The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley

  All sorts of cozening for trepanning

  Corpses less corrupt than they.

  III

  There is a * * *, who has lost

  His wits, or sold them, none knows which;

  He walks about a double ghost,

  160

  And though as thin as Fraud almost—

  Ever grows more grim and rich.

  IV

  There is a Chancery Court; a King;

  A manufacturing mob; a set

  Of thieves who by themselves are sent

  165

  Similar thieves to represent;

  An army; and a public debt.

  V

  Which last is a scheme of paper money,

  And means—being interpreted—

  ‘Bees, keep your wax—give us the honey,

  170

  And we will plant, while skies are sunny,

  Flowers, which in winter serve instead.’

  VI

  There is a great talk of revolution—

  And a great chance of despotism—

  German soldiers—camps—confusion—

  175

  Tumults — lotteries — rage — delusion—

  Gin—suicide—and methodism;

  VII

  Taxes too, on wine and bread,

  And meat, and beer, and tea, and cheese,

  From which those patriots pure are fed,

  Who gorge before they reel to bed

  The tenfold essence of all these.

  VIII

  There are mincing women, mewing,

  (Like cats, who amant miserè,3)

  Of their own virtue, and pursuing

  Their gentler sisters to that ruin,

  Without which—what were chastity?4

  IX

  Lawyers—judges—old hobnobbers

  Are there — bailiffs — chancellors—

  Bishops—great and little robbers—

  190

  Rhymesters—pamphleteers—stock-jobbers—

  Men of glory in the wars,—

  X

  Things whose trade is, over ladies

  To lean, and flirt, and stare, and simper,

  Till all that is divine in woman

  195

  Grows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman,

  Crucified ’twixt a smile and whimper.

  XI

  Thrusting, toiling, wailing, moiling,

  Frowning, preaching — such a riot!

  Each with never-ceasing labour,

  200

  Whilst he thinks he cheats his neighbour,

  Cheating his own heart of quiet.

  XII

  And all these meet at levees;—

  Dinners convivial and political;—

  Suppers of epic poets;—teas,

  Where small talk dies in agonies;—

  Breakfasts professional and critical;

  XIII

  Lunches and snacks so aldermanic

  That one would furnish forth ten dinners,

  Where reigns a Cretan-tonguèd panic,

  210

  Lest news Russ, Dutch, or Alemannic

  Should make some losers, and some winners;—

  XIV

  At conversazioni—balls—

  Conventicles—and drawing-rooms—

  Courts of law—committees—calls

  Of a morning—clubs—book stalls—

  Churches—masquerades—and tombs.

  XV

  And this is Hell—and in this smother

  All are damnable and damned;

  Each one damning, damns the other;

  They are damned by one another,

  By none other are they damned.

  XVI

  ’Tis a lie to say, ‘God damns5!’

  Where was Heaven’s Attorney General

  When they first gave out such flams?

  225

  Let there be an end of shams,

  They are mines of poisonous mineral.

  XVII

  Statesmen damn themselves to be

  Cursed; and lawyers damn their souls

  To the auction of a fee;

  Churchmen damn themselves to see

  God’s sweet love in burning coals.

  XVIII

  The rich are damned, beyond all cure,

  To taunt, and starve, and trample on

  The weak and wretched; and the poor

  Damn their broken hearts to endure

  Stripe on stripe, with groan on groan.

  XIX

  Sometimes the poor are damned indeed

  To take,—not means for being blessed,—

  But Cobbett’s snuff, revenge; that weed

  240

  From which the worms that it doth feed

  Squeeze less than they before possessed.

  XX

  And some few, like we know who,

  Damned—but God alone knows why—

  To believe their minds are given

  To make this ugly Hell a Heaven;

  In which faith they live and die.

  XXI

  Thus, as in a town, plague-stricken,

  Each man be he sound or no

  Must indifferently sicken;

  250

  As when day begins to thicken,

  None knows a pigeon from a crow,—

  XXII

  So good and bad, sane and mad,

  The oppressor and the oppressed;

  Those who weep to see what others

  Smile to inflict upon their brothers;

  Lovers, haters, worst and best;

  XXIII

  All are damned—they breathe an air,

  Thick infected, joy-dispelling:

  Each pursues what seems most fair,

  260

  Mining like moles, through mind, and there

  Scoop palace-caverns vast, where Care

  In thronéd state is ever dwelling.

  PART THE FOURTH

  SIN

  I

  LO, Peter in Hell’s Grosvenor Square,

  A footman in the Devil’s service!

  265

  And the misjudging world would swear

  That every man in service there

  To virtue would prefer vice.

  II

  But Peter, though now damned, was not

  What Peter was before damnation.

  270

  Men oftentimes prepare a lot

  Which ere it finds them, is not what

  Suits with their genuine station.

  III

  All things that Peter saw and felt

  Had a peculiar aspect to him;

  275

  And when they came within the belt

  Of his own nature, seemed to melt,

  Like cloud to cloud, into him.

  IV

  And so the outward world uniting

  To that within him, he became

  280

  Considerably uninviting

  To those who, meditation slighting,

  Were moulded in a different frame.

  V

  And he scorned them, and they scorned him;

  And he scorned all they did; and they

  Did all that men of their own trim

  Are wont to do to please their whim,

  Drinking, lying, swearing, play.

  VI

  Such were his fellow-servants; thus

  His virtue, like our own, was built

  290

  Too much on that indignant fuss

  Hypocrite Pride stirs up in us

  To bully one another’s guilt.

  VII

  He had a mind which was somehow

  At once circumference and centre

  295

  Of all he might or feel or know;

  Nothing went ever out, although

  Something did ever enter.

  VIII

  He had as much imagination

  As a pint-pot;—he never could

&
nbsp; 300

  Fancy another situation,

  From which to dart his contemplation,

  Than that wherein he stood.

  IX

  Yet his was individual mind,

  And new created all he saw

  305

  In a new manner, and refined

  Those new creations, and combined

  Them, by a master-spirit’s law.

  X

  Thus—though unimaginative—

  An apprehension clear, intense,

  Of his mind’s work, had made alive

  The things it wrought on; I believe

  Wakening a sort of thought in sense.

  XI

  But from the first ’twas Peter’s drift

  To be a kind of moral eunuch,

  315

  He touched the hem of Nature’s shift,

  Felt faint—and never dared uplift

  The closest, all-concealing tunic.

  XII

  She laughed the while, with an arch smile,

  And kissed him with a sister’s kiss,

  320

  And said—‘My best Diogenes,

  I love you well—but, if you please,

  Tempt not again my deepest bliss.

  XIII

  ‘’Tis you are cold—for I, not coy,

  Yield love for love, frank, warm, and true;

  325

  And Burns, a Scottish peasant boy—

  His errors prove it—knew my joy

  More, learned friend, than you.

  XIV

  ‘Bocca bacciata non perde ventura,

  Anzi rinnuova come fa la luna:—

  330

  So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might cure a

  Male prude, like you, from what you now endure, a

  Low-tide in soul, like a stagnant laguna.’

  XV

  Then Peter rubbed his eyes severe,

  And smoothed his spacious forehead down

  335

  With his broad palm;—’twixt love and fear,

  He looked, as he no doubt felt, queer,

  And in his dream sate down.

  XVI

  The Devil was no uncommon creature,

  A leaden-witted thief—just huddled

  Out of the dross and scum of nature;

  A toad-like lump of limb and feature,

  With mind, and heart, and fancy muddled.

  XVII

  He was that heavy, dull, cold thing,

  The spirit of evil well may be:

  A drone too base to have a sting;

  Who gluts, and grimes his lazy wing,

  And calls lust, luxury.

  XVIII

  Now he was quite the kind of wight

  Round whom collect, at a fixed aera,

  Venison, turtle, hock, and claret,—

  Good cheer—and those who come to share it—

  And best East Indian madeira!

  XIX

  It was his fancy to invite

  Men of science, wit, and learning,

  Who came to lend each other light;

  He proudly thought that his gold’s might

  Had set those spirits burning.

  XX

  And men of learning, science, wit,

  Considered him as you and I

  Think of some rotten tree, and sit

  Lounging and dining under it,

  Exposed to the wide sky.

  XXI

  And all the while, with loose fat smile,

  The willing wretch sat winking there,

  Believing ’twas his power that made

  That jovial scene—and that all paid

  Homage to his unnoticed chair.

  XXII

  Though to be sure this place was Hell;

  He was the Devil—and all they—

  What though the claret circled well,

  And wit, like ocean, rose and fell?—

  Were damned eternally.

  PART THE FIFTH

  GRACE

  I

  AMONG the guests who often stayed

  Till the Devil’s petits-soupers,

  375

  A man there came, fair as a maid,

  And Peter noted what he said,

  Standing behind his master’s chair.

  II

  He was a mighty poet—and

  A subtle-souled psychologist;

  All things he seemed to understand,

  Of old or new—of sea or land—

  But his own mind—which was a mist.

  III

  This was a man who might have turned

  Hell into Heaven—and so in gladness

  A Heaven unto himself have earned;

  But he in shadows undiscerned

  Trusted,—and damned himself to madness.

  IV

  He spoke of poetry, and how

  ‘Divine it was—a light—a love—

  A spirit which like wind doth blow

  As it listeth, to and fro;

  A dew rained down from God above;

  V

  ‘A power which comes and goes like dream,

  And which none can ever trace—

  395

  Heaven’s light on earth—Truth’s brightest beam.’

  And when he ceased there lay the gleam

  Of those words upon his face.

  VI

  Now Peter, when he heard such talk,

  Would, heedless of a broken pate,

  400

  Stand like a man asleep, or balk

  Some wishing guest of knife or fork,

  Or drop and break his master’s plate.

  VII

  At night he oft would start and wake

  Like a lover, and began

  405

  In a wild measure songs to make

  On moor, and glen, and rocky lake,

  And on the heart of man—

  VIII

  And on the universal sky—

  And the wide earth’s bosom green,—

  410

  And the sweet, strange mystery

  Of what beyond these things may lie,

  And yet remain unseen.

  IX

  For in his thought he visited

  The spots in which, ere dead and damned,

  415

  He his wayward life had led;

  Yet knew not whence the thoughts were fed

  Which thus his fancy crammed.

  X

  And these obscure remembrances

  Stirred such harmony in Peter,

  That, whensoever he should please,

  He could speak of rocks and trees

  In poetic metre.

  XI

  For though it was without a sense

  Of memory, yet he remembered well

  Many a ditch and quick-set fence;

  Of lakes he had intelligence,

  He knew something of heath and fell.

  XII

  He had also dim recollections

  Of pedlars tramping on their rounds;

  430

  Milk-pans and pails; and odd collections

  Of saws, and proverbs; and reflections

  Old parsons make in burying-grounds.

  XIII

  But Peter’s verse was clear, and came

  Announcing from the frozen hearth

  435

  Of a cold age, that none might tame

  The soul of that diviner flame

  It augured to the Earth:

  XIV

  Like gentle rains, on the dry plains,

  Making that green which late was gray,

  Or like the sudden moon, that stains

  Some gloomy chamber’s window-panes

  With a broad light like day.

  XV

  For language was in Peter’s hand

  Like clay while he was yet a potter;

  445

  And he made songs for all the land,

  Sweet both to feel and under
stand,

  As pipkins late to mountain Cotter.

  XVI

  And Mr.—–, the bookseller,

  Gave twenty pounds for some;—then scorning

  A footman’s yellow coat to wear,

  Peter, too proud of heart, I fear,

  Instantly gave the Devil warning.

  XVII

  Whereat the Devil took offence,

  And swore in his soul a great oath then,

  ‘That for his damned impertinence

  He’d bring him to a proper sense

  Of what was due to gentlemen!’

  PART THE SIXTH

  DAMNATION

  I

  ‘O THAT mine enemy had written

  A book!’—cried Job:—a fearful curse,

  460

  If to the Arab, as the Briton,

  ’Twas galling to be critic-bitten:—

  The Devil to Peter wished no worse.

  II

  When Peter’s next new book found vent,

  The Devil to all the first Reviews

  465

  A copy of it slyly sent,

  With five-pound note as compliment,

  And this short notice—‘Pray abuse.’

  III

  Then seriatim, month and quarter,

  Appeared such mad tirades.—One said—

  ‘Peter seduced Mrs. Foy’s daughter,

  Then drowned the mother in Ullswater,

  The last thing as he went to bed.’

  IV

  Another—‘Let him shave his head!

  Where’s Dr. Willis?—Or is he joking?

  475

  What does the rascal mean or hope,

  No longer imitating Pope,

  In that barbarian Shakespeare poking?’