The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley

  After long years, some sweet and moving scene

  Of youthful hope, returning suddenly,

  Quells his long madness—thus man shall remember thee.

  XXXI

  ‘And Calumny meanwhile shall feed on us,

  3740

  As worms devour the dead, and near the throne

  And at the altar, most accepted thus

  Shall sneers and curses be;—what we have done

  None shall dare vouch, though it be truly known;

  That record shall remain, when they must pass

  3745

  Who built their pride on its oblivion;

  And fame, in human hope which sculptured was,

  Survive the perished scrolls of unenduring brass.

  XXXII

  ‘The while we two, belovèd, must depart,

  And Sense and Reason, those enchanters fair,

  3750

  Whose wand of power is hope, would bid the heart

  That gazed beyond the wormy grave despair:

  These eyes, these lips, this blood, seems darkly there

  To fade in hideous ruin; no calm sleep

  Peopling with golden dreams the stagnant air,

  3755

  Seems our obscure and rotting eyes to steep

  In joy;—but senseless death—a ruin dark and deep!

  XXXIII

  ‘These are blind fancies—reason cannot know

  What sense can neither feel, nor thought conceive;

  There is delusion in the world—and woe,

  3760

  And fear, and pain—we know not whence we live,

  Or why, or how, or what mute Power may give

  Their being to each plant, and star, and beast,

  Or even these thoughts.—Come near me! I do weave

  A chain I cannot break—I am possessed

  3765

  With thoughts too swift and strong for one lone human breast.

  XXXIV

  ‘Yes, yes—thy kiss is sweet, thy lips are warm—

  O! willingly, belovèd, would these eyes,

  Might they no more drink being from thy form,

  Even as to sleep whence we again arise,

  3770

  Close their faint orbs in death: I fear nor prize

  Aught that can now betide, unshared by thee—

  Yes, Love when Wisdom fails makes Cythna wise:

  Darkness and death, if death be true, must be

  Dearer than life and hope, if unenjoyed with thee.

  XXXV

  ‘Alas, our thoughts flow on with stream, whose waters

  Return not to their fountain—Earth and Heaven,

  The Ocean and the Sun, the Clouds their daughters,

  Winter, and Spring, and Morn, and Noon, and Even,

  All that we are or know, is darkly driven

  3780

  Towards one gulf.—Lo! what a change is come

  Since I first spake—but time shall be forgiven,

  Though it change all but thee!’—She ceased—night’s gloom

  Meanwhile had fallen on earth from the sky’s sunless dome.

  XXXVI

  Though she had ceased, her countenance uplifted

  3785

  To Heaven, still spake, with solemn glory bright;

  Her dark deep eyes, her lips, whose motions gifted

  The air they breathed with love, her locks undight.

  ‘Fair star of life and love,’ I cried, ‘my soul’s delight,

  Why lookest thou on the crystalline skies?

  3790

  O, that my spirit were yon Heaven of night,

  Which gazes on thee with its thousand eyes!’

  She turned to me and smiled—that smile was Paradise!

  CANTO X

  I

  WAS there a human spirit in the steed,

  That thus with his proud voice, ere night was gone,

  3795

  He broke our linked rest? or do indeed

  All living things a common nature own,

  And thought erect an universal throne,

  Where many shapes one tribute ever bear?

  And Earth, their mutual mother, does she groan

  3800

  To see her sons contend? and makes she bare

  Her breast, that all in peace its drainless stores may share?

  II

  I have heard friendly sounds from many a tongue

  Which was not human—the lone nightingale

  Has answered me with her most soothing song,

  3805

  Out of her ivy bower, when I sate pale

  With grief, and sighed beneath; from many a dale

  The antelopes who flocked for food have spoken

  With happy sounds, and motions, that avail

  3810

  Like man’s own speech; and such was now the token

  Of waning night, whose calm by that proud neigh was broken.

  III

  Each night, that mighty steed bore me abroad,

  And I returned with food to our retreat,

  And dark intelligence; the blood which flowed

  Over the fields, had stained the courser’s feet;

  3815

  Soon the dust drinks that bitter dew,—then meet

  The vulture, and the wild dog, and the snake,

  The wolf, and the hyæna gray, and eat

  The dead in horrid truce: their throngs did make

  Behind the steed, a chasm like waves in a ship’s wake.

  IV

  3820

  For, from the utmost realms of earth, came pouring

  The banded slaves whom every despot sent

  At that throned traitor’s summons; like the roaring

  Of fire, whose floods the wild deer circumvent

  In the scorched pastures of the South; so bent

  3825

  The armies of the leaguèd Kings around

  Their files of steel and flame;—the continent

  Trembled, as with a zone of ruin bound,

  Beneath their feet, the sea shook with their Navies’ sound.

  V

  From every nation of the earth they came,

  3830

  The multitude of moving heartless things,

  Whom slaves call men: obediently they came,

  Like sheep whom from the fold the shepherd brings

  To the stall, red with blood; their many kings

  Led them, thus erring, from their native land;

  3835

  Tartar and Frank, and millions whom the wings

  Of Indian breezes lull, and many a band

  The Arctic Anarch sent, and Idumea’s sand,

  VI

  Fertile in prodigies and lies;—so there

  Strange natures made a brotherhood of ill.

  3840

  The desert savage ceased to grasp in fear

  His Asian shield and bow, when, at the will

  Of Europe’s subtler son, the bolt would kill

  Some shepherd sitting on a rock secure;

  But smiles of wondering joy his face would fill,

  3845

  And savage sympathy: those slaves impure,

  Each one the other thus from ill to ill did lure.

  VII

  For traitorously did that foul Tyrant robe

  His countenance in lies,—even at the hour

  When he was snatched from death, then o’er the globe,

  3850

  With secret signs from many a mountain-tower,

  With smoke by day, and fire by night, the power

  Of Kings and Priests, those dark conspirators,

  He called:—they knew his cause their own, and swore

  3855

  Like wolves and serpents to their mutual wars

  Strange truce, with many a rite which Earth and Heaven abhors.

  VIII

  Myriads had come—millions were on their way;

  The Tyrant passed, surrounded by the steel


  Of hired assassins, through the public way,

  Choked with his country’s dead:—his footsteps reel

  3860

  On the fresh blood—he smiles. ‘Ay, now I feel

  I am a King in truth!’ he said, and took

  His royal seat, and bade the torturing wheel

  Be brought, and fire, and pincers, and the hook,

  And scorpions; that his soul on its revenge might look.

  IX

  3865

  ‘But first, go slay the rebels—why return

  The victor bands?’ he said, ‘millions yet live,

  Of whom the weakest with one word might turn

  The scales of victory yet;—let none survive

  But those within the walls—each fifth shall give

  3870

  The expiation for his brethren here.—

  Go forth, and waste and kill!’—‘O king, forgive

  My speech,’ a soldier answered—‘but we fear

  The spirits of the night, and morn is drawing near;

  X

  ‘For we were slaying still without remorse,

  3875

  And now that dreadful chief beneath my hand

  Defenceless lay, when, on a hell-black horse,

  An Angel bright as day, waving a brand

  Which flashed among the stars, passed.’—‘Dost thou stand

  Parleying with me, thou wretch?’ the king replied;

  3880

  ‘Slaves, bind him to the wheel; and of this band,

  Whoso will drag that woman to his side

  That scared him thus, may burn his dearest foe beside;

  XI

  ‘And gold and glory shall be his.—Go forth!’

  They rushed into the plain.—Loud was the roar

  3885

  Of their career: the horsemen shook the earth;

  The wheeled artillery’s speed the pavement tore;

  The infantry, file after file, did pour

  Their clouds on the utmost hills. Five days they slew

  Among the wasted fields; the sixth saw gore

  3890

  Stream through the city; on the seventh, the dew

  Of slaughter became stiff, and there was peace anew:

  XII

  Peace in the desert fields and villages,

  Between the glutted beasts and mangled dead!

  Peace in the silent streets! save when the cries

  3895

  Of victims to their fiery judgement led,

  Made pale their voiceless lips who seemed to dread

  Even in their dearest kindred, lest some tongue

  Be faithless to the fear yet unbetrayed;

  Peace in the Tyrant’s palace, where the throng

  3900

  Waste the triumphal hours in festival and song!

  XIII

  Day after day the burning sun rolled on

  Over the death-polluted land—it came

  Out of the east like fire, and fiercely shone

  A lamp of Autumn, ripening with its flame

  3905

  The few lone ears of corn;—the sky became

  Stagnate with heat, so that each cloud and blast

  Languished and died,—the thirsting air did claim

  All moisture, and a rotting vapour passed

  From the unburied dead, invisible and fast.

  XIV

  First Want, then Plague came on the beasts; their food

  Failed, and they drew the breath of its decay.

  Millions on millions, whom the scent of blood

  Had lured, or who, from regions far away,

  Had tracked the hosts in festival array,

  3915

  From their dark deserts; gaunt and wasting now,

  Stalked like fell shades among their perished prey;

  In their green eyes a strange disease did glow.

  They sank in hideous spasm, or pains severe and slow.

  XV

  The fish were poisoned in the streams; the birds

  3920

  In the green woods perished; the insect race

  Was withered up; the scattered flocks and herds

  Who had survived the wild beasts’ hungry chase

  Died moaning, each upon the other’s face

  In helpless agony gazing; round the City

  3925

  All night, the lean hyænas their sad case

  Like starving infants wailed; a woeful ditty!

  And many a mother wept, pierced with unnatural pity.

  XVI

  Amid the aëreal minarets on high,

  The Ethiopian vultures fluttering fell

  3930

  From their long line of brethren in the sky,

  Startling the concourse of mankind.—Too well

  These signs the coming mischief did foretell:—

  Strange panic first, a deep and sickening dread

  Within each heart, like ice, did sink and dwell,

  3935

  A voiceless thought of evil, which did spread

  With the quick glance of eyes, like withering lightnings shed.

  XVII

  Day after day, when the year wanes, the frosts

  Strip its green crown of leaves, till all is bare;

  So on those strange and congregated hosts

  3940

  Came Famine, a swift shadow, and the air

  Groaned with the burden of a new despair;

  Famine, than whom Misrule no deadlier daughter

  Feeds from her thousand breasts, though sleeping there

  With lidless eyes, lie Faith, and Plague, and Slaughter,

  3945

  A ghastly brood; conceived of Lethe’s sullen water.

  XVIII

  There was no food, the corn was trampled down,

  The flocks and herds had perished; on the shore

  The dead and putrid fish were ever thrown;

  The deeps were foodless, and the winds no more

  3950

  Creaked with the weight of birds, but, as before

  Those wingèd things sprang forth, were void of shade;

  The vines and orchards, Autumn’s golden store,

  Were burned;—so that the meanest food was weighed

  With gold, and Avarice died before the god it made.

  XIX

  3955

  There was no corn—in the wide market-place

  All loathliest things, even human flesh, was sold;

  They weighed it in small scales—and many a face

  Was fixed in eager horror then: his gold

  The miser brought; the tender maid, grown bold

  3960

  Through hunger, bared her scornèd charms in vain;

  The mother brought her eldest-born, controlled

  By instinct blind as love, but turned again

  And bade her infant suck, and died in silent pain.

  XX

  Then fell blue Plague upon the race of man.

  3965

  ‘O, for the sheathed steel, so late which gave

  Oblivion to the dead, when the streets ran

  With brothers’ blood! O, that the earthquake’s grave

  Would gape, or Ocean lift its stifling wave!’

  Vain cries—throughout the streets, thousands pursued

  3970

  Each by his fiery torture howl and rave,

  Or sit, in frenzy’s unimagined mood,

  Upon fresh heaps of dead; a ghastly multitude.

  XXI

  It was not hunger now, but thirst. Each well

  Was choked with rotting corpses, and became

  3975

  A cauldron of green mist made visible

  At sunrise. Thither still the myriads came,

  Seeking to quench the agony of the flame,

  Which raged like poison through their bursting veins;

  Naked they were from torture, without shame,

  3980

  Spotted with nameless
scars and lurid blains,

  Childhood, and youth, and age, writhing in savage pains.

  XXII

  It was not thirst but madness! Many saw

  Their own lean image everywhere, it went

  A ghastlier self beside them, till the awe

  3985

  Of that dread sight to self-destruction sent

  Those shrieking victims; some, ere life was spent,

  Sought, with a horrid sympathy, to shed

  Contagion on the sound; and others rent

  Their matted hair, and cried aloud, ‘We tread

  3990

  On fire! the avenging Power his hell on earth has spread!’

  XXIII

  Sometimes the living by the dead were hid.

  Near the great fountain in the public square,

  Where corpses made a crumbling pyramid

  Under the sun, was heard one stifled prayer

  3995

  For life, in the hot silence of the air;

  And strange ’twas, amid that hideous heap to see

  Some shrouded in their long and golden hair,

  As if not dead, but slumbering quietly

  Like forms which sculptors carve, then love to agony.

  XXIV

  4000

  Famine had spared the palace of the king:—

  He rioted in festival the while,

  He and his guards and priests; but Plague did fling

  One shadow upon all. Famine can smile

  On him who brings it food, and pass, with guile

  4005

  Of thankful falsehood, like a courtier gray,

  The house-dog of the throne; but many a mile

  Comes Plague, a wingèd wolf, who loathes alway

  The garbage and the scum that strangers make her prey.

  XXV

  So, near the throne, amid the gorgeous feast,

  4010