The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley

  XXX

  3460

  ‘But one was mute, her cheeks and lips most fair,

  Changing their hue like lilies newly blown,

  Beneath a bright acacia’s shadowy hair,

  Waved by the wind amid the sunny noon,

  Showed that her soul was quivering; and full soon

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  That Youth arose, and breathlessly did look

  On her and me, as for some speechless boon:

  I smiled, and both their hands in mine I took,

  And felt a soft delight from what their spirits shook.

  CANTO IX

  I

  ‘THAT night we anchored in a woody bay,

  3470

  And sleep no more around us dared to hover

  Than, when all doubt and fear has passed away,

  It shades the couch of some unresting lover,

  Whose heart is now at rest: thus night passed over

  In mutual joy:—around, a forest grew

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  Of poplar and dark oaks, whose shade did cover

  The waning stars pranked in the waters blue,

  And trembled in the wind which from the morning flew.

  II

  ‘The joyous Mariners, and each free Maiden,

  Now brought from the deep forest many a bough,

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  With woodland spoil most innocently laden;

  Soon wreaths of budding foliage seemed to flow

  Over the mast and sails, the stern and prow

  Were canopied with blooming boughs,—the while

  On the slant sun’s path o’er the waves we go

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  Rejoicing, like the dwellers of an isle

  Doomed to pursue those waves that cannot cease to smile.

  III

  ‘The many ships spotting the dark blue deep

  With snowy sails, fled fast as ours came nigh,

  In fear and wonder; and on every steep

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  Thousands did gaze, they heard the startling cry,

  Like Earth’s own voice lifted unconquerably

  To all her children, the unbounded mirth,

  The glorious joy of thy name—Liberty!

  They heard!—As o’er the mountains of the earth

  3495

  From peak to peak leap on the beams of Morning’s birth:

  IV

  ‘So from that cry over the boundless hills

  Sudden was caught one universal sound,

  Like a volcano’s voice, whose thunder fills

  Remotest skies,—such glorious madness found

  A path through human hearts with stream which drowned

  Its struggling fears and cares, dark Custom’s brood;

  They knew not whence it came, but felt around

  A wide contagion poured—they called aloud

  On Liberty—that name lived on the sunny flood.

  V

  3505

  ‘We reached the port.—Alas! from many spirits

  The wisdom which had waked that cry, was fled,

  Like the brief glory which dark Heaven inherits

  From the false dawn, which fades ere it is spread,

  Upon the night’s devouring darkness shed:

  3510

  Yet soon bright day will burst—even like a chasm

  Of fire, to burn the shrouds outworn and dead,

  Which wrap the world; a wide enthusiasm,

  To cleanse the fevered world as with an earthquake’s spasm!

  VI

  ‘I walked through the great City then, but free

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  From shame or fear; those toil-worn Mariners

  And happy Maidens did encompass me;

  And like a subterranean wind that stirs

  Some forest among caves, the hopes and fears

  From every human soul, a murmur strange

  3520

  Made as I passed: and many wept, with tears

  Of joy and awe, and wingèd thoughts did range,

  And half-extinguished words, which prophesied of change.

  VII

  ‘For, with strong speech I tore the veil that hid

  Nature, and Truth, and Liberty, and Love,—

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  As one who from some mountain’s pyramid

  Points to the unrisen sun!—the shades approve

  His truth, and flee from every stream and grove.

  Thus, gentle thoughts did many a bosom fill,—

  Wisdom, the mail of tried affections wove

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  For many a heart, and tameless scorn of ill,

  Thrice steeped in molten steel the unconquerable will.

  VIII

  ‘Some said I was a maniac wild and lost;

  Some, that I scarce had risen from the grave,

  The Prophet’s virgin bride, a heavenly ghost:—

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  Some said, I was a fiend from my weird cave,

  Who had stolen human shape, and o’er the wave,

  The forest, and the mountain came;—some said

  I was the child of God, sent down to save

  Women from bonds and death, and on my head

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  The burden of their sins would frightfully be laid.

  IX

  ‘But soon my human words found sympathy

  In human hearts: the purest and the best,

  As friend with friend, made common cause with me,

  And they were few, but resolute:—the rest,

  3545

  Ere yet success the enterprise had blessed,

  Leagued with me in their hearts;—their meals, their slumber,

  Their hourly occupations, were possessed

  By hopes which I had armed to overnumber

  Those hosts of meaner cares, which life’s strong wings encumber.

  X

  3550

  ‘But chiefly women, whom my voice did waken

  From their cold, careless, willing slavery,

  Sought me: one truth their dreary prison has shaken,—

  They looked around, and lo! they became free!

  Their many tyrants sitting desolately

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  In slave-deserted halls, could none restrain;

  For wrath’s red fire had withered in the eye,

  Whose lightning once was death,—nor fear, nor gain

  Could tempt one captive now to lock another’s chain.

  XI

  ‘Those who were sent to bind me, wept, and felt

  Their minds outsoar the bonds which clasped them round,

  Even as a waxen shape may waste and melt

  In the white furnace; and a visioned swound,

  A pause of hope and awe the City bound,

  Which, like the silence of a tempest’s birth,

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  When in its awful shadow it has wound

  The sun, the wind, the ocean, and the earth,

  Hung terrible, ere yet the lightnings have leaped forth.

  XII

  ‘Like clouds inwoven in the silent sky,

  By winds from distant regions meeting there,

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  In the high name of truth and liberty,

  Around the City millions gathered were,

  By hopes which sprang from many a hidden lair,—

  Words which the lore of truth in hues of flame

  Arrayed, thine own wild songs which in the air

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  Like homeless odours floated, and the name

  Of thee, and many a tongue which thou hadst dipped in flame.

  XIII

  ‘The Tyrant knew his power was gone, but Fear,

  The nurse of Vengeance, bade him wait the event—

  That perfidy and custom, gold and prayer,

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  And whatsoe’er, when force is impotent,

  To fraud the sceptre of the world has lent,

  Might, as he judged, confirm his failing sway.

/>   Therefore throughout the streets, the Priests he sent

  To curse the rebels.—To their gods did they

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  For Earthquake, Plague, and Want, kneel in the public way.

  XIV

  ‘And grave and hoary men were bribed to tell

  From seats where law is made the slave of wrong,

  How glorious Athens in her splendour fell,

  Because her sons were free,—and that among

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  Mankind, the many to the few belong,

  By Heaven, and Nature, and Necessity.

  They said, that age was truth, and that the young

  Marred with wild hopes the peace of slavery,

  With which old times and men had quelled the vain and free.

  XV

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  ‘And with the falsehood of their poisonous lips

  They breathed on the enduring memory

  Of sages and of bards a brief eclipse;

  There was one teacher, who necessity

  Had armed with strength and wrong against mankind,

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  His slave and his avenger aye to be;

  That we were weak and sinful, frail and blind,

  And that the will of one was peace, and we

  Should seek for nought on earth but toil and misery—

  XVI

  ‘ “For thus we might avoid the hell hereafter.”

  3605

  So spake the hypocrites, who cursed and lied;

  Alas, their sway was past, and tears and laughter

  Clung to their hoary hair, withering the pride

  Which in their hollow hearts dared still abide;

  And yet obscener slaves with smoother brow,

  3610

  And sneers on their strait lips, thin, blue and wide,

  Said, that the rule of men was over now,

  And hence, the subject world to woman’s will must bow;

  XVII

  ‘And gold was scattered through the streets, and wine

  Flowed at a hundred feasts within the wall.

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  In vain! the steady towers in Heaven did shine

  As they were wont, nor at the priestly call

  Left Plague her banquet in the Ethiop’s hall,

  Nor Famine from the rich man’s portal came,

  Where at her ease she ever preys on all

  3620

  Who throng to kneel for food: nor fear nor shame,

  Nor faith, nor discord, dimmed hope’s newly kindled flame.

  XVIII

  ‘For gold was as a god whose faith began

  To fade, so that its worshippers were few,

  And Faith itself, which in the heart of man

  3625

  Gives shape, voice, name, to spectral Terror, knew

  Its downfall, as the altars lonelier grew,

  Till the Priests stood alone within the fane;

  The shafts of falsehood unpolluting flew,

  And the cold sneers of calumny were vain,

  3630

  The union of the free with discord’s brand to stain.

  XIX

  ‘The rest thou knowest.—Lo! we two are here—

  We have survived a ruin wide and deep—

  Strange thoughts are mine.—I cannot grieve or fear,

  Sitting with thee upon this lonely steep

  3635

  I smile, though human love should make me weep.

  We have survived a joy that knows no sorrow,

  And I do feel a mighty calmness creep

  Over my heart, which can no longer borrow

  Its hues from chance or change, dark children of to-morrow.

  XX

  3640

  ‘We know not what will come—yet Laon, dearest,

  Cythna shall be the prophetess of Love,

  Her lips shall rob thee of the grace thou wearest,

  To hide thy heart, and clothe the shapes which rove

  Within the homeless Future’s wintry grove;

  3645

  For I now, sitting thus beside thee, seem

  Even with thy breath and blood to live and move,

  And violence and wrong are as a dream

  Which rolls from steadfast truth, an unreturning stream.

  XXI

  ‘The blasts of Autumn drive the wingèd seeds

  3650

  Over the earth,—next come the snows, and rain,

  And frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads

  Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train;

  Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again,

  Shedding soft dews from her ethereal wings;

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  Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain,

  And music on the waves and woods she flings,

  And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things.

  XXII

  ‘O Spring, of hope, and love, and youth, and gladness

  Wind-wingèd emblem! brightest, best and fairest!

  3660

  Whence comest thou, when, with dark Winter’s sadness

  The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest?

  Sister of joy, thou art the child who wearest

  Thy mother’s dying smile, tender and sweet;

  Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest

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  Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet,

  Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding-sheet.

  XXIII

  ‘Virtue, and Hope, and Love, like light and Heaven,

  Surround the world.—We are their chosen slaves.

  Has not the whirlwind of our spirit driven

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  Truth’s deathless germs to thought’s remotest caves?

  Lo, Winter comes!—the grief of many graves,

  The frost of death, the tempest of the sword,

  The flood of tyranny, whose sanguine waves

  Stagnate like ice at Faith the enchanter’s word,

  3675

  And bind all human hearts in its repose abhorred.

  XXIV

  ‘The seeds are sleeping in the soil: meanwhile

  The Tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey,

  Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile

  Because they cannot speak; and, day by day,

  3680

  The moon of wasting Science wanes away

  Among her stars, and in that darkness vast

  The sons of earth to their foul idols pray,

  And gray Priests triumph, and like blight or blast

  A shade of selfish care o’er human looks is cast.

  XXV

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  ‘This is the winter of the world;—and here

  We die, even as the winds of Autumn fade,

  Expiring in the frore and foggy air.—

  Behold! Spring comes, though we must pass, who made

  The promise of its birth,—even as the shade

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  Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings

  The future, a broad sunrise; thus arrayed

  As with the plumes of overshadowing wings,

  From its dark gulf of chains, Earth like an eagle springs.

  XXVI

  ‘O dearest love! we shall be dead and cold

  3695

  Before this morn may on the world arise;

  Wouldst thou the glory of its dawn behold?

  Alas! gaze not on me, but turn thine eyes

  On thine own heart—it is a paradise

  Which everlasting Spring has made its own,

  3700

  And while drear Winter fills the naked skies,

  Sweet streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh-blown,

  Are there, and weave their sounds and odours into one.

  XXVII

  ‘In their own hearts the earnest of the hope

  Which made them great, the good will ever find;

  37
05

  And though some envious shades may interlope

  Between the effect and it, One comes behind,

  Who aye the future to the past will bind—

  Necessity, whose sightless strength for ever

  Evil with evil, good with good must wind

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  In bands of union, which no power may sever:

  They must bring forth their kind, and be divided never!

  XXVIII

  ‘The good and mighty of departed ages

  Are in their graves, the innocent and free,

  Heroes, and Poets, and prevailing Sages,

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  Who leave the vesture of their majesty

  To adorn and clothe this naked world;—and we

  Are like to them—such perish, but they leave

  All hope, or love, or truth, or liberty,

  Whose forms their mighty spirits could conceive,

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  To be a rule and law to ages that survive.

  XXIX

  ‘So be the turf heaped over our remains

  Even in our happy youth, and that strange lot,

  Whate’er it be, when in these mingling veins

  The blood is still, be ours; let sense and thought

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  Pass from our being, or be numbered not

  Among the things that are; let those who come

  Behind, for whom our steadfast will has bought

  A calm inheritance, a glorious doom,

  Insult with careless tread, our undivided tomb.

  XXX

  3730

  ‘Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love,

  Our happiness, and all that we have been,

  Immortally must live, and burn and move,

  When we shall be no more;—the world has seen

  A type of peace; and—as some most serene

  3735

  And lovely spot to a poor maniac’s eye,