The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley

  2905

  They anchored then, where, be there calm or breeze,

  The gloomiest of the drear Symplegades

  Shakes with the sleepless surge;—the Ethiop there

  Wound his long arms around her, and with knees

  Like iron clasped her feet, and plunged with her

  2910

  Among the closing waves out of the boundless air.

  X

  ‘Swift as an eagle stooping from the plain

  Of morning light, into some shadowy wood,

  He plunged through the green silence of the main,

  Through many a cavern which the eternal flood

  2915

  Had scooped, as dark lairs for its monster brood;

  And among mighty shapes which fled in wonder,

  And among mightier shadows which pursued

  His heels, he wound: until the dark rocks under

  He touched a golden chain—a sound arose like thunder.

  XI

  2920

  ‘A stunning clang of massive bolts redoubling

  Beneath the deep—a burst of waters driven

  As from the roots of the sea, raging and bubbling:

  And in that roof of crags a space was riven

  Through which there shone the emerald beams of heaven,

  2925

  Shot through the lines of many waves inwoven,

  Like sunlight through acacia woods at even,

  Through which, his way the diver having cloven,

  Passed like a spark sent up out of a burning oven,

  XII

  ‘And then,’ she said, ‘he laid me in a cave

  2930

  Above the waters, by that chasm of sea,

  A fountain round and vast, in which the wave

  Imprisoned, boiled and leaped perpetually,

  Down which, one moment resting, he did flee,

  Winning the adverse depth; that spacious cell

  2935

  Like an hupaithric temple wide and high,

  Whose aëry dome is inaccessible,

  Was pierced with one round cleft through which the sunbeams fell.

  XIII

  ‘Below, the fountain’s brink was richly paven

  With the deep’s wealth, coral, and pearl, and sand

  2940

  Like spangling gold, and purple shells engraven

  With mystic legends by no mortal hand,

  Left there, when thronging to the moon’s command,

  The gathering waves rent the Hesperian gate

  Of mountains, and on such bright floor did stand

  2945

  Columns, and shapes like statues, and the state

  Of kingless thrones, which Earth did in her heart create.

  XIV

  ‘The fiend of madness which had made its prey

  Of my poor heart, was lulled to sleep awhile:

  There was an interval of many a day,

  2950

  And a sea-eagle brought me food the while,

  Whose nest was built in that untrodden isle,

  And who, to be the gaoler had been taught

  Of that strange dungeon; as a friend whose smile

  Like light and rest at morn and even is sought

  That wild bird was to me, till madness misery brought.

  XV

  ‘The misery of a madness slow and creeping,

  Which made the earth seem fire, the sea seem air,

  And the white clouds of noon which oft were sleeping,

  In the blue heaven so beautiful and fair,

  2960

  Like hosts of ghastly shadows hovering there;

  And the sea-eagle looked a fiend, who bore

  Thy mangled limbs for food!—Thus all things were

  Transformed into the agony which I wore

  Even as a poisoned robe around my bosom’s core.

  XVI

  2965

  ‘Again I knew the day and night fast fleeing,

  The eagle, and the fountain, and the air;

  Another frenzy came—there seemed a being

  Within me—a strange load my heart did bear,

  As if some living thing had made its lair

  2970

  Even in the fountains of my life:—a long

  And wondrous vision wrought from my despair,

  Then grew, like sweet reality among

  Dim visionary woes, an unreposing throng.

  XVII

  ‘Methought I was about to be a mother—

  2975

  Month after month went by, and still I dreamed

  That we should soon be all to one another,

  I and my child; and still new pulses seemed

  To beat beside my heart, and still I deemed

  There was a babe within—and, when the rain

  2980

  Of winter through the rifted cavern streamed,

  Methought, after a lapse of lingering pain,

  I saw that lovely shape, which near my heart had lain.

  XVIII

  ‘It was a babe, beautiful from its birth,—

  It was like thee, dear love, its eyes were thine,

  2985

  Its brow, its lips, and so upon the earth

  It laid its fingers, as now rest on mine

  Thine own, belovèd!—’twas a dream divine;

  Even to remember how it fled, how swift,

  How utterly, might make the heart repine,—

  2990

  Though ’twas a dream.’—Then Cythna did uplift

  Her looks on mine, as if some doubt she sought to shift:

  XIX

  A doubt which would not flee, a tenderness

  Of questioning grief, a source of thronging tears:

  Which having passed, as one whom sobs oppress

  2995

  She spoke: ‘Yes, in the wilderness of years

  Her memory, aye, like a green home appears;

  She sucked her fill even at this breast, sweet love,

  For many months. I had no mortal fears;

  Methought I felt her lips and breath approve,—

  3000

  It was a human thing which to my bosom clove.

  XX

  ‘I watched the dawn of her first smiles, and soon

  When zenith-stars were trembling on the wave,

  Or when the beams of the invisible moon,

  Or sun, from many a prism within the cave

  3005

  Their gem-born shadows to the water gave,

  Her looks would hunt them, and with outspread hand,

  From the swift lights which might that fountain pave,

  She would mark one, and laugh, when that command

  Slighting, it lingered there, and could not understand.

  XXI

  3010

  ‘Methought her looks began to talk with me;

  And no articulate sounds, but something sweet

  Her lips would frame,—so sweet it could not be,

  That it was meaningless; her touch would meet

  Mine, and our pulses calmly flow and beat

  3015

  In response while we slept; and on a day

  When I was happiest in that strange retreat,

  With heaps of golden shells we two did play,—

  Both infants, weaving wings for time’s perpetual way.

  XXII

  ‘Ere night, methought, her waning eyes were grown

  3020

  Weary with joy, and tired with our delight,

  We, on the earth, like sister twins lay down

  On one fair mother’s bosom:—from that night

  She fled;—like those illusions clear and bright,

  Which dwell in lakes, when the red moon on high

  3025

  Pause ere it wakens tempest;—and her flight,

  Though ’twas the death of brainless fantasy,

  Yet smote my lonesome heart more than all misery.

  XXIII

/>   ‘It seemed that in the dreary night, the diver

  Who brought me thither, came again, and bore

  3030

  My child away. I saw the waters quiver,

  When he so swiftly sunk, as once before;

  Then morning came—it shone even as of yore,

  But I was changed—the very life was gone

  Out of my heart—I wasted more and more,

  3035

  Day after day, and sitting there alone,

  Vexed the inconstant waves with my perpetual moan.

  XXIV

  ‘I was no longer mad, and yet methought

  My breasts were swoln and changed:—in every vein

  The blood stood still one moment, while that thought

  3040

  Was passing—with a gush of sickening pain

  It ebbed even to its withered springs again:

  When my wan eyes in stern resolve I turned

  From that most strange delusion, which would fain

  Have waked the dream for which my spirit yearned

  3045

  With more than human love,—then left it unreturned.

  XXV

  ‘So now my reason was restored to me

  I struggled with that dream, which, like a beast

  Most fierce and beauteous, in my memory

  Had made its lair, and on my heart did feast;

  3050

  But all that cave and all its shapes, possessed

  By thoughts which could not fade, renewed each one

  Some smile, some look, some gesture which had blessed

  Me heretofore: I, sitting there alone,

  Vexed the inconstant waves with my perpetual moan.

  XXVI

  ‘Time passed, I know not whether months or years;

  For day, nor night, nor change of seasons made

  Its note, but thoughts and unavailing tears:

  And I became at last even as a shade,

  A smoke, a cloud on which the winds have preyed,

  3060

  Till it be thin as air; until, one even,

  A Nautilus upon the fountain played,

  Spreading his azure sail where breath of Heaven

  Descended not, among the waves and whirlpools driven,

  XXVII

  ‘And, when the Eagle came, that lovely thing,

  3065

  Oaring with rosy feet its silver boat,

  Fled near me as for shelter; on slow wing,

  The Eagle, hovering o’er his prey did float;

  But when he saw that I with fear did note

  His purpose, proffering my own food to him,

  3070

  The eager plumes subsided on his throat—

  He came where that bright child of sea did swim,

  And o’er it cast in peace his shadow broad and dim.

  XXVIII

  ‘This wakened me, it gave me human strength;

  And hope, I knew not whence or wherefore, rose,

  3075

  But I resumed my ancient powers at length;

  My spirit felt again like one of those

  Like thine, whose fate it is to make the woes

  Of humankind their prey—what was this cave?

  Its deep foundation no firm purpose knows

  3080

  Immutable, resistless, strong to save,

  Like mind while yet it mocks the all-devouring grave.

  XXIX

  ‘And where was Laon? might my heart be dead,

  While that far dearer heart could move and be?

  Or whilst over the earth the pall was spread,

  3085

  Which I had sworn to rend? I might be free,

  Could I but win that friendly bird to me,

  To bring me ropes; and long in vain I sought

  By intercourse of mutual imagery

  Of objects, if such aid he could be taught;

  3090

  But fruit, and flowers, and boughs, yet never ropes he brought.

  XXX

  ‘We live in our own world, and mine was made

  From glorious fantasies of hope departed:

  Aye we are darkened with their floating shade,

  Or cast a lustre on them—time imparted

  3095

  Such power to me—I became fearless-hearted,

  My eye and voice grew firm, calm was my mind,

  And piercing, like the morn, now it has darted

  Its lustre on all hidden things, behind

  Yon dim and fading clouds which load the weary wind.

  XXXI

  3100

  ‘My mind became the book through which I grew

  Wise in all human wisdom, and its cave,

  Which like a mine I rifled through and through,

  To me the keeping of its secrets gave—

  One mind, the type of all, the moveless wave

  3105

  Whose calm reflects all moving things that are,

  Necessity, and love, and life, the grave,

  And sympathy, fountains of hope and fear;

  Justice, and truth, and time, and the world’s natural sphere.

  XXXII

  ‘And on the sand would I make signs to range

  3110

  These woofs, as they were woven, of my thought;

  Clear, elemental shapes, whose smallest change

  A subtler language within language wrought:

  The key of truths which once were dimly taught

  In old Crotona;—and sweet melodies

  3115

  Of love, in that lorn solitude I caught

  From mine own voice in dream, when thy dear eyes

  Shone through my sleep, and did that utterance harmonize,

  XXXIII

  ‘Thy songs were winds whereon I fled at will,

  As in a wingèd chariot, o’er the plain

  3120

  Of crystal youth; and thou wert there to fill

  My heart with joy, and there we sate again

  On the gray margin of the glimmering main,

  Happy as then but wiser far, for we

  Smiled on the flowery grave in which were lain

  3125

  Fear, Faith, and Slavery; and mankind was free,

  Equal, and pure, and wise, in Wisdom’s prophecy.

  XXXIV

  ‘For to my will my fancies were as slaves

  To do their sweet and subtile ministries;

  And oft from that bright fountain’s shadowy waves

  3130

  They would make human throngs gather and rise

  To combat with my overflowing eyes,

  And voice made deep with passion—thus I grew

  Familiar with the shock and the surprise

  And war of earthly minds, from which I drew

  3135

  The power which has been mine to frame their thoughts anew.

  XXXV

  ‘And thus my prison was the populous earth—

  Where I saw—even as misery dreams of morn

  Before the east has given its glory birth—

  Religion’s pomp made desolate by the scorn

  3140

  Of Wisdom’s faintest smile, and thrones, uptorn,

  And dwellings of mild people interspersed

  With undivided fields of ripening corn,

  And love made free,—a hope which we have nursed

  Even with our blood and tears,—until its glory burst.

  XXXVI

  3145

  ‘All is not lost! There is some recompense

  For hope whose fountain can be thus profound,

  Even thronèd Evil’s splendid impotence,

  Girt by its hell of power, the secret sound

  Of hymns to truth and freedom—the dread bound

  3150

  Of life and death passed fearlessly and well,

  Dungeons wherein the high resolve is found,

  Racks which degraded woman’s greatness tell,

&nb
sp; And what may else be good and irresistible.

  XXXVII

  ‘Such are the thoughts which, like the fires that flare

  3155

  In storm-encompassed isles, we cherish yet

  In this dark ruin—such were mine even there;

  As in its sleep some odorous violet,

  While yet its leaves with nightly dews are wet,

  Breathes in prophetic dreams of day’s uprise,

  3160

  Or, as ere Scythian frost in fear has met

  Spring’s messengers descending from the skies,

  The buds foreknow their life—this hope must ever rise.

  XXXVIII

  ‘So years had passed, when sudden earthquake rent

  The depth of ocean, and the cavern cracked

  3165

  With sound, as if the world’s wide continent

  Had fallen in universal ruin wracked:

  And through the cleft streamed in one cataract

  The stifling waters—when I woke, the flood

  Whose banded waves that crystal cave had sacked

  3170

  Was ebbing round me, and my bright abode

  Before me yawned—a chasm desert, and bare, and broad.

  XXXIX

  ‘Above me was the sky, beneath the sea:

  I stood upon a point of shattered stone,

  And heard loose rocks rushing tumultuously

  3175

  With splash and shock into the deep—anon

  All ceased, and there was silence wide and lone.

  I felt that I was free! The Ocean-spray

  Quivered beneath my feet, the broad Heaven shone

  Around, and in my hair the winds did play

  3180

  Lingering as they pursued their unimpeded way.

  XL

  ‘My spirit moved upon the sea like wind

  Which round some thymy cape will lag and hover,