The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Shall steam up like inspiration,

  Eloquent, oracular;

  A volcano heard afar.

  XC

  ‘And these words shall then becom

  Like Oppression’s thundered doom

  Ringing through each heart and brain

  Heard again—again—again—

  XCI

  ‘Rise like Lions after slumber

  In unvanquishable number—

  370

  Shake your chains to earth like dew

  Which in sleep had fallen on you—

  Ye are many—they are few.’

  NOTE ON THE MASK OF ANARCHY, BY MRS. SHELLEY

  THOUGH Shelley’s first eager desire to excite his countrymen to resist openly the oppressions existent during ‘the good old times’ had faded with early youth, still his warmest sympathies were for the people. He was a republican, and loved a democracy. He looked on all human beings as inheriting an equal right to possess the dearest privileges of our nature; the necessaries of life when fairly earned by labour, and intellectual instruction. His hatred of any despotism that looked upon the people as not to be consulted, or protected from want and ignorance, was intense. He was residing near Leghorn, at Villa Valsovano, writing The Cenci, when the news of the Manchester Massacre reached us; it roused in him violent emotions of indignation and compassion. The great truth that the many, if accordant and resolute, could control the few, as was shown some years after, made him long to teach his injured countrymen how to resist. Inspired by these feelings, he wrote the Mask of Anarchy, which he sent to his friend Leigh Hunt, to be inserted in the Examiner, of which he was then the Editor.

  ‘I did not insert it,’ Leigh Hunt writes in his valuable and interesting preface to this poem, when he printed it in 1832, ‘because I thought that the public at large had not become sufficiently discerning to do justice to the sincerity and kind-heartedness of the spirit that walked in this flaming robe of verse.’ Days of outrage have passed away, and with them the exasperation that would cause such an appeal to the many to be injurious. Without being aware of them, they at one time acted on his suggestions, and gained the day. But they rose when human life was respected by the Minister in power; such was not the case during the Administration which excited Shelley’s abhorrence.

  The poem was written for the people, and is therefore in a more popular tone than usual: portions strike as abrupt and unpolished, but many stanzas are all his own. I heard him repeat, and admired, those beginning

  ‘My Father Time is old and gray,’

  before I knew to what poem they were to belong. But the most touching passage is that which describes the blessed effects of liberty; it might make a patriot of any man whose heart was not wholly closed against his humbler fellow-creatures.

  PETER BELL THE THIRD

  By MICHING MALLECHO, ESQ.

  Is it a party in a parlour,

  Crammed just as they on earth were crammed,

  Some sipping punch—some sipping tea;

  But, as you by their faces see,

  All silent, and all—damned!

  Peter Bell, by W. WORDSWORTH.

  OPHELIA.—What means this, my lord?

  HAMLET.—Marry, this is Miching Mallecho; it means mischief.

  SHAKESPEARE.

  DEDICATION

  TO THOMAS BROWN, ESQ., THE YOUNGER, H.F.

  DEAR TOM—Allow me to request you to introduce Mr. Peter Bell to the respectable family of the Fudges. Although he may fall short of those very considerable personages in the more active properties which characterize the Rat and the Apostate, I suspect that even you, their historian, will confess that he surpasses them in the more peculiarly legitimate qualification of intolerable dulness.

  You know Mr. Examiner Hunt; well—it was he who presented me to two of the Mr. Bells. My intimacy with the younger Mr. Bell naturally sprung from this introduction to his brothers. And in presenting him to you, I have the satisfaction of being able to assure you that he is considerably the dullest of the three.

  There is this particular advantage in an acquaintance with any one of the Peter Bells, that if you know one Peter Bell, you know three Peter Bells; they are not one, but three; not three, but one. An awful mystery, which, after having caused torrents of blood, and having been hymned by groans enough to deafen the music of the spheres, is at length illustrated to the satisfaction of all parties in the theological world, by the nature of Mr. Peter Bell.

  Peter is a polyhedric Peter, or a Peter with many sides. He changes colours like a chameleon, and his coat like a snake. He is a Proteus of a Peter. He was at first sublime, pathetic, impressive, profound; then dull; then prosy and dull; and now dull—oh so very dull! it is an ultra-legitimate dulness.

  You will perceive that it is not necessary to consider Hell and the Devil as supernatural machinery. The whole scene of my epic is in ‘this world which is’—so Peter informed us before his conversion to White Obi—

  ‘The world of all of us, and where

  We find our happiness, or not at all.’

  Let me observe that I have spent six or seven days in composing this sublime piece; the orb of my moonlike genius has made the fourth part of its revolution round the dull earth which you inhabit, driving you mad, while it has retained its calmness and its splendour, and I have been fitting this its last phase ‘to occupy a permanent station in the literature of my country.’

  Your works, indeed, dear Tom, sell better; but mine are far superior, The public is no judge; posterity sets all to rights.

  Allow me to observe that so much has been written of Peter Bell, that the present history can be considered only, like the Iliad, as a continuation of that series of cyclic poems, which have already been candidates for bestowing immortality upon, at the same time that they receive it from, his character and adventures. In this point of view I have violated no rule of syntax in beginning my composition with a conjunction; the full stop which closes the poem continued by me being, like the full stops at the end of the Iliad and Odyssey, a full stop of a very qualified import.

  Hoping that the immortality which you have given to the Fudges, you will receive from them; and in the firm expectation, that when London shall be an habitation of bitterns; when St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey shall stand, shapeless and nameless ruins, in the midst of an unpeopled marsh; when the piers of Waterloo Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary stream, some transatlantic commentator will be weighing in the scales of some new and now unimagined system of criticism, the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges, and their historians. I remain, dear Tom, yours sincerely,

  MICHING MALLECHO.

  December 1, 1810.

  P.S.—Pray excuse the date of place; so soon as the profits of the publication come in, I mean to hire lodgings in a more respectable street.

  PROLOGUE

  PETER BELLS, one, two and three,

  O’er the wide world wandering be.—

  First, the antenatal Peter,

  Wrapped in weeds of the same metre,

  5

  The so-long-predestined raiment

  Clothed in which to walk his way meant

  The second Peter; whose ambition

  Is to link the proposition,

  As the mean of two extremes—

  10

  (This was learned from Aldric’s themes)

  Shielding from the guilt of schism

  The orthodoxal syllogism;

  The First Peter—he who was

  Like the shadow in the glass

  15

  Of the second, yet unripe,

  His substantial antitype.—

  Then came Peter Bell the Second,

  Who henceforward must be reckoned

  The body of a double soul,

  20

  And that portion of the whole

  Without which the rest would seem

  Ends of a disjointed d
ream.—

  And the Third is he who has

  O’er the grave been forced to pass

  25

  To the other side, which is,—

  Go and try else,—just like this.

  Peter Bell the First was Peter

  Smugger, milder, softer, neater,

  Like the soul before it is

  30

  Born from that world into this.

  The next Peter Bell was he,

  Predevote, like you and me,

  To good or evil as may come;

  His was the severer doom,—

  35

  For he was an evil Cotter,

  And a polygamic Potter.1

  And the last is Peter Bell,

  Damned since our first parents fell,

  Damned eternally to Hell—

  40

  Surely he deserves it well!

  PART THE FIRST

  DEATH

  I

  AND Peter Bell, when he had been

  With fresh-imported Hell-fire warmed,

  Grew serious—from his dress and mien

  ’Twas very plainly to be seen

  5

  Peter was quite reformed.

  II

  His eyes turned up, his mouth turned down;

  His accent caught a nasal twang;

  He oiled his hair;2 there might be heard

  The grace of God in every word

  10

  Which Peter said or sang.

  III

  But Peter now grew old, and had

  An ill no doctor could unravel;

  His torments almost drove him mad;—

  Some said it was a fever bad—

  15

  Some swore it was the gravel.

  IV

  His holy friends then came about,

  And with long preaching and persuasion

  Convinced the patient that, with out

  The smallest shadow of a doubt,

  20

  He was predestined to damnation.

  V

  They said—‘Thy name is Peter Bell;

  Thy skin is of a brimstone hue;

  Alive or dead—ay, sick or well—

  The one God made to rhyme with hell;

  25

  The other, I think, rhymes with you.’

  VI

  Then Peter set up such a yell! —

  The nurse, who with some water gruel

  Was climbing up the stairs, as well

  As her old legs could climb them—fell,

  30

  And broke them both—the fall was cruel.

  VII

  The Parson from the casement lept

  Into the lake of Windermere—

  And many an eel—though no adept

  In God’s right reason for it—kept

  Gnawing his kidneys half a year.

  VIII

  And all the rest rushed through the door,

  And tumbled over one another,

  And broke their skulls.—Upon the floor

  Meanwhile sat Peter Bell, and swore,

  40

  And cursed his father and his mother;

  IX

  And raved of God, and sin, and death,

  Blaspheming like an infidel;

  And said, that with his clenchèd teeth

  He’d seize the earth from underneath,

  45

  And drag it with him down to hell.

  X

  As he was speaking came a spasm,

  And wrenched his gnashing teeth asunder;

  Like one who sees a strange phantasm

  He lay,—there was a silent chasm

  Between his upper jaw and under.

  XI

  And yellow death lay on his face;

  And a fixed smile that was not human

  Told, as I understand the case,

  That he was gone to the wrong place:—

  55

  I heard all this from the old woman.

  XII

  Then there came down from Langdale Pike

  A cloud, with lightning, wind and hail;

  It swept over the mountains like

  An ocean,—and I heard it strike

  60

  The woods and crags of Grasmere vale.

  XIII

  And I saw the black storm come

  Nearer, minute after minute;

  Its thunder made the cataracts dumb;

  With hiss, and clash, and hollow hum,

  65

  It neared as if the Devil was in it.

  XIV

  The Devil was in it:—he had bought

  Peter for half-a-crown; and when

  The storm which bore him vanished, nought

  That in the house that storm had caught

  70

  Was ever seen again.

  XV

  The gaping neighbours came next day—

  They found all vanished from the shore:

  The Bible, whence he used to pray,

  Half scorched under a hen-coop lay;

  75

  Smashed glass—and nothing more!

  PART THE SECOND

  THE DEVIL

  I

  THE DEVIL, I safely can aver,

  Has neither hoof, nor tail, nor sting;

  Nor is he, as some sages swear,

  A spirit, neither here nor there,

  80

  In nothing—yet in everything.

  II

  He is—what we are; for sometimes

  The Devil is a gentleman;

  At others a bard bartering rhymes

  For sack; a statesman spinning crimes;

  85

  A swindler, living as he can;

  III

  A thief, who cometh in the night,

  With whole boots and net pantaloons,

  Like some one whom it were not right

  To mention;—or the luckless wight

  90

  From whom he steals nine silver spoons.

  IV

  But in this case he did appear

  Like a slop-merchant from Wapping,

  And with smug face, and eye severe,

  On every side did perk and peer

  Till he saw Peter dead or napping.

  V

  He had on an upper Benjamin

  (For he was of the driving schism)

  In the which he wrapped his skin

  From the storm he travelled in,

  100

  For fear of rheumatism.

  VI

  He called the ghost out of the corse;—

  It was exceedingly like Peter,—

  Only its voice was hollow and hoarse—

  It had a queerish look of course—

  105

  Its dress too was a little neater.

  VII

  The Devil knew not his name and lot;

  Peter knew not that he was Bell:

  Each had an upper stream of thought,

  Which made all seem as it was not;

  110

  Fitting itself to all things well.

  VIII

  Peter thought he had parents dear,

  Bothers, sisters, cousins, cronies,

  In the fens of Lincolnshire;

  He perhaps had found them there

  115

  Had he gone and boldly shown his

  IX

  Solemn phiz in his own village;

  Where he thought oft when a boy

  He’d clomb the orchard walls to pillage

  The produce of his neighbour’s tillage,

  120

  With marvellous pride and joy.

  X

  And the Devil thought he had,

  ’Mid the misery and confusion

  Of an unjust war, just made

  A fortune by the gainful trade

  125

  Of giving soldiers rations bad—

  The world is full of strange delusion—

  XI

  That he
had a mansion planned

  In a square like Grosvenor Square,

  That he was aping fashion, and

  130

  That he now came to Westmoreland

  To see what was romantic there.

  XII

  And all this, though quite ideal,—

  Ready at a breath to vanish,—

  Was a state not more unreal

  135

  Than the peace he could not feel,

  Or the care he could not banish.

  XIII

  After a little conversation,

  The Devil told Peter, if he chose,

  He’d bring him to the world of fashion

  140

  By giving him a situation

  In his own service—and new clothes.

  XIV

  And Peter bowed, quite pleased and proud,

  And after waiting some few days

  For a new livery—dirty yellow

  145

  Turned up with black—the wretched fellow

  Was bowled to Hell in the Devil’s chaise.

  PART THE THIRD

  HELL

  I

  HELL is a city much like London—

  A populous and a smoky city;

  There are all sorts of people undone,

  150

  And there is little or no fun done;

  Small justice shown, and still less pity.

  II

  There is a Castles, and a Canning,

  A Cobbett, and a Castlereagh;

  All sorts of caitiff corpses planning

  155