The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 105

Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild _25 And terrorless as this serenest night: Here could I hope, like some inquiring child Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep. _30

TO --.

[Published with "Alastor", 1816. See Editor's Note.]

DAKRTSI DIOISO POTMON 'APOTMON.

Oh! there are spirits of the air, And genii of the evening breeze, And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair As star-beams among twilight trees:-- Such lovely ministers to meet _5 Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.

With mountain winds, and babbling springs, And moonlight seas, that are the voice Of these inexplicable things, Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice _10 When they did answer thee; but they Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.

And thou hast sought in starry eyes Beams that were never meant for thine, Another's wealth:--tame sacrifice To a fond faith! still dost thou pine? _15 Still dost thou hope that greeting hands, Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands?

Ah! wherefore didst thou build thine hope On the false earth's inconstancy? _20 Did thine own mind afford no scope Of love, or moving thoughts to thee?

That natural scenes or human smiles Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles?

Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled _25 Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted; The glory of the moon is dead; Night's ghosts and dreams have now departed; Thine own soul still is true to thee, But changed to a foul fiend through misery. _30

This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever Beside thee like thy shadow hangs, Dream not to chase;--the mad endeavour Would scourge thee to severer pangs.

Be as thou art. Thy settled fate, Dark as it is, all change would aggravate. _35

NOTES: _1 of 1816; in 1839.

_8 moonlight 1816; mountain 1839.

TO WORDSWORTH.

[Published with "Alastor", 1816.]

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know That things depart which never may return: Childhood and youth, friends.h.i.+p and love's first glow, Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.

These common woes I feel. One loss is mine _5 Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.

Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did s.h.i.+ne On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar: Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood Above the blind and battling mult.i.tude: _10 In honoured poverty thy voice did weave Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,-- Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve, Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE.

[Published with "Alastor", 1816.]

I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan To think that a most unambitious slave, Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne Where it had stood even now: thou didst prefer _5 A frail and b.l.o.o.d.y pomp which Time has swept In fragments towards Oblivion. Ma.s.sacre, For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept, Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and l.u.s.t, And stifled thee, their minister. I know _10 Too late, since thou and France are in the dust, That Virtue owns a more eternal foe Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime, And b.l.o.o.d.y Faith the foulest birth of Time.

LINES.

[Published in Hunt's "Literary Pocket-Book", 1823, where it is headed "November, 1815". Reprinted in the "Posthumous Poems", 1824. See Editor's Note.]

1.

The cold earth slept below, Above the cold sky shone; And all around, with a chilling sound, From caves of ice and fields of snow, The breath of night like death did flow _5 Beneath the sinking moon.

2.

The wintry hedge was black, The green gra.s.s was not seen, The birds did rest on the bare thorn's breast, Whose roots, beside the pathway track, _10 Had bound their folds o'er many a crack Which the frost had made between.

3.

Thine eyes glowed in the glare Of the moon's dying light; As a fen-fire's beam on a sluggish stream _15 Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there, And it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair, That shook in the wind of night.

4.

The moon made thy lips pale, beloved-- The wind made thy bosom chill-- _20 The night did shed on thy dear head Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie Where the bitter breath of the naked sky Might visit thee at will.

NOTE: _17 raven 1823; tangled 1824.

NOTE ON THE EARLY POEMS, BY MRS. Sh.e.l.lEY.

The remainder of Sh.e.l.ley's Poems will be arranged in the order in which they were written. Of course, mistakes will occur in placing some of the shorter ones; for, as I have said, many of these were thrown aside, and I never saw them till I had the misery of looking over his writings after the hand that traced them was dust; and some were in the hands of others, and I never saw them till now. The subjects of the poems are often to me an unerring guide; but on other occasions I can only guess, by finding them in the pages of the same ma.n.u.script book that contains poems with the date of whose composition I am fully conversant. In the present arrangement all his poetical translations will be placed together at the end.

The loss of his early papers prevents my being able to give any of the poetry of his boyhood. Of the few I give as "Early Poems", the greater part were published with "Alastor"; some of them were written previously, some at the same period. The poem beginning 'Oh, there are spirits in the air' was addressed in idea to Coleridge, whom he never knew; and at whose character he could only guess imperfectly, through his writings, and accounts he heard of him from some who knew him well.

He regarded his change of opinions as rather an act of will than conviction, and believed that in his inner heart he would be haunted by what Sh.e.l.ley considered the better and holier aspirations of his youth.

The summer evening that suggested to him the poem written in the churchyard of Lechlade occurred during his voyage up the Thames in 1815. He had been advised by a physician to live as much as possible in the open air; and a fortnight of a bright warm July was spent in tracing the Thames to its source. He never spent a season more tranquilly than the summer of 1815. He had just recovered from a severe pulmonary attack; the weather was warm and pleasant. He lived near Windsor Forest; and his life was spent under its shades or on the water, meditating subjects for verse. Hitherto, he had chiefly aimed at extending his political doctrines, and attempted so to do by appeals in prose essays to the people, exhorting them to claim their rights; but he had now begun to feel that the time for action was not ripe in England, and that the pen was the only instrument wherewith to prepare the way for better things.

In the scanty journals kept during those years I find a record of the books that Sh.e.l.ley read during several years. During the years of 1814 and 1815 the list is extensive. It includes, in Greek, Homer, Hesiod, Theocritus, the histories of Thucydides and Herodotus, and Diogenes Laertius. In Latin, Petronius, Suetonius, some of the works of Cicero, a large proportion of those of Seneca and Livy. In English, Milton's poems, Wordsworth's "Excursion", Southey's "Madoc" and "Thalaba", Locke "On the Human Understanding", Bacon's "Novum Organum". In Italian, Ariosto, Ta.s.so, and Alfieri. In French, the "Reveries d'un Solitaire"

of Rousseau. To these may be added several modern books of travel. He read few novels.

POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816.

THE SUNSET.

[Written at Bishopsgate, 1816 (spring). Published in full in the "Posthumous Poems", 1824. Lines 9-20, and 28-42, appeared in Hunt's "Literary Pocket-Book", 1823, under the t.i.tles, respectively, of "Sunset. From an Unpublished Poem", And "Grief. A Fragment".]

There late was One within whose subtle being, As light and wind within some delicate cloud That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky, Genius and death contended. None may know The sweetness of the joy which made his breath _5 Fail, like the trances of the summer air, When, with the Lady of his love, who then First knew the unreserve of mingled being, He walked along the pathway of a field Which to the east a h.o.a.r wood shadowed o'er, _10 But to the west was open to the sky.

There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points Of the far level gra.s.s and nodding flowers And the old dandelion's h.o.a.ry beard, _15 And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay On the brown ma.s.sy woods--and in the east The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose Between the black trunks of the crowded trees, While the faint stars were gathering overhead.-- _20 'Is it not strange, Isabel,' said the youth, 'I never saw the sun? We will walk here To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me.'

That night the youth and lady mingled lay In love and sleep--but when the morning came _25 The lady found her lover dead and cold.

Let none believe that G.o.d in mercy gave That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild, But year by year lived on--in truth I think Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles, _30 And that she did not die, but lived to tend Her aged father, were a kind of madness, If madness 'tis to be unlike the world.

For but to see her were to read the tale Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts _35 Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief;-- Her eyes were black and l.u.s.treless and wan: Her eyelashes were worn away with tears, Her lips and cheeks were like things dead--so pale; Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins _40 And weak articulations might be seen Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day, Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!