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- Herausgeber: e-artnow
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
This carefully crafted ebook collection is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: The Daemon of the World Alastor: or, the Spirit of Solitude. The Revolt of Islam Prince Athanase Rosalind and Helen Julian and Maddalo Prometheus Unbound The Cenci – A Tragedy in Five Acts The Mask of Anarchy Peter Bell the Third Letter to Maria Gisborne The Witch of Atlas Oedipus Tyrannus Epipsychidion Adonais Hellas Fragments of an Unfinished Drama Charles the First The Triumph of Life Early Poems (1814, 1815): Stanza, Written at Bracknell Stanzas — April, 1814 To Harriet To Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Mutability On Death A Summer Evening Churchyard To Wordsworth Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte Lines… Poems Written in 1816-1822: The Sunset Hymn to Intellectual Beauty Mont Blanc Home Fragment of a Ghost Story Marianne's Dream To Constantia, Singing To Constantia To Music 'Mighty Eagle' To William Shelley On Fanny Godwin Death Otho A Hate-Song Lines to a Critic Ozymandias To the Nile Passage of the Apennines The Past To Mary On a Faded Violet October, 1818 Song for 'Tasso' Invocation to Misery The Woodman and the Nightingale Marenghi Sonnet To Byron Apostrophe to Silence The Lake's Margin The Vine-Shroud Song to the Men of England To the People of England 'What Men Gain Fairly' A New National Anthem Ode to Heaven Ode to the West Wind An Exhortation Love's Philosophy The Birth of Pleasure Rain A Tale Untold To Italy Wine of the Fairies A Roman's Chamber Rome and Nature The Sensitive Plant A Vision of the Sea The Cloud To a Skylark Ode to Liberty Dirge for the Year To Night Time The Fugitives The Zucca The Isle… Translations: Hymn to Mercury Homer's Hymns The Cyclops Epigrams from the Greek Pan, Echo, and the Satyr Ugolino…. Juvenilia: Queen Mab Verses on a Cat Omens Epitaphium In Horologium To the Moonbeam The Solitary Love's Rose The Devil's Walk To the Queen of My Heart… Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things A Defence of Poetry – Essay by Shelley Shelley – Biography by John Addington Symonds
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The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley
Table of Contents
Preface by Mrs. Shelley to 1839 Edition
Obstacles have long existed to my presenting the public with a perfect edition of Shelley’s Poems. These being at last happily removed, I hasten to fulfil an important duty — that of giving the productions of a sublime genius to the world, with all the correctness possible, and of, at the same time, detailing the history of those productions, as they sprang, living and warm, from his heart and brain. I abstain from any remark on the occurrences of his private life, except inasmuch as the passions which they engendered inspired his poetry. This is not the time to relate the truth; and I should reject any colouring of the truth. No account of these events has ever been given at all approaching reality in their details, either as regards himself or others; nor shall I further allude to them than to remark that the errors of action committed by a man as noble and generous as Shelley, may, as far as he only is concerned, be fearlessly avowed by those who loved him, in the firm conviction that, were they judged impartially, his character would stand in fairer and brighter light than that of any contemporary. Whatever faults he had ought to find extenuation among his fellows, since they prove him to be human; without them, the exalted nature of his soul would have raised him into something divine.
The qualities that struck any one newly introduced to Shelley were — First, a gentle and cordial goodness that animated his intercourse with warm affection and helpful sympathy. The other, the eagerness and ardour with which he was attached to the cause of human happiness and improvement; and the fervent eloquence with which he discussed such subjects. His conversation was marked by its happy abundance, and the beautiful language in which he clothed his poetic ideas and philosophical notions. To defecate life of its misery and its evil was the ruling passion of his soul; he dedicated to it every power of his mind, every pulsation of his heart. He looked on political freedom as the direct agent to effect the happiness of mankind; and thus any new-sprung hope of liberty inspired a joy and an exultation more intense and wild than he could have felt for any personal advantage. Those who have never experienced the workings of passion on general and unselfish subjects cannot understand this; and it must be difficult of comprehension to the younger generation rising around, since they cannot remember the scorn and hatred with which the partisans of reform were regarded some few years ago, nor the persecutions to which they were exposed. He had been from youth the victim of the state of feeling inspired by the reaction of the French Revolution; and believing firmly in the justice and excellence of his views, it cannot be wondered that a nature as sensitive, as impetuous, and as generous as his, should put its whole force into the attempt to alleviate for others the evils of those systems from which he had himself suffered. Many advantages attended his birth; he spurned them all when balanced with what he considered his duties. He was generous to imprudence, devoted to heroism.
These characteristics breathe throughout his poetry. The struggle for human weal; the resolution firm to martyrdom; the impetuous pursuit, the glad triumph in good; the determination not to despair; — such were the features that marked those of his works which he regarded with most complacency, as sustained by a lofty subject and useful aim.
In addition to these, his poems may be divided into two classes — the purely imaginative, and those which sprang from the emotions of his heart. Among the former may be classed the “Witch of Atlas”, “Adonais”, and his latest composition, left imperfect, the “Triumph of Life”. In the first of these particularly he gave the reins to his fancy, and luxuriated in every idea as it rose; in all there is that sense of mystery which formed an essential portion of his perception of life — a clinging to the subtler inner spirit, rather than to the outward form — a curious and metaphysical anatomy of human passion and perception.
The second class is, of course, the more popular, as appealing at once to emotions common to us all; some of these rest on the passion of love; others on grief and despondency; others on the sentiments inspired by natural objects. Shelley’s conception of love was exalted, absorbing, allied to all that is purest and noblest in our nature, and warmed by earnest passion; such it appears when he gave it a voice in verse. Yet he was usually averse to expressing these feelings, except when highly idealized; and many of his more beautiful effusions he had cast aside unfinished, and they were never seen by me till after I had lost him. Others, as for instance “Rosalind and Helen” and “Lines written among the Euganean Hills”, I found among his papers by chance; and with some difficulty urged him to complete them. There are others, such as the “Ode to the Skylark and The Cloud”, which, in the opinion of many critics, bear a purer poetical stamp than any other of his productions. They were written as his mind prompted: listening to the carolling of the bird, aloft in the azure sky of Italy; or marking the cloud as it sped across the heavens, while he floated in his boat on the Thames.
No poet was ever warmed by a more genuine and unforced inspiration. His extreme sensibility gave the intensity of passion to his intellectual pursuits; and rendered his mind keenly alive to every perception of outward objects, as well as to his internal sensations. Such a gift is, among the sad vicissitudes of human life, the disappointments we meet, and the galling sense of our own mistakes and errors, fraught with pain; to escape from such, he delivered up his soul to poetry, and felt happy when he sheltered himself, from the influence of human sympathies, in the wildest regions of fancy. His imagination has been termed too brilliant, his thoughts too subtle. He loved to idealize reality; and this is a taste shared by few. We are willing to have our passing whims exalted into passions, for this gratifies our vanity; but few of us understand or sympathize with the endeavour to ally the love of abstract beauty, and adoration of abstract good, the to agathon kai to kalon of the Socratic philosophers, with our sympathies with our kind. In this, Shelley resembled Plato; both taking more delight in the abstract and the ideal than in the special and tangible. This did not result from imitation; for it was not till Shelley resided in Italy that he made Plato his study. He then translated his “Symposium” and his “Ion”; and the English language boasts of no more brilliant composition than Plato’s Praise of Love translated by Shelley. To return to his own poetry. The luxury of imagination, which sought nothing beyond itself (as a child burdens itself with spring flowers, thinking of no use beyond the enjoyment of gathering them), often showed itself in his verses: they will be only appreciated by minds which have resemblance to his own; and the mystic subtlety of many of his thoughts will share the same fate. The metaphysical strain that characterizes much of what he has written was, indeed, the portion of his works to which, apart from those whose scope was to awaken mankind to aspirations for what he considered the true and good, he was himself particularly attached. There is much, however, that speaks to the many. When he would consent to dismiss these huntings after the obscure (which, entwined with his nature as they were, he did with difficulty), no poet ever expressed in sweeter, more heart-reaching, or more passionate verse, the gentler or more forcible emotions of the soul.
A wise friend once wrote to Shelley: ‘You are still very young, and in certain essential respects you do not yet sufficiently perceive that you are so.’ It is seldom that the young know what youth is, till they have got beyond its period; and time was not given him to attain this knowledge. It must be remembered that there is the stamp of such inexperience on all he wrote; he had not completed his nine-and-twentieth year when he died. The calm of middle life did not add the seal of the virtues which adorn maturity to those generated by the vehement spirit of youth. Through life also he was a martyr to ill-health, and constant pain wound up his nerves to a pitch of susceptibility that rendered his views of life different from those of a man in the enjoyment of healthy sensations. Perfectly gentle and forbearing in manner, he suffered a good deal of internal irritability, or rather excitement, and his fortitude to bear was almost always on the stretch; and thus, during a short life, he had gone through more experience of sensation than many whose existence is protracted. ‘If I die to-morrow,’ he said, on the eve of his unanticipated death, ‘I have lived to be older than my father.’ The weight of thought and feeling burdened him heavily; you read his sufferings in his attenuated frame, while you perceived the mastery he held over them in his animated countenance and brilliant eyes.
He died, and the world showed no outward sign. But his influence over mankind, though slow in growth, is fast augmenting; and, in the ameliorations that have taken place in the political state of his country, we may trace in part the operation of his arduous struggles. His spirit gathers peace in its new state from the sense that, though late, his exertions were not made in vain, and in the progress of the liberty he so fondly loved.
He died, and his place, among those who knew him intimately, has never been filled up. He walked beside them like a spirit of good to comfort and benefit — to enlighten the darkness of life with irradiations of genius, to cheer it with his sympathy and love. Any one, once attached to Shelley, must feel all other affections, however true and fond, as wasted on barren soil in comparison. It is our best consolation to know that such a pure-minded and exalted being was once among us, and now exists where we hope one day to join him; — although the intolerant, in their blindness, poured down anathemas, the Spirit of Good, who can judge the heart, never rejected him.
In the notes appended to the poems I have endeavoured to narrate the origin and history of each. The loss of nearly all letters and papers which refer to his early life renders the execution more imperfect than it would otherwise have been. I have, however, the liveliest recollection of all that was done and said during the period of my knowing him. Every impression is as clear as if stamped yesterday, and I have no apprehension of any mistake in my statements as far as they go. In other respects I am indeed incompetent: but I feel the importance of the task, and regard it as my most sacred duty. I endeavour to fulfil it in a manner he would himself approve; and hope, in this publication, to lay the first stone of a monument due to Shelley’s genius, his sufferings, and his virtues:—
Se al seguir son tarda,Forse avverra che ‘l bel nome gentileConsacrero con questa stanca penna.
Postscript in 1839 Edition
In revising this new edition, and carefully consulting Shelley’s scattered and confused papers, I found a few fragments which had hitherto escaped me, and was enabled to complete a few poems hitherto left unfinished. What at one time escapes the searching eye, dimmed by its own earnestness, becomes clear at a future period. By the aid of a friend, I also present some poems complete and correct which hitherto have been defaced by various mistakes and omissions. It was suggested that the poem “To the Queen of my Heart” was falsely attributed to Shelley. I certainly find no trace of it among his papers; and, as those of his intimate friends whom I have consulted never heard of it, I omit it.
Two poems are added of some length, “Swellfoot the Tyrant” and “Peter Bell the Third”. I have mentioned the circumstances under which they were written in the notes; and need only add that they are conceived in a very different spirit from Shelley’s usual compositions. They are specimens of the burlesque and fanciful; but, although they adopt a familiar style and homely imagery, there shine through the radiance of the poet’s imagination the earnest views and opinions of the politician and the moralist.
At my request the publisher has restored the omitted passages of “Queen Mab”. I now present this edition as a complete collection of my husband’s poetical works, and I do not foresee that I can hereafter add to or take away a word or line.
Putney, November 6, 1839.
Preface by Mrs. Shelley to the Posthumous Poems, 1824
In nobil sangue vita umile e queta,Ed in alto intelletto un puro coreFrutto senile in sul giovenil fibre,E in aspetto pensoso anima lieta.
— PETRARCA.
It had been my wish, on presenting the public with the Posthumous Poems of Mr. Shelley, to have accompanied them by a biographical notice; as it appeared to me that at this moment a narration of the events of my husband’s life would come more gracefully from other hands than mine, I applied to Mr. Leigh Hunt. The distinguished friendship that Mr. Shelley felt for him, and the enthusiastic affection with which Mr. Leigh Hunt clings to his friend’s memory, seemed to point him out as the person best calculated for such an undertaking. His absence from this country, which prevented our mutual explanation, has unfortunately rendered my scheme abortive. I do not doubt but that on some other occasion he will pay this tribute to his lost friend, and sincerely regret that the volume which I edit has not been honoured by its insertion.
The comparative solitude in which Mr. Shelley lived was the occasion that he was personally known to few; and his fearless enthusiasm in the cause which he considered the most sacred upon earth, the improvement of the moral and physical state of mankind, was the chief reason why he, like other illustrious reformers, was pursued by hatred and calumny. No man was ever more devoted than he to the endeavour of making those around him happy; no man ever possessed friends more unfeignedly attached to him. The ungrateful world did not feel his loss, and the gap it made seemed to close as quickly over his memory as the murderous sea above his living frame. Hereafter men will lament that his transcendent powers of intellect were extinguished before they had bestowed on them their choicest treasures. To his friends his loss is irremediable: the wise, the brave, the gentle, is gone for ever! He is to them as a bright vision, whose radiant track, left behind in the memory, is worth all the realities that society can afford. Before the critics contradict me, let them appeal to any one who had ever known him. To see him was to love him: and his presence, like Ithuriel’s spear, was alone sufficient to disclose the falsehood of the tale which his enemies whispered in the ear of the ignorant world.
His life was spent in the contemplation of Nature, in arduous study, or in acts of kindness and affection. He was an elegant scholar and a profound metaphysician; without possessing much scientific knowledge, he was unrivalled in the justness and extent of his observations on natural objects; he knew every plant by its name, and was familiar with the history and habits of every production of the earth; he could interpret without a fault each appearance in the sky; and the varied phenomena of heaven and earth filled him with deep emotion. He made his study and reading-room of the shadowed copse, the stream, the lake, and the waterfall. Ill health and continual pain preyed upon his powers; and the solitude in which we lived, particularly on our first arrival in Italy, although congenial to his feelings, must frequently have weighed upon his spirits; those beautiful and affecting “Lines written in Dejection near Naples” were composed at such an interval; but, when in health, his spirits were buoyant and youthful to an extraordinary degree.
Such was his love for Nature that every page of his poetry is associated, in the minds of his friends, with the loveliest scenes of the countries which he inhabited. In early life he visited the most beautiful parts of this country and Ireland. Afterwards the Alps of Switzerland became his inspirers. “Prometheus Unbound” was written among the deserted and flower-grown ruins of Rome; and, when he made his home under the Pisan hills, their roofless recesses harboured him as he composed the “Witch of Atlas”, “Adonais”, and “Hellas”. In the wild but beautiful Bay of Spezzia, the winds and waves which he loved became his playmates. His days were chiefly spent on the water; the management of his boat, its alterations and improvements, were his principal occupation. At night, when the unclouded moon shone on the calm sea, he often went alone in his little shallop to the rocky caves that bordered it, and, sitting beneath their shelter, wrote the “Triumph of Life”, the last of his productions. The beauty but strangeness of this lonely place, the refined pleasure which he felt in the companionship of a few selected friends, our entire sequestration from the rest of the world, all contributed to render this period of his life one of continued enjoyment. I am convinced that the two months we passed there were the happiest which he had ever known: his health even rapidly improved, and he was never better than when I last saw him, full of spirits and joy, embark for Leghorn, that he might there welcome Leigh Hunt to Italy. I was to have accompanied him; but illness confined me to my room, and thus put the seal on my misfortune. His vessel bore out of sight with a favourable wind, and I remained awaiting his return by the breakers of that sea which was about to engulf him.
He spent a week at Pisa, employed in kind offices toward his friend, and enjoying with keen delight the renewal of their intercourse. He then embarked with Mr. Williams, the chosen and beloved sharer of his pleasures and of his fate, to return to us. We waited for them in vain; the sea by its restless moaning seemed to desire to inform us of what we would not learn:— but a veil may well be drawn over such misery. The real anguish of those moments transcended all the fictions that the most glowing imagination ever portrayed; our seclusion, the savage nature of the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, and our immediate vicinity to the troubled sea, combined to imbue with strange horror our days of uncertainty. The truth was at last known — a truth that made our loved and lovely Italy appear a tomb, its sky a pall. Every heart echoed the deep lament, and my only consolation was in the praise and earnest love that each voice bestowed and each countenance demonstrated for him we had lost — not, I fondly hope, for ever; his unearthly and elevated nature is a pledge of the continuation of his being, although in an altered form. Rome received his ashes; they are deposited beneath its weed-grown wall, and ‘the world’s sole monument’ is enriched by his remains.
I must add a few words concerning the contents of this volume. “Julian and Maddalo”, the “Witch of Atlas”, and most of the “Translations”, were written some years ago; and, with the exception of the “Cyclops”, and the Scenes from the “Magico Prodigioso”, may be considered as having received the author’s ultimate corrections. The “Triumph of Life” was his last work, and was left in so unfinished a state that I arranged it in its present form with great difficulty. All his poems which were scattered in periodical works are collected in this volume, and I have added a reprint of “Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude”: the difficulty with which a copy can be obtained is the cause of its republication. Many of the Miscellaneous Poems, written on the spur of the occasion, and never retouched, I found among his manuscript books, and have carefully copied. I have subjoined, whenever I have been able, the date of their composition.
I do not know whether the critics will reprehend the insertion of some of the most imperfect among them; but I frankly own that I have been more actuated by the fear lest any monument of his genius should escape me than the wish of presenting nothing but what was complete to the fastidious reader. I feel secure that the lovers of Shelley’s poetry (who know how, more than any poet of the present day, every line and word he wrote is instinct with peculiar beauty) will pardon and thank me: I consecrate this volume to them.
The size of this collection has prevented the insertion of any prose pieces. They will hereafter appear in a separate publication.
MARY W. SHELLEY.London, June 1, 1824.
The Daemon of the World
A Fragment
Part 1
Nec tantum prodere vati,Quantum scire licet. Venit aetas omnis in unamCongeriem, miserumque premunt tot saecula pectus.
— LUCAN, Phars. v. 176.
How wonderful is Death,Death and his brother Sleep!One pale as yonder wan and horned moon,With lips of lurid blue,
The other glowing like the vital morn,When throned on ocean’s waveIt breathes over the world:Yet both so passing strange and wonderful!
Hath then the iron-sceptred Skeleton,
Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres,To the hell dogs that couch beneath his throneCast that fair prey? Must that divinest form,Which love and admiration cannot viewWithout a beating heart, whose azure veins
Steal like dark streams along a field of snow,Whose outline is as fair as marble clothedIn light of some sublimest mind, decay?Nor putrefaction’s breathLeave aught of this pure spectacle
But loathsomeness and ruin? —Spare aught but a dark theme,On which the lightest heart might moralize?Or is it but that downy-winged slumbersHave charmed their nurse coy Silence near her lids
To watch their own repose?Will they, when morning’s beamFlows through those wells of light,Seek far from noise and day some western cave,Where woods and streams with soft and pausing winds
A lulling murmur weave? —Ianthe doth not sleepThe dreamless sleep of death:Nor in her moonlight chamber silentlyDoth Henry hear her regular pulses throb,
Or mark her delicate cheekWith interchange of hues mock the broad moon,Outwatching weary night,Without assured reward.Her dewy eyes are closed;
On their translucent lids, whose texture fineScarce hides the dark blue orbs that burn belowWith unapparent fire,The baby Sleep is pillowed:Her golden tresses shade
The bosom’s stainless pride,Twining like tendrils of the parasiteAround a marble column.
Hark! whence that rushing sound?’Tis like a wondrous strain that sweeps
Around a lonely ruinWhen west winds sigh and evening waves respondIn whispers from the shore:’Tis wilder than the unmeasured notesWhich from the unseen lyres of dells and groves
The genii of the breezes sweep.Floating on waves of music and of light,The chariot of the Daemon of the WorldDescends in silent power:Its shape reposed within: slight as some cloud
That catches but the palest tinge of dayWhen evening yields to night,Bright as that fibrous woof when stars indueIts transitory robe.Four shapeless shadows bright and beautiful
Draw that strange car of glory, reins of lightCheck their unearthly speed; they stop and foldTheir wings of braided air:The Daemon leaning from the ethereal carGazed on the slumbering maid.
Human eye hath ne’er beheldA shape so wild, so bright, so beautiful,As that which o’er the maiden’s charmed sleepWaving a starry wand,Hung like a mist of light.
Such sounds as breathed around like odorous windsOf wakening spring arose,Filling the chamber and the moonlight sky.Maiden, the world’s supremest spiritBeneath the shadow of her wings
Folds all thy memory doth inheritFrom ruin of divinest things,Feelings that lure thee to betray,And light of thoughts that pass away.For thou hast earned a mighty boon,
The truths which wisest poets seeDimly, thy mind may make its own,Rewarding its own majesty,Entranced in some diviner moodOf self-oblivious solitude.
Custom, and Faith, and Power thou spurnest;From hate and awe thy heart is free;Ardent and pure as day thou burnest,For dark and cold mortalityA living light, to cheer it long,
The watch-fires of the world among.
Therefore from nature’s inner shrine,Where gods and fiends in worship bend,Majestic spirit, be it thineThe flame to seize, the veil to rend,
Where the vast snake EternityIn charmed sleep doth ever lie.
All that inspires thy voice of love,Or speaks in thy unclosing eyes,Or through thy frame doth burn or move,
Or think or feel, awake, arise!Spirit, leave for mine and meEarth’s unsubstantial mimicry!
It ceased, and from the mute and moveless frameA radiant spirit arose,
All beautiful in naked purity.Robed in its human hues it did ascend,Disparting as it went the silver clouds,It moved towards the car, and took its seatBeside the Daemon shape.
Obedient to the sweep of aery song,The mighty ministersUnfurled their prismy wings.The magic car moved on;The night was fair, innumerable stars
Studded heaven’s dark blue vault;The eastern wave grew paleWith the first smile of morn.The magic car moved on.From the swift sweep of wings
The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew;And where the burning wheelsEddied above the mountain’s loftiest peakWas traced a line of lightning.Now far above a rock the utmost verge
Of the wide earth it flew,The rival of the Andes, whose dark browFrowned o’er the silver sea.Far, far below the chariot’s stormy path,Calm as a slumbering babe,
Tremendous ocean lay.Its broad and silent mirror gave to viewThe pale and waning stars,The chariot’s fiery track,And the grey light of morn
Tingeing those fleecy cloudsThat cradled in their folds the infant dawn.The chariot seemed to flyThrough the abyss of an immense concave,Radiant with million constellations, tinged
With shades of infinite colour,And semicircled with a beltFlashing incessant meteors.
As they approached their goal,The winged shadows seemed to gather speed.
The sea no longer was distinguished; earthAppeared a vast and shadowy sphere, suspendedIn the black concave of heavenWith the sun’s cloudless orb,Whose rays of rapid light
Parted around the chariot’s swifter course,And fell like ocean’s feathery sprayDashed from the boiling surgeBefore a vessel’s prow.
The magic car moved on.
Earth’s distant orb appearedThe smallest light that twinkles in the heavens,Whilst round the chariot’s wayInnumerable systems widely rolled,And countless spheres diffused
An ever varying glory.It was a sight of wonder! Some were horned,And like the moon’s argentine crescent hungIn the dark dome of heaven; some did shedA clear mild beam like Hesperus, while the sea
Yet glows with fading sunlight; others dashedAthwart the night with trains of bickering fire,Like sphered worlds to death and ruin driven;Some shone like stars, and as the chariot passedBedimmed all other light.
Spirit of Nature! hereIn this interminable wildernessOf worlds, at whose involved immensityEven soaring fancy staggers,Here is thy fitting temple.
Yet not the lightest leafThat quivers to the passing breezeIs less instinct with thee —Yet not the meanest worm.That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead,
Less shares thy eternal breath.Spirit of Nature! thouImperishable as this glorious scene,Here is thy fitting temple.
If solitude hath ever led thy steps
To the shore of the immeasurable sea,And thou hast lingered thereUntil the sun’s broad orbSeemed resting on the fiery line of ocean,Thou must have marked the braided webs of gold
That without motion hangOver the sinking sphere:Thou must have marked the billowy mountain clouds,Edged with intolerable radiancy,Towering like rocks of jet
Above the burning deep:And yet there is a momentWhen the sun’s highest pointPeers like a star o’er ocean’s western edge,When those far clouds of feathery purple gleam
Like fairy lands girt by some heavenly sea:Then has thy rapt imagination soaredWhere in the midst of all existing thingsThe temple of the mightiest Daemon stands.
Yet not the golden islands
That gleam amid yon flood of purple light,Nor the feathery curtainsThat canopy the sun’s resplendent couch,Nor the burnished ocean wavesPaving that gorgeous dome,
So fair, so wonderful a sightAs the eternal temple could afford.The elements of all that human thoughtCan frame of lovely or sublime, did joinTo rear the fabric of the fane, nor aught
Of earth may image forth its majesty.Yet likest evening’s vault that faery hall,As heaven low resting on the wave it spreadIts floors of flashing light,Its vast and azure dome;
And on the verge of that obscure abyssWhere crystal battlements o’erhang the gulfOf the dark world, ten thousand spheres diffuseTheir lustre through its adamantine gates.
The magic car no longer moved;
The Daemon and the SpiritEntered the eternal gates.Those clouds of aery goldThat slept in glittering billowsBeneath the azure canopy,
With the ethereal footsteps trembled not;While slight and odorous mistsFloated to strains of thrilling melodyThrough the vast columns and the pearly shrines.
The Daemon and the Spirit
Approached the overhanging battlement,Below lay stretched the boundless universe!There, far as the remotest lineThat limits swift imagination’s flight.Unending orbs mingled in mazy motion,
Immutably fulfillingEternal Nature’s law.Above, below, around,The circling systems formedA wilderness of harmony.
Each with undeviating aimIn eloquent silence through the depths of spacePursued its wondrous way. —
Awhile the Spirit paused in ecstasy.Yet soon she saw, as the vast spheres swept by,
Strange things within their belted orbs appear.Like animated frenzies, dimly movedShadows, and skeletons, and fiendly shapes,Thronging round human graves, and o’er the deadSculpturing records for each memory
In verse, such as malignant gods pronounce,Blasting the hopes of men, when heaven and hellConfounded burst in ruin o’er the world:And they did build vast trophies, instrumentsOf murder, human bones, barbaric gold,
Skins torn from living men, and towers of skullsWith sightless holes gazing on blinder heaven,Mitres, and crowns, and brazen chariots stainedWith blood, and scrolls of mystic wickedness,The sanguine codes of venerable crime.
The likeness of a throned king came by.When these had passed, bearing upon his browA threefold crown; his countenance was calm.His eye severe and cold; but his right handWas charged with bloody coin, and he did gnaw
By fits, with secret smiles, a human heartConcealed beneath his robe; and motley shapes,A multitudinous throng, around him knelt.With bosoms bare, and bowed heads, and false looksOf true submission, as the sphere rolled by.
Brooking no eye to witness their foul shame,Which human hearts must feel, while human tonguesTremble to speak, they did rage horribly,Breathing in self-contempt fierce blasphemiesAgainst the Daemon of the World, and high
Hurling their armed hands where the pure Spirit,Serene and inaccessibly secure,
Part 2
O happy Earth! reality of Heaven!To which those restless powers that ceaselesslyThrong through the human universe aspire;
Thou consummation of all mortal hope!Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will!Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time,Verge to one point and blend for ever there:Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place!
Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime,Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come:O happy Earth, reality of Heaven!
Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams,And dim forebodings of thy loveliness,
Haunting the human heart, have there entwinedThose rooted hopes, that the proud Power of EvilShall not for ever on this fairest worldShake pestilence and war, or that his slavesWith blasphemy for prayer, and human blood
For sacrifice, before his shrine for everIn adoration bend, or ErebusWith all its banded fiends shall not upriseTo overwhelm in envy and revengeThe dauntless and the good, who dare to hurl
Defiance at his throne, girt tho’ it beWith Death’s omnipotence. Thou hast beheldHis empire, o’er the present and the past;It was a desolate sight — now gaze on mine,Futurity. Thou hoary giant Time,
Render thou up thy half-devoured babes —And from the cradles of eternity,Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleepBy the deep murmuring stream of passing things,Tear thou that gloomy shroud. — Spirit, beholdThy glorious destiny!
The Spirit sawThe vast frame of the renovated worldSmile in the lap of Chaos, and the senseOf hope thro’ her fine texture did suffuseSuch varying glow, as summer evening casts
On undulating clouds and deepening lakes.Like the vague sighings of a wind at even,That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering seaAnd dies on the creation of its breath,And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits,
Was the sweet stream of thought that with wild motionFlowed o’er the Spirit’s human sympathies.The mighty tide of thought had paused awhile,Which from the Daemon now like Ocean’s streamAgain began to pour. —
To me is given
The wonders of the human world to keep —Space, matter, time and mind — let the sightRenew and strengthen all thy failing hope.All things are recreated, and the flameOf consentaneous love inspires all life:
The fertile bosom of the earth gives suckTo myriads, who still grow beneath her care,Rewarding her with their pure perfectness:The balmy breathings of the wind inhaleHer virtues, and diffuse them all abroad:
Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere,Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream;No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven,Nor scatter in the freshness of its prideThe foliage of the undecaying trees;
But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair,And Autumn proudly bears her matron grace,Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of Spring,Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruitReflects its tint and blushes into love.
The habitable earth is full of bliss;Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurledBy everlasting snow-storms round the poles,Where matter dared not vegetate nor live,But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude
Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed;And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy islesRuffle the placid ocean-deep, that rollsIts broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet
To murmur through the heaven-breathing grovesAnd melodise with man’s blest nature there.
The vast tract of the parched and sandy wasteNow teems with countless rills and shady woods,Corn-fields and pastures and white cottages;
And where the startled wilderness did hearA savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,Hymmng his victory, or the milder snakeCrushing the bones of some frail antelopeWithin his brazen folds — the dewy lawn,
Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smilesTo see a babe before his mother’s door,Share with the green and golden basiliskThat comes to lick his feet, his morning’s meal.
Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail
Has seen, above the illimitable plain,Morning on night and night on morning rise,Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spreadIts shadowy mountains on the sunbright sea,Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves
So long have mingled with the gusty windIn melancholy loneliness, and sweptThe desert of those ocean solitudes,But vocal to the sea-bird’s harrowing shriek,The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm,
Now to the sweet and many-mingling soundsOf kindliest human impulses respond:Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem,With lightsome clouds and shining seas between,And fertile valleys resonant with bliss,
Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave,Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore,To meet the kisses of the flowerets there.
Man chief perceives the change, his being notesThe gradual renovation, and defines
Each movement of its progress on his mind.Man, where the gloom of the long polar nightLowered o’er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil,Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frostBasked in the moonlight’s ineffectual glow,
Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night;Nor where the tropics bound the realms of dayWith a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame,Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphereScattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed
Unnatural vegetation, where the landTeemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease,Was man a nobler being; slaveryHad crushed him to his country’s blood-stained dust.
Even where the milder zone afforded man
A seeming shelter, yet contagion there,Blighting his being with unnumbered ills,Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth availedTill late to arrest its progress, or createThat peace which first in bloodless victory waved
Her snowy standard o’er this favoured clime:There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,The mimic of surrounding misery,The jackal of ambition’s lion-rage,The bloodhound of religion’s hungry zeal.
Here now the human being stands adorningThis loveliest earth with taintless body and mind;Blest from his birth with all bland impulses,Which gently in his noble bosom wakeAll kindly passions and all pure desires.
Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing,Which from the exhaustless lore of human wealDawns on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that riseIn time-destroying infiniteness giftWith self-enshrined eternity, that mocks
The unprevailing hoariness of age,And man, once fleeting o’er the transient sceneSwift as an unremembered vision, standsImmortal upon earth: no longer nowHe slays the beast that sports around his dwelling
And horribly devours its mangled flesh,Or drinks its vital blood, which like a streamOf poison thro’ his fevered veins did flowFeeding a plague that secretly consumedHis feeble frame, and kindling in his mind
Hatred, despair, and fear and vain belief,The germs of misery, death, disease and crime.No longer now the winged habitants,That in the woods their sweet lives sing away,Flee from the form of man; but gather round,
And prune their sunny feathers on the handsWhich little children stretch in friendly sportTowards these dreadless partners of their play.All things are void of terror: man has lostHis desolating privilege, and stands
An equal amidst equals: happinessAnd science dawn though late upon the earth;Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here,Reason and passion cease to combat there;
Whilst mind unfettered o’er the earth extendsIts all-subduing energies, and wieldsThe sceptre of a vast dominion there.
Mild is the slow necessity of death:The tranquil spirit fails beneath its grasp,
Without a groan, almost without a fear,Resigned in peace to the necessity,Calm as a voyager to some distant land,And full of wonder, full of hope as he.The deadly germs of languor and disease
Waste in the human frame, and Nature giftsWith choicest boons her human worshippers.How vigorous now the athletic form of age!How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, or care,
Had stamped the seal of grey deformityOn all the mingling lineaments of time.How lovely the intrepid front of youth!How sweet the smiles of taintless infancy.
Within the massy prison’s mouldering courts,
Fearless and free the ruddy children play,Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent browsWith the green ivy and the red wall-flower,That mock the dungeon’s unavailing gloom;The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron,
There rust amid the accumulated ruinsNow mingling slowly with their native earth:There the broad beam of day, which feebly onceLighted the cheek of lean captivityWith a pale and sickly glare, now freely shines
On the pure smiles of infant playfulness:No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despairPeals through the echoing vaults, but soothing notesOf ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birdsAnd merriment are resonant around.
The fanes of Fear and Falsehood hear no moreThe voice that once waked multitudes to warThundering thro’ all their aisles: but now respondTo the death dirge of the melancholy wind:It were a sight of awfulness to see
The works of faith and slavery, so vast,So sumptuous, yet withal so perishing!Even as the corpse that rests beneath their wall.A thousand mourners deck the pomp of deathTo-day, the breathing marble glows above
To decorate its memory, and tonguesAre busy of its life: to-morrow, wormsIn silence and in darkness seize their prey.These ruins soon leave not a wreck behind:Their elements, wide-scattered o’er the globe,
To happier shapes are moulded, and becomeMinistrant to all blissful impulses:Thus human things are perfected, and earth,Even as a child beneath its mother’s love,Is strengthened in all excellence, and grows
Fairer and nobler with each passing year.
Now Time his dusky pennons o’er the sceneCloses in steadfast darkness, and the pastFades from our charmed sight. My task is done:Thy lore is learned. Earth’s wonders are thine own,
With all the fear and all the hope they bring.My spells are past: the present now recurs.Ah me! a pathless wilderness remainsYet unsubdued by man’s reclaiming hand.
Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course,
Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursueThe gradual paths of an aspiring change:For birth and life and death, and that strange stateBefore the naked powers that thro’ the worldWander like winds have found a human home,
All tend to perfect happiness, and urgeThe restless wheels of being on their way,Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal:For birth but wakes the universal mind
Whose mighty streams might else in silence flowThro’ the vast world, to individual senseOf outward shows, whose unexperienced shapeNew modes of passion to its frame may lend;Life is its state of action, and the store
Of all events is aggregated thereThat variegate the eternal universe;Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom,That leads to azure isles and beaming skiesAnd happy regions of eternal hope.
Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on:Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk,Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom,Yet spring’s awakening breath will woo the earth,To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower,
That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens,Lighting the green wood with its sunny smile.
Fear not then, Spirit, death’s disrobing hand,So welcome when the tyrant is awake,So welcome when the bigot’s hell-torch flares;
’Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour,The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep.For what thou art shall perish utterly,But what is thine may never cease to be;Death is no foe to virtue: earth has seen
Love’s brightest roses on the scaffold bloom,Mingling with freedom’s fadeless laurels there,And presaging the truth of visioned bliss.Are there not hopes within thee, which this sceneOf linked and gradual being has confirmed?
Hopes that not vainly thou, and living firesOf mind as radiant and as pure as thou,Have shone upon the paths of men — return,Surpassing Spirit, to that world, where thouArt destined an eternal war to wage
With tyranny and falsehood, and uprootThe germs of misery from the human heart.Thine is the hand whose piety would sootheThe thorny pillow of unhappy crime,Whose impotence an easy pardon gains,
Watching its wanderings as a friend’s disease:Thine is the brow whose mildness would defyIts fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will,When fenced by power and master of the world.Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind,
Free from heart-withering custom’s cold control,Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued.Earth’s pride and meanness could not vanquish thee,And therefore art thou worthy of the boonWhich thou hast now received: virtue shall keep
Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod,And many days of beaming hope shall blessThy spotless life of sweet and sacred love.Go, happy one, and give that bosom joyWhose sleepless spirit waits to catch
Light, life and rapture from thy smile.
The Daemon called its winged ministers.Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car,That rolled beside the crystal battlement,Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness.
The burning wheels inflameThe steep descent of Heaven’s untrodden way.Fast and far the chariot flew:The mighty globes that rolledAround the gate of the Eternal Fane
Lessened by slow degrees, and soon appearedSuch tiny twinklers as the planet orbsThat ministering on the solar powerWith borrowed light pursued their narrower way.Earth floated then below:
The chariot paused a moment;The Spirit then descended:And from the earth departingThe shadows with swift wingsSpeeded like thought upon the light of Heaven.
The Body and the Soul united then,A gentle start convulsed Ianthe’s frame:Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained:She looked around in wonder and beheld
Alastor: or, the Spirit of Solitude
Preface
The poem entitled “Alastor” may be considered as allegorical of one of the most interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, and affords to their modifications at variety not to be exhausted. so long as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous, and tranquil, and self-possessed. But the period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He images to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant with speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in which he embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or wise, or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover could depicture. The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functions of sense, have their respective requisitions on the sympathy of corresponding powers in other human beings. The Poet is represented as uniting these requisitions, and attaching them to a single image. He seeks in vain for a prototype of his conception. Blasted by his disappointment, he descends to an untimely grave.
The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The Poet’s self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Power which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those manner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorious as their delinquency is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by no generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from sympathies with their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy nor mourning with human grief; these, and such as they, have their apportioned curse. They languish, because none feel with them their common nature. They are morally dead. They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their country. Among those who attempt to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tender-hearted perish through the intensity and passion of their search after its communities, when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who constitute, together with their own, the lasting misery and loneliness of the world. Those who love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.
‘The good die first,And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust,Burn to the socket!’
December 14, 1815.
Alastor: or, the Spirit of Solitude
Earth, Ocean, Air, beloved brotherhood!If our great Mother has imbued my soulWith aught of natural piety to feelYour 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 breathesHer first sweet kisses, have been dear to me;If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beastI consciously have injured, but still loved
And cherished these my kindred; then forgiveThis boast, beloved brethren, and withdrawNo 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 watchedThy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,And my heart ever gazes on the depthOf thy deep mysteries. I have made my bedIn charnels and on coffins, where black death
Keeps record of the trophies won from thee,Hoping to still these obstinate questioningsOf thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost,Thy messenger, to render up the taleOf what we are. In lone and silent hours,
When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,Like an inspired and desperate alchymistStaking his very life on some dark hope,Have I mixed awful talk and asking looksWith my most innocent love, until strange tears,
Uniting with those breathless kisses, madeSuch magic as compels the charmed nightTo render up thy charge: . . . and, though ne’er yetThou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,Enough from incommunicable dream,
And twilight phantasms, and deep noon-day thought,Has shone within me, that serenely nowAnd moveless, as a long-forgotten lyreSuspended in the solitary domeOf some mysterious and deserted fane,
I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strainMay modulate with murmurs of the air,And motions of the forests and the sea,And voice of living beings, and woven hymnsOf night and day, and the deep heart of man.
There was a Poet whose untimely tombNo human hands with pious reverence reared,But the charmed eddies of autumnal windsBuilt o’er his mouldering bones a pyramidOf mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness:—
A lovely youth — no mourning maiden deckedWith weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath,The lone couch of his everlasting sleep:—Gentle, and brave, and generous — no lorn bardBreathed 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 pinedAnd 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 dreamHis infancy was nurtured. Every sightAnd sound from the vast earth and ambient air,
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.The fountains of divine philosophyFled not his thirsting lips, and all of great,Or good, or lovely, which the sacred pastIn truth or fable consecrates, he felt
And knew. When early youth had passed, he leftHis cold fireside and alienated homeTo seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.Many a wide waste and tangled wildernessHas 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 stepsHe like her shadow has pursued, where’erThe red volcano overcanopiesIts fields of snow and pinnacles of ice
With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakesOn black bare pointed islets ever beatWith sluggish surge, or where the secret caves,Rugged and dark, winding among the springsOf fire and poison, inaccessible
To avarice or pride, their starry domesOf diamond and of gold expand aboveNumberless and immeasurable halls,Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrinesOf pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.
Nor had that scene of ampler majestyThan gems or gold, the varying roof of heavenAnd the green earth lost in his heart its claimsTo love and wonder; he would linger longIn lonesome vales, making the wild his home,
Until the doves and squirrels would partakeFrom his innocuous hand his bloodless food,Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks,And the wild antelope, that starts whene’erThe dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspendHer timid steps, to gaze upon a form
More graceful than her own.His wandering step,Obedient to high thoughts, has visitedThe awful ruins of the days of old:Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste
Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towersOf 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 hillsConceals. Among the ruined temples there,Stupendous columns, and wild imagesOf more than man, where marble daemons watchThe Zodiac’s brazen mystery, and dead men
Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,He lingered, poring on memorialsOf the world’s youth: through the long burning dayGazed on those speechless shapes; nor, when the moonFilled the mysterious halls with floating shades
Suspended he that task, but ever gazedAnd gazed, till meaning on his vacant mindFlashed like strong inspiration, and he sawThe 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 stoleFrom duties and repose to tend his steps,Enamoured, yet not daring for deep aweTo speak her love:— and watched his nightly sleep,
Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lipsParted in slumber, whence the regular breathOf innocent dreams arose; then, when red mornMade paler the pale moon, to her cold homeWildered, and wan, and panting, she returned.
The Poet, wandering on, through Arabie,And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,And o’er the aerial mountains which pour downIndus and Oxus from their icy caves,In joy and exultation held his way;
Till in the vale of Cashmire, far withinIts loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwineBeneath the hollow rocks a natural bower,Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretchedHis languid limbs. A vision on his sleep
There came, a dream of hopes that never yetHad flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maidSate near him, talking in low solemn tones.Her voice was like the voice of his own soulHeard in the calm of thought; its music long,
Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, heldHis inmost sense suspended in its webOf 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 moodOf her pure mind kindled through all her frameA permeating fire; wild numbers thenShe raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs
Subdued by its own pathos; her fair handsWere bare alone, sweeping from some strange harpStrange symphony, and in their branching veinsThe eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.The beating of her heart was heard to fill
