Ube

Series

POEMS BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

Illustrated and decorated by Robert Anning Bell. With an Introduction by Professor Walter Raleigh, M.A. Post 8vo. js. 6d.

POEMS BY JOHN KEATS. Illustrated and

decorated by Robert Anning Bell. With an Introduc- tion by Professor Walter Raleigh, M.A. yd edition^ revised, with several new illustrations. Post 8vo. 7$. 6d.

POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING. Illus-

trated and decorated by Byam Shaw. With an Intro- duction by Richard Garnett, LL.D., C.B. znd edition. Post 8vo. 75 . 6d.

ENGLISH LYRICS, from Spenser to Milton.

Illustrated and decorated by R. Anning Bell. With an Introduction by John Dennis, Post 8vo. 6s.

MINOR POEMS BY JOHN MILTON. Illus- trated and decorated by Alfred Garth Jones. Post 8vo. 6s.

THE POEMS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE.

Illustrated and decorated by W. Heath Robinson. With an Introduction by Noel Williams. Post 8vo. 6s.

LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS

POEMS

BY

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

POP

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INTRO! WAI ILLV ROBEP

190

1

POEMS BY PERCY BYSHE

SHELLEY

INTRODVCTION BY WXLTER RALEIGH ILLVSTR ATIONS BY ROBERT ANNINGBELL

LONDONT GEORGE BELL AND

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Mo 4

CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND co.

TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

CONIENJTS

ALASTOR ; OR THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE 5

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

A SUMMER EVENING CHURCHYARD — LECHLADE,

GLOUCESTERSHIRE 33

To COLERIDGE 34

SONNET TO WORDSWORTH 36

OZYMANDIAS 36

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY 37

LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HlLLS . STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES SONNET—

" Lift not the painted veil which those who live "

ODE TO THE WEST WIND

THE SENSITIVE PLANT

THE CLOUD

To A SKYLARK

ARETHUSA

HYMN OF APOLLO 82

HYMN OF PAN 84

THE QUESTION 87

40

53 53 57 68

73

77

vi CONTENTS

I'AGE

THE Two SPIRITS : AN ALLEGORY 89

ODE TO NAPLES 92

LINES FROM "FIORDISPINA" 98

To JANE—

The Invitation 99

To JANE—

The Recollection 101

CHORUSES FROM "HELLAS"

"WE STREW THESE OPIATE FLOWERS" 1 09

"LIFE MAY CHANGE, BUT IT MAY FLY NOT" . . . . I IO

" IN THE GREAT MORNING OF THE WORLD " . . . . IIO

"WORLDS ON WORLDS ARE ROLLING EVER" . . . . 112

"THE WORLD'S GREAT AGE BEGINS ANEW" 113

SHORTER LYRICS

ON FANNY GOODWIN 119

LINES—

" That time is dead for ever, child " 119

FRAGMENT ON HOME 120

PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES 121

THE PAST 121

To MARY—

" O Mary dear, that you were here " 122

THE INDIAN SERENADE 123

Two FRAGMENTS TO MARY—

" My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone" . . 124

" The world is dreary " 124

FRAGMENTS—

Questions 125

Love the Universe 125

Visitations of Calm Thoughts 125

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY 126

To

" I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden " 127

SONG—

" Rarely, rarely, comest thou " 127

SONG OF PROSERPINE, WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON

THE PLAIN OF ENNA 130

To THE MOON 131

CONTENTS vii

PAGE

THE WORLD'S WANDERERS 131

TIME LONG PAST 132

To NIGHT 132

FROM THE ARABIC : AN IMITATION 134

To EMILIA VIVIANI 135

TIME 136

To

" Music, when soft voices die " 136

MUTABILITY 136

THE AZIOLA 138

TO-MORROW . . • 138

To

" One word is too often profaned " 1 39

To

" When passion's trance is overpast " 140

A BRIDAL SONG 141

LINES—

" When the Lamp is shattered " 141

To JANE—

" The keen stars are twinkling " 143

SONG FROM "CHARLES I." —

"A Widow Bird sate mourning" 144

DIRGES AND LAMENTS

THE DIRGE OF BEATRICE (From " The Cenci ") ... 149

AUTUMN: A DIRGE 150

DIRGE FOR THE YEAR 151

A LAMENT—

"O world! OLife! OTime!" 152

REMEMBRANCE 153

A DIRGE—

" Rough wind, that moanest loud " 1 54

EPIPSYCHIDION 159

ADONAIS 181

THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 207

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 235

INTRODUCTION

MORE than the others of that group of English poets who flourished at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and whose work, taken as a whole, gives to English literature its all but greatest glory, Shelley was the inheritor and the exponent of the ideas of the French Revo- lution. The French Revolution aroused and then disappointed Wordsworth, causing him to turn away from political ideals and to seek con- solation in universal nature ; it made Byron a rebel, and Southey a Laureate ; but it gave birth to Shelley. And the chief effect of the

x INTRODUCTION

Revolution on English life and thought is to be sought in literature rather than in politics. The great wave that broke over Europe in the roar of the Napoleonic wars spent its strength in vain on the political structure of these islands, but the air was long salt with its spray. And the poems of Shelley, if it be not too fanciful to prolong the figure, are the rainbow lights seen in the broken wave.

The ideas of the Revolution and the passion of the Revolution glitter and vibrate in Shelley's poems. And these ideas, it must be remem- bered, in their earlier and cruder political forms, had but a short spell of life. They bred the giant that killed them ; the modern scientific and historical temper finds it wellnigh impossible to regain the outlook of those who stood breath- lessly waiting for the revelation of a new heaven and a new earth. So that it is not to be won- dered at if the poetry that sprang from the political creed has been to some extent involved in the downfall of the creed. Certain it is that few of his readers, even among his professed admirers, read Shelley for his meaning ; few, even among his critics, treat his message seri- ously. The people of England, said Burke, want " food that will stick to their ribs " ; and the remark condenses in a phrase all that dissatis- faction with theory and dream which is heard as an undertone in most of the authoritative criticisms of Shelley. The poet has achieved immortality, but not on his own terms. He is

INTRODUCTION xi

" a beautiful and ineffectual angel " — a decora- tor's angel, one might almost say, designed for a vacant space, not the authentic messenger of the will of Heaven. Or he is a moonlight visitant that soothes the soul with melodious words and beautiful images when the bonds of reality are loosened. As a prophet he is lightly esteemed, but when once the prophet's mantle is gently removed from his shoulders by tender official hands, he is welcome to stay with us, and to delight us in all restful places by the subtle marvels of his lyrical craft, and the iri- descent play of his creative fancy.

Yet seeing that a poet is a poet only in so far as he reveals the beauty and the power that is universal and enduring caught from the con- fused lights and shadows of his own time, it is worth the pains to examine the main ideas that animate the poetry of Shelley. Some of these, it may not be denied, are utterly fallen" from power. Like other revolutionary thinkers, Shelley hopes for the salvation and perfection of mankind by way of an absolute breach with the past. History is to him at best a black business, an orgy of fantastic and luxurious cruelty. Commerce is " the venal interchange of all that human art and nature yield." Gold —how far would gold have enthralled the im- agination of poets if it had been a dull black substance with a slightly unpleasant scent ? — gold is a god, or demon, of dreadful strength. Education and tradition, institution and custom

xii INTRODUCTION

are made the marks of the same impassioned invective, simple sometimes almost to thought- lessness, as in that passage of " Laon and Cythna" where British parental authority is thus described:

" The land in which I lived by a fell bane Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side And stabled in our homes ; "

Sometimes rising to heights of grave denuncia- tion, as in that other passage where is described how

"The Queen of Slaves,

The hood-winked angel of the blind and dead, Custom, with iron mace points to the graves Where her own standard desolately waves Over the dust of Prophets and of Kings."

Yet this multiplied oppression, which is im- posed on man by man himself, which has grown with his growth and is intertwined with his dearest interests, is conceived of by the revo- lutionary theorists and, at least in his earlier poems, by Shelley himself, as a thing separable from man, a burden laid on him by some dark unknown power, a net weaved around him by foreign enemies. One resolute act of inspired insurrection, and the burden may be cast off for ever, the net severed at a blow, leaving man free, innocent and happy, the denizen of a golden world.

In his later and maturer poems we may de- tect Shelley's growing suspicion that the burden of man is none other than the weight of " the

INTRODUCTION xiii

superincumbent hour," or of the atmosphere that he breathes ; that the net has its fibres entangled with the nerves of his body and the veins and arteries that feed his life. Yet he neither faltered nor repented ; he had learned

" To hope, till hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates ; "

and if the tyrant that oppresses mankind is immitigable Reality, he will be a rebel against Reality in the name of that fairer and no less immortal power, the desire of the heart.

Shelley is the poet of desire. To him, as to Blake, the promptings of desire were the voice of divinity in man, and instinct and impulse bore the authentic stamp of the Godhead. His pure and clear and wonderfully simple spirit could hardly conceive of a duty that travels by a dim light through difficult and uncertain ways, still less of a duty that calculates and balances and chooses. When he was lifted on the crest of some over-mastering emotion, he saw all clear ; dropped into the hollow, he could only wait for another wave. It is as if he could not live save in the keen and rarified air of some great joy or heroic passion ; and his large capacity for joy made him the more susceptible to all that thwarts or depresses or interrupts it. These two strains, of rapture and of lament, of delight in love and beauty, and of protest against a world where love and beauty are not fixed eternal forms, run through all the poetry of Shelley, answering

xiv INTRODUCTION

each other like the voices of a chorus. Our life on earth seems to him a stormy vision, a wintry forest, a " cold common hell " ; but it has moments of exaltation which belie it, and by their power and intensity hold out a promise of deliverance. Thought and passion transform the dull suffering of this life into the likeness of " a fiery martyrdom," and by their very intensity bear witness to the greatness of the issues at stake.

It is somewhat absurdly made a charge against Shelley that the ideal which he sets before humanity is not a practicable or possible one. He had to deal with this sort of criticism during his lifetime, and in the preface to " Prometheus Unbound" he offers a grave explanation ; " It is a mistake," he says, "to suppose that I dedi- cate my poetical compositions solely to the direct enforcement of reform, or that I consider them in any degree as containing a reasoned system on the theory of human life." No exact politi- cal programme is deducible from his works. No coherent or satisfactory account can be given of the changes that would be necessary to bring in the idyllic society that mocks his vision in the distance. But if the aspirations of a poet are to be tethered to what is demonstrably attainable, the loftiest legitimate ambition ever breathed in English verse would perhaps be found in those lines of " The Excursion" where an earnest wish is expressed for a System of National Education established universally by Govern-

INTRODUCTION xv

ment. The creed of the Revolution was a noble creed, and although Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, considered as the basis of a political system, have been sadly battered by critical artillery, they have not yet been so completely disgraced that it is forbidden to a poet to desire them. Only in a world where they shall be more desired than they are with us can they ever become possible. And the gist of Shelley's teaching lies not in this or that promise held out of future good, but in the means that he in- sists on for its realization. The elusive vague- ness of the millenium pictured in the weakest part of " Prometheus Unbound" detracts no whit from the loftiness and truth of the great speech of Demogorgon and the closing World- symphony. The early Christians, too, were deceived in their hopes of the millennium, but they, like the early alchemists, went not un- rewarded by " fair, unsought discoveries by the way."

The very vagueness of Shelley's poetry is an essential part of its charm. He speaks the language of pure emotion, where definite per- ceptions are melted in the mood they generate. Possessed by the desire of escape, he gazes calmly and steadily on nothing of earthly build. Every visible object is merely another starting- point for the cobwebs of dreams. Like his own poet,

" He will watch from dawn to gloom The lake-reflected sun illume

INTRODUCTION

The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, Nor heed nor see, what things they be ; But from these create he can Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality."

His thoughts travel incessantly from what he sees to what he desires, and his goal is no more distinctly conceived than his starting-place. His desire leaps forth towards its mark, but is consumed, like his fancied arrow, by the speed of its own flight. His devotion is "to some- thing afar from the sphere of our sorrow " ; the voices that he hears bear him vague messages and hints

" Of some world far from ours Where music and moonlight and feeling are one."

And this perfect lyrical vagueness produces some of the most ghostly and bodiless descrip- tions to be found in all poetry. His scenery is dream-scenery ; it can hardly be called cloud- scenery, for the clouds that tumble in a June sky are shapes of trim and substantial jollity compared with the shifting and diffused ether of his phantom visions. The scene of his poems is laid among

" Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumined caves, And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist."

And the inhabitants are even less definite in outline ; the spaces of his imagination are

" Peopled with unimaginable shapes,

Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deep."

INTRODUCTION xvii

The poet is himself native to this haunted and scarce visible world ; and when, in " Epipsychi- dion," he tells of the Being who communed with him in his youth, it is in this world that they meet:

" On ail imagined shore, Under the grey beak of some promontory She met me, robed in such exceeding glory, That I beheld her not."

It is pleasant to consider what a critic of the school of Johnson, if any had survived, would have said of these lines. " Here, Sir," he might have said, "he tells us merely that in a place which did not exist he met nobody. Whom did he expect to meet ? " Yet the spirit of Romance, which will listen to no logic but the logic of feeling, is prompt to vindicate Shelley. The kind of human experience that he sets himself to utter will not admit of chastened and exact language ; the homeless desires and intimations that seem to have no counterpart and no cause among visible things must create or divine their origin and object by suggestion and hyperbole, by groping analogies, and fluttering denials. To Shelley life is the great unreality, a painted veil, the triumphal procession of a pretender. Yet, here and there, in the works of Nature and of Art — " flowers, ruins, statues, music, words," — there are sudden inexplicable glories that speak of reality beyond. It is from the images and thoughts that are least of a piece with the daily economy of life, from the faithful attend-

xviii INTRODUCTION

ants that hang on the footsteps of our exiled per- ceptions, and from the dwellers on the boundary of our alienated world, from shadows and echoes, dreams and memories, yearnings and regrets, that he would learn to give expression to this hidden reality. Yet the very attempt defeats itself and is reduced to the bare negation of appearances. The highest beauty, as he de- scribes it, is always invisible ; the liveliest emo- tion passes into swoon, and takes on the likeness of death. Demogorgon, the lord of the Uni- verse, is " a mighty darkness, filling the seat of power."

So habitual and familiar was Shelley's con- verse with this spectral world that both in his thought and in his expression it held the place of what is commonly called the real world. The figures of his poetry illustrate what is strange by what is familiar, and it is the shadows and spirits that are familiar. The autumn leaves scurrying before the wind remind him of " ghosts from an enchanter fleeing." The skylark in the heavens is " like a poet hidden in the light of thought." The avalanche on the mountain is piled flake by flake, as thought by thought is piled in heaven-defying minds,

"Till some great truth Is loosened, and the nations echo round, Shaken to their roots."

It is his outward perceptions that he seeks to explain and justify by a reference to the ex-

INTRODUCTION xix

istences and forms that filled and controlled his daily meditations.

His poetry, as might be expected, has been found too remote and unsubstantial to satisfy the taste of many readers and even of some few lovers of poetry. It is lacking in human interest. The figures that he sets in motion are for the most part creatures of his own making, who have no tangible being outside the realm of his imagination. Minds that move naturally and easily only in the world of concrete existences are compelled to translate Shelley's poetry, as it were, into another dialect of the universal language, if they would grasp his meaning. Too often they have refused the task ; they have been content to float along on his melody, and to indulge their sense of colour with the delicate tints of his vision. Even when he is thus read, there is no denying the matchless quality of his poetic genius, or the absolute mastery of his art. But the wisdom of his reading of life, and the scope and depth of his thought, have some- times been questioned.

He died young, and the accumulated wis- dom of old experience was never within his reach. Yet before he died he had graduated in the school of suffering, and had there learned lessons that only the wise heart learns. " Pro- metheus Unbound " is something more than a dance of prismatic lights and a concert of sweet sounds ; it is a record of spiritual experience, subtle in its analysis, profound in its insight.

xx INTRODUCTION

The supreme torture of Prometheus, inflicted by the Furies, comes to him in the form of doubt — doubt lest his age-long sufferings should all be vain, and worse than vain. The Furies, who are " hollow underneath, like death," and who darken the dawn with their multitude, are the ministers of pain and fear, of mistrust and hate. They plant self-contempt and shame in young spirits ; they live in the heart and brain in the shape of base desires and craven thoughts. Of all passions, the ugliest in Shelley's eyes is Hate ; the most terrible and maleficent is Fear. But Prometheus through his long agony feels no fear, and no rancour ; the pity and love that endure in his heart are at last victorious, and the Furies, baffled, take themselves away. The first act is full of psychological study, and Shelley throughout is speaking of what he has felt and known and observed. But he embodies it in such unearthly forms, and so carefully avoids the allegorical manner, that the details of the drama, difficult as they often are of interpreta- tion, have been wrongly regarded as freaks of ornament and fantasy. The main idea, the conception of Love and Life as a dualism, and of Love as the sole principle of freedom, joy, beauty and harmony, in Nature and in Man, appears in Shelley's earlier poems, and strengthens with his growth, until it reaches its most magnificent expression in the radiant figure of Asia and the closing rhapsody of " Adonais."

INTRODUCTION xxi

"That Light whose smile kindles the Universe, That Beauty in which all things work and move, That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love Which through the web of being blindly wove By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst ; now beams on me Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality."

His early death, though it has endeared him the more to his lovers, has also deprived him of a full meed of critical appreciation. The bulk of reputable criticism is written by middle-aged men, who have made their peace with the world, on reasonable and honourable terms, perhaps, but not without concessions. How should they do full justice to the young rebels, the Marlowes and the Shelleys, who died under the standard of revolt ? They are tender to them, and tolerant, as to their younger selves. But they have accepted, where these refused, and they cannot always conceal their sense of the headstrong folly of the refusal. Nor can their judgment be disabled, for they have knowledge on their side, and experience, and the practical lore of life. Further, they can enlist poet against poet, and over against the heart that defies Power which seems omnipotent, they can set the heart that watches and receives. Is there not more of human wisdom to be learned from the quiet harvester of the twilight than from the glittering apostle of the dawn ? Yet there is a wisdom that is not born of acceptance; and the spirit

XX11

INTRODUCTION

that is to be tamed to the uses of this world, if it has much to learn, has something also to for- get. The severest criticism that the world and the uses of the world are called upon to undergo is that which looks out on them, ever afresh, from the surprised and troubled eyes of a child. In the debate of Youth and Age, neither can expect to have it all his own way. It is therefore no unqualified condemnation of Shelley's poetry to say that it appeals chiefly to the young. And it is not true to say that it appeals to no others. Many men, it has been said, are poets in their youth ; it would be truer to say that many born subjects of prose are tickled by sentiment in their youth, and beguiled by sense into believ- ing, for a time, that they love poetry. The love of poetry is not so easily eradicable ; it is not Time's fool,

"though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come,"

and wherever there are poets, to the end of time, Shelley will find lovers.

WALTER RALEIGH.

It is hoped that the present selection of Shelley's poems will be found to contain all of his best-loved lyrical pieces. There is no great poet who offers a more hopeless task to the illustrator, if by illustration is understood a drawing that helps to the understanding of the poem. But Art begets Art, and there is surely nothing illicit about an embroidery of fair designs suggested by a reading of the poems. If they be found superfluous or irrelevant, they must share that condemnation with the preface.

POEMS

BY

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

ALASTOR.

Oil THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE

Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare. — Confess. St. August.

ALASTOR OR THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE

EARTH, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood !

If our great Mother has imbued my soul

With aught of natural piety to feel

Your love, and recompense the boon with mine ;

If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,

With sunset and its gorgeous ministers,

And solemn midnight's tingling silentness ;

If autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood,

And winter robing with pure snow and crowns

Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs ;

If spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes

Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me ;

If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast

6 ALASTOR

I consciously have injured, but still loved And cherished these my kindred ; then forgive This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw No portion of your wonted favour now.

Mother of this unfathomable world ! Favour my solemn song, for I have loved Thee ever, and thee only ; I have watched Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps, And my heart ever gazes on the depth Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins, where black death Keeps record of the trophies won from thee, Hoping to still these obstinate questionings Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost, Thy messenger, to render up the tale Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, When night makes a weird sound of its own stilln< Like an inspired and desperate alchymist Staking his very life on some dark hope, Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks With my most innocent love, until strange tears Uniting with those breathless kisses, made Such magic as compels the charmed night To render up thy charge : . . . and, though ne'er yet Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary, Enough from incommunicable dream, And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought, Has shone within me, that serenely now And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre Suspended in the solitary dome Of some mysterious and deserted fane, I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain May modulate with murmurs of the air, And motions of the forests and the sea, And voice of living beings, and woven hymns Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.

ALASTOR

There was a Poet whose untimely tomb No human hands with pious reverence reared, But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness : — A lovely youth, — no mourning maiden decked With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath, The lone couch of his everlasting sleep : — Gentle, and brave, and generous, — no lorn bard Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh : He lived, he died, he sung, in solitude. Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes, And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes. The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn, And Silence, too enamoured of that voice, Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.

By solemn vision, and bright silver dream, His infancy was nurtured. Every sight And sound from the vast earth and ambient air, Sent to his heart its choicest impulses. The fountains of divine philosophy Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great, Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past In truth or fable consecrates, he felt And knew. When early youth had passed, he left His cold fireside and alienated home To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness Has lured his fearless steps ; and he has bought With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps He like her shadow has pursued, where'er The red volcano overcanopies Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes

ALASTOR

On black bare pointed islets ever beat With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves Rugged and dark, winding among the springs Of fire and poison, inaccessible To avarice or pride, their starry domes Of diamond and of gold expand above Numberless and immeasureable halls, Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite. Nor had that scene of ampler majesty Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven And the green earth, lost in his heart its claims To love and wonder ; he would linger long In lonesome vales, making the wild his home, Until the doves and squirrels would partake From his innocuous hand his bloodless food, Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks, And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend Her timid steps to gaze upon a form More graceful than her own.

His wandering step, Obedient to high thoughts, has visited The awful ruins of the days of old : Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange Sculptured on alabaster obelisk, Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphynx, Dark Aethiopia in her desert hills Conceals. Among the ruined temples there, Stupendous columns, and wild images Of more than man, where marble daemons watch The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around, He lingered, poring on memorials

ALASTOR

Of the world's youth, through the long burning day Gazed on those speechless shapes, nor, when the moon Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades, Suspended he that task, but ever gazed And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.

Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food, Her daily portion, from her father's tent, And spread her matting for his couch, and stole From duties and repose to tend his steps : — Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe To speak her love : — and watched his nightly sleep, Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath Of innocent dreams arose : then, when red morn Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned.

The Poet wandering on, through Arabic And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste, And o'er the aerial mountains which pour down Indus and Oxus from their icy caves, In joy and exultation held his way ; Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower, Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep There came, a dream of hopes that never yet Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones. Her voice was like the voice of his own soul Heard in the calm of thought ; its music long, Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held His inmost sense suspended in its web

io ALASTOR

Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues.

Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme

And lofty hopes of divine liberty,

Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,

Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood

Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame

A permeating fire : wild numbers then

She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs

Subdued by its own pathos : her fair hands

Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp

Strange symphony, and in their branching veins

The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.

The beating of her heart was heard to fill

The pauses of her music, and her breath

Tumultuously accorded with those fits

Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose,

As if her heart impatiently endured

Its bursting burthen : at the sound he turned,

And saw by the warm light of their own life

Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil

Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,

Her dark locks floating in the breath of night,

Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips

Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly.

His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess

Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled

His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet

Her panting bosom : . . . she drew back a while,

Then, yielding to the irresistible joy,

With frantic gesture and short breathless cry

Folded his frame in her dissolving arms.

Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night

Involved and swallowed up the vision ; sleep,

Like a dark flood suspended in its course,

Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.

Roused by the shock he started from his trance —

ALASTOR ii

The cold white light of morning, the blue moon

Low in the west, the clear and garish hills,

The distinct valley and the vacant woods,

Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled

The hues of heaven that canopied his bower

Of yesternight ? The sounds that soothed his sleep,

The mystery and the majesty of Earth,

The joy, the exultation ? His wan eyes

Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly

As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven.

The spirit of sweet human love has sent

A vision to the sleep of him who spurned

Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues

Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade ;

He overleaps the bounds. Alas ! alas !

Were limbs, and breath, and being intertwined

Thus treacherously ? Lost, lost, for ever lost,

In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep,

That beautiful shape ! Does the dark gate of death

Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,

O Sleep ? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds,

And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake,

Lead only to a black and watery depth,

While death's blue vault, with loathliest vapours hung,

Where every shade which the foul grave exhales

Hides its dead eye from the detested day,

Conduct, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms ?

This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart,

The insatiate hope which it awakened stung

His brain even like despair.

While day-light held The sky, the Poet kept mute conference With his still soul. At night the passion came, Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream, And shook him from his rest, and led him forth Into the darkness. — As an eagle grasped In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast

12 ALASTOR

Burn with the poison, and precipitates

Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud,

Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight

O'er the wide aery wilderness : thus driven

By the bright shadow of that lovely dream,

Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night,

Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells,

Startling with careless step the moon-light snake,

He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight,

Shedding the mockery of its vital hues

Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on

Till vast Aornos seen from Petra's steep

Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud ;

Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs

Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind

Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on,

Day after day, a weary waste of hours,

Bearing within his life the brooding care

That ever fed on its decaying flame.

And now his limbs were lean ; his scattered hair

Sered by the autumn of strange suffering

Sung dirges in the wind ; his listless hand

Hung like dead bone within its withered skin ;

Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone

As in a furnace burning secretly

From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers,

Who ministered with human charity

His human wants, beheld with wondering awe

Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer,

Encountering on some dizzy precipice

That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind

With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet

Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused

In its career : the infant would conceal

His troubled visage in his mother's robe

In terror at the glare of those wild eyes,

To remember their strange light in many a dream

ALASTOR

Of after-times ; but youthful maidens, taught By nature, would interpret half the woe That wasted him, would call him with false names Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path Of his departure from their father's door.

At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore He paused, a wide and melancholy waste Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. It rose as he approached, and with strong wings Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course High over the immeasurable main. His eyes pursued its flight. — " Thou hast a home, Beautiful bird ; thou voyagest to thine home, Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. And what am I that I should linger here, With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven That echoes not my thoughts ? " A gloomy smile Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly Its precious charge, and silent death exposed, Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure, With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.

Startled by his own thoughts he looked around. There was no fair fiend near him not a sight Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind. A little shallop floating near the shore Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze.

16 ALASTOR

It had been long abandoned, for its sides

Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints

Swayed with the undulations of the tide.

A restless impulse urged him to embark

And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste

For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves

The slimy caverns of the populous deep.

The day was fair and sunny, sea and sky Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves. Following his eager soul, the wanderer Leaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloft On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat, And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil sea Like a torn cloud before the hurricane.

As one that in a silver vision floats Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly Along the dark and ruffled waters fled The straining boat. — A whirlwind swept it on, With fierce gusts and precipitating force, Through the white ridges of the chafed sea. The waves arose. Higher and higher still Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest's scourge Like serpents struggling in a vulture's grasp. Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven With dark obliterating course, he sate : As if their genii were the ministers Appointed to conduct him to the light Of