The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley
V
One more, ‘Is incest not enough?
And must there be adultery too?
480
Grace after meat? Miscreant and Liar!
Thief! Blackguard! Scoundrel! Fool! Hell-fire
Is twenty times too good for you.
VI
‘By that last book of yours WE think
You’ve double damned yourself to scorn;
485
We warned you whilst yet on the brink
You stood. From your black name will shrink
The babe that is unborn.’
VII
All these Reviews the Devil made
Up in a parcel, which he had
490
Safely to Peter’s house conveyed.
For carriage, tenpence Peter paid—
Untied them—read them—went half mad.
VIII
‘What!’ cried he, ‘this is my reward
For nights of thought, and days of toil?
495
Do poets, but to be abhorred
By men of whom they never heard,
Consume their spirits’ oil?
IX
‘What have I done to them?—and who
Is Mrs. Foy? ’Tis very cruel
500
To speak of me and Betty so!
Adultery! God defend me! Oh!
I’ve half a mind to fight a duel.
X
‘Or,’ cried he, a grave look collecting,
‘Is it my genius, like the moon,
505
Sets those who stand her face inspecting,
That face within their brain reflecting,
Like a crazed bell-chime, out of tune?’
XI
For Peter did not know the town,
But thought, as country readers do,
510
For half a guinea or a crown,
He bought oblivion or renown
From God’s own voice6 in a review.
XII
All Peter did on this occasion
Was, writing some sad stuff in prose.
515
It is a dangerous invasion
When poets criticize; their station
Is to delight, not pose.
XIII
The Devil then sent to Leipsic fair
For Born’s translation of Kant’s book;
A world of words, tail foremost, where
Right — wrong — false — true —- and foul—and fair
As in a lottery-wheel are shook.
XIV
Five thousand crammed octavo pages
Of German psychologies,—he
525
Who his furor verborum assuages
Thereon, deserves just seven months’ wages
More than will e’er be due to me.
XV
I looked on them nine several days,
And then I saw that they were bad;
530
A friend, too, spoke in their dispraise,—
He never read them;—with amaze
I found Sir William Drummond had.
XVI
When the book came, the Devil sent
It to P. Verbovale,7 Esquire,
With a brief note of compliment,
By that night’s Carlisle mail. It went,
And set his soul on fire.
XVII
Fire, which ex luce praebens fumum,
Made him beyond the bottom see
540
Of truth’s clear well—when I and you, Ma’am,
Go, as we shall do, subter humum,
We may know more than he.
XVIII
Now Peter ran to seed in soul
Into a walking paradox;
For he was neither part nor whole,
Nor good, nor bad—nor knave nor fool;
—Among the woods and rocks
XIX
Furious he rode, where late he ran,
Lashing and spurring his tame hobby;
550
Turned to a formal puritan,
A solemn and unsexual man,—
He half believed White Obi.
XX
This steed in vision he would ride,
High trotting over nine-inch bridges,
With Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride,
Mocking and mowing by his side—
A mad-brained goblin for a guide—
Over corn-fields, gates, and hedges.
XXI
After these ghastly rides, he came
560
Home to his heart, and found from thence
Much stolen of its accustomed flame;
His thoughts grew weak, drowsy, and lame
Of their intelligence.
XXII
To Peter’s view, all seemed one hue;
He was no Whig, he was no Tory;
No Deist and no Christian he;—
He got so subtle, that to be
Nothing, was all his glory.
XXIII
One single point in his belief
570
From his organization sprung,
The heart-enrooted faith, the chief
Ear in his doctrines’ blighted sheaf,
That ‘Happiness is wrong’;
XXIV
So thought Calvin and Dominic;
So think their fierce successors, who
Even now would neither stint nor stick
Our flesh from off our bones to pick,
If they might ‘do their do.’
XXV
His morals thus were undermined:—
580
The old Peter—the hard, old Potter—
Was born anew within his mind;
He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined,
As when he tramped beside the Otter.8
XXVI
In the death hues of agony
585
Lambently flashing from a fish,
Now Peter felt amused to see
Shades like a rainbow’s rise and flee,
Mixed with a certain hungry wish.
XXVII
So in his Country’s dying face
He looked—and, lovely as she lay,
Seeking in vain his last embrace,
Wailing her own abandoned case,
With hardened sneer he turned away:
XXVIII
And coolly to his own soul said;—
595
‘Do you not think that we might make
A poem on her when she’s dead:—
Or no—a thought is in my head—
Her shroud for a new sheet I’ll take:
XXIX
‘My wife wants one.—Let who will bury
600
This mangled corpse! And I and you,
My dearest Soul, will then make merry,
As the Prince Regent did with Sherry,—’
‘Ay—and at last desert me too.’
XXX
And so his Soul would not be gay,
605
But moaned within him; like a fawn
Moaning within a cave, it lay
Wounded and wasting, day by day,
Till all its life of life was gone.
XXXI
As troubled skies stain waters clear,
The storm in Peter’s heart and mind
Now made his verses dark and queer:
They were the ghosts of what they were,
Shaking dim grave-clothes in the wind.
XXXII
For he now raved enormous folly,
615
Of Baptisms, Sunday-schools, and Graves,
’Twould make George Colman melancholy
To have heard him, like a male Molly,
Chanting those stupid staves.
XXXIII
Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse
620
On Peter while he wrote for freedom,
So soon as in his song they spy
The
folly which soothes tyranny,
Praise him, for those who feed ’em.
XXXIV
‘He was a man, too great to scan;—
625
A planet lost in truth’s keen rays:—
His virtue, awful and prodigious;—
He was the most sublime, religious,
Pure-minded Poet of these days.’
XXXV
As soon as he read that, cried Peter,
630
‘Eureka! I have found the way
To make a better thing of metre
Than e’er was made by living creature
Up to this blessèd day.’
XXXVI
Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil;—
635
In one of which he meekly said:
‘May Carnage and Slaughter,
Thy niece and thy daughter,
May Rapine and Famine,
Thy gorge ever cramming,
640
Glut thee with living and dead!
XXXVII
‘May Death and Damnation,
And Consternation,
Flit up from Hell with pure intent!
Slash them at Manchester,
645
Glasgow, Leeds, and Chester;
Drench all with blood from Avon to Trent.
XXXVIII
‘Let thy body-guard yeomen
Hew down babes and women,
And laugh with bold triumph till Heaven be rent!
650
When Moloch in Jewry
Munched children with fury,
It was thou, Devil, dining with pure intent.’9
PART THE SEVENTH
DOUBLE DAMNATION
I
THE Devil now knew his proper cue.—
Soon as he read the ode, he drove
655
To his friend Lord MacMurderchouse’s,
A man of interest in both houses,
And said:—‘For money or for love,
II
‘Pray find some cure or sinecure;
To feed from the superfluous taxes
660
A friend of ours—a poet—fewer
Have fluttered tamer to the lure
Than he.’ His lordship stands and racks his
III
Stupid brains, while one might count
As many beads as he had boroughs,—
665
At length replies; from his mean front,
Like one who rubs out an account,
Smoothing away the unmeaning furrows:
IV
‘It happens fortunately, dear Sir,
I can. I hope I need require
670
No pledge from you, that he will stir
In our affairs;—like Oliver,
That he’ll be worthy of his hire.’
V
These words exchanged, the news sent off
To Peter, home the Devil hied,—
Took to his bed; he had no cough,
No doctor,—meat and drink enough,—
Yet that same night he died.
VI
The Devil’s corpse was leaded down;
His decent heirs enjoyed his pelf,
680
Mourning-coaches, many a one,
Followed his hearse along the town:—
Where was the Devil himself?
VII
When Peter heard of his promotion,
His eyes grew like two stars for bliss:
685
There was a bow of sleek devotion
Engendering in his back; each motion
Seemed a Lord’s shoe to kiss.
VIII
He hired a house, bought plate, and made
A genteel drive up to his door,
690
With sifted gravel neatly laid,—
As if defying all who said,
Peter was ever poor.
IX
But a disease soon struck into
The very life and soul of Peter—
695
He walked about—slept—had the hue
Of health upon his cheeks—and few
Dug better—none a heartier eater.
X
And yet a strange and horrid curse
Clung upon Peter, night and day;
700
Month after month the thing grew worse,
And deadlier than in this my verse
I can find strength to say.
XI
Peter was dull—he was at first
Dull—oh, so dull—so very dull!
705
Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed—
Still with this dulness was he cursed—
Dull—beyond all conception—dull.
XII
No one could read his books—no mortal,
But a few natural friends, would hear him;
710
The parson came not near his portal;
His state was like that of the immortal
Described by Swift—no man could bear him.
XIII
His sister, wife, and children yawned,
With a long, slow, and drear ennui,
715
All human patience far beyond;
Their hopes of Heaven each would have pawned,
Anywhere else to be.
XIV
But in his verse, and in his prose,
The essence of his dulness was
720
Concentred and compressed so close,
’Twould have made Guatimozin doze
On his red gridiron of brass.
XV
A printer’s boy, folding those pages,
Fell slumbrously upon one side;
725
Like those famed Seven who slept three ages.
To wakeful frenzy’s vigil-rages,
As opiates, were the same applied.
XVI
Even the Reviewers who were hired
To do the work of his reviewing,
730
With adamantine nerves, grew tired;—
Gaping and torpid they retired,
To dream of what they should be doing.
XVII
And worse and worse, the drows curse
Yawned in him, till it grew a pest—
735
A wide contagious atmosphere,
Creeping like cold through all things near;
A power to infect and to infest.
XVIII
His servant-maids and dogs grew dull;
His kitten, late a sportive elf;
740
The woods and lakes, so beautiful,
Of dim stupidity were full,
All grew dull as Peter’s self.
XIX
The earth under his feet—the springs,
Which lived within it a quick life,
745
The air, the winds of many wings,
That fan it with new murmurings,
Were dead to their harmonious strife.
XX
The birds and beasts within the wood,
The insects, and each creeping thing,
750
Were now a silent multitude;
Love’s work was left unwrought—no brood
Near Peter’s house took wing.
XXI
And every neighbouring cottager
Stupidly yawned upon the other:
755
No jackass brayed; no little cur
Cocked up his ears;—no man would stir
To save a dying mother.
XXII
Yet all from that charmed district went
But some half-idiot and half-knave,
760
Who rather than pay any rent,
Would live with marvellous content,
Over his father’s grave.
XXIII
No bailiff dared within that space,
For fear
of the dull charm, to enter;
765
A man would bear upon his face,
For fifteen months in any case,
The yawn of such a venture.
XXIV
Seven miles above—below—around—
This pest of dulness holds its sway;
770
A ghastly life without a sound;
To Peter’s soul the spell is bound—
How should it ever pass away?
NOTE ON PETER BELL THE THIRD, BY MRS. SHELLEY
IN this new edition I have added Peter Bell the Third. A critique on Wordsworth’s Peter Bell reached us at Leghorn, which amused Shelley exceedingly, and suggested this poem.
I need scarcely observe that nothing personal to the author of Peter Bell is intended in this poem. No man ever admired Wordsworth’s poetry more;—he read it perpetually, and taught others to appreciate its beauties. This poem is, like all others written by Shelley, ideal. He conceived the idealism of a poet—a man of lofty and creative genius—quitting the glorious calling of discovering and announcing the beautiful and good, to support and propagate ignorant prejudices and pernicious errors; imparting to the unenlightened, not that ardour for truth and spirit of toleration which Shelley looked on as the sources of the moral improvement and happiness of mankind, but false and injurious opinions, that evil was good, and that ignorance and force were the best allies of purity and virtue. His idea was that a man gifted, even as transcendently as the author of Peter Bell, with the highest qualities of genius, must, if he fostered such errors, be infected with dulness. This poem was written as a warning—not as a narration of the reality. He was unacquainted personally with Wordsworth, or with Coleridge (to whom he alludes in the fifth part of the poem), and therefore, I repeat, his poem is purely ideal;—it contains something of criticism on the compositions of those great poets, but nothing injurious to the men themselves.