes sought some hole or pit,\nLooking askance and winking fast as thought,\nWhere he might hide himself and not be caught.\n\n71.\nSudden he changed his plan, and with strange skill                   _555\nSubdued the strong Latonian, by the might\nOf winning music, to his mightier will;\nHis left hand held the lyre, and in his right\nThe plectrum struck the chords—unconquerable\nUp from beneath his hand in circling flight                          _560\nThe gathering music rose—and sweet as Love\nThe penetrating notes did live and move\n\n72.\nWithin the heart of great Apollo—he\nListened with all his soul, and laughed for pleasure.\nClose to his side stood harping fearlessly                           _565\nThe unabashed boy; and to the measure\nOf the sweet lyre, there followed loud and free\nHis joyous voice; for he unlocked the treasure\nOf his deep song, illustrating the birth\nOf the bright Gods, and the dark desert Earth:                       _570\n\n73.\nAnd how to the Immortals every one\nA portion was assigned of all that is;\nBut chief Mnemosyne did Maia’s son\nClothe in the light of his loud melodies;—\nAnd, as each God was born or had begun,                              _575\nHe in their order due and fit degrees\nSung of his birth and being—and did move\nApollo to unutterable love.\n\n74.\nThese words were winged with his swift delight:\n‘You heifer-stealing schemer, well do you                            _580\nDeserve that fifty oxen should requite\nSuch minstrelsies as I have heard even now.\nComrade of feasts, little contriving wight,\nOne of your secrets I would gladly know,\nWhether the glorious power you now show forth                        _585\nWas folded up within you at your birth,\n\n75.\n‘Or whether mortal taught or God inspired\nThe power of unpremeditated song?\nMany divinest sounds have I admired,\nThe Olympian Gods and mortal men among;                              _590\nBut such a strain of wondrous, strange, untired,\nAnd soul-awakening music, sweet and strong,\nYet did I never hear except from thee,\nOffspring of May, impostor Mercury!\n\n76.\n‘What Muse, what skill, what unimagined use,                         _595\nWhat exercise of subtlest art, has given\nThy songs such power?—for those who hear may choose\nFrom three, the choicest of the gifts of Heaven,\nDelight, and love, and sleep,—sweet sleep, whose dews\nAre sweeter than the balmy tears of even:—                          _600\nAnd I, who speak this praise, am that Apollo\nWhom the Olympian Muses ever follow:\n\n77.\n‘And their delight is dance, and the blithe noise\nOf song and overflowing poesy;\nAnd sweet, even as desire, the liquid voice                          _605\nOf pipes, that fills the clear air thrillingly;\nBut never did my inmost soul rejoice\nIn this dear work of youthful revelry\nAs now. I wonder at thee, son of Jove;\nThy harpings and thy song are soft as love.                          _610\n\n78.\n‘Now since thou hast, although so very small,\nScience of arts so glorious, thus I swear,—\nAnd let this cornel javelin, keen and tall,\nWitness between us what I promise here,—\nThat I will lead thee to the Olympian Hall,                          _615\nHonoured and mighty, with thy mother dear,\nAnd many glorious gifts in joy will give thee,\nAnd even at the end will ne’er deceive thee.’\n\n79.\nTo whom thus Mercury with prudent speech:—\n‘Wisely hast thou inquired of my skill:                              _620\nI envy thee no thing I know to teach\nEven this day:—for both in word and will\nI would be gentle with thee; thou canst reach\nAll things in thy wise spirit, and thy sill\nIs highest in Heaven among the sons of Jove,                         _625\nWho loves thee in the fulness of his love.\n\n80.\n‘The Counsellor Supreme has given to thee\nDivinest gifts, out of the amplitude\nOf his profuse exhaustless treasury;\nBy thee, ’tis said, the depths are understood                        _630\nOf his far voice; by thee the mystery\nOf all oracular fates,—and the dread mood\nOf the diviner is breathed up; even I—\nA child—perceive thy might and majesty.\n\n81.\n‘Thou canst seek out and compass all that wit                        _635\nCan find or teach;—yet since thou wilt, come take\nThe lyre—be mine the glory giving it—\nStrike the sweet chords, and sing aloud, and wake\nThy joyous pleasure out of many a fit\nOf tranced sound—and with fleet fingers make                        _640\nThy liquid-voiced comrade talk with thee,—\nIt can talk measured music eloquently.\n\n82.\n‘Then bear it boldly to the revel loud,\nLove-wakening dance, or feast of solemn state,\nA joy by night or day—for those endowed                             _645\nWith art and wisdom who interrogate\nIt teaches, babbling in delightful mood\nAll things which make the spirit most elate,\nSoothing the mind with sweet familiar play,\nChasing the heavy shadows of dismay.                                 _650\n\n83.\n‘To those who are unskilled in its sweet tongue,\nThough they should question most impetuously\nIts hidden soul, it gossips something wrong—\nSome senseless and impertinent reply.\nBut thou who art as wise as thou art strong                          _655\nCanst compass all that thou desirest. I\nPresent thee with this music-flowing shell,\nKnowing thou canst interrogate it well.\n\n84.\n‘And let us two henceforth together feed,\nOn this green mountain-slope and pastoral plain,                     _660\nThe herds in litigation—they will breed\nQuickly enough to recompense our pain,\nIf to the bulls and cows we take good heed;—\nAnd thou, though somewhat over fond of gain,\nGrudge me not half the profit.’—Having spoke,                       _665\nThe shell he proffered, and Apollo took;\n\n85.\nAnd gave him in return the glittering lash,\nInstalling him as herdsman;—from the look\nOf Mercury then laughed a joyous flash.\nAnd then Apollo with the plectrum strook                             _670\nThe chords, and from beneath his hands a crash\nOf mighty sounds rushed up, whose music shook\nThe soul with sweetness, and like an adept\nHis sweeter voice a just accordance kept.\n\n86.\nThe herd went wandering o’er the divine mead,                        _675\nWhilst these most beautiful Sons of Jupiter\nWon their swift way up to the snowy head\nOf white Olympus, with the joyous lyre\nSoothing their journey; and their father dread\nGathered them both into familiar                                     _680\nAffection sweet,—and then, and now, and ever,\nHermes must love Him of the Golden Quiver,\n\n87.\nTo whom he gave the lyre that sweetly sounded,\nWhich skilfully he held and played thereon.\nHe piped the while, and far and wide rebounded                       _685\nThe echo of his pipings; every one\nOf the Olympians sat with joy astounded;\nWhile he conceived another piece of fun,\nOne of his old tricks—which the God of Day\nPerceiving, said:—‘I fear thee, Son of May;—                       _690\n\n88.\n‘I fear thee and thy sly chameleon spirit,\nLest thou should steal my lyre and crooked bow;\nThis glory and power thou dost from Jove inherit,\nTo teach all craft upon the earth below;\nThieves love and worship thee—it is thy merit                       _695\nTo make all mortal business ebb and flow\nBy roguery:—now, Hermes, if you dare\nBy sacred Styx a mighty oath to swear\n\n89.\n‘That you will never rob me, you will do\nA thing extremely pleasing to my heart.’                             _700\nThen Mercury swore by the Stygian dew,\nThat he would never steal his bow or dart,\nOr lay his hands on what to him was due,\nOr ever would employ his powerful art\nAgainst his Pythian fane. Then Phoebus swore                         _705\nThere was no God or Man whom he loved more.\n\n90.\n‘And I will give thee as a good-will token,\nThe beautiful wand of wealth and happiness;\nA perfect three-leaved rod of gold unbroken,\nWhose magic will thy footsteps ever bless;                           _710\nAnd whatsoever by Jove’s voice is spoken\nOf earthly or divine from its recess,\nIt, like a loving soul, to thee will speak,\nAnd more than this, do thou forbear to seek.\n\n91.\n‘For, dearest child, the divinations high                            _715\nWhich thou requirest, ’tis unlawful ever\nThat thou, or any other deity\nShould understand—and vain were the endeavour;\nFor they are hidden in Jove’s mind, and I,\nIn trust of them, have sworn that I would never                      _720\nBetray the counsels of Jove’s inmost will\nTo any God—the oath was terrible.\n\n92.\n‘Then, golden-wanded brother, ask me not\nTo speak the fates by Jupiter designed;\nBut be it mine to tell their various lot                             _725\nTo the unnumbered tribes of human-kind.\nLet good to these, and ill to those be wrought\nAs I dispense—but he who comes consigned\nBy voice and wings of perfect augury\nTo my great shrine, shall find avail in me.                          _730\n\n93.\n‘Him will I not deceive, but will assist;\nBut he who comes relying on such birds\nAs chatter vainly, who would strain and twist\nThe purpose of the Gods with idle words,\nAnd deems their knowledge light, he shall have missed                _735\nHis road—whilst I among my other hoards\nHis gifts deposit. Yet, O son of May,\nI have another wondrous thing to say.\n\n96.\n‘There are three Fates, three virgin Sisters, who\nRejoicing in their wind-outspeeding wings,                           _740\nTheir heads with flour snowed over white and new,\nSit in a vale round which Parnassus flings\nIts circling skirts—from these I have learned true\nVaticinations of remotest things.\nMy father cared not. Whilst they search out dooms,                   _745\nThey sit apart and feed on honeycombs.\n\n95.\n‘They, having eaten the fresh honey, grow\nDrunk with divine enthusiasm, and utter\nWith earnest willingness the truth they know;\nBut if deprived of that sweet food, they mutter                      _750\nAll plausible delusions;—these to you\nI give;—if you inquire, they will not stutter;\nDelight your own soul with them:—any man\nYou would instruct may profit if he can.\n\n96.\n‘Take these and the fierce oxen, Maia’s child—                      _755\nO’er many a horse and toil-enduring mule,\nO’er jagged-jawed lions, and the wild\nWhite-tusked boars, o’er all, by field or pool,\nOf cattle which the mighty Mother mild\nNourishes in her bosom, thou shalt rule—                            _760\nThou dost alone the veil from death uplift—\nThou givest not—yet this is a great gift.’\n\n97.\nThus King Apollo loved the child of May\nIn truth, and Jove covered their love with joy.\nHermes with Gods and Men even from that day                          _765\nMingled, and wrought the latter much annoy,\nAnd little profit, going far astray\nThrough the dun night. Farewell, delightful Boy,\nOf Jove and Maia sprung,—never by me,\nNor thou, nor other songs, shall unremembered be.                    _770\n\n_13 cow-stealing]qy. cattle-stealing?\n_57 stony Boscombe manuscript. Harvard manuscript; strong edition 1824.\n_252 neighbouring]neighbour Harvard manuscript.\n_336 hurl Harvard manuscript, editions 1839; haul edition 1824.\n_402 Round]Roused edition 1824 only.\n_488 wrath]ruth Harvard manuscript.\n_580 heifer-stealing]heifer-killing Harvard manuscript.\n_673 and like 1839, 1st edition; as of edition 1824, Harvard manuscript.\n_713 loving]living cj. Rossetti.\n_761 from Harvard manuscript; of editions 1824, 1839.\n_764 their love with joy Harvard manuscript; them with love and joy,\n     editions 1824, 1839.\n_767 going]wandering Harvard manuscript.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Homer’S Hymn To Castor And Pollux.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition; dated\n1818.]\n\nYe wild-eyed Muses, sing the Twins of Jove,\nWhom the fair-ankled Leda, mixed in love\nWith mighty Saturn’s Heaven-obscuring Child,\nOn Taygetus, that lofty mountain wild,\nBrought forth in joy: mild Pollux, void of blame,                    _5\nAnd steed-subduing Castor, heirs of fame.\nThese are the Powers who earth-born mortals save\nAnd ships, whose flight is swift along the wave.\nWhen wintry tempests o’er the savage sea\nAre raging, and the sailors tremblingly                              _10\nCall on the Twins of Jove with prayer and vow,\nGathered in fear upon the lofty prow,\nAnd sacrifice with snow-white lambs,—the wind\nAnd the huge billow bursting close behind,\nEven then beneath the weltering waters bear                          _15\nThe staggering ship—they suddenly appear,\nOn yellow wings rushing athwart the sky,\nAnd lull the blasts in mute tranquillity,\nAnd strew the waves on the white Ocean’s bed,\nFair omen of the voyage; from toil and dread                         _20\nThe sailors rest, rejoicing in the sight,\nAnd plough the quiet sea in safe delight.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Homer’S Hymn To The Moon.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition;\ndated 1818.]\n\nDaughters of Jove, whose voice is melody,\nMuses, who know and rule all minstrelsy\nSing the wide-winged Moon! Around the earth,\nFrom her immortal head in Heaven shot forth,\nFar light is scattered—boundless glory springs;                     _5\nWhere’er she spreads her many-beaming wings\nThe lampless air glows round her golden crown.\n\nBut when the Moon divine from Heaven is gone\nUnder the sea, her beams within abide,\nTill, bathing her bright limbs in Ocean’s tide,                      _10\nClothing her form in garments glittering far,\nAnd having yoked to her immortal car\nThe beam-invested steeds whose necks on high\nCurve back, she drives to a remoter sky\nA western Crescent, borne impetuously.                               _15\nThen is made full the circle of her light,\nAnd as she grows, her beams more bright and bright\nAre poured from Heaven, where she is hovering then,\nA wonder and a sign to mortal men.\n\nThe Son of Saturn with this glorious Power                           _20\nMingled in love and sleep—to whom she bore\nPandeia, a bright maid of beauty rare\nAmong the Gods, whose lives eternal are.\n\nHail Queen, great Moon, white-armed Divinity,\nFair-haired and favourable! thus with thee                           _25\nMy song beginning, by its music sweet\nShall make immortal many a glorious feat\nOf demigods, with lovely lips, so well\nWhich minstrels, servants of the Muses, tell.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Homer’S Hymn To The Sun.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition;\ndated 1818.]\n\nOffspring of Jove, Calliope, once more\nTo the bright Sun, thy hymn of music pour;\nWhom to the child of star-clad Heaven and Earth\nEuryphaessa, large-eyed nymph, brought forth;\nEuryphaessa, the famed sister fair                                   _5\nOf great Hyperion, who to him did bear\nA race of loveliest children; the young Morn,\nWhose arms are like twin roses newly born,\nThe fair-haired Moon, and the immortal Sun,\nWho borne by heavenly steeds his race doth run                       _10\nUnconquerably, illuming the abodes\nOf mortal Men and the eternal Gods.\n\nFiercely look forth his awe-inspiring eyes,\nBeneath his golden helmet, whence arise\nAnd are shot forth afar, clear beams of light;                       _15\nHis countenance, with radiant glory bright,\nBeneath his graceful locks far shines around,\nAnd the light vest with which his limbs are bound,\nOf woof aethereal delicately twined,\nGlows in the stream of the uplifting wind.                           _20\nHis rapid steeds soon bear him to the West;\nWhere their steep flight his hands divine arrest,\nAnd the fleet car with yoke of gold, which he\nSends from bright Heaven beneath the shadowy sea.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Homer’S Hymn To The Earth: Mother Of All.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition;\ndated 1818.]\n\nO universal Mother, who dost keep\nFrom everlasting thy foundations deep,\nEldest of things, Great Earth, I sing of thee!\nAll shapes that have their dwelling in the sea,\nAll things that fly, or on the ground divine                         _5\nLive, move, and there are nourished—these are thine;\nThese from thy wealth thou dost sustain; from thee\nFair babes are born, and fruits on every tree\nHang ripe and large, revered Divinity!\n\nThe life of mortal men beneath thy sway                              _10\nIs held; thy power both gives and takes away!\nHappy are they whom thy mild favours nourish;\nAll things unstinted round them grow and flourish.\nFor them, endures the life-sustaining field\nIts load of harvest, and their cattle yield                          _15\nLarge increase, and their house with wealth is filled.\nSuch honoured dwell in cities fair and free,\nThe homes of lovely women, prosperously;\nTheir sons exult in youth’s new budding gladness,\nAnd their fresh daughters free from care or sadness,                 _20\nWith bloom-inwoven dance and happy song,\nOn the soft flowers the meadow-grass among,\nLeap round them sporting—such delights by thee\nAre given, rich Power, revered Divinity.\n\nMother of gods, thou Wife of starry Heaven,                          _25\nFarewell! be thou propitious, and be given\nA happy life for this brief melody,\nNor thou nor other songs shall unremembered be.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Homer’S Hymn To Minerva.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition;\ndated 1818.]\n\nI sing the glorious Power with azure eyes,\nAthenian Pallas! tameless, chaste, and wise,\nTritogenia, town-preserving Maid,\nRevered and mighty; from his awful head\nWhom Jove brought forth, in warlike armour dressed,                  _5\nGolden, all radiant! wonder strange possessed\nThe everlasting Gods that Shape to see,\nShaking a javelin keen, impetuously\nRush from the crest of Aegis-bearing Jove;\nFearfully Heaven was shaken, and did move                            _10\nBeneath the might of the Cerulean-eyed;\nEarth dreadfully resounded, far and wide;\nAnd, lifted from its depths, the sea swelled high\nIn purple billows, the tide suddenly\nStood still, and great Hyperion’s son long time                      _15\nChecked his swift steeds, till, where she stood sublime,\nPallas from her immortal shoulders threw\nThe arms divine; wise Jove rejoiced to view.\nChild of the Aegis-bearer, hail to thee,\nNor thine nor others’ praise shall unremembered be.                  _20\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Homer’S Hymn To Venus.",
    "body": "[Published by Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862; dated 1818.]\n\n[VERSES 1-55, WITH SOME OMISSIONS.]\n\nMuse, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite,\nWho wakens with her smile the lulled delight\nOf sweet desire, taming the eternal kings\nOf Heaven, and men, and all the living things\nThat fleet along the air, or whom the sea,                           _5\nOr earth, with her maternal ministry,\nNourish innumerable, thy delight\nAll seek ... O crowned Aphrodite!\nThree spirits canst thou not deceive or quell:—\nMinerva, child of Jove, who loves too well                           _10\nFierce war and mingling combat, and the fame\nOf glorious deeds, to heed thy gentle flame.\nDiana ... golden-shafted queen,\nIs tamed not by thy smiles; the shadows green\nOf the wild woods, the bow, the...                                   _15\nAnd piercing cries amid the swift pursuit\nOf beasts among waste mountains,—such delight\nIs hers, and men who know and do the right.\nNor Saturn’s first-born daughter, Vesta chaste,\nWhom Neptune and Apollo wooed the last,                              _20\nSuch was the will of aegis-bearing Jove;\nBut sternly she refused the ills of Love,\nAnd by her mighty Father’s head she swore\nAn oath not unperformed, that evermore\nA virgin she would live mid deities                                  _25\nDivine: her father, for such gentle ties\nRenounced, gave glorious gifts—thus in his hall\nShe sits and feeds luxuriously. O’er all\nIn every fane, her honours first arise\nFrom men—the eldest of Divinities.                                  _30\n\nThese spirits she persuades not, nor deceives,\nBut none beside escape, so well she weaves\nHer unseen toils; nor mortal men, nor gods\nWho live secure in their unseen abodes.\nShe won the soul of him whose fierce delight                         _35\nIs thunder—first in glory and in might.\nAnd, as she willed, his mighty mind deceiving,\nWith mortal limbs his deathless limbs inweaving,\nConcealed him from his spouse and sister fair,\nWhom to wise Saturn ancient Rhea bare.                               _40\nbut in return,\nIn Venus Jove did soft desire awaken,\nThat by her own enchantments overtaken,\nShe might, no more from human union free,\nBurn for a nursling of mortality.                                    _45\nFor once amid the assembled Deities,\nThe laughter-loving Venus from her eyes\n\nShot forth the light of a soft starlight smile,\nAnd boasting said, that she, secure the while,\nCould bring at Will to the assembled Gods                            _50\nThe mortal tenants of earth’s dark abodes,\nAnd mortal offspring from a deathless stem\nShe could produce in scorn and spite of them.\nTherefore he poured desire into her breast\nOf young Anchises,                                                   _55\nFeeding his herds among the mossy fountains\nOf the wide Ida’s many-folded mountains,—\nWhom Venus saw, and loved, and the love clung\nLike wasting fire her senses wild among.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Satyric Drama Translated From The Greek Of Euripides.",
    "body": "[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824; dated 1819.\nAmongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian there is a copy,\n‘practically complete,’ which has been collated by Mr. C.D. Locock. See\n“Examination”, etc., 1903, pages 64-70. ‘Though legible throughout, and\ncomparatively free from corrections, it has the appearance of being a\nfirst draft’ (Locock).]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Silenus:",
    "body": "O Bacchus, what a world of toil, both now\nAnd ere these limbs were overworn with age,\nHave I endured for thee! First, when thou fled’st\nThe mountain-nymphs who nursed thee, driven afar\nBy the strange madness Juno sent upon thee;                          _5\nThen in the battle of the Sons of Earth,\nWhen I stood foot by foot close to thy side,\nNo unpropitious fellow-combatant,\nAnd, driving through his shield my winged spear,\nSlew vast Enceladus. Consider now,                                   _10\nIs it a dream of which I speak to thee?\nBy Jove it is not, for you have the trophies!\nAnd now I suffer more than all before.\nFor when I heard that Juno had devised\nA tedious voyage for you, I put to sea                               _15\nWith all my children quaint in search of you,\nAnd I myself stood on the beaked prow\nAnd fixed the naked mast; and all my boys\nLeaning upon their oars, with splash and strain\nMade white with foam the green and purple sea,—                     _20\nAnd so we sought you, king. We were sailing\nNear Malea, when an eastern wind arose,\nAnd drove us to this waste Aetnean rock;\nThe one-eyed children of the Ocean God,\nThe man-destroying Cyclopses, inhabit,                               _25\nOn this wild shore, their solitary caves,\nAnd one of these, named Polypheme, has caught us\nTo be his slaves; and so, for all delight\nOf Bacchic sports, sweet dance and melody,\nWe keep this lawless giant’s wandering flocks.                       _30\nMy sons indeed on far declivities,\nYoung things themselves, tend on the youngling sheep,\nBut I remain to fill the water-casks,\nOr sweeping the hard floor, or ministering\nSome impious and abominable meal                                     _35\nTo the fell Cyclops. I am wearied of it!\nAnd now I must scrape up the littered floor\nWith this great iron rake, so to receive\nMy absent master and his evening sheep\nIn a cave neat and clean. Even now I see                             _40\nMy children tending the flocks hitherward.\nHa! what is this? are your Sicinnian measures\nEven now the same, as when with dance and song\nYou brought young Bacchus to Althaea’s halls?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Strophe:",
    "body": "Where has he of race divine                                          _45\nWandered in the winding rocks?\nHere the air is calm and fine\nFor the father of the flocks;—\nHere the grass is soft and sweet,\nAnd the river-eddies meet                                            _50\nIn the trough beside the cave,\nBright as in their fountain wave.—\nNeither here, nor on the dew\nOf the lawny uplands feeding?\nOh, you come!—a stone at you                                        _55\nWill I throw to mend your breeding;—\nGet along, you horned thing,\nWild, seditious, rambling!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Epode:",
    "body": "An Iacchic melody\nTo the golden Aphrodite                                              _60\nWill I lift, as erst did I\nSeeking her and her delight\nWith the Maenads, whose white feet\nTo the music glance and fleet.\nBacchus, O beloved, where,                                           _65\nShaking wide thy yellow hair,\nWanderest thou alone, afar?\nTo the one-eyed Cyclops, we,\nWho by right thy servants are,\nMinister in misery,                                                  _70\nIn these wretched goat-skins clad,\nFar from thy delights and thee.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Silenus:",
    "body": "I see a Grecian vessel on the coast,\nAnd thence the rowers with some general\nApproaching to this cave.—About their necks\nHang empty vessels, as they wanted food,\nAnd water-flasks.—Oh, miserable strangers!                          _80\nWhence come they, that they know not what and who\nMy master is, approaching in ill hour\nThe inhospitable roof of Polypheme,\nAnd the Cyclopian jaw-bone, man-destroying?\nBe silent, Satyrs, while I ask and hear                              _85\nWhence coming, they arrive the Aetnean hill.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ulysses:",
    "body": "Friends, can you show me some clear water-spring,\nThe remedy of our thirst? Will any one\nFurnish with food seamen in want of it?\nHa! what is this? We seem to be arrived                              _90\nAt the blithe court of Bacchus. I observe\nThis sportive band of Satyrs near the caves.\nFirst let me greet the elder.—Hail!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Silenus:",
    "body": "The wanton wretch! she was bewitched to see                          _160\nThe many-coloured anklets and the chain\nOf woven gold which girt the neck of Paris,\nAnd so she left that good man Menelaus.\nThere should be no more women in the world\nBut such as are reserved for me alone.—                             _165\nSee, here are sheep, and here are goats, Ulysses,\nHere are unsparing cheeses of pressed milk;\nTake them; depart with what good speed ye may;\nFirst leaving my reward, the Bacchic dew\nOf joy-inspiring grapes.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ulysses:",
    "body": "That will I never do!\nThe mighty Troy would be indeed disgraced\nIf I should fly one man. How many times\nHave I withstood, with shield immovable.\nTen thousand Phrygians!—if I needs must die,                        _180\nYet will I die with glory;—if I live,\nThe praise which I have gained will yet remain.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyclops:",
    "body": "What is this tumult? Bacchus is not here,\nNor tympanies nor brazen castanets.                                  _185\nHow are my young lambs in the cavern? Milking\nTheir dams or playing by their sides? And is\nThe new cheese pressed into the bulrush baskets?\nSpeak! I’ll beat some of you till you rain tears—\nLook up, not downwards when I speak to you.                          _190",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyclops:",
    "body": "By no means.—\n...\nWhat is this crowd I see beside the stalls?                          _200\nOutlaws or thieves? for near my cavern-home\nI see my young lambs coupled two by two\nWith willow bands; mixed with my cheeses lie\nTheir implements; and this old fellow here\nHas his bald head broken with stripes.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Silenus:",
    "body": "I told them so, but they bore off your things,\nAnd ate the cheese in spite of all I said,\nAnd carried out the lambs—and said, moreover,\nThey’d pin you down with a three-cubit collar,\nAnd pull your vitals out through your one eye,                       _215\nFurrow your back with stripes, then, binding you,\nThrow you as ballast into the ship’s hold,\nAnd then deliver you, a slave, to move\nEnormous rocks, or found a vestibule.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyclops:",
    "body": "In truth? Nay, haste, and place in order quickly\nThe cooking-knives, and heap upon the hearth,                        _221\nAnd kindle it, a great faggot of wood.—\nAs soon as they are slaughtered, they shall fill\nMy belly, broiling warm from the live coals,\nOr boiled and seethed within the bubbling caldron.                   _225\nI am quite sick of the wild mountain game;\nOf stags and lions I have gorged enough,\nAnd I grow hungry for the flesh of men.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ulysses:",
    "body": "Hear, Cyclops, a plain tale on the other side.\nWe, wanting to buy food, came from our ship\nInto the neighbourhood of your cave, and here\nThis old Silenus gave us in exchange                                 _235\nThese lambs for wine, the which he took and drank,\nAnd all by mutual compact, without force.\nThere is no word of truth in what he says,\nFor slyly he was selling all your store.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Silenus:",
    "body": "Cyclops, I swear by Neptune who begot thee,\nBy mighty Triton and by Nereus old,\nCalypso and the glaucous Ocean Nymphs,\nThe sacred waves and all the race of fishes—\nBe these the witnesses, my dear sweet master,                        _245\nMy darling little Cyclops, that I never\nGave any of your stores to these false strangers;—\nIf I speak false may those whom most I love,\nMy children, perish wretchedly!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ulysses:",
    "body": "’Twas the Gods’ work—no mortal was in fault.                        _265\nBut, O great Offspring of the Ocean-King,\nWe pray thee and admonish thee with freedom,\nThat thou dost spare thy friends who visit thee,\nAnd place no impious food within thy jaws.\nFor in the depths of Greece we have upreared                         _270\nTemples to thy great Father, which are all\nHis homes. The sacred bay of Taenarus\nRemains inviolate, and each dim recess\nScooped high on the Malean promontory,\nAnd aery Sunium’s silver-veined crag,                                _275\nWhich divine Pallas keeps unprofaned ever,\nThe Gerastian asylums, and whate’er\nWithin wide Greece our enterprise has kept\nFrom Phrygian contumely; and in which\nYou have a common care, for you inhabit                              _280\nThe skirts of Grecian land, under the roots\nOf Aetna and its crags, spotted with fire.\nTurn then to converse under human laws,\nReceive us shipwrecked suppliants, and provide\nFood, clothes, and fire, and hospitable gifts;                       _285\nNor fixing upon oxen-piercing spits\nOur limbs, so fill your belly and your jaws.\nPriam’s wide land has widowed Greece enough;\nAnd weapon-winged murder leaped together\nEnough of dead, and wives are husbandless,                           _290\nAnd ancient women and gray fathers wail\nTheir childless age;—if you should roast the rest—\nAnd ’tis a bitter feast that you prepare—\nWhere then would any turn? Yet be persuaded;\nForgo the lust of your jaw-bone; prefer                              _295\nPious humanity to wicked will:\nMany have bought too dear their evil joys.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyclops:",
    "body": "Wealth, my good fellow, is the wise man’s God,\nAll other things are a pretence and boast.\nWhat are my father’s ocean promontories,\nThe sacred rocks whereon he dwells, to me?\nStranger, I laugh to scorn Jove’s thunderbolt,                       _305\nI know not that his strength is more than mine.\nAs to the rest I care not.—When he pours\nRain from above, I have a close pavilion\nUnder this rock, in which I lie supine,\nFeasting on a roast calf or some wild beast,                         _310\nAnd drinking pans of milk, and gloriously\nEmulating the thunder of high Heaven.\nAnd when the Thracian wind pours down the snow,\nI wrap my body in the skins of beasts,\nKindle a fire, and bid the snow whirl on.                            _315\nThe earth, by force, whether it will or no,\nBringing forth grass, fattens my flocks and herds,\nWhich, to what other God but to myself\nAnd this great belly, first of deities,\nShould I be bound to sacrifice? I well know                          _320\nThe wise man’s only Jupiter is this,\nTo eat and drink during his little day,\nAnd give himself no care. And as for those\nWho complicate with laws the life of man,\nI freely give them tears for their reward.                           _325\nI will not cheat my soul of its delight,\nOr hesitate in dining upon you:—\nAnd that I may be quit of all demands,\nThese are my hospitable gifts;—fierce fire\nAnd yon ancestral caldron, which o’er-bubbling                       _330\nShall finely cook your miserable flesh.\nCreep in!—\n\n...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ulysses:",
    "body": "Ai! ai! I have escaped the Trojan toils,\nI have escaped the sea, and now I fall\nUnder the cruel grasp of one impious man.                            _335\nO Pallas, Mistress, Goddess, sprung from Jove,\nNow, now, assist me! Mightier toils than Troy\nAre these;—I totter on the chasms of peril;—\nAnd thou who inhabitest the thrones\nOf the bright stars, look, hospitable Jove,                          _340\nUpon this outrage of thy deity,\nOtherwise be considered as no God!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus (Alone):",
    "body": "For your gaping gulf and your gullet wide,\nThe ravin is ready on every side,\nThe limbs of the strangers are cooked and done;                      _345\nThere is boiled meat, and roast meat, and meat from the coal,\nYou may chop it, and tear it, and gnash it for fun,\nAn hairy goat’s-skin contains the whole.\nLet me but escape, and ferry me o’er\nThe stream of your wrath to a safer shore.                           _350\nThe Cyclops Aetnean is cruel and bold,\nHe murders the strangers\nThat sit on his hearth,\nAnd dreads no avengers\nTo rise from the earth.                                              _355\nHe roasts the men before they are cold,\nHe snatches them broiling from the coal,\nAnd from the caldron pulls them whole,\nAnd minces their flesh and gnaws their bone\nWith his cursed teeth, till all be gone.                             _360\nFarewell, foul pavilion:\nFarewell, rites of dread!\nThe Cyclops vermilion,\nWith slaughter uncloying,\nNow feasts on the dead,                                              _365\nIn the flesh of strangers joying!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ulysses:",
    "body": "Soon as we came into this craggy place,\nKindling a fire, he cast on the broad hearth                         _375\nThe knotty limbs of an enormous oak,\nThree waggon-loads at least, and then he strewed\nUpon the ground, beside the red firelight,\nHis couch of pine-leaves; and he milked the cows,\nAnd pouring forth the white milk, filled a bowl                      _380\nThree cubits wide and four in depth, as much\nAs would contain ten amphorae, and bound it\nWith ivy wreaths; then placed upon the fire\nA brazen pot to boil, and made red hot\nThe points of spits, not sharpened with the sickle                   _385\nBut with a fruit tree bough, and with the jaws\nOf axes for Aetnean slaughterings.\nAnd when this God-abandoned Cook of Hell\nHad made all ready, he seized two of us\nAnd killed them in a kind of measured manner;                        _390\nFor he flung one against the brazen rivets\nOf the huge caldron, and seized the other\nBy the foot’s tendon, and knocked out his brains\nUpon the sharp edge of the craggy stone:\nThen peeled his flesh with a great cooking-knife                     _395\nAnd put him down to roast. The other’s limbs\nHe chopped into the caldron to be boiled.\nAnd I, with the tears raining from my eyes,\nStood near the Cyclops, ministering to him;\nThe rest, in the recesses of the cave,                               _400\nClung to the rock like bats, bloodless with fear.\nWhen he was filled with my companions’ flesh,\nHe threw himself upon the ground and sent\nA loathsome exhalation from his maw.\nThen a divine thought came to me. I filled                           _405\nThe cup of Maron, and I offered him\nTo taste, and said:—‘Child of the Ocean God,\nBehold what drink the vines of Greece produce,\nThe exultation and the joy of Bacchus.’\nHe, satiated with his unnatural food,                                _410\nReceived it, and at one draught drank it off,\nAnd taking my hand, praised me:—‘Thou hast given\nA sweet draught after a sweet meal, dear guest.’\nAnd I, perceiving that it pleased him, filled\nAnother cup, well knowing that the wine                              _415\nWould wound him soon and take a sure revenge.\nAnd the charm fascinated him, and I\nPlied him cup after cup, until the drink\nHad warmed his entrails, and he sang aloud\nIn concert with my wailing fellow-seamen                             _420\nA hideous discord—and the cavern rung.\nI have stolen out, so that if you will\nYou may achieve my safety and your own.\nBut say, do you desire, or not, to fly\nThis uncompanionable man, and dwell                                  _425\nAs was your wont among the Grecian Nymphs\nWithin the fanes of your beloved God?\nYour father there within agrees to it,\nBut he is weak and overcome with wine,\nAnd caught as if with bird-lime by the cup,                          _430\nHe claps his wings and crows in doting joy.\nYou who are young escape with me, and find\nBacchus your ancient friend; unsuited he\nTo this rude Cyclops.\n\n_382 ten cj. Swinburne; four 1824; four cancelled for ten (possibly) B.\n_387 I confess I do not understand this.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.]\n_416 take]grant (as alternative) B.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ulysses:",
    "body": "I will dissuade him from this plan, by saying                        _450\nIt were unwise to give the Cyclopses\nThis precious drink, which if enjoyed alone\nWould make life sweeter for a longer time.\nWhen, vanquished by the Bacchic power, he sleeps,\nThere is a trunk of olive wood within,                               _455\nWhose point having made sharp with this good sword\nI will conceal in fire, and when I see\nIt is alight, will fix it, burning yet,\nWithin the socket of the Cyclops’ eye\nAnd melt it out with fire—as when a man                             _460\nTurns by its handle a great auger round,\nFitting the framework of a ship with beams,\nSo will I, in the Cyclops’ fiery eye\nTurn round the brand and dry the pupil up.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ulysses:",
    "body": "Silence now!                                                         _475\nYe know the close device—and when I call,\nLook ye obey the masters of the craft.\nI will not save myself and leave behind\nMy comrades in the cave: I might escape,\nHaving got clear from that obscure recess,                           _480\nBut ’twere unjust to leave in jeopardy\nThe dear companions who sailed here with me.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 1 [Song Within]:",
    "body": "Listen! listen! he is coming,\nA most hideous discord humming.\nDrunken, museless, awkward, yelling,\nFar along his rocky dwelling;                                        _490\nLet us with some comic spell\nTeach the yet unteachable.\nBy all means he must be blinded,\nIf my counsel be but minded.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Semichorus 2:",
    "body": "Happy thou made odorous                                              _495\nWith the dew which sweet grapes weep,\nTo the village hastening thus,\nSeek the vines that soothe to sleep;\nHaving first embraced thy friend,\nThou in luxury without end,                                          _500\nWith the strings of yellow hair,\nOf thy voluptuous leman fair,\nShalt sit playing on a bed!—\nSpeak! what door is opened?\n\n_495 thou cj. Swinburne, Rossetti; those 1824;\n    ‘the word is doubtful in B.’ (Locock).\n_500 Thou B.; There 1824.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyclops:",
    "body": "Ha! ha! ha! I’m full of wine,                                        _505\nHeavy with the joy divine,\nWith the young feast oversated;\nLike a merchant’s vessel freighted\nTo the water’s edge, my crop\nIs laden to the gullet’s top.                                        _510\nThe fresh meadow grass of spring\nTempts me forth thus wandering\nTo my brothers on the mountains,\nWho shall share the wine’s sweet fountains.\nBring the cask, O stranger, bring!                                   _515",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "One with eyes the fairest\nCometh from his dwelling;\nSome one loves thee, rarest\nBright beyond my telling.\nIn thy grace thou shinest                                            _520\nLike some nymph divinest\nIn her caverns dewy:—\nAll delights pursue thee,\nSoon pied flowers, sweet-breathing,\nShall thy head be wreathing.                                         _525",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyclops:",
    "body": "Ho! ho! I can scarce rise. What pure delight!                        _585\nThe heavens and earth appear to whirl about\nConfusedly. I see the throne of Jove\nAnd the clear congregation of the Gods.\nNow if the Graces tempted me to kiss\nI would not—for the loveliest of them all                           _590\nI would not leave this Ganymede.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ulysses:",
    "body": "Come, boys of Bacchus, children of high race,\nThis man within is folded up in sleep,                               _595\nAnd soon will vomit flesh from his fell maw;\nThe brand under the shed thrusts out its smoke,\nNo preparation needs, but to burn out\nThe monster’s eye;—but bear yourselves like men.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ulysses:",
    "body": "Vulcan, Aetnean king! burn out with fire\nThe shining eye of this thy neighbouring monster!\nAnd thou, O Sleep, nursling of gloomy Night,                         _605\nDescend unmixed on this God-hated beast,\nAnd suffer not Ulysses and his comrades,\nReturning from their famous Trojan toils,\nTo perish by this man, who cares not either\nFor God or mortal; or I needs must think                             _610\nThat Chance is a supreme divinity,\nAnd things divine are subject to her power.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "Soon a crab the throat will seize\nOf him who feeds upon his guest,\nFire will burn his lamp-like eyes                                    _615\nIn revenge of such a feast!\nA great oak stump now is lying\nIn the ashes yet undying.\nCome, Maron, come!\nRaging let him fix the doom,                                         _620\nLet him tear the eyelid up\nOf the Cyclops—that his cup\nMay be evil!\nOh! I long to dance and revel\nWith sweet Bromian, long desired,                                    _625\nIn loved ivy wreaths attired;\nLeaving this abandoned home—\nWill the moment ever come?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ulysses:",
    "body": "Be silent, ye wild things! Nay, hold your peace,\nAnd keep your lips quite close; dare not to breathe,                 _630\nOr spit, or e’en wink, lest ye wake the monster,\nUntil his eye be tortured out with fire.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "With pitying my own back and my back-bone,\nAnd with not wishing all my teeth knocked out,\nThis cowardice comes of itself—but stay,\nI know a famous Orphic incantation                                   _650\nTo make the brand stick of its own accord\nInto the skull of this one-eyed son of Earth.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ulysses:",
    "body": "Of old I knew ye thus by nature; now\nI know ye better.—I will use the aid\nOf my own comrades. Yet though weak of hand                          _655\nSpeak cheerfully, that so ye may awaken\nThe courage of my friends with your blithe words.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "This I will do with peril of my life,\nAnd blind you with my exhortations, Cyclops.\nHasten and thrust,                                                   _660\nAnd parch up to dust,\nThe eye of the beast\nWho feeds on his guest.\nBurn and blind\nThe Aetnean hind!                                                    _665\nScoop and draw,\nBut beware lest he claw\nYour limbs near his maw.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyclops:",
    "body": "It was that stranger ruined me:—the wretch                          _685\nFirst gave me wine and then burned out my eye,\nFor wine is strong and hard to struggle with.\nHave they escaped, or are they yet within?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyclops:",
    "body": "Ai! ai! the ancient oracle is accomplished;                          _705\nIt said that I should have my eyesight blinded\nBy your coming from Troy, yet it foretold\nThat you should pay the penalty for this\nBy wandering long over the homeless sea.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyclops:",
    "body": "Not so, if, whelming you with this huge stone,\nI can crush you and all your men together;\nI will descend upon the shore, though blind,                         _715\nGroping my way adown the steep ravine.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "From The Greek Of Plato.",
    "body": "Kissing Helena, together\nWith my kiss, my soul beside it\nCame to my lips, and there I kept it,—\nFor the poor thing had wandered thither,\nTo follow where the kiss should guide it,                            _5\nOh, cruel I, to intercept it!\n\n\n3.—SPIRIT OF PLATO.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "From The Greek.",
    "body": "Eagle! why soarest thou above that tomb?\nTo what sublime and star-ypaven home\nFloatest thou?—\nI am the image of swift Plato’s spirit,\nAscending heaven; Athens doth inherit                                _5\nHis corpse below.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "From The Greek.",
    "body": "A man who was about to hang himself,\nFinding a purse, then threw away his rope;\nThe owner, coming to reclaim his pelf,\nThe halter found; and used it. So is Hope\nChanged for Despair—one laid upon the shelf,                        _5\nWe take the other. Under Heaven’s high cope\nFortune is God—all you endure and do\nDepends on circumstance as much as you.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prom The Greek Of Bion.",
    "body": "[Published by Forman, “Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1876.]\n\nI mourn Adonis dead—loveliest Adonis—\nDead, dead Adonis—and the Loves lament.\nSleep no more, Venus, wrapped in purple woof—\nWake violet-stoled queen, and weave the crown\nOf Death,—’tis Misery calls,—for he is dead.                       _5\n\nThe lovely one lies wounded in the mountains,\nHis white thigh struck with the white tooth; he scarce\nYet breathes; and Venus hangs in agony there.\nThe dark blood wanders o’er his snowy limbs,\nHis eyes beneath their lids are lustreless,                          _10\nThe rose has fled from his wan lips, and there\nThat kiss is dead, which Venus gathers yet.\n\nA deep, deep wound Adonis...\nA deeper Venus bears upon her heart.\nSee, his beloved dogs are gathering round—                          _15\nThe Oread nymphs are weeping—Aphrodite\nWith hair unbound is wandering through the woods,\n‘Wildered, ungirt, unsandalled—the thorns pierce\nHer hastening feet and drink her sacred blood.\nBitterly screaming out, she is driven on                             _20\nThrough the long vales; and her Assyrian boy,\nHer love, her husband, calls—the purple blood\nFrom his struck thigh stains her white navel now,\nHer bosom, and her neck before like snow.\n\nAlas for Cytherea—the Loves mourn—                                 _25\nThe lovely, the beloved is gone!—and now\nHer sacred beauty vanishes away.\nFor Venus whilst Adonis lived was fair—\nAlas! her loveliness is dead with him.\nThe oaks and mountains cry, Ai! ai! Adonis!                          _30\nThe springs their waters change to tears and weep—\nThe flowers are withered up with grief...\n\nAi! ai! ... Adonis is dead\nEcho resounds ... Adonis dead.\nWho will weep not thy dreadful woe. O Venus?                         _35\nSoon as she saw and knew the mortal wound\nOf her Adonis—saw the life-blood flow\nFrom his fair thigh, now wasting,—wailing loud\nShe clasped him, and cried ... ‘Stay, Adonis!\nStay, dearest one,...                                                _40\nand mix my lips with thine—\nWake yet a while, Adonis—oh, but once,\nThat I may kiss thee now for the last time—\nBut for as long as one short kiss may live—\nOh, let thy breath flow from thy dying soul                          _45\nEven to my mouth and heart, that I may suck\nThat...’",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "From The Greek Of Moschus.",
    "body": "[Published from the Hunt manuscripts by Forman, “Poetical Works of P. B.\nS.”, 1876.]\n\nYe Dorian woods and waves, lament aloud,—\nAugment your tide, O streams, with fruitless tears,\nFor the beloved Bion is no more.\nLet every tender herb and plant and flower,\nFrom each dejected bud and drooping bloom,                           _5\nShed dews of liquid sorrow, and with breath\nOf melancholy sweetness on the wind\nDiffuse its languid love; let roses blush,\nAnemones grow paler for the loss\nTheir dells have known; and thou, O hyacinth,                        _10\nUtter thy legend now—yet more, dumb flower,\nThan ‘Ah! alas!’—thine is no common grief—\nBion the [sweetest singer] is no more.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "From The Greek Of Moschus.",
    "body": "[Published with “Alastor”, 1816.]\n\nTan ala tan glaukan otan onemos atrema Balle—k.t.l.\n\nWhen winds that move not its calm surface sweep\nThe azure sea, I love the land no more;\nThe smiles of the serene and tranquil deep\nTempt my unquiet mind.—But when the roar\nOf Ocean’s gray abyss resounds, and foam                             _5\nGathers upon the sea, and vast waves burst,\nI turn from the drear aspect to the home\nOf Earth and its deep woods, where, interspersed,\nWhen winds blow loud, pines make sweet melody.\nWhose house is some lone bark, whose toil the sea,                   _10\nWhose prey the wandering fish, an evil lot\nHas chosen.—But I my languid limbs will fling\nBeneath the plane, where the brook’s murmuring\nMoves the calm spirit, but disturbs it not.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "From The Greek Of Moschus.",
    "body": "[Published (without title) by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.\nThere is a draft amongst the Hunt manuscripts.]\n\nPan loved his neighbour Echo—but that child\nOf Earth and Air pined for the Satyr leaping;\nThe Satyr loved with wasting madness wild\nThe bright nymph Lyda,—and so three went weeping.\nAs Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the Satyr,                             _5\nThe Satyr, Lyda; and so love consumed them.—\nAnd thus to each—which was a woful matter—\nTo bear what they inflicted Justice doomed them;\nFor, inasmuch as each might hate the lover,\nEach, loving, so was hated.—Ye that love not                        _10\nBe warned—in thought turn this example over,\nThat when ye love, the like return ye prove not.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "From Vergil’S Tenth Eclogue.",
    "body": "[VERSES 1-26.]\n\n[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870,\nfrom the Boscombe manuscripts now in the Bodleian. Mr. Locock\n(“Examination”, etc., 1903, pages 47-50), as the result of his collation\nof the same manuscripts, gives a revised and expanded version which we\nprint below.]\n\nMelodious Arethusa, o’er my verse\nShed thou once more the spirit of thy stream:\nWho denies verse to Gallus? So, when thou\nGlidest beneath the green and purple gleam\nOf Syracusan waters, mayst thou flow                                 _5\nUnmingled with the bitter Doric dew!\nBegin, and, whilst the goats are browsing now\nThe soft leaves, in our way let us pursue\nThe melancholy loves of Gallus. List!\nWe sing not to the dead: the wild woods knew                         _10\nHis sufferings, and their echoes...\nYoung Naiads,...in what far woodlands wild\nWandered ye when unworthy love possessed\nYour Gallus? Not where Pindus is up-piled,\nNor where Parnassus’ sacred mount, nor where                         _15\nAonian Aganippe expands...\nThe laurels and the myrtle-copses dim.\nThe pine-encircled mountain, Maenalus,\nThe cold crags of Lycaeus, weep for him;\nAnd Sylvan, crowned with rustic coronals,                            _20\nCame shaking in his speed the budding wands\nAnd heavy lilies which he bore: we knew\nPan the Arcadian.\n\n...\n\n‘What madness is this, Gallus? Thy heart’s care\nWith willing steps pursues another there.’                           _25\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Same.",
    "body": "(As revised by Mr. C.D. Locock.)\n\nMelodious Arethusa, o’er my verse\nShed thou once more the spirit of thy stream:\n\n(Two lines missing.)\n\nWho denies verse to Gallus? So, when thou\nGlidest beneath the green and purple gleam\nOf Syracusan waters, mayest thou flow                                _5\nUnmingled with the bitter Dorian dew!\nBegin, and whilst the goats are browsing now\nThe soft leaves, in our song let us pursue\nThe melancholy loves of Gallus. List!\nWe sing not to the deaf: the wild woods knew                         _10\nHis sufferings, and their echoes answer...\nYoung Naiades, in what far woodlands wild\nWandered ye, when unworthy love possessed\nOur Gallus? Nor where Pindus is up-piled,\nNor where Parnassus’ sacred mount, nor where                         _15\nAonian Aganippe spreads its...\n\n(Three lines missing.)\n\nThe laurels and the myrtle-copses dim,\nThe pine-encircled mountain, Maenalus,\nThe cold crags of Lycaeus weep for him.\n\n(Several lines missing.)\n\n‘What madness is this, Gallus? thy heart’s care,                     _20\nLycoris, mid rude camps and Alpine snow,\nWith willing step pursues another there.’\n\n(Some lines missing.)\n\nAnd Sylvan, crowned with rustic coronals,\nCame shaking in his speed the budding wands\nAnd heavy lilies which he bore: we knew                              _25\nPan the Arcadian with....\n...and said,\n‘Wilt thou not ever cease? Love cares not.\nThe meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme,\nThe goats with the green leaves of budding spring                    _30\nAre saturated not—nor Love with tears.’\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "From Vergil’S Fourth Georgic.",
    "body": "[VERSES 360 ET SEQ.]\n\n[Published by Locock, “Examination”, etc., 1903.]\n\nAnd the cloven waters like a chasm of mountains\nStood, and received him in its mighty portal\nAnd led him through the deep’s untrampled fountains\n\nHe went in wonder through the path immortal\nOf his great Mother and her humid reign                              _5\nAnd groves profaned not by the step of mortal\n\nWhich sounded as he passed, and lakes which rain\nReplenished not girt round by marble caves\n‘Wildered by the watery motion of the main\n\nHalf ‘wildered he beheld the bursting waves                          _10\nOf every stream beneath the mighty earth\nPhasis and Lycus which the ... sand paves,\n\n[And] The chasm where old Enipeus has its birth\nAnd father Tyber and Anienas[?] glow\nAnd whence Caicus, Mysian stream, comes forth                        _15\n\nAnd rock-resounding Hypanis, and thou\nEridanus who bearest like empire’s sign\nTwo golden horns upon thy taurine brow\n\nThou than whom none of the streams divine\nThrough garden-fields and meads with fiercer power,                  _20\nBurst in their tumult on the purple brine\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Dante Alighieri To Guido Cavalcanti:",
    "body": "Guido, I would that Lapo, thou, and I,\nLed by some strong enchantment, might ascend\nA magic ship, whose charmed sails should fly\nWith winds at will where’er our thoughts might wend,\nSo that no change, nor any evil chance                               _5\nShould mar our joyous voyage; but it might be,\nThat even satiety should still enhance\nBetween our hearts their strict community:\nAnd that the bounteous wizard then would place\nVanna and Bice and my gentle love,                                   _10\nCompanions of our wandering, and would grace\nWith passionate talk, wherever we might rove,\nOur time, and each were as content and free\nAs I believe that thou and I should be.\n\n_5 So 1824; And 1816.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "From The Italian Of Dante.",
    "body": "[Published by Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862; dated 1820.]\n\n1.\nYe who intelligent the Third Heaven move,\nHear the discourse which is within my heart,\nWhich cannot be declared, it seems so new.\nThe Heaven whose course follows your power and art,\nOh, gentle creatures that ye are! me drew,                           _5\nAnd therefore may I dare to speak to you,\nEven of the life which now I live—and yet\nI pray that ye will hear me when I cry,\nAnd tell of mine own heart this novelty;\nHow the lamenting Spirit moans in it,                                _10\nAnd how a voice there murmurs against her\nWho came on the refulgence of your sphere.\n\n2.\nA sweet Thought, which was once the life within\nThis heavy heart, man a time and oft\nWent up before our Father’s feet, and there                          _15\nIt saw a glorious Lady throned aloft;\nAnd its sweet talk of her my soul did win,\nSo that I said, ‘Thither I too will fare.’\nThat Thought is fled, and one doth now appear\nWhich tyrannizes me with such fierce stress,                         _20\nThat my heart trembles—ye may see it leap—\nAnd on another Lady bids me keep\nMine eyes, and says—Who would have blessedness\nLet him but look upon that Lady’s eyes,\nLet him not fear the agony of sighs.                                 _25\n\n3.\nThis lowly Thought, which once would talk with me\nOf a bright seraph sitting crowned on high,\nFound such a cruel foe it died, and so\nMy Spirit wept, the grief is hot even now—\nAnd said, Alas for me! how swift could flee                          _30\nThat piteous Thought which did my life console!\nAnd the afflicted one ... questioning\nMine eyes, if such a Lady saw they never,\nAnd why they would...\nI said: ‘Beneath those eyes might stand for ever                     _35\nHe whom ... regards must kill with...\nTo have known their power stood me in little stead,\nThose eyes have looked on me, and I am dead.’\n\n4.\n‘Thou art not dead, but thou hast wandered,\nThou Soul of ours, who thyself dost fret,’                           _40\nA Spirit of gentle Love beside me said;\nFor that fair Lady, whom thou dost regret,\nHath so transformed the life which thou hast led,\nThou scornest it, so worthless art thou made.\nAnd see how meek, how pitiful, how staid,                            _45\nYet courteous, in her majesty she is.\nAnd still call thou her Woman in thy thought;\nHer whom, if thou thyself deceivest not,\nThou wilt behold decked with such loveliness,\nThat thou wilt cry [Love] only Lord, lo! here                        _50\nThy handmaiden, do what thou wilt with her.\n\n5.\nMy song, I fear that thou wilt find but few\nWho fitly shall conceive thy reasoning\nOf such hard matter dost thou entertain.\nWhence, if by misadventure chance should bring                       _55\nThee to base company, as chance may do,\nQuite unaware of what thou dost contain,\nI prithee comfort thy sweet self again,\nMy last delight; tell them that they are dull,\nAnd bid them own that thou art beautiful.                            _60",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "From The Purgatorio Of Dante, Canto 28, Lines 1-51.",
    "body": "[Published in part (lines 1-8, 22-51) by Medwin, “The Angler in Wales”,\n1834, “Life of Shelley”, 1847; reprinted in full by Garnett, “Relics of\nShelley”, 1862.]\n\nAnd earnest to explore within—around—\nThe divine wood, whose thick green living woof\nTempered the young day to the sight—I wound\n\nUp the green slope, beneath the forest’s roof,\nWith slow, soft steps leaving the mountain’s steep,                  _5\nAnd sought those inmost labyrinths, motion-proof\n\nAgainst the air, that in that stillness deep\nAnd solemn, struck upon my forehead bare,\nThe slow, soft stroke of a continuous...\n\nIn which the ... leaves tremblingly were                             _10\nAll bent towards that part where earliest\nThe sacred hill obscures the morning air.\n\nYet were they not so shaken from the rest,\nBut that the birds, perched on the utmost spray,\nIncessantly renewing their blithe quest,                             _15\n\nWith perfect joy received the early day,\nSinging within the glancing leaves, whose sound\nKept a low burden to their roundelay,\n\nSuch as from bough to bough gathers around\nThe pine forest on bleak Chiassi’s shore,                            _20\nWhen Aeolus Sirocco has unbound.\n\nMy slow steps had already borne me o’er\nSuch space within the antique wood, that I\nPerceived not where I entered any more,—\n\nWhen, lo! a stream whose little waves went by,                       _25\nBending towards the left through grass that grew\nUpon its bank, impeded suddenly\n\nMy going on. Water of purest hue\nOn earth, would appear turbid and impure\nCompared with this, whose unconcealing dew,                          _30\n\nDark, dark, yet clear, moved under the obscure\nEternal shades, whose interwoven looms\nThe rays of moon or sunlight ne’er endure.\n\nI moved not with my feet, but mid the glooms\nPierced with my charmed eye, contemplating                           _35\nThe mighty multitude of fresh May blooms\n\nWhich starred that night, when, even as a thing\nThat suddenly, for blank astonishment,\nCharms every sense, and makes all thought take wing,—\n\nA solitary woman! and she went                                       _40\nSinging and gathering flower after flower,\nWith which her way was painted and besprent.\n\n‘Bright lady, who, if looks had ever power\nTo bear true witness of the heart within,\nDost bask under the beams of love, come lower                        _45\n\nTowards this bank. I prithee let me win\nThis much of thee, to come, that I may hear\nThy song: like Proserpine, in Enna’s glen,\n\nThou seemest to my fancy, singing here\nAnd gathering flowers, as that fair maiden when                      _50\nShe lost the Spring, and Ceres her, more dear.\n\n_2 The 1862; That 1834.\n_4, _5 So 1862;\nUp a green slope, beneath the starry roof,\nWith slow, slow steps— 1834.\n_6 inmost 1862; leafy 1834.\n_9 So 1862; The slow, soft stroke of a continuous sleep cj. Rossetti, 1870.\n_9-_28 So 1862;\n       Like the sweet breathing of a child asleep:\n       Already I had lost myself so far\n       Amid that tangled wilderness that I\n       Perceived not where I ventured, but no fear\n       Of wandering from my way disturbed, when nigh\n       A little stream appeared; the grass that grew\n       Thick on its banks impeded suddenly\n       My going on. 1834.\n_13 the 1862; their cj. Rossetti, 1870.\n_26 through]the cj. Rossetti.\n_28 hue 1862; dew 1834.\n_30 dew 1862; hue 1834.\n_32 Eternal shades 1862; Of the close boughs 1834.\n_33 So 1862; No ray of moon or sunshine would endure 1834.\n_34, _35 So 1862;\n         My feet were motionless, but mid the glooms\n         Darted my charmed eyes—1834.\n_37 Which 1834; That 1862.\n_39 So 1834; Dissolves all other thought...1862.\n_40 So 1862; Appeared a solitary maid—she went 1834.\n_46 Towards 1862; Unto 1834.\n_47 thee, to come 1862; thee O come 1834.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Inferno 33, 22-75.",
    "body": "[Translated by Medwin and corrected by Shelley.]\n\nNow had the loophole of that dungeon, still\nWhich bears the name of Famine’s Tower from me,\nAnd where ’tis fit that many another will\n\nBe doomed to linger in captivity,\nShown through its narrow opening in my cell                          _5\n‘Moon after moon slow waning’, when a sleep,\n\n‘That of the future burst the veil, in dream\nVisited me. It was a slumber deep\nAnd evil; for I saw, or I did seem’\n\nTo see, ‘that’ tyrant Lord his revels keep                           _10\nThe leader of the cruel hunt to them,\nChasing the wolf and wolf-cubs up the steep\n\nAscent, that from ‘the Pisan is the screen’\nOf ‘Lucca’; with him Gualandi came,\nSismondi, and Lanfranchi, ‘bloodhounds lean,                         _15\n\nTrained to the sport and eager for the game\nWide ranging in his front;’ but soon were seen\nThough by so short a course, with ‘spirits tame,’\n\nThe father and ‘his whelps’ to flag at once,\nAnd then the sharp fangs gored their bosoms deep.                    _20\nEre morn I roused myself, and heard my sons,\n\nFor they were with me, moaning in their sleep,\nAnd begging bread. Ah, for those darling ones!\nRight cruel art thou, if thou dost not weep\n\nIn thinking of my soul’s sad augury;                                 _25\nAnd if thou weepest not now, weep never more!\nThey were already waked, as wont drew nigh\n\nThe allotted hour for food, and in that hour\nEach drew a presage from his dream. When I\n‘Heard locked beneath me of that horrible tower                      _30\n\nThe outlet; then into their eyes alone\nI looked to read myself,’ without a sign\nOr word. I wept not—turned within to stone.\n\nThey wept aloud, and little Anselm mine,\nSaid—’twas my youngest, dearest little one,—                       _35\n“What ails thee, father? Why look so at thine?”\n\nIn all that day, and all the following night,\nI wept not, nor replied; but when to shine\nUpon the world, not us, came forth the light\n\nOf the new sun, and thwart my prison thrown                          _40\nGleamed through its narrow chink, a doleful sight,\n‘Three faces, each the reflex of my own,\n\nWere imaged by its faint and ghastly ray;’\nThen I, of either hand unto the bone,\nGnawed, in my agony; and thinking they                               _45\n\nTwas done from sudden pangs, in their excess,\nAll of a sudden raise themselves, and say,\n“Father! our woes, so great, were yet the less\n\nWould you but eat of us,—twas ‘you who clad\nOur bodies in these weeds of wretchedness;                           _50\nDespoil them’.” Not to make their hearts more sad,\n\nI ‘hushed’ myself. That day is at its close,—\nAnother—still we were all mute. Oh, had\nThe obdurate earth opened to end our woes!\n\nThe fourth day dawned, and when the new sun shone,                   _55\nOutstretched himself before me as it rose\nMy Gaddo, saying, “Help, father! hast thou none\n\nFor thine own child—is there no help from thee?”\nHe died—there at my feet—and one by one,\nI saw them fall, plainly as you see me.                              _60\n\nBetween the fifth and sixth day, ere twas dawn,\nI found ‘myself blind-groping o’er the three.’\nThree days I called them after they were gone.\n\nFamine of grief can get the mastery.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Guido Cavalcanti To Dante Alighieri:",
    "body": "[Published by Forman (who assigns it to 1815), “Poetical Works of P. B.\nS.”, 1876.]\n\nReturning from its daily quest, my Spirit\nChanged thoughts and vile in thee doth weep to find:\nIt grieves me that thy mild and gentle mind\nThose ample virtues which it did inherit\nHas lost. Once thou didst loathe the multitude                       _5\nOf blind and madding men—I then loved thee—\nI loved thy lofty songs and that sweet mood\nWhen thou wert faithful to thyself and me\nI dare not now through thy degraded state\nOwn the delight thy strains inspire—in vain                         _10\nI seek what once thou wert—we cannot meet\nAnd we were wont. Again and yet again\nPonder my words: so the false Spirit shall fly\nAnd leave to thee thy true integrity.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "In the sweet solitude of this calm place,\nThis intricate wild wilderness of trees\nAnd flowers and undergrowth of odorous plants,\nLeave me; the books you brought out of the house\nTo me are ever best society.                                         _5\nAnd while with glorious festival and song,\nAntioch now celebrates the consecration\nOf a proud temple to great Jupiter,\nAnd bears his image in loud jubilee\nTo its new shrine, I would consume what still                        _10\nLives of the dying day in studious thought,\nFar from the throng and turmoil. You, my friends,\nGo, and enjoy the festival; it will\nBe worth your pains. You may return for me\nWhen the sun seeks its grave among the billows                       _15\nWhich, among dim gray clouds on the horizon,\nDance like white plumes upon a hearse;— and here\nI shall expect you.\n\n_14 So transcr.; Be worth the labour, and return for me 1824.\n_16, _17 So 1824;\nHid among dim gray clouds on the horizon\nWhich dance like plumes—transcr., Forman.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Moscon:",
    "body": "I cannot bring my mind,\nGreat as my haste to see the festival\nCertainly is, to leave you, Sir, without                             _20\nJust saying some three or four thousand words.\nHow is it possible that on a day\nOf such festivity, you can be content\nTo come forth to a solitary country\nWith three or four old books, and turn your back                     _25\nOn all this mirth?\n\n_21 thousand transcr.; hundred 1824.\n_23 be content transcr.; bring your mind 1824.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "Enough, you foolish fellows!                                         _35\nPuffed up with your own doting ignorance,\nYou always take the two sides of one question.\nNow go; and as I said, return for me\nWhen night falls, veiling in its shadows wide\nThis glorious fabric of the universe.                                _40",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "Now, since I am alone, let me examine                                _50\nThe question which has long disturbed my mind\nWith doubt, since first I read in Plinius\nThe words of mystic import and deep sense\nIn which he defines God. My intellect\nCan find no God with whom these marks and signs                      _55\nFitly agree. It is a hidden truth\nWhich I must fathom.\n\n[CYPRIAN READS;\nTHE DAEMON, DRESSED IN A COURT DRESS, ENTERS.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Daemon:",
    "body": "’Tis a foreign gentleman.                                            _60\nEven from this morning I have lost my way\nIn this wild place; and my poor horse at last,\nQuite overcome, has stretched himself upon\nThe enamelled tapestry of this mossy mountain,\nAnd feeds and rests at the same time. I was                          _65\nUpon my way to Antioch upon business\nOf some importance, but wrapped up in cares\n(Who is exempt from this inheritance?)\nI parted from my company, and lost\nMy way, and lost my servants and my comrades.                        _70",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "’Tis singular that even within the sight\nOf the high towers of Antioch you could lose\nYour way. Of all the avenues and green paths\nOf this wild wood there is not one but leads,\nAs to its centre, to the walls of Antioch;                           _75\nTake which you will, you cannot miss your road.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Daemon:",
    "body": "And such is ignorance! Even in the sight\nOf knowledge, it can draw no profit from it.\nBut as it still is early, and as I\nHave no acquaintances in Antioch,                                    _80\nBeing a stranger there, I will even wait\nThe few surviving hours of the day,\nUntil the night shall conquer it. I see\nBoth by your dress and by the books in which\nYou find delight and company, that you                               _85\nAre a great student;—for my part, I feel\nMuch sympathy in such pursuits.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "Alas!                                                                _90\nMuch pains must we expend on one alone,\nAnd even then attain it not;—but you\nHave the presumption to assert that you\nKnow many without study.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Daemon:",
    "body": "It is so true, that I\nHad so much arrogance as to oppose                                   _100\nThe chair of the most high Professorship,\nAnd obtained many votes, and, though I lost,\nThe attempt was still more glorious, than the failure\nCould be dishonourable. If you believe not,\nLet us refer it to dispute respecting                                _105\nThat which you know the best, and although I\nKnow not the opinion you maintain, and though\nIt be the true one, I will take the contrary.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "The offer gives me pleasure. I am now\nDebating with myself upon a passage                                  _110\nOf Plinius, and my mind is racked with doubt\nTo understand and know who is the God\nOf whom he speaks.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "I do not recognize among the Gods\nThe God defined by Plinius; if he must\nBe supreme goodness, even Jupiter                                    _120\nIs not supremely good; because we see\nHis deeds are evil, and his attributes\nTainted with mortal weakness; in what manner\nCan supreme goodness be consistent with\nThe passions of humanity?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "This reply will not satisfy me, for\nSuch awe is due to the high name of God                              _130\nThat ill should never be imputed. Then,\nExamining the question with more care,\nIt follows, that the Gods would always will\nThat which is best, were they supremely good.\nHow then does one will one thing, one another?                       _135\nAnd that you may not say that I allege\nPoetical or philosophic learning:—\nConsider the ambiguous responses\nOf their oracular statues; from two shrines\nTwo armies shall obtain the assurance of                             _140\nOne victory. Is it not indisputable\nThat two contending wills can never lead\nTo the same end? And, being opposite,\nIf one be good, is not the other evil?\nEvil in God is inconceivable;                                        _145\nBut supreme goodness fails among the Gods\nWithout their union.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Daemon:",
    "body": "I deny your major.\nThese responses are means towards some end\nUnfathomed by our intellectual beam.\nThey are the work of Providence, and more                            _150\nThe battle’s loss may profit those who lose,\nThan victory advantage those who win.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "That I admit; and yet that God should not\n(Falsehood is incompatible with deity)\nAssure the victory; it would be enough                               _155\nTo have permitted the defeat. If God\nBe all sight,—God, who had beheld the truth,\nWould not have given assurance of an end\nNever to be accomplished: thus, although\nThe Deity may according to his attributes                            _160\nBe well distinguished into persons, yet\nEven in the minutest circumstance\nHis essence must be one.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "But for a purpose thus subordinate\nHe might have employed Genii, good or evil,—\nA sort of spirits called so by the learned,\nWho roam about inspiring good or evil,\nAnd from whose influence and existence we                            _170\nMay well infer our immortality.\nThus God might easily, without descent\nTo a gross falsehood in his proper person,\nHave moved the affections by this mediation\nTo the just point.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Daemon:",
    "body": "These trifling contradictions                                        _175\nDo not suffice to impugn the unity\nOf the high Gods; in things of great importance\nThey still appear unanimous; consider\nThat glorious fabric, man,—his workmanship\nIs stamped with one conception.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "Who made man                                                         _180\nMust have, methinks, the advantage of the others.\nIf they are equal, might they not have risen\nIn opposition to the work, and being\nAll hands, according to our author here,\nHave still destroyed even as the other made?                         _185\nIf equal in their power, unequal only\nIn opportunity, which of the two\nWill remain conqueror?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "That there must be a mighty God\nOf supreme goodness and of highest grace,\nAll sight, all hands, all truth, infallible,\nWithout an equal and without a rival,\nThe cause of all things and the effect of nothing,                   _195\nOne power, one will, one substance, and one essence.\nAnd, in whatever persons, one or two,\nHis attributes may be distinguished, one\nSovereign power, one solitary essence,\nOne cause of all cause.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Daemon:",
    "body": "Who but regrets a check\nIn rivalry of wit? I could reply\nAnd urge new difficulties, but will now\nDepart, for I hear steps of men approaching,                         _205\nAnd it is time that I should now pursue\nMy journey to the city.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Daemon:",
    "body": "Remain in peace!—Since thus it profits him\nTo study, I will wrap his senses up\nIn sweet oblivion of all thought but of                              _210\nA piece of excellent beauty; and, as I\nHave power given me to wage enmity\nAgainst Justina’s soul, I will extract\nFrom one effect two vengeances.\n\n[ASIDE AND EXIT.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "Be silent, fellows! What! two friends who are\nIn blood and fame the eyes and hope of Antioch,\nOne of the noble race of the Colalti,\nThe other son o’ the Governor, adventure\nAnd cast away, on some slight cause no doubt,                        _235\nTwo lives, the honour of their country?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lelio:",
    "body": "Cyprian!\nAlthough my high respect towards your person\nHolds now my sword suspended, thou canst not\nRestore it to the slumber of the scabbard:\nThou knowest more of science than the duel;                          _240\nFor when two men of honour take the field,\nNo counsel nor respect can make them friends\nBut one must die in the dispute.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "Though you may imagine\nThat I know little of the laws of duel,\nWhich vanity and valour instituted,\nYou are in error. By my birth I am\nHeld no less than yourselves to know the limits                      _250\nOf honour and of infamy, nor has study\nQuenched the free spirit which first ordered them;\nAnd thus to me, as one well experienced\nIn the false quicksands of the sea of honour,\nYou may refer the merits of the case;                                _255\nAnd if I should perceive in your relation\nThat either has the right to satisfaction\nFrom the other, I give you my word of honour\nTo leave you.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "And if you both\nWould marry her, is it not weak and vain,\nCulpable and unworthy, thus beforehand\nTo slur her honour? What would the world say\nIf one should slay the other, and if she                             _280\nShould afterwards espouse the murderer?\n\n[THE RIVALS AGREE TO REFER THEIR QUARREL TO CYPRIAN; WHO IN CONSEQUENCE\nVISITS JUSTINA, AND BECOMES ENAMOURED OF HER; SHE DISDAINS HIM, AND HE\nRETIRES TO A SOLITARY SEA-SHORE.]\n\n\nSCENE 2.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "O memory! permit it not\nThat the tyrant of my thought\nBe another soul that still\nHolds dominion o’er the will,\nThat would refuse, but can no more,                                  _5\nTo bend, to tremble, and adore.\nVain idolatry!—I saw,\nAnd gazing, became blind with error;\nWeak ambition, which the awe\nOf her presence bound to terror!                                     _10\nSo beautiful she was—and I,\nBetween my love and jealousy,\nAm so convulsed with hope and fear,\nUnworthy as it may appear;—\nSo bitter is the life I live,                                        _15\nThat, hear me, Hell! I now would give\nTo thy most detested spirit\nMy soul, for ever to inherit,\nTo suffer punishment and pine,\nSo this woman may be mine.                                           _20\nHear’st thou, Hell! dost thou reject it?\nMy soul is offered!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "What is this? ye heavens for ever pure,\nAt once intensely radiant and obscure!\nAthwart the aethereal halls                                          _25\nThe lightning’s arrow and the thunder-balls\nThe day affright,\nAs from the horizon round,\nBurst with earthquake sound,\nIn mighty torrents the electric fountains;—                         _30\nClouds quench the sun, and thunder-smoke\nStrangles the air, and fire eclipses Heaven.\nPhilosophy, thou canst not even\nCompel their causes underneath thy yoke:\nFrom yonder clouds even to the waves below                           _35\nThe fragments of a single ruin choke\nImagination’s flight;\nFor, on flakes of surge, like feathers light,\nThe ashes of the desolation, cast\nUpon the gloomy blast,                                               _40\nTell of the footsteps of the storm;\nAnd nearer, see, the melancholy form\nOf a great ship, the outcast of the sea,\nDrives miserably!\nAnd it must fly the pity of the port,                                _45\nOr perish, and its last and sole resort\nIs its own raging enemy.\nThe terror of the thrilling cry\nWas a fatal prophecy\nOf coming death, who hovers now                                      _50\nUpon that shattered prow,\nThat they who die not may be dying still.\nAnd not alone the insane elements\nAre populous with wild portents,\nBut that sad ship is as a miracle                                    _55\nOf sudden ruin, for it drives so fast\nIt seems as if it had arrayed its form\nWith the headlong storm.\nIt strikes—I almost feel the shock,—\nIt stumbles on a jagged rock,—                                      _60\nSparkles of blood on the white foam are cast.\n\n[A TEMPEST.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "As in contempt of the elemental rage\nA man comes forth in safety, while the ship’s                        _65\nGreat form is in a watery eclipse\nObliterated from the Oceans page,\nAnd round its wreck the huge sea-monsters sit,\nA horrid conclave, and the whistling wave\nIs heaped over its carcase, like a grave.                            _70\n\n[THE DAEMON ENTERS, AS ESCAPED FROM THE SEA.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Daemon [Aside]:",
    "body": "It was essential to my purposes\nTo wake a tumult on the sapphire ocean,\nThat in this unknown form I might at length\nWipe out the blot of the discomfiture\nSustained upon the mountain, and assail                              _75\nWith a new war the soul of Cyprian,\nForging the instruments of his destruction\nEven from his love and from his wisdom.—O\nBeloved earth, dear mother, in thy bosom\nI seek a refuge from the monster who                                 _80\nPrecipitates itself upon me.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "Friend,\nCollect thyself; and be the memory\nOf thy late suffering, and thy greatest sorrow\nBut as a shadow of the past,—for nothing\nBeneath the circle of the moon, but flows                            _85\nAnd changes, and can never know repose.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cyprian:",
    "body": "Now, since the fury\nOf this earthquaking hurricane is still,                             _95\nAnd the crystalline Heaven has reassumed\nIts windless calm so quickly, that it seems\nAs if its heavy wrath had been awakened\nOnly to overwhelm that vessel,—speak,\nWho art thou, and whence comest thou?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Daemon:",
    "body": "Since thou desirest, I will then unveil\nMyself to thee;—for in myself I am                                  _105\nA world of happiness and misery;\nThis I have lost, and that I must lament\nForever. In my attributes I stood\nSo high and so heroically great,\nIn lineage so supreme, and with a genius                             _110\nWhich penetrated with a glance the world\nBeneath my feet, that, won by my high merit,\nA king—whom I may call the King of kings,\nBecause all others tremble in their pride\nBefore the terrors of His countenance,                               _115\nIn His high palace roofed with brightest gems\nOf living light—call them the stars of Heaven—\nNamed me His counsellor. But the high praise\nStung me with pride and envy, and I rose\nIn mighty competition, to ascend                                     _120\nHis seat and place my foot triumphantly\nUpon His subject thrones. Chastised, I know\nThe depth to which ambition falls; too mad\nWas the attempt, and yet more mad were now\nRepentance of the irrevocable deed:—                                _125\nTherefore I chose this ruin, with the glory\nOf not to be subdued, before the shame\nOf reconciling me with Him who reigns\nBy coward cession.—Nor was I alone,\nNor am I now, nor shall I be alone;                                  _130\nAnd there was hope, and there may still be hope,\nFor many suffrages among His vassals\nHailed me their lord and king, and many still\nAre mine, and many more, perchance shall be.\nThus vanquished, though in fact victorious,                          _135\nI left His seat of empire, from mine eye\nShooting forth poisonous lightning, while my words\nWith inauspicious thunderings shook Heaven,\nProclaiming vengeance, public as my wrong,\nAnd imprecating on His prostrate slaves                              _140\nRapine, and death, and outrage. Then I sailed\nOver the mighty fabric of the world,—\nA pirate ambushed in its pathless sands,\nA lynx crouched watchfully among its caves\nAnd craggy shores; and I have wandered over                          _145\nThe expanse of these wide wildernesses\nIn this great ship, whose bulk is now dissolved\nIn the light breathings of the invisible wind,\nAnd which the sea has made a dustless ruin,\nSeeking ever a mountain, through whose forests                       _150\nI seek a man, whom I must now compel\nTo keep his word with me. I came arrayed\nIn tempest, and although my power could well\nBridle the forest winds in their career,\nFor other causes I forbore to soothe                                 _155\nTheir fury to Favonian gentleness;\nI could and would not;\n[ASIDE.]\n(thus I wake in him\nA love of magic art). Let not this tempest,\nNor the succeeding calm excite thy wonder;\nFor by my art the sun would turn as pale                             _160\nAs his weak sister with unwonted fear;\nAnd in my wisdom are the orbs of Heaven\nWritten as in a record; I have pierced\nThe flaming circles of their wondrous spheres\nAnd know them as thou knowest every corner                           _165\nOf this dim spot. Let it not seem to thee\nThat I boast vainly; wouldst thou that I work\nA charm over this waste and savage wood,\nThis Babylon of crags and aged trees,\nFilling its leafy coverts with a horror                              _170\nThrilling and strange? I am the friendless guest\nOf these wild oaks and pines—and as from thee\nI have received the hospitality\nOf this rude place, I offer thee the fruit\nOf years of toil in recompense; whate’er                             _175\nThy wildest dream presented to thy thought\nAs object of desire, that shall be thine.\n\n...\n\nAnd thenceforth shall so firm an amity\n’Twixt thee and me be, that neither Fortune,\nThe monstrous phantom which pursues success,                         _180\nThat careful miser, that free prodigal,\nWho ever alternates, with changeful hand,\nEvil and good, reproach and fame; nor Time,\nThat lodestar of the ages, to whose beam\nThe winged years speed o’er the intervals                            _185\nOf their unequal revolutions; nor\nHeaven itself, whose beautiful bright stars\nRule and adorn the world, can ever make\nThe least division between thee and me,\nSince now I find a refuge in thy favour.                             _190\n\n_146 wide glassy wildernesses Rossetti.\n_150 Seeking forever cj. Forman.\n_154 forest]fiercest cj. Rossetti.\n\n\nSCENE 3.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Daemon:",
    "body": "Abyss of Hell! I call on thee,\nThou wild misrule of thine own anarchy!\nFrom thy prison-house set free\nThe spirits of voluptuous death,\nThat with their mighty breath                                        _5\nThey may destroy a world of virgin thoughts;\nLet her chaste mind with fancies thick as motes\nBe peopled from thy shadowy deep,\nTill her guiltless fantasy\nFull to overflowing be!                                              _10\nAnd with sweetest harmony,\nLet birds, and flowers, and leaves, and all things move\nTo love, only to love.\nLet nothing meet her eyes\nBut signs of Love’s soft victories;                                  _15\nLet nothing meet her ear\nBut sounds of Love’s sweet sorrow,\nSo that from faith no succour she may borrow,\nBut, guided by my spirit blind\nAnd in a magic snare entwined,                                       _20\nShe may now seek Cyprian.\nBegin, while I in silence bind\nMy voice, when thy sweet song thou hast began.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The First Voice:",
    "body": "There is no form in which the fire\nOf love its traces has impressed not.\nMan lives far more in love’s desire\nThan by life’s breath, soon possessed not.\nIf all that lives must love or die,                                  _30\nAll shapes on earth, or sea, or sky,\nWith one consent to Heaven cry\nThat the glory far above\nAll else in life is—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Justina:",
    "body": "Thou melancholy Thought which art                                    _35\nSo flattering and so sweet, to thee\nWhen did I give the liberty\nThus to afflict my heart?\nWhat is the cause of this new Power\nWhich doth my fevered being move,                                    _40\nMomently raging more and more?\nWhat subtle Pain is kindled now\nWhich from my heart doth overflow\nInto my senses?—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Justina:",
    "body": "’Tis that enamoured Nightingale                                      _45\nWho gives me the reply;\nHe ever tells the same soft tale\nOf passion and of constancy\nTo his mate, who rapt and fond,\nListening sits, a bough beyond.                                      _50\n\nBe silent, Nightingale—no more\nMake me think, in hearing thee\nThus tenderly thy love deplore,\nIf a bird can feel his so,\nWhat a man would feel for me.                                        _55\nAnd, voluptuous Vine, O thou\nWho seekest most when least pursuing,—\nTo the trunk thou interlacest\nArt the verdure which embracest,\nAnd the weight which is its ruin,—                                  _60\nNo more, with green embraces, Vine,\nMake me think on what thou lovest,—\nFor whilst thus thy boughs entwine\nI fear lest thou shouldst teach me, sophist,\nHow arms might be entangled too.                                     _65\n\nLight-enchanted Sunflower, thou\nWho gazest ever true and tender\nOn the sun’s revolving splendour!\nFollow not his faithless glance\nWith thy faded countenance,                                          _70\nNor teach my beating heart to fear,\nIf leaves can mourn without a tear,\nHow eyes must weep! O Nightingale,\nCease from thy enamoured tale,—\nLeafy Vine, unwreathe thy bower,                                     _75\nRestless Sunflower, cease to move,—\nOr tell me all, what poisonous Power\nYe use against me—\n\n_58 To]Who to cj. Rossetti.\n_63 whilst thus Rossetti, Forman, Dowden; whilst thou thus 1824.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Justina:",
    "body": "It cannot be!—Whom have I ever loved?\nTrophies of my oblivion and disdain,                                 _80\nFloro and Lelio did I not reject?\nAnd Cyprian?—\n[SHE BECOMES TROUBLED AT THE NAME OF CYPRIAN.]\nDid I not requite him\nWith such severity, that he has fled\nWhere none has ever heard of him again?—\nAlas! I now begin to fear that this                                  _85\nMay be the occasion whence desire grows bold,\nAs if there were no danger. From the moment\nThat I pronounced to my own listening heart,\n‘Cyprian is absent!’—O me miserable!\nI know not what I feel!\n[MORE CALMLY.]\nIt must be pity                                                      _90\nTo think that such a man, whom all the world\nAdmired, should be forgot by all the world,\nAnd I the cause.\n[SHE AGAIN BECOMES TROUBLED.]\nAnd yet if it were pity,\nFloro and Lelio might have equal share,\nFor they are both imprisoned for my sake.                            _95\n[CALMLY.]\nAlas! what reasonings are these? it is\nEnough I pity him, and that, in vain,\nWithout this ceremonious subtlety.\nAnd, woe is me! I know not where to find him now,\nEven should I seek him through this wide world.                      _100",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Justina:",
    "body": "I will not be discouraged, nor despair,\nAlthough I thought it, and although ’tis true\nThat thought is but a prelude to the deed:—\nThought is not in my power, but action is:\nI will not move my foot to follow thee.                              _120",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Daemon:",
    "body": "Woman, thou hast subdued me,\nOnly by not owning thyself subdued.                                  _135\nBut since thou thus findest defence in God,\nI will assume a feigned form, and thus\nMake thee a victim of my baffled rage.\nFor I will mask a spirit in thy form\nWho will betray thy name to infamy,                                  _140\nAnd doubly shall I triumph in thy loss,\nFirst by dishonouring thee, and then by turning\nFalse pleasure to true ignominy.\n\n[EXIT.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Justina: I",
    "body": "Appeal to Heaven against thee; so that Heaven\nMay scatter thy delusions, and the blot                              _145\nUpon my fame vanish in idle thought,\nEven as flame dies in the envious air,\nAnd as the floweret wanes at morning frost;\nAnd thou shouldst never—But, alas! to whom\nDo I still speak?—Did not a man but now                             _150\nStand here before me?—No, I am alone,\nAnd yet I saw him. Is he gone so quickly?\nOr can the heated mind engender shapes\nFrom its own fear? Some terrible and strange\nPeril is near. Lisander! father! lord!                               _155\nLivia!—\n\n[ENTER LISANDER AND LIVIA.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Justina:",
    "body": "Oh, would it were\nDelusion; but I fear some greater ill.\nI feel as if out of my bleeding bosom                                _170\nMy heart was torn in fragments; ay,\nSome mortal spell is wrought against my frame;\nSo potent was the charm that, had not God\nShielded my humble innocence from wrong,\nI should have sought my sorrow and my shame                          _175\nWith willing steps.—Livia, quick, bring my cloak,\nFor I must seek refuge from these extremes\nEven in the temple of the highest God\nWhere secretly the faithful worship.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Translated By Medwin And Corrected By Shelley.",
    "body": "[Published by Medwin, “Life of Shelley”, 1847,\nwith Shelley’s corrections in ‘‘.]\n\n1.\nHast thou not seen, officious with delight,\nMove through the illumined air about the flower\nThe Bee, that fears to drink its purple light,\nLest danger lurk within that Rose’s bower?\nHast thou not marked the moth’s enamoured flight                     _5\nAbout the Taper’s flame at evening hour;\n‘Till kindle in that monumental fire\nHis sunflower wings their own funereal pyre?\n\n2.\nMy heart, its wishes trembling to unfold.\nThus round the Rose and Taper hovering came,                         _10\n‘And Passion’s slave, Distrust, in ashes cold.\nSmothered awhile, but could not quench the flame,’—\nTill Love, that grows by disappointment bold,\nAnd Opportunity, had conquered Shame;\nAnd like the Bee and Moth, in act to close,                          _15\n‘I burned my wings, and settled on the Rose.’\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Raphael:",
    "body": "The sun makes music as of old\nAmid the rival spheres of Heaven,\nOn its predestined circle rolled\nWith thunder speed: the Angels even\nDraw strength from gazing on its glance,                             _5\nThough none its meaning fathom may:—\nThe world’s unwithered countenance\nIs bright as at Creation’s day.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Gabriel:",
    "body": "And swift and swift, with rapid lightness,\nThe adorned Earth spins silently,                                    _10\nAlternating Elysian brightness\nWith deep and dreadful night; the sea\nFoams in broad billows from the deep\nUp to the rocks, and rocks and Ocean,\nOnward, with spheres which never sleep,                              _15\nAre hurried in eternal motion.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Michael:",
    "body": "And tempests in contention roar\nFrom land to sea, from sea to land;\nAnd, raging, weave a chain of power,\nWhich girds the earth, as with a band.—                             _20\nA flashing desolation there,\nFlames before the thunder’s way;\nBut Thy servants, Lord, revere\nThe gentle changes of Thy day.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Gabriel:",
    "body": "And swift, and inconceivably swift\nThe adornment of earth winds itself round,\nAnd exchanges Paradise-clearness\nWith deep dreadful night.\nThe sea foams in broad waves\nFrom its deep bottom, up to the rocks,\nAnd rocks and sea are torn on together\nIn the eternal swift course of the spheres.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Michael:",
    "body": "And storms roar in emulation\nFrom sea to land, from land to sea,\nAnd make, raging, a chain\nOf deepest operation round about.\nThere flames a flashing destruction\nBefore the path of the thunderbolt.\nBut Thy servants, Lord, revere\nThe gentle alternations of Thy day.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "Thy countenance gives the Angels strength,\nThough none can comprehend Thee:\nAnd all Thy lofty works\nAre excellent as at the first day.\n\nSuch is a literal translation of this astonishing chorus; it is\nimpossible to represent in another language the melody of the\nversification; even the volatile strength and delicacy of the ideas\nescape in the crucible of translation, and the reader is surprised to\nfind a caput mortuum.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])\n\n[ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mephistopheles:",
    "body": "As thou, O Lord, once more art kind enough\nTo interest Thyself in our affairs,                                  _30\nAnd ask, ‘How goes it with you there below?’\nAnd as indulgently at other times\nThou tookest not my visits in ill part,\nThou seest me here once more among Thy household.\nThough I should scandalize this company,                             _35\nYou will excuse me if I do not talk\nIn the high style which they think fashionable;\nMy pathos certainly would make You laugh too,\nHad You not long since given over laughing.\nNothing know I to say of suns and worlds;                            _40\nI observe only how men plague themselves;—\nThe little god o’ the world keeps the same stamp,\nAs wonderful as on creation’s day:—\nA little better would he live, hadst Thou\nNot given him a glimpse of Heaven’s light                            _45\nWhich he calls reason, and employs it only\nTo live more beastlily than any beast.\nWith reverence to Your Lordship be it spoken,\nHe’s like one of those long-legged grasshoppers,\nWho flits and jumps about, and sings for ever                        _50\nThe same old song i’ the grass. There let him lie,\nBurying his nose in every heap of dung.\n\n_38 certainly would editions 1839; would certainly 1824.\n_47 beastlily 1824; beastily editions 1839.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mephistopheles:",
    "body": "In truth                                                             _60\nHe serves You in a fashion quite his own;\nAnd the fool’s meat and drink are not of earth.\nHis aspirations bear him on so far\nThat he is half aware of his own folly,\nFor he demands from Heaven its fairest star,                         _65\nAnd from the earth the highest joy it bears,\nYet all things far, and all things near, are vain\nTo calm the deep emotions of his breast.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Lord:",
    "body": "Though he now serves Me in a cloud of error,\nI will soon lead him forth to the clear day.                         _70\nWhen trees look green, full well the gardener knows\nThat fruits and blooms will deck the coming year.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mephistopheles:",
    "body": "Thanks.\nAnd that is all I ask; for willingly\nI never make acquaintance with the dead.                             _80\nThe full fresh cheeks of youth are food for me,\nAnd if a corpse knocks, I am not at home.\nFor I am like a cat—I like to play\nA little with the mouse before I eat it.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Lord:",
    "body": "Well, well! it is permitted thee. Draw thou                          _85\nHis spirit from its springs; as thou find’st power\nSeize him and lead him on thy downward path;\nAnd stand ashamed when failure teaches thee\nThat a good man, even in his darkest longings,\nIs well aware of the right way.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mephistopheles:",
    "body": "Well and good.                                                       _90\nI am not in much doubt about my bet,\nAnd if I lose, then ’tis Your turn to crow;\nEnjoy Your triumph then with a full breast.\nAy; dust shall he devour, and that with pleasure,\nLike my old paramour, the famous Snake.                              _95",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Lord:",
    "body": "Pray come here when it suits you; for I never\nHad much dislike for people of your sort.\nAnd, among all the Spirits who rebelled,\nThe knave was ever the least tedious to Me.\nThe active spirit of man soon sleeps, and soon                       _100\nHe seeks unbroken quiet; therefore I\nHave given him the Devil for a companion,\nWho may provoke him to some sort of work,\nAnd must create forever.—But ye, pure\nChildren of God, enjoy eternal beauty;—                             _105\nLet that which ever operates and lives\nClasp you within the limits of its love;\nAnd seize with sweet and melancholy thoughts\nThe floating phantoms of its loveliness.\n\n[HEAVEN CLOSES; THE ARCHANGELS EXEUNT.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mephistopheles:",
    "body": "From time to time I visit the old fellow,                            _110\nAnd I take care to keep on good terms with Him.\nCivil enough is the same God Almighty,\nTo talk so freely with the Devil himself.\n\n\nSCENE 2.—MAY-DAY NIGHT.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Faust:",
    "body": "This knotted staff is help enough for me,\nWhilst I feel fresh upon my legs. What good                          _5\nIs there in making short a pleasant way?\nTo creep along the labyrinths of the vales,\nAnd climb those rocks, where ever-babbling springs,\nPrecipitate themselves in waterfalls,\nIs the true sport that seasons such a path.                          _10\nAlready Spring kindles the birchen spray,\nAnd the hoar pines already feel her breath:\nShall she not work also within our limbs?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mephistopheles:",
    "body": "Nothing of such an influence do I feel.\nMy body is all wintry, and I wish                                    _15\nThe flowers upon our path were frost and snow.\nBut see how melancholy rises now,\nDimly uplifting her belated beam,\nThe blank unwelcome round of the red moon,\nAnd gives so bad a light, that every step                            _20\nOne stumbles ’gainst some crag. With your permission,\nI’ll call on Ignis-fatuus to our aid:\nI see one yonder burning jollily.\nHalloo, my friend! may I request that you\nWould favour us with your bright company?                            _25\nWhy should you blaze away there to no purpose?\nPray be so good as light us up this way.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ignis-Fatuus:",
    "body": "Well,\nI see you are the master of the house;\nI will accommodate myself to you.                                    _35\nOnly consider that to-night this mountain\nIs all enchanted, and if Jack-a-lantern\nShows you his way, though you should miss your own,\nYou ought not to be too exact with him.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Faust, Mephistopheles, And Ignis-Fatuus, In Alternate Chorus:",
    "body": "The limits of the sphere of dream,                                   _40\nThe bounds of true and false, are past.\nLead us on, thou wandering Gleam,\nLead us onward, far and fast,\nTo the wide, the desert waste.\n\nBut see, how swift advance and shift                                 _45\nTrees behind trees, row by row,—\nHow, clift by clift, rocks bend and lift\nTheir frowning foreheads as we go.\nThe giant-snouted crags, ho! ho!\nHow they snort, and how they blow!                                   _50\n\nThrough the mossy sods and stones,\nStream and streamlet hurry down—\nA rushing throng! A sound of song\nBeneath the vault of Heaven is blown!\nSweet notes of love, the speaking tones                              _55\nOf this bright day, sent down to say\nThat Paradise on Earth is known,\nResound around, beneath, above.\nAll we hope and all we love\nFinds a voice in this blithe strain,                                 _60\nWhich wakens hill and wood and rill,\nAnd vibrates far o’er field and vale,\nAnd which Echo, like the tale\nOf old times, repeats again.\n\nTo-whoo! to-whoo! near, nearer now                                   _65\nThe sound of song, the rushing throng!\nAre the screech, the lapwing, and the jay,\nAll awake as if ’twere day?\nSee, with long legs and belly wide,\nA salamander in the brake!                                           _70\nEvery root is like a snake,\nAnd along the loose hillside,\nWith strange contortions through the night,\nCurls, to seize or to affright;\nAnd, animated, strong, and many,                                     _75\nThey dart forth polypus-antennae,\nTo blister with their poison spume\nThe wanderer. Through the dazzling gloom\nThe many-coloured mice, that thread\nThe dewy turf beneath our tread,                                     _80\nIn troops each other’s motions cross,\nThrough the heath and through the moss;\nAnd, in legions intertangled,\nThe fire-flies flit, and swarm, and throng,\nTill all the mountain depths are spangled.                           _85\n\nTell me, shall we go or stay?\nShall we onward? Come along!\nEverything around is swept\nForward, onward, far away!\nTrees and masses intercept                                           _90\nThe sight, and wisps on every side\nAre puffed up and multiplied.\n\n_48 frowning]fawning 1822.\n_70 brake 1824; lake 1822.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Faust:",
    "body": "Ay—\nAnd strangely through the solid depth below\nA melancholy light, like the red dawn,\nShoots from the lowest gorge of the abyss\nOf mountains, lightning hitherward: there rise                       _100\nPillars of smoke, here clouds float gently by;\nHere the light burns soft as the enkindled air,\nOr the illumined dust of golden flowers;\nAnd now it glides like tender colours spreading;\nAnd now bursts forth in fountains from the earth;                    _105\nAnd now it winds, one torrent of broad light,\nThrough the far valley with a hundred veins;\nAnd now once more within that narrow corner\nMasses itself into intensest splendour.\nAnd near us, see, sparks spring out of the ground,                   _110\nLike golden sand scattered upon the darkness;\nThe pinnacles of that black wall of mountains\nThat hems us in are kindled.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mephistopheles:",
    "body": "Rare: in faith!\nDoes not Sir Mammon gloriously illuminate\nHis palace for this festival?—it is                                 _115\nA pleasure which you had not known before.\nI spy the boisterous guests already.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mephistopheles:",
    "body": "Cling tightly to the old ribs of the crag.                           _120\nBeware! for if with them thou warrest\nIn their fierce flight towards the wilderness,\nTheir breath will sweep thee into dust, and drag\nThy body to a grave in the abyss.\nA cloud thickens the night.                                          _125\nHark! how the tempest crashes through the forest!\nThe owls fly out in strange affright;\nThe columns of the evergreen palaces\nAre split and shattered;\nThe roots creak, and stretch, and groan;                             _130\nAnd ruinously overthrown,\nThe trunks are crushed and shattered\nBy the fierce blast’s unconquerable stress.\nOver each other crack and crash they all\nIn terrible and intertangled fall;                                   _135\nAnd through the ruins of the shaken mountain\nThe airs hiss and howl—\nIt is not the voice of the fountain,\nNor the wolf in his midnight prowl.\nDost thou not hear?                                                  _140\nStrange accents are ringing\nAloft, afar, anear?\nThe witches are singing!\nThe torrent of a raging wizard song\nStreams the whole mountain along.                                    _145",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus Of Witches:",
    "body": "The stubble is yellow, the corn is green,\nNow to the Brocken the witches go;\nThe mighty multitude here may be seen\nGathering, wizard and witch, below.\nSir Urian is sitting aloft in the air;                               _150\nHey over stock! and hey over stone!\n’Twixt witches and incubi, what shall be done?\nTell it who dare! tell it who dare!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus:",
    "body": "Honour her, to whom honour is due,\nOld mother Baubo, honour to you!\nAn able sow, with old Baubo upon her,\nIs worthy of glory, and worthy of honour!\nThe legion of witches is coming behind,                              _160\nDarkening the night, and outspeeding the wind—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus Of Witches:",
    "body": "Come away! come along!\nThe way is wide, the way is long,                                    _170\nBut what is that for a Bedlam throng?\nStick with the prong, and scratch with the broom.\nThe child in the cradle lies strangled at home,\nAnd the mother is clapping her hands.—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Voices Below:",
    "body": "Oh, let me join your flocks!\nI, three hundred years have striven\nTo catch your skirt and mount to Heaven,—\nAnd still in vain. Oh, might I be\nWith company akin to me!                                             _195",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus Of Witches:",
    "body": "Come onward, away! aroint thee, aroint!\nA witch to be strong must anoint—anoint—\nThen every trough will be boat enough;                               _205\nWith a rag for a sail we can sweep through the sky,\nWho flies not to-night, when means he to fly?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mephistopheles:",
    "body": "What thronging, dashing, raging, rustling;\nWhat whispering, babbling, hissing, bustling;\nWhat glimmering, spurting, stinking, burning,\nAs Heaven and Earth were overturning.\nThere is a true witch element about us;                              _215\nTake hold on me, or we shall be divided:—\nWhere are you?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mephistopheles:",
    "body": "What!\nI must exert my authority in the house.\nPlace for young Voland! pray make way, good people.\nTake hold on me, doctor, and with one step                           _220\nLet us escape from this unpleasant crowd:\nThey are too mad for people of my sort.\nJust there shines a peculiar kind of light—\nSomething attracts me in those bushes. Come\nThis way: we shall slip down there in a minute.                      _225",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Faust:",
    "body": "Spirit of Contradiction! Well, lead on—\n’Twere a wise feat indeed to wander out\nInto the Brocken upon May-day night,\nAnd then to isolate oneself in scorn,\nDisgusted with the humours of the time.                              _230",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Faust:",
    "body": "Would that I were\nUp yonder in the glow and whirling smoke,                            _235\nWhere the blind million rush impetuously\nTo meet the evil ones; there might I solve\nMany a riddle that torments me.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mephistopheles:",
    "body": "Yet\nMany a riddle there is tied anew\nInextricably. Let the great world rage!                              _240\nWe will stay here safe in the quiet dwellings.\n’Tis an old custom. Men have ever built\nTheir own small world in the great world of all.\nI see young witches naked there, and old ones\nWisely attired with greater decency.                                 _245\nBe guided now by me, and you shall buy\nA pound of pleasure with a dram of trouble.\nI hear them tune their instruments—one must\nGet used to this damned scraping. Come, I’ll lead you\nAmong them; and what there you do and see,                           _250\nAs a fresh compact ’twixt us two shall be.\nHow say you now? this space is wide enough—\nLook forth, you cannot see the end of it—\nAn hundred bonfires burn in rows, and they\nWho throng around them seem innumerable:                             _255\nDancing and drinking, jabbering, making love,\nAnd cooking, are at work. Now tell me, friend,\nWhat is there better in the world than this?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mephistopheles:",
    "body": "In truth, I generally go about\nIn strict incognito; and yet one likes\nTo wear one’s orders upon gala days.\nI have no ribbon at my knee; but here\nAt home, the cloven foot is honourable.                              _265\nSee you that snail there?—she comes creeping up,\nAnd with her feeling eyes hath smelt out something.\nI could not, if I would, mask myself here.\nCome now, we’ll go about from fire to fire:\nI’ll be the Pimp, and you shall be the Lover.                        _270\n[TO SOME OLD WOMEN, WHO ARE SITTING ROUND A HEAP OF GLIMMERING COALS.]\nOld gentlewomen, what do you do out here?\nYou ought to be with the young rioters\nRight in the thickest of the revelry—\nBut every one is best content at home.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Minister:",
    "body": "Nowadays\nPeople assert their rights: they go too far;                         _280\nBut as for me, the good old times I praise;\nThen we were all in all—’twas something worth\nOne’s while to be in place and wear a star;\nThat was indeed the golden age on earth.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Parvenu:",
    "body": "We too are active, and we did and do                                 _285\nWhat we ought not, perhaps; and yet we now\nWill seize, whilst all things are whirled round and round,\nA spoke of Fortune’s wheel, and keep our ground.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Author:",
    "body": "Who now can taste a treatise of deep sense\nAnd ponderous volume? ’tis impertinence                              _290\nTo write what none will read, therefore will I\nTo please the young and thoughtless people try.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Pedlar-Witch:",
    "body": "Look here,\nGentlemen; do not hurry on so fast;\nAnd lose the chance of a good pennyworth.\nI have a pack full of the choicest wares\nOf every sort, and yet in all my bundle                              _300\nIs nothing like what may be found on earth;\nNothing that in a moment will make rich\nMen and the world with fine malicious mischief—\nThere is no dagger drunk with blood; no bowl\nFrom which consuming poison may be drained                           _305\nBy innocent and healthy lips; no jewel,\nThe price of an abandoned maiden’s shame;\nNo sword which cuts the bond it cannot loose,\nOr stabs the wearer’s enemy in the back;\nNo—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mephistopheles:",
    "body": "Gossip, you know little of these times.                              _310\nWhat has been, has been; what is done, is past,\nThey shape themselves into the innovations\nThey breed, and innovation drags us with it.\nThe torrent of the crowd sweeps over us:\nYou think to impel, and are yourself impelled.                       _315",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mephistopheles:",
    "body": "Lilith, the first wife of Adam.\nBeware of her fair hair, for she excels\nAll women in the magic of her locks;\nAnd when she winds them round a young man’s neck,                    _320\nShe will not ever set him free again.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mephistopheles:",
    "body": "There is no rest to-night for any one:\nWhen one dance ends another is begun;                                _325\nCome, let us to it. We shall have rare fun.\n\n[FAUST DANCES AND SINGS WITH A GIRL, AND\nMEPHISTOPHELES WITH AN OLD WOMAN.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Faust:",
    "body": "I had once a lovely dream\nIn which I saw an apple-tree,\nWhere two fair apples with their gleam\nTo climb and taste attracted me.                                     _330\n\n_327-_334 So Boscombe manuscript (“Westminster Review”, July, 1870);\n          wanting, 1822, 1824, 1839.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Procto-Phantasmist:",
    "body": "What is this cursed multitude about?                                 _335\nHave we not long since proved to demonstration\nThat ghosts move not on ordinary feet?\nBut these are dancing just like men and women.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Faust:",
    "body": "Oh! he\nIs far above us all in his conceit:                                  _340\nWhilst we enjoy, he reasons of enjoyment;\nAnd any step which in our dance we tread,\nIf it be left out of his reckoning,\nIs not to be considered as a step.\nThere are few things that scandalize him not:                        _345\nAnd when you whirl round in the circle now,\nAs he went round the wheel in his old mill,\nHe says that you go wrong in all respects,\nEspecially if you congratulate him\nUpon the strength of the resemblance.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Procto-Phantasmist:",
    "body": "Fly!                                                                 _350\nVanish! Unheard-of impudence! What, still there!\nIn this enlightened age too, since you have been\nProved not to exist!—But this infernal brood\nWill hear no reason and endure no rule.\nAre we so wise, and is the POND still haunted?                       _355\nHow long have I been sweeping out this rubbish\nOf superstition, and the world will not\nCome clean with all my pains!—it is a case\nUnheard of!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Procto-Phantasmist:",
    "body": "I tell you, spirits, to your faces now,                              _360\nThat I should not regret this despotism\nOf spirits, but that mine can wield it not.\nTo-night I shall make poor work of it,\nYet I will take a round with you, and hope\nBefore my last step in the living dance                              _365\nTo beat the poet and the devil together.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mephistopheles:",
    "body": "At last he will sit down in some foul puddle;\nThat is his way of solacing himself;\nUntil some leech, diverted with his gravity,\nCures him of spirits and the spirit together.                        _370\n[TO FAUST, WHO HAS SECEDED FROM THE DANCE.]\nWhy do you let that fair girl pass from you,\nWho sung so sweetly to you in the dance?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Faust:",
    "body": "Seest thou not a pale,\nFair girl, standing alone, far, far away?\nShe drags herself now forward with slow steps,                       _380\nAnd seems as if she moved with shackled feet:\nI cannot overcome the thought that she\nIs like poor Margaret.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mephistopheles:",
    "body": "Let it be—pass on—\nNo good can come of it—it is not well\nTo meet it—it is an enchanted phantom,                              _385\nA lifeless idol; with its numbing look,\nIt freezes up the blood of man; and they\nWho meet its ghastly stare are turned to stone,\nLike those who saw Medusa.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Faust:",
    "body": "Oh, too true!\nHer eyes are like the eyes of a fresh corpse                         _390\nWhich no beloved hand has closed, alas!\nThat is the breast which Margaret yielded to me—\nThose are the lovely limbs which I enjoyed!",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mephistopheles:",
    "body": "Ay, she can carry                                                    _400\nHer head under her arm upon occasion;\nPerseus has cut it off for her. These pleasures\nEnd in delusion.—Gain this rising ground,\nIt is as airy here as in a...\nAnd if I am not mightily deceived,                                   _405\nI see a theatre.—What may this mean?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Attendant:",
    "body": "Quite a new piece, the last of seven, for ’tis\nThe custom now to represent that number.\n’Tis written by a Dilettante, and\nThe actors who perform are Dilettanti;                               _410\nExcuse me, gentlemen; but I must vanish.\nI am a Dilettante curtain-lifter.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Philosophical Poem, With Notes.",
    "body": "[An edition (250 copies) of “Queen Mab” was printed at London in the\nsummer of 1813 by Shelley himself, whose name, as author and printer,\nappears on the title-page (see “Bibliographical List”). Of this edition\nabout seventy copies were privately distributed. Sections 1, 2, 8, and 9\nwere afterwards rehandled, and the intermediate sections here and there\nrevised and altered; and of this new text sections 1 and 2 were\npublished by Shelley in the “Alastor” volume of 1816, under the title,\n“The Daemon of the World”. The remainder lay unpublished till 1876, when\nsections 8 and 9 were printed by Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B., from a\nprinted copy of “Queen Mab” with Shelley’s manuscript corrections. See\n“The Shelley Library”, pages 36-44, for a description of this copy,\nwhich is in Mr. Forman’s possession. Sources of the text are (1) the\neditio princeps of 1813; (2) text (with some omissions) in the “Poetical\nWorks” of 1839, edited by Mrs. Shelley; (3) text (one line only wanting)\nin the 2nd edition of the “Poetical Works”, 1839 (same editor).\n\n“Queen Mab” was probably written during the year 1812—it is first heard\nof at Lynmouth, August 18, 1812 (“Shelley Memorials”, page 39)—but the\ntext may be assumed to include earlier material.]\n\nECRASEZ L’INFAME!—Correspondance de Voltaire.\n\nAvia Pieridum peragro loca, nullius ante\nTrita solo; juvat integros accedere fonteis;\nAtque haurire: juvatque novos decerpere flores.\n\n...\n\nUnde prius nulli velarint tempora musae.\nPrimum quod magnis doceo de rebus; et arctis\nReligionum animos nodis exsolvere pergo.—Lucret. lib. 4.\n\nDos pon sto, kai kosmon kineso.—Archimedes.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Queen Mab.",
    "body": "1.\n\nHow wonderful is Death,\nDeath and his brother Sleep!\nOne, pale as yonder waning moon\nWith lips of lurid blue;\nThe other, rosy as the morn                                          _5\nWhen throned on ocean’s wave\nIt blushes o’er the world:\nYet both so passing wonderful!\n\nHath then the gloomy Power\nWhose reign is in the tainted sepulchres                             _10\nSeized on her sinless soul?\nMust then that peerless form\nWhich love and admiration cannot view\nWithout a beating heart, those azure veins\nWhich steal like streams along a field of snow,                      _15\nThat lovely outline, which is fair\nAs breathing marble, perish?\nMust putrefaction’s breath\nLeave nothing of this heavenly sight\nBut loathsomeness and ruin?                                          _20\nSpare nothing but a gloomy theme,\nOn which the lightest heart might moralize?\nOr is it only a sweet slumber\nStealing o’er sensation,\nWhich the breath of roseate morning                                  _25\nChaseth into darkness?\nWill Ianthe wake again,\nAnd give that faithful bosom joy\nWhose sleepless spirit waits to catch\nLight, life and rapture from her smile?                              _30\n\nYes! she will wake again,\nAlthough her glowing limbs are motionless,\nAnd silent those sweet lips,\nOnce breathing eloquence,\nThat might have soothed a tiger’s rage,                              _35\nOr thawed the cold heart of a conqueror.\nHer dewy eyes are closed,\nAnd on their lids, whose texture fine\nScarce hides the dark blue orbs beneath,\nThe baby Sleep is pillowed:                                          _40\nHer golden tresses shade\nThe bosom’s stainless pride,\nCurling like tendrils of the parasite\nAround a marble column.\n\nHark! whence that rushing sound?                                     _45\n’Tis like the wondrous strain\nThat round a lonely ruin swells,\nWhich, wandering on the echoing shore,\nThe enthusiast hears at evening:\n’Tis softer than the west wind’s sigh;                               _50\n’Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes\nOf that strange lyre whose strings\nThe genii of the breezes sweep:\nThose lines of rainbow light\nAre like the moonbeams when they fall                                _55\nThrough some cathedral window, but the tints\nAre such as may not find\nComparison on earth.\n\nBehold the chariot of the Fairy Queen!\nCelestial coursers paw the unyielding air;                           _60\nTheir filmy pennons at her word they furl,\nAnd stop obedient to the reins of light:\nThese the Queen of Spells drew in,\nShe spread a charm around the spot,\nAnd leaning graceful from the aethereal car,                         _65\nLong did she gaze, and silently,\nUpon the slumbering maid.\n\nOh! not the visioned poet in his dreams,\nWhen silvery clouds float through the ‘wildered brain,\nWhen every sight of lovely, wild and grand                           _70\nAstonishes, enraptures, elevates,\nWhen fancy at a glance combines\nThe wondrous and the beautiful,—\nSo bright, so fair, so wild a shape\nHath ever yet beheld,                                                _75\nAs that which reined the coursers of the air,\nAnd poured the magic of her gaze\nUpon the maiden’s sleep.\n\nThe broad and yellow moon\nShone dimly through her form—                                       _80\nThat form of faultless symmetry;\nThe pearly and pellucid car\nMoved not the moonlight’s line:\n’Twas not an earthly pageant:\nThose who had looked upon the sight,                                 _85\nPassing all human glory,\nSaw not the yellow moon,\nSaw not the mortal scene,\nHeard not the night-wind’s rush,\nHeard not an earthly sound,                                          _90\nSaw but the fairy pageant,\nHeard but the heavenly strains\nThat filled the lonely dwelling.\n\nThe Fairy’s frame was slight, yon fibrous cloud,\nThat catches but the palest tinge of even,                           _95\nAnd which the straining eye can hardly seize\nWhen melting into eastern twilight’s shadow,\nWere scarce so thin, so slight; but the fair star\nThat gems the glittering coronet of morn,\nSheds not a light so mild, so powerful,                              _100\nAs that which, bursting from the Fairy’s form,\nSpread a purpureal halo round the scene,\nYet with an undulating motion,\nSwayed to her outline gracefully.\n\nFrom her celestial car                                               _105\nThe Fairy Queen descended,\nAnd thrice she waved her wand\nCircled with wreaths of amaranth:\nHer thin and misty form\nMoved with the moving air,                                           _110\nAnd the clear silver tones,\nAs thus she spoke, were such\nAs are unheard by all but gifted ear.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fairy:",
    "body": "‘Stars! your balmiest influence shed!\nElements! your wrath suspend!                                        _115\nSleep, Ocean, in the rocky bounds\nThat circle thy domain!\nLet not a breath be seen to stir\nAround yon grass-grown ruin’s height,\nLet even the restless gossamer                                       _120\nSleep on the moveless air!\nSoul of Ianthe! thou,\nJudged alone worthy of the envied boon,\nThat waits the good and the sincere; that waits\nThose who have struggled, and with resolute will                     _125\nVanquished earth’s pride and meanness, burst the chains,\nThe icy chains of custom, and have shone\nThe day-stars of their age;—Soul of Ianthe!\nAwake! arise!’\n\nSudden arose                                                         _130\nIanthe’s Soul; it stood\nAll beautiful in naked purity,\nThe perfect semblance of its bodily frame.\nInstinct with inexpressible beauty and grace,\nEach stain of earthliness                                            _135\nHad passed away, it reassumed\nIts native dignity, and stood\nImmortal amid ruin.\n\nUpon the couch the body lay\nWrapped in the depth of slumber:                                     _140\nIts features were fixed and meaningless,\nYet animal life was there,\nAnd every organ yet performed\nIts natural functions: ’twas a sight\nOf wonder to behold the body and soul.                               _145\nThe self-same lineaments, the same\nMarks of identity were there:\nYet, oh, how different! One aspires to Heaven,\nPants for its sempiternal heritage,\nAnd ever-changing, ever-rising still,                                _150\nWantons in endless being.\nThe other, for a time the unwilling sport\nOf circumstance and passion, struggles on;\nFleets through its sad duration rapidly:\nThen, like an useless and worn-out machine,                          _155\nRots, perishes, and passes.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fairy:",
    "body": "‘I am the Fairy MAB: to me ’tis given\nThe wonders of the human world to keep:\nThe secrets of the immeasurable past,\nIn the unfailing consciences of men,                                 _170\nThose stern, unflattering chroniclers, I find:\nThe future, from the causes which arise\nIn each event, I gather: not the sting\nWhich retributive memory implants\nIn the hard bosom of the selfish man;                                _175\nNor that ecstatic and exulting throb\nWhich virtue’s votary feels when he sums up\nThe thoughts and actions of a well-spent day,\nAre unforeseen, unregistered by me:\nAnd it is yet permitted me, to rend                                  _180\nThe veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit,\nClothed in its changeless purity, may know\nHow soonest to accomplish the great end\nFor which it hath its being, and may taste\nThat peace, which in the end all life will share.                    _185\nThis is the meed of virtue; happy Soul,\nAscend the car with me!’\n\nThe chains of earth’s immurement\nFell from Ianthe’s spirit;\nThey shrank and brake like bandages of straw                         _190\nBeneath a wakened giant’s strength.\nShe knew her glorious change,\nAnd felt in apprehension uncontrolled\nNew raptures opening round:\nEach day-dream of her mortal life,                                   _195\nEach frenzied vision of the slumbers\nThat closed each well-spent day,\nSeemed now to meet reality.\n\nThe Fairy and the Soul proceeded;\nThe silver clouds disparted;                                         _200\nAnd as the car of magic they ascended,\nAgain the speechless music swelled,\nAgain the coursers of the air\nUnfurled their azure pennons, and the Queen\nShaking the beamy reins                                              _205\nBade them pursue their way.\n\nThe magic car moved on.\nThe night was fair, and countless stars\nStudded Heaven’s dark blue vault,—\nJust o’er the eastern wave                                           _210\nPeeped the first faint smile of morn:—\nThe magic car moved on—\nFrom the celestial hoofs\nThe atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew,\nAnd where the burning wheels                                         _215\nEddied above the mountain’s loftiest peak,\nWas traced a line of lightning.\nNow it flew far above a rock,\nThe utmost verge of earth,\nThe rival of the Andes, whose dark brow                              _220\nLowered o’er the silver sea.\n\nFar, far below the chariot’s path,\nCalm as a slumbering babe,\nTremendous Ocean lay.\nThe mirror of its stillness showed                                   _225\nThe pale and waning stars,\nThe chariot’s fiery track,\nAnd the gray light of morn\nTinging those fleecy clouds\nThat canopied the dawn.                                              _230\nSeemed it, that the chariot’s way\nLay through the midst of an immense concave,\nRadiant with million constellations, tinged\nWith shades of infinite colour,\nAnd semicircled with a belt                                          _235\nFlashing incessant meteors.\n\nThe magic car moved on.\nAs they approached their goal\nThe coursers seemed to gather speed;\nThe sea no longer was distinguished; earth                           _240\nAppeared a vast and shadowy sphere;\nThe sun’s unclouded orb\nRolled through the black concave;\nIts rays of rapid light\nParted around the chariot’s swifter course,                          _245\nAnd fell, like ocean’s feathery spray\nDashed from the boiling surge\nBefore a vessel’s prow.\n\nThe magic car moved on.\nEarth’s distant orb appeared                                         _250\nThe smallest light that twinkles in the heaven;\nWhilst round the chariot’s way\nInnumerable systems rolled,\nAnd countless spheres diffused\nAn ever-varying glory.                                               _255\nIt was a sight of wonder: some\nWere horned like the crescent moon;\nSome shed a mild and silver beam\nLike Hesperus o’er the western sea;\nSome dashed athwart with trains of flame,                            _260\nLike worlds to death and ruin driven;\nSome shone like suns, and, as the chariot passed,\nEclipsed all other light.\n\nSpirit of Nature! here!\nIn this interminable wilderness                                      _265\nOf worlds, at whose immensity\nEven soaring fancy staggers,\nHere is thy fitting temple.\nYet not the lightest leaf\nThat quivers to the passing breeze                                   _270\nIs less instinct with thee:\nYet not the meanest worm\nThat lurks in graves and fattens on the dead\nLess shares thy eternal breath.\nSpirit of Nature! thou!                                              _275\nImperishable as this scene,\nHere is thy fitting temple.\n\n2.\n\nIf solitude hath ever led thy steps\nTo the wild Ocean’s echoing shore,\nAnd thou hast lingered there,\nUntil the sun’s broad orb\nSeemed resting on the burnished wave,                                _5\nThou must have marked the lines\nOf purple gold, that motionless\nHung o’er the sinking sphere:\nThou must have marked the billowy clouds\nEdged with intolerable radiancy                                      _10\nTowering like rocks of jet\nCrowned with a diamond wreath.\nAnd yet there is a moment,\nWhen the sun’s highest point\nPeeps like a star o’er Ocean’s western edge,                         _15\nWhen those far clouds of feathery gold,\nShaded with deepest purple, gleam\nLike islands on a dark blue sea;\nThen has thy fancy soared above the earth,\nAnd furled its wearied wing                                          _20\nWithin the Fairy’s fane.\n\nYet not the golden islands\nGleaming in yon flood of light,\nNor the feathery curtains\nStretching o’er the sun’s bright couch,                              _25\nNor the burnished Ocean waves\nPaving that gorgeous dome,\nSo fair, so wonderful a sight\nAs Mab’s aethereal palace could afford.\nYet likest evening’s vault, that faery Hall!                         _30\nAs Heaven, low resting on the wave, it spread\nIts floors of flashing light,\nIts vast and azure dome,\nIts fertile golden islands\nFloating on a silver sea;                                            _35\nWhilst suns their mingling beamings darted\nThrough clouds of circumambient darkness,\nAnd pearly battlements around\nLooked o’er the immense of Heaven.\n\nThe magic car no longer moved.                                       _40\nThe Fairy and the Spirit\nEntered the Hall of Spells:\nThose golden clouds\nThat rolled in glittering billows\nBeneath the azure canopy                                             _45\nWith the aethereal footsteps trembled not:\nThe light and crimson mists,\nFloating to strains of thrilling melody\nThrough that unearthly dwelling,\nYielded to every movement of the will.                               _50\nUpon their passive swell the Spirit leaned,\nAnd, for the varied bliss that pressed around,\nUsed not the glorious privilege\nOf virtue and of wisdom.\n\n‘Spirit!’ the Fairy said,                                            _55\nAnd pointed to the gorgeous dome,\n‘This is a wondrous sight\nAnd mocks all human grandeur;\nBut, were it virtue’s only meed, to dwell\nIn a celestial palace, all resigned                                  _60\nTo pleasurable impulses, immured\nWithin the prison of itself, the will\nOf changeless Nature would be unfulfilled.\nLearn to make others happy. Spirit, come!\nThis is thine high reward:—the past shall rise;                     _65\nThou shalt behold the present; I will teach\nThe secrets of the future.’\n\nThe Fairy and the Spirit\nApproached the overhanging battlement.—\nBelow lay stretched the universe!                                    _70\nThere, far as the remotest line\nThat bounds imagination’s flight,\nCountless and unending orbs\nIn mazy motion intermingled,\nYet still fulfilled immutably                                        _75\nEternal Nature’s law.\nAbove, below, around,\nThe circling systems formed\nA wilderness of harmony;\nEach with undeviating aim,                                           _80\nIn eloquent silence, through the depths of space\nPursued its wondrous way.\n\nThere was a little light\nThat twinkled in the misty distance:\nNone but a spirit’s eye                                              _85\nMight ken that rolling orb;\nNone but a spirit’s eye,\nAnd in no other place\nBut that celestial dwelling, might behold\nEach action of this earth’s inhabitants.                             _90\nBut matter, space and time\nIn those aereal mansions cease to act;\nAnd all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps\nThe harvest of its excellence, o’er-bounds\nThose obstacles, of which an earthly soul                            _95\nFears to attempt the conquest.\n\nThe Fairy pointed to the earth.\nThe Spirit’s intellectual eye\nIts kindred beings recognized.\nThe thronging thousands, to a passing view,                          _100\nSeemed like an ant-hill’s citizens.\nHow wonderful! that even\nThe passions, prejudices, interests,\nThat sway the meanest being, the weak touch\nThat moves the finest nerve,                                         _105\nAnd in one human brain\nCauses the faintest thought, becomes a link\nIn the great chain of Nature.\n\n‘Behold,’ the Fairy cried,\n‘Palmyra’s ruined palaces!—                                         _110\nBehold! where grandeur frowned;\nBehold! where pleasure smiled;\nWhat now remains?—the memory\nOf senselessness and shame—\nWhat is immortal there?                                              _115\nNothing—it stands to tell\nA melancholy tale, to give\nAn awful warning: soon\nOblivion will steal silently\nThe remnant of its fame.                                             _120\nMonarchs and conquerors there\nProud o’er prostrate millions trod—\nThe earthquakes of the human race;\nLike them, forgotten when the ruin\nThat marks their shock is past.                                      _125\n\n‘Beside the eternal Nile,\nThe Pyramids have risen.\nNile shall pursue his changeless way:\nThose Pyramids shall fall;\nYea! not a stone shall stand to tell                                 _130\nThe spot whereon they stood!\nTheir very site shall be forgotten,\nAs is their builder’s name!\n\n‘Behold yon sterile spot;\nWhere now the wandering Arab’s tent                                  _135\nFlaps in the desert-blast.\nThere once old Salem’s haughty fane\nReared high to Heaven its thousand golden domes,\nAnd in the blushing face of day\nExposed its shameful glory.                                          _140\nOh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed\nThe building of that fane; and many a father;\nWorn out with toil and slavery, implored\nThe poor man’s God to sweep it from the earth,\nAnd spare his children the detested task                             _145\nOf piling stone on stone, and poisoning\nThe choicest days of life,\nTo soothe a dotard’s vanity.\nThere an inhuman and uncultured race\nHowled hideous praises to their Demon-God;                           _150\nThey rushed to war, tore from the mother’s womb\nThe unborn child,—old age and infancy\nPromiscuous perished; their victorious arms\nLeft not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends:\nBut what was he who taught them that the God                         _155\nOf nature and benevolence hath given\nA special sanction to the trade of blood?\nHis name and theirs are fading, and the tales\nOf this barbarian nation, which imposture\nRecites till terror credits, are pursuing                            _160\nItself into forgetfulness.\n\n‘Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood,\nThere is a moral desert now:\nThe mean and miserable huts,\nThe yet more wretched palaces,                                       _165\nContrasted with those ancient fanes,\nNow crumbling to oblivion;\nThe long and lonely colonnades,\nThrough which the ghost of Freedom stalks,\nSeem like a well-known tune,                                         _170\nWhich in some dear scene we have loved to hear,\nRemembered now in sadness.\nBut, oh! how much more changed,\nHow gloomier is the contrast\nOf human nature there!                                               _175\nWhere Socrates expired, a tyrant’s slave,\nA coward and a fool, spreads death around—\nThen, shuddering, meets his own.\nWhere Cicero and Antoninus lived,\nA cowled and hypocritical monk                                       _180\nPrays, curses and deceives.\n\n‘Spirit, ten thousand years\nHave scarcely passed away,\nSince, in the waste where now the savage drinks\nHis enemy’s blood, and aping Europe’s sons,                          _185\nWakes the unholy song of war, Arose a stately city,\nMetropolis of the western continent:\nThere, now, the mossy column-stone,\nIndented by Time’s unrelaxing grasp,                                 _190\nWhich once appeared to brave\nAll, save its country’s ruin;\nThere the wide forest scene,\nRude in the uncultivated loveliness\nOf gardens long run wild,                                            _195\nSeems, to the unwilling sojourner, whose steps\nChance in that desert has delayed,\nThus to have stood since earth was what it is.\nYet once it was the busiest haunt,\nWhither, as to a common centre, flocked                              _200\nStrangers, and ships, and merchandise:\nOnce peace and freedom blessed\nThe cultivated plain:\nBut wealth, that curse of man,\nBlighted the bud of its prosperity:                                  _205\nVirtue and wisdom, truth and liberty,\nFled, to return not, until man shall know\nThat they alone can give the bliss\nWorthy a soul that claims\nIts kindred with eternity.                                           _210\n\n‘There’s not one atom of yon earth\nBut once was living man;\nNor the minutest drop of rain,\nThat hangeth in its thinnest cloud,\nBut flowed in human veins:                                           _215\nAnd from the burning plains\nWhere Libyan monsters yell,\nFrom the most gloomy glens\nOf Greenland’s sunless clime,\nTo where the golden fields                                           _220\nOf fertile England spread\nTheir harvest to the day,\nThou canst not find one spot\nWhereon no city stood.\n\n‘How strange is human pride!                                         _225\nI tell thee that those living things,\nTo whom the fragile blade of grass,\nThat springeth in the morn\nAnd perisheth ere noon,\nIs an unbounded world;                                               _230\nI tell thee that those viewless beings,\nWhose mansion is the smallest particle\nOf the impassive atmosphere,\nThink, feel and live like man;\nThat their affections and antipathies,                               _235\nLike his, produce the laws\nRuling their moral state;\nAnd the minutest throb\nThat through their frame diffuses\nThe slightest, faintest motion,                                      _240\nIs fixed and indispensable\nAs the majestic laws\nThat rule yon rolling orbs.’\n\nThe Fairy paused. The Spirit,\nIn ecstasy of admiration, felt                                       _245\nAll knowledge of the past revived; the events\nOf old and wondrous times,\nWhich dim tradition interruptedly\nTeaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded\nIn just perspective to the view;                                     _250\nYet dim from their infinitude.\nThe Spirit seemed to stand\nHigh on an isolated pinnacle;\nThe flood of ages combating below,\nThe depth of the unbounded universe                                  _255\nAbove, and all around\nNature’s unchanging harmony.\n\n3.\n\n‘Fairy!’ the Spirit said,\nAnd on the Queen of Spells\nFixed her aethereal eyes,\n‘I thank thee. Thou hast given\nA boon which I will not resign, and taught                           _5\nA lesson not to be unlearned. I know\nThe past, and thence I will essay to glean\nA warning for the future, so that man\nMay profit by his errors, and derive\nExperience from his folly:                                           _10\nFor, when the power of imparting joy\nIs equal to the will, the human soul\nRequires no other Heaven.’",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mab:",
    "body": "‘Turn thee, surpassing Spirit!\nMuch yet remains unscanned.                                          _15\nThou knowest how great is man,\nThou knowest his imbecility:\nYet learn thou what he is:\nYet learn the lofty destiny\nWhich restless time prepares                                         _20\nFor every living soul.\n\n‘Behold a gorgeous palace, that, amid\nYon populous city rears its thousand towers\nAnd seems itself a city. Gloomy troops\nOf sentinels, in stern and silent ranks,                             _25\nEncompass it around: the dweller there\nCannot be free and happy; hearest thou not\nThe curses of the fatherless, the groans\nOf those who have no friend? He passes on:\nThe King, the wearer of a gilded chain                               _30\nThat binds his soul to abjectness, the fool\nWhom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave\nEven to the basest appetites—that man\nHeeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles\nAt the deep curses which the destitute                               _35\nMutter in secret, and a sullen joy\nPervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan\nBut for those morsels which his wantonness\nWastes in unjoyous revelry, to save\nAll that they love from famine: when he hears                        _40\nThe tale of horror, to some ready-made face\nOf hypocritical assent he turns,\nSmothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him,\nFlushes his bloated cheek.\nNow to the meal\nOf silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags                           _45\nHis palled unwilling appetite. If gold,\nGleaming around, and numerous viands culled\nFrom every clime, could force the loathing sense\nTo overcome satiety,—if wealth\nThe spring it draws from poisons not,—or vice,                      _50\nUnfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not\nIts food to deadliest venom; then that king\nIs happy; and the peasant who fulfils\nHis unforced task, when he returns at even,\nAnd by the blazing faggot meets again                                _55\nHer welcome for whom all his toil is sped,\nTastes not a sweeter meal.\nBehold him now\nStretched on the gorgeous couch; his fevered brain\nReels dizzily awhile: but ah! too soon\nThe slumber of intemperance subsides,                                _60\nAnd conscience, that undying serpent, calls\nHer venomous brood to their nocturnal task.\nListen! he speaks! oh! mark that frenzied eye—\nOh! mark that deadly visage.’",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "King:",
    "body": "‘No cessation!\nOh! must this last for ever? Awful Death,                            _65\nI wish, yet fear to clasp thee!—Not one moment\nOf dreamless sleep! O dear and blessed peace!\nWhy dost thou shroud thy vestal purity\nIn penury and dungeons? wherefore lurkest\nWith danger, death, and solitude; yet shunn’st                       _70\nThe palace I have built thee? Sacred peace!\nOh visit me but once, but pitying shed\nOne drop of balm upon my withered soul.’",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Fairy:",
    "body": "‘Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart,\nAnd Peace defileth not her snowy robes                               _75\nIn such a shed as thine. Hark! yet he mutters;\nHis slumbers are but varied agonies,\nThey prey like scorpions on the springs of life.\nThere needeth not the hell that bigots frame\nTo punish those who err: earth in itself                             _80\nContains at once the evil and the cure;\nAnd all-sufficing Nature can chastise\nThose who transgress her law,—she only knows\nHow justly to proportion to the fault\nThe punishment it merits.\nIs it strange                                                        _85\nThat this poor wretch should pride him in his woe?\nTake pleasure in his abjectness, and hug\nThe scorpion that consumes him? Is it strange\nThat, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns,\nGrasping an iron sceptre, and immured                                _90\nWithin a splendid prison, whose stern bounds\nShut him from all that’s good or dear on earth,\nHis soul asserts not its humanity?\nThat man’s mild nature rises not in war\nAgainst a king’s employ? No—’tis not strange.                       _95\nHe, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts and lives\nJust as his father did; the unconquered powers\nOf precedent and custom interpose\nBetween a KING and virtue. Stranger yet,\nTo those who know not Nature, nor deduce                             _100\nThe future from the present, it may seem,\nThat not one slave, who suffers from the crimes\nOf this unnatural being; not one wretch,\nWhose children famish, and whose nuptial bed\nIs earth’s unpitying bosom, rears an arm\nTo dash him from his throne!                                         _105\nThose gilded flies\nThat, basking in the sunshine of a court,\nFatten on its corruption!—what are they?\n—The drones of the community; they feed\nOn the mechanic’s labour: the starved hind                           _110\nFor them compels the stubborn glebe to yield\nIts unshared harvests; and yon squalid form,\nLeaner than fleshless misery, that wastes\nA sunless life in the unwholesome mine,\nDrags out in labour a protracted death,                              _115\nTo glut their grandeur; many faint with toil,\nThat few may know the cares and woe of sloth.\n\n‘Whence, think’st thou, kings and parasites arose?\nWhence that unnatural line of drones, who heap\nToil and unvanquishable penury                                       _120\nOn those who build their palaces, and bring\nTheir daily bread?—From vice, black loathsome vice;\nFrom rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong;\nFrom all that ‘genders misery, and makes\nOf earth this thorny wilderness; from lust,                          _125\nRevenge, and murder...And when Reason’s voice,\nLoud as the voice of Nature, shall have waked\nThe nations; and mankind perceive that vice\nIs discord, war, and misery; that virtue\nIs peace, and happiness and harmony;                                 _130\nWhen man’s maturer nature shall disdain\nThe playthings of its childhood;—kingly glare\nWill lose its power to dazzle; its authority\nWill silently pass by; the gorgeous throne\nShall stand unnoticed in the regal hall,                             _135\nFast falling to decay; whilst falsehood’s trade\nShall be as hateful and unprofitable\nAs that of truth is now.\nWhere is the fame\nWhich the vainglorious mighty of the earth\nSeek to eternize? Oh! the faintest sound                             _140\nFrom Time’s light footfall, the minutest wave\nThat swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing\nThe unsubstantial bubble. Ay! today\nStern is the tyrant’s mandate, red the gaze\nThat flashes desolation, strong the arm                              _145\nThat scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes!\nThat mandate is a thunder-peal that died\nIn ages past; that gaze, a transient flash\nOn which the midnight closed, and on that arm\nThe worm has made his meal.\nThe virtuous man,                                                    _150\nWho, great in his humility, as kings\nAre little in their grandeur; he who leads\nInvincibly a life of resolute good,\nAnd stands amid the silent dungeon depths\nMore free and fearless than the trembling judge,                     _155\nWho, clothed in venal power, vainly strove\nTo bind the impassive spirit;—when he falls,\nHis mild eye beams benevolence no more:\nWithered the hand outstretched but to relieve;\nSunk Reason’s simple eloquence, that rolled                          _160\nBut to appal the guilty. Yes! the grave\nHath quenched that eye, and Death’s relentless frost\nWithered that arm: but the unfading fame\nWhich Virtue hangs upon its votary’s tomb;\nThe deathless memory of that man, whom kings                         _165\nCall to their mind and tremble; the remembrance\nWith which the happy spirit contemplates\nIts well-spent pilgrimage on earth,\nShall never pass away.\n\n‘Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;                            _170\nThe subject, not the citizen: for kings\nAnd subjects, mutual foes, forever play\nA losing game into each other’s hands,\nWhose stakes are vice and misery. The man\nOf virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.                            _175\nPower, like a desolating pestilence,\nPollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience,\nBane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,\nMakes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,\nA mechanized automaton.\nWhen Nero,                                                           _180\nHigh over flaming Rome, with savage joy\nLowered like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear\nThe shrieks of agonizing death, beheld\nThe frightful desolation spread, and felt\nA new-created sense within his soul                                  _185\nThrill to the sight, and vibrate to the sound;\nThink’st thou his grandeur had not overcome\nThe force of human kindness? and, when Rome,\nWith one stern blow, hurled not the tyrant down,\nCrushed not the arm red with her dearest blood                       _190\nHad not submissive abjectness destroyed\nNature’s suggestions?\nLook on yonder earth:\nThe golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun\nSheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees,\nArise in due succession; all things speak                            _195\nPeace, harmony, and love. The universe,\nIn Nature’s silent eloquence, declares\nThat all fulfil the works of love and joy,—\nAll but the outcast, Man. He fabricates\nThe sword which stabs his peace; he cherisheth                       _200\nThe snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up\nThe tyrant, whose delight is in his woe,\nWhose sport is in his agony. Yon sun,\nLights it the great alone? Yon silver beams,\nSleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch                        _205\nThan on the dome of kings? Is mother Earth\nA step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn\nHer unshared gifts with unremitting toil;\nA mother only to those puling babes\nWho, nursed in ease and luxury, make men                             _210\nThe playthings of their babyhood, and mar,\nIn self-important childishness, that peace\nWhich men alone appreciate?\n\n‘Spirit of Nature! no.\nThe pure diffusion of thy essence throbs                             _215\nAlike in every human heart.\nThou, aye, erectest there\nThy throne of power unappealable:\nThou art the judge beneath whose nod\nMan’s brief and frail authority                                      _220\nIs powerless as the wind\nThat passeth idly by.\nThine the tribunal which surpasseth\nThe show of human justice,\nAs God surpasses man.                                                _225\n\n‘Spirit of Nature! thou\nLife of interminable multitudes;\nSoul of those mighty spheres\nWhose changeless paths through\nHeaven’s deep silence lie;\nSoul of that smallest being,                                         _230\nThe dwelling of whose life\nIs one faint April sun-gleam;—\nMan, like these passive things,\nThy will unconsciously fulfilleth:\nLike theirs, his age of endless peace,                               _235\nWhich time is fast maturing,\nWill swiftly, surely come;\nAnd the unbounded frame, which thou pervadest,\nWill be without a flaw\nMarring its perfect symmetry.                                        _240\n\n4.\n\n‘How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh,\nWhich vernal zephyrs breathe in evening’s ear,\nWere discord to the speaking quietude\nThat wraps this moveless scene. Heaven’s ebon vault,\nStudded with stars unutterably bright,                               _5\nThrough which the moon’s unclouded grandeur rolls,\nSeems like a canopy which love had spread\nTo curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills,\nRobed in a garment of untrodden snow;\nYon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend,                           _10\nSo stainless, that their white and glittering spires\nTinge not the moon’s pure beam; yon castled steep,\nWhose banner hangeth o’er the time-worn tower\nSo idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it\nA metaphor of peace;—all form a scene                               _15\nWhere musing Solitude might love to lift\nHer soul above this sphere of earthliness;\nWhere Silence undisturbed might watch alone,\nSo cold, so bright, so still.\nThe orb of day,\nIn southern climes, o’er ocean’s waveless field                      _20\nSinks sweetly smiling: not the faintest breath\nSteals o’er the unruffled deep; the clouds of eve\nReflect unmoved the lingering beam of day;\nAnd vesper’s image on the western main\nIs beautifully still. To-morrow comes:                               _25\nCloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass,\nRoll o’er the blackened waters; the deep roar\nOf distant thunder mutters awfully;\nTempest unfolds its pinion o’er the gloom\nThat shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend,                  _30\nWith all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey;\nThe torn deep yawns,—the vessel finds a grave\nBeneath its jagged gulf.\nAh! whence yon glare\nThat fires the arch of Heaven!—that dark red smoke\nBlotting the silver moon? The stars are quenched                     _35\nIn darkness, and the pure and spangling snow\nGleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round!\nHark to that roar, whose swift and deaf’ning peals\nIn countless echoes through the mountains ring,\nStartling pale Midnight on her starry throne!                        _40\nNow swells the intermingling din; the jar\nFrequent and frightful of the bursting bomb;\nThe falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout,\nThe ceaseless clangour, and the rush of men\nInebriate with rage:—loud, and more loud                            _45\nThe discord grows; till pale Death shuts the scene,\nAnd o’er the conqueror and the conquered draws\nHis cold and bloody shroud.—Of all the men\nWhom day’s departing beam saw blooming there,\nIn proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts                      _50\nThat beat with anxious life at sunset there;\nHow few survive, how few are beating now!\nAll is deep silence, like the fearful calm\nThat slumbers in the storm’s portentous pause;\nSave when the frantic wail of widowed love                           _55\nComes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan\nWith which some soul bursts from the frame of clay\nWrapped round its struggling powers.\nThe gray morn\nDawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke\nBefore the icy wind slow rolls away,                                 _60\nAnd the bright beams of frosty morning dance\nAlong the spangling snow. There tracks of blood\nEven to the forest’s depth, and scattered arms,\nAnd lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments                         _65\nDeath’s self could change not, mark the dreadful path\nOf the outsallying victors: far behind,\nBlack ashes note where their proud city stood.\nWithin yon forest is a gloomy glen—\nEach tree which guards its darkness from the day,\nWaves o’er a warrior’s tomb.\nI see thee shrink,                                                   _70\nSurpassing Spirit!—wert thou human else?\nI see a shade of doubt and horror fleet\nAcross thy stainless features: yet fear not;\nThis is no unconnected misery,\nNor stands uncaused, and irretrievable.                              _75\nMan’s evil nature, that apology\nWhich kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up\nFor their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood\nWhich desolates the discord-wasted land.\nFrom kings, and priests, and statesmen, war arose,                   _80\nWhose safety is man’s deep unbettered woe,\nWhose grandeur his debasement. Let the axe\nStrike at the root, the poison-tree will fall;\nAnd where its venomed exhalations spread\nRuin, and death, and woe, where millions lay                         _85\nQuenching the serpent’s famine, and their bones\nBleaching unburied in the putrid blast,\nA garden shall arise, in loveliness\nSurpassing fabled Eden.\nHath Nature’s soul,\nThat formed this world so beautiful, that spread                     _90\nEarth’s lap with plenty, and life’s smallest chord\nStrung to unchanging unison, that gave\nThe happy birds their dwelling in the grove,\nThat yielded to the wanderers of the deep\nThe lovely silence of the unfathomed main,                           _95\nAnd filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust\nWith spirit, thought, and love; on Man alone,\nPartial in causeless malice, wantonly\nHeaped ruin, vice, and slavery; his soul\nBlasted with withering curses; placed afar                           _100\nThe meteor-happiness, that shuns his grasp,\nBut serving on the frightful gulf to glare,\nRent wide beneath his footsteps?\nNature!—no!\nKings, priests, and statesmen, blast the human flower\nEven in its tender bud; their influence darts                        _105\nLike subtle poison through the bloodless veins\nOf desolate society. The child,\nEre he can lisp his mother’s sacred name,\nSwells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts\nHis baby-sword even in a hero’s mood.                                _110\nThis infant-arm becomes the bloodiest scourge\nOf devastated earth; whilst specious names,\nLearned in soft childhood’s unsuspecting hour,\nServe as the sophisms with which manhood dims\nBright Reason’s ray, and sanctifies the sword                        _115\nUpraised to shed a brother’s innocent blood.\nLet priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man\nInherits vice and misery, when Force\nAnd Falsehood hang even o’er the cradled babe\nStifling with rudest grasp all natural good.                         _120\n‘Ah! to the stranger-soul, when first it peeps\nFrom its new tenement, and looks abroad\nFor happiness and sympathy, how stern\nAnd desolate a tract is this wide world!\nHow withered all the buds of natural good!                           _125\nNo shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms\nOf pitiless power! On its wretched frame,\nPoisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe\nHeaped on the wretched parent whence it sprung\nBy morals, law, and custom, the pure winds                           _130\nOf Heaven, that renovate the insect tribes,\nMay breathe not. The untainting light of day\nMay visit not its longings. It is bound\nEre it has life: yea, all the chains are forged\nLong ere its being: all liberty and love                             _135\nAnd peace is torn from its defencelessness;\nCursed from its birth, even from its cradle doomed\nTo abjectness and bondage!\n\n‘Throughout this varied and eternal world\nSoul is the only element: the block                                  _140\nThat for uncounted ages has remained\nThe moveless pillar of a mountain’s weight\nIs active, living spirit. Every grain\nIs sentient both in unity and part,\nAnd the minutest atom comprehends                                    _145\nA world of loves and hatreds; these beget\nEvil and good: hence truth and falsehood spring;\nHence will and thought and action, all the germs\nOf pain or pleasure, sympathy or hate,\nThat variegate the eternal universe.                                 _150\nSoul is not more polluted than the beams\nOf Heaven’s pure orb, ere round their rapid lines\nThe taint of earth-born atmospheres arise.\n\n‘Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds\nOf high resolve, on fancy’s boldest wing                             _155\nTo soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn\nThe keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste\nThe joys which mingled sense and spirit yield.\nOr he is formed for abjectness and woe,\nTo grovel on the dunghill of his fears,                              _160\nTo shrink at every sound, to quench the flame\nOf natural love in sensualism, to know\nThat hour as blessed when on his worthless days\nThe frozen hand of Death shall set its seal,\nYet fear the cure, though hating the disease.                        _165\nThe one is man that shall hereafter be;\nThe other, man as vice has made him now.\n\n‘War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight,\nThe lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade,\nAnd, to those royal murderers, whose mean thrones                    _170\nAre bought by crimes of treachery and gore,\nThe bread they eat, the staff on which they lean.\nGuards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround\nTheir palaces, participate the crimes\nThat force defends, and from a nation’s rage                         _175\nSecure the crown, which all the curses reach\nThat famine, frenzy, woe and penury breathe.\nThese are the hired bravos who defend\nThe tyrant’s throne—the bullies of his fear:\nThese are the sinks and channels of worst vice,                      _180\nThe refuse of society, the dregs\nOf all that is most vile: their cold hearts blend\nDeceit with sternness, ignorance with pride,\nAll that is mean and villanous, with rage\nWhich hopelessness of good, and self-contempt,                       _185\nAlone might kindle; they are decked in wealth,\nHonour and power, then are sent abroad\nTo do their work. The pestilence that stalks\nIn gloomy triumph through some eastern land\nIs less destroying. They cajole with gold,                           _190\nAnd promises of fame, the thoughtless youth\nAlready crushed with servitude: he knows\nHis wretchedness too late, and cherishes\nRepentance for his ruin, when his doom\nIs sealed in gold and blood!                                         _195\nThose too the tyrant serve, who, skilled to snare\nThe feet of Justice in the toils of law,\nStand, ready to oppress the weaker still;\nAnd right or wrong will vindicate for gold,\nSneering at public virtue, which beneath                             _200\nTheir pitiless tread lies torn and trampled, where\nHonour sits smiling at the sale of truth.\n\n‘Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites,\nWithout a hope, a passion, or a love,\nWho, through a life of luxury and lies,                              _205\nHave crept by flattery to the seats of power,\nSupport the system whence their honours flow...\nThey have three words:—well tyrants know their use,\nWell pay them for the loan, with usury\nTorn from a bleeding world!—God, Hell, and Heaven.                  _210\nA vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend,\nWhose mercy is a nickname for the rage\nOf tameless tigers hungering for blood.\nHell, a red gulf of everlasting fire,\nWhere poisonous and undying worms prolong                            _215\nEternal misery to those hapless slaves\nWhose life has been a penance for its crimes.\nAnd Heaven, a meed for those who dare belie\nTheir human nature, quake, believe, and cringe\nBefore the mockeries of earthly power.                               _220\n\n‘These tools the tyrant tempers to his work,\nWields in his wrath, and as he wills destroys,\nOmnipotent in wickedness: the while\nYouth springs, age moulders, manhood tamely does\nHis bidding, bribed by short-lived joys to lend                      _225\nForce to the weakness of his trembling arm.\n\n‘They rise, they fall; one generation comes\nYielding its harvest to destruction’s scythe.\nIt fades, another blossoms: yet behold!\nRed glows the tyrant’s stamp-mark on its bloom,                      _230\nWithering and cankering deep its passive prime.\nHe has invented lying words and modes,\nEmpty and vain as his own coreless heart;\nEvasive meanings, nothings of much sound,\nTo lure the heedless victim to the toils                             _235\nSpread round the valley of its paradise.\n\n‘Look to thyself, priest, conqueror, or prince!\nWhether thy trade is falsehood, and thy lusts\nDeep wallow in the earnings of the poor,\nWith whom thy Master was:—or thou delight’st                        _240\nIn numbering o’er the myriads of thy slain,\nAll misery weighing nothing in the scale\nAgainst thy short-lived fame: or thou dost load\nWith cowardice and crime the groaning land,\nA pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched self!                          _245\nAy, art thou not the veriest slave that e’er\nCrawled on the loathing earth? Are not thy days\nDays of unsatisfying listlessness?\nDost thou not cry, ere night’s long rack is o’er,\n“When will the morning come?” Is not thy youth                       _250\nA vain and feverish dream of sensualism?\nThy manhood blighted with unripe disease?\nAre not thy views of unregretted death\nDrear, comfortless, and horrible? Thy mind,\nIs it not morbid as thy nerveless frame,                             _255\nIncapable of judgement, hope, or love?\nAnd dost thou wish the errors to survive\nThat bar thee from all sympathies of good,\nAfter the miserable interest\nThou hold’st in their protraction? When the grave                    _260\nHas swallowed up thy memory and thyself,\nDost thou desire the bane that poisons earth\nTo twine its roots around thy coffined clay,\nSpring from thy bones, and blossom on thy tomb,\nThat of its fruit thy babes may eat and die?                         _265",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Spirit:",
    "body": "‘I was an infant when my mother went\nTo see an atheist burned. She took me there:\nThe dark-robed priests were met around the pile;\nThe multitude was gazing silently;\nAnd as the culprit passed with dauntless mien,                       _5\nTempered disdain in his unaltering eye,\nMixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth:\nThe thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs;\nHis resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon;\nHis death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob                      _10\nUttered a cry of triumph, and I wept.\n“Weep not, child!” cried my mother, “for that man\nHas said, There is no God.”’",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fairy:",
    "body": "‘There is no God!\nNature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed:\nLet heaven and earth, let man’s revolving race,                      _15\nHis ceaseless generations tell their tale;\nLet every part depending on the chain\nThat links it to the whole, point to the hand\nThat grasps its term! let every seed that falls\nIn silent eloquence unfold its store                                 _20\nOf argument; infinity within,\nInfinity without, belie creation;\nThe exterminable spirit it contains\nIs nature’s only God; but human pride\nIs skilful to invent most serious names                              _25\nTo hide its ignorance.\nThe name of God\nHas fenced about all crime with holiness,\nHimself the creature of His worshippers,\nWhose names and attributes and passions change,\nSeeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord,                            _30\nEven with the human dupes who build His shrines,\nStill serving o’er the war-polluted world\nFor desolation’s watchword; whether hosts\nStain His death-blushing chariot-wheels, as on\nTriumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise                        _35\nA sacred hymn to mingle with the groans;\nOr countless partners of His power divide\nHis tyranny to weakness; or the smoke\nOf burning towns, the cries of female helplessness,\nUnarmed old age, and youth, and infancy,                             _40\nHorribly massacred, ascend to Heaven\nIn honour of His name; or, last and worst,\nEarth groans beneath religion’s iron age,\nAnd priests dare babble of a God of peace,\nEven whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood,                _45\nMurdering the while, uprooting every germ\nOf truth, exterminating, spoiling all,\nMaking the earth a slaughter-house!\n\n‘O Spirit! through the sense\nBy which thy inner nature was apprised                               _50\nOf outward shows, vague dreams have rolled,\nAnd varied reminiscences have waked\nTablets that never fade;\nAll things have been imprinted there,\nThe stars, the sea, the earth, the sky,                              _55\nEven the unshapeliest lineaments\nOf wild and fleeting visions\nHave left a record there\nTo testify of earth.\n\n‘These are my empire, for to me is given                             _60\nThe wonders of the human world to keep,\nAnd Fancy’s thin creations to endow\nWith manner, being, and reality;\nTherefore a wondrous phantom, from the dreams\nOf human error’s dense and purblind faith,                           _65\nI will evoke, to meet thy questioning.\nAhasuerus, rise!’\n\nA strange and woe-worn wight\nArose beside the battlement,\nAnd stood unmoving there.                                            _70\nHis inessential figure cast no shade\nUpon the golden floor;\nHis port and mien bore mark of many years,\nAnd chronicles of untold ancientness\nWere legible within his beamless eye:                                _75\nYet his cheek bore the mark of youth;\nFreshness and vigour knit his manly frame;\nThe wisdom of old age was mingled there\nWith youth’s primaeval dauntlessness;\nAnd inexpressible woe,                                               _80\nChastened by fearless resignation, gave\nAn awful grace to his all-speaking brow.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ahasuerus:",
    "body": "‘Is there a God!—ay, an almighty God,\nAnd vengeful as almighty! Once His voice                             _85\nWas heard on earth: earth shuddered at the sound;\nThe fiery-visaged firmament expressed\nAbhorrence, and the grave of Nature yawned\nTo swallow all the dauntless and the good\nThat dared to hurl defiance at His throne,                           _90\nGirt as it was with power. None but slaves\nSurvived,—cold-blooded slaves, who did the work\nOf tyrannous omnipotence; whose souls\nNo honest indignation ever urged\nTo elevated daring, to one deed                                      _95\nWhich gross and sensual self did not pollute.\nThese slaves built temples for the omnipotent Fiend,\nGorgeous and vast: the costly altars smoked\nWith human blood, and hideous paeans rung\nThrough all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heard                  _100\nHis voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts\nHad raised him to his eminence in power,\nAccomplice of omnipotence in crime,\nAnd confidant of the all-knowing one.\nThese were Jehovah’s words:—                                        _105\n\n‘From an eternity of idleness\nI, God, awoke; in seven days’ toil made earth\nFrom nothing; rested, and created man:\nI placed him in a Paradise, and there\nPlanted the tree of evil, so that he                                 _110\nMight eat and perish, and My soul procure\nWherewith to sate its malice, and to turn,\nEven like a heartless conqueror of the earth,\nAll misery to My fame. The race of men\nChosen to My honour, with impunity                                   _115\nMay sate the lusts I planted in their heart.\nHere I command thee hence to lead them on,\nUntil, with hardened feet, their conquering troops\nWade on the promised soil through woman’s blood,\nAnd make My name be dreaded through the land.                        _120\nYet ever-burning flame and ceaseless woe\nShall be the doom of their eternal souls,\nWith every soul on this ungrateful earth,\nVirtuous or vicious, weak or strong,—even all\nShall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge                            _125\n(Which you, to men, call justice) of their God.’\n\nThe murderer’s brow\nQuivered with horror.\n‘God omnipotent,\nIs there no mercy? must our punishment\nBe endless? will long ages roll away,                                _130\nAnd see no term? Oh! wherefore hast Thou made\nIn mockery and wrath this evil earth?\nMercy becomes the powerful—be but just:\nO God! repent and save.’\n\n‘One way remains:\nI will beget a Son, and He shall bear                                _135\nThe sins of all the world; He shall arise\nIn an unnoticed corner of the earth,\nAnd there shall die upon a cross, and purge\nThe universal crime; so that the few\nOn whom My grace descends, those who are marked                      _140\nAs vessels to the honour of their God,\nMay credit this strange sacrifice, and save\nTheir souls alive: millions shall live and die,\nWho ne’er shall call upon their Saviour’s name,\nBut, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave.                             _145\nThousands shall deem it an old woman’s tale,\nSuch as the nurses frighten babes withal:\nThese in a gulf of anguish and of flame\nShall curse their reprobation endlessly,\nYet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow,                          _150\nEven on their beds of torment, where they howl,\nMy honour, and the justice of their doom.\nWhat then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts\nOf purity, with radiant genius bright,\nOr lit with human reason’s earthly ray?                              _155\nMany are called, but few will I elect.\nDo thou My bidding, Moses!’\nEven the murderer’s cheek\nWas blanched with horror, and his quivering lips\nScarce faintly uttered—‘O almighty One,\nI tremble and obey!’                                                 _160\n\n‘O Spirit! centuries have set their seal\nOn this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain,\nSince the Incarnate came: humbly He came,\nVeiling His horrible Godhead in the shape\nOf man, scorned by the world, His name unheard,                      _165\nSave by the rabble of His native town,\nEven as a parish demagogue. He led\nThe crowd; He taught them justice, truth, and peace,\nIn semblance; but He lit within their souls\nThe quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword                 _170\nHe brought on earth to satiate with the blood\nOf truth and freedom His malignant soul.\nAt length His mortal frame was led to death.\nI stood beside Him: on the torturing cross\nNo pain assailed His unterrestrial sense;                            _175\nAnd yet He groaned. Indignantly I summed\nThe massacres and miseries which His name\nHad sanctioned in my country, and I cried,\n“Go! Go!” in mockery.\nA smile of godlike malice reillumed                                  _180\nHis fading lineaments.—“I go,” He cried,\n“But thou shalt wander o’er the unquiet earth\nEternally.”—The dampness of the grave\nBathed my imperishable front. I fell,\nAnd long lay tranced upon the charmed soil.                          _185\nWhen I awoke Hell burned within my brain,\nWhich staggered on its seat; for all around\nThe mouldering relics of my kindred lay,\nEven as the Almighty’s ire arrested them,\nAnd in their various attitudes of death                              _190\nMy murdered children’s mute and eyeless skulls\nGlared ghastily upon me.\nBut my soul,\nFrom sight and sense of the polluting woe\nOf tyranny, had long learned to prefer\nHell’s freedom to the servitude of Heaven.                           _195\nTherefore I rose, and dauntlessly began\nMy lonely and unending pilgrimage,\nResolved to wage unweariable war\nWith my almighty Tyrant, and to hurl\nDefiance at His impotence to harm                                    _200\nBeyond the curse I bore. The very hand\nThat barred my passage to the peaceful grave\nHas crushed the earth to misery, and given\nIts empire to the chosen of His slaves.\nThese have I seen, even from the earliest dawn                       _205\nOf weak, unstable and precarious power,\nThen preaching peace, as now they practise war;\nSo, when they turned but from the massacre\nOf unoffending infidels, to quench\nTheir thirst for ruin in the very blood                              _210\nThat flowed in their own veins, and pitiless zeal\nFroze every human feeling, as the wife\nSheathed in her husband’s heart the sacred steel,\nEven whilst its hopes were dreaming of her love;\nAnd friends to friends, brothers to brothers stood                   _215\nOpposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war,\nScarce satiable by fate’s last death-draught, waged,\nDrunk from the winepress of the Almighty’s wrath;\nWhilst the red cross, in mockery of peace,\nPointed to victory! When the fray was done,                          _220\nNo remnant of the exterminated faith\nSurvived to tell its ruin, but the flesh,\nWith putrid smoke poisoning the atmosphere,\nThat rotted on the half-extinguished pile.\n\n‘Yes! I have seen God’s worshippers unsheathe                        _225\nThe sword of His revenge, when grace descended,\nConfirming all unnatural impulses,\nTo sanctify their desolating deeds;\nAnd frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross\nO’er the unhappy earth: then shone the sun                           _230\nOn showers of gore from the upflashing steel\nOf safe assassination, and all crime\nMade stingless by the Spirits of the Lord,\nAnd blood-red rainbows canopied the land.\n‘Spirit, no year of my eventful being                                _235\nHas passed unstained by crime and misery,\nWhich flows from God’s own faith. I’ve marked His slaves\nWith tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile\nThe insensate mob, and, whilst one hand was red\nWith murder, feign to stretch the other out                          _240\nFor brotherhood and peace; and that they now\nBabble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds\nAre marked with all the narrowness and crime\nThat Freedom’s young arm dare not yet chastise,\nReason may claim our gratitude, who now                              _245\nEstablishing the imperishable throne\nOf truth, and stubborn virtue, maketh vain\nThe unprevailing malice of my Foe,\nWhose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave,\nAdds impotent eternities to pain,                                    _250\nWhilst keenest disappointment racks His breast\nTo see the smiles of peace around them play,\nTo frustrate or to sanctify their doom.\n\n‘Thus have I stood,—through a wild waste of years\nStruggling with whirlwinds of mad agony,                             _255\nYet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined,\nMocking my powerless Tyrant’s horrible curse\nWith stubborn and unalterable will,\nEven as a giant oak, which Heaven’s fierce flame\nHad scathed in the wilderness, to stand                              _260\nA monument of fadeless ruin there;\nYet peacefully and movelessly it braves\nThe midnight conflict of the wintry storm,\nAs in the sunlight’s calm it spreads\nIts worn and withered arms on high                                   _265\nTo meet the quiet of a summer’s noon.’\n\nThe Fairy waved her wand:\nAhasuerus fled\nFast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist,\nThat lurk in the glens of a twilight grove,                          _270\nFlee from the morning beam:\nThe matter of which dreams are made\nNot more endowed with actual life\nThan this phantasmal portraiture\nOf wandering human thought.                                          _275",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Fairy:",
    "body": "‘The Present and the Past thou hast beheld:\nIt was a desolate sight. Now, Spirit, learn\nThe secrets of the Future.—Time!\nUnfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom,\nRender thou up thy half-devoured babes,                              _5\nAnd from the cradles of eternity,\nWhere millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep\nBy the deep murmuring stream of passing things,\nTear thou that gloomy shroud.—Spirit, behold\nThy glorious destiny!’                                               _10\n\nJoy to the Spirit came.\nThrough the wide rent in Time’s eternal veil,\nHope was seen beaming through the mists of fear:\nEarth was no longer Hell;\nLove, freedom, health, had given                                     _15\nTheir ripeness to the manhood of its prime,\nAnd all its pulses beat\nSymphonious to the planetary spheres:\nThen dulcet music swelled\nConcordant with the life-strings of the soul;                        _20\nIt throbbed in sweet and languid beatings there,\nCatching new life from transitory death,—\nLike the vague sighings of a wind at even,\nThat wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea\nAnd dies on the creation of its breath,                              _25\nAnd sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits:\nWas the pure stream of feeling\nThat sprung from these sweet notes,\nAnd o’er the Spirit’s human sympathies\nWith mild and gentle motion calmly flowed.                           _30\n\nJoy to the Spirit came,—\nSuch joy as when a lover sees\nThe chosen of his soul in happiness,\nAnd witnesses her peace\nWhose woe to him were bitterer than death,                           _35\nSees her unfaded cheek\nGlow mantling in first luxury of health,\nThrills with her lovely eyes,\nWhich like two stars amid the heaving main\nSparkle through liquid bliss.                                        _40\n\nThen in her triumph spoke the Fairy Queen:\n‘I will not call the ghost of ages gone\nTo unfold the frightful secrets of its lore;\nThe present now is past,\nAnd those events that desolate the earth                             _45\nHave faded from the memory of Time,\nWho dares not give reality to that\nWhose being I annul. To me is given\nThe wonders of the human world to keep,\nSpace, matter, time, and mind. Futurity                              _50\nExposes now its treasure; let the sight\nRenew and strengthen all thy failing hope.\nO human Spirit! spur thee to the goal\nWhere virtue fixes universal peace,\nAnd midst the ebb and flow of human things,                          _55\nShow somewhat stable, somewhat certain still,\nA lighthouse o’er the wild of dreary waves.\n\n‘The habitable earth is full of bliss;\nThose wastes of frozen billows that were hurled\nBy everlasting snowstorms round the poles,                           _60\nWhere matter dared not vegetate or live,\nBut ceaseless frost round the vast solitude\nBound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed;\nAnd fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles\nRuffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls                             _65\nIts broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,\nWhose roar is wakened into echoings sweet\nTo murmur through the Heaven-breathing groves\nAnd melodize with man’s blest nature there.\n\n‘Those deserts of immeasurable sand,                                 _70\nWhose age-collected fervours scarce allowed\nA bird to live, a blade of grass to spring,\nWhere the shrill chirp of the green lizard’s love\nBroke on the sultry silentness alone,\nNow teem with countless rills and shady woods,                       _75\nCornfields and pastures and white cottages;\nAnd where the startled wilderness beheld\nA savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,\nA tigress sating with the flesh of lambs\nThe unnatural famine of her toothless cubs,                          _80\nWhilst shouts and howlings through the desert rang,\nSloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn,\nOffering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles\nTo see a babe before his mother’s door,\nSharing his morning’s meal                                           _85\nWith the green and golden basilisk\nThat comes to lick his feet.\n\n‘Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail\nHas seen above the illimitable plain,\nMorning on night, and night on morning rise,                         _90\nWhilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread\nIts shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea,\nWhere the loud roarings of the tempest-waves\nSo long have mingled with the gusty wind\nIn melancholy loneliness, and swept                                  _95\nThe desert of those ocean solitudes,\nBut vocal to the sea-bird’s harrowing shriek,\nThe bellowing monster, and the rushing storm,\nNow to the sweet and many-mingling sounds\nOf kindliest human impulses respond.                                 _100\nThose lonely realms bright garden-isles begem,\nWith lightsome clouds and shining seas between,\nAnd fertile valleys, resonant with bliss,\nWhilst green woods overcanopy the wave,\nWhich like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore,                      _105\nTo meet the kisses of the flow’rets there.\n\n‘All things are recreated, and the flame\nOf consentaneous love inspires all life:\nThe fertile bosom of the earth gives suck\nTo myriads, who still grow beneath her care,                         _110\nRewarding her with their pure perfectness:\nThe balmy breathings of the wind inhale\nHer virtues, and diffuse them all abroad:\nHealth floats amid the gentle atmosphere,\nGlows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream:                      _115\nNo storms deform the beaming brow of Heaven,\nNor scatter in the freshness of its pride\nThe foliage of the ever-verdant trees;\nBut fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair,\nAnd Autumn proudly bears her matron grace,                           _120\nKindling a flush on the fair cheek of Spring,\nWhose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit\nReflects its tint, and blushes into love.\n\n‘The lion now forgets to thirst for blood:\nThere might you see him sporting in the sun                          _125\nBeside the dreadless kid; his claws are sheathed,\nHis teeth are harmless, custom’s force has made\nHis nature as the nature of a lamb.\nLike passion’s fruit, the nightshade’s tempting bane\nPoisons no more the pleasure it bestows:                             _130\nAll bitterness is past; the cup of joy\nUnmingled mantles to the goblet’s brim,\nAnd courts the thirsty lips it fled before.\n\n‘But chief, ambiguous Man, he that can know\nMore misery, and dream more joy than all;                            _135\nWhose keen sensations thrill within his breast\nTo mingle with a loftier instinct there,\nLending their power to pleasure and to pain,\nYet raising, sharpening, and refining each;\nWho stands amid the ever-varying world,                              _140\nThe burthen or the glory of the earth;\nHe chief perceives the change, his being notes\nThe gradual renovation, and defines\nEach movement of its progress on his mind.\n\n‘Man, where the gloom of the long polar night                        _145\nLowers o’er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil,\nWhere scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost\nBasks in the moonlight’s ineffectual glow,\nShrank with the plants, and darkened with the night;\nHis chilled and narrow energies, his heart,                          _150\nInsensible to courage, truth, or love,\nHis stunted stature and imbecile frame,\nMarked him for some abortion of the earth,\nFit compeer of the bears that roamed around,\nWhose habits and enjoyments were his own:                            _155\nHis life a feverish dream of stagnant woe,\nWhose meagre wants, but scantily fulfilled,\nApprised him ever of the joyless length\nWhich his short being’s wretchedness had reached;\nHis death a pang which famine, cold and toil                         _160\nLong on the mind, whilst yet the vital spark\nClung to the body stubbornly, had brought:\nAll was inflicted here that Earth’s revenge\nCould wreak on the infringers of her law;\nOne curse alone was spared—the name of God.                         _165\n\n‘Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day\nWith a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame,\nWhere blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere\nScattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed\nUnnatural vegetation, where the land                                 _170\nTeemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease,\nWas Man a nobler being; slavery\nHad crushed him to his country’s bloodstained dust;\nOr he was bartered for the fame of power,\nWhich all internal impulses destroying,                              _175\nMakes human will an article of trade;\nOr he was changed with Christians for their gold,\nAnd dragged to distant isles, where to the sound\nOf the flesh-mangling scourge, he does the work\nOf all-polluting luxury and wealth,                                  _180\nWhich doubly visits on the tyrants’ heads\nThe long-protracted fulness of their woe;\nOr he was led to legal butchery,\nTo turn to worms beneath that burning sun,\nWhere kings first leagued against the rights of men,                 _185\nAnd priests first traded with the name of God.\n\n‘Even where the milder zone afforded Man\nA seeming shelter, yet contagion there,\nBlighting his being with unnumbered ills,\nSpread like a quenchless fire; nor truth till late                   _190\nAvailed to arrest its progress, or create\nThat peace which first in bloodless victory waved\nHer snowy standard o’er this favoured clime:\nThere man was long the train-bearer of slaves,\nThe mimic of surrounding misery,                                     _195\nThe jackal of ambition’s lion-rage,\nThe bloodhound of religion’s hungry zeal.\n‘Here now the human being stands adorning\nThis loveliest earth with taintless body and mind;\nBlessed from his birth with all bland impulses,                      _200\nWhich gently in his noble bosom wake\nAll kindly passions and all pure desires.\nHim, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing\nWhich from the exhaustless lore of human weal\nDawns on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise                   _205\nIn time-destroying infiniteness, gift\nWith self-enshrined eternity, that mocks\nThe unprevailing hoariness of age,\nAnd man, once fleeting o’er the transient scene\nSwift as an unremembered vision, stands                              _210\nImmortal upon earth: no longer now\nHe slays the lamb that looks him in the face,\nAnd horribly devours his mangled flesh,\nWhich, still avenging Nature’s broken law,\nKindled all putrid humours in his frame,                             _215\nAll evil passions, and all vain belief,\nHatred, despair, and loathing in his mind,\nThe germs of misery, death, disease, and crime.\nNo longer now the winged habitants,\nThat in the woods their sweet lives sing away,—                     _220\nFlee from the form of man; but gather round,\nAnd prune their sunny feathers on the hands\nWhich little children stretch in friendly sport\nTowards these dreadless partners of their play.\nAll things are void of terror: Man has lost                          _225\nHis terrible prerogative, and stands\nAn equal amidst equals: happiness\nAnd science dawn though late upon the earth;\nPeace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;\nDisease and pleasure cease to mingle here,                           _230\nReason and passion cease to combat there;\nWhilst each unfettered o’er the earth extend\nTheir all-subduing energies, and wield\nThe sceptre of a vast dominion there;\nWhilst every shape and mode of matter lends                          _235\nIts force to the omnipotence of mind,\nWhich from its dark mine drags the gem of truth\nTo decorate its Paradise of peace.’\n\n_204 exhaustless store edition 1813.\n_205 Draws edition 1813. See Editor’s Note.\n\n9.\n\n‘O happy Earth! reality of Heaven!\nTo which those restless souls that ceaselessly\nThrong through the human universe, aspire;\nThou consummation of all mortal hope!\nThou glorious prize of blindly-working will!                         _5\nWhose rays, diffused throughout all space and time,\nVerge to one point and blend for ever there:\nOf purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place!\nWhere care and sorrow, impotence and crime,\nLanguor, disease, and ignorance dare not come:                       _10\nO happy Earth, reality of Heaven!\n\n‘Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams,\nAnd dim forebodings of thy loveliness\nHaunting the human heart, have there entwined\nThose rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss                      _15\nWhere friends and lovers meet to part no more.\nThou art the end of all desire and will,\nThe product of all action; and the souls\nThat by the paths of an aspiring change\nHave reached thy haven of perpetual peace,                           _20\nThere rest from the eternity of toil\nThat framed the fabric of thy perfectness.\n\n‘Even Time, the conqueror, fled thee in his fear;\nThat hoary giant, who, in lonely pride,\nSo long had ruled the world, that nations fell                       _25\nBeneath his silent footstep. Pyramids,\nThat for millenniums had withstood the tide\nOf human things, his storm-breath drove in sand\nAcross that desert where their stones survived\nThe name of him whose pride had heaped them there.                   _30\nYon monarch, in his solitary pomp,\nWas but the mushroom of a summer day,\nThat his light-winged footstep pressed to dust:\nTime was the king of earth: all things gave way\nBefore him, but the fixed and virtuous will,                         _35\nThe sacred sympathies of soul and sense,\nThat mocked his fury and prepared his fall.\n\n‘Yet slow and gradual dawned the morn of love;\nLong lay the clouds of darkness o’er the scene,\nTill from its native Heaven they rolled away:                        _40\nFirst, Crime triumphant o’er all hope careered\nUnblushing, undisguising, bold and strong;\nWhilst Falsehood, tricked in Virtue’s attributes,\nLong sanctified all deeds of vice and woe,\nTill done by her own venomous sting to death,                        _45\nShe left the moral world without a law,\nNo longer fettering Passion’s fearless wing,—\nNor searing Reason with the brand of God.\nThen steadily the happy ferment worked;\nReason was free; and wild though Passion went                        _50\nThrough tangled glens and wood-embosomed meads,\nGathering a garland of the strangest flowers,\nYet like the bee returning to her queen,\nShe bound the sweetest on her sister’s brow,\nWho meek and sober kissed the sportive child,                        _55\nNo longer trembling at the broken rod.\n\n‘Mild was the slow necessity of death:\nThe tranquil spirit failed beneath its grasp,\nWithout a groan, almost without a fear,\nCalm as a voyager to some distant land,                              _60\nAnd full of wonder, full of hope as he.\nThe deadly germs of languor and disease\nDied in the human frame, and Purity\nBlessed with all gifts her earthly worshippers.\nHow vigorous then the athletic form of age!                          _65\nHow clear its open and unwrinkled brow!\nWhere neither avarice, cunning, pride, nor care,\nHad stamped the seal of gray deformity\nOn all the mingling lineaments of time.\nHow lovely the intrepid front of youth!                              _70\nWhich meek-eyed courage decked with freshest grace;—\nCourage of soul, that dreaded not a name,\nAnd elevated will, that journeyed on\nThrough life’s phantasmal scene in fearlessness,\nWith virtue, love, and pleasure, hand in hand.                       _75\n\n‘Then, that sweet bondage which is Freedom’s self,\nAnd rivets with sensation’s softest tie\nThe kindred sympathies of human souls,\nNeeded no fetters of tyrannic law:\nThose delicate and timid impulses                                    _80\nIn Nature’s primal modesty arose,\nAnd with undoubted confidence disclosed\nThe growing longings of its dawning love,\nUnchecked by dull and selfish chastity,\nThat virtue of the cheaply virtuous,                                 _85\nWho pride themselves in senselessness and frost.\nNo longer prostitution’s venomed bane\nPoisoned the springs of happiness and life;\nWoman and man, in confidence and love,\nEqual and free and pure together trod                                _90\nThe mountain-paths of virtue, which no more\nWere stained with blood from many a pilgrim’s feet.\n\n‘Then, where, through distant ages, long in pride\nThe palace of the monarch-slave had mocked\nFamine’s faint groan, and Penury’s silent tear,                      _95\nA heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threw\nYear after year their stones upon the field,\nWakening a lonely echo; and the leaves\nOf the old thorn, that on the topmost tower\nUsurped the royal ensign’s grandeur, shook                           _100\nIn the stern storm that swayed the topmost tower\nAnd whispered strange tales in the Whirlwind’s ear.\n‘Low through the lone cathedral’s roofless aisles\nThe melancholy winds a death-dirge sung:\nIt were a sight of awfulness to see                                  _105\nThe works of faith and slavery, so vast,\nSo sumptuous, yet so perishing withal!\nEven as the corpse that rests beneath its wall.\nA thousand mourners deck the pomp of death\nTo-day, the breathing marble glows above                             _110\nTo decorate its memory, and tongues\nAre busy of its life: to-morrow, worms\nIn silence and in darkness seize their prey.\n\n‘Within the massy prison’s mouldering courts,\nFearless and free the ruddy children played,                         _115\nWeaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows\nWith the green ivy and the red wallflower,\nThat mock the dungeon’s unavailing gloom;\nThe ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron,\nThere rusted amid heaps of broken stone                              _120\nThat mingled slowly with their native earth:\nThere the broad beam of day, which feebly once\nLighted the cheek of lean Captivity\nWith a pale and sickly glare, then freely shone\nOn the pure smiles of infant playfulness:                            _125\nNo more the shuddering voice of hoarse Despair\nPealed through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes\nOf ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds\nAnd merriment were resonant around.\n\n‘These ruins soon left not a wreck behind:                           _130\nTheir elements, wide scattered o’er the globe,\nTo happier shapes were moulded, and became\nMinistrant to all blissful impulses:\nThus human things were perfected, and earth,\nEven as a child beneath its mother’s love,                           _135\nWas strengthened in all excellence, and grew\nFairer and nobler with each passing year.\n\n‘Now Time his dusky pennons o’er the scene\nCloses in steadfast darkness, and the past\nFades from our charmed sight. My task is done:                       _140\nThy lore is learned. Earth’s wonders are thine own,\nWith all the fear and all the hope they bring.\nMy spells are passed: the present now recurs.\nAh me! a pathless wilderness remains\nYet unsubdued by man’s reclaiming hand.                              _145\n\n‘Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course,\nLet virtue teach thee firmly to pursue\nThe gradual paths of an aspiring change:\nFor birth and life and death, and that strange state\nBefore the naked soul has found its home,                            _150\nAll tend to perfect happiness, and urge\nThe restless wheels of being on their way,\nWhose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,\nBicker and burn to gain their destined goal:\nFor birth but wakes the spirit to the sense                          _155\nOf outward shows, whose unexperienced shape\nNew modes of passion to its frame may lend;\nLife is its state of action, and the store\nOf all events is aggregated there\nThat variegate the eternal universe;                                 _160\nDeath is a gate of dreariness and gloom,\nThat leads to azure isles and beaming skies\nAnd happy regions of eternal hope.\nTherefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on:\nThough storms may break the primrose on its stalk,                   _165\nThough frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom,\nYet Spring’s awakening breath will woo the earth,\nTo feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower,\nThat blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens,\nLighting the greenwood with its sunny smile.                         _170\n\n‘Fear not then, Spirit, Death’s disrobing hand,\nSo welcome when the tyrant is awake,\nSo welcome when the bigot’s hell-torch burns;\n’Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour,\nThe transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep.                       _175\nDeath is no foe to Virtue: earth has seen\nLove’s brightest roses on the scaffold bloom,\nMingling with Freedom’s fadeless laurels there,\nAnd presaging the truth of visioned bliss.\nAre there not hopes within thee, which this scene                    _180\nOf linked and gradual being has confirmed?\nWhose stingings bade thy heart look further still,\nWhen, to the moonlight walk by Henry led,\nSweetly and sadly thou didst talk of death?\nAnd wilt thou rudely tear them from thy breast,                      _185\nListening supinely to a bigot’s creed,\nOr tamely crouching to the tyrant’s rod,\nWhose iron thongs are red with human gore?\nNever: but bravely bearing on, thy will\nIs destined an eternal war to wage                                   _190\nWith tyranny and falsehood, and uproot\nThe germs of misery from the human heart.\nThine is the hand whose piety would soothe\nThe thorny pillow of unhappy crime,\nWhose impotence an easy pardon gains,                                _195\nWatching its wanderings as a friend’s disease:\nThine is the brow whose mildness would defy\nIts fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will,\nWhen fenced by power and master of the world.\nThou art sincere and good; of resolute mind,                         _200\nFree from heart-withering custom’s cold control,\nOf passion lofty, pure and unsubdued.\nEarth’s pride and meanness could not vanquish thee,\nAnd therefore art thou worthy of the boon\nWhich thou hast now received: Virtue shall keep                      _205\nThy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod,\nAnd many days of beaming hope shall bless\nThy spotless life of sweet and sacred love.\nGo, happy one, and give that bosom joy\nWhose sleepless spirit waits to catch                                _210\nLight, life and rapture from thy smile.’\n\nThe Fairy waves her wand of charm.\nSpeechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car,\nThat rolled beside the battlement,\nBending her beamy eyes in thankfulness.                              _215\nAgain the enchanted steeds were yoked,\nAgain the burning wheels inflame\nThe steep descent of Heaven’s untrodden way.\nFast and far the chariot flew:\nThe vast and fiery globes that rolled                                _220\nAround the Fairy’s palace-gate\nLessened by slow degrees and soon appeared\nSuch tiny twinklers as the planet orbs\nThat there attendant on the solar power\nWith borrowed light pursued their narrower way.                      _225\n\nEarth floated then below:\nThe chariot paused a moment there;\nThe Spirit then descended:\nThe restless coursers pawed the ungenial soil,\nSnuffed the gross air, and then, their errand done,                  _230\nUnfurled their pinions to the winds of Heaven.\n\nThe Body and the Soul united then,\nA gentle start convulsed Ianthe’s frame:\nHer veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;\nMoveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained:                         _235\nShe looked around in wonder and beheld\nHenry, who kneeled in silence by her couch,\nWatching her sleep with looks of speechless love,\nAnd the bright beaming stars\nThat through the casement shone.                                     _240\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Shelley’S Notes.",
    "body": "1. 242, 243:—\n\nThe sun’s unclouded orb\nRolled through the black concave.\n\nBeyond our atmosphere the sun would appear a rayless orb of fire in the\nmidst of a black concave. The equal diffusion of its light on earth is\nowing to the refraction of the rays by the atmosphere, and their\nreflection from other bodies. Light consists either of vibrations\npropagated through a subtle medium, or of numerous minute particles\nrepelled in all directions from the luminous body. Its velocity greatly\nexceeds that of any substance with which we are acquainted: observations\non the eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites have demonstrated that light\ntakes up no more than 8 minutes 7 seconds in passing from the sun to the\nearth, a distance of 95,000,000 miles.—Some idea may be gained of the\nimmense distance of the fixed stars when it is computed that many years\nwould elapse before light could reach this earth from the nearest of\nthem; yet in one year light travels 5,422,400,000,000 miles, which is a\ndistance 5,707,600 times greater than that of the sun from the earth.\n\n1. 252, 253:—\n\nWhilst round the chariot’s way\nInnumerable systems rolled.\n\nThe plurality of worlds,—the indefinite immensity of the universe, is a\nmost awful subject of contemplation. He who rightly feels its mystery\nand grandeur is in no danger of seduction from the falsehoods of\nreligious systems, or of deifying the principle of the universe. It is\nimpossible to believe that the Spirit that pervades this infinite\nmachine begat a son upon the body of a Jewish woman; or is angered at\nthe consequences of that necessity, which is a synonym of itself. All\nthat miserable tale of the Devil, and Eve, and an Intercessor, with the\nchildish mummeries of the God of the Jews, is irreconcilable with the\nknowledge of the stars. The works of His fingers have borne witness\nagainst Him.\n\nThe nearest of the fixed stars is inconceivably distant from the earth,\nand they are probably proportionably distant from each other. By a\ncalculation of the velocity of light, Sirius is supposed to be at least\n54,224,000,000,000 miles from the earth. (See Nicholson’s\n“Encyclopedia”, article Light.) That which appears only like a thin and\nsilvery cloud streaking the heaven is in effect composed of innumerable\nclusters of suns, each shining with its own light, and illuminating\nnumbers of planets that revolve around them. Millions and millions of\nsuns are ranged around us, all attended by innumerable worlds, yet calm,\nregular, and harmonious, all keeping the paths of immutable necessity.\n\n4. 178, 179:—\n\nThese are the hired bravos who defend\nThe tyrant’s throne.\n\nTo employ murder as a means of justice is an idea which a man of an\nenlightened mind will not dwell upon with pleasure. To march forth in\nrank and file, and all the pomp of streamers and trumpets, for the\npurpose of shooting at our fellow-men as a mark; to inflict upon them\nall the variety of wound and anguish; to leave them weltering in their\nblood; to wander over the field of desolation, and count the number of\nthe dying and the dead,—are employments which in thesis we may maintain\nto be necessary, but which no good man will contemplate with gratulation\nand delight. A battle we suppose is won:—thus truth is established,\nthus the cause of justice is confirmed! It surely requires no common\nsagacity to discern the connexion between this immense heap of\ncalamities and the assertion of truth or the maintenance of justice.\n\n‘Kings, and ministers of state, the real authors of the calamity, sit\nunmolested in their cabinet, while those against whom the fury of the\nstorm is directed are, for the most part, persons who have been\ntrepanned into the service, or who are dragged unwillingly from their\npeaceful homes into the field of battle. A soldier is a man whose\nbusiness it is to kill those who never offended him, and who are the\ninnocent martyrs of other men’s iniquities. Whatever may become of the\nabstract question of the justifiableness of war, it seems impossible\nthat the soldier should not be a depraved and unnatural being.\n\nTo these more serious and momentous considerations it may be proper to\nadd a recollection of the ridiculousness of the military character. Its\nfirst constituent is obedience: a soldier is, of all descriptions of\nmen, the most completely a machine; yet his profession inevitably\nteaches him something of dogmatism, swaggering, and sell-consequence: he\nis like the puppet of a showman, who, at the very time he is made to\nstrut and swell and display the most farcical airs, we perfectly know\ncannot assume the most insignificant gesture, advance either to the\nright or the left, but as he is moved by his exhibitor.’—Godwin’s\n“Enquirer”, Essay 5.\n\nI will here subjoin a little poem, so strongly expressive of my\nabhorrence of despotism and falsehood, that I fear lest it never again\nmay be depictured so vividly. This opportunity is perhaps the only one\nthat ever will occur of rescuing it from oblivion.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Dialogue.",
    "body": "Whilst monarchs laughed upon their thrones\nTo hear a famished nation’s groans,\nAnd hugged the wealth wrung from the woe\nThat makes its eyes and veins o’erflow,—\nThose thrones, high built upon the heaps\nOf bones where frenzied Famine sleeps,\nWhere Slavery wields her scourge of iron,\nRed with mankind’s unheeded gore,\nAnd War’s mad fiends the scene environ,\nMingling with shrieks a drunken roar,\nThere Vice and Falsehood took their stand,\nHigh raised above the unhappy land.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Falsehood:",
    "body": "What have I done!—I have torn the robe\nFrom baby Truth’s unsheltered form,\nAnd round the desolated globe\nBorne safely the bewildering charm:\nMy tyrant-slaves to a dungeon-floor\nHave bound the fearless innocent,\nAnd streams of fertilizing gore\nFlow from her bosom’s hideous rent,\nWhich this unfailing dagger gave...\nI dread that blood!—no more—this day\nIs ours, though her eternal ray\nMust shine upon our grave.\nYet know, proud Vice, had I not given\nTo thee the robe I stole from Heaven,\nThy shape of ugliness and fear\nHad never gained admission here.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vice:",
    "body": "And know, that had I disdained to toil,\nBut sate in my loathsome cave the while,\nAnd ne’er to these hateful sons of Heaven,\nGOLD, MONARCHY, and MURDER, given;\nHadst thou with all thine art essayed\nOne of thy games then to have played,\nWith all thine overweening boast,\nFalsehood! I tell thee thou hadst lost!—\nYet wherefore this dispute?—we tend,\nFraternal, to one common end;\nIn this cold grave beneath my feet,\nWill our hopes, our fears, and our labours, meet.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Falsehood:",
    "body": "I brought my daughter, RELIGION, on earth:\nShe smothered Reason’s babes in their birth;\nBut dreaded their mother’s eye severe,—\nSo the crocodile slunk off slily in fear,\nAnd loosed her bloodhounds from the den....\nThey started from dreams of slaughtered men,\nAnd, by the light of her poison eye,\nDid her work o’er the wide earth frightfully:\nThe dreadful stench of her torches’ flare,\nFed with human fat, polluted the air:\nThe curses, the shrieks, the ceaseless cries\nOf the many-mingling miseries,\nAs on she trod, ascended high\nAnd trumpeted my victory!—\nBrother, tell what thou hast done.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vice:",
    "body": "I have extinguished the noonday sun,\nIn the carnage-smoke of battles won:\nFamine, Murder, Hell and Power\nWere glutted in that glorious hour\nWhich searchless fate had stamped for me\nWith the seal of her security...\nFor the bloated wretch on yonder throne\nCommanded the bloody fray to rise.\nLike me he joyed at the stifled moan\nWrung from a nation’s miseries;\nWhile the snakes, whose slime even him DEFILED,\nIn ecstasies of malice smiled:\nThey thought ’twas theirs,—but mine the deed!\nTheirs is the toil, but mine the meed—\nTen thousand victims madly bleed.\nThey dream that tyrants goad them there\nWith poisonous war to taint the air:\nThese tyrants, on their beds of thorn,\nSwell with the thoughts of murderous fame,\nAnd with their gains to lift my name\nRestless they plan from night to morn:\nI—I do all; without my aid\nThy daughter, that relentless maid,\nCould never o’er a death-bed urge\nThe fury of her venomed scourge.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Falsehood:",
    "body": "Brother, well:—the world is ours;\nAnd whether thou or I have won,\nThe pestilence expectant lowers\nOn all beneath yon blasted sun.\nOur joys, our toils, our honours meet\nIn the milk-white and wormy winding-sheet:\nA short-lived hope, unceasing care,\nSome heartless scraps of godly prayer,\nA moody curse, and a frenzied sleep\nEre gapes the grave’s unclosing deep,\nA tyrant’s dream, a coward’s start,\nThe ice that clings to a priestly heart,\nA judge’s frown, a courtier’s smile,\nMake the great whole for which we toil;\nAnd, brother, whether thou or I\nHave done the work of misery,\nIt little boots: thy toil and pain,\nWithout my aid, were more than vain;\nAnd but for thee I ne’er had sate\nThe guardian of Heaven’s palace gate.\n\n5. 1, 2:—\n\nThus do the generations of the earth\nGo to the grave, and issue from the womb.\n\n‘One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the\nearth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down,\nand hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the\nsouth, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually,\nand the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers\nrun into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence\nthe rivers come, thither they return again.’—Ecclesiastes, chapter 1\nverses 4-7.\n\n5. 4-6.\n\nEven as the leaves\nWhich the keen frost-wind of the waning year\nHas scattered on the forest soil.\n\nOin per phullon genee, toiede kai andron.\nPhulla ta men t’ anemos chamadis cheei, alla de th’ ule\nTelethoosa phuei, earos d’ epigignetai ore.\nOs andron genee, e men phuei, e d’ apolegei.\n\nIliad Z, line 146.\n\n5. 58:—\nThe mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings.\n\nSuave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis\nE terra magnum alterius spectare laborem;\nNon quia vexari quemquam est iucunda voluptas,\nSed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est.\nSuave etiam belli certamina magna tueri\nPer campos instructa, tua sine parte pericli;\nSed nil dulcius est bene quam munita tenere\nEdita doctrina sapientum templa serena,\nDespicere undo queas alios, passimque videre\nErrare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae;\nCertare ingenio; contendere nobilitate;\nNoctes atque dies niti praestante labore\nAd summas emergere opes, rerumque potiri.\nO miseras hominum mentes! O pectora caeca!\n\nLucret. lib. 2.\n\n5. 93, 94.\n\nAnd statesmen boast\nOf wealth!\n\nThere is no real wealth but the labour of man. Were the mountains of\ngold and the valleys of silver, the world would not be one grain of corn\nthe richer; no one comfort would be added to the human race. In\nconsequence of our consideration for the precious metals, one man is\nenabled to heap to himself luxuries at the expense of the necessaries of\nhis neighbour; a system admirably fitted to produce all the varieties of\ndisease and crime, which never fail to characterize the two extremes of\nopulence and penury. A speculator takes pride to himself as the promoter\nof his country’s prosperity, who employs a number of hands in the\nmanufacture of articles avowedly destitute of use, or subservient only\nto the unhallowed cravings of luxury and ostentation. The nobleman, who\nemploys the peasants of his neighbourhood in building his palaces, until\n‘jam pauca aratro jugera regiae moles relinquunt,’ flatters himself that\nhe has gained the title of a patriot by yielding to the impulses of\nvanity. The show and pomp of courts adduce the same apology for its\ncontinuance; and many a fete has been given, many a woman has eclipsed\nher beauty by her dress, to benefit the labouring poor and to encourage\ntrade. Who does not see that this is a remedy which aggravates whilst it\npalliates the countless diseases of society? The poor are set to\nlabour,—for what? Not the food for which they famish: not the blankets\nfor want of which their babes are frozen by the cold of their miserable\nhovels: not those comforts of civilization without which civilized man\nis far more miserable than the meanest savage; oppressed as he is by all\nits insidious evils, within the daily and taunting prospect of its\ninnumerable benefits assiduously exhibited before him:—no; for the\npride of power, for the miserable isolation of pride, for the false\npleasures of the hundredth part of society. No greater evidence is\nafforded of the wide extended and radical mistakes of civilized man than\nthis fact: those arts which are essential to his very being are held in\nthe greatest contempt; employments are lucrative in an inverse ratio to\ntheir usefulness (See Rousseau, “De l’Inegalite parmi les Hommes”, note\n7.): the jeweller, the toyman, the actor gains fame and wealth by the\nexercise of his useless and ridiculous art; whilst the cultivator of the\nearth, he without whom society must cease to subsist, struggles through\ncontempt and penury, and perishes by that famine which but for his\nunceasing exertions would annihilate the rest of mankind.\n\nI will not insult common sense by insisting on the doctrine of the\nnatural equality of man. The question is not concerning its\ndesirableness, but its practicability: so far as it is practicable, it\nis desirable. That state of human society which approaches nearer to an\nequal partition of its benefits and evils should, caeteris paribus, be\npreferred: but so long as we conceive that a wanton expenditure of human\nlabour, not for the necessities, not even for the luxuries of the mass\nof society, but for the egotism and ostentation of a few of its members,\nis defensible on the ground of public justice, so long we neglect to\napproximate to the redemption of the human race.\n\nLabour is required for physical, and leisure for moral improvement: from\nthe former of these advantages the rich, and from the latter the poor,\nby the inevitable conditions of their respective situations, are\nprecluded. A state which should combine the advantages of both would be\nsubjected to the evils of neither. He that is deficient in firm health,\nor vigorous intellect, is but half a man: hence it follows that to\nsubject the labouring classes to unnecessary labour is wantonly\ndepriving them of any opportunities of intellectual improvement; and\nthat the rich are heaping up for their own mischief the disease,\nlassitude, and ennui by which their existence is rendered an intolerable\nburthen.\n\nEnglish reformers exclaim against sinecures,—but the true pension list\nis the rent-roll of the landed proprietors: wealth is a power usurped by\nthe few, to compel the many to labour for their benefit. The laws which\nsupport this system derive their force from the ignorance and credulity\nof its victims: they are the result of a conspiracy of the few against\nthe many, who are themselves obliged to purchase this pre-eminence by\nthe loss of all real comfort.\n\n‘The commodities that substantially contribute to the subsistence of the\nhuman species form a very short catalogue: they demand from us but a\nslender portion of industry. If these only were produced, and\nsufficiently produced, the species of man would be continued. If the\nlabour necessarily required to produce them were equitably divided among\nthe poor, and, still more, if it were equitably divided among all, each\nman’s share of labour would be light, and his portion of leisure would\nbe ample. There was a time when this leisure would have been of small\ncomparative value: it is to be hoped that the time will come when it\nwill be applied to the most important purposes. Those hours which are\nnot required for the production of the necessaries of life may be\ndevoted to the cultivation of the understanding, the enlarging our stock\nof knowledge, the refining our taste, and thus opening to us new and\nmore exquisite sources of enjoyment.\n\n...\n\n‘It was perhaps necessary that a period of monopoly and oppression\nshould subsist, before a period of cultivated equality could subsist.\nSavages perhaps would never have been excited to the discovery of truth\nand the invention of art but by the narrow motives which such a period\naffords. But surely, after the savage state has ceased, and men have set\nout in the glorious career of discovery and invention, monopoly and\noppression cannot be necessary to prevent them from returning to a state\nof barbarism.’—Godwin’s “Enquirer”, Essay 2. See also “Pol. Jus.”, book\n8, chapter 2.\n\nIt is a calculation of this admirable author, that all the conveniences\nof civilized life might be produced, if society would divide the labour\nequally among its members, by each individual being employed in labour\ntwo hours during the day.\n\n5. 112, 113:—\n\nor religion\nDrives his wife raving mad.\n\nI am acquainted with a lady of considerable accomplishments, and the\nmother of a numerous family, whom the Christian religion has goaded to\nincurable insanity. A parallel case is, I believe, within the experience\nof every physician.\n\nNam iam saepe homines patriam, carosquo parentes\nProdiderunt, vitare Acherusia templa petentes.—Lucretius.\n\n5. 189:—\n\nEven love is sold.\n\nNot even the intercourse of the sexes is exempt from the despotism of\npositive institution. Law pretends even to govern the indisciplinable\nwanderings of passion, to put fetters on the clearest deductions of\nreason, and, by appeals to the will, to subdue the involuntary\naffections of our nature. Love is inevitably consequent upon the\nperception of loveliness. Love withers under constraint: its very\nessence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy,\nnor fear: it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited, where its\nvotaries live in confidence, equality, and unreserve.\n\nHow long then ought the sexual connection to last? what law ought to\nspecify the extent of the grievances which should limit its duration? A\nhusband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each\nother: any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment\nafter the decay of their affection would be a most intolerable tyranny,\nand the most unworthy of toleration. How odious an usurpation of the\nright of private judgement should that law be considered which should\nmake the ties of friendship indissoluble, in spite of the caprices, the\ninconstancy, the fallibility, and capacity for improvement of the human\nmind. And by so much would the fetters of love be heavier and more\nunendurable than those of friendship, as love is more vehement and\ncapricious, more dependent on those delicate peculiarities of\nimagination, and less capable of reduction to the ostensible merits of\nthe object.\n\nThe state of society in which we exist is a mixture of feudal savageness\nand imperfect civilization. The narrow and unenlightened morality of the\nChristian religion is an aggravation of these evils. It is not even\nuntil lately that mankind have admitted that happiness is the sole end\nof the science of ethics, as of all other sciences; and that the\nfanatical idea of mortifying the flesh for the love of God has been\ndiscarded. I have heard, indeed, an ignorant collegian adduce, in favour\nof Christianity, its hostility to every worldly feeling! (The first\nChristian emperor made a law by which seduction was punished with death;\nif the female pleaded her own consent, she also was punished with death;\nif the parents endeavoured to screen the criminals, they were banished\nand their estates were confiscated; the slaves who might be accessory\nwere burned alive, or forced to swallow melted lead. The very offspring\nof an illegal love were involved in the consequences of the\nsentence.—Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall”, etc., volume 2, page 210. See\nalso, for the hatred of the primitive Christians to love and even\nmarriage, page 269.)\n\nBut if happiness be the object of morality, of all human unions and\ndisunions; if the worthiness of every action is to be estimated by the\nquantity of pleasurable sensation it is calculated to produce, then the\nconnection of the sexes is so long sacred as it contributes to the\ncomfort of the parties, and is naturally dissolved when its evils are\ngreater than its benefits. There is nothing immoral in this separation.\nConstancy has nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure\nit confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in proportion\nas it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the object of its\nindiscreet choice. Love is free: to promise for ever to love the same\nwoman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed: such\na vow, in both cases, excludes us from all inquiry. The language of the\nvotarist is this: The woman I now love may be infinitely inferior to\nmany others; the creed I now profess may be a mass of errors and\nabsurdities; but I exclude myself from all future information as to the\namiability of the one and the truth of the other, resolving blindly, and\nin spite of conviction, to adhere to them. Is this the language of\ndelicacy and reason? Is the love of such a frigid heart of more worth\nthan its belief?\n\nThe present system of constraint does no more, in the majority of\ninstances, than make hypocrites or open enemies. Persons of delicacy and\nvirtue, unhappily united to one whom they find it impossible to love,\nspend the loveliest season of their life in unproductive efforts to\nappear otherwise than they are, for the sake of the feelings of their\npartner or the welfare of their mutual offspring: those of less\ngenerosity and refinement openly avow their disappointment, and linger\nout the remnant of that union, which only death can dissolve, in a state\nof incurable bickering and hostility. The early education of their\nchildren takes its colour from the squabbles of the parents; they are\nnursed in a systematic school of ill-humour, violence, and falsehood.\nHad they been suffered to part at the moment when indifference rendered\ntheir union irksome, they would have been spared many years of misery:\nthey would have connected themselves more suitably, and would have found\nthat happiness in the society of more congenial partners which is for\never denied them by the despotism of marriage. They would have been\nseparately useful and happy members of society, who, whilst united, were\nmiserable and rendered misanthropical by misery. The conviction that\nwedlock is indissoluble holds out the strongest of all temptations to\nthe perverse: they indulge without restraint in acrimony, and all the\nlittle tyrannies of domestic life, when they know that their victim is\nwithout appeal. If this connection were put on a rational basis, each\nwould be assured that habitual ill-temper would terminate in separation,\nand would check this vicious and dangerous propensity.\n\nProstitution is the legitimate offspring of marriage and its\naccompanying errors. Women, for no other crime than having followed the\ndictates of a natural appetite, are driven with fury from the comforts\nand sympathies of society. It is less venial than murder; and the\npunishment which is inflicted on her who destroys her child to escape\nreproach is lighter than the life of agony and disease to which the\nprostitute is irrecoverably doomed. Has a woman obeyed the impulse of\nunerring nature;—society declares war against her, pitiless and eternal\nwar: she must be the tame slave, she must make no reprisals; theirs is\nthe right of persecution, hers the duty of endurance. She lives a life\nof infamy: the loud and bitter laugh of scorn scares her from all\nreturn. She dies of long and lingering disease: yet SHE is in fault, SHE\nis the criminal, SHE the froward and untamable child,—and society,\nforsooth, the pure and virtuous matron, who casts her as an abortion\nfrom her undefiled bosom! Society avenges herself on the criminals of\nher own creation; she is employed in anathematizing the vice to-day,\nwhich yesterday she was the most zealous to teach. Thus is formed\none-tenth of the population of London: meanwhile the evil is twofold.\nYoung men, excluded by the fanatical idea of chastity from the society\nof modest and accomplished women, associate with these vicious and\nmiserable beings, destroying thereby all those exquisite and delicate\nsensibilities whose existence cold-hearted worldlings have denied;\nannihilating all genuine passion, and debasing that to a selfish feeling\nwhich is the excess of generosity and devotedness. Their body and mind\nalike crumble into a hideous wreck of humanity; idiocy and disease\nbecome perpetuated in their miserable offspring, and distant generations\nsuffer for the bigoted morality of their forefathers. Chastity is a\nmonkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural\ntemperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root\nof all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half of the human race\nto misery, that some few may monopolize according to law. A system could\nnot well have been devised more studiously hostile to human happiness\nthan marriage.\n\nI conceive that from the abolition of marriage, the fit and natural\narrangement of sexual connection would result. I by no means assert that\nthe intercourse would be promiscuous: on the contrary, it appears, from\nthe relation of parent to child, that this union is generally of long\nduration, and marked above all others with generosity and self-devotion.\nBut this is a subject which it is perhaps premature to discuss. That\nwhich will result from the abolition of marriage will be natural and\nright; because choice and change will be exempted from restraint.\n\nIn fact, religion and morality, as they now stand, compose a practical\ncode of misery and servitude: the genius of human happiness must tear\nevery leaf from the accursed book of God ere man can read the\ninscription on his heart. How would morality, dressed up in stiff stays\nand finery, start from her own disgusting image should she look in the\nmirror of nature!—\n\n6. 45, 46:—\n\nTo the red and baleful sun\nThat faintly twinkles there.\n\nThe north polar star, to which the axis of the earth, in its present\nstate of obliquity, points. It is exceedingly probable, from many\nconsiderations, that this obliquity will gradually diminish, until the\nequator coincides with the ecliptic: the nights and days will then\nbecome equal on the earth throughout the year, and probably the seasons\nalso. There is no great extravagance in presuming that the progress of\nthe perpendicularity of the poles may be as rapid as the progress of\nintellect; or that there should be a perfect identity between the moral\nand physical improvement of the human species. It is certain that wisdom\nis not compatible with disease, and that, in the present state of the\nclimates of the earth, health, in the true and comprehensive sense of\nthe word, is out of the reach of civilized man. Astronomy teaches us\nthat the earth is now in its progress, and that the poles are every year\nbecoming more and more perpendicular to the ecliptic. The strong\nevidence afforded by the history of mythology, and geological\nresearches, that some event of this nature has taken place already,\naffords a strong presumption that this progress is not merely an\noscillation, as has been surmised by some late astronomers. (Laplace,\n“Systeme du Monde”.)\n\nBones of animals peculiar to the torrid zone have been found in the\nnorth of Siberia, and on the banks of the river Ohio. Plants have been\nfound in the fossil state in the interior of Germany, which demand the\npresent climate of Hindostan for their production. (Cabanis, “Rapports\ndu Physique et du Moral de l’Homme”, volume 2 page 406.) The researches\nof M. Bailly establish the existence of a people who inhabited a tract\nin Tartary 49 degrees north latitude, of greater antiquity than either\nthe Indians, the Chinese, or the Chaldeans, from whom these nations\nderived their sciences and theology. (Bailly, “Lettres sur les Sciences,\na Voltaire”.) We find, from the testimony of ancient writers, that\nBritain, Germany, and France were much colder than at present, and that\ntheir great rivers were annually frozen over. Astronomy teaches us also\nthat since this period the obliquity of the earth’s position has been\nconsiderably diminished.\n\n6. 171-173:—\n\nNo atom of this turbulence fulfils\nA vague and unnecessitated task,\nOr acts but as it must and ought to act.\n\n‘Deux examples serviront a nous rendre plus sensible le principe qui\nvient d’etre pose; nous emprunterons l’un du physique at l’autre du\nmoral. Dans un tourbillon de poussiere qu’eleve un vent impetueux,\nquelque confus qu’il paraisse a nos yeux; dans la plus affreuse tempete\nexcitee par des vents opposes qui soulevent les flots,—il n’y a pas une\nseule molecule de poussiere ou d’eau qui soit placee au HASARD, qui\nn’ait sa cause suffisante pour occuper le lieu ou elle se trouve, et qui\nn’agisse rigoureusement de la maniere dont ella doit agir. Un geometre\nqui connaitrait exactement les differentes forces qui agissent dans ces\ndeux cas, at las proprietes des molecules qui sent mues, demontrerait\nque d’apres des causes donnees, chaque molecule agit precisement comme\nella doit agir, et ne peut agir autrement qu’elle ne fait.\n\n‘Dans les convulsions terribles qui agitent quelquefois les societes\npolitiques, et qui produisent souvent le renversement d’un empire, il\nn’y a pas une seule action, une seule parole, une seule pensee, une\nseule volonte, une seule passion dans las agens qui concourent a la\nrevolution comme destructeurs ou comme victimes, qui ne soit necessaire,\nqui n’agissa comme ella doit agir, qui n’opere infailliblemont les\neffets qu’eile doit operer, suivant la place qu’occupent ces agens dana\nce tourbillon moral. Cela paraitrait evident pour une intelligence qui\nsera en etat de saisir et d’apprecier toutes las actions at reactions\ndes esprits at des corps de ceux qui contribuent a cette\nrevolution.’—“Systeme de la Nature”, volume 1, page 44.\n\n6. 198:—\n\nNecessity! thou mother of the world!\n\nHe who asserts the doctrine of Necessity means that, contemplating the\nevents which compose the moral and material universe, he beholds only an\nimmense and uninterrupted chain of causes and effects, no one of which\ncould occupy any other place than it does occupy, or act in any other\nplace than it does act. The idea of necessity is obtained by our\nexperience of the connection between objects, the uniformity of the\noperations of nature, the constant conjunction of similar events, and\nthe consequent inference of one from the other. Mankind are therefore\nagreed in the admission of necessity, if they admit that these two\ncircumstances take place in voluntary action. Motive is to voluntary\naction in the human mind what cause is to effect in the material\nuniverse. The word liberty, as applied to mind, is analogous to the word\nchance as applied to matter: they spring from an ignorance of the\ncertainty of the conjunction of antecedents and consequents.\n\nEvery human being is irresistibly impelled to act precisely as he does\nact: in the eternity which preceded his birth a chain of causes was\ngenerated, which, operating under the name of motives, make it\nimpossible that any thought of his mind, or any action of his life,\nshould be otherwise than it is. Were the doctrine of Necessity false,\nthe human mind would no longer be a legitimate object of science; from\nlike causes it would be in vain that we should expect like effects; the\nstrongest motive would no longer be paramount over the conduct; all\nknowledge would be vague and undeterminate; we could not predict with\nany certainty that we might not meet as an enemy to-morrow him with whom\nwe have parted in friendship to-night; the most probable inducements and\nthe clearest reasonings would lose the invariable influence they\npossess. The contrary of this is demonstrably the fact. Similar\ncircumstances produce the same unvariable effects. The precise character\nand motives of any man on any occasion being given, the moral\nphilosopher could predict his actions with as much certainty as the\nnatural philosopher could predict the effects of the mixture of any\nparticular chemical substances. Why is the aged husbandman more\nexperienced than the young beginner? Because there is a uniform,\nundeniable necessity in the operations of the material universe. Why is\nthe old statesman more skilful than the raw politician) Because, relying\non the necessary conjunction of motive and action, he proceeds to\nproduce moral effects, by the application of those moral causes which\nexperience has shown to be effectual. Some actions may be found to which\nwe can attach no motives, but these are the effects of causes with which\nwe are unacquainted. Hence the relation which motive bears to voluntary\naction is that of cause to effect; nor, placed in this point of view, is\nit, or ever has it been, the subject of popular or philosophical\ndispute. None but the few fanatics who are engaged in the herculean task\nof reconciling the justice of their God with the misery of man, will\nlonger outrage common sense by the supposition of an event without a\ncause, a voluntary action without a motive. History, politics, morals,\ncriticism, all grounds of reasonings, all principles of science, alike\nassume the truth of the doctrine of Necessity. No farmer carrying his\ncorn to market doubts the sale of it at the market price. The master of\na manufactory no more doubts that he can purchase the human labour\nnecessary for his purposes than that his machinery will act as they have\nbeen accustomed to act.\n\nBut, whilst none have scrupled to admit necessity as influencing matter,\nmany have disputed its dominion over mind. Independently of its\nmilitating with the received ideas of the justice of God, it is by no\nmeans obvious to a superficial inquiry. When the mind observes its own\noperations, it feels no connection of motive and action: but as we know\n‘nothing more of causation than the constant conjunction of objects and\nthe consequent inference of one from the other, as we find that these\ntwo circumstances are universally allowed to have place in voluntary\naction, we may be easily led to own that they are subjected to the\nnecessity common to all causes.’ The actions of the will have a regular\nconjunction with circumstances and characters; motive is to voluntary\naction what cause is to effect. But the only idea we can form of\ncausation is a constant conjunction of similar objects, and the\nconsequent inference of one from the other: wherever this is the case\nnecessity is clearly established.\n\nThe idea of liberty, applied metaphorically to the will, has sprung from\na misconception of the meaning of the word power. What is power?—id\nquod potest, that which can produce any given effect. To deny power is\nto say that nothing can or has the power to be or act. In the only true\nsense of the word power, it applies with equal force to the lodestone as\nto the human will. Do you think these motives, which I shall present,\nare powerful enough to rouse him? is a question just as common as, Do\nyou think this lever has the power of raising this weight? The advocates\nof free-will assert that the will has the power of refusing to be\ndetermined by the strongest motive; but the strongest motive is that\nwhich, overcoming all others, ultimately prevails; this assertion\ntherefore amounts to a denial of the will being ultimately determined by\nthat motive which does determine it, which is absurd. But it is equally\ncertain that a man cannot resist the strongest motive as that he cannot\novercome a physical impossibility.\n\nThe doctrine of Necessity tends to introduce a great change into the\nestablished notions of morality, and utterly to destroy religion. Reward\nand punishment must be considered, by the Necessarian, merely as motives\nwhich he would employ in order to procure the adoption or abandonment of\nany given line of conduct. Desert, in the present sense of the word,\nwould no longer have any meaning; and he who should inflict pain upon\nanother for no better reason than that he deserved it, would only\ngratify his revenge under pretence of satisfying justice? It is not\nenough, says the advocate of free-will, that a criminal should be\nprevented from a repetition of his crime: he should feel pain, and his\ntorments, when justly inflicted, ought precisely to be proportioned to\nhis fault. But utility is morality; that which is incapable of producing\nhappiness is useless; and though the crime of Damiens must be condemned,\nyet the frightful torments which revenge, under the name of justice,\ninflicted on this unhappy man cannot be supposed to have augmented, even\nat the long run, the stock of pleasurable sensation in the world. At the\nsame time, the doctrine of Necessity does not in the least diminish our\ndisapprobation of vice. The conviction which all feel that a viper is a\npoisonous animal, and that a tiger is constrained, by the inevitable\ncondition of his existence, to devour men, does not induce us to avoid\nthem less sedulously, or, even more, to hesitate in destroying them: but\nhe would surely be of a hard heart who, meeting with a serpent on a\ndesert island, or in a situation where it was incapable of injury,\nshould wantonly deprive it of existence. A Necessarian is inconsequent\nto his own principles if he indulges in hatred or contempt; the\ncompassion which he feels for the criminal is unmixed with a desire of\ninjuring him: he looks with an elevated and dreadless composure upon the\nlinks of the universal chain as they pass before his eyes; whilst\ncowardice, curiosity, and inconsistency only assail him in proportion to\nthe feebleness and indistinctness with which he has perceived and\nrejected the delusions of free-will.\n\nReligion is the perception of the relation in which we stand to the\nprinciple of the universe. But if the principle of the universe be not\nan organic being, the model and prototype of man, the relation between\nit and human beings is absolutely none. Without some insight into its\nwill respecting our actions religion is nugatory and vain. But will is\nonly a mode of animal mind; moral qualities also are such as only a\nhuman being can possess; to attribute them to the principle of the\nuniverse is to annex to it properties incompatible with any possible\ndefinition of its nature. It is probable that the word God was\noriginally only an expression denoting the unknown cause of the known\nevents which men perceived in the universe. By the vulgar mistake of a\nmetaphor for a real being, of a word for a thing, it became a man,\nendowed with human qualities and governing the universe as an earthly\nmonarch governs his kingdom. Their addresses to this imaginary being,\nindeed, are much in the same style as those of subjects to a king. They\nacknowledge his benevolence, deprecate his anger, and supplicate his\nfavour.\n\nBut the doctrine of Necessity teaches us that in no case could any event\nhave happened otherwise than it did happen, and that, if God is the\nauthor of good, He is also the author of evil; that, if He is entitled\nto our gratitude for the one, He is entitled to our hatred for the\nother; that, admitting the existence of this hypothetic being, He is\nalso subjected to the dominion of an immutable necessity. It is plain\nthat the same arguments which prove that God is the author of food,\nlight, and life, prove Him also to be the author of poison, darkness,\nand death. The wide-wasting earthquake, the storm, the battle, and the\ntyranny, are attributable to this hypothetic being in the same degree as\nthe fairest forms of nature, sunshine, liberty, and peace.\n\nBut we are taught, by the doctrine of Necessity, that there is neither\ngood nor evil in the universe, otherwise than as the events to which we\napply these epithets have relation to our own peculiar mode of being.\nStill less than with the hypothesis of a God will the doctrine of\nNecessity accord with the belief of a future state of punishment. God\nmade man such as he is, and than damned him for being so: for to say\nthat God was the author of all good, and man the author of all evil, is\nto say that one man made a straight line and a crooked one, and another\nman made the incongruity.\n\nA Mahometan story, much to the present purpose, is recorded, wherein\nAdam and Moses are introduced disputing before God in the following\nmanner. Thou, says Moses, art Adam, whom God created, and animated with\nthe breath of life, and caused to be worshipped by the angels, and\nplaced in Paradise, from whence mankind have been expelled for thy\nfault. Whereto Adam answered, Thou art Moses, whom God chose for His\napostle, and entrusted with His word, by giving thee the tables of the\nlaw, and whom He vouchsafed to admit to discourse with Himself. How many\nyears dost thou find the law was written before I was created? Says\nMoses, Forty. And dost thou not find, replied Adam, these words therein,\nAnd Adam rebelled against his Lord and transgressed? Which Moses\nconfessing, Dost thou therefore blame me, continued he, for doing that\nwhich God wrote of me that I should do, forty years before I was\ncreated, nay, for what was decreed concerning me fifty thousand years\nbefore the creation of heaven and earth?—Sale’s “Prelim. Disc. to the\nKoran”, page 164.\n\n7. 13:—\n\nThere is no God.\n\nThis negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The\nhypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe remains\nunshaken.\n\nA close examination of the validity of the proofs adduced to support any\nproposition is the only secure way of attaining truth, on the advantages\nof which it is unnecessary to descant: our knowledge of the existence of\na Deity is a subject of such importance that it cannot be too minutely\ninvestigated; in consequence of this conviction we proceed briefly and\nimpartially to examine the proofs which have been adduced. It is\nnecessary first to consider the nature of belief.\n\nWhen a proposition is offered to the mind, it perceives the agreement or\ndisagreement of the ideas of which it is composed. A perception of their\nagreement is termed BELIEF. Many obstacles frequently prevent this\nperception from being immediate; these the mind attempts to remove in\norder that the perception may be distinct. The mind is active in the\ninvestigation in order to perfect the state of perception of the\nrelation which the component ideas of the proposition bear to each,\nwhich is passive: the investigation being confused with the perception\nhas induced many falsely to imagine that the mind is active in\nbelief,—that belief is an act of volition,—in consequence of which it\nmay be regulated by the mind. Pursuing, continuing this mistake, they\nhave attached a degree of criminality to disbelief; of which, in its\nnature, it is incapable: it is equally incapable of merit.\n\nBelief, then, is a passion, the strength of which, like every other\npassion, is in precise proportion to the degrees of excitement.\n\nThe degrees of excitement are three.\n\nThe senses are the sources of all knowledge to the mind; consequently\ntheir evidence claims the strongest assent.\n\nThe decision of the mind, founded upon our own experience, derived from\nthese sources, claims the next degree.\n\nThe experience of others, which addresses itself to the former one,\noccupies the lowest degree.\n\n(A graduated scale, on which should be marked the capabilities of\npropositions to approach to the test of the senses, would be a just\nbarometer of the belief which ought to be attached to them.)\n\nConsequently no testimony can be admitted which is contrary to reason;\nreason is founded on the evidence of our senses.\n\nEvery proof may be referred to one of these three divisions: it is to be\nconsidered what arguments we receive from each of them, which should\nconvince us of the existence of a Deity.\n\n1st, The evidence of the senses. If the Deity should appear to us, if He\nshould convince our senses of His existence, this revelation would\nnecessarily command belief. Those to whom the Deity has thus appeared\nhave the strongest possible conviction of His existence. But the God of\nTheologians is incapable of local visibility.\n\n2d, Reason. It is urged that man knows that whatever is must either have\nhad a beginning, or have existed from all eternity: he also knows that\nwhatever is not eternal must have had a cause. When this reasoning is\napplied to the universe, it is necessary to prove that it was created:\nuntil that is clearly demonstrated we may reasonably suppose that it has\nendured from all eternity. We must prove design before we can infer a\ndesigner. The only idea which we can form of causation is derivable from\nthe constant conjunction of objects, and the consequent inference of one\nfrom the other. In a case where two propositions are diametrically\nopposite, the mind believes that which is least incomprehensible;—it is\neasier to suppose that the universe has existed from all eternity than\nto conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it: if the\nmind sinks beneath the weight of one, is it an alleviation to increase\nthe intolerability of the burthen?\n\nThe other argument, which is founded on a man’s knowledge of his own\nexistence, stands thus. A man knows not only that he now is, but that\nonce he was not; consequently there must have been a cause. But our idea\nof causation is alone derivable from the constant conjunction of objects\nand the consequent inference of one from the other; and, reasoning\nexperimentally, we can only infer from effects causes exactly adequate\nto those effects. But there certainly is a generative power which is\neffected by certain instruments: we cannot prove that it is inherent in\nthese instruments; nor is the contrary hypothesis capable of\ndemonstration: we admit that the generative power is incomprehensible;\nbut to suppose that the same effect is produced by an eternal,\nomniscient, omnipotent being leaves the cause in the same obscurity, but\nrenders it more incomprehensible.\n\n3d, Testimony. It is required that testimony should not be contrary to\nreason. The testimony that the Deity convinces the senses of men of His\nexistence can only be admitted by us if our mind considers it less\nprobable that these men should have been deceived than that the Deity\nshould have appeared to them. Our reason can never admit the testimony\nof men, who not only declare that they were eye-witnesses of miracles,\nbut that the Deity was irrational; for He commanded that He should be\nbelieved, He proposed the highest rewards for faith, eternal punishments\nfor disbelief. We can only command voluntary actions; belief is not an\nact of volition; the mind is even passive, or involuntarily active; from\nthis it is evident that we have no sufficient testimony, or rather that\ntestimony is insufficient to prove the being of a God. It has been\nbefore shown that it cannot be deduced from reason. They alone, then,\nwho have been convinced by the evidence of the senses can believe it.\n\nHence it is evident that, having no proofs from either of the three\nsources of conviction, the mind CANNOT believe the existence of a\ncreative God: it is also evident that, as belief is a passion of the\nmind, no degree of criminality is attachable to disbelief; and that they\nonly are reprehensible who neglect to remove the false medium through\nwhich their mind views any subject of discussion. Every reflecting mind\nmust acknowledge that there is no proof of the existence of a Deity.\n\nGod is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus\nprobandi rests on the theist. Sir Isaac Newton says: Hypotheses non\nfingo, quicquid enim ex phaenomenis non deducitur hypothesis vocanda\nest, et hypothesis vel metaphysicae, vel physicae, vel qualitatum\noccultarum, seu mechanicae, in philosophia locum non habent. To all\nproofs of the existence of a creative God apply this valuable rule. We\nsee a variety of bodies possessing a variety of powers: we merely know\ntheir effects; we are in a state of ignorance with respect to their\nessences and causes. These Newton calls the phenomena of things; but the\npride of philosophy is unwilling to admit its ignorance of their causes.\nFrom the phenomena, which are the objects of our senses, we attempt to\ninfer a cause, which we call God, and gratuitously endow it with all\nnegative and contradictory qualities. From this hypothesis we invent\nthis general name, to conceal our ignorance of causes and essences. The\nbeing called God by no means answers with the conditions prescribed by\nNewton; it bears every mark of a veil woven by philosophical conceit, to\nhide the ignorance of philosophers even from themselves. They borrow the\nthreads of its texture from the anthropomorphism of the vulgar. Words\nhave been used by sophists for the same purposes, from the occult\nqualities of the peripatetics to the effluvium of Boyle and the\ncrinities or nebulae of Herschel. God is represented as infinite,\neternal, incomprehensible; He is contained under every predicate in non\nthat the logic of ignorance could fabricate. Even His worshippers allow\nthat it is impossible to form any idea of Him: they exclaim with the\nFrench poet,\n\nPour dire ce qu’il est, il faut etre lui-meme.\n\nLord Bacon says that atheism leaves to man reason, philosophy, natural\npiety, laws, reputation, and everything that can serve to conduct him to\nvirtue; but superstition destroys all these, and erects itself into a\ntyranny over the understandings of men: hence atheism never disturbs the\ngovernment, but renders man more clear-sighted, since he sees nothing\nbeyond the boundaries of the present life.—Bacon’s “Moral Essays”.\n\nLa premiere theologie de l’homme lui fit d’abord craindre at adorer les\nelements meme, des objets materiels at grossiers; il randit ensuite ses\nhommages a des agents presidant aux elements, a des genies inferieurs, a\ndes heros, ou a des hommes doues de grandes qualites. A force de\nreflechir il crut simplifier les choses en soumettant la nature entiere\na un seul agent, a un esprit, a una ame universelle, qui mettait cette\nnature et ses parties en mouvement. En remontant de causes en causes,\nles mortels ont fini par ne rien voir; at c’est dans cette obscurite\nqu’ils ont place leur Dieu; c’est dans cat abime tenebreux que leur\nimagination inquiete travaille toujours a se fabriquer des chimeres, qui\nles affligeront jusqu’a ce que la connaissance da la nature les detrompe\ndes fantomes qu’ils ont toujours si vainement adores.\n\nSi nous voulons nous rendre compte de nos idees sur la Divinite, nous\nserons obliges de convanir que, par le mot “Dieu”, les hommes n’ont\njamais pu designer que la cause la plus cachee, la plus eloignee, la\nplus inconnue des effets qu’ils voyaient: ils ne font usage de ce mot,\nque lorsque le jeu des causes naturelles at connues cesse d’etre visible\npour eux; des qu’ils perdent le fil de ces causes, on des que leur\nesprit ne peut plus en suivre la chaine, ils tranchent leur difficulte,\nat terminent leurs recherches en appellant Dieu la derniere des causes,\nc’est-a-dire celle qui est au-dela de toutes les causes qu’ils\nconnaissent; ainsi ils ne font qu’assigner une denomination vague a une\ncause ignoree, a laquelle leur paresse ou les bornes de leurs\nconnaissances les forcent de s’arreter. Toutes les fois qu’on nous dit\nque Dieu est l’auteur de quelque phenomene, cela signifie qu’on ignore\ncomment un tel phenomene a pu s’operer par le secours des forces ou des\ncauses que nous connaissons dans la nature. C’est ainsi que le commun\ndes hommes, dont l’ignorance est la partage, attribue a la Divinite non\nseulement les effets inusites qui las frappent, mais encore les\nevenemens les plus simples, dont les causes sont les plus faciles a\nconnaitre pour quiconque a pu les mediter. En un mot, l’homme a toujours\nrespecte les causes inconnues des effets surprenans, que son ignorance\nl’empechait de demeler. Ce fut sur les debris de la nature que les\nhommes eleverent le colosse imaginaire de la Divinite.\n\nSi l’ignorance de la nature donna la naissance aux dieux, la\nconnaissance de la nature est faite pour les detruire. A mesure que\nl’homme s’instruit, ses forces at ses ressources augmentent avec ses\nlumieres; les sciences, les arts conservateurs, l’industrie, lui\nfournissent des secours; l’experience le rassure ou lui procure des\nmoyens de resister aux efforts de bien des causes\nqui cessent de l’alarmer des qu’il les a connues. En un mot, ses\nterreurs se dissipent dans la meme proportion que son esprit s’eclaire.\nL’homnme instruit cesse d’etre superstitieux.\n\nCe n’est jamais que sur parole que des peuples entiers adorent le Dieu\nde leurs peres at de leurs pretres: l’autorite, la confiance, la\nsoumission, et l’habitude leur tiennent lieu de conviction et de\npreuves; ils se prosternent et prient, parce que leurs peres leur out\nappris a se prosterner at prier: mais pourquoi ceux-ci se sont-ils mis a\ngenoux? C’est que dans les temps eloignes leurs legislateurs et leurs\nguides leur en ont fait un devoir. ‘Adorez at croyez,’ ont-ils dit, ‘des\ndieux que vous ne pouvez comprendre; rapportez-vous-en a notre sagesse\nprofonde; nous en savons plus que vous sur la divinite.’ Mais pourquoi\nm’en rapporterais-je a vous? C’est que Dieu le veut ainsi, c’est que\nDieu vous punira si vous osez resister. Mais ce Dieu n’est-il donc pas\nla chose en question? Cependant las hommes se sont toujours payes de ce\ncercle vicieux; la paresse de leur esprit leur fit trouver plus court de\ns’en rapporter au jugament des autres. Toutes las notions religieuses\nsent fondees uniquement sur l’autorite; toutes les religions du monde\ndefendent l’examen et ne veulent pas que l’on raisonne; c’est l’autorite\nqui veut qu’on croie en Dieu; ce Dieu n’est lui-meme fonde que sur\nl’autorite de quelques hommes qui pretendent le connaitre, et venir de\nsa part pour l’annoncer a la terre. Un Dieu fait par les hommes a sans\ndoute bosom des hommes pour se faire connaitre aux hommes.\n\nNe serait-ce donc que pour des pretres, des inspires, des metaphysiciens\nque serait reservee la conviction de l’existence d’un Dieu, que l’on dit\nneanmoins si necessaire a tout le genre humain? Mais trouvons-nous de\nl’harmonie entre les opinions theologiques des differens inspires, ou\ndes penseurs repandus sur la terre? Ceux meme qui font profession\nd’adorer le meme Dieu, sent-ils d’accord sur son compte? Sont-ils\ncontents des preuves que leurs collegues apportent de son existence?\nSouscrivent-ils unanimement aux idees qu’ils presentent sur sa nature,\nsur sa conduite, sur la facon d’entendre ses pretandus oracles? Est-il\nune centree sur la terre ou la science de Dieu se soit reellement\nparfectionnee? A-t-elle pris quelqne part la consistance et l’uniformite\nque nous voyons prendre aux connaissances humaines, aux arts les plus\nfutiles, aux metiers les plus meprises? Ces mots d’esprit,\nd’immaterialite, de creation, de predestination, de grace; cette foule\nde distinctions subtiles dont la theologie s’est parteut remplie dans\nquelques pays, ces inventions si ingenieuses, imaginees par des penseurs\nqui se sont succedes depuis taut de siecles, n’ont fait, helas!\nqu’embrouiller les choses, et jamais la science la plus necassaire aux\nhommes n’a jusqu’ici pu acquerir la moindre fixite. Depuis des milliers\nd’annees ces reveurs oisifs se sont perpetuellement relayes pour mediter\nla Divinite, pour deviner ses voies cachees, pour inventer des\nhypotheses propres a developper cette enigme importante. Leur peu de\nsucces n’a point decourage la vanite theologique; toujours on a parle de\nDieu: on s’est egorge pour lui, et cet etre sublime demeure toujours le\nplus ignore et le plus discute.\n\nLes hommes auraient ete trop heureux, si, se bornant aux objets visibles\nqui les interessent, ils eussent employe a perfectionner leurs sciences\nreelles, leurs lois, leur morale, leur education, la moitie des efforts\nqu’ils ont mis dans leurs recherches sur la Divinite. Ils auraiant ete\nbien plus sages encore, et plus fortunes, s’ils eussent pu consentir a\nlaisser leurs guides desoeuvres se quereller entre eux, et sonder des\nprofondeurs capables de les etourdir, sans se meler de leurs disputes\ninsensees. Mais il est de l’essence de l’ignorance d’attacher de\nl’importance a ce qu’elle ne comprend pas. La vanite humaine fait que\nl’esprit se roidit contra des difficultes. Plus un objet se derobe a nos\nyeux, plus nous faisons d’efforts pour le saisir, parce que des-lors il\naiguillonne notre orgueil, il excite notre curiosite, il nous parait\ninteressant. En combattant pour son Dieu chacun ne combattit en effet\nque pour les interets de sa propra vanite, qui de toutes les passions\nproduites par la mal-organisation de la societe est la plus prompte a\ns’alarmer, et la plus propre a produire de tres grandes folies.\n\nSi ecartant pour un moment les idees facheuses que la theologie nous\ndonne d’un Dieu capriciaux, dont les decrets partiaux et despotiques\ndecident du sort des humains, nous ne voulons fixer nos yeux que sur la\nbonte pretendue, que tous les hommes, meme en tramblant devant ce Dieu,\ns’accordent a lui donner; si nous lui supposons le projet qu’on lui\nprete de n’avoir travaille que pour sa propre gloire, d’exiger les\nhommages des etres intelligens; de ne chercher dans ses oeuvres que le\nbien-etre du genre humain: comment concilier ces vues et ces\ndispositions avec l’ignorance vraiment invincible dans laquelle ce Dieu,\nsi glorieux et si bon, laisse la plupart des hommes sur son compte? Si\nDieu veut etre connu, cheri, remercie, que ne se montre-t-il sous des\ntraits favorables a tous ces etres intelligens dont il veut etre aime et\nadore? Pourquoi ne point se manifester a toute la terre dune facon non\nequivoque, bien plus capable de nous convaincre que ces revelations\nparticulieres qui semblent accuser la Divinite d’une partialite facheuse\npour quelques-unes de ses creatures? La tout-puissant n’auroit-il donc\npas des moyens plus convainquans de se montrer aux hommas que ces\nmetamorphoses ridicules, cas incarnations pretendues, qui nous sont\nattestees par des ecrivains si peu d’accord entre eux dans les recits\nqu’ils en font? Au lieu de tant de miracles, inventes pour prouver la\nmission divine de tant de legislateurs reveres par les differens peuples\ndu monde, le souverain des esprits ne pouvait-il pas convaincre tout\nd’un coup l’esprit humain des choses qu’il a voulu lui faire connaitre?\nAu lieu de suspendre un soleil dans la voute du firmament; au lieu de\nrepandre sans ordre les etoiles et les constellations qui remplissent\nl’espace, n’eut-il pas ete plus conforme aux vues d’un Dieu si jaloux de\nsa gloire et si bien-intentionne pour l’homme d’ecrire, d’une facon non\nsujette a dispute, son nom, ses attributs, ses volontes permanentes en\ncaracteres ineffacables, et lisibles egalement pour tous les habitants\nde la terre? Personne alors n’aurait pu douter de l’existence d’un Dieu,\nde ses volontes claires, de ses intentions visibles. Sous les yeux de ce\nDieu si terrible, personne n’aurait eu l’audace de violer ses\nordonnances; nul mortel n’eut ose se mettre dans le cas d’attirer sa\ncolere: enfin nul homme n’eut eu le front d’en imposer en son nom, ou\nd’interpreter ses volontes suivant ses propres fantaisies.\n\nEn effet, quand meme on admettrait l’existence du Dieu theologique et la\nrealite des attributs si discordans qu’on lui donne, l’on n’en peut rien\nconclure, pour autoriser la conduite ou les cultes qu’on prescrit de lui\nrendre. La theologie est vraiment “le tonneau des Danaides”. A force de\nqualites contradictoires et d’assartions hasardees, ella a, pour ainsi\ndire, tellement garrotte son Dieu qu’elle l’a mis dans l’impossibilite\nd’agir. S’il est infiniment bon, quelle raison aurions-nous de le\ncraindre? S’il est infiniment sage, de quoi nous inquieter sur notre\nsort? S’il sait tout, pourquoi l’avertir de nos besoins, et le fatiguer\nde nos prieres? S’il est partout, pourquoi lui elever des temples? S’il\nest maitre de tout, pourquoi lui faire des sacrifices et des offrandes?\nS’il est juste, comment croire qu’il punisse des creatures qu’il a\nrempli de faiblesses? Si la grace fait tout en elles, quelle raison\naurait-il de les recompenser? S’il est tout-puissant, comment\nl’offenser, comment lui resister? S’il est raisonnable, comment se\nmattrait-il en colere contre des aveugles, a qui il a laisse la liberte\nde deraisonner? S’il est immuable, de quel droit pretendrions-nous faire\nchanger ses decrets? S’il est inconcevable, pourquoi nous en occuper?\nS’IL A PARLE, POURQUOI L’UNIVERS N’EST-IL PAS CONVAINCU? Si la\nconnaissance d’un Dieu est la plus necessaire, pourquoi n’est-elle pas\nla plus evidente et a plus claire?—“Systeme de la Nature”, London,\n1781.\n\nThe enlightened and benevolent Pliny thus publicly professes himself an\natheist:—Quapropter effigiem Dei formamque quaerere imbecillitatis\nhumanae reor. Quisquis est Deus (si modo est alius) et quacunque in\nparte, totus est sensus, totus est visus, totus auditus, totus animae,\ntotus animi, totus sui...Imperfectae vero in homine naturae praecipua\nsolatia ne deum quidem posse omnia. Namque nec sibi potest mortem\nconsciscere, si velit, quad homini dedit optimum in tantis vitae poenis:\nnec mortales aeternitata donare, aut revocare defunctos; nec facere ut\nqui vixit non vixerit, qui honores gessit non gessarit, nullumque habere\nin praeteritum ius, praeterquam oblivionis, atque (ut facetis quoque\nargumentis societas haec cum deo copuletur) ut bis dena viginti non\nsint, et multa similiter efficere non posse.—Per quae declaratur haud\ndubie naturae potentiam id quoque esse quad Deum vocamus.—Plin. “Nat.\nHist.” cap. de Deo.\n\nThe consistent Newtonian is necessarily an atheist. See Sir W.\nDrummond’s “Academical Questions”, chapter 3.—Sir W. seems to consider\nthe atheism to which it leads as a sufficient presumption of the\nfalsehood of the system of gravitation; but surely it is more consistent\nwith the good faith of philosophy to admit a deduction from facts than\nan hypothesis incapable of proof, although it might militate with the\nobstinate preconceptions of the mob. Had this author, instead of\ninveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its\nfalsehood, his conduct would have been more suited to the modesty of the\nsceptic and the toleration of the philosopher.\n\nOmnia enim per Dei potentiam facta sunt: imo quia naturae potentia nulla\nest nisi ipsa Dei potentia. Certum est nos eatenus Dei potentiam non\nintelligere, quatenus causas naturales ignoramus; adeoque stulte ad\neandem Dei potentiam recurritur, quando rei alicuius causam naturalem,\nsive est, ipsam Dei potantiam ignoramus.— Spinosa, “Tract.\nTheologico-Pol.” chapter 1, page 14.\n\n7. 67:—\n\nAhasuerus, rise!\n\n‘Ahasuerus the Jew crept forth from the dark cave of Mount Carmel. Near\ntwo thousand years have elapsed since he was first goaded by\nnever-ending restlessness to rove the globe from pole to pole. When our\nLord was wearied with the burthen of His ponderous cross, and wanted to\nrest before the door of Ahasuerus, the unfeeling wretch drove Him away\nwith brutality. The Saviour of mankind staggered, sinking under the\nheavy load, but uttered no complaint. An angel of death appeared before\nAhasuerus, and exclaimed indignantly, “Barbarian! thou hast denied rest\nto the Son of man: be it denied thee also, until He comes to judge the\nworld.”\n\n‘A black demon, let loose from hell upon Ahasuerus, goads him now from\ncountry to country; he is denied the consolation which death affords,\nand precluded from the rest of the peaceful grave.\n\n‘Ahasuerus crept forth from the dark cave of Mount Carmel—he shook the\ndust from his beard—and taking up one of the skulls heaped there,\nhurled it down the eminence: it rebounded from the earth in shivered\natoms. “This was my father!” roared Ahasuerus. Seven more skulls rolled\ndown from rock to rock; while the infuriate Jew, following them with\nghastly looks, exclaimed—“And these were my wives!” He still continued\nto hurl down skull after skull, roaring in dreadful accents—“And these,\nand these, and these were my children! They COULD DIE; but I! reprobate\nwretch! alas! I cannot die! Dreadful beyond conception is the judgement\nthat hangs over me. Jerusalem fell—I crushed the sucking babe, and\nprecipitated myself into the destructive flames. I cursed the\nRomans—but, alas! alas! the restless curse held me by the hair,—and I\ncould not die!\n\n‘“Rome the giantess fell—I placed myself before the falling statue—she\nfell and did not crush me. Nations sprang up and disappeared before\nme;—but I remained and did not die. From cloud-encircled cliffs did I\nprecipitate myself into the ocean; but the foaming billows cast me upon\nthe shore, and the burning arrow of existence pierced my cold heart\nagain. I leaped into Etna’s flaming abyss, and roared with the giants\nfor ten long months, polluting with my groans the Mount’s sulphureous\nmouth—ah! ten long months. The volcano fermented, and in a fiery stream\nof lava cast me up. I lay torn by the torture-snakes of hell amid the\nglowing cinders, and yet continued to exist.—A forest was on fire: I\ndarted on wings of fury and despair into the crackling wood. Fire\ndropped upon me from the trees, but the flames only singed my limbs;\nalas! it could not consume them.—I now mixed with the butchers of\nmankind, and plunged in the tempest of the raging battle. I roared\ndefiance to the infuriate Gaul, defiance to the victorious German; but\narrows and spears rebounded in shivers from my body. The Saracen’s\nflaming sword broke upon my skull: balls in vain hissed upon me: the\nlightnings of battle glared harmless around my loins: in vain did the\nelephant trample on me, in vain the iron hoof of the wrathful steed! The\nmine, big with destructive power, burst upon me, and hurled me high in\nthe air—I fell on heaps of smoking limbs, but was only singed. The\ngiant’s steel club rebounded from my body; the executioner’s hand could\nnot strangle me, the tiger’s tooth could not pierce me, nor would the\nhungry lion in the circus devour me. I cohabited with poisonous snakes,\nand pinched the red crest of the dragon.—The serpent stung, but could\nnot destroy me. The dragon tormented, but dared not to devour me.—I now\nprovoked the fury of tyrants: I said to Nero, ‘Thou art a bloodhound!’ I\nsaid to Christiern, ‘Thou art a bloodhound!, I said to Muley Ismail,\n‘Thou art a bloodhound!’—The tyrants invented cruel torments, but did\nnot kill me. Ha! not to be able to die—not to be able to die—not to be\npermitted to rest after the toils of life—to be doomed to be imprisoned\nfor ever in the clay-formed dungeon—to be for ever clogged with this\nworthless body, its lead of diseases and infirmities—to be condemned to\n[be]hold for millenniums that yawning monster Sameness, and Time, that\nhungry hyaena, ever bearing children, and ever devouring again her\noffspring!—Ha! not to be permitted to die! Awful Avenger in Heaven,\nhast Thou in Thine armoury of wrath a punishment more dreadful? then let\nit thunder upon me, command a hurricane to sweep me down to the foot of\nCarmel, that I there may lie extended; may pant, and writhe, and die.!”’\n\nThis fragment is the translation of part of some German work, whose\ntitle I have vainly endeavoured to discover. I picked it up, dirty and\ntorn, some years ago, in Lincoln’s-Inn Fields.\n\n7. 135, 136:—\n\nI will beget a Son, and He shall bear\nThe sins of all the world.\n\nA book is put into our hands when children, called the Bible, the\npurport of whose history is briefly this: That God made the earth in six\ndays, and there planted a delightful garden, in which He placed the\nfirst pair of human beings. In the midst of the garden He planted a\ntree, whose fruit, although within their reach, they were forbidden to\ntouch. That the Devil, in the shape of a snake, persuaded them to eat of\nthis fruit; in consequence of which God condemned both them and their\nposterity yet unborn to satisfy His justice by their eternal misery.\nThat, four thousand years after these events (the human race in the\nmeanwhile having gone unredeemed to perdition), God engendered with the\nbetrothed wife of a carpenter in Judea (whose virginity was nevertheless\nuninjured), and begat a son, whose name was Jesus Christ; and who was\ncrucified and died, in order that no more men might be devoted to\nhell-fire, He bearing the burthen of His Father’s displeasure by proxy.\nThe book states, in addition, that the soul of whoever disbelieves this\nsacrifice will be burned with everlasting fire.\n\nDuring many ages of misery and darkness this story gained implicit\nbelief; but at length men arose who suspected that it was a fable and\nimposture, and that Jesus Christ, so far from being a God, was only a\nman like themselves. But a numerous set of men, who derived and still\nderive immense emoluments from this opinion, in the shape of a popular\nbelief, told the vulgar that if they did not believe in the Bible they\nwould be damned to all eternity; and burned, imprisoned, and poisoned\nall the unbiassed and unconnected inquirers who occasionally arose. They\nstill oppress them, so far as the people, now become more enlightened,\nwill allow.\n\nThe belief in all that the Bible contains is called Christianity. A\nRoman governor of Judea, at the instance of a priest-led mob, crucified\na man called Jesus eighteen centuries ago. He was a man of pure life,\nwho desired to rescue his countrymen from the tyranny of their barbarous\nand degrading superstitions. The common fate of all who desire to\nbenefit mankind awaited him. The rabble, at the instigation of the\npriests, demanded his death, although his very judge made public\nacknowledgement of his innocence. Jesus was sacrificed to the honour of\nthat God with whom he was afterwards confounded. It is of importance,\ntherefore, to distinguish between the pretended character of this being\nas the Son of God and the Saviour of the world, and his real character\nas a man, who, for a vain attempt to reform the world, paid the forfeit\nof his life to that overbearing tyranny which has since so long\ndesolated the universe in his name. Whilst the one is a hypocritical\nDaemon, who announces Himself as the God of compassion and peace, even\nwhilst He stretches forth His blood-red hand with the sword of discord\nto waste the earth, having confessedly devised this scheme of desolation\nfrom eternity; the other stands in the foremost list of those true\nheroes who have died in the glorious martyrdom of liberty, and have\nbraved torture, contempt, and poverty in the cause of suffering\nhumanity. (Since writing this note I have some reason to suspect that\nJesus was an ambitious man, who aspired to the throne of Judea.\n\nThe vulgar, ever in extremes, became persuaded that the crucifixion of\nJesus was a supernatural event. Testimonies of miracles, so frequent in\nunenlightened ages, were not wanting to prove that he was something\ndivine. This belief, rolling through the lapse of ages, met with the\nreveries of Plato and the reasonings of Aristotle, and acquired force\nand extent, until the divinity of Jesus became a dogma, which to dispute\nwas death, which to doubt was infamy.\n\nCHRISTIANITY is now the established religion: he who attempts to impugn\nit must be contented to behold murderers and traitors take precedence of\nhim in public opinion; though, if his genius be equal to his courage,\nand assisted by a peculiar coalition of circumstances, future ages may\nexalt him to a divinity, and persecute others in his name, as he was\npersecuted in the name of his predecessor in the homage of the world.\n\nThe same means that have supported every other popular belief have\nsupported Christianity. War, imprisonment, assassination, and falsehood;\ndeeds of unexampled and incomparable atrocity have made it what it is.\nThe blood shed by the votaries of the God of mercy and peace, since the\nestablishment of His religion, would probably suffice to drown all other\nsectaries now on the habitable globe. We derive from our ancestors a\nfaith thus fostered and supported: we quarrel, persecute, and hate for\nits maintenance. Even under a government which, whilst it infringes the\nvery right of thought and speech, boasts of permitting the liberty of\nthe press, a man is pilloried and imprisoned because he is a deist, and\nno one raises his voice in the indignation of outraged humanity. But it\nis ever a proof that the falsehood of a proposition is felt by those who\nuse coercion, not reasoning, to procure its admission; and a\ndispassionate observer would feel himself more powerfully interested in\nfavour of a man who, depending on the truth of his opinions, simply\nstated his reasons for entertaining them, than in that of his aggressor\nwho, daringly avowing his unwillingness or incapacity to answer them by\nargument, proceeded to repress the energies and break the spirit of\ntheir promulgator by that torture and imprisonment whose infliction he\ncould command.\n\nAnalogy seems to favour the opinion that as, like other systems,\nChristianity has arisen and augmented, so like them it will decay and\nperish; that as violence, darkness, and deceit, not reasoning and\npersuasion, have procured its admission among mankind, so, when\nenthusiasm has subsided, and time, that infallible controverter of false\nopinions, has involved its pretended evidences in the darkness of\nantiquity, it will become obsolete; that Milton’s poem alone will give\npermanency to the remembrance of its absurdities; and that men will\nlaugh as heartily at grace, faith, redemption, and original sin, as they\nnow do at the metamorphoses of Jupiter, the miracles of Romish saints,\nthe efficacy of witchcraft, and the appearance of departed spirits.\n\nHad the Christian religion commenced and continued by the mere force of\nreasoning and persuasion, the preceding analogy would be inadmissible.\nWe should never speculate on the future obsoleteness of a system\nperfectly conformable to nature and reason: it would endure so long as\nthey endured; it would be a truth as indisputable as the light of the\nsun, the criminality of murder, and other facts, whose evidence,\ndepending on our organization and relative situations, must remain\nacknowledged as satisfactory so long as man is man. It is an\nincontrovertible fact, the consideration of which ought to repress the\nhasty conclusions of credulity, or moderate its obstinacy in maintaining\nthem, that, had the Jews not been a fanatical race of men, had even the\nresolution of Pontius Pilate been equal to his candour, the Christian\nreligion never could have prevailed, it could not even have existed: on\nso feeble a thread hangs the most cherished opinion of a sixth of the\nhuman race! When will the vulgar learn humility? When will the pride of\nignorance blush at having believed before it could comprehend?\n\nEither the Christian religion is true, or it is false: if true, it comes\nfrom God, and its authenticity can admit of doubt and dispute no further\nthan its omnipotent author is willing to allow. Either the power or the\ngoodness of God is called in question, if He leaves those doctrines most\nessential to the well-being of man in doubt and dispute; the only ones\nwhich, since their promulgation, have been the subject of unceasing\ncavil, the cause of irreconcilable hatred. IF GOD HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE\nUNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED?\n\nThere is this passage in the Christian Scriptures: ‘Those who obey not\nGod, and believe not the Gospel of his Son, shall be punished with\neverlasting destruction.’ This is the pivot upon which all religions\nturn:—they all assume that it is in our power to believe or not to\nbelieve; whereas the mind can only believe that which it thinks true. A\nhuman being can only be supposed accountable for those actions which are\ninfluenced by his will. But belief is utterly distinct from and\nunconnected with volition: it is the apprehension of the agreement or\ndisagreement of the ideas that compose any preposition. Belief is a\npassion, or involuntary operation of the mind, and, like other passions,\nits intensity is precisely proportionate to the degrees of excitement.\nVolition is essential to merit or demerit. But the Christian religion\nattaches the highest possible degrees of merit and demerit to that which\nis worthy of neither, and which is totally unconnected with the peculiar\nfaculty of the mind, whose presence is essential to their being.\n\nChristianity was intended to reform the world: had an all-wise Being\nplanned it, nothing is more improbable than that it should have failed:\nomniscience would infallibly have foreseen the inutility of a scheme\nwhich experience demonstrates, to this age, to have been utterly\nunsuccessful.\n\nChristianity inculcates the necessity of supplicating the Deity. Prayer\nmay be considered under two points of view;—as an endeavour to change\nthe intentions of God, or as a formal testimony of our obedience. But\nthe former case supposes that the caprices of a limited intelligence can\noccasionally instruct the Creator of the world how to regulate the\nuniverse; and the latter, a certain degree of servility analogous to the\nloyalty demanded by earthly tyrants. Obedience indeed is only the\npitiful and cowardly egotism of him who thinks that he can do something\nbetter than reason.\n\nChristianity, like all other religions, rests upon miracles, prophecies,\nand martyrdoms. No religion ever existed which had not its prophets, its\nattested miracles, and, above all, crowds of devotees who would bear\npatiently the most horrible tortures to prove its authenticity. It\nshould appear that in no case can a discriminating mind subscribe to the\ngenuineness of a miracle. A miracle is an infraction of nature’s law, by\na supernatural cause; by a cause acting beyond that eternal circle\nwithin which all things are included. God breaks through the law of\nnature, that He may convince mankind of the truth of that revelation\nwhich, in spite of His precautions, has been, since its introduction,\nthe subject of unceasing schism and cavil.\n\nMiracles resolve themselves into the following question (See Hume’s\nEssay, volume 2 page 121.):—Whether it is more probable the laws of\nnature, hitherto so immutably harmonious, should have undergone\nviolation, or that a man should have told a lie? Whether it is more\nprobable that we are ignorant of the natural cause of an event, or that\nwe know the supernatural one? That, in old times, when the powers of\nnature were less known than at present, a certain set of men were\nthemselves deceived, or had some hidden motive for deceiving others; or\nthat God begat a Son, who, in His legislation, measuring merit by\nbelief, evidenced Himself to be totally ignorant of the powers of the\nhuman mind—of what is voluntary, and what is the contrary?\n\nWe have many instances of men telling lies;—none of an infraction of\nnature’s laws, those laws of whose government alone we have any\nknowledge or experience. The records of all nations afford innumerable\ninstances of men deceiving others either from vanity or interest, or\nthemselves being deceived by the limitedness of their views and their\nignorance of natural causes: but where is the accredited case of God\nhaving come upon earth, to give the lie to His own creations? There\nwould be something truly wonderful in the appearance of a ghost; but the\nassertion of a child that he saw one as he passed through the churchyard\nis universally admitted to be less miraculous.\n\nBut even supposing that a man should raise a dead body to life before\nour eyes, and on this fact rest his claim to being considered the son of\nGod;—the Humane Society restores drowned persons, and because it makes\nno mystery of the method it employs, its members are not mistaken for\nthe sons of God. All that we have a right to infer from our ignorance of\nthe cause of any event is that we do not know it: had the Mexicans\nattended to this simple rule when they heard the cannon of the\nSpaniards, they would not have considered them as gods: the experiments\nof modern chemistry would have defied the wisest philosophers of ancient\nGreece and Rome to have accounted for them on natural principles. An\nauthor of strong common sense has observed that ‘a miracle is no miracle\nat second-hand’; he might have added that a miracle is no miracle in any\ncase; for until we are acquainted with all natural causes, we have no\nreason to imagine others.\n\nThere remains to be considered another proof of Christianity—Prophecy.\nA book is written before a certain event, in which this event is\nforetold; how could the prophet have foreknown it without inspiration?\nhow could he have been inspired without God? The greatest stress is laid\non the prophecies of Moses and Hosea on the dispersion of the Jews, and\nthat of Isaiah concerning the coming of the Messiah. The prophecy of\nMoses is a collection of every possible cursing and blessing; and it is\nso far from being marvellous that the one of dispersion should have been\nfulfilled, that it would have been more surprising if, out of all these,\nnone should have taken effect. In Deuteronomy, chapter 28, verse 64,\nwhere Moses explicitly foretells the dispersion, he states that they\nshall there serve gods of wood and stone: ‘And the Lord shall scatter\nthee among all people, from the one end of the earth even to the other;\nAND THERE THOU SHALT SERVE OTHER GODS, WHICH NEITHER THOU NOR THY\nFATHERS HAVE KNOWN, EVEN GODS OF WOOD AND STONE.’ The Jews are at this\nday remarkably tenacious of their religion. Moses also declares that\nthey shall be subjected to these curses for disobedience to his ritual:\n‘And it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of\nthe Lord thy God, to observe to do all the commandments and statutes\nwhich I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon\nthee, and overtake thee.’ Is this the real reason? The third, fourth,\nand fifth chapters of Hosea are a piece of immodest confession. The\nindelicate type might apply in a hundred senses to a hundred things. The\nfifty-third chapter of Isaiah is more explicit, yet it does not exceed\nin clearness the oracles of Delphos. The historical proof that Moses,\nIsaiah, and Hosea did write when they are said to have written is far\nfrom being clear and circumstantial.\n\nBut prophecy requires proof in its character as a miracle; we have no\nright to suppose that a man foreknew future events from God, until it is\ndemonstrated that he neither could know them by his own exertions, nor\nthat the writings which contain the prediction could possibly have been\nfabricated after the event pretended to be foretold. It is more probable\nthat writings, pretending to divine inspiration, should have been\nfabricated after the fulfilment of their pretended prediction than that\nthey should have really been divinely inspired, when we consider that\nthe latter supposition makes God at once the creator of the human mind\nand ignorant of its primary powers, particularly as we have numberless\ninstances of false religions, and forged prophecies of things long past,\nand no accredited case of God having conversed with men directly or\nindirectly. It is also possible that the description of an event might\nhave foregone its occurrence; but this is far from being a legitimate\nproof of a divine revelation, as many men, not pretending to the\ncharacter of a prophet, have nevertheless, in this sense, prophesied.\n\nLord Chesterfield was never yet taken for a prophet, even by a bishop,\nyet he uttered this remarkable prediction: ‘The despotic government of\nFrance is screwed up to the highest pitch; a revolution is fast\napproaching; that revolution, I am convinced, will be radical and\nsanguinary.’ This appeared in the letters of the prophet long before the\naccomplishment of this wonderful prediction. Now, have these particulars\ncome to pass, or have they not? If they have, how could the Earl have\nforeknown them without inspiration? If we admit the truth of the\nChristian religion on testimony such as this, we must admit, on the same\nstrength of evidence, that God has affixed the highest rewards to\nbelief, and the eternal tortures of the never-dying worm to disbelief,\nboth of which have been demonstrated to be involuntary.\n\nThe last proof of the Christian religion depends on the influence of the\nHoly Ghost. Theologians divide the influence of the Holy Ghost into its\nordinary and extraordinary modes of operation. The latter is supposed to\nbe that which inspired the Prophets and Apostles; and the former to be\nthe grace of God, which summarily makes known the truth of His\nrevelation to those whose mind is fitted for its reception by a\nsubmissive perusal of His word. Persons convinced in this manner can do\nanything but account for their conviction, describe the time at which it\nhappened, or the manner in which it came upon them. It is supposed to\nenter the mind by other channels than those of the senses, and therefore\nprofesses to be superior to reason founded on their experience.\n\nAdmitting, however, the usefulness or possibility of a divine\nrevelation, unless we demolish the foundations of all human knowledge,\nit is requisite that our reason should previously demonstrate its\ngenuineness; for, before we extinguish the steady ray of reason and\ncommon sense, it is fit that we should discover whether we cannot do\nwithout their assistance, whether or no there be any other which may\nsuffice to guide us through the labyrinth of life (See Locke’s “Essay on\nthe Human Understanding”, book 4 chapter 19, on Enthusiasm.): for, if a\nman is to be inspired upon all occasions, if he is to be sure of a thing\nbecause he is sure, if the ordinary operations of the Spirit are not to\nbe considered very extraordinary modes of demonstration, if enthusiasm\nis to usurp the place of proof, and madness that of sanity, all\nreasoning is superfluous. The Mahometan dies fighting for his prophet,\nthe Indian immolates himself at the chariot-wheels of Brahma, the\nHottentot worships an insect, the Negro a bunch of feathers, the Mexican\nsacrifices human victims! Their degree of conviction must certainly be\nvery strong: it cannot arise from reasoning, it must from feelings, the\nreward of their prayers. If each of these should affirm, in opposition\nto the strongest possible arguments, that inspiration carried internal\nevidence, I fear their inspired brethren, the orthodox missionaries,\nwould be so uncharitable as to pronounce them obstinate.\n\nMiracles cannot be received as testimonies of a disputed fact, because\nall human testimony has ever been insufficient to establish the\npossibility of miracles. That which is incapable of proof itself is no\nproof of anything else. Prophecy has also been rejected by the test of\nreason. Those, then, who have been actually inspired are the only true\nbelievers in the Christian religion.\n\nMox numine viso\nVirgineei tumuere sinus, innuptaque mater\nArcano stupuit compleri viscera partu,\nAuctorem paritura suum. Mortalia corda\nArtificem texere poli, latuitque sub uno\nPectore, qui totum late complectitur orbem.—Claudian, “Carmen Paschale”.\n\nDoes not so monstrous and disgusting an absurdity carry its own infamy\nand refutation with itself?\n\n8. 203-207:—\n\nHim, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing\nWhich from the exhaustless lore of human weal\nDraws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise\nIn time-destroying infiniteness, gift\nWith self-enshrined eternity, etc.\n\nTime is our consciousness of the succession of ideas in our mind. Vivid\nsensation, of either pain or pleasure, makes the time seem long, as the\ncommon phrase is, because it renders us more acutely conscious of our\nideas. If a mind be conscious of an hundred ideas during one minute, by\nthe clock, and of two hundred during another, the latter of these spaces\nwould actually occupy so much greater extent in the mind as two exceed\none in quantity. If, therefore, the human mind, by any future\nimprovement of its sensibility, should become conscious of an infinite\nnumber of ideas in a minute, that minute would be eternity. I do not\nhence infer that the actual space between the birth and death of a man\nwill ever be prolonged; but that his sensibility is perfectible, and\nthat the number of ideas which his mind is capable of receiving is\nindefinite. One man is stretched on the rack during twelve hours;\nanother sleeps soundly in his bed: the difference of time perceived by\nthese two persons is immense; one hardly will believe that half an hour\nhas elapsed, the other could credit that centuries had flown during his\nagony. Thus, the life of a man of virtue and talent, who should die in\nhis thirtieth year, is, with regard to his own feelings, longer than\nthat of a miserable priest-ridden slave, who dreams out a century of\ndulness. The one has perpetually cultivated his mental faculties, has\nrendered himself master of his thoughts, can abstract and generalize\namid the lethargy of every-day business;—the other can slumber over the\nbrightest moments of his being, and is unable to remember the happiest\nhour of his life. Perhaps the perishing ephemeron enjoys a longer life\nthan the tortoise.\n\nDark flood of time!\nRoll as it listeth thee—I measure not\nBy months or moments thy ambiguous course.\nAnother may stand by me on the brink\nAnd watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken\nThat pauses at my feet. The sense of love,\nThe thirst for action, and the impassioned thought\nProlong my being: if I wake no more,\nMy life more actual living will contain\nThan some gray veteran’s of the world’s cold school,\nWhose listless hours unprofitably roll,\nBy one enthusiast feeling unredeemed.—\n\nSee Godwin’s “Pol. Jus.” volume 1, page 411; and Condorcet, “Esquisse\nd’un Tableau Historique des Progres de l’Esprit Humain”, epoque 9.\n\n8. 211, 212:—\n\nNo longer now\nHe slays the lamb that looks him in the face.\n\nI hold that the depravity of the physical and moral nature of man\noriginated in his unnatural habits of life. The origin of man, like that\nof the universe of which he is a part, is enveloped in impenetrable\nmystery. His generations either had a beginning, or they had not. The\nweight of evidence in favour of each of these suppositions seems\ntolerably equal; and it is perfectly unimportant to the present argument\nwhich is assumed. The language spoken, however, by the mythology of\nnearly all religions seems to prove that at some distant period man\nforsook the path of nature, and sacrificed the purity and happiness of\nhis being to unnatural appetites. The date of this event seems to have\nalso been that of some great change in the climates of the earth, with\nwhich it has an obvious correspondence. The allegory of Adam and Eve\neating of the tree of evil, and entailing upon their posterity the wrath\nof God and the loss of everlasting life, admits of no other explanation\nthan the disease and crime that have flowed from unnatural diet. Milton\nwas so well aware of this that he makes Raphael thus exhibit to Adam the\nconsequence of his disobedience:—\n\nImmediately a place\nBefore his eyes appeared, sad, noisome, dark;\nA lazar-house it seemed; wherein were laid\nNumbers of all diseased—all maladies\nOf ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms\nOf heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds,\nConvulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,\nIntestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,\nDemoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,\nAnd moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,\nMarasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,\nDropsies and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums.\n\nAnd how many thousands more might not be added to this frightful catalogue!\n\nThe story of Prometheus is one likewise which, although universally\nadmitted to be allegorical, has never been satisfactorily explained.\nPrometheus stole fire from heaven, and was chained for this crime to\nMount Caucasus, where a vulture continually devoured his liver, that\ngrew to meet its hunger. Hesiod says that, before the time of\nPrometheus, mankind were exempt from suffering; that they enjoyed a\nvigorous youth, and that death, when at length it came, approached like\nsleep, and gently closed their eyes. Again, so general was this opinion\nthat Horace, a poet of the Augustan age, writes:—\n\nAudax omnia perpeti,\nGens humana ruit per vetitum nefas;\nAudax Iapeti genus\nIgnem fraude mala gentibus intulit:\nPost ignem aetheria domo\nSubductum, macies et nova febrium\nTerris incubuit cohors,\nSemotique prius tarda necessitas\nLethi corripuit gradum.\n\nHow plain a language is spoken by all this! Prometheus (who represents\nthe human race) effected some great change in the condition of his\nnature, and applied fire to culinary purposes; thus inventing an\nexpedient for screening from his disgust the horrors of the shambles.\nFrom this moment his vitals were devoured by the vulture of disease. It\nconsumed his being in every shape of its loathsome and infinite variety,\ninducing the soul-quelling sinkings of premature and violent death. All\nvice rose from the ruin of healthful innocence. Tyranny, superstition,\ncommerce, and inequality were then first known, when reason vainly\nattempted to guide the wanderings of exacerbated passion. I conclude\nthis part of the subject with an extract from Mr. Newton’s “Defence of\nVegetable Regimen”, from whom I have borrowed this interpretation of the\nfable of Prometheus.\n\n‘Making allowance for such transposition of the events of the allegory\nas time might produce after the important truths were forgotten, which\nthis portion of the ancient mythology was intended to transmit, the\ndrift of the fable seems to be this:—Man at his creation was endowed\nwith the gift of perpetual youth; that is, he was not formed to be a\nsickly suffering creature as we now see him, but to enjoy health, and to\nsink by slow degrees into the bosom of his parent earth without disease\nor pain. Prometheus first taught the use of animal food (primus bovem\noccidit Prometheus (Plin. “Nat. Hist”. lib. 7 sect. 57.)) and of fire,\nwith which to render it more digestible and pleasing to the taste.\nJupiter, and the rest of the gods, foreseeing the consequences of these\ninventions, were amused or irritated at the short-sighted devices of the\nnewly-formed creature, and left him to experience the sad effects of\nthem. Thirst, the necessary concomitant of a flesh diet’ (perhaps of all\ndiet vitiated by culinary preparation), ‘ensued; water was resorted to,\nand man forfeited the inestimable gift of health which he had received\nfrom heaven: he became diseased, the partaker of a precarious existence,\nand no longer descended slowly to his grave. (“Return to Nature”.\nCadell, 1811.)\n\nBut just disease to luxury succeeds,\nAnd every death its own avenger breeds;\nThe fury passions from that blood began,\nAnd turned on man a fiercer savage—man.\n\nMan, and the animals whom he has infected with his society, or depraved\nby his dominion, are alone diseased. The wild hog, the mouflon, the\nbison, and the wolf; are perfectly exempt from malady, and invariably\ndie either from external violence or natural old age. But the domestic\nhog, the sheep, the cow, and the dog, are subject to an incredible\nvariety of distempers; and, like the corruptors of their nature, have\nphysicians who thrive upon their miseries. The supereminence of man is\nlike Satan’s, a supereminence of pain; and the majority of his species,\ndoomed to penury, disease, and crime, have reason to curse the untoward\nevent that, by enabling him to communicate his sensations, raised him\nabove the level of his fellow-animals. But the steps that have been\ntaken are irrevocable. The whole of human science is comprised in one\nquestion:—How can the advantages of intellect and civilization be\nreconciled with the liberty and pure pleasures of natural life? How can\nwe take the benefits and reject the evils of the system, which is now\ninterwoven with all the fibres of our being?—I believe that abstinence\nfrom animal food and spirituous liquors would in a great measure\ncapacitate us for the solution of this important question.\n\nIt is true that mental and bodily derangement is attributable in part to\nother deviations from rectitude and nature than those which concern\ndiet. The mistakes cherished by society respecting the connection of the\nsexes, whence the misery and diseases of unsatisfied celibacy,\nunenjoying prostitution, and the premature arrival of puberty,\nnecessarily spring; the putrid atmosphere of crowded cities; the\nexhalations of chemical processes; the muffling of our bodies in\nsuperfluous apparel; the absurd treatment of infants:—all these and\ninnumerable other causes contribute their mite to the mass of human\nevil.\n\nComparative anatomy teaches us that man resembles frugivorous animals in\neverything, and carnivorous in nothing; he has neither claws wherewith\nto seize his prey, nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the living\nfibre. A Mandarin of the first class, with nails two inches long, would\nprobably find them alone inefficient to hold even a hare. After every\nsubterfuge of gluttony, the bull must be degraded into the ox, and the\nram into the wether, by an unnatural and inhuman operation, that the\nflaccid fibre may offer a fainter resistance to rebellious nature. It is\nonly by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that\nit is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion; and that the\nsight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable\nloathing and disgust. Let the advocate of animal food force himself to a\ndecisive experiment on its fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends, tear a\nliving lamb with his teeth, and plunging his head into its vitals slake\nhis thirst with the steaming blood; when fresh from the deed of horror,\nlet him revert to the irresistible instincts of nature that would rise\nin judgement against it, and say, ‘Nature formed me for such work as\nthis.’ Then, and then only, would he be consistent.\n\nMan resembles no carnivorous animal. There is no exception, unless man\nbe one, to the rule of herbivorous animals having cellulated colons.\n\nThe orang-outang perfectly resembles man both in the order and number of\nhis teeth. The orang-outang is the most anthropomorphous of the ape\ntribe, all of which are strictly frugivorous. There is no other species\nof animals, which live on different food, in which this analogy exists.\n(Cuvier, “Lecons d’Anat. Comp”. tom. 3, pages 169, 373, 448, 465, 480.\nRees’s “Cyclopaedia”, article Man.) In many frugivorous animals, the\ncanine teeth are more pointed and distinct than those of man. The\nresemblance also of the human stomach to that of the orang-outang is\ngreater than to that of any other animal.\n\nThe intestines are also identical with those of herbivorous animals,\nwhich present a larger surface for absorption and have ample and\ncellulated colons. The caecum also, though short, is larger than that of\ncarnivorous animals; and even here the orang-outang retains its\naccustomed similarity.\n\nThe structure of the human frame, then, is that of one fitted to a pure\nvegetable diet, in every essential particular. It is true that the\nreluctance to abstain from animal food, in those who have been long\naccustomed to its stimulus, is so great in some persons of weak minds as\nto be scarcely overcome; but this is far from bringing any argument in\nits favour. A lamb, which was fed for some time on flesh by a ship’s\ncrew, refused its natural diet at the end of the voyage. There are\nnumerous instances of horses, sheep, oxen, and even wood-pigeons, having\nbeen taught to live upon flesh, until they have loathed their natural\naliment. Young children evidently prefer pastry, oranges, apples, and\nother fruit, to the flesh of animals; until, by the gradual depravation\nof the digestive organs, the free use of vegetables has for a time\nproduced serious inconveniences; FOR A TIME, I say, since there never\nwas an instance wherein a change from spirituous liquors and animal food\nto vegetables and pure water has failed ultimately to invigorate the\nbody, by rendering its juices bland and consentaneous, and to restore to\nthe mind that cheerfulness and elasticity which not one in fifty\npossesses on the present system. A love of strong liquors is also with\ndifficulty taught to infants. Almost every one remembers the wry faces\nwhich the first glass of port produced. Unsophisticated instinct is\ninvariably unerring; but to decide on the fitness of animal food from\nthe perverted appetites which its constrained adoption produces; is to\nmake the criminal a judge in his own cause: it is even worse, it is\nappealing to the infatuated drunkard in a question of the salubrity of\nbrandy.\n\nWhat is the cause of morbid action in the animal system? Not the air we\nbreathe, for our fellow-denizens of nature breathe the same uninjured;\nnot the water we drink (if remote from the pollutions of man and his\ninventions (The necessity of resorting to some means of purifying water,\nand the disease which arises from its adulteration in civilized\ncountries, is sufficiently apparent. See Dr. Lambe’s “Reports on\nCancer”. I do not assert that the use of water is in itself unnatural,\nbut that the unperverted palate would swallow no liquid capable of\noccasioning disease.)), for the animals drink it too; not the earth we\ntread upon; not the unobscured sight of glorious nature, in the wood,\nthe field, or the expanse of sky and ocean; nothing that we are or do in\ncommon with the undiseased inhabitants of the forest. Something, then,\nwherein we differ from them: our habit of altering our food by fire, so\nthat our appetite is no longer a just criterion for the fitness of its\ngratification. Except in children, there remain no traces of that\ninstinct which determines, in all other animals, what aliment is natural\nor otherwise; and so perfectly obliterated are they in the reasoning\nadults of our species, that it has become necessary to urge\nconsiderations drawn from comparative anatomy to prove that we are\nnaturally frugivorous.\n\nCrime is madness. Madness is disease. Whenever the cause of disease\nshall be discovered, the root, from which all vice and misery have so\nlong overshadowed the globe, will lie bare to the axe. All the exertions\nof man, from that moment, may be considered as tending to the clear\nprofit of his species. No sane mind in a sane body resolves upon a real\ncrime. It is a man of violent passions, bloodshot eyes, and swollen\nveins, that alone can grasp the knife of murder. The system of a simple\ndiet promises no Utopian advantages. It is no mere reform of\nlegislation, whilst the furious passions and evil propensities of the\nhuman heart, in which it had its origin, are still unassuaged. It\nstrikes at the root of all evil, and is an experiment which may be tried\nwith success, not alone by nations, but by small societies, families,\nand even individuals. In no cases has a return to vegetable diet\nproduced the slightest injury; in most it has been attended with changes\nundeniably beneficial. Should ever a physician be born with the genius\nof Locke, I am persuaded that he might trace all bodily and mental\nderangements to our unnatural habits, as clearly as that philosopher has\ntraced all knowledge to sensation. What prolific sources of disease are\nnot those mineral and vegetable poisons that have been introduced for\nits extirpation! How many thousands have become murderers and robbers,\nbigots and domestic tyrants, dissolute and abandoned adventurers, from\nthe use of fermented liquors; who, had they slaked their thirst only\nwith pure water, would have lived but to diffuse the happiness of their\nown unperverted feelings! How many groundless opinions and absurd\ninstitutions have not received a general sanction from the sottishness\nand intemperance of individuals! Who will assert that, had the populace\nof Paris satisfied their hunger at the ever-furnished table of vegetable\nnature, they would have lent their brutal suffrage to the\nproscription-list of Robespierre? Could a set of men, whose passions\nwere not perverted by unnatural stimuli, look with coolness on an auto\nda fe? Is it to be believed that a being of gentle feelings, rising from\nhis meal of roots, would take delight in sports of blood? Was Nero a man\nof temperate life? could you read calm health in his cheek, flushed with\nungovernable propensities of hatred for the human race? Did Muley\nIsmael’s pulse beat evenly, was his skin transparent, did his eyes beam\nwith healthfulness, and its invariable concomitants, cheerfulness and\nbenignity? Though history has decided none of these questions, a child\ncould not hesitate to answer in the negative. Surely the bile-suffused\ncheek of Buonaparte, his wrinkled brow, and yellow eye, the ceaseless\ninquietude of his nervous system, speak no less plainly the character of\nhis unresting ambition than his murders and his victories. It is\nimpossible, had Buonaparte descended from a race of vegetable feeders,\nthat he could have had either the inclination or the power to ascend the\nthrone of the Bourbons. The desire of tyranny could scarcely be excited\nin the individual, the power to tyrannize would certainly not be\ndelegated by a society neither frenzied by inebriation nor rendered\nimpotent and irrational by disease. Pregnant indeed with inexhaustible\ncalamity is the renunciation of instinct, as it concerns our physical\nnature; arithmetic cannot enumerate, nor reason perhaps suspect, the\nmultitudinous sources of disease in civilized life. Even common water,\nthat apparently innoxious pabulum, when corrupted by the filth of\npopulous cities, is a deadly and insidious destroyer. (Lambe’s “Reports\non Cancer”.) Who can wonder that all the inducements held out by God\nHimself in the Bible to virtue should have been vainer than a nurse’s\ntale; and that those dogmas, by which He has there excited and justified\nthe most ferocious propensities, should have alone been deemed\nessential; whilst Christians are in the daily practice of all those\nhabits which have infected with disease and crime, not only the\nreprobate sons, but those favoured children of the common Father’s love?\nOmnipotence itself could not save them from the consequences of this\noriginal and universal sin.\n\nThere is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of vegetable diet\nand pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experiment has\nbeen fairly tried. Debility is gradually converted into strength;\ndisease into healthfulness; madness, in all its hideous variety, from\nthe ravings of the fettered maniac to the unaccountable irrationalities\nof ill-temper, that make a hell of domestic life, into a calm and\nconsiderate evenness of temper, that alone might offer a certain pledge\nof the future moral reformation of society. On a natural system of diet,\nold age would be our last and our only malady; the term of our existence\nwould be protracted; we should enjoy life, and no longer preclude others\nfrom the enjoyment of it; all sensational delights would be infinitely\nmore exquisite and perfect; the very sense of being would then be a\ncontinued pleasure, such as we now feel it in some few and favoured\nmoments of our youth. By all that is sacred in our hopes for the human\nrace, I conjure those who love happiness and truth to give a fair trial\nto the vegetable system. Reasoning is surely superfluous on a subject\nwhose merits an experience of six months would set for ever at rest. But\nit is only among the enlightened and benevolent that so great a\nsacrifice of appetite and prejudice can be expected, even though its\nultimate excellence should not admit of dispute. It is found easier, by\nthe short-sighted victims of disease, to palliate their torments by\nmedicine than to prevent them by regimen. The vulgar of all ranks are\ninvariably sensual and indocile; yet I cannot but feel myself persuaded\nthat when the benefits of vegetable diet are mathematically proved, when\nit is as clear that those who live naturally are exempt from premature\ndeath as that nine is not one, the most sottish of mankind will feel a\npreference towards a long and tranquil, contrasted with a short and\npainful, life. On the average, out of sixty persons four die in three\nyears. Hopes are entertained that, in April, 1814, a statement will be\ngiven that sixty persons, all having lived more than three years on\nvegetables and pure water, are then IN PERFECT HEALTH. More than two\nyears have now elapsed; NOT ONE OF THEM HAS DIED; no such example will\nbe found in any sixty persons taken at random. Seventeen persons of all\nages (the families of Dr. Lambe and Mr. Newton) have lived for seven\nyears on this diet without a death, and almost without the slightest\nillness. Surely, when we consider that some of those were infants, and\none a martyr to asthma now nearly subdued, we may challenge any\nseventeen persons taken at random in this city to exhibit a parallel\ncase. Those who may have been excited to question the rectitude of\nestablished habits of diet by these loose remarks, should consult Mr.\nNewton’s luminous and eloquent essay. (“Return to Nature, or Defence of\nVegetable Regimen”. Cadell, 1811.)\n\nWhen these proofs come fairly before the world, and are clearly seen by\nall who understand arithmetic, it is scarcely possible that abstinence\nfrom aliments demonstrably pernicious should not become universal. In\nproportion to the number of proselytes, so will be the weight of\nevidence; and when a thousand persons can be produced, living on\nvegetables and distilled water, who have to dread no disease but old\nage, the world will be compelled to regard animal flesh and fermented\nliquors as slow but certain poisons. The change which would be produced\nby simpler habits on political economy is sufficiently remarkable. The\nmonopolizing eater of animal flesh would no longer destroy his\nconstitution by devouring an acre at a meal, and many loaves of bread\nwould cease to contribute to gout, madness and apoplexy, in the shape of\na pint of porter, or a dram of gin, when appeasing the long-protracted\nfamine of the hardworking peasant’s hungry babes. The quantity of\nnutritious vegetable matter, consumed in fattening the carcase of an ox,\nwould afford ten times the sustenance, undepraving indeed, and incapable\nof generating disease, if gathered immediately from the bosom of the\nearth. The most fertile districts of the habitable globe are now\nactually cultivated by men for animals, at a delay and waste of aliment\nabsolutely incapable of calculation. It is only the wealthy that can, to\nany great degree, even now, indulge the unnatural craving for dead\nflesh, and they pay for the greater licence of the privilege by\nsubjection to supernumerary diseases. Again, the spirit of the nation\nthat should take the lead in this great reform would insensibly become\nagricultural; commerce, with all its vice, selfishness, and corruption,\nwould gradually decline; more natural habits would produce gentler\nmanners, and the excessive complication of political relations would be\nso far simplified that every individual might feel and understand why he\nloved his country, and took a personal interest in its welfare. How\nwould England, for example, depend on the caprices of foreign rulers if\nshe contained within herself all the necessaries, and despised whatever\nthey possessed of the luxuries, of life? How could they starve her into\ncompliance with their views? Of what consequence would it be that they\nrefused to take her woollen manufactures, when large and fertile tracts\nof the island ceased to be allotted to the waste of pasturage? On a\nnatural system of diet we should require no spices from India; no wines\nfrom Portugal, Spain, France, or Madeira; none of those multitudinous\narticles of luxury, for which every corner of the globe is rifled, and\nwhich are the causes of so much individual rivalship, such calamitous\nand sanguinary national disputes. In the history of modern times, the\navarice of commercial monopoly, no less than the ambition of weak and\nwicked chiefs, seems to have fomented the universal discord, to have\nadded stubbornness to the mistakes of cabinets, and indocility to the\ninfatuation of the people. Let it ever be remembered that it is the\ndirect influence of commerce to make the interval between the richest\nand the poorest man wider and more unconquerable. Let it be remembered\nthat it is a foe to everything of real worth and excellence in the human\ncharacter. The odious and disgusting aristocracy of wealth is built upon\nthe ruins of all that is good in chivalry or republicanism; and luxury\nis the forerunner of a barbarism scarce capable of cure. Is it\nimpossible to realize a state of society, where all the energies of man\nshall be directed to the production of his solid happiness? Certainly,\nif this advantage (the object of all political speculation) be in any\ndegree attainable, it is attainable only by a community which holds out\nno factitious incentives to the avarice and ambition of the few, and\nwhich is internally organized for the liberty, security, and comfort of\nthe many. None must be entrusted with power (and money is the completest\nspecies of power) who do not stand pledged to use it exclusively for the\ngeneral benefit. But the use of animal flesh and fermented liquors\ndirectly militates with this equality of the rights of man. The peasant\ncannot gratify these fashionable cravings without leaving his family to\nstarve. Without disease and war, those sweeping curtailers of\npopulation, pasturage would include a waste too great to be afforded.\nThe labour requisite to support a family is far lighter’ than is usually\nsupposed. (It has come under the author’s experience that some of the\nworkmen on an embankment in North Wales, who, in consequence of the\ninability of the proprietor to pay them, seldom received their wages,\nhave supported large families by cultivating small spots of sterile\nground by moonlight. In the notes to Pratt’s poem, “Bread, or the Poor”,\nis an account of an industrious labourer who, by working in a small\ngarden, before and after his day’s task, attained to an enviable state\nof independence.) The peasantry work, not only for themselves, but for\nthe aristocracy, the army, and the manufacturers.\n\nThe advantage of a reform in diet is obviously greater than that of any\nother. It strikes at the root of the evil. To remedy the abuses of\nlegislation, before we annihilate the propensities by which they are\nproduced, is to suppose that by taking away the effect the cause will\ncease to operate. But the efficacy of this system depends entirely on\nthe proselytism of individuals, and grounds its merits, as a benefit to\nthe community, upon the total change of the dietetic habits in its\nmembers. It proceeds securely from a number of particular cases to one\nthat is universal, and has this advantage over the contrary mode, that\none error does not invalidate all that has gone before.\n\nLet not too much, however, be expected from this system. The healthiest\namong us is not exempt from hereditary disease. The most symmetrical,\nathletic, and longlived is a being inexpressibly inferior to what he\nwould have been, had not the unnatural habits of his ancestors\naccumulated for him a certain portion of malady and deformity. In the\nmost perfect specimen of civilized man, something is still found wanting\nby the physiological critic. Can a return to nature, then,\ninstantaneously eradicate predispositions that have been slowly taking\nroot in the silence of innumerable ages?—Indubitably not. All that I\ncontend for is, that from the moment of the relinquishing all unnatural\nhabits no new disease is generated; and that the predisposition to\nhereditary maladies gradually perishes, for want of its accustomed\nsupply. In cases of consumption, cancer, gout, asthma, and scrofula,\nsuch is the invariable tendency of a diet of vegetables and pure water.\n\nThose who may be induced by these remarks to give the vegetable system a\nfair trial, should, in the first place, date the commencement of their\npractice from the moment of their conviction. All depends upon breaking\nthrough a pernicious habit resolutely and at once. Dr. Trotter asserts\nthat no drunkard was ever reformed by gradually relinquishing his dram.\n(See Trotter on the Nervous Temperament.) Animal flesh, in its effects\non the human stomach, is analogous to a dram. It is similar in the kind,\nthough differing in the degree, of its operation. The proselyte to a\npure diet must be warned to expect a temporary diminution of muscular\nstrength. The subtraction of a powerful stimulus will suffice to account\nfor this event. But it is only temporary, and is succeeded by an equable\ncapability for exertion, far surpassing his former various and\nfluctuating strength. Above all, he will acquire an easiness of\nbreathing, by which such exertion is performed, with a remarkable\nexemption from that painful and difficult panting now felt by almost\nevery one after hastily climbing an ordinary mountain. He will be\nequally capable of bodily exertion, or mental application, after as\nbefore his simple meal. He will feel none of the narcotic effects of\nordinary diet. Irritability, the direct consequence of exhausting\nstimuli, would yield to the power of natural and tranquil impulses. He\nwill no longer pine under the lethargy of ennui, that unconquerable\nweariness of life, more to be dreaded than death itself. He will escape\nthe epidemic madness, which broods over its own injurious notions of the\nDeity, and ‘realizes the hell that priests and beldams feign.’ Every man\nforms, as it were, his god from his own character; to the divinity of\none of simple habits no offering would be more acceptable than the\nhappiness of his creatures. He would be incapable of hating or\npersecuting others for the love of God. He will find, moreover, a system\nof simple diet to be a system of perfect epicurism. He will no longer be\nincessantly occupied in blunting and destroying those organs from which\nhe expects his gratification. The pleasures of taste to be derived from\na dinner of potatoes, beans, peas, turnips, lettuces, with a dessert of\napples, gooseberries, strawberries, currants, raspberries, and in\nwinter, oranges, apples and pears, is far greater than is supposed.\nThese who wait until they can eat this plain fare with the sauce of\nappetite will scarcely join with the hypocritical sensualist at a\nlord-mayor’s feast, who declaims against the pleasures of the table.\nSolomon kept a thousand concubines, and owned in despair that all was\nvanity. The man whose happiness is constituted by the society of one\namiable woman would find some difficulty in sympathizing with the\ndisappointment of this venerable debauchee.\n\nI address myself not only to the young enthusiast, the ardent devotee of\ntruth and virtue, the pure and passionate moralist, yet unvitiated by\nthe contagion of the world. He will embrace a pure system, from its\nabstract truth, its beauty, its simplicity, and its promise of\nwide-extended benefit; unless custom has turned poison into food, he\nwill hate the brutal pleasures of the chase by instinct; it will be a\ncontemplation full of horror, and disappointment to his mind, that\nbeings capable of the gentlest and most admirable sympathies should take\ndelight in the death-pangs and last convulsions of dying animals. The\nelderly man, whose youth has been poisoned by intemperance, or who has\nlived with apparent moderation, and is afflicted with a wide variety of\npainful maladies, would find his account in a beneficial change produced\nwithout the risk of poisonous medicines. The mother, to whom the\nperpetual restlessness of disease and unaccountable deaths incident to\nher children are the causes of incurable unhappiness, would on this diet\nexperience the satisfaction of beholding their perpetual healths and\nnatural playfulness. (See Mr. Newton’s book. His children are the most\nbeautiful and healthy creatures it is possible to conceive; the girls\nare perfect models for a sculptor; their dispositions are also the most\ngentle and conciliating; the judicious treatment, which they experience\nin other points, may be a correlative cause of this. In the first five\nyears of their life, of 18,000 children that are born, 7,500 die of\nvarious diseases; and how many more of those that survive are not\nrendered miserable by maladies not immediately mortal? The quality and\nquantity of a woman’s milk are materially injured by the use of dead\nflesh. In an island near Iceland, where no vegetables are to be got, the\nchildren invariably die of tetanus before they are three weeks old, and\nthe population is supplied from the mainland.—Sir G. Mackenzie’s\n“History of Iceland”. See also “Emile”, chapter 1, pages 53, 54, 56.)\nThe most valuable lives are daily destroyed by diseases that it is\ndangerous to palliate and impossible to cure by medicine. How much\nlonger will man continue to pimp for the gluttony of Death, his most\ninsidious, implacable, and eternal foe?\n\nAlla drakontas agrious kaleite kai pardaleis kai leontas, autoi de\nmiaiphoneite eis omoteta katalipontes ekeinois ouden ekeinois men gar o\nphonos trophe, umin de opson estin...“Oti gar ouk estin anthropo kata\nphusin to sarkophagein, proton men apo ton somaton deloutai tes\nkataskeues. Oudeni gar eoike to anthropou soma ton epi sarkophagia\ngegonoton, ou grupotes cheilous, ouk ozutes onuchos, ou traxutes odontos\nprosestin, ou koilias eutonia kai pneumatos thermotes, trepsai kai\nkatergasasthai dunate to baru kai kreodes all autothen e phusis te\nleioteti ton odonton kai te smikroteti tou stomatos kai te malakoteti\ntes glosses kai te pros pepsin ambluteti tou pneumatos, exomnutai ten\nsarkophagian. Ei de legeis pephukenai seauton epi toiauten edoden, o\nboulei phagein proton autos apokteinon, all autos dia seauton, me\nchesamenos kopidi mede tumpano tini mede pelekei alla, os lukoi kai\narktoi kai leontes autoi osa esthiousi phoneuousin, anele degmati boun e\nstomati sun, e apna e lagoon diarrexon kai phage prospeson eti zontos,\nos ekeina...Emeis d’ outos en to miaiphono truphomen, ost ochon to kreas\nprosagoreuomen, eit ochon pros auto to kreas deometha, anamignuntes\nelaion oinon meli garon oxos edusmasi Suriakois Arabikois, oster ontos\nnekron entaphiazontes. Kai gar outos auton dialuthenton kai\nmelachthenton kai tropon tina prosapenton ergon esti ten pechin\nkratesai, kai diakratepheises de deinas barutetas empoiei kai nosodeis\napechias...Outo to proton agprion ti zoon ebrothe kai kakourgon, eit\nornis tis e ichthus eilkusto kai geusamenon outo kai promeletesan en\nekeinois to thonikon epi boun ergaten elthe kai to kosmion probaton kai\nton oikouron alektruona kai kata mikron outo ten aplestian stomosantes\nepi sphagas anthropon kai polemous kai phonous proelthon.—Plout. peri\ntes Sarkophagias.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On Queen Mab, By Mrs. Shelley.",
    "body": "Shelley was eighteen when he wrote “Queen Mab”; he never published it.\nWhen it was written, he had come to the decision that he was too young\nto be a ‘judge of controversies’; and he was desirous of acquiring ‘that\nsobriety of spirit which is the characteristic of true heroism.’ But he\nnever doubted the truth or utility of his opinions; and, in printing and\nprivately distributing “Queen Mab”, he believed that he should further\ntheir dissemination, without occasioning the mischief either to others\nor himself that might arise from publication. It is doubtful whether he\nwould himself have admitted it into a collection of his works. His\nsevere classical taste, refined by the constant study of the Greek\npoets, might have discovered defects that escape the ordinary reader;\nand the change his opinions underwent in many points would have\nprevented him from putting forth the speculations of his boyish days.\nBut the poem is too beautiful in itself, and far too remarkable as the\nproduction of a boy of eighteen, to allow of its being passed over:\nbesides that, having been frequently reprinted, the omission would be\nvain. In the former edition certain portions were left out, as shocking\nthe general reader from the violence of their attack on religion. I\nmyself had a painful feeling that such erasures might be looked upon as\na mark of disrespect towards the author, and am glad to have the\nopportunity of restoring them. The notes also are reprinted entire—not\nbecause they are models of reasoning or lessons of truth, but because\nShelley wrote them, and that all that a man at once so distinguished and\nso excellent ever did deserves to be preserved. The alterations his\nopinions underwent ought to be recorded, for they form his history.\n\nA series of articles was published in the “New Monthly Magazine” during\nthe autumn of the year 1832, written by a man of great talent, a\nfellow-collegian and warm friend of Shelley: they describe admirably the\nstate of his mind during his collegiate life. Inspired with ardour for\nthe acquisition of knowledge, endowed with the keenest sensibility and\nwith the fortitude of a martyr, Shelley came among his fellow-creatures,\ncongregated for the purposes of education, like a spirit from another\nsphere; too delicately organized for the rough treatment man uses\ntowards man, especially in the season of youth, and too resolute in\ncarrying out his own sense of good and justice, not to become a victim.\nTo a devoted attachment to those he loved he added a determined\nresistance to oppression. Refusing to fag at Eton, he was treated with\nrevolting cruelty by masters and boys: this roused instead of taming his\nspirit, and he rejected the duty of obedience when it was enforced by\nmenaces and punishment. To aversion to the society of his\nfellow-creatures, such as he found them when collected together in\nsocieties, where one egged on the other to acts of tyranny, was joined\nthe deepest sympathy and compassion; while the attachment he felt for\nindividuals, and the admiration with which he regarded their powers and\ntheir virtues, led him to entertain a high opinion of the perfectibility\nof human nature; and he believed that all could reach the highest grade\nof moral improvement, did not the customs and prejudices of society\nfoster evil passions and excuse evil actions.\n\nThe oppression which, trembling at every nerve yet resolute to heroism,\nit was his ill-fortune to encounter at school and at college, led him to\ndissent in all things from those whose arguments were blows, whose faith\nappeared to engender blame and hatred. ‘During my existence,’ he wrote\nto a friend in 1812, ‘I have incessantly speculated, thought, and read.’\nHis readings were not always well chosen; among them were the works of\nthe French philosophers: as far as metaphysical argument went, he\ntemporarily became a convert. At the same time, it was the cardinal\narticle of his faith that, if men were but taught and induced to treat\ntheir fellows with love, charity, and equal rights, this earth would\nrealize paradise. He looked upon religion, as it is professed, and above\nall practised, as hostile instead of friendly to the cultivation of\nthose virtues which would make men brothers.\n\nCan this be wondered at? At the age of seventeen, fragile in health and\nframe, of the purest habits in morals, full of devoted generosity and\nuniversal kindness, glowing with ardour to attain wisdom, resolved at\nevery personal sacrifice to do right, burning with a desire for\naffection and sympathy,—he was treated as a reprobate, cast forth as a\ncriminal.\n\nThe cause was that he was sincere; that he believed the opinions which\nhe entertained to be true. And he loved truth with a martyr’s love; he\nwas ready to sacrifice station and fortune, and his dearest affections,\nat its shrine. The sacrifice was demanded from, and made by, a youth of\nseventeen. It is a singular fact in the history of society in the\ncivilized nations of modern times that no false step is so irretrievable\nas one made in early youth. Older men, it is true, when they oppose\ntheir fellows and transgress ordinary rules, carry a certain prudence or\nhypocrisy as a shield along with them. But youth is rash; nor can it\nimagine, while asserting what it believes to be true, and doing what it\nbelieves to be right, that it should be denounced as vicious, and\npursued as a criminal.\n\nShelley possessed a quality of mind which experience has shown me to be\nof the rarest occurrence among human beings: this was his UNWORLDLINESS.\nThe usual motives that rule men, prospects of present or future\nadvantage, the rank and fortune of those around, the taunts and\ncensures, or the praise, of those who were hostile to him, had no\ninfluence whatever over his actions, and apparently none over his\nthoughts. It is difficult even to express the simplicity and directness\nof purpose that adorned him. Some few might be found in the history of\nmankind, and some one at least among his own friends, equally\ndisinterested and scornful, even to severe personal sacrifices, of every\nbaser motive. But no one, I believe, ever joined this noble but passive\nvirtue to equal active endeavours for the benefit of his friends and\nmankind in general, and to equal power to produce the advantages he\ndesired. The world’s brightest gauds and its most solid advantages were\nof no worth in his eyes, when compared to the cause of what he\nconsidered truth, and the good of his fellow-creatures. Born in a\nposition which, to his inexperienced mind, afforded the greatest\nfacilities to practise the tenets he espoused, he boldly declared the\nuse he would make of fortune and station, and enjoyed the belief that he\nshould materially benefit his fellow-creatures by his actions; while,\nconscious of surpassing powers of reason and imagination, it is not\nstrange that he should, even while so young, have believed that his\nwritten thoughts would tend to disseminate opinions which he believed\nconducive to the happiness of the human race.\n\nIf man were a creature devoid of passion, he might have said and done\nall this with quietness. But he was too enthusiastic, and too full of\nhatred of all the ills he witnessed, not to scorn danger. Various\ndisappointments tortured, but could not tame, his soul. The more enmity\nhe met, the more earnestly he became attached to his peculiar views, and\nhostile to those of the men who persecuted him.\n\nHe was animated to greater zeal by compassion for his fellow-creatures.\nHis sympathy was excited by the misery with which the world is burning.\nHe witnessed the sufferings of the poor, and was aware of the evils of\nignorance. He desired to induce every rich man to despoil himself of\nsuperfluity, and to create a brotherhood of property and service, and\nwas ready to be the first to lay down the advantages of his birth. He\nwas of too uncompromising a disposition to join any party. He did not in\nhis youth look forward to gradual improvement: nay, in those days of\nintolerance, now almost forgotten, it seemed as easy to look forward to\nthe sort of millennium of freedom and brotherhood which he thought the\nproper state of mankind as to the present reign of moderation and\nimprovement. Ill-health made him believe that his race would soon be\nrun; that a year or two was all he had of life. He desired that these\nyears should be useful and illustrious. He saw, in a fervent call on his\nfellow-creatures to share alike the blessings of the creation, to love\nand serve each other, the noblest work that life and time permitted him.\nIn this spirit he composed “Queen Mab”.\n\nHe was a lover of the wonderful and wild in literature, but had not\nfostered these tastes at their genuine sources—the romances and\nchivalry of the middle ages—but in the perusal of such German works as\nwere current in those days. Under the influence of these he, at the age\nof fifteen, wrote two short prose romances of slender merit. The\nsentiments and language were exaggerated, the composition imitative and\npoor. He wrote also a poem on the subject of Ahasuerus—being led to it\nby a German fragment he picked up, dirty and torn, in Lincoln’s Inn\nFields. This fell afterwards into other hands, and was considerably\naltered before it was printed. Our earlier English poetry was almost\nunknown to him. The love and knowledge of Nature developed by\nWordsworth—the lofty melody and mysterious beauty of Coleridge’s\npoetry—and the wild fantastic machinery and gorgeous scenery adopted by\nSouthey—composed his favourite reading; the rhythm of “Queen Mab” was\nfounded on that of “Thalaba”, and the first few lines bear a striking\nresemblance in spirit, though not in idea, to the opening of that poem.\nHis fertile imagination, and ear tuned to the finest sense of harmony,\npreserved him from imitation. Another of his favourite books was the\npoem of “Gebir” by Walter Savage Landor. From his boyhood he had a\nwonderful facility of versification, which he carried into another\nlanguage; and his Latin school-verses were composed with an ease and\ncorrectness that procured for him prizes, and caused him to be resorted\nto by all his friends for help. He was, at the period of writing “Queen\nMab”, a great traveller within the limits of England, Scotland, and\nIreland. His time was spent among the loveliest scenes of these\ncountries. Mountain and lake and forest were his home; the phenomena of\nNature were his favourite study. He loved to inquire into their causes,\nand was addicted to pursuits of natural philosophy and chemistry, as far\nas they could be carried on as an amusement. These tastes gave truth and\nvivacity to his descriptions, and warmed his soul with that deep\nadmiration for the wonders of Nature which constant association with her\ninspired.\n\nHe never intended to publish “Queen Mab” as it stands; but a few years\nafter, when printing “Alastor”, he extracted a small portion which he\nentitled “The Daemon of the World”. In this he changed somewhat the\nversification, and made other alterations scarcely to be called\nimprovements.\n\nSome years after, when in Italy, a bookseller published an edition of\n“Queen Mab” as it originally stood. Shelley was hastily written to by\nhis friends, under the idea that, deeply injurious as the mere\ndistribution of the poem had proved, the publication might awaken fresh\npersecutions. At the suggestion of these friends he wrote a letter on\nthe subject, printed in the “Examiner” newspaper—with which I close\nthis history of his earliest work.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "‘Percy B. Shelley.",
    "body": "‘Pisa, June 22, 1821.’\n\n***\n\n\n[Of the following pieces the “Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire”, the\nPoems from “St. Irvyne, or The Rosicrucian”, “The Posthumous Fragments\nof Margaret Nicholson” and “The Devil’s Walk”, were published by Shelley\nhimself; the others by Medwin, Rossetti, Forman and Dowden, as indicated\nin the several prefatory notes.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Verses On A Cat.",
    "body": "[Published by Hogg, “Life of Shelley”, 1858; dated 1800.]\n\n1.\nA cat in distress,\nNothing more, nor less;\nGood folks, I must faithfully tell ye,\nAs I am a sinner,\nIt waits for some dinner                                             _5\nTo stuff out its own little belly.\n\n2.\nYou would not easily guess\nAll the modes of distress\nWhich torture the tenants of earth;\nAnd the various evils,                                               _10\nWhich like so many devils,\nAttend the poor souls from their birth.\n\n3.\nSome a living require,\nAnd others desire\nAn old fellow out of the way;                                        _15\nAnd which is the best\nI leave to be guessed,\nFor I cannot pretend to say.\n\n4.\nOne wants society,\nAnother variety,                                                     _20\nOthers a tranquil life;\nSome want food,\nOthers, as good,\nOnly want a wife.\n\n5.\nBut this poor little cat                                             _25\nOnly wanted a rat,\nTo stuff out its own little maw;\nAnd it were as good\nSOME people had such food,\nTo make them HOLD THEIR JAW!                                         _30\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Epitaphium.",
    "body": "[LATIN VERSION OF THE EPITAPH IN GRAY’S ELEGY.]\n\n[Published by Medwin, “Life of Shelley”, 1847; dated 1808-9.]\n\n1.\nHic sinu fessum caput hospitali\nCespitis dormit juvenis, nec illi\nFata ridebant, popularis ille\nNescius aurae.\n\n2.\nMusa non vultu genus arroganti                                       _5\nRustica natum grege despicata,\nEt suum tristis puerum notavit\nSollicitudo.\n\n3.\nIndoles illi bene larga, pectus\nVeritas sedem sibi vindicavit,                                       _10\nEt pari tantis meritis beavit\nMunere coelum.\n\n4.\nOmne quad moestis habuit miserto\nCorde largivit lacrimam, recepit\nOmne quod coelo voluit, fidelis                                      _15\nPectus amici.\n\n5.\nLongius sed tu fuge curiosus\nCaeteras laudes fuge suspicari,\nCaeteras culpas fuge velle tractas\nSede tremenda.                                                       _20\n\n6.\nSpe tremescentes recubant in illa\nSede virtutes pariterque culpae,\nIn sui Patris gremio, tremenda\nSede Deique.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "In Horologium.",
    "body": "[Published by Medwin, “Life of Shelley”, 1847; dated 1809.]\n\nInter marmoreas Leonorae pendula colles\nFortunata nimis Machina dicit horas.\nQuas MANIBUS premit illa duas insensa papillas\nCur mihi sit DIGITO tangere, amata, nefas?\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Death:",
    "body": "For my dagger is bathed in the blood of the brave,\nI come, care-worn tenant of life, from the grave,\nWhere Innocence sleeps ‘neath the peace-giving sod,\nAnd the good cease to tremble at Tyranny’s nod;\nI offer a calm habitation to thee,—                                 _5\nSay, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me?\nMy mansion is damp, cold silence is there,\nBut it lulls in oblivion the fiends of despair;\nNot a groan of regret, not a sigh, not a breath,\nDares dispute with grim Silence the empire of Death.                 _10\nI offer a calm habitation to thee,—\nSay, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me?",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mortal:",
    "body": "Mine eyelids are heavy; my soul seeks repose,\nIt longs in thy cells to embosom its woes,\nIt longs in thy cells to deposit its load,                           _15\nWhere no longer the scorpions of Perfidy goad,—\nWhere the phantoms of Prejudice vanish away,\nAnd Bigotry’s bloodhounds lose scent of their prey.\nYet tell me, dark Death, when thine empire is o’er,\nWhat awaits on Futurity’s mist-covered shore?                        _20",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Death:",
    "body": "Cease, cease, wayward Mortal! I dare not unveil\nThe shadows that float o’er Eternity’s vale;\nNought waits for the good but a spirit of Love,\nThat will hail their blest advent to regions above.\nFor Love, Mortal, gleams through the gloom of my sway,               _25\nAnd the shades which surround me fly fast at its ray.\nHast thou loved?—Then depart from these regions of hate,\nAnd in slumber with me blunt the arrows of fate.\nI offer a calm habitation to thee.—\nSay, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me?                     _30",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mortal:",
    "body": "Oh! sweet is thy slumber! oh! sweet is the ray\nWhich after thy night introduces the day;\nHow concealed, how persuasive, self-interest’s breath,\nThough it floats to mine ear from the bosom of Death!\nI hoped that I quite was forgotten by all,                           _35\nYet a lingering friend might be grieved at my fall,\nAnd duty forbids, though I languish to die,\nWhen departure might heave Virtue’s breast with a sigh.\nO Death! O my friend! snatch this form to thy shrine,\nAnd I fear, dear destroyer, I shall not repine.                      _40",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Solitary.",
    "body": "[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870;\ndated 1810. Included in the Esdaile manuscript book.]\n\n1.\nDar’st thou amid the varied multitude\nTo live alone, an isolated thing?\nTo see the busy beings round thee spring,\nAnd care for none; in thy calm solitude,\nA flower that scarce breathes in the desert rude                     _5\nTo Zephyr’s passing wing?\n\n2.\nNot the swart Pariah in some Indian grove,\nLone, lean, and hunted by his brother’s hate,\nHath drunk so deep the cup of bitter fate\nAs that poor wretch who cannot, cannot love:                         _10\nHe bears a load which nothing can remove,\nA killing, withering weight.\n\n3.\nHe smiles—’tis sorrow’s deadliest mockery;\nHe speaks—the cold words flow not from his soul;\nHe acts like others, drains the genial bowl,—                       _15\nYet, yet he longs—although he fears—to die;\nHe pants to reach what yet he seems to fly,\nDull life’s extremest goal.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Love’S Rose.",
    "body": "[Published (without title) by Hogg, “Life of Shelley”, 1858; dated 1810.\nIncluded in the Esdaile manuscript book.]\n\n1.\nHopes, that swell in youthful breasts,\nLive not through the waste of time!\nLove’s rose a host of thorns invests;\nCold, ungenial is the clime,\nWhere its honours blow.                                              _5\nYouth says, ‘The purple flowers are mine,’\nWhich die the while they glow.\n\n2.\nDear the boon to Fancy given,\nRetracted whilst it’s granted:\nSweet the rose which lives in Heaven,                                _10\nAlthough on earth ’tis planted,\nWhere its honours blow,\nWhile by earth’s slaves the leaves are riven\nWhich die the while they glow.\n\n3.\nAge cannot Love destroy,                                             _15\nBut perfidy can blast the flower,\nEven when in most unwary hour\nIt blooms in Fancy’s bower.\nAge cannot Love destroy,\nBut perfidy can rend the shrine                                      _20\nIn which its vermeil splendours shine.\n\nLove’s Rose—The title is Rossetti’s, 1870.\n_2 not through Esdaile manuscript; they this, 1858.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Eyes: A Fragment.",
    "body": "[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870;\ndated 1810. Included (four unpublished eight-line stanzas) in the\nEsdaile manuscript book.)]\n\nHow eloquent are eyes!\nNot the rapt poet’s frenzied lay\nWhen the soul’s wildest feelings stray\nCan speak so well as they.\nHow eloquent are eyes!                                               _5\nNot music’s most impassioned note\nOn which Love’s warmest fervours float\nLike them bids rapture rise.\n\nLove, look thus again,—\nThat your look may light a waste of years,                           _10\nDarting the beam that conquers cares\nThrough the cold shower of tears.\nLove, look thus again!\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Original Poetry By Victor And Cazire.",
    "body": "[Published by Shelley, 1810. A Reprint, edited by Richard Garnett, C.B.,\nLL.D., was issued by John Lane, in 1898. The punctuation of the original\nedition is here retained.]\n\nA Person complained that whenever he began to write, he never could\narrange his ideas in grammatical order. Which occasion suggested the\nidea of the following lines:\n\n1.\nHere I sit with my paper, my pen and my ink,\nFirst of this thing, and that thing, and t’other thing think;\nThen my thoughts come so pell-mell all into my mind,\nThat the sense or the subject I never can find:\nThis word is wrong placed,—no regard to the sense,\nThe present and future, instead of past tense,\nThen my grammar I want; O dear! what a bore,\nI think I shall never attempt to write more,\nWith patience I then my thoughts must arraign,\nHave them all in due order like mutes in a train,                    _10\nLike them too must wait in due patience and thought,\nOr else my fine works will all come to nought.\nMy wit too’s so copious, it flows like a river,\nBut disperses its waters on black and white never;\nLike smoke it appears independent and free,                          _15\nBut ah luckless smoke! it all passes like thee—\nThen at length all my patience entirely lost,\nMy paper and pens in the fire are tossed;\nBut come, try again—you must never despair,\nOur Murray’s or Entick’s are not all so rare,                        _20\nImplore their assistance—they’ll come to your aid,\nPerform all your business without being paid,\nThey’ll tell you the present tense, future and past,\nWhich should come first, and which should come last,\nThis Murray will do—then to Entick repair,                          _25\nTo find out the meaning of any word rare.\nThis they friendly will tell, and ne’er make you blush,\nWith a jeering look, taunt, or an O fie! tush!\nThen straight all your thoughts in black and white put,\nNot minding the if’s, the be’s, and the but,                         _30\nThen read it all over, see how it will run,\nHow answers the wit, the retort, and the pun,\nYour writings may then with old Socrates vie,\nMay on the same shelf with Demosthenes lie,\nMay as Junius be sharp, or as Plato be sage.                         _35\nThe pattern or satire to all of the age;\nBut stop—a mad author I mean not to turn,\nNor with thirst of applause does my heated brain burn,\nSufficient that sense, wit, and grammar combined,\nMy letters may make some slight food for the mind;                   _40\nThat my thoughts to my friends I may freely impart,\nIn all the warm language that flows from the heart.\nHark! futurity calls! it loudly complains,\nIt bids me step forward and just hold the reins,\nMy excuse shall be humble, and faithful, and true,                   _45\nSuch as I fear can be made but by few—\nOf writers this age has abundance and plenty,\nThree score and a thousand, two millions and twenty,\nThree score of them wits who all sharply vie,\nTo try what odd creature they best can belie,                        _50\nA thousand are prudes who for CHARITY write,\nAnd fill up their sheets with spleen, envy, and spite[,]\nOne million are bards, who to Heaven aspire,\nAnd stuff their works full of bombast, rant, and fire,\nT’other million are wags who in Grubstreet attend,                   _55\nAnd just like a cobbler the old writings mend,\nThe twenty are those who for pulpits indite,\nAnd pore over sermons all Saturday night.\nAnd now my good friends—who come after I mean,\nAs I ne’er wore a cassock, or dined with a dean.                     _60\nOr like cobblers at mending I never did try,\nNor with poets in lyrics attempted to vie;\nAs for prudes these good souls I both hate and detest,\nSo here I believe the matter must rest.—\nI’ve heard your complaint—my answer I’ve made,                      _65\nAnd since to your calls all the tribute I’ve paid,\nAdieu my good friend; pray never despair,\nBut grammar and sense and everything dare,\nAttempt but to write dashing, easy, and free,\nThen take out your grammar and pay him his fee,                      _70\nBe not a coward, shrink not to a tense,\nBut read it all over and make it out sense.\nWhat a tiresome girl!—pray soon make an end,\nElse my limited patience you’ll quickly expend.\nWell adieu, I no longer your patience will try—                     _75\nSo swift to the post now the letter shall fly.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "July, 1810.",
    "body": "4. SONG.\n\nCome [Harriet]! sweet is the hour,\nSoft Zephyrs breathe gently around,\nThe anemone’s night-boding flower,\nHas sunk its pale head on the ground.\n\n’Tis thus the world’s keenness hath torn,                            _5\nSome mild heart that expands to its blast,\n’Tis thus that the wretched forlorn,\nSinks poor and neglected at last.—\n\nThe world with its keenness and woe,\nHas no charms or attraction for me,                                  _10\nIts unkindness with grief has laid low,\nThe heart which is faithful to thee.\nThe high trees that wave past the moon,\nAs I walk in their umbrage with you,\nAll declare I must part with you soon,                               _15\nAll bid you a tender adieu!—\n\nThen [Harriet]! dearest farewell,\nYou and I love, may ne’er meet again;\nThese woods and these meadows can tell\nHow soft and how sweet was the strain.—                             _20",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Despair.",
    "body": "Ask not the pallid stranger’s woe,\nWith beating heart and throbbing breast,\nWhose step is faltering, weak, and slow,\nAs though the body needed rest.—\n\nWhose ‘wildered eye no object meets,                                 _5\nNor cares to ken a friendly glance,\nWith silent grief his bosom beats,—\nNow fixed, as in a deathlike trance.\n\nWho looks around with fearful eye,\nAnd shuns all converse with man kind,                                _10\nAs though some one his griefs might spy,\nAnd soothe them with a kindred mind.\n\nA friend or foe to him the same,\nHe looks on each with equal eye;\nThe difference lies but in the name,                                 _15\nTo none for comfort can he fly.—\n\n’Twas deep despair, and sorrow’s trace,\nTo him too keenly given,\nWhose memory, time could not efface—\nHis peace was lodged in Heaven.—                                    _20\n\nHe looks on all this world bestows,\nThe pride and pomp of power,\nAs trifles best for pageant shows\nWhich vanish in an hour.\n\nWhen torn is dear affection’s tie,                                   _25\nSinks the soft heart full low;\nIt leaves without a parting sigh,\nAll that these realms bestow.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Sorrow.",
    "body": "To me this world’s a dreary blank,\nAll hopes in life are gone and fled,\nMy high strung energies are sank,\nAnd all my blissful hopes lie dead.—\n\nThe world once smiling to my view,                                   _5\nShowed scenes of endless bliss and joy;\nThe world I then but little knew,\nAh! little knew how pleasures cloy;\n\nAll then was jocund, all was gay,\nNo thought beyond the present hour,                                  _10\nI danced in pleasure’s fading ray,\nFading alas! as drooping flower.\n\nNor do the heedless in the throng,\nOne thought beyond the morrow give[,]\nThey court the feast, the dance, the song,                           _15\nNor think how short their time to live.\n\nThe heart that bears deep sorrow’s trace,\nWhat earthly comfort can console,\nIt drags a dull and lengthened pace,\n‘Till friendly death its woes enroll.—                              _20\n\nThe sunken cheek, the humid eyes,\nE’en better than the tongue can tell;\nIn whose sad breast deep sorrow lies,\nWhere memory’s rankling traces dwell.—\n\nThe rising tear, the stifled sigh,                                   _25\nA mind but ill at ease display,\nLike blackening clouds in stormy sky,\nWhere fiercely vivid lightnings play.\n\nThus when souls’ energy is dead,\nWhen sorrow dims each earthly view,                                  _30\nWhen every fairy hope is fled,\nWe bid ungrateful world adieu.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hope.",
    "body": "And said I that all hope was fled,\nThat sorrow and despair were mine,\nThat each enthusiast wish was dead,\nHad sank beneath pale Misery’s shrine.—\n\nSeest thou the sunbeam’s yellow glow,                                _5\nThat robes with liquid streams of light;\nYon distant Mountain’s craggy brow.\nAnd shows the rocks so fair,—so bright—\n\nTis thus sweet expectation’s ray,\nIn softer view shows distant hours,                                  _10\nAnd portrays each succeeding day,\nAs dressed in fairer, brighter flowers,—\n\nThe vermeil tinted flowers that blossom;\nAre frozen but to bud anew,\nThen sweet deceiver calm my bosom,                                   _15\nAlthough thy visions be not true,—\n\nYet true they are,—and I’ll believe,\nThy whisperings soft of love and peace,\nGod never made thee to deceive,\n’Tis sin that bade thy empire cease.                                 _20\n\nYet though despair my life should gloom,\nThough horror should around me close,\nWith those I love, beyond the tomb,\nHope shows a balm for all my woes.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Translated From The Italian.",
    "body": "Oh! what is the gain of restless care,\nAnd what is ambitious treasure?\nAnd what are the joys that the modish share,\nIn their sickly haunts of pleasure?\n\nMy husband’s repast with delight I spread,                           _5\nWhat though ’tis but rustic fare,\nMay each guardian angel protect his shed,\nMay contentment and quiet be there.\n\nAnd may I support my husband’s years,\nMay I soothe his dying pain,                                         _10\nAnd then may I dry my fast falling tears,\nAnd meet him in Heaven again.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Translated From The German.",
    "body": "Ah! grasp the dire dagger and couch the fell spear,\nIf vengeance and death to thy bosom be dear,\nThe dastard shall perish, death’s torment shall prove,\nFor fate and revenge are decreed from above.\n\nAh! where is the hero, whose nerves strung by youth,                 _5\nWill defend the firm cause of justice and truth;\nWith insatiate desire whose bosom shall swell,\nTo give up the oppressor to judgement and Hell—\n\nFor him shall the fair one twine chaplets of bays,\nTo him shall each warrior give merited praise,                       _10\nAnd triumphant returned from the clangour of arms,\nHe shall find his reward in his loved maiden’s charms.\n\nIn ecstatic confusion the warrior shall sip,\nThe kisses that glow on his love’s dewy lip,\nAnd mutual, eternal, embraces shall prove,                           _15\nThe rewards of the brave are the transports of love.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "October, 1809.",
    "body": "10. THE IRISHMAN’S SONG.\n\nThe stars may dissolve, and the fountain of light\nMay sink into ne’er ending chaos and night,\nOur mansions must fall, and earth vanish away,\nBut thy courage O Erin! may never decay.\n\nSee! the wide wasting ruin extends all around,                       _5\nOur ancestors’ dwellings lie sunk on the ground,\nOur foes ride in triumph throughout our domains,\nAnd our mightiest heroes lie stretched on the plains.\n\nAh! dead is the harp which was wont to give pleasure,\nAh! sunk is our sweet country’s rapturous measure,                   _10\nBut the war note is waked, and the clangour of spears,\nThe dread yell of Sloghan yet sounds in our ears.\n\nAh! where are the heroes! triumphant in death,\nConvulsed they recline on the blood sprinkled heath,\nOr the yelling ghosts ride on the blast that sweeps by,              _15\nAnd ‘my countrymen! vengeance!’ incessantly cry.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "October, 1809.",
    "body": "11. SONG.\n\nFierce roars the midnight storm\nO’er the wild mountain,\nDark clouds the night deform,\nSwift rolls the fountain—\n\nSee! o’er yon rocky height,                                          _5\nDim mists are flying—\nSee by the moon’s pale light,\nPoor Laura’s dying!\n\nShame and remorse shall howl,\nBy her false pillow—                                                _10\nFiercer than storms that roll,\nO’er the white billow;\n\nNo hand her eyes to close,\nWhen life is flying,\nBut she will find repose,                                            _15\nFor Laura’s dying!\n\nThen will I seek my love,\nThen will I cheer her,\nThen my esteem will prove,\nWhen no friend is near her.                                          _20\n\nOn her grave I will lie,\nWhen life is parted,\nOn her grave I will die,\nFor the false hearted.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "August, 1810.",
    "body": "14. SAINT EDMOND’S EVE.\n\nOh! did you observe the Black Canon pass,\nAnd did you observe his frown?\nHe goeth to say the midnight mass,\nIn holy St. Edmond’s town.\n\nHe goeth to sing the burial chaunt,                                  _5\nAnd to lay the wandering sprite,\nWhose shadowy, restless form doth haunt,\nThe Abbey’s drear aisle this night.\n\nIt saith it will not its wailing cease,\n‘Till that holy man come near,                                       _10\n‘Till he pour o’er its grave the prayer of peace,\nAnd sprinkle the hallowed tear.\n\nThe Canon’s horse is stout and strong\nThe road is plain and fair,\nBut the Canon slowly wends along,                                    _15\nAnd his brow is gloomed with care.\n\nWho is it thus late at the Abbey-gate?\nSullen echoes the portal bell,\nIt sounds like the whispering voice of fate,\nIt sounds like a funeral knell.                                      _20\n\nThe Canon his faltering knee thrice bowed,\nAnd his frame was convulsed with fear,\nWhen a voice was heard distinct and loud,\n‘Prepare! for thy hour is near.’\n\nHe crosses his breast, he mutters a prayer,                          _25\nTo Heaven he lifts his eye,\nHe heeds not the Abbot’s gazing stare,\nNor the dark Monks who murmured by.\n\nBare-headed he worships the sculptured saints\nThat frown on the sacred walls,                                      _30\nHis face it grows pale,—he trembles, he faints,\nAt the Abbot’s feet he falls.\n\nAnd straight the father’s robe he kissed,\nWho cried, ‘Grace dwells with thee,\nThe spirit will fade like the morning mist,                          _35\nAt your benedicite.\n\n‘Now haste within! the board is spread,\nKeen blows the air, and cold,\nThe spectre sleeps in its earthy bed,\n‘Till St. Edmond’s bell hath tolled,—                               _40\n\n‘Yet rest your wearied limbs to-night,\nYou’ve journeyed many a mile,\nTo-morrow lay the wailing sprite,\nThat shrieks in the moonlight aisle.\n\n‘Oh! faint are my limbs and my bosom is cold,                        _45\nYet to-night must the sprite be laid,\nYet to-night when the hour of horror’s told,\nMust I meet the wandering shade.\n\n‘Nor food, nor rest may now delay,—\nFor hark! the echoing pile,                                          _50\nA bell loud shakes!—Oh haste away,\nO lead to the haunted aisle.’\n\nThe torches slowly move before,\nThe cross is raised on high,\nA smile of peace the Canon wore,                                     _55\nBut horror dimmed his eye—\n\nAnd now they climb the footworn stair,\nThe chapel gates unclose,\nNow each breathed low a fervent prayer,\nAnd fear each bosom froze—                                          _60\n\nNow paused awhile the doubtful band\nAnd viewed the solemn scene,—\nFull dark the clustered columns stand,\nThe moon gleams pale between—\n\n‘Say father, say, what cloisters’ gloom                              _65\nConceals the unquiet shade,\nWithin what dark unhallowed tomb,\nThe corse unblessed was laid.’\n\n‘Through yonder drear aisle alone it walks,\nAnd murmurs a mournful plaint,                                       _70\nOf thee! Black Canon, it wildly talks,\nAnd call on thy patron saint—\n\nThe pilgrim this night with wondering eyes,\nAs he prayed at St. Edmond’s shrine,\nFrom a black marble tomb hath seen it rise,                          _75\nAnd under yon arch recline.’—\n\n‘Oh! say upon that black marble tomb,\nWhat memorial sad appears.’—\n‘Undistinguished it lies in the chancel’s gloom,\nNo memorial sad it bears’—                                          _80\n\nThe Canon his paternoster reads,\nHis rosary hung by his side,\nNow swift to the chancel doors he leads,\nAnd untouched they open wide,\n\nResistless, strange sounds his steps impel,                          _85\nTo approach to the black marble tomb,\n‘Oh! enter, Black Canon,’ a whisper fell,\n‘Oh! enter, thy hour is come.’\n\nHe paused, told his beads, and the threshold passed.\nOh! horror, the chancel doors close,                                 _90\nA loud yell was borne on the rising blast,\nAnd a deep, dying groan arose.\n\nThe Monks in amazement shuddering stand,\nThey burst through the chancel’s gloom,\nFrom St. Edmond’s shrine, lo! a skeleton’s hand,                     _95\nPoints to the black marble tomb.\n\nLo! deeply engraved, an inscription blood red,\nIn characters fresh and clear—\n‘The guilty Black Canon of Elmham’s dead,\nAnd his wife lies buried here!’                                      _100\n\nIn Elmham’s tower he wedded a Nun,\nTo St. Edmond’s his bride he bore,\nOn this eve her noviciate here was begun,\nAnd a Monk’s gray weeds she wore;—\n\nO! deep was her conscience dyed with guilt,                          _105\nRemorse she full oft revealed,\nHer blood by the ruthless Black Canon was spilt,\nAnd in death her lips he sealed;\n\nHer spirit to penance this night was doomed,\n‘Till the Canon atoned the deed,                                     _110\nHere together they now shall rest entombed,\n‘Till their bodies from dust are freed—\n\nHark! a loud peal of thunder shakes the roof,\nRound the altar bright lightnings play,\nSpeechless with horror the Monks stand aloof,                        _115\nAnd the storm dies sudden away—\n\nThe inscription was gone! a cross on the ground,\nAnd a rosary shone through the gloom,\nBut never again was the Canon there found,\nOr the Ghost on the black marble tomb.                               _120\n\n\n15. REVENGE.\n\n‘Ah! quit me not yet, for the wind whistles shrill,\nIts blast wanders mournfully over the hill,\nThe thunder’s wild voice rattles madly above,\nYou will not then, cannot then, leave me my love.—’\n\nI must dearest Agnes, the night is far gone—                        _5\nI must wander this evening to Strasburg alone,\nI must seek the drear tomb of my ancestors’ bones,\nAnd must dig their remains from beneath the cold stones.\n\n‘For the spirit of Conrad there meets me this night,\nAnd we quit not the tomb ‘till dawn of the light,                    _10\nAnd Conrad’s been dead just a month and a day!\nSo farewell dearest Agnes for I must away,—\n\n‘He bid me bring with me what most I held dear,\nOr a month from that time should I lie on my bier,\nAnd I’d sooner resign this false fluttering breath,                  _15\nThan my Agnes should dread either danger or death,\n\n‘And I love you to madness my Agnes I love,\nMy constant affection this night will I prove,\nThis night will I go to the sepulchre’s jaw\nAlone will I glut its all conquering maw’—                          _20\n\n‘No! no loved Adolphus thy Agnes will share,\nIn the tomb all the dangers that wait for you there,\nI fear not the spirit,—I fear not the grave,\nMy dearest Adolphus I’d perish to save’—\n\n‘Nay seek not to say that thy love shall not go,                     _25\nBut spare me those ages of horror and woe,\nFor I swear to thee here that I’ll perish ere day,\nIf you go unattended by Agnes away’—\n\nThe night it was bleak the fierce storm raged around,\nThe lightning’s blue fire-light flashed on the ground,               _30\nStrange forms seemed to flit,—and howl tidings of fate,\nAs Agnes advanced to the sepulchre gate.—\n\nThe youth struck the portal,—the echoing sound\nWas fearfully rolled midst the tombstones around,\nThe blue lightning gleamed o’er the dark chapel spire,               _35\nAnd tinged were the storm clouds with sulphurous fire.\n\nStill they gazed on the tombstone where Conrad reclined,\nYet they shrank at the cold chilling blast of the wind,\nWhen a strange silver brilliance pervaded the scene,\nAnd a figure advanced—tall in form—fierce in mien.                 _40\n\nA mantle encircled his shadowy form,\nAs light as a gossamer borne on the storm,\nCelestial terror sat throned in his gaze,\nLike the midnight pestiferous meteor’s blaze.—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Spirit:",
    "body": "Thy father, Adolphus! was false, false as hell,                      _45\nAnd Conrad has cause to remember it well,\nHe ruined my Mother, despised me his son,\nI quitted the world ere my vengeance was done.\n\nI was nearly expiring—’twas close of the day,—\nA demon advanced to the bed where I lay,                             _50\nHe gave me the power from whence I was hurled,\nTo return to revenge, to return to the world,—\n\nNow Adolphus I’ll seize thy best loved in my arms,\nI’ll drag her to Hades all blooming in charms,\nOn the black whirlwind’s thundering pinion I’ll ride,                _55\nAnd fierce yelling fiends shall exult o’er thy bride—\n\nHe spoke, and extending his ghastly arms wide,\nMajestic advanced with a swift noiseless stride,\nHe clasped the fair Agnes—he raised her on high,\nAnd cleaving the roof sped his way to the sky—                      _60\n\nAll was now silent,—and over the tomb,\nThicker, deeper, was swiftly extended a gloom,\nAdolphus in horror sank down on the stone,\nAnd his fleeting soul fled with a harrowing groan.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "December, 1809.",
    "body": "16. GHASTA OR, THE AVENGING DEMON!!!\n\nThe idea of the following tale was taken from a few unconnected German\nStanzas.—The principal Character is evidently the Wandering Jew, and\nalthough not mentioned by name, the burning Cross on his forehead\nundoubtedly alludes to that superstition, so prevalent in the part of\nGermany called the Black Forest, where this scene is supposed to lie.\n\nHark! the owlet flaps her wing,\nIn the pathless dell beneath,\nHark! night ravens loudly sing,\nTidings of despair and death.—\n\nHorror covers all the sky,                                           _5\nClouds of darkness blot the moon,\nPrepare! for mortal thou must die,\nPrepare to yield thy soul up soon—\n\nFierce the tempest raves around,\nFierce the volleyed lightnings fly,                                  _10\nCrashing thunder shakes the ground,\nFire and tumult fill the sky.—\n\nHark! the tolling village bell,\nTells the hour of midnight come,\nNow can blast the powers of Hell,                                    _15\nFiend-like goblins now can roam—\n\nSee! his crest all stained with rain,\nA warrior hastening speeds his way,\nHe starts, looks round him, starts again,\nAnd sighs for the approach of day.                                   _20\n\nSee! his frantic steed he reins,\nSee! he lifts his hands on high,\nImplores a respite to his pains,\nFrom the powers of the sky.—\n\nHe seeks an Inn, for faint from toil,                                _25\nFatigue had bent his lofty form,\nTo rest his wearied limbs awhile,\nFatigued with wandering and the storm.\n\n...\n...\n\nSlow the door is opened wide—\nWith trackless tread a stranger came,                                _30\nHis form Majestic, slow his stride,\nHe sate, nor spake,—nor told his name—\n\nTerror blanched the warrior’s cheek,\nCold sweat from his forehead ran,\nIn vain his tongue essayed to speak,—                               _35\nAt last the stranger thus began:\n\n‘Mortal! thou that saw’st the sprite,\nTell me what I wish to know,\nOr come with me before ’tis light,\nWhere cypress trees and mandrakes grow.                              _40\n\n‘Fierce the avenging Demon’s ire,\nFiercer than the wintry blast,\nFiercer than the lightning’s fire,\nWhen the hour of twilight’s past’—\n\nThe warrior raised his sunken eye.                                   _45\nIt met the stranger’s sullen scowl,\n‘Mortal! Mortal! thou must die,’\nIn burning letters chilled his soul.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Warrior:",
    "body": "Stranger! whoso’er you are,\nI feel impelled my tale to tell—                                    _50\nHorrors stranger shalt thou hear,\nHorrors drear as those of Hell.\n\nO’er my Castle silence reigned,\nLate the night and drear the hour,\nWhen on the terrace I observed,                                      _55\nA fleeting shadowy mist to lower.—\n\nLight the cloud as summer fog,\nWhich transient shuns the morning beam;\nFleeting as the cloud on bog,\nThat hangs or on the mountain stream.—                              _60\n\nHorror seized my shuddering brain,\nHorror dimmed my starting eye.\nIn vain I tried to speak,—In vain\nMy limbs essayed the spot to fly—\n\nAt last the thin and shadowy form,                                   _65\nWith noiseless, trackless footsteps came,—\nIts light robe floated on the storm,\nIts head was bound with lambent flame.\n\nIn chilling voice drear as the breeze\nWhich sweeps along th’ autumnal ground,                              _70\nWhich wanders through the leafless trees,\nOr the mandrake’s groan which floats around.\n\n‘Thou art mine and I am thine,\n‘Till the sinking of the world,\nI am thine and thou art mine,                                        _75\n‘Till in ruin death is hurled—\n\n‘Strong the power and dire the fate,\nWhich drags me from the depths of Hell,\nBreaks the tomb’s eternal gate,\nWhere fiendish shapes and dead men yell,                             _80\n\n‘Haply I might ne’er have shrank\nFrom flames that rack the guilty dead,\nHaply I might ne’er have sank\nOn pleasure’s flowery, thorny bed—\n\n—‘But stay! no more I dare disclose,                                _85\nOf the tale I wish to tell,\nOn Earth relentless were my woes,\nBut fiercer are my pangs in Hell—\n\n‘Now I claim thee as my love,\nLay aside all chilling fear,                                         _90\nMy affection will I prove,\nWhere sheeted ghosts and spectres are!\n\n‘For thou art mine, and I am thine,\n‘Till the dreaded judgement day,\nI am thine, and thou art mine—                                      _95\nNight is past—I must away.’\n\nStill I gazed, and still the form\nPressed upon my aching sight,\nStill I braved the howling storm,\nWhen the ghost dissolved in night.—                                 _100\n\nRestless, sleepless fled the night,\nSleepless as a sick man’s bed,\nWhen he sighs for morning light,\nWhen he turns his aching head,—\n\nSlow and painful passed the day.                                     _105\nMelancholy seized my brain,\nLingering fled the hours away,\nLingering to a wretch in pain.—\n\nAt last came night, ah! horrid hour,\nAh! chilling time that wakes the dead,                               _110\nWhen demons ride the clouds that lower,\n—The phantom sat upon my bed.\n\nIn hollow voice, low as the sound\nWhich in some charnel makes its moan,\nWhat floats along the burying ground,                                _115\nThe phantom claimed me as her own.\n\nHer chilling finger on my head,\nWith coldest touch congealed my soul—\nCold as the finger of the dead,\nOr damps which round a tombstone roll—                              _120\n\nMonths are passed in lingering round,\nEvery night the spectre comes,\nWith thrilling step it shakes the ground,\nWith thrilling step it round me roams—\n\nStranger! I have told to thee,                                       _125\nAll the tale I have to tell—\nStranger! canst thou tell to me,\nHow to ‘scape the powers of Hell?—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Stranger:",
    "body": "Warrior! I can ease thy woes,\nWilt thou, wilt thou, come with me—                                 _130\nWarrior! I can all disclose,\nFollow, follow, follow me.\n\nYet the tempest’s duskiest wing,\nIts mantle stretches o’er the sky,\nYet the midnight ravens sing,                                        _135\n‘Mortal! Mortal! thou must die.’\n\nAt last they saw a river clear,\nThat crossed the heathy path they trod,\nThe Stranger’s look was wild and drear,\nThe firm Earth shook beneath his nod—                               _140\n\nHe raised a wand above his head,\nHe traced a circle on the plain,\nIn a wild verse he called the dead,\nThe dead with silent footsteps came.\n\nA burning brilliance on his head,                                    _145\nFlaming filled the stormy air,\nIn a wild verse he called the dead,\nThe dead in motley crowd were there.—\n\n‘Ghasta! Ghasta! come along,\nBring thy fiendish crowd with thee,                                  _150\nQuickly raise th’ avenging Song,\nGhasta! Ghasta! come to me.’\n\nHorrid shapes in mantles gray,\nFlit athwart the stormy night,\n‘Ghasta! Ghasta! come away,                                          _155\nCome away before ’tis light.’\n\nSee! the sheeted Ghost they bring,\nYelling dreadful o’er the heath,\nHark! the deadly verse they sing,\nTidings of despair and death!                                        _160\n\nThe yelling Ghost before him stands,\nSee! she rolls her eyes around,\nNow she lifts her bony hands,\nNow her footsteps shake the ground.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Phantom:",
    "body": "Mighty one I know thee now,\nMightiest power of the sky,                                          _170\nKnow thee by thy flaming brow,\nKnow thee by thy sparkling eye.\n\nThat fire is scorching! Oh! I came,\nFrom the caverned depth of Hell,\nMy fleeting false Rodolph to claim,                                  _175\nMighty one! I know thee well.—",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Stranger:",
    "body": "Ghasta! seize yon wandering sprite,\nDrag her to the depth beneath,\nTake her swift, before ’tis light,\nTake her to the cells of death!                                      _180\n\nThou that heardst the trackless dead,\nIn the mouldering tomb must lie,\nMortal! look upon my head,\nMortal! Mortal! thou must die.\n\nOf glowing flame a cross was there,                                  _185\nWhich threw a light around his form,\nWhilst his lank and raven hair,\nFloated wild upon the storm.—\n\nThe warrior upwards turned his eyes,\nGazed upon the cross of fire,                                        _190\nThere sat horror and surprise,\nThere sat God’s eternal ire.—\n\nA shivering through the Warrior flew,\nColder than the nightly blast,\nColder than the evening dew,                                         _195\nWhen the hour of twilight’s past.—\n\nThunder shakes th’ expansive sky,\nShakes the bosom of the heath,\n‘Mortal! Mortal! thou must die’—\nThe warrior sank convulsed in death.                                 _200",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Poems From St. Irvyne, Or, The Rosicrucian.",
    "body": "[“St. Irvyne; or The Rosicrucian”, appeared early in 1811 (see\n“Bibliographical List”). Rossetti (1870) relying on a passage in\nMedwin’s “Life of Shelley” (1 page 74), assigns 1, 4, 5, and 6 to 1808,\nand 2 and 4 to 1809. The titles of 1, 3, 4, and 5 are Rossetti’s; those\nof 2 and 6 are Dowden’s.]\n\n***\n\n\n1.—VICTORIA.\n\n[Another version of “The Triumph of Conscience” immediately preceding.]\n\n1.\n’Twas dead of the night, when I sat in my dwelling;\nOne glimmering lamp was expiring and low;\nAround, the dark tide of the tempest was swelling,\nAlong the wild mountains night-ravens were yelling,—\nThey bodingly presaged destruction and woe.                          _5\n\n2.\n’Twas then that I started!—the wild storm was howling,\nNought was seen, save the lightning, which danced in the sky;\nAbove me, the crash of the thunder was rolling,\nAnd low, chilling murmurs, the blast wafted by.\n\n3.\nMy heart sank within me—unheeded the war                            _10\nOf the battling clouds, on the mountain-tops, broke;—\nUnheeded the thunder-peal crashed in mine ear—\nThis heart, hard as iron, is stranger to fear;\nBut conscience in low, noiseless whispering spoke.\n\n4.\n’Twas then that her form on the whirlwind upholding,                 _15\nThe ghost of the murdered Victoria strode;\nIn her right hand, a shadowy shroud she was holding,\nShe swiftly advanced to my lonesome abode.\n\n5.\nI wildly then called on the tempest to bear me—’\n\n...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note:",
    "body": "1.—Victoria: without title, 1811.\n\n\n2.—ON THE DARK HEIGHT OF JURA.\n\n1.\nGhosts of the dead! have I not heard your yelling\nRise on the night-rolling breath of the blast,\nWhen o’er the dark aether the tempest is swelling,\nAnd on eddying whirlwind the thunder-peal passed?\n\n2.\nFor oft have I stood on the dark height of Jura,                     _5\nWhich frowns on the valley that opens beneath;\nOft have I braved the chill night-tempest’s fury,\nWhilst around me, I thought, echoed murmurs of death.\n\n3.\nAnd now, whilst the winds of the mountain are howling,\nO father! thy voice seems to strike on mine ear;                     _10\nIn air whilst the tide of the night-storm is rolling,\nIt breaks on the pause of the elements’ jar.\n\n4.\nOn the wing of the whirlwind which roars o’er the mountain\nPerhaps rides the ghost of my sire who is dead:\nOn the mist of the tempest which hangs o’er the fountain,\nWhilst a wreath of dark vapour encircles his head.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note:",
    "body": "2.—On the Dark, etc.: without title, 1811;\n    The Father’s Spectre, Rossetti, 1870.\n\n\n3.—SISTER ROSA: A BALLAD.\n\n1.\nThe death-bell beats!—\nThe mountain repeats\nThe echoing sound of the knell;\nAnd the dark Monk now\nWraps the cowl round his brow,                                       _5\nAs he sits in his lonely cell.\n\n2.\nAnd the cold hand of death\nChills his shuddering breath,\nAs he lists to the fearful lay\nWhich the ghosts of the sky,                                         _10\nAs they sweep wildly by,\nSing to departed day.\nAnd they sing of the hour\nWhen the stern fates had power\nTo resolve Rosa’s form to its clay.                                  _15\n\n3.\nBut that hour is past;\nAnd that hour was the last\nOf peace to the dark Monk’s brain.\nBitter tears, from his eyes, gushed silent and fast;\nAnd he strove to suppress them in vain.                              _20\n\n4.\nThen his fair cross of gold he dashed on the floor,\nWhen the death-knell struck on his ear.—\n‘Delight is in store\nFor her evermore;\nBut for me is fate, horror, and fear.’                               _25\n\n5.\nThen his eyes wildly rolled,\nWhen the death-bell tolled,\nAnd he raged in terrific woe.\nAnd he stamped on the ground,—\nBut when ceased the sound,                                           _30\nTears again began to flow.\n\n6.\nAnd the ice of despair\nChilled the wild throb of care,\nAnd he sate in mute agony still;\nTill the night-stars shone through the cloudless air,                _35\nAnd the pale moonbeam slept on the hill.\n\n7.\nThen he knelt in his cell:—\nAnd the horrors of hell\nWere delights to his agonized pain,\nAnd he prayed to God to dissolve the spell,                          _40\nWhich else must for ever remain.\n\n8.\nAnd in fervent pray’r he knelt on the ground,\nTill the abbey bell struck One:\nHis feverish blood ran chill at the sound:\nA voice hollow and horrible murmured around—                        _45\n‘The term of thy penance is done!’\n\n9.\nGrew dark the night;\nThe moonbeam bright\nWaxed faint on the mountain high;\nAnd, from the black hill,                                            _50\nWent a voice cold and still,—\n‘Monk! thou art free to die.’\n\n10.\nThen he rose on his feet,\nAnd his heart loud did beat,\nAnd his limbs they were palsied with dread;                          _55\nWhilst the grave’s clammy dew\nO’er his pale forehead grew;\nAnd he shuddered to sleep with the dead.\n\n11.\nAnd the wild midnight storm\nRaved around his tall form,                                          _60\nAs he sought the chapel’s gloom:\nAnd the sunk grass did sigh\nTo the wind, bleak and high,\nAs he searched for the new-made tomb.\n\n12.\nAnd forms, dark and high,                                            _65\nSeemed around him to fly,\nAnd mingle their yells with the blast:\nAnd on the dark wall\nHalf-seen shadows did fall,\nAs enhorrored he onward passed.                                      _70\n\n13.\nAnd the storm-fiends wild rave\nO’er the new-made grave,\nAnd dread shadows linger around.\nThe Monk called on God his soul to save,\nAnd, in horror, sank on the ground.                                  _75\n\n14.\nThen despair nerved his arm\nTo dispel the charm,\nAnd he burst Rosa’s coffin asunder.\nAnd the fierce storm did swell\nMore terrific and fell,                                              _80\nAnd louder pealed the thunder.\n\n15.\nAnd laughed, in joy, the fiendish throng,\nMixed with ghosts of the mouldering dead:\nAnd their grisly wings, as they floated along,\nWhistled in murmurs dread.                                           _85\n\n16.\nAnd her skeleton form the dead Nun reared\nWhich dripped with the chill dew of hell.\nIn her half-eaten eyeballs two pale flames appeared,\nAnd triumphant their gleam on the dark Monk glared,\nAs he stood within the cell.                                         _90\n\n17.\nAnd her lank hand lay on his shuddering brain;\nBut each power was nerved by fear.—\n‘I never, henceforth, may breathe again;\nDeath now ends mine anguished pain.—\nThe grave yawns,—we meet there.’                                    _95\n\n18.\nAnd her skeleton lungs did utter the sound,\nSo deadly, so lone, and so fell,\nThat in long vibrations shuddered the ground;\nAnd as the stern notes floated around,\nA deep groan was answered from hell.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note:",
    "body": "3.—Sister Rosa: Ballad, 1811.\n\n\n4.—ST. IRVYNE’S TOWER.\n\n1.\nHow swiftly through Heaven’s wide expanse\nBright day’s resplendent colours fade!\nHow sweetly does the moonbeam’s glance\nWith silver tint St. Irvyne’s glade!\n\n2.\nNo cloud along the spangled air,                                     _5\nIs borne upon the evening breeze;\nHow solemn is the scene! how fair\nThe moonbeams rest upon the trees!\n\n3.\nYon dark gray turret glimmers white,\nUpon it sits the mournful owl;                                       _10\nAlong the stillness of the night,\nHer melancholy shriekings roll.\n\n4.\nBut not alone on Irvyne’s tower,\nThe silver moonbeam pours her ray;\nIt gleams upon the ivied bower,                                      _15\nIt dances in the cascade’s spray.\n\n5.\n‘Ah! why do dark’ning shades conceal\nThe hour, when man must cease to be?\nWhy may not human minds unveil\nThe dim mists of futurity?—                                         _20\n\n6.\n‘The keenness of the world hath torn\nThe heart which opens to its blast;\nDespised, neglected, and forlorn,\nSinks the wretch in death at last.’",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note:",
    "body": "4.—St. Irvyne’s Tower: Song, 1810.\n\n\n5.—BEREAVEMENT.\n\n1.\nHow stern are the woes of the desolate mourner,\nAs he bends in still grief o’er the hallowed bier,\nAs enanguished he turns from the laugh of the scorner,\nAnd drops, to Perfection’s remembrance, a tear;\nWhen floods of despair down his pale cheek are streaming,            _5\nWhen no blissful hope on his bosom is beaming,\nOr, if lulled for awhile, soon he starts from his dreaming,\nAnd finds torn the soft ties to affection so dear.\n\n2.\nAh! when shall day dawn on the night of the grave,\nOr summer succeed to the winter of death?                            _10\nRest awhile, hapless victim, and Heaven will save\nThe spirit, that faded away with the breath.\nEternity points in its amaranth bower,\nWhere no clouds of fate o’er the sweet prospect lower,\nUnspeakable pleasure, of goodness the dower,                         _15\nWhen woe fades away like the mist of the heath.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note:",
    "body": "5.—Bereavement: Song, 1811.\n\n\n6.—THE DROWNED LOVER.\n\n1.\nAh! faint are her limbs, and her footstep is weary,\nYet far must the desolate wanderer roam;\nThough the tempest is stern, and the mountain is dreary,\nShe must quit at deep midnight her pitiless home.\nI see her swift foot dash the dew from the whortle,                  _5\nAs she rapidly hastes to the green grove of myrtle;\nAnd I hear, as she wraps round her figure the kirtle,\n‘Stay thy boat on the lake,—dearest Henry, I come.’\n\n2.\nHigh swelled in her bosom the throb of affection,\nAs lightly her form bounded over the lea,                            _10\nAnd arose in her mind every dear recollection;\n‘I come, dearest Henry, and wait but for thee.’\nHow sad, when dear hope every sorrow is soothing,\nWhen sympathy’s swell the soft bosom is moving,\nAnd the mind the mild joys of affection is proving,                  _15\nIs the stern voice of fate that bids happiness flee!\n\n3.\nOh! dark lowered the clouds on that horrible eve,\nAnd the moon dimly gleamed through the tempested air;\nOh! how could fond visions such softness deceive?\nOh! how could false hope rend, a bosom so fair?                      _20\nThy love’s pallid corse the wild surges are laving,\nO’er his form the fierce swell of the tempest is raving;\nBut, fear not, parting spirit; thy goodness is saving,\nIn eternity’s bowers, a seat for thee there.\n\n6.—The Drowned Lover: Song. 1811; The Lake-Storm, Rossetti, 1870.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Posthumous Fragments Of Margaret Mcholson.",
    "body": "Being Poems found amongst the Papers of that noted Female who attempted\nthe life of the King in 1786. Edited by John Fitzvictor.\n\n[The “Posthumous Fragments”, published at Oxford by Shelley, appeared in\nNovember, 1810. See “Bibliographical List”.]",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Advertisement.",
    "body": "The energy and native genius of these Fragments must be the only apology\nwhich the Editor can make for thus intruding them on the public notice.\nThe first I found with no title, and have left it so. It is intimately\nconnected with the dearest interests of universal happiness; and much as\nwe may deplore the fatal and enthusiastic tendency which the ideas of\nthis poor female had acquired, we cannot fail to pay the tribute of\nunequivocal regret to the departed memory of genius, which, had it been\nrightly organized, would have made that intellect, which has since\nbecome the victim of frenzy and despair, a most brilliant ornament to\nsociety.\n\nIn case the sale of these Fragments evinces that the public have any\ncuriosity to be presented with a more copious collection of my\nunfortunate Aunt’s poems, I have other papers in my possession which\nshall, in that case, be subjected to their notice. It may be supposed\nthey require much arrangement; but I send the following to the press in\nthe same state in which they came into my possession. J. F.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "War.",
    "body": "Ambition, power, and avarice, now have hurled\nDeath, fate, and ruin, on a bleeding world.\nSee! on yon heath what countless victims lie,\nHark! what loud shrieks ascend through yonder sky;\nTell then the cause, ’tis sure the avenger’s rage                    _5\nHas swept these myriads from life’s crowded stage:\nHark to that groan, an anguished hero dies,\nHe shudders in death’s latest agonies;\nYet does a fleeting hectic flush his cheek,\nYet does his parting breath essay to speak—                         _10\n‘Oh God! my wife, my children—Monarch thou\nFor whose support this fainting frame lies low;\nFor whose support in distant lands I bleed,\nLet his friends’ welfare be the warrior’s meed.\nHe hears me not—ah! no—kings cannot hear,                          _15\nFor passion’s voice has dulled their listless ear.\nTo thee, then, mighty God, I lift my moan,\nThou wilt not scorn a suppliant’s anguished groan.\nOh! now I die—but still is death’s fierce pain—\nGod hears my prayer—we meet, we meet again.’                        _20\nHe spake, reclined him on death’s bloody bed,\nAnd with a parting groan his spirit fled.\nOppressors of mankind to YOU we owe\nThe baleful streams from whence these miseries flow;\nFor you how many a mother weeps her son,                             _25\nSnatched from life’s course ere half his race was run!\nFor you how many a widow drops a tear,\nIn silent anguish, on her husband’s bier!\n‘Is it then Thine, Almighty Power,’ she cries,\n‘Whence tears of endless sorrow dim these eyes?                      _30\nIs this the system which Thy powerful sway,\nWhich else in shapeless chaos sleeping lay,\nFormed and approved?—it cannot be—but oh!\nForgive me, Heaven, my brain is warped by woe.’\n’Tis not—He never bade the war-note swell,                          _35\nHe never triumphed in the work of hell—\nMonarchs of earth! thine is the baleful deed,\nThine are the crimes for which thy subjects bleed.\nAh! when will come the sacred fated time,\nWhen man unsullied by his leaders’ crime,                            _40\nDespising wealth, ambition, pomp, and pride,\nWill stretch him fearless by his foe-men’s side?\nAh! when will come the time, when o’er the plain\nNo more shall death and desolation reign?\nWhen will the sun smile on the bloodless field,                      _45\nAnd the stern warrior’s arm the sickle wield?\nNot whilst some King, in cold ambition’s dreams,\nPlans for the field of death his plodding schemes;\nNot whilst for private pique the public fall,\nAnd one frail mortal’s mandate governs all.                          _50\nSwelled with command and mad with dizzying sway;\nWho sees unmoved his myriads fade away.\nCareless who lives or dies—so that he gains\nSome trivial point for which he took the pains.\nWhat then are Kings?—I see the trembling crowd,                     _55\nI hear their fulsome clamours echoed loud;\nTheir stern oppressor pleased appears awhile,\nBut April’s sunshine is a Monarch’s smile—\nKings are but dust—the last eventful day\nWill level all and make them lose their sway;                        _60\nWill dash the sceptre from the Monarch’s hand,\nAnd from the warrior’s grasp wrest the ensanguined brand.\nOh! Peace, soft Peace, art thou for ever gone,\nIs thy fair form indeed for ever flown?\nAnd love and concord hast thou swept away,                           _65\nAs if incongruous with thy parted sway?\nAlas, I fear thou hast, for none appear.\nNow o’er the palsied earth stalks giant Fear,\nWith War, and Woe, and Terror, in his train;—\nList’ning he pauses on the embattled plain,                          _70\nThen speeding swiftly o’er the ensanguined heath,\nHas left the frightful work to Hell and Death.\nSee! gory Ruin yokes his blood-stained car,\nHe scents the battle’s carnage from afar;\nHell and Destruction mark his mad career,                            _75\nHe tracks the rapid step of hurrying Fear;\nWhilst ruined towns and smoking cities tell,\nThat thy work, Monarch, is the work of Hell.\n‘It is thy work!’ I hear a voice repeat,\nShakes the broad basis of thy bloodstained seat;                     _80\nAnd at the orphan’s sigh, the widow’s moan,\nTotters the fabric of thy guilt-stained throne—\n‘It is thy work, O Monarch;’ now the sound\nFainter and fainter, yet is borne around,\nYet to enthusiast ears the murmurs tell                              _85\nThat Heaven, indignant at the work of Hell,\nWill soon the cause, the hated cause remove,\nWhich tears from earth peace, innocence, and love.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment: Supposed To Be An Epithalamium Of Francis Ravaillac",
    "body": "AND CHARLOTTE CORDAY.\n\n’Tis midnight now—athwart the murky air,\nDank lurid meteors shoot a livid gleam;\nFrom the dark storm-clouds flashes a fearful glare,\nIt shows the bending oak, the roaring stream.\n\nI pondered on the woes of lost mankind,                              _5\nI pondered on the ceaseless rage of Kings;\nMy rapt soul dwelt upon the ties that bind\nThe mazy volume of commingling things,\nWhen fell and wild misrule to man stern sorrow brings.\n\nI heard a yell—it was not the knell,                                _10\nWhen the blasts on the wild lake sleep,\nThat floats on the pause of the summer gale’s swell,\nO’er the breast of the waveless deep.\n\nI thought it had been death’s accents cold\nThat bade me recline on the shore;                                   _15\nI laid mine hot head on the surge-beaten mould,\nAnd thought to breathe no more.\n\nBut a heavenly sleep\nThat did suddenly steep\nIn balm my bosom’s pain,                                             _20\nPervaded my soul,\nAnd free from control,\nDid mine intellect range again.\n\nMethought enthroned upon a silvery cloud,\nWhich floated mid a strange and brilliant light;                     _25\nMy form upborne by viewless aether rode,\nAnd spurned the lessening realms of earthly night.\nWhat heavenly notes burst on my ravished ears,\nWhat beauteous spirits met my dazzled eye!\nHark! louder swells the music of the spheres,                        _30\nMore clear the forms of speechless bliss float by,\nAnd heavenly gestures suit aethereal melody.\n\nBut fairer than the spirits of the air,\nMore graceful than the Sylph of symmetry,\nThan the enthusiast’s fancied love more fair,                        _35\nWere the bright forms that swept the azure sky.\nEnthroned in roseate light, a heavenly band\nStrewed flowers of bliss that never fade away;\nThey welcome virtue to its native land,\nAnd songs of triumph greet the joyous day                            _40\nWhen endless bliss the woes of fleeting life repay.\n\nCongenial minds will seek their kindred soul,\nE’en though the tide of time has rolled between;\nThey mock weak matter’s impotent control,\nAnd seek of endless life the eternal scene.                          _45\nAt death’s vain summons THIS will never die,\nIn Nature’s chaos THIS will not decay—\nThese are the bands which closely, warmly, tie\nThy soul, O Charlotte, ‘yond this chain of clay,\nTo him who thine must be till time shall fade away.                  _50\n\nYes, Francis! thine was the dear knife that tore\nA tyrant’s heart-strings from his guilty breast,\nThine was the daring at a tyrant’s gore,\nTo smile in triumph, to contemn the rest;\nAnd thine, loved glory of thy sex! to tear                           _55\nFrom its base shrine a despot’s haughty soul,\nTo laugh at sorrow in secure despair,\nTo mock, with smiles, life’s lingering control,\nAnd triumph mid the griefs that round thy fate did roll.\n\nYes! the fierce spirits of the avenging deep                         _60\nWith endless tortures goad their guilty shades.\nI see the lank and ghastly spectres sweep\nAlong the burning length of yon arcades;\nAnd I see Satan stalk athwart the plain;\nHe hastes along the burning soil of Hell.                            _65\n‘Welcome, ye despots, to my dark domain,\nWith maddening joy mine anguished senses swell\nTo welcome to their home the friends I love so well.’\n\n...\n\nHark! to those notes, how sweet, how thrilling sweet\nThey echo to the sound of angels’ feet.                              _70\n\n...\n\nOh haste to the bower where roses are spread,\nFor there is prepared thy nuptial bed.\nOh haste—hark! hark!—they’re gone.\n\n...",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chorus Of Spirits:",
    "body": "Stay, ye days of contentment and joy,\nWhilst love every care is erasing,                                   _75\nStay ye pleasures that never can cloy,\nAnd ye spirits that can never cease pleasing.\n\nAnd if any soft passion be near,\nWhich mortals, frail mortals, can know,\nLet love shed on the bosom a tear,                                   _80\nAnd dissolve the chill ice-drop of woe.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Francis:",
    "body": "‘Soft, my dearest angel, stay,\nOh! you suck my soul away;\nSuck on, suck on, I glow, I glow!\nTides of maddening passion roll,                                     _85\nAnd streams of rapture drown my soul.\nNow give me one more billing kiss,\nLet your lips now repeat the bliss,\nEndless kisses steal my breath,\nNo life can equal such a death.’                                     _90",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Charlotte:",
    "body": "‘Oh! yes I will kiss thine eyes so fair,\nAnd I will clasp thy form;\nSerene is the breath of the balmy air,\nBut I think, love, thou feelest me warm\nAnd I will recline on thy marble neck                                _95\nTill I mingle into thee;\nAnd I will kiss the rose on thy cheek,\nAnd thou shalt give kisses to me.\nFor here is no morn to flout our delight,\nOh! dost thou not joy at this?                                       _100\nAnd here we may lie an endless night,\nA long, long night of bliss.’\n\nSpirits! when raptures move,\nSay what it is to love,\nWhen passion’s tear stands on the cheek,                             _105\nWhen bursts the unconscious sigh;\nAnd the tremulous lips dare not speak\nWhat is told by the soul-felt eye.\nBut what is sweeter to revenge’s ear\nThan the fell tyrant’s last expiring yell?                           _110\nYes! than love’s sweetest blisses ’tis more dear\nTo drink the floatings of a despot’s knell.\nI wake—’tis done—’tis over.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Despair.",
    "body": "And canst thou mock mine agony, thus calm\nIn cloudless radiance, Queen of silver night?\nCan you, ye flow’rets, spread your perfumed balm\nMid pearly gems of dew that shine so bright?\nAnd you wild winds, thus can you sleep so still                      _5\nWhilst throbs the tempest of my breast so high?\nCan the fierce night-fiends rest on yonder hill,\nAnd, in the eternal mansions of the sky,\nCan the directors of the storm in powerless silence lie?\n\nHark! I hear music on the zephyr’s wing,                             _10\nLouder it floats along the unruffled sky;\nSome fairy sure has touched the viewless string—\nNow faint in distant air the murmurs die.\nAwhile it stills the tide of agony.\nNow—now it loftier swells—again stern woe                          _15\nArises with the awakening melody.\nAgain fierce torments, such as demons know,\nIn bitterer, feller tide, on this torn bosom flow.\n\nArise ye sightless spirits of the storm,\nYe unseen minstrels of the aereal song,                              _20\nPour the fierce tide around this lonely form,\nAnd roll the tempest’s wildest swell along.\nDart the red lightning, wing the forked flash,\nPour from thy cloud-formed hills the thunder’s roar;\nArouse the whirlwind—and let ocean dash                             _25\nIn fiercest tumult on the rocking shore,—\nDestroy this life or let earth’s fabric be no more.\n\nYes! every tie that links me here is dead;\nMysterious Fate, thy mandate I obey,\nSince hope and peace, and joy, for aye are fled,                     _30\nI come, terrific power, I come away.\nThen o’er this ruined soul let spirits of Hell,\nIn triumph, laughing wildly, mock its pain;\nAnd though with direst pangs mine heart-strings swell,\nI’ll echo back their deadly yells again,                             _35\nCursing the power that ne’er made aught in vain.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment.",
    "body": "Yes! all is past—swift time has fled away,\nYet its swell pauses on my sickening mind;\nHow long will horror nerve this frame of clay?\nI’m dead, and lingers yet my soul behind.\nOh! powerful Fate, revoke thy deadly spell,                          _5\nAnd yet that may not ever, ever be,\nHeaven will not smile upon the work of Hell;\nAh! no, for Heaven cannot smile on me;\nFate, envious Fate, has sealed my wayward destiny.\n\nI sought the cold brink of the midnight surge,                       _10\nI sighed beneath its wave to hide my woes,\nThe rising tempest sung a funeral dirge,\nAnd on the blast a frightful yell arose.\nWild flew the meteors o’er the maddened main,\nWilder did grief athwart my bosom glare;                             _15\nStilled was the unearthly howling, and a strain,\nSwelled mid the tumult of the battling air,\n’Twas like a spirit’s song, but yet more soft and fair.\n\nI met a maniac—like he was to me,\nI said—‘Poor victim, wherefore dost thou roam?                      _20\nAnd canst thou not contend with agony,\nThat thus at midnight thou dost quit thine home?’\n‘Ah there she sleeps: cold is her bloodless form,\nAnd I will go to slumber in her grave;\nAnd then our ghosts, whilst raves the maddened storm,                _25\nWill sweep at midnight o’er the wildered wave;\nWilt thou our lowly beds with tears of pity lave?’\n\n‘Ah! no, I cannot shed the pitying tear,\nThis breast is cold, this heart can feel no more—\nBut I can rest me on thy chilling bier,                              _30\nCan shriek in horror to the tempest’s roar.’\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Spectral Horseman.",
    "body": "What was the shriek that struck Fancy’s ear\nAs it sate on the ruins of time that is past?\nHark! it floats on the fitful blast of the wind,\nAnd breathes to the pale moon a funeral sigh.\nIt is the Benshie’s moan on the storm,                               _5\nOr a shivering fiend that thirsting for sin,\nSeeks murder and guilt when virtue sleeps,\nWinged with the power of some ruthless king,\nAnd sweeps o’er the breast of the prostrate plain.\nIt was not a fiend from the regions of Hell                          _10\nThat poured its low moan on the stillness of night:\nIt was not a ghost of the guilty dead,\nNor a yelling vampire reeking with gore;\nBut aye at the close of seven years’ end,\nThat voice is mixed with the swell of the storm,                     _15\nAnd aye at the close of seven years’ end,\nA shapeless shadow that sleeps on the hill\nAwakens and floats on the mist of the heath.\nIt is not the shade of a murdered man,\nWho has rushed uncalled to the throne of his God,                    _20\nAnd howls in the pause of the eddying storm.\nThis voice is low, cold, hollow, and chill,\n’Tis not heard by the ear, but is felt in the soul.\n’Tis more frightful far than the death-daemon’s scream,\nOr the laughter of fiends when they howl o’er the corpse             _25\nOf a man who has sold his soul to Hell.\nIt tells the approach of a mystic form,\nA white courser bears the shadowy sprite;\nMore thin they are than the mists of the mountain,\nWhen the clear moonlight sleeps on the waveless lake.                _30\nMore pale HIS cheek than the snows of Nithona,\nWhen winter rides on the northern blast,\nAnd howls in the midst of the leafless wood.\nYet when the fierce swell of the tempest is raving,\nAnd the whirlwinds howl in the caves of Inisfallen,                  _35\nStill secure mid the wildest war of the sky,\nThe phantom courser scours the waste,\nAnd his rider howls in the thunder’s roar.\nO’er him the fierce bolts of avenging Heaven\nPause, as in fear, to strike his head.                               _40\nThe meteors of midnight recoil from his figure,\nYet the ‘wildered peasant, that oft passes by,\nWith wonder beholds the blue flash through his form:\nAnd his voice, though faint as the sighs of the dead,\nThe startled passenger shudders to hear,                             _45\nMore distinct than the thunder’s wildest roar.\nThen does the dragon, who, chained in the caverns\nTo eternity, curses the champion of Erin,\nMoan and yell loud at the lone hour of midnight,\nAnd twine his vast wreaths round the forms of the daemons;           _50\nThen in agony roll his death-swimming eyeballs,\nThough ‘wildered by death, yet never to die!\nThen he shakes from his skeleton folds the nightmares,\nWho, shrieking in agony, seek the couch\nOf some fevered wretch who courts sleep in vain;                     _55\nThen the tombless ghosts of the guilty dead\nIn horror pause on the fitful gale.\nThey float on the swell of the eddying tempest,\nAnd scared seek the caves of gigantic...\nWhere their thin forms pour unearthly sounds                         _60\nOn the blast that sweets the breast of the lake,\nAnd mingles its swell with the moonlight air.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Melody To A Scene Of Former Times.",
    "body": "Art thou indeed forever gone,\nForever, ever, lost to me?\nMust this poor bosom beat alone,\nOr beat at all, if not for thee?\nAh! why was love to mortals given,                                   _5\nTo lift them to the height of Heaven,\nOr dash them to the depths of Hell?\nYet I do not reproach thee, dear!\nAh, no! the agonies that swell\nThis panting breast, this frenzied brain,                            _10\nMight wake my —‘s slumb’ring tear.\nOh! Heaven is witness I did love,\nAnd Heaven does know I love thee still,\nDoes know the fruitless sick’ning thrill,\nWhen reason’s judgement vainly strove                                _15\nTo blot thee from my memory;\nBut which might never, never be.\nOh! I appeal to that blest day\nWhen passion’s wildest ecstasy\nWas coldness to the joys I knew,                                     _20\nWhen every sorrow sunk away.\nOh! I had never lived before,\nBut now those blisses are no more.\nAnd now I cease to live again,\nI do not blame thee, love; ah, no!                                   _25\nThe breast that feels this anguished woe.\nThrobs for thy happiness alone.\nTwo years of speechless bliss are gone,\nI thank thee, dearest, for the dream.\n’Tis night—what faint and distant scream                            _30\nComes on the wild and fitful blast?\nIt moans for pleasures that are past,\nIt moans for days that are gone by.\nOh! lagging hours, how slow you fly!\nI see a dark and lengthened vale,                                    _35\nThe black view closes with the tomb;\nBut darker is the lowering gloom\nThat shades the intervening dale.\nIn visioned slumber for awhile\nI seem again to share thy smile,                                     _40\nI seem to hang upon thy tone.\nAgain you say, ‘Confide in me,\nFor I am thine, and thine alone,\nAnd thine must ever, ever be.’\nBut oh! awak’ning still anew,                                        _45\nAthwart my enanguished senses flew\nA fiercer, deadlier agony!\n\n[End of “Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson”.]\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Stanza From A Translation Of The Marseillaise Hymn.",
    "body": "[Published by Forman, “Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1876; dated 1810.]\n\nTremble, Kings despised of man!\nYe traitors to your Country,\nTremble! Your parricidal plan\nAt length shall meet its destiny...\nWe all are soldiers fit to fight,                                    _5\nBut if we sink in glory’s night\nOur mother Earth will give ye new\nThe brilliant pathway to pursue\nWhich leads to Death or Victory...\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Bigotry’S Victim.",
    "body": "[Published (without title) by Hogg, “Life of Shelley”, 1858; dated\n1809-10. The title is Rossetti’s (1870).]\n\n1.\nDares the lama, most fleet of the sons of the wind,\nThe lion to rouse from his skull-covered lair?\nWhen the tiger approaches can the fast-fleeting hind\nRepose trust in his footsteps of air?\nNo! Abandoned he sinks in a trance of despair,                       _5\nThe monster transfixes his prey,\nOn the sand flows his life-blood away;\nWhilst India’s rocks to his death-yells reply,\nProtracting the horrible harmony.\n\n2.\nYet the fowl of the desert, when danger encroaches,                  _10\nDares fearless to perish defending her brood,\nThough the fiercest of cloud-piercing tyrants approaches\nThirsting—ay, thirsting for blood;\nAnd demands, like mankind, his brother for food;\nYet more lenient, more gentle than they;                             _15\nFor hunger, not glory, the prey\nMust perish. Revenge does not howl in the dead.\nNor ambition with fame crown the murderer’s head.\n\n3.\nThough weak as the lama that bounds on the mountains,\nAnd endued not with fast-fleeting footsteps of air,                  _20\nYet, yet will I draw from the purest of fountains,\nThough a fiercer than tiger is there.\nThough, more dreadful than death, it scatters despair,\nThough its shadow eclipses the day,\nAnd the darkness of deepest dismay                                   _25\nSpreads the influence of soul-chilling terror around,\nAnd lowers on the corpses, that rot on the ground.\n\n4.\nThey came to the fountain to draw from its stream\nWaves too pure, too celestial, for mortals to see;\nThey bathed for awhile in its silvery beam,                          _30\nThen perished, and perished like me.\nFor in vain from the grasp of the Bigot I flee;\nThe most tenderly loved of my soul\nAre slaves to his hated control.\nHe pursues me, he blasts me! ’Tis in vain that I fly:                _35 -\nWhat remains, but to curse him,—to curse him and die?\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "On An Icicle That Clung To The Grass Of A Grave.",
    "body": "[Published (without title) by Hogg, “Life of Shelley”, 1858; dated\n1809-10. The poem, with title as above, is included in the Esdaile\nmanuscript book.]\n\n1.\nOh! take the pure gem to where southerly breezes,\nWaft repose to some bosom as faithful as fair,\nIn which the warm current of love never freezes,\nAs it rises unmingled with selfishness there,\nWhich, untainted by pride, unpolluted by care,                       _5\nMight dissolve the dim icedrop, might bid it arise,\nToo pure for these regions, to gleam in the skies.\n\n2.\nOr where the stern warrior, his country defending,\nDares fearless the dark-rolling battle to pour,\nOr o’er the fell corpse of a dread tyrant bending,                   _10\nWhere patriotism red with his guilt-reeking gore\nPlants Liberty’s flag on the slave-peopled shore,\nWith victory’s cry, with the shout of the free,\nLet it fly, taintless Spirit, to mingle with thee.\n\n3.\nFor I found the pure gem, when the daybeam returning,                _15\nIneffectual gleams on the snow-covered plain,\nWhen to others the wished-for arrival of morning\nBrings relief to long visions of soul-racking pain;\nBut regret is an insult—to grieve is in vain:\nAnd why should we grieve that a spirit so fair                       _20\nSeeks Heaven to mix with its own kindred there?\n\n4.\nBut still ’twas some Spirit of kindness descending\nTo share in the load of mortality’s woe,\nWho over thy lowly-built sepulchre bending\nBade sympathy’s tenderest teardrop to flow.                          _25\nNot for THEE soft compassion celestials did know,\nBut if ANGELS can weep, sure MAN may repine,\nMay weep in mute grief o’er thy low-laid shrine.\n\n5.\nAnd did I then say, for the altar of glory,\nThat the earliest, the loveliest of flowers I’d entwine,             _30\nThough with millions of blood-reeking victims ’twas gory,\nThough the tears of the widow polluted its shrine,\nThough around it the orphans, the fatherless pine?\nOh! Fame, all thy glories I’d yield for a tear\nTo shed on the grave of a heart so sincere.                          _35\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Love.",
    "body": "[Published (without title) by Hogg, “Life of Shelley”, 1858; dated 1811.\nThe title is Rossetti’s (1870).]\n\nWhy is it said thou canst not live\nIn a youthful breast and fair,\nSince thou eternal life canst give,\nCanst bloom for ever there?\nSince withering pain no power possessed,                             _5\nNor age, to blanch thy vermeil hue,\nNor time’s dread victor, death, confessed,\nThough bathed with his poison dew,\nStill thou retain’st unchanging bloom,\nFixed tranquil, even in the tomb.                                    _10\nAnd oh! when on the blest, reviving,\nThe day-star dawns of love,\nEach energy of soul surviving\nMore vivid, soars above,\nHast thou ne’er felt a rapturous thrill,                             _15\nLike June’s warm breath, athwart thee fly,\nO’er each idea then to steal,\nWhen other passions die?\nFelt it in some wild noonday dream,\nWhen sitting by the lonely stream,                                   _20\nWhere Silence says, ‘Mine is the dell’;\nAnd not a murmur from the plain,\nAnd not an echo from the fell,\nDisputes her silent reign.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "On A Fete At Carlton House: Fragment.",
    "body": "[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870;\ndated 1811.]\n\nBy the mossy brink,\nWith me the Prince shall sit and think;\nShall muse in visioned Regency,\nRapt in bright dreams of dawning Royalty.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Tale Of Society As It Is: From Facts, 1811.",
    "body": "[Published (from Esdaile manuscript with title as above) by Rossetti,\n“Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870. Rossetti’s title is “Mother\nand Son”.]\n\n1.\nShe was an aged woman; and the years\nWhich she had numbered on her toilsome way\nHad bowed her natural powers to decay.\nShe was an aged woman; yet the ray\nWhich faintly glimmered through her starting tears,                  _5\nPressed into light by silent misery,\nHath soul’s imperishable energy.\nShe was a cripple, and incapable\nTo add one mite to gold-fed luxury:\nAnd therefore did her spirit dimly feel                              _10\nThat poverty, the crime of tainting stain,\nWould merge her in its depths, never to rise again.\n\n2.\nOne only son’s love had supported her.\nShe long had struggled with infirmity,\nLingering to human life-scenes; for to die,                          _15\nWhen fate has spared to rend some mental tie,\nWould many wish, and surely fewer dare.\nBut, when the tyrant’s bloodhounds forced the child\nFor his cursed power unhallowed arms to wield—\nBend to another’s will—become a thing                               _20\nMore senseless than the sword of battlefield—\nThen did she feel keen sorrow’s keenest sting;\nAnd many years had passed ere comfort they would bring.\n\n3.\nFor seven years did this poor woman live\nIn unparticipated solitude.                                          _25\nThou mightst have seen her in the forest rude\nPicking the scattered remnants of its wood.\nIf human, thou mightst then have learned to grieve.\nThe gleanings of precarious charity\nHer scantiness of food did scarce supply.                            _30\nThe proofs of an unspeaking sorrow dwelt\nWithin her ghastly hollowness of eye:\nEach arrow of the season’s change she felt.\nYet still she groans, ere yet her race were run,\nOne only hope: it was—once more to see her son.                     _35\n\n4.\nIt was an eve of June, when every star\nSpoke peace from Heaven to those on earth that live.\nShe rested on the moor. ’Twas such an eve\nWhen first her soul began indeed to grieve:\nThen he was here; now he is very far.                                _40\nThe sweetness of the balmy evening\nA sorrow o’er her aged soul did fling,\nYet not devoid of rapture’s mingled tear:\nA balm was in the poison of the sting.\nThis aged sufferer for many a year                                   _45\nHad never felt such comfort. She suppressed\nA sigh—and turning round, clasped William to her breast!\n\n5.\nAnd, though his form was wasted by the woe\nWhich tyrants on their victims love to wreak,\nThough his sunk eyeballs and his faded cheek                         _50\nOf slavery’s violence and scorn did speak,\nYet did the aged woman’s bosom glow.\nThe vital fire seemed re-illumed within\nBy this sweet unexpected welcoming.\nOh, consummation of the fondest hope                                 _55\nThat ever soared on Fancy’s wildest wing!\nOh, tenderness that foundst so sweet a scope!\nPrince who dost pride thee on thy mighty sway,\nWhen THOU canst feel such love, thou shalt be great as they!\n\n6.\nHer son, compelled, the country’s foes had fought,                   _60\nHad bled in battle; and the stern control\nWhich ruled his sinews and coerced his soul\nUtterly poisoned life’s unmingled bowl,\nAnd unsubduable evils on him brought.\nHe was the shadow of the lusty child                                 _65\nWho, when the time of summer season smiled,\nDid earn for her a meal of honesty,\nAnd with affectionate discourse beguiled\nThe keen attacks of pain and poverty;\nTill Power, as envying her this only joy,                            _70\nFrom her maternal bosom tore the unhappy boy.\n\n7.\nAnd now cold charity’s unwelcome dole\nWas insufficient to support the pair;\nAnd they would perish rather than would bear\nThe law’s stern slavery, and the insolent stare                      _75\nWith which law loves to rend the poor man’s soul—\nThe bitter scorn, the spirit-sinking noise\nOf heartless mirth which women, men, and boys\nWake in this scene of legal misery.\n\n...\n\n_28 grieve Esdaile manuscript; feel, 1870.\n_37 to those on earth that live Esdaile manuscripts; omitted, 1870.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "On Robert Emmet’S Grave.",
    "body": "[Published from the Esdaile manuscript book by Dowden,\n“Life of Shelley”, 1887; dated 1812.]\n\n...\n\n6.\nNo trump tells thy virtues—the grave where they rest\nWith thy dust shall remain unpolluted by fame,\nTill thy foes, by the world and by fortune caressed,\nShall pass like a mist from the light of thy name.\n\n7.\nWhen the storm-cloud that lowers o’er the day-beam is gone,          _5\nUnchanged, unextinguished its life-spring will shine;\nWhen Erin has ceased with their memory to groan,\nShe will smile through the tears of revival on thine.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Retrospect: Cwm Elan, 1812.",
    "body": "[Published from the Esdaile manuscript book by Dowden,\n“Life of Shelley”, 1887.]\n\nA scene, which ‘wildered fancy viewed\nIn the soul’s coldest solitude,\nWith that same scene when peaceful love\nFlings rapture’s colour o’er the grove,\nWhen mountain, meadow, wood and stream                               _5\nWith unalloying glory gleam,\nAnd to the spirit’s ear and eye\nAre unison and harmony.\nThe moonlight was my dearer day;\nThen would I wander far away,                                        _10\nAnd, lingering on the wild brook’s shore\nTo hear its unremitting roar,\nWould lose in the ideal flow\nAll sense of overwhelming woe;\nOr at the noiseless noon of night                                    _15\nWould climb some heathy mountain’s height,\nAnd listen to the mystic sound\nThat stole in fitful gasps around.\nI joyed to see the streaks of day\nAbove the purple peaks decay,                                        _20\nAnd watch the latest line of light\nJust mingling with the shades of night;\nFor day with me was time of woe\nWhen even tears refused to flow;\nThen would I stretch my languid frame                                _25\nBeneath the wild woods’ gloomiest shade,\nAnd try to quench the ceaseless flame\nThat on my withered vitals preyed;\nWould close mine eyes and dream I were\nOn some remote and friendless plain,                                 _30\nAnd long to leave existence there,\nIf with it I might leave the pain\nThat with a finger cold and lean\nWrote madness on my withering mien.\n\nIt was not unrequited love                                           _35\nThat bade my ‘wildered spirit rove;\n’Twas not the pride disdaining life,\nThat with this mortal world at strife\nWould yield to the soul’s inward sense,\nThen groan in human impotence,                                       _40\nAnd weep because it is not given\nTo taste on Earth the peace of Heaven.\n’Twas not that in the narrow sphere\nWhere Nature fixed my wayward fate\nThere was no friend or kindred dear                                  _45\nFormed to become that spirit’s mate,\nWhich, searching on tired pinion, found\nBarren and cold repulse around;\nOh, no! yet each one sorrow gave\nNew graces to the narrow grave.                                      _50\nFor broken vows had early quelled\nThe stainless spirit’s vestal flame;\nYes! whilst the faithful bosom swelled,\nThen the envenomed arrow came,\nAnd Apathy’s unaltering eye                                          _55\nBeamed coldness on the misery;\nAnd early I had learned to scorn\nThe chains of clay that bound a soul\nPanting to seize the wings of morn,\nAnd where its vital fires were born                                  _60\nTo soar, and spur the cold control\nWhich the vile slaves of earthly night\nWould twine around its struggling flight.\n\nOh, many were the friends whom fame\nHad linked with the unmeaning name,                                  _65\nWhose magic marked among mankind\nThe casket of my unknown mind,\nWhich hidden from the vulgar glare\nImbibed no fleeting radiance there.\nMy darksome spirit sought—it found                                  _70\nA friendless solitude around.\nFor who that might undaunted stand,\nThe saviour of a sinking land,\nWould crawl, its ruthless tyrant’s slave,\nAnd fatten upon Freedom’s grave,                                     _75\nThough doomed with her to perish, where\nThe captive clasps abhorred despair.\n\nThey could not share the bosom’s feeling,\nWhich, passion’s every throb revealing,\nDared force on the world’s notice cold                               _80\nThoughts of unprofitable mould,\nWho bask in Custom’s fickle ray,\nFit sunshine of such wintry day!\nThey could not in a twilight walk\nWeave an impassioned web of talk,                                    _85\nTill mysteries the spirits press\nIn wild yet tender awfulness,\nThen feel within our narrow sphere\nHow little yet how great we are!\nBut they might shine in courtly glare,                               _90\nAttract the rabble’s cheapest stare,\nAnd might command where’er they move\nA thing that bears the name of love;\nThey might be learned, witty, gay,\nForemost in fashion’s gilt array,                                    _95\nOn Fame’s emblazoned pages shine,\nBe princes’ friends, but never mine!\n\nYe jagged peaks that frown sublime,\nMocking the blunted scythe of Time,\nWhence I would watch its lustre pale                                 _100\nSteal from the moon o’er yonder vale\nThou rock, whose bosom black and vast,\nBared to the stream’s unceasing flow,\nEver its giant shade doth cast\nOn the tumultuous surge below:                                       _105\n\nWoods, to whose depths retires to die\nThe wounded Echo’s melody,\nAnd whither this lone spirit bent\nThe footstep of a wild intent:\n\nMeadows! whose green and spangled breast                             _110\nThese fevered limbs have often pressed,\nUntil the watchful fiend Despair\nSlept in the soothing coolness there!\nHave not your varied beauties seen\nThe sunken eye, the withering mien,                                  _115\nSad traces of the unuttered pain\nThat froze my heart and burned my brain.\nHow changed since Nature’s summer form\nHad last the power my grief to charm,\nSince last ye soothed my spirit’s sadness,                           _120\nStrange chaos of a mingled madness!\nChanged!—not the loathsome worm that fed\nIn the dark mansions of the dead,\nNow soaring through the fields of air,\nAnd gathering purest nectar there,                                   _125\nA butterfly, whose million hues\nThe dazzled eye of wonder views,\nLong lingering on a work so strange,\nHas undergone so bright a change.\nHow do I feel my happiness?                                          _130\nI cannot tell, but they may guess\nWhose every gloomy feeling gone,\nFriendship and passion feel alone;\nWho see mortality’s dull clouds\nBefore affection’s murmur fly,                                       _135\nWhilst the mild glances of her eye\nPierce the thin veil of flesh that shrouds\nThe spirit’s inmost sanctuary.\nO thou! whose virtues latest known,\nFirst in this heart yet claim’st a throne;                           _140\nWhose downy sceptre still shall share\nThe gentle sway with virtue there;\nThou fair in form, and pure in mind,\nWhose ardent friendship rivets fast\nThe flowery band our fates that bind,                                _145\nWhich incorruptible shall last\nWhen duty’s hard and cold control\nHas thawed around the burning soul,—\nThe gloomiest retrospects that bind\nWith crowns of thorn the bleeding mind,                              _150\nThe prospects of most doubtful hue\nThat rise on Fancy’s shuddering view,—\nAre gilt by the reviving ray\nWhich thou hast flung upon my day.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Sonnet.",
    "body": "ON LAUNCHING SOME BOTTLES FILLED WITH KNOWLEDGE INTO THE BRISTOL CHANNEL.\n\n[Published from the Esdaile manuscript book by Dowden,\n“Life of Shelley”, 1887; dated August, 1812.]\n\nVessels of heavenly medicine! may the breeze\nAuspicious waft your dark green forms to shore;\nSafe may ye stem the wide surrounding roar\nOf the wild whirlwinds and the raging seas;\nAnd oh! if Liberty e’er deigned to stoop                             _5\nFrom yonder lowly throne her crownless brow,\nSure she will breathe around your emerald group\nThe fairest breezes of her West that blow.\nYes! she will waft ye to some freeborn soul\nWhose eye-beam, kindling as it meets your freight,                   _10\nHer heaven-born flame in suffering Earth will light,\nUntil its radiance gleams from pole to pole,\nAnd tyrant-hearts with powerless envy burst\nTo see their night of ignorance dispersed.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Ballad.",
    "body": "[Published as a broadside by Shelley, 1812.]\n\n1.\nOnce, early in the morning, Beelzebub arose,\nWith care his sweet person adorning,\nHe put on his Sunday clothes.\n\n2.\nHe drew on a boot to hide his hoof,                                  _5\nHe drew on a glove to hide his claw,\nHis horns were concealed by a Bras Chapeau,\nAnd the Devil went forth as natty a Beau\nAs Bond-street ever saw.\n\n3.\nHe sate him down, in London town,                                    _10\nBefore earth’s morning ray;\nWith a favourite imp he began to chat,\nOn religion, and scandal, this and that,\nUntil the dawn of day.\n\n4.\nAnd then to St. James’s Court he went,                               _15\nAnd St. Paul’s Church he took on his way;\nHe was mighty thick with every Saint,\nThough they were formal and he was gay.\n\n5.\nThe Devil was an agriculturist,\nAnd as bad weeds quickly grow,                                       _20\nIn looking over his farm, I wist,\nHe wouldn’t find cause for woe.\n\n6.\nHe peeped in each hole, to each chamber stole,\nHis promising live-stock to view;\nGrinning applause, he just showed them his claws,                    _25\nAnd they shrunk with affright from his ugly sight,\nWhose work they delighted to do.\n\n7.\nSatan poked his red nose into crannies so small\nOne would think that the innocents fair,\nPoor lambkins! were just doing nothing at all                        _30\nBut settling some dress or arranging some ball,\nBut the Devil saw deeper there.\n\n8.\nA Priest, at whose elbow the Devil during prayer\nSate familiarly, side by side,\nDeclared that, if the Tempter were there,                            _35\nHis presence he would not abide.\nAh! ah! thought Old Nick, that’s a very stale trick,\nFor without the Devil, O favourite of Evil,\nIn your carriage you would not ride.\n\n9.\nSatan next saw a brainless King,                                     _40\nWhose house was as hot as his own;\nMany Imps in attendance were there on the wing,\nThey flapped the pennon and twisted the sting,\nClose by the very Throne.\n\n10.\nAh! ah! thought Satan, the pasture is good,                          _45\nMy Cattle will here thrive better than others;\nThey dine on news of human blood,\nThey sup on the groans of the dying and dead,\nAnd supperless never will go to bed;\nWhich will make them fat as their brothers.                          _50\n\n11.\nFat as the Fiends that feed on blood,\nFresh and warm from the fields of Spain,\nWhere Ruin ploughs her gory way,\nWhere the shoots of earth are nipped in the bud,\nWhere Hell is the Victor’s prey,                                     _55\nIts glory the meed of the slain.\n\n12.\nFat—as the Death-birds on Erin’s shore,\nThat glutted themselves in her dearest gore,\nAnd flitted round Castlereagh,\nWhen they snatched the Patriot’s heart, that HIS grasp               _60\nHad torn from its widow’s maniac clasp,\n—And fled at the dawn of day.\n\n13.\nFat—as the Reptiles of the tomb,\nThat riot in corruption’s spoil,\nThat fret their little hour in gloom,                                _65\nAnd creep, and live the while.\n\n14.\nFat as that Prince’s maudlin brain,\nWhich, addled by some gilded toy,\nTired, gives his sweetmeat, and again\nCries for it, like a humoured boy.                                   _70\n\n15.\nFor he is fat,—his waistcoat gay,\nWhen strained upon a levee day,\nScarce meets across his princely paunch;\nAnd pantaloons are like half-moons\nUpon each brawny haunch.                                             _75\n\n16.\nHow vast his stock of calf! when plenty\nHad filled his empty head and heart,\nEnough to satiate foplings twenty,\nCould make his pantaloon seams start.\n\n17.\nThe Devil (who sometimes is called Nature),                          _80\nFor men of power provides thus well,\nWhilst every change and every feature,\nTheir great original can tell.\n\n18.\nSatan saw a lawyer a viper slay,\nThat crawled up the leg of his table,                                _85\nIt reminded him most marvellously\nOf the story of Cain and Abel.\n\n19.\nThe wealthy yeoman, as he wanders\nHis fertile fields among,\nAnd on his thriving cattle ponders,                                  _90\nCounts his sure gains, and hums a song;\nThus did the Devil, through earth walking,\nHum low a hellish song.\n\n20.\nFor they thrive well whose garb of gore\nIs Satan’s choicest livery,                                          _95\nAnd they thrive well who from the poor\nHave snatched the bread of penury,\nAnd heap the houseless wanderer’s store\nOn the rank pile of luxury.\n\n21.\nThe Bishops thrive, though they are big;                             _100\nThe Lawyers thrive, though they are thin;\nFor every gown, and every wig,\nHides the safe thrift of Hell within.\n\n22.\nThus pigs were never counted clean,\nAlthough they dine on finest corn;                                   _105\nAnd cormorants are sin-like lean,\nAlthough they eat from night to morn.\n\n23.\nOh! why is the Father of Hell in such glee,\nAs he grins from ear to ear?\nWhy does he doff his clothes joyfully,                               _110\nAs he skips, and prances, and flaps his wing,\nAs he sidles, leers, and twirls his sting,\nAnd dares, as he is, to appear?\n\n24.\nA statesman passed—alone to him,\nThe Devil dare his whole shape uncover,                              _115\nTo show each feature, every limb,\nSecure of an unchanging lover.\n\n25.\nAt this known sign, a welcome sight,\nThe watchful demons sought their King,\nAnd every Fiend of the Stygian night,                                _120\nWas in an instant on the wing.\n\n26.\nPale Loyalty, his guilt-steeled brow,\nWith wreaths of gory laurel crowned:\nThe hell-hounds, Murder, Want and Woe,\nForever hungering, flocked around;                                   _125\nFrom Spain had Satan sought their food,\n’Twas human woe and human blood!\n\n27.\nHark! the earthquake’s crash I hear,—\nKings turn pale, and Conquerors start,\nRuffians tremble in their fear,                                      _130\nFor their Satan doth depart.\n\n28.\nThis day Fiends give to revelry\nTo celebrate their King’s return,\nAnd with delight its Sire to see\nHell’s adamantine limits burn.                                       _135\n\n29.\nBut were the Devil’s sight as keen\nAs Reason’s penetrating eye,\nHis sulphurous Majesty I ween,\nWould find but little cause for joy.\n\n30.\nFor the sons of Reason see                                           _140\nThat, ere fate consume the Pole,\nThe false Tyrant’s cheek shall be\nBloodless as his coward soul.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Farewell To North Devon.",
    "body": "[Published (from the Esdaile manuscript book) by Dowden,\n“Life of Shelley”, 1887; dated August, 1812.]\n\nWhere man’s profane and tainting hand\nNature’s primaeval loveliness has marred,\nAnd some few souls of the high bliss debarred\nWhich else obey her powerful command;\n...mountain piles                                                    _5\nThat load in grandeur Cambria’s emerald vales.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "On Leaving London For Wales.",
    "body": "[Published (from the Esdaile manuscript book) by Dowden,\n“Life of Shelley”, 1887; dated November, 1812.]\n\nHail to thee, Cambria! for the unfettered wind\nWhich from thy wilds even now methinks I feel,\nChasing the clouds that roll in wrath behind,\nAnd tightening the soul’s laxest nerves to steel;\nTrue mountain Liberty alone may heal                                 _5\nThe pain which Custom’s obduracies bring,\nAnd he who dares in fancy even to steal\nOne draught from Snowdon’s ever sacred spring\nBlots out the unholiest rede of worldly witnessing.\n\nAnd shall that soul, to selfish peace resigned,                      _10\nSo soon forget the woe its fellows share?\nCan Snowdon’s Lethe from the free-born mind\nSo soon the page of injured penury tear?\nDoes this fine mass of human passion dare\nTo sleep, unhonouring the patriot’s fall,                            _15\nOr life’s sweet load in quietude to bear\nWhile millions famish even in Luxury’s hall,\nAnd Tyranny, high raised, stern lowers on all?\n\nNo, Cambria! never may thy matchless vales\nA heart so false to hope and virtue shield;                          _20\nNor ever may thy spirit-breathing gales\nWaft freshness to the slaves who dare to yield.\nFor me!...the weapon that I burn to wield\nI seek amid thy rocks to ruin hurled,\nThat Reason’s flag may over Freedom’s field,                         _25\nSymbol of bloodless victory, wave unfurled,\nA meteor-sign of love effulgent o’er the world.\n\n...\n\nDo thou, wild Cambria, calm each struggling thought;\nCast thy sweet veil of rocks and woods between,\nThat by the soul to indignation wrought                              _30\nMountains and dells be mingled with the scene;\nLet me forever be what I have been,\nBut not forever at my needy door\nLet Misery linger speechless, pale and lean;\nI am the friend of the unfriended poor,—                            _35\nLet me not madly stain their righteous cause in gore.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Wandering Jew’S Soliloquy.",
    "body": "[Published (from the Esdaile manuscript book) by Bertram Dobell, 1887.]\n\nIs it the Eternal Triune, is it He\nWho dares arrest the wheels of destiny\nAnd plunge me in the lowest Hell of Hells?\nWill not the lightning’s blast destroy my frame?\nWill not steel drink the blood-life where it swells?                 _5\nNo—let me hie where dark Destruction dwells,\nTo rouse her from her deeply caverned lair,\nAnd, taunting her cursed sluggishness to ire,\nLight long Oblivion’s death-torch at its flame\nAnd calmly mount Annihilation’s pyre.                                _10\nTyrant of Earth! pale Misery’s jackal Thou!\nAre there no stores of vengeful violent fate\nWithin the magazines of Thy fierce hate?\nNo poison in the clouds to bathe a brow\nThat lowers on Thee with desperate contempt?                         _15\nWhere is the noonday Pestilence that slew\nThe myriad sons of Israel’s favoured nation?\nWhere the destroying Minister that flew\nPouring the fiery tide of desolation\nUpon the leagued Assyrian’s attempt?                                 _20\nWhere the dark Earthquake-daemon who engorged\nAt the dread word Korah’s unconscious crew?\nOr the Angel’s two-edged sword of fire that urged\nOur primal parents from their bower of bliss\n(Reared by Thine hand) for errors not their own                      _25\nBy Thine omniscient mind foredoomed, foreknown?\nYes! I would court a ruin such as this,\nAlmighty Tyrant! and give thanks to Thee—\nDrink deeply—drain the cup of hate; remit this—I may die.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song From The Wandering Jew.",
    "body": "[Published as Shelley’s by Medwin, “Life of Shelley”, 1847, 1 page 58.]\n\nSee yon opening flower\nSpreads its fragrance to the blast;\nIt fades within an hour,\nIts decay is pale—is fast.\nPaler is yon maiden;                                                 _5\nFaster is her heart’s decay;\nDeep with sorrow laden,\nShe sinks in death away.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fragment From The Wandering Jew.",
    "body": "[Published as Shelley’s by Medwin, “Life of Shelley”, 1847, 1 page 56.]\n\nThe Elements respect their Maker’s seal!\nStill Like the scathed pine tree’s height,\nBraving the tempests of the night\nHave I ‘scaped the flickering flame.\nLike the scathed pine, which a monument stands                       _5\nOf faded grandeur, which the brands\nOf the tempest-shaken air\nHave riven on the desolate heath;\nYet it stands majestic even in death,\nAnd rears its wild form there.                                       _10,\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 1.",
    "body": "9. scale (3), neck (7).\n11. What life what power (1).\n22. boat, (8), lay (9).\n23. embarked, (7), below A vast (8, 9).\n26. world (1), chaos: Lo! (2).\n28. life: (2), own. (9).\n29. mirth, (6).\n30. language (2), But, when (5).\n31. foundations—soon (2), war— thrones (6), multitude, (7).\n32. flame, (4).\n33. lightnings (3), truth, (5), brood, (5), hearts, (8).\n34. Fiend (6).\n35. keep (8).\n37. mountains— (8).\n38. unfold, (1), woe: (4), show, (5).\n39. gladness, (6) 40 fire, (1), cover, (5), far (6).\n42. kiss. (9).\n43. But (5).\n44. men. (4), fame; (7).\n45. loved (4).\n47. sky, (5), away (6).\n49. dream, (2), floods. (9).\n50. Universe. (4), language (6).\n54. blind. (4).\n57. mine—He (8).\n58. said— (5).\n60. tongue, (9).",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 2.",
    "body": "1. which (4).\n3. Yet flattering power had (7).\n4. lust, (6).\n6. kind, (2).\n11. Nor, (2).\n13. ruin. (3), trust. (9).\n18. friend (3).\n22. thought, (6), fancies (7).\n24. radiancy, (3).\n25. dells, (8).\n26. waste, (4)\n28. passion (7).\n31. yet (4).\n32. which (3).\n33. blight (8), who (8).\n37. seat; (7).\n39. not—‘wherefore (1).\n40. good, (5).\n41. tears (7).\n43. air (2).\n46. fire, (3).\n47. stroke, (2).\n49. But (6).",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 4.",
    "body": "2. fallen—We (6).\n3. ray, (7).\n4. sleep, (5).\n8. fed (6).\n10. wide; (1), sword (7).\n16. chance, (7).\n19. her (3), blending (8).\n23. tyranny, (4).\n24. unwillingly (1).\n26. blood; (2).\n27. around (2), as (4).\n31. or (4).\n33. was (5).",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 5.",
    "body": "1. flow, (5).\n2. profound—Oh, (4), veiled, (6).\n3. victory (1), face— (8).\n4. swim, (5)\n6. spread, (2), outsprung (5), far, (6), war, (8).\n8. avail (5).\n10. weep; (4), tents (8).\n11. lives, (8).\n13. beside (1).\n15. sky, (3).\n17. love (4).\n20. Which (9).\n22. gloom, (8).\n23. King (6).\n27. known, (4).\n33. ye? (1), Othman— (3).\n34. pure— (7).\n35. people (1).\n36. where (3).\n38. quail; (2).\n39. society, (8).\n40. see (1).\n43. light (8), throne. (9).\n50. skies, (6).\n51. Image (7), isles; all (9), amaze. When (9, 10), fair. (12).\n51. 1: will (15), train (15).\n51. 2: wert, (5).\n51. 4: brethren (1).\n51. 5: steaming, (6).\n55. creep. (9).",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 6.",
    "body": "1. snapped (9).\n2. gate, (2).\n5. rout (4), voice, (6), looks, (6).\n6. as (1).\n7. prey, (1), isle. (9).\n8. sight (2).\n12. glen (4).\n14. almost (1), dismounting (4).\n15. blood (2).\n21. reins:—We (3), word (3).\n22. crest (6).\n25. And, (1), and (9).\n28. but (3), there, (8).\n30. air. (9).\n32. voice:— (1).\n37. frames; (5).\n43. mane, (2), again, (7).\n48. Now (8).\n51. hut, (4).\n54. waste, (7).",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 7.",
    "body": "2. was, (5).\n6. dreams (3).\n7. gave Gestures and (2, 3), withstood, (4), save (4), sphere, (5).\n8. sent, (2).\n14. taught, (6), sought, (8).\n17. and (6).\n18. own (5), beloved:— (5).\n19. tears; (2), which, (3), appears, (5).\n25. me, (1), shapes (5).\n27. And (1).\n28. strength (1).\n30. Aye, (3), me, (5).\n33. pure (9).\n38. wracked; (4), cataract, (5).",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 8.",
    "body": "2. and (2).\n9. shadow (5).\n11. freedom (7), blood. (9).\n13. Woman, (8), bond-slave, (8).\n14. pursuing (8), wretch! (9).\n15. home, (3).\n21. Hate, (1).\n23. reply, (1).\n25. fairest, (1).\n26. And (6).\n28. thunder (2).",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 9.",
    "body": "4. hills, (1), brood, (6).\n5. port—alas! (1).\n8. grave (2).\n9. with friend (3), occupations (7), overnumber, (8).\n12. lair; (5), Words, (6).\n15. who, (4), armed, (5), misery. (9).\n17. call, (4).\n20. truth (9).\n22. sharest; (4).\n23. Faith, (8).\n28. conceive (8).\n30. and as (5), hope (8).\n33. thoughts:—Come (7).\n34. willingly (2).\n35. ceased, (8).\n36. undight; (4).",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 10.",
    "body": "2. tongue, (1).\n7. conspirators (6), wolves, (8).\n8. smiles, (5).\n9. bands, (2)\n11. file did (5).\n18. but (5).\n19. brought, (5).\n24. food (5).\n29. worshippers (3).\n32. west (2).\n36. foes, (5).\n38. now! (2).\n40. alone, (5).\n41. morn—at (1).\n42. below, (2).\n43. deep, (7), pest (8).\n44. drear (8).\n47. ‘Kill me!’ they (9).\n48. died, (8).",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 11.",
    "body": "4. which, (6), eyes, (8).\n5. tenderness (7).\n7. return—the (8).\n8. midnight— (1).\n10. multitude (1).\n11. cheeks (1), here (4).\n12. come, give (3).\n13. many (1).\n14. arrest, (4), terror, (6).\n19. thus (1).\n20. Stranger: ‘What (5).\n23. People: (7).",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Canto 12.",
    "body": "3. and like (7).\n7. away (7).\n8. Fairer it seems than (7).\n10. self, (9).\n11. divine (2), beauty— (3).\n12. own. (9).\n14. fear, (1), choose, (4).\n17. death? the (1).\n19. radiance (3).\n22. spake; (5).\n25. thee beloved;— (8).\n26. towers (6).\n28. repent, (2).\n29. withdrawn, (2).\n31. stood a winged Thought (1).\n32. gossamer, (6).\n33. stream (1).\n34. sunrise, (3), gold, (3), quiver, (4).\n35. abode, (4).\n37. wonderful; (3), go, (4).\n40. blended: (4), heavens, (6), lake; (6).\n\n1.\nPRINCE ATHANASE.\n\nLines 28-30. The punctuation here (“Poetical Works”, 1839) is supported\nby the Bodleian manuscript, which has a full stop at relief (line 28),\nand a comma at chief (line 30). The text of the “Posthumous Poems”,\n1824, has a semicolon at relief and a full stop at chief. The original\ndraft of lines 29, 30, in the Bodleian manuscript, runs:—\n He was the child of fortune and of power,\n And, though of a high race the orphan Chief, etc.\n—which is decisive in favour of our punctuation (1839). See Locock,\n“Examination”, etc., page 51.\n\n2.\nWhich wake and feed an ever-living woe,— (line 74.)\nAll the editions have on for an, the reading of the Bodleian manuscript,\nwhere it appears as a substitute for his, the word originally written.\nThe first draft of the line runs: Which nursed and fed his everliving\nwoe. Wake, accordingly, is to be construed as a transitive (Locock).\n\n3.\nLines 130-169. This entire passage is distinctly cancelled in the\nBodleian manuscript, where the following revised version of lines\n125-129 and 168-181 is found some way later on:—\n Prince Athanase had one beloved friend,\n An old, old man, with hair of silver white,\n And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend\n With his wise words; and eyes whose arrowy light\n Was the reflex of many minds; he filled\n From fountains pure, nigh overgrown and [lost],\n The spirit of Prince Athanase, a child;\n And soul-sustaining songs of ancient lore\n And philosophic wisdom, clear and mild.\n And sweet and subtle talk they evermore\n The pupil and the master [share], until\n Sharing that undiminishable store,\n The youth, as clouds athwart a grassy hill\n Outrun the winds that chase them, soon outran\n His teacher, and did teach with native skill\n Strange truths and new to that experienced man;\n So [?] they were friends, as few have ever been\n Who mark the extremes of life’s discordant span.\nThe words bracketed above, and in Fragment 5 of our text, are cancelled\nin the manuscript (Locock).\n\n4.\nAnd blighting hope, etc. (line 152.)\nThe word blighting here, noted as unsuitable by Rossetti, is cancelled\nin the Bodleian manuscript (Locock).\n\n5.\nShe saw between the chestnuts, far beneath, etc. (line 154.)\nThe reading of editions 1824, 1839 (beneath the chestnuts) is a palpable\nmisprint.\n\n6.\nAnd sweet and subtle talk they evermore,\nThe pupil and the master, shared; (lines 173, 174.)\nSo edition 1824, which is supported by the Bodleian manuscript,—both\nthe cancelled draft and the revised version: cf. note above. “Poetical\nWorks”, 1839, has now for they—a reading retained by Rossetti alone of\nmodern editors.\n\n7.\nLine 193. The ‘three-dots’ point at storm is in the Bodleian manuscript.\n\n8.\nLines 202-207. The Bodleian manuscript, which has a comma and dash after\nnightingale, bears out James Thomson’s (‘B. V.’s’) view, approved by\nRossetti, that these lines form one sentence. The manuscript has a dash\nafter here (line 207), which must be regarded as ‘equivalent to a full\nstop or note of exclamation’ (Locock). Editions 1824, 1839 have a note\nof exclamation after nightingale (line 204) and a comma after here (line\n207).\n\n9.\nFragment 3 (lines 230-239). First printed from the Bodleian manuscript\nby Mr. C.D. Locock. In the space here left blank, line 231, the\nmanuscript has manhood, which is cancelled for some monosyllable\nunknown—query, spring?\n\n10.\nAnd sea-buds burst under the waves serene:— (line 250.)\nFor under edition 1839 has beneath, which, however, is cancelled for\nunder in the Bodleian manuscript (Locock).\n\n11.\nLines 251-254. This, with many other places from line 222 onwards,\nevidently lacks Shelley’s final corrections.\n\n12.\nLine 259. According to Mr. Locock, the final text of this line in the\nBodleian manuscript runs:—\nExulting, while the wide world shrinks below, etc.\n\n13.\nFragment 5 (lines 261-278). The text here is much tortured in the\nBodleian manuscript. What the editions give us is clearly but a rough\nand tentative draft. ‘The language contains no third rhyme to mountains\n(line 262) and fountains (line 264).’ Locock. Lines 270-278 were first\nprinted by Mr. Locock.\n\n14.\nLine 289. For light (Bodleian manuscript) here the editions read bright.\nBut light is undoubtedly the right word: cf. line 287. Investeth (line\n285), Rossetti’s cj. for Investeth (1824, 1839) is found in the Bodleian\nmanuscript.\n\n15.\nLines 297-302 (the darts...ungarmented). First printed by Mr. Locock\nfrom the Bodleian manuscript.\n\n16.\nAnother Fragment (A). Lines 1-3 of this Fragment reappear in a modified\nshape in the Bodleian manuscript of “Prometheus Unbound”, 2 4 28-30:—\n Or looks which tell that while the lips are calm\n And the eyes cold, the spirit weeps within\n Tears like the sanguine sweat of agony;\nHere the lines are cancelled—only, however, to reappear in a heightened\nshape in “The Cenci”, 1 1 111-113:—\n The dry, fixed eyeball; the pale quivering lip,\n Which tells me that the spirit weeps within\n Tears bitterer than the bloody sweat of Christ.\n(Garnett, Locock.)\n\n17.\nPUNCTUAL VARIATIONS.\nThe punctuation of “Prince Athanase” is that of “Poetical Works”, 1839,\nsave in the places specified in the notes above, and in line 60—where\nthere is a full stop, instead of the comma demanded by the sense, at the\nclose of the line.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Rosalind And Helen.",
    "body": "1.\nA sound from there, etc. (line 63.)\nRossetti’s cj., there for thee, is adopted by all modern editors.\n\n2.\nAnd down my cheeks the quick tears fell, etc. (line 366.)\nThe word fell is Rossetti’s cj. (to rhyme with tell, line 369) for ran\n1819, 1839).\n\n3.\nLines 405-409. The syntax here does not hang together, and Shelley may\nhave been thinking of this passage amongst others when, on September 6,\n1819, he wrote to Ollier:—‘In the “Rosalind and Helen” I see there are\nsome few errors, which are so much the worse because they are errors in\nthe sense.’ The obscurity, however, may have been, in part at least,\ndesigned: Rosalind grows incoherent before breaking off abruptly. No\nsatisfactory emendation has been proposed.\n\n4.\nWhere weary meteor lamps repose, etc. (line 551.)\nWith Woodberry I regard Where, his cj. for When (1819, 1839), as\nnecessary for the sense.\n\n5.\nWith which they drag from mines of gore, etc. (line 711.)\nRossetti proposes yore for gore here, or, as an alternative, rivers of\ngore, etc. If yore be right, Shelley’s meaning is: ‘With which from of\nold they drag,’ etc. But cf. Note (3) above.\n\n6.\nWhere, like twin vultures, etc. (line 932.)\nWhere is Woodberry’s reading for When (1819, 1839). Forman suggests\nWhere but does not print it.\n\n7.\nLines 1093-1096. The editio princeps (1819) punctuates:—\nHung in dense flocks beneath the dome,\nThat ivory dome, whose azure night\nWith golden stars, like heaven, was bright\nO’er the split cedar’s pointed flame;\n\n8.\nLines 1168-1170. Sunk (line 1170) must be taken as a transitive in this\npassage, the grammar of which is defended by Mr. Swinburne.\n\n9.\nWhilst animal life many long years\nHad rescue from a chasm of tears; (lines 1208-9.)\nForman substitutes rescue for rescued (1819, 1839)—a highly probable\ncj. adopted by Dowden, but rejected by Woodberry. The sense is: ‘Whilst\nmy life, surviving by the physical functions merely, thus escaped during\nmany years from hopeless weeping.’\n\n10.\nPUNCTUAL VARIATIONS.\nThe following is a list of punctual variations, giving in each case the\npointing of the editio princeps (1819):—heart 257; weak 425; Aye 492;\nThere—now 545; immortally 864; not, 894; bleeding, 933; Fidelity 1055;\ndome, 1093; bright 1095; tremble, 1150; life-dissolving 1166; words,\n1176; omit parentheses lines 1188-9; bereft, 1230.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Julian And Maddalo.",
    "body": "1.\nLine 158. Salutations past; (1824); Salutations passed; (1839). Our text\nfollows Woodberry.\n\n2.\n—we might be all\nWe dream of happy, high, majestical. (lines 172-3.)\nSo the Hunt manuscript, edition 1824, has a comma after of (line 173),\nwhich is retained by Rossetti and Dowden.\n\n3.\n—his melody\nIs interrupted—now we hear the din, etc. (lines 265-6.)\nSo the Hunt manuscript; his melody Is interrupted now: we hear the din,\netc., 1824, 1829.\n\n4.\nLines 282-284. The editio princeps (1824) runs:—\nSmiled in their motions as they lay apart,\nAs one who wrought from his own fervid heart\nThe eloquence of passion: soon he raised, etc.\n\n5.\nLine 414. The editio princeps (1824) has a colon at the end of this\nline, and a semicolon at the close of line 415.\n\n6.\nThe ‘three-dots’ point, which appears several times in these pages, is\ntaken from the Hunt manuscript and serves to mark a pause longer than\nthat of a full stop.\n\n7.\nHe ceased, and overcome leant back awhile, etc. (line 511.)\nThe form leant is retained here, as the stem-vowel, though unaltered in\nspelling, is shortened in pronunciation. Thus leant (pronounced ‘lent’)\nfrom lean comes under the same category as crept from creep, lept from\nleap, cleft from cleave, etc.—perfectly normal forms, all of them. In\nthe case of weak preterites formed without any vowel-change, the more\nregular formation with ed is that which has been adopted in this volume.\nSee Editor’s “Preface”.\n\n8.\nCANCELLED FRAGMENTS OF JULIAN AND MADDALO. These were first printed by\nDr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.\n\n9.\nPUNCTUAL VARIATIONS.\nShelley’s final transcript of “Julian and Maddalo”, though written with\ngreat care and neatness, is yet very imperfectly punctuated. He would\nseem to have relied on the vigilance of Leigh Hunt—or, failing Hunt, of\nPeacock—to make good all omissions while seeing the poem through the\npress. Even Mr. Buxton Forman, careful as he is to uphold manuscript\nauthority in general, finds it necessary to supplement the pointing of\nthe Hunt manuscript in no fewer than ninety-four places. The following\ntable gives a list of the pointings adopted in our text, over and above\nthose found in the Hunt manuscript. In all but four or five instances,\nthe supplementary points are derived from Mrs. Shelley’s text of 1824.\n\n1. Comma added at end of line:\n40, 54, 60, 77, 78, 85, 90, 94, 107,\n110, 116, 120, 123, 134, 144, 145,\n154, 157, 168, 179, 183, 191, 196,\n202, 203, 215, 217, 221, 224, 225,\n238, 253, 254, 262, 287, 305, 307,\n331, 338, 360, 375, 384, 385, 396,\n432, 436, 447, 450, 451, 473, 475,\n476, 511, 520, 526, 541, 582, 590,\n591, 592, 593, 595, 603, 612.\n\n2. Comma added elsewhere:\nseas, 58; vineyards, 58;\ndismounted, 61;\nevening, 65;\ncompanion, 86;\nisles, 90;\nmeant, 94;\nLook, Julian, 96;\nmaniacs, 110;\nmaker, 113;\npast, 114;\nchurches, 136;\nrainy, 141;\nblithe, 167;\nbeauty, 174;\nMaddalo, 192;\nothers, 205;\nthis, 232;\nrespects, 241;\nshriek, 267;\nwrote, 286;\nmonth, 300;\ncried, 300;\nO, 304;\nand, 306;\nmisery, disappointment, 314;\nsoon, 369;\nstay, 392;\nmad, 394;\nNay, 398;\nserpent, 399;\nsaid, 403;\ncruel, 439;\nhate, 461;\nhearts, 483;\nhe, 529;\nseemed, 529;\nUnseen, 554;\nmorning, 582;\naspect, 585;\nAnd, 593;\nremember, 604;\nparted, 610.\n\n3. Semicolon added at end of line:\n101, 103, 167, 181, 279, 496.\n\n4. Colon added at end of line:\n164, 178, 606, 610.\n\n5. Full stop added at end of line:\n95, 201, 299, 319, 407, 481, 599, 601, 617.\n\n6. Full stop added elsewhere:\ntransparent. 85;\ntrials. 472;\nVenice, 583.\n\n7. Admiration—note added at end of line:\n392, 492;\nelsewhere: 310, 323,\n\n8. Dash added at end of line:\n158, 379.\n\n9. Full stop for comma (manuscript):\neye. 119.\n\n10. Full stop for dash (manuscript):\nentered. 158.\n\n11. Colon for full stop (manuscript):\ntale: 596.\n\n12. Dash for colon (manuscript):\nthis— 207;\nprepared— 379.\n\n13. Comma and dash for semicolon (manuscript):\nexpressionless,— 292.\n\n14. Comma and dash for comma (manuscript):\nnot,— 127.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prometheus Unbound.",
    "body": "The variants of B. (Shelley’s ‘intermediate draft’ of “Prometheus\nUnbound”, now in the Bodleian Library), here recorded, are taken from\nMr. C.D. Locock’s “Examination”, etc., Clarendon Press, 1903. See\nEditor’s Prefatory Note, above.\n\n1.\nAct 1, line 204. B. has—shaken in pencil above—peopled.\n\n2.\nHark that outcry, etc. (1 553.)\nAll editions read Mark that outcry, etc. As Shelley nowhere else uses\nMark in the sense of List, I have adopted Hark, the reading of B.\n\n3.\nGleamed in the night. I wandered, etc. (1 770.)\nForman proposes to delete the period at night.\n\n4.\nBut treads with lulling footstep, etc. (1 774.)\nForman prints killing—a misreading of B. Editions 1820, 1839 read silent.\n\n5.\n...the eastern star looks white, etc. (1 825.)\nB. reads wan for white.\n\n6.\nLike footsteps of weak melody, etc. (2 1 89.)\nB. reads far (above a cancelled lost) for weak.\n\n7.\nAnd wakes the destined soft emotion,—\nAttracts, impels them; (2 2 50, 51.)\nThe editio princeps (1820) reads destined soft emotion, Attracts, etc.;\n“Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition reads destined: soft emotion\nAttracts, etc. “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition reads destined, soft\nemotion Attracts, etc. Forman and Dowden place a period, and Woodberry a\nsemicolon, at destined (line 50).\n\n8.\nThere steams a plume-uplifting wind, etc. (2 2 53.)\nHere steams is found in B., in the editio princeps (1820) and in the 1st\nedition of “Poetical Works”, 1839. In the 2nd edition, 1839, streams\nappears—no doubt a misprint overlooked by the editress.\n\n9.\nSucked up and hurrying: as they fleet, etc. (2 2 60.)\nSo “Poetical Works”, 1839, both editions. The editio princeps (1820)\nreads hurrying as, etc.\n\n10.\nSee’st thou shapes within the mist? (2 3 50.)\nSo B., where these words are substituted for the cancelled I see thin\nshapes within the mist of the editio princeps (1820). ‘The credit of\ndiscovering the true reading belongs to Zupitza’ (Locock).\n\n11.\n2 4 12-18. The construction is faulty here, but the sense, as Professor\nWoodberry observes, is clear.\n\n12.\n...but who rains down, etc. (2 4 100.)\nThe editio princeps (1820) has reigns—a reading which Forman bravely\nbut unsuccessfully attempts to defend.\n\n13.\nChild of Light! thy limbs are burning, etc. (2 5 54.)\nThe editio princeps (1820) has lips for limbs, but the word membre in\nShelley’s Italian prose version of these lines establishes limbs, the\nreading of B. (Locock).\n\n14.\nWhich in the winds and on the waves doth move, (2 5 96.)\nThe word and is Rossetti’s conjectural emendation, adopted by Forman and\nDowden. Woodberry unhappily observes that ‘the emendation corrects a\nfaultless line merely to make it agree with stanzaic structure, and...is\nopen to the gravest doubt.’ Rossetti’s conjecture is fully established\nby the authority of B.\n\n15.\n3 4 172-174. The editio princeps (1820) punctuates:\nmouldering round\nThese imaged to the pride of kings and priests,\nA dark yet mighty faith, a power, etc.\nThis punctuation is retained by Forman and Dowden; that of our text is\nWoodberry’s.\n\n16.\n3 4 180, 188. A dash has been introduced at the close of these two lines\nto indicate the construction more clearly. And for the sake of clearness\na note of interrogation has been substituted for the semicolon of 1820\nafter Passionless (line 198).\n\n17.\nWhere lovers catch ye by your loose tresses; (4 107.)\nB. has sliding for loose (cancelled).\n\n18.\nBy ebbing light into her western cave, (4 208.)\nHere light is the reading of B. for night (all editions). Mr. Locock\ntells us that the anticipated discovery of this reading was the origin\nof his examination of the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian. In\nprinting night Marchant’s compositor blundered; yet ‘we cannot wish the\nfault undone, the issue of it being so proper.’\n\n19.\nPurple and azure, white, and green, and golden, (4 242.)\nThe editio princeps (1820) reads white, green and golden, etc.—white\nand green being Rossetti’s emendation, adopted by Forman and Dowden.\nHere again—cf. note on (17) above—Prof. Woodberry commits himself by\nstigmatizing the correction as one ‘for which there is no authority in\nShelley’s habitual versification.’ Rossetti’s conjecture is confirmed by\nthe reading of B., white and green, etc.\n\n20.\nFilling the abyss with sun-like lightenings, (4 276.)\nThe editio princeps (1820) reads lightnings, for which Rossetti\nsubstitutes lightenings—a conjecture described by Forman as ‘an example\nof how a very slight change may produce a very calamitous result.’ B.\nhowever supports Rossetti, and in point of fact Shelley usually wrote\nlightenings, even where the word counts as a dissyllable (Locock).\n\n21.\nMeteors and mists, which throng air’s solitudes:— (4 547.)\nFor throng (cancelled) B. reads feed, i.e., ‘feed on’ (cf. Pasturing\nflowers of vegetable fire, 3 4 110)—a reading which carries on the\nmetaphor of line 546 (ye untameable herds), and ought, perhaps, to be\nadopted into the text.\n\n22.\nPUNCTUAL VARIATIONS.\nThe punctuation of our text is that of the editio princeps (1820),\nexcept in the places indicated in the following list, which records in\neach instance the pointing of 1820:—\n\nAct 1.—empire. 15; O, 17; God 144; words 185; internally. 299; O, 302;\ngnash 345; wail 345; Sufferer 352; agony. 491; Between 712; cloud 712;\nvale 826.\n\nAct 2:\nScene 1.—air 129; by 153; fire, 155.\nScene 2.—noonday, 25; hurrying 60.\nScene 3.—mist. 50.\nScene 4.—sun, 4; Ungazed 5; on 103; ay 106; secrets. 115.\nScene 5.—brightness 67.\n\nAct 3:\nScene 3.—apparitions, 49; beauty, 51; phantoms, (omit parentheses) 52;\n          reality, 53; wind 98.\nScene 4.—toil 109; fire. 110; feel; 114; borne; 115; said 124;\n          priests, 173; man, 180; hate, 188; Passionless; 198.\n\nAct 4.—dreams, 66; be. 165; light. 168; air, 187; dreams, 209; woods 211;\n        thunder-storm, 215; lie 298; bones 342; blending. 343; mire. 349;\n        pass, 371; kind 385; move. 387.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Cenci.",
    "body": "1.\nThe deed he saw could not have rated higher\nThan his most worthless life:— (1 1 24, 25.)\nThan is Mrs. Shelley’s emendation (1839) for That, the word in the\neditio princeps (1819) printed in Italy, and in the (standard) edition\nof 1821. The sense is: ‘The crime he witnessed could not have proved\ncostlier to redeem than his murder has proved to me.’\n\n2.\nAnd but that there yet remains a deed to act, etc. (1 1 100.)\nRead: And but : that there yet : remains : etc.\n\n3.\n1 1 111-113. The earliest draft of these lines appears as a tentative\nfragment in the Bodleian manuscript of “Prince Athanase” (vid. supr.).\nIn the Bodleian manuscript of “Prometheus Unbound” they reappear (after\n2 4 27) in a modified shape, as follows:—\nOr looks which tell that while the lips are calm\nAnd the eyes cold, the spirit weeps within\nTears like the sanguine sweat of agony;\nHere again, however, the passage is cancelled, once more to reappear in\nits final and most effective shape in “The Cenci” (Locock).\n\n4.\nAnd thus I love you still, but holily,\nEven as a sister or a spirit might; (1 2 24, 25.)\nFor this, the reading of the standard edition (1821), the editio\nprinceps has, And yet I love, etc., which Rossetti retains. If yet be\nright, the line should be punctuated:—\nAnd yet I love you still,—but holily,\nEven as a sister or a spirit might;\n\n5.\nWhat, if we,\nThe desolate and the dead, were his own flesh,\nHis children and his wife, etc. (1 3 103-105.)\nFor were (104) Rossetti cj. are or wear. Wear is a plausible emendation,\nbut the text as it stands is defensible.\n\n6.\nBut that no power can fill with vital oil\nThat broken lamp of flesh. (3 2 17, 18.)\nThe standard text (1821) has a Shelleyan comma after oil (17), which\nForman retains. Woodberry adds a dash to the comma, thus making that\n(17) a demonstrative pronoun indicating broken lamp of flesh. The\npointing of our text is that of editions 1819, 1839, But that (17) is to\nbe taken as a prepositional conjunction linking the dependent clause, no\npower...lamp of flesh, to the principal sentence, So wastes...kindled\nmine (15, 16).\n\n7.\nThe following list of punctual variations indicates the places where our\npointing departs from that of the standard text of 1821, and records in\neach instance the pointing of that edition:—\n\nAct 1, Scene 2:—Ah! No, 34; Scene 3:—hope, 29; Why 44;\n                 love 115; thou 146; Ay 146.\n\nAct 2, Scene 1:—Ah! No, 13; Ah! No, 73; courage 80; nook 179;\n       Scene 2:—fire, 70; courage 152.\n\nAct 3, Scene 1:—Why 64; mock 185; opinion 185; law 185; strange 188;\n                 friend 222;\n       Scene 2:—so 3; oil, 17.\n\nAct 4, Scene 1:—wrong 41; looked 97; child 107;\n       Scene 3:—What 19; father, (omit quotes) 32.\n\nAct 5, Scene 2:—years 119;\n       Scene 3:—Ay, 5; Guards 94;\n       Scene 4:—child, 145.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Mask Of Anarchy.",
    "body": "Our text follows in the main the transcript by Mrs. Shelley (with\nadditions and corrections in Shelley’s hand) known as the ‘Hunt\nmanuscript.’ For the readings of this manuscript we are indebted to Mr.\nBuxton Forman’s Library Edition of the Poems, 1876. The variants of the\n‘Wise manuscript’ (see Prefatory Note) are derived from the Facsimile\nedited in 1887 for the Shelley Society by Mr. Buxton Forman.\n\n1.\nLike Eldon, an ermined gown; (4 2.)\nThe editio princeps (1832) has Like Lord E— here. Lord is inserted in\nminute characters in the Wise manuscript, but is rejected from our text\nas having been cancelled by the poet himself in the (later) Hunt\nmanuscript.\n\n2.\nFor he knew the Palaces\nOf our Kings were rightly his; (20 1, 2.)\nFor rightly (Wise manuscript) the Hunt manuscript and editions 1832,\n1839 have nightly which is retained by Rossetti and in Forman’s text of\n1876. Dowden and Woodberry print rightly which also appears in Forman’s\nlatest text (“Aldine Shelley”, 1892).\n\n3.\nIn a neat and happy home. (54 4.)\nFor In (Wise manuscript, editions 1832, 1839) the Hunt manuscript reads\nTo a neat, etc., which is adopted by Rossetti and Dowden, and appeared\nin Forman’s text of 1876. Woodberry and Forman (1892) print In a neat,\netc.\n\n4.\nStanzas 70 3, 4; 71 1. These form one continuous clause in every text\nsave the editio princeps, 1832, where a semicolon appears after around\n(70 4).\n\n5.\nOur punctuation follows that of the Hunt manuscript, save in the\nfollowing places, where a comma, wanting in the manuscript, is supplied\nin the text:—gay 47; came 58; waken 122; shaken 123; call 124; number\n152; dwell 163; thou 209; thee 249; fashion 287; surprise 345; free 358.\nA semicolon is supplied after earth (line 131).",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Peter Bell The Third.",
    "body": "Thomas Brown, Esq., the Younger, H. F., to whom the “Dedication” is\naddressed, is the Irish poet, Tom Moore. The letters H. F. may stand for\n‘Historian of the Fudges’ (Garnett), Hibernicae Filius (Rossetti), or,\nperhaps, Hibernicae Fidicen. Castles and Oliver (3 2 1; 7 4 4) were\ngovernment spies, as readers of Charles Lamb are aware. The allusion in\n6 36 is to Wordsworth’s “Thanksgiving Ode on The Battle of Waterloo”,\noriginal version, published in 1816:—\nBut Thy most dreaded instrument,\nIn working out a pure intent,\nIs Man—arrayed for mutual slaughter,\n—Yea, Carnage is Thy daughter!\n\n1.\nLines 547-549 (6 18 5; 19 1, 2). These lines evidently form a continuous\nclause. The full stop of the editio princeps at rocks, line 547, has\ntherefore been deleted, and a semicolon substituted for the original\ncomma at the close of line 546.\n\n2.\n‘Ay—and at last desert me too.’ (line 603.)\nRossetti, who however follows the editio princeps, saw that these words\nare spoken—not by Peter to his soul, but—by his soul to Peter, by way\nof rejoinder to the challenge of lines 600-602:—‘And I and you, My\ndearest Soul, will then make merry, As the Prince Regent did with\nSherry.’ In order to indicate this fact, inverted commas are inserted at\nthe close of line 602 and the beginning of line 603.\n\n3.\nThe punctuation of the editio princeps, 1839, has been throughout\nrevised, but—with the two exceptions specified in notes (1) and (2)\nabove—it seemed an unprofitable labour to record the particular\nalterations, which serve but to clarify—in no instance to modify—the\nsense as indicated by Mrs. Shelley’s punctuation.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Letter To Maria Gisborne.",
    "body": "Our text mainly follows Mrs. Shelley’s transcript, for the readings of\nwhich we are indebted to Mr. Buxton Forman’s Library Edition of the\nPoems, 1876. The variants from Shelley’s draft are supplied by Dr.\nGarnett.\n\n1.\nLines 197-201. These lines, which are wanting in editions 1824 and 1839\n(1st edition), are supplied from Mrs. Shelley’s transcript and from\nShelley’s draft (Boscombe manuscript). In the 2nd edition of 1839 the\nfollowing lines appear in their place:—\nYour old friend Godwin, greater none than he;\nThough fallen on evil times, yet will he stand,\nAmong the spirits of our age and land,\nBefore the dread tribunal of To-come\nThe foremost, whilst rebuke stands pale and dumb.\n\n2.\nLine 296. The names in this line are supplied from the two manuscripts.\nIn the “Posthumous Poems” of 1824 the line appears:—Oh! that H— — and\n— were there, etc.\n\n3.\nThe following list gives the places where the pointing of the text\nvaries from that of Mrs. Shelley’s transcript as reported by Mr. Buxton\nForman, and records in each case the pointing of that original:—Turk\n26; scorn 40; understood, 49; boat— 75; think, 86; believe; 158; are;\n164; fair 233; cameleopard; 240; Now 291.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Witch Of Atlas.",
    "body": "1.\nThe following list gives the places where our text departs from the\npointing of the editio princeps (“Dedication”, 1839; “Witch of Atlas”,\n1824), and records in each case the original pointing:—\nDEDIC.—pinions, 14; fellow, 41; Othello, 45.\nWITCH OF ATLAS.—bliss; 164; above. 192; gums 258; flashed 409;\nsunlight, 409; Thamondocana. 424; by. 432; engraven. 448; apart, 662;\nmind! 662.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Epipsychidion.",
    "body": "1.\nThe following list gives the places where our text departs from the\npointing of the editio princeps, 1821, with the original point in each\ncase:—love, 44; pleasure; 68; flowing 96; where! 234; passed 252;\ndreamed, 278; Night 418; year), 440; children, 528.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Adonais.",
    "body": "1.\nThe following list indicates the places in which the punctuation of this\nedition departs from that of the editio princeps, of 1821, and records\nin each instance the pointing of that text:—thou 10; Oh 19; apace, 65;\nOh 73; flown 138; Thou 142; Ah 154; immersed 167; corpse 172; tender\n172; his 193; they 213; Death 217; Might 218; bow, 249; sighs 314;\nescape 320; Cease 366; dark 406; forth 415; dead, 440; Whilst 493.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hellas.",
    "body": "A Reprint of the original edition (1822) of “Hellas” was edited for the\nShelley Society in 1887 by Mr. Thomas J. Wise. In Shelley’s list of\nDramatis Personae the Phantom of Mahomet the Second is wanting.\nShelley’s list of Errata in edition 1822 was first printed in Mr. Buxton\nForman’s Library Edition of the Poems, 1876 (4 page 572). These errata\nare silently corrected in the text.\n\n1.\nFor Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind, etc. (lines 728-729.)\n‘“For” has no rhyme (unless “are” and “despair” are to be considered\nsuch): it requires to rhyme with “hear.” From this defect of rhyme, and\nother considerations, I (following Mr. Fleay) used to consider it almost\ncertain that “Fear” ought to replace “For”; and I gave “Fear” in my\nedition of 1870...However, the word in the manuscript [“Williams\ntranscript”] is “For,” and Shelley’s list of errata leaves this\nunaltered—so we must needs abide by it.’—Rossetti, “Complete Poetical\nWorks of P. B. S.”, edition 1878 (3 volumes), 2 page 456.\n\n2.\nLines 729-732. This quatrain, as Dr. Garnett (“Letters of Shelley”,\n1884, pages 166, 249) points out, is an expansion of the following lines\nfrom the “Agamemmon” of Aeschylus (758-760), quoted by Shelley in a\nletter to his wife, dated ‘Friday, August 10, 1821’:—\nto dussebes—\nmeta men pleiona tiktei,\nsphetera d’ eikota genna.\n\n3.\nLines 1091-1093. This passage, from the words more bright to the close\nof line 1093, is wanting in the editio princeps, 1822, its place being\nsupplied by asterisks. The lacuna in the text is due, no doubt, to the\ntimidity of Ollier, the publisher, whom Shelley had authorised to make\nexcisions from the notes. In “Poetical Works”, 1839, the lines, as they\nappear in our text, are restored; in Galignani’s edition of “Coleridge,\nShelley, and Keats” (Paris, 1829), however, they had already appeared,\nthough with the substitution of wise for bright (line 1091), and of\nunwithstood for unsubdued (line 1093). Galignani’s reading—native for\nvotive—in line 1095 is an evident misprint. In Ascham’s edition of\nShelley (2 volumes, fcp. 8vo., 1834), the passage is reprinted from\nGalignani.\n\n4.\nThe following list shows the places in which our text departs from the\npunctuation of the editio princeps, 1822, and records in each instance\nthe pointing of that edition:—dreams 71; course. 125; mockery 150;\nconqueror 212; streams 235; Moslems 275; West 305; moon, 347; harm, 394;\nshame, 402; anger 408; descends 447; crime 454; banner. 461; Phanae,\n470; blood 551; tyrant 557; Cydaris, 606; Heaven 636; Highness 638; man\n738; sayest 738; One 768; mountains 831; dust 885; consummation? 902;\ndream 921; may 923; death 935; clime. 1005; feast, 1025; horn, 1032;\nNoon, 1045; death 1057; dowers 1094.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Charles The First.",
    "body": "To Mr. Rossetti we owe the reconstruction of this fragmentary drama out\nof materials partly published by Mrs. Shelley in 1824, partly recovered\nfrom manuscript by himself. The bracketed words are, presumably,\nsupplied by Mr. Rossetti to fill actual lacunae in the manuscript; those\nqueried represent indistinct writing. Mr. Rossetti’s additions to the\ntext are indicated in the footnotes. In one or two instances Mr. Forman\nand Dr. Garnett have restored the true reading. The list of Dramatis\nPersonae is Mr. Forman’s.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Triumph Of Life.",
    "body": "1.\nLines 131-135. This grammatically incoherent passage is thus\nconjecturally emended by Rossetti:—\nFled back like eagles to their native noon;\nFor those who put aside the diadem\nOf earthly thrones or gems...,\nWhether of Athens or Jerusalem,\nWere neither mid the mighty captives seen, etc.\nIn the case of an incomplete poem lacking the author’s final\ncorrections, however, restoration by conjecture is, to say the least of\nit, gratuitous.\n\n2.\nLine 282. The words, ‘Even as the deeds of others, not as theirs.’ And\nthen—are wanting in editions 1824, 1839, and were recovered by Dr.\nGarnett from the Boscombe manuscript. Mrs. Shelley’s note here\nruns:—‘There is a chasm here in the manuscript which it is impossible\nto fill. It appears from the context that other shapes pass and that\nRousseau still stood beside the dreamer.’ Mr. Forman thinks that the\n‘chasm’ is filled up by the words restored from the manuscript by Dr.\nGarnett. Mr. A.C. Bradley writes: ‘It seems likely that, after writing\n“I have suffered...pain”, Shelley meant to strike out the words between\n“known” [276] and “I” [278], and to fill up the gap in such a way that\n“I” would be the last word of the line beginning “May well be known”.’",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Miscellaneous Poems.",
    "body": "1.\nTO —. Mrs. Shelley tentatively assigned this fragment to 1817. ‘It\nseems not improbable that it was addressed at this time [June, 1814] to\nMary Godwin.’ Dowden, “Life”, 1 422, Woodberry suggests that ‘Harriet\nanswers as well, or better, to the situation described.’\n\n2.\nON DEATH. These stanzas occur in the Esdaile manuscript along with\nothers which Shelley intended to print with “Queen Mab” in 1813; but the\ntext was revised before publication in 1816.\n\n3.\nTO —. ‘The poem beginning “Oh, there are spirits in the air,” was\naddressed in idea to Coleridge, whom he never knew’—writes Mrs.\nShelley. Mr. Bertram Dobell, Mr. Rossetti and Professor Dowden, however,\nincline to think that we have here an address by Shelley in a despondent\nmood to his own spirit.\n\n4.\nLINES. These appear to be antedated by a year, as they evidently allude\nto the death of Harriet Shelley in November, 1816.\n\n5.\nANOTHER FRAGMENT TO MUSIC. To Mr. Forman we owe the restoration of the\ntrue text here—‘food of Love.’ Mrs. Shelley printed ‘god of Love.’\n\n6.\nMARENGHI, lines 92, 93. The 1870 (Rossetti) version of these lines is:—\nWhite bones, and locks of dun and yellow hair,\nAnd ringed horns which buffaloes did wear—\nThe words locks of dun (line 92) are cancelled in the manuscript.\nShelley’s failure to cancel the whole line was due, Mr. Locock rightly\nargues, to inadvertence merely; instead of buffaloes the manuscript\ngives the buffalo, and it supplies the ‘wonderful line’ (Locock) which\ncloses the stanza in our text, and with which Mr. Locock aptly compares\n“Mont Blanc”, line 69:—\nSave when the eagle brings some hunter’s bone,\nAnd the wolf tracks her there.\n\n7.\nODE TO LIBERTY, lines 1, 2. On the suggestion of his brother, Mr. Alfred\nForman, the editor of the Library Edition of Shelley’s Poems (1876), Mr.\nBuxton Forman, printed these lines as follows:—\nA glorious people vibrated again:\nThe lightning of the nations, Liberty,\nFrom heart to heart, etc.\nThe testimony of Shelley’s autograph in the Harvard College manuscript,\nhowever, is final against such a punctuation.\n\n8.\nLines 41, 42. We follow Mrs. Shelley’s punctuation (1839). In Shelley’s\nedition (1820) there is no stop at the end of line 41, and a semicolon\ncloses line 42.\n\n9.\nODE TO NAPLES. In Mrs. Shelley’s editions the various sections of this\nOde are severally headed as follows:—‘Epode 1 alpha, Epode 2 alpha,\nStrophe alpha 1, Strophe beta 2, Antistrophe alpha gamma, Antistrophe\nbeta gamma, Antistrophe beta gamma, Antistrophe alpha gamma, Epode 1\ngamma, Epode 2 gamma. In the manuscript, Mr. Locock tells us, the\nheadings are ‘very doubtful, many of them being vaguely altered with pen\nand pencil.’ Shelley evidently hesitated between two or three\nalternative ways of indicating the structure and corresponding parts of\nhis elaborate song; hence the chaotic jumble of headings printed in\neditions 1824, 1839. So far as the “Epodes” are concerned, the headings\nin this edition are those of editions 1824, 1839, which may be taken as\nsupported by the manuscript (Locock). As to the remaining sections, Mr.\nLocock’s examination of the manuscript leads him to conclude that\nShelley’s final choice was:—‘Strophe 1, Strophe 2, Antistrophe 1,\nAntistrophe 2, Antistrophe 1 alpha, Antistrophe 2 alpha.’ This in itself\nwould be perfectly appropriate, but it would be inconsistent with the\nmethod employed in designating the “Epodes”. I have therefore adopted in\npreference a scheme which, if it lacks manuscript authority in some\nparticulars, has at least the merit of being absolutely logical and\nconsistent throughout.\n\nMr. Locock has some interesting remarks on the metrical features of this\ncomplex ode. On the 10th line of Antistrophe 1a (line 86 of the\node)—Aghast she pass from the Earth’s disk—which exceeds by one foot\nthe 10th lines of the two corresponding divisions, Strophe 1 and\nAntistrophe 1b, he observes happily enough that ‘Aghast may well have\nbeen intended to disappear.’ Mr. Locock does not seem to notice that the\nclosing lines of these three answering sections—(1) hail, hail, all\nhail!—(2) Thou shalt be great—All hail!—(3) Art Thou of all these\nhopes.—O hail! increase by regular lengths—two, three, four iambi. Nor\ndoes he seem quite to grasp Shelley’s intention with regard to the rhyme\nscheme of the other triple group, Strophe 2, Antistrophe 2a, Antistrophe\n2b. That of Strophe 2 may be thus expressed:—a-a-bc; d-d-bc; a-c-d;\nb-c. Between this and Antistrophe 2a (the second member of the group)\nthere is a general correspondence with, in one particular, a subtle\nmodification. The scheme now becomes a-a-bc; d-d-bc; a-c-b; d-c: i.e.\nthe rhymes of lines 9 and 10 are transposed—God (line 9) answering to\nthe halfway rhymes of lines 3 and 6, gawd and unawed, instead of (as in\nStrophe 2) to the rhyme-endings of lines 4 and 5; and, vice versa, fate\n(line 10) answering to desolate and state (lines 4 and 5), instead of to\nthe halfway rhymes aforesaid. As to Antistrophe 2b, that follows\nAntistrophe 2a, so far as it goes; but after line 9 it breaks off\nsuddenly, and closes with two lines corresponding in length and rhyme to\nthe closing couplet of Antistrophe 1b, the section immediately\npreceding, which, however, belongs not to this group, but to the other.\nMr. Locock speaks of line 124 as ‘a rhymeless line.’ Rhymeless it is\nnot, for shore, its rhyme-termination, answers to bower and power, the\nhalfway rhymes of lines 118 and 121 respectively. Why Mr. Locock should\ncall line 12 an ‘unmetrical line,’ I cannot see. It is a decasyllabic\nline, with a trochee substituted for an iambus in the third foot—Around\n: me gleamed : many a : bright se : pulchre.\n\n10.\nTHE TOWER OF FAMINE.—It is doubtful whether the following note is\nShelley’s or Mrs. Shelley’s: ‘At Pisa there still exists the prison of\nUgolino, which goes by the name of “La Torre della Fame”; in the\nadjoining building the galley-slaves are confined. It is situated on the\nPonte al Mare on the Arno.’\n\n11.\nGINEVRA, line 129: Through seas and winds, cities and wildernesses. The\nfootnote omits Professor Dowden’s conjectural emendation—woods—for\nwinds, the reading of edition 1824 here.\n\n12.\nTHE LADY OF THE SOUTH. Our text adopts Mr. Forman’s correction—drouth\nfor drought—in line 3. This should have been recorded in a footnote.\n\n13.\nHYMN TO MERCURY, line 609. The period at now is supported by the Harvard\nmanuscript.",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Queen Mab.",
    "body": "1.\nThroughout this varied and eternal world\nSoul is the only element: the block\nThat for uncounted ages has remained\nThe moveless pillar of a mountain’s weight\nIs active, living spirit. (4, lines 139-143.)\nThis punctuation was proposed in 1888 by Mr. J. R. Tutin (see “Notebook\nof the Shelley Society”, Part 1, page 21), and adopted by Dowden,\n“Poetical Works of Shelley”, Macmillan, 1890. The editio princeps\n(1813), which is followed by Forman (1892) and Woodberry (1893), has a\ncomma after element and a full stop at remained.\n\n2.\nGuards...from a nation’s rage\nSecure the crown, etc. (4, lines 173-176.)\nSo Mrs. Shelley (“Poetical Works”, 1839, both editions), Rossetti,\nForman, Dowden. The editio princeps reads Secures, which Woodberry\ndefends and retains.\n\n3.\n4, lines 203-220: omitted by Mrs. Shelley from the text of “Poetical\nWorks”, 1839, 1st edition, but restored in the 2nd edition of 1839. See\nabove, “Note on Queen Mab, by Mrs. Shelley”.\n\n4.\nAll germs of promise, yet when the tall trees, etc. (5, line 9.)\nSo Rossetti, Dowden, Woodberry. In editions 1813 (editio princeps) and\n1839 (“Poetical Works”, both editions) there is a full stop at promise\nwhich Forman retains.\n\n5.\nWho ever hears his famished offspring’s scream, etc. (5, line 116.)\nThe editio princeps has offsprings—an evident misprint.\n\n6.\n6, lines 54-57, line 275: struck out of the text of “Poetical Works”, 1839\n(1st edition), but restored in the 2nd edition of that year. See Note 3 above.\n\n7.\nThe exterminable spirit it contains, etc. (7, line 23.)\nExterminable seems to be used here in the sense of ‘illimitable’ (N. E.\nD.). Rossetti proposes interminable, or inexterminable.\n\n8.\nA smile of godlike malice reillumed, etc. (7, line 180.)\nThe editio princeps and the first edition of “Poetical Works”, 1839,\nread reillumined here, which is retained by Forman, Dowden, Woodberry.\nWith Rossetti, I follow Mrs. Shelley’s reading in “Poetical Works”, 1839\n(2nd edition).\n\n9.\nOne curse alone was spared—the name of God. (8, line 165.)\nRemoved from the text, “Poetical Works”, 1839 (1st edition); restored,\n“Poetical Works”, 1839 (2nd edition). See Notes 3 and 6 above.\n\n10.\nWhich from the exhaustless lore of human weal\nDawns on the virtuous mind, etc. (8, lines 204-205.)\nWith some hesitation as to lore, I reprint these lines as they are given\nby Shelley himself in the note on this passage (supra). The text of 1813\nruns:—\nWhich from the exhaustless store of human weal\nDraws on the virtuous mind, etc.\nThis is retained by Woodberry, while Rossetti, Forman, and Dowden adopt\neclectic texts, Forman and Dowden reading lore and Draws, while\nRossetti, again, reads store and Dawns. Our text is supported by the\nauthority of Dr. Richard Garnett. The comma after infiniteness (line\n206) has a metrical, not a logical, value.\n\n11.\nNor searing Reason with the brand of God. (9, line 48.)\nRemoved from the text, “Poetical Works”, 1839 (1st edition), by Mrs.\nShelley, who failed, doubtless through an oversight, to restore it in\nthe second edition. See Notes 3, 6, and 9 above.\n\n12.\nWhere neither avarice, cunning, pride, nor care, etc. (9, line 67.)\nThe editio princeps reads pride, or care, which is retained by Forman\nand Woodberry. With Rossetti and Dowden, I follow Mrs. Shelley’s text,\n“Poetical Works”, 1839 (both editions).\n\n\n1.\nThe mine, big with destructive power, burst under me, etc. (Note on 7 67.)\nThis is the reading of the “Poetical Works” of 1839 (2nd edition). The\neditio princeps (1813) reads burst upon me. Doubtless under was intended\nby Shelley: the occurrence, thrice over, of upon in the ten lines\npreceding would account for the unconscious substitution of the word\nhere, either by the printer, or perhaps by Shelley himself in his\ntranscript for the press.\n\n2.\n...it cannot arise from reasoning, etc. (Note on 7 135.)\nThe editio princeps (1813) has conviction for reasoning here—an obvious\nerror of the press, overlooked by Mrs. Shelley in 1839, and perpetuated\nin his several editions of the poems by Mr. H. Buxton Forman. Reasoning,\nMr. W.M. Rossetti’s conjectural emendation, is manifestly the right word\nhere, and has been adopted by Dowden and Woodberry.\n\n3.\nHim, still from hope to hope, etc. (Note on 8 203-207.)\nSee editor’s note 10 on “Queen Mab” above.\n\n1.\nA DIALOGUE.—The titles of this poem, of the stanzas “On an Icicle”,\netc., and of the lines “To Death”, were first given by Professor Dowden\n(“Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1890) from the Esdaile manuscript book.\nThe textual corrections from the same quarter (see footnotes passim) are\nalso owing to Professor Dowden.\n\n2.\nORIGINAL POETRY BY VICTOR AND CAZIRE.—Dr. Garnett, who in 1898 edited\nfor Mr. John Lane a reprint of these long-lost verses, identifies\n“Victor’s” coadjutrix, “Cazire”, with Elizabeth Shelley, the poet’s\nsister. ‘The two initial pieces are the only two which can be attributed\nto Elizabeth Shelley with absolute certainty, though others in the\nvolume may possibly belong to her’ (Garnett).\n\n3.\nSAINT EDMOND’S EVE. This ballad-tale was “conveyed” in its entirety by\n“Cazire” from Matthew Gregory Lewis’s “Tales of Terror”, 1801, where it\nappears under the title of “The Black Canon of Elmham; or, Saint\nEdmond’s Eve”. Stockdale, the publisher of “Victor and Cazire”, detected\nthe imposition, and communicated his discovery to Shelley—when ‘with\nall the ardour natural to his character he [Shelley] expressed the\nwarmest resentment at the imposition practised upon him by his\ncoadjutor, and entreated me to destroy all the copies, of which about\none hundred had been put into circulation.’\n\n4.\nTO MARY WHO DIED IN THIS OPINION.—From a letter addressed by Shelley to\nMiss Hitchener, dated November 23, 1811.\n\n5.\nA TALE OF SOCIETY.—The titles of this and the following piece were\nfirst given by Professor Dowden from the Esdaile manuscript, from which\nalso one or two corrections in the text of both poems, made in\nMacmillan’s edition of 1890, were derived.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Showing The Various Printed Sources Of The Contents Of This Edition.",
    "body": "1.\n(1) Original Poetry; : By : Victor and Cazire. : Call it not vain:—they\ndo not err, : Who say, that, when the poet dies, : Mute Nature mourns\nher worshipper. : “Lay of the Last Minstrel.” : Worthing : Printed by C.\nand W. Phillips, : for the Authors; : And sold by J. J. Stockdale, 41,\nPall-Mall, : And all other Booksellers. 1810.\n\n(2) Original : Poetry : By : Victor & Cazire : [Percy Bysshe Shelley : &\nElizabeth Shelley] : Edited by : Richard Garnett C.B., LL.D. : Published\nby : John Lane, at the Sign : of the Bodley Head in : London and New\nYork : MDCCCXCVIII.\n\n2.\nPosthumous Fragments : of : Margaret Nicholson; : Being Poems Found\nAmongst the Papers of that : Noted Female who attempted the Life : of\nthe King in 1786. : Edited by : John Fitz-Victor. : Oxford: : Printed\nand sold by J. Munday : 1810.\n\n3.\nSt. Irvyne; : or, : The Rosicrucian. : A Romance. : By : A Gentleman :\nof the University of Oxford. : London: : Printed for J. J. Stockdale, :\n41, Pall Mall. : 1811.\n\n4.\nThe Devil’s Walk; a Ballad. Printed as a broadside, 1812.\n\n5.\nQueen Mab; : a : Philosophical Poem: : with Notes. : By : Percy Bysshe\nShelley. : Ecrasez l’Infame! : “Correspondance de Voltaire.” : Avia\nPieridum peragro loca, nullius ante : Trita solo; iuvat integros\naccedere fonteis; : Atque haurire: iuratque (sic) novos decerpere\nflores. : Unde prius nulli velarint tempora nausae. : Primum quod magnis\ndoceo de rebus; et arctis : Religionum animos nodis exsolvere pergo. :\nLucret. lib. 4 : Dos pou sto, kai kosmon kineso. : Archimedes. : London:\n: Printed by P. B. Shelley, : 23, Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square. :\n1813.\n\n6.\nAlastor; : or, : The Spirit of Solitude: : and Other Poems. : By : Percy\nBysshe Shelley : London : Printed for Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy,\nPater-:noster Row; and Carpenter and Son, : Old Bond Street: : By S.\nHamilton, Weybridge, Surrey : 1816.\n\n7.\n(1) Laon and Cythna; : or, : The Revolution : of : the Golden City: : A\nVision of the Nineteenth Century. : In the Stanza of Spenser. : By :\nPercy B. Shelley. : Dos pou sto, kai kosmon kineso. : Archimedes. :\nLondon: : Printed for Sherwood, Neely, & Jones, Paternoster-:Row; and C.\nand J. Ollier, Welbeck-Street: : By B. M’Millan, Bow-Street,\nCovent-Garden. : 1818.\n\n(2) The : Revolt of Islam; : A Poem, : in Twelve Cantos. : By : Percy\nBysshe Shelley. : London: : Printed for C. and J. Ollier,\nWelbeck-Street; : By B. M’Millan, Bow-Street, Covent-Garden. : 1818.\n\n(3) A few copies of “The Revolt of Islam” bear date 1817 instead of\n1818.\n\n(4) ‘The same sheets were used again in 1829 with a third title-page\nsimilar to the foregoing [2], but with the imprint “London: : Printed\nfor John Brooks, : 421 Oxford-Street. : 1829.”’ (H. Buxton Forman, C.B.:\nThe Shelley Library, page 73.)\n\n(5) ‘Copies of the 1829 issue of “The Revolt of Islam” not infrequently\noccur with “Laon and Cythna” text.’ (Ibid., page 73.)\n\n8.\nRosalind and Helen, : A Modern Eclogue; : With Other Poems: : By : Percy\nBysshe Shelley. : London: : Printed for C. and J. Ollier, : Vere Street,\nBond Street. : 1819.\n\n9.\n(1) The Cenci. : A Tragedy, : In Five Acts. : By Percy B. Shelley. :\nItaly. : Printed for C. and J. Ollier, : Vere Street, Bond Street. :\nLondon. : 1819.\n\n(2) The Cenci : A Tragedy : In Five Acts : By : Percy Bysshe Shelley :\nSecond Edition : London : C. and J. Ollier Vere Street Bond Street :\n1821.\n\n10.\nPrometheus Unbound : A Lyrical Drama : In Four Acts : With Other Poems :\nBy : Percy Bysshe Shelley : Audisne haec, Amphiarae, sub terram abdite?\n: London : C. and J. Ollier Vere Street Bond Street : 1820.\n\n11.\nOedipus Tyrannus; : or, : Swellfoot The Tyrant. : A Tragedy. : In Two\nActs. : Translated from the Original Doric. : —Choose Reform or\ncivil-war, : When thro’ thy streets, instead of hare with dogs, A\nCONSORT-QUEEN shall hunt a KING with hogs, : Riding on the IONIAN\nMINOTAUR. : London: : Published for the Author, : By J. Johnston, 98,\nCheapside, and sold by all booksellers. : 1820.\n\n12.\nEpipsychidion : Verses Addressed to the Noble : And Unfortunate Lady :\nEmilia V— : Now Imprisoned in the Convent of — : L’ anima amante si\nslancia fuori del creato, e si crea nel infinito : un Mondo tutto per\nessa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso : baratro. Her Own Words.\n: London : C. and J. Ollier Vere Street Bond Street : MDCCCXXI.\n\n13.\n(1) Adonais : An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, : Author of Endymion,\nHyperion etc. : By : Percy B. Shelley : Aster prin men elampes eni\nzooisin eoos. : Nun de thanon, lampeis esmeros en phthimenois. : Plato.\n: Pisa : With the Types of Didot : MDCCCXXI.\n\n(2) Adonais. : An Elegy : on the : Death of John Keats, : Author of\nEndymion, Hyperion, etc. : By : Percy B. Shelley. : [Motto as in (1)]\nCambridge: : Printed by W. Metcalfe, : and sold by Messrs. Gee &\nBridges, Market-Hill. : MDCCCXXIX.\n\n14.\nHellas : A Lyrical Drama : By : Percy B. Shelley : MANTIS EIM’ ESTHAON\n‘AGONON : Oedip. Colon. : London : Charles and James Ollier Vere Street\n: Bond Street : MDCCCXXII. (The last work issued in Shelley’s lifetime.)\n\n15.\nPosthumous Poems : of : Percy Bysshe Shelley. : In nobil sangue vita\numile e queta, : Ed in alto intelletto on puro core; : Frutto senile in\nsul giovenil fiore, : E in aspetto pensoso anima lieta. : Petrarca. :\nLondon, 1824: : Printed for John and Henry L. Hunt, : Tavistock Street,\nCovent Garden. (Edited by Mrs. Shelley.)\n\n16.\nThe : Masque of Anarchy. : A Poem. : By Percy Bysshe Shelley. Now first\npublished, with a Preface : by Leigh Hunt. : Hope is Strong; : Justice\nand Truth their winged child have found. : “Revolt of Islam”. : London:\n: Edward Moxon, 64, New Bond Street. : 1832.\n\n17.\nThe Shelley Papers : Memoir : of : Percy Bysshe Shelley : By T. Medwin,\nEsq. : And : Original Poems and Papers : By Percy Bysshe Shelley. : Now\nfirst collected. : London: : Whittaker, Treacher, & Co. : 1833.\n(The Poems occupy pages 109-126.)\n\n18.\nThe : Poetical Works : of : Percy Bysshe Shelley. : Edited : by Mrs\nShelley. : Lui non trov’ io, ma suoi santi vestigi : Tutti rivolti alla\nsuperna strada : Veggio, lunge da’ laghi averni e stigi.—Petrarca. : In\nFour Volumes. : Vol. 1 [2 3 4] : London: : Edward Moxon, Dover Street. :\nMDCCCXXXIX.\n\n19.\n(1) The : Poetical Works : of : Percy Bysshe Shelley: [Vignette of\nShelley’s Tomb.] London. : Edward Moxon, Dover Street. : 1839.\n(This is the engraved title-page. The printed title-page runs:—)\n\n(2) The : Poetical Works : of Percy Bysshe Shelley. : Edited : By Mrs.\nShelley. : [Motto from Petrarch as in 18] London: : Edward Moxon, Dover\nStreet. : M.DCCC.XL.\n(Large octavo, printed in double columns. The Dedication is dated 11th\nNovember, 1839.)\n\n20.\nEssays, : Letters from Abroad, : Translations and Fragments, : By :\nPercy Bysshe Shelley. : Edited : By Mrs. Shelley. : [Long prose motto\ntranslated from Schiller] : In Two Volumes. : Volume 1 [2] : London: :\nEdward Moxon, Dover Street. : MDCCCXL.\n\n21.\nRelics of Shelley. : Edited by : Richard Garnett. : [Lines 20-24 of “To\nJane”: ‘The keen stars,’ etc.] : London: : Edward Moxon & Co., Dover\nStreet. : 1862.\n\n22.\nThe : Poetical Works : of : Percy Bysshe Shelley: : Including Various\nAdditional Pieces : From Manuscript and Other Sources. : The Text\ncarefully revised, with Notes and : A Memoir, : By William Michael\nRossetti. : Volume 1 [2] : [Moxon’s Device.] : London: : E. Moxon, Son,\n& Co., 44 Dover Street, W. : 1870.\n\n23.\nThe Daemon of the World : By : Percy Bysshe Shelley : The First Part :\nas published in 1816 with “Alastor” : The Second Part : Deciphered and\nnow First Printed from his own Manuscript : Revision and Interpolations\nin the Newly Discovered : Copy of “Queen Mab” : London : Privately\nprinted by H. Buxton Forman : 38 Marlborough Hill : 1876.\n\n24.\nThe Poetical Works : of : Percy Bysshe Shelley : Edited by : Harry\nBuxton Forman : In Four Volumes : Volume 1 [2 3 4] London : Reeves and\nTurner 196 Strand : 1876.\n\n25.\nThe Complete : Poetical Works : of : Percy Bysshe Shelley. : The Text\ncarefully revised with Notes and : A Memoir, : by : William Michael\nRossetti. : In Three Volumes. : Volume 1 [2 3] London: : E. Moxon, Son,\nAnd Co., : Dorset Buildings, Salisbury Square, E.C. : 1878.\n\n26.\nThe Poetical Works : of Percy Bysshe Shelley : Given from His Own\nEditions and Other Authentic Sources : Collated with many Manuscripts\nand with all Editions of Authority : Together with Prefaces and Notes :\nHis Poetical Translations and Fragments : and an Appendix of : Juvenilia\n: [Publisher’s Device.] Edited by Harry Buxton Forman : In Two Volumes.\n: Volume 1 [2] London : Reeves and Turner, 196, Strand : 1882.\n\n27.\nThe : Poetical Works : of : Percy Bysshe Shelley : Edited by : Edward\nDowden : London : Macmillan and Co, Limited : New York: The Macmillan\nCompany : 1900.\n\n28.\nThe Poetical Works of : Percy Bysshe Shelley : Edited with a Memoir by :\nH. Buxton Forman : In Five Volumes [Publisher’s Device.] Volume 1 [2 3 4\n5] London : George Bell and Sons : 1892.\n\n29.\nThe : Complete Poetical Works : of : Percy Bysshe Shelley : The Text\nnewly collated and revised : and Edited with a Memoir and Notes : By\nGeorge Edward Woodberry : Centenary Edition : In Four Volumes : Volume 1\n[2 3 4] [Publisher’s Device.] London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and\nCo. : Limited : 1893.\n\n30.\nAn Examination of the : Shelley Manuscripts : In the Bodleian Library :\nBeing a collation thereof with the printed : texts, resulting in the\npublication of : several long fragments hitherto unknown, : and the\nintroduction of many improved : readings into “Prometheus Unbound”, and\n: other poems, by : C.D. Locock, B.A. : Oxford : At the Clarendon Press\n: 1903.\n\nThe early poems from the Esdaile manuscript book, which are included in\nthis edition by the kind permission of the owner of the volume, Charles\nE.J. Esdaile, Esq., appeared for the first time in Professor Dowden’s\n“Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, published in the year 1887.\n\nOne poem from the same volume; entitled “The Wandering Jew’s Soliloquy”,\nwas printed in one of the Shelley Society Publications (Second Series,\nNo. 12), a reprint of “The Wandering Jew”, edited by Mr. Bertram Dobell\nin 1887.\n\n***",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  },
  {
    "title": "Index Of First Lines.",
    "body": "A cat in distress :\nA gentle story of two lovers young :\nA glorious people vibrated again :\nA golden-winged Angel stood :\nA Hater he came and sat by a ditch :\nA man who was about to hang himself :\nA pale Dream came to a Lady fair :\nA portal as of shadowy adamant :\nA rainbow’s arch stood on the sea :\nA scene, which ‘wildered fancy viewed :\nA Sensitive Plant in a garden grew :\nA shovel of his ashes took :\nA widow bird sate mourning :\nA woodman whose rough heart was out of tune :\nAh! faint are her limbs, and her footstep is weary :\nAh! grasp the dire dagger and couch the fell spear :\nAh! quit me not yet, for the wind whistles shrill :\nAh, sister! Desolation is a delicate thing :\nAh! sweet is the moonbeam that sleeps on yon fountain :\nAlas! for Liberty! :\nAlas, good friend, what profit can you see :\nAlas! this is not what I thought life was :\nAmbition, power, and avarice, now have hurled :\nAmid the desolation of a city :\nAmong the guests who often stayed :\nAn old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king :\nAnd can’st thou mock mine agony, thus calm :\nAnd earnest to explore within—around :\nAnd ever as he went he swept a lyre :\nAnd, if my grief should still be dearer to me :\nAnd like a dying lady, lean and pale :\nAnd many there were hurt by that strong boy :\nAnd Peter Bell, when he had been :\nAnd said I that all hope was fled :\nAnd that I walk thus proudly crowned withal :\nAnd the cloven waters like a chasm of mountains :\nAnd when the old man saw that on the green :\nAnd where is truth? On tombs? for such to thee :\nAnd who feels discord now or sorrow? :\nArethusa arose :\nAriel to Miranda:—Take :\nArise, arise, arise! :\nArt thou indeed forever gone :\nArt thou pale for weariness :\nAs a violet’s gentle eye :\nAs from an ancestral oak :\nAs I lay asleep in Italy :\nAs the sunrise to the night :\nAsk not the pallid stranger’s woe :\nAt the creation of the Earth :\nAway! the moor is dark beneath the moon :\n\nBear witness, Erin! when thine injured isle :\nBefore those cruel Twins, whom at one birth :\nBeside the dimness of the glimmering sea :\nBest and brightest, come away! :\nBreak the dance, and scatter the song :\nBright ball of flame that through the gloom of even :\nBright clouds float in heaven :\nBright wanderer, fair coquette of Heaven :\nBrothers! between you and me :\n‘Buona notte, buona notte!’—Come mai :\nBy the mossy brink :\n\nChameleons feed on light and air :\nCold, cold is the blast when December is howling :\nCome, be happy!—sit near me :\nCome [Harriet]! sweet is the hour :\nCome hither, my sweet Rosalind :\nCome, thou awakener of the spirit’s ocean :\nCorpses are cold in the tomb :\n\nDares the lama, most fleet of the sons of the wind :\nDar’st thou amid the varied multitude :\nDarkness has dawned in the East :\nDaughters of Jove, whose voice is melody :\nDear home, thou scene of earliest hopes and joys :\nDearest, best and brightest :\nDeath is here and death is there :\nDeath! where is thy victory? :\nDo evil deeds thus quickly come to end?\nDo you not hear the Aziola cry? :\n\nEagle! why soarest thou above that tomb? :\nEarth, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood :\nEchoes we: listen!\nEver as now with Love and Virtue’s glow :\n\nFaint with love, the Lady of the South :\nFairest of the Destinies :\nFalse friend, wilt thou smile or weep :\nFar, far away, O ye :\nFiend, I defy thee! with a calm, fixed mind :\nFierce roars the midnight storm :\nFlourishing vine, whose kindling clusters glow :\nFollow to the deep wood’s weeds :\nFor me, my friend, if not that tears did tremble :\nFor my dagger is bathed in the blood of the brave :\nFor your letter, dear [Hattie], accept my best thanks :\nFrom all the blasts of heaven thou hast descended :\nFrom the cities where from caves :\nFrom the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth :\nFrom the forests and highlands :\nFrom unremembered ages we :\n\nGather, O gather :\nGhosts of the dead! have I not heard your yelling :\nGod prosper, speed, and save :\nGood-night? ah! no; the hour is ill :\nGreat Spirit whom the sea of boundless thought :\nGuido, I would that Lapo, thou, and I :\n\nHail to thee, blithe Spirit! :\nHail to thee, Cambria! for the unfettered wind :\nHark! the owlet flaps her wing :\nHark! the owlet flaps his wings :\nHast thou not seen, officious with delight :\nHe came like a dream in the dawn of life :\nHe wanders, like a day-appearing dream :\nHell is a city much like London :\nHer hair was brown, her sphered eyes were brown :\nHer voice did quiver as we parted :\nHere I sit with my paper, my pen and my ink :\n‘Here lieth One whose name was writ on water’ :\nHere, my dear friend, is a new book for you :\nHere, oh, here :\nHic sinu fessum caput hospitali :\nHis face was like a snake’s—wrinkled and loose :\nHoney from silkworms who can gather :\nHopes, that swell in youthful breasts :\nHow eloquent are eyes :\nHow, my dear Mary,—are you critic-bitten :\nHow stern are the woes of the desolate mourner :\nHow sweet it is to sit and read the tales :\nHow swiftly through Heaven’s wide expanse :\nHow wonderful is Death :\nHow wonderful is Death :\n\nI am afraid these verses will not please you, but :\nI am as a spirit who has dwelt :\nI am drunk with the honey wine :\nI arise from dreams of thee :\nI bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers :\nI dreamed that, as I wandered by the way :\nI dreamed that Milton’s spirit rose, and took :\nI faint, I perish with my love! I grow :\nI fear thy kisses, gentle maiden :\nI hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan :\nI love thee, Baby! for thine own sweet sake :\nI loved—alas! our life is love :\nI met a traveller from an antique land :\nI mourn Adonis dead—loveliest Adonis :\nI pant for the music which is divine :\nI rode one evening with Count Maddalo :\nI sate beside a sage’s bed :\nI sate beside the Steersman then, and gazing :\nI sing the glorious Power with azure eyes :\nI stood upon a heaven-cleaving turret :\nI stood within the City disinterred :\nI weep for Adonais—he is dead’ :\nI went into the deserts of dim sleep :\nI would not be a king—enough :\nIf gibbets, axes, confiscations, chains :\nIf I esteemed you less, Envy would kill :\nIf I walk in Autumn’s even :\nIn the cave which wild weeds cover :\nIn the sweet solitude of this calm place :\nInter marmoreas Leonorae pendula colles :\nIs it that in some brighter sphere :\nIs it the Eternal Triune, is it He :\nIs not to-day enough? Why do I peer :\nIt is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven :\nIt is the day when all the sons of God :\nIt lieth, gazing on the midnight sky :\nIt was a bright and cheerful afternoon :\n\nKissing Helena, together :\n\nLet there be light! said Liberty :\nLet those who pine in pride or in revenge :\nLife of Life! thy lips enkindle :\nLift not the painted veil which those who live :\nLike the ghost of a dear friend dead :\nListen, listen, Mary mine :\nLo, Peter in Hell’s Grosvenor Square :\n\nMadonna, wherefore hast thou sent to me :\nMaiden, quench the glare of sorrow :\nMany a green isle needs must be :\nMelodious Arethusa, o’er my verse :\nMen of England, wherefore plough :\nMethought I was a billow in the crowd :\nMighty eagle! thou that soarest :\nMine eyes were dim with tears unshed :\nMonarch of Gods and Daemons, and all Spirits :\nMonth after month the gathered rains descend :\nMoonbeam, leave the shadowy vale :\nMuse, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite :\nMusic, when soft voices die :\nMy coursers are fed with the lightning :\nMy dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone :\nMy faint spirit was sitting in the light :\nMy head is heavy, my limbs are weary :\nMy head is wild with weeping for a grief :\nMy lost William, thou in whom :\nMy Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few :\nMy soul is an enchanted boat :\nMy spirit like a charmed bark doth swim :\nMy thoughts arise and fade in solitude :\nMy wings are folded o’er mine ears :\n\nNight, with all thine eyes look down! :\nNight! with all thine eyes look down! :\nNo access to the Duke! You have not said :\nNo, Music, thou art not the ‘food of Love’ :\nNo trump tells thy virtues :\nNor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame :\nNot far from hence. From yonder pointed hill :\nNow had the loophole of that dungeon, still :\nNow the last day of many days :\n\nO Bacchus, what a world of toil, both now :\nO happy Earth! reality of Heaven :\nO Mary dear, that you were here :\nO mighty mind, in whose deep stream this age :\nO pillow cold and wet with tears! :\nO Slavery! thou frost of the world’s prime :\nO that a chariot of cloud were mine! :\nO that mine enemy had written :\nO thou bright Sun! beneath the dark blue line :\nO thou immortal deity :\nO thou, who plumed with strong desire :\nO universal Mother, who dost keep :\nO wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being :\nO world! O life! O time! :\nOffspring of Jove, Calliope, once more :\nOh! did you observe the black Canon pass :\nOh! take the pure gem to where southerly breezes :\nOh! there are spirits of the air :\nOh! what is the gain of restless care :\nOn a battle-trumpet’s blast :\nOn a poet’s lips I slept :\nOn the brink of the night and the morning :\nOnce, early in the morning :\nOne sung of thee who left the tale untold :\nOne word is too often profaned :\nOrphan Hours, the Year is dead :\nOur boat is asleep on Serchio’s stream :\nOur spoil is won :\nOut of the eastern shadow of the Earth :\nOver the utmost hill at length I sped :\n\nPalace-roof of cloudless nights! :\nPan loved his neighbour Echo—but that child :\nPeople of England, ye who toil and groan :\nPeter Bells, one, two and three :\nPlace, for the Marshal of the Masque! :\nPoet of Nature, thou hast wept to know :\nPrince Athanase had one beloved friend :\n\nRarely, rarely, comest thou :\nReach me that handkerchief!—My brain is hurt :\nReturning from its daily quest, my Spirit :\nRome has fallen, ye see it lying :\nRough wind, that moanest loud :\n\nSacred Goddess, Mother Earth :\nSee yon opening flower :\nSerene in his unconquerable might :\nShall we roam, my love :\nShe comes not; yet I left her even now :\nShe left me at the silent time :\nShe saw me not—she heard me not—alone :\nShe was an aged woman; and the years :\nSilence! Oh, well are Death and Sleep and Thou :\nSilver key of the fountain of tears :\nSing, Muse, the son of Maia and of Jove :\nSleep, sleep on! forget thy pain :\nSo now my summer task is ended, Mary :\nSo we sate joyous as the morning ray :\nStern, stern is the voice of fate’s fearful command :\nSuch hope, as is the sick despair of good :\nSuch was Zonoras; and as daylight finds :\nSummer was dead and Autumn was expiring :\nSweet Spirit! Sister of that orphan one :\nSweet star, which gleaming o’er the darksome scene :\nSwift as a spirit hastening to his task :\nSwifter far than summer’s flight :\nSwiftly walk o’er the western wave :\n\nTell me, thou Star, whose wings of light :\nThat matter of the murder is hushed up :\nThat night we anchored in a woody bay :\nThat time is dead for ever, child! :\nThe awful shadow of some unseen Power :\nThe babe is at peace within the womb :\nThe billows on the beach are leaping around it :\nThe cold earth slept below :\nThe curtain of the Universe :\nThe death-bell beats! :\nThe death knell is ringing :\nThe Devil, I safely can aver :\nThe Devil now knew his proper cue :\nThe Elements respect their Maker’s seal! :\nThe everlasting universe of things :\nThe fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses :\nThe fiery mountains answer each other :\nThe fitful alternations of the rain :\nThe flower that smiles to-day :\nThe fountains mingle with the river :\nThe gentleness of rain was in the wind :\nThe golden gates of Sleep unbar :\nThe joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness :\nThe keen stars were twinkling :\nThe odour from the flower is gone :\nThe old man took the oars, and soon the bark :\nThe pale stars are gone :\nThe pale stars of the morn :\nThe pale, the cold, and the moony smile :\nThe path through which that lovely twain :\nThe rose that drinks the fountain dew :\nThe rude wind is singing :\nThe season was the childhood of sweet June :\nThe serpent is shut out from Paradise :\nThe sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie :\nThe spider spreads her webs, whether she be :\nThe starlight smile of children, the sweet looks :\nThe stars may dissolve, and the fountain of light :\nThe sun is set; the swallows are asleep :\nThe sun is warm, the sky is clear :\nThe sun makes music as of old :\nThe transport of a fierce and monstrous gladness :\nThe viewless and invisible Consequence :\nThe voice of the Spirits of Air and of Earth :\nThe warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing :\nThe waters are flashing :\nThe wind has swept from the wide atmosphere :\nThe world is dreary :\nThe world is now our dwelling-place :\nThe world’s great age begins anew :\nThen weave the web of the mystic measure :\nThere is a voice, not understood by all :\nThere is a warm and gentle atmosphere :\nThere late was One within whose subtle being :\nThere was a little lawny islet :\nThere was a youth, who, as with toil and travel :\nThese are two friends whose lives were undivided :\nThey die—the dead return not—Misery :\nThose whom nor power, nor lying faith, nor toil :\nThou art fair, and few are fairer :\nThou art the wine whose drunkenness is all :\nThou living light that in thy rainbow hues :\nThou supreme Goddess! by whose power divine :\nThou wert not, Cassius, and thou couldst not be :\nThou wert the morning star among the living :\nThrice three hundred thousand years :\nThus to be lost and thus to sink and die :\nThy beauty hangs around thee like :\nThy country’s curse is on thee, darkest crest :\nThy dewy looks sink in my breast :\nThy little footsteps on the sands :\nThy look of love has power to calm :\n’Tis midnight now—athwart the murky air :\n’Tis the terror of tempest. The rags of the sail :\nTo me this world’s a dreary blank :\nTo the deep, to the deep :\nTo thirst and find no fill—to wail and wander :\nTremble, Kings despised of man :\n’Twas at the season when the Earth upsprings :\n’Twas at this season that Prince Athanase :\n’Twas dead of the night, when I sat in my dwelling :\n’Twas dead of the night when I sate in my dwelling :\n\nUnfathomable Sea! whose waves are years :\nUnrisen splendour of the brightest sun :\n\nVessels of heavenly medicine! may the breeze :\nVictorious Wrong, with vulture scream :\n\nWake the serpent not—lest he :\nWas there a human spirit in the steed :\nWe are as clouds that veil the midnight moon :\nWe come from the mind :\nWe join the throng :\nWe meet not as we parted :\nWe strew these opiate flowers :\nWealth and dominion fade into the mass :\nWeave the dance on the floor of the breeze :\nWeep not, my gentle boy; he struck but me :\nWhat! alive and so bold, O Earth? :\nWhat art thou, Presumptuous, who profanest :\nWhat Mary is when she a little smiles :\nWhat men gain fairly—that they should possess :\n‘What think you the dead are?’ :\nWhat thoughts had sway o’er Cythna’s lonely slumber :\nWhat was the shriek that struck Fancy’s ear :\nWhen a lover clasps his fairest :\nWhen May is painting with her colours gay :\nWhen passion’s trance is overpast :\nWhen soft winds and sunny skies :\nWhen the lamp is shattered :\nWhen the last hope of trampled France had failed :\nWhen winds that move not its calm surface sweep :\nWhere art thou, beloved To-morrow? :\nWhere man’s profane and tainting hand :\nWhose is the love that gleaming through the world :\nWhy is it said thou canst not live :\nWild, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one :\nWilt thou forget the happy hours :\nWithin a cavern of man’s trackless spirit :\nWorlds on worlds are rolling ever :\nWould I were the winged cloud :\n\nYe congregated powers of heaven, who share :\nYe Dorian woods and waves, lament aloud :\nYe gentle visitations of calm thought :\nYe hasten to the grave! What seek ye there :\nYe who intelligent the Third Heaven move :\nYe wild-eyed Muses, sing the Twins of Jove :\nYes! all is past—swift time has fled away :\nYes, often when the eyes are cold and dry :\nYet look on me—take not thine eyes away :\nYou said that spirits spoke, but it was thee :\nYour call was as a winged car :",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Shelley",
    "period": "1810–1822"
  }
]