The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley

But she in the calm depths her way could take,

  Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide

  Beneath the weltering of the restless tide.

  LXIV

  And she saw princes couched under the glow

  Of sunlike gems; and round each temple-court

  555

  In dormitories ranged, row after row,

  She saw the priests asleep—all of one sort—

  For all were educated to be so.—

  The peasants in their huts, and in the port

  The sailors she saw cradled on the waves,

  560

  And the dead lulled within their dreamless graves.

  LXV

  And all the forms in which those spirits lay

  Were to her sight like the diaphanous

  Veils, in which those sweet ladies oft array

  Their delicate limbs, who would conceal from us

  565

  Only their scorn of all concealment: they

  Move in the light of their own beauty thus.

  But these and all now lay with sleep upon them,

  And little thought a Witch was looking on them.

  LXVI

  She, all those human figures breathing there,

  570

  Beheld as living spirits—to her eyes

  The naked beauty of the soul lay bare,

  And often through a rude and worn disguise

  She saw the inner form most bright and fair—

  And then she had a charm of strange device,

  575

  Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone,

  Could make that spirit mingle with her own.

  LXVII

  Alas! Aurora, what wouldst thou have given

  For such a charm when Tithon became gray?

  Or how much, Venus, of thy silver heaven

  580

  Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina

  Had half (oh! why not all?) the debt forgiven

  Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pay,

  To any witch who would have taught you it?

  The Heliad doth not know its value yet.

  LXVIII

  585

  ’Tis said in after times her spirit free

  Knew what love was, and felt itself alone—

  But holy Dian could not chaster be

  Before she stooped to kiss Endymion,

  Than now this lady—like a sexless bee

  590

  Tasting all blossoms, and confined to none,

  Among those mortal forms, the wizard-maiden

  Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen.

  LXIX

  To those she saw most beautiful, she gave

  Strange panacea in a crystal bowl:—

  595

  They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave,

  And lived thenceforward as if some control,

  Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave

  Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul,

  Was as a green and overarching bower

  600

  Lit by the gems of many a starry flower.

  LXX

  For on the night when they were buried, she

  Restored the embalmers’ ruining, and shook

  The light out of the funeral lamps, to be

  A mimic day within that deathy nook;

  605

  And she unwound the woven imagery

  Of second childhood’s swaddling bands, and took

  The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche,

  And threw it with contempt into a ditch.

  LXXI

  And there the body lay, age after age,

  610

  Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying,

  Like one asleep in a green hermitage,

  With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing,

  And living in its dreams beyond the rage

  Of death or life; while they were still arraying

  615

  In liveries ever new, the rapid, blind

  And fleeting generations of mankind.

  LXXII

  And she would write strange dreams upon the brain

  Of those who were less beautiful, and make

  All harsh and crooked purposes more vain

  620

  Than in the desert is the serpent’s wake

  Which the sand covers—all his evil gain

  The miser in such dreams would rise and shake

  Into a beggar’s lap;—the lying scribe

  Would his own lies betray without a bribe.

  LXXIII

  625

  The priests would write an explanation full,

  Translating hieroglyphics into Greek,

  How the God Apis really was a bull,

  And nothing more; and bid the herald stick

  The same against the temple doors, and pull

  630

  The old cant down; they licensed all to speak

  Whate’er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese,

  By pastoral letters to each diocese.

  LXXIV

  The king would dress an ape up in his crown

  And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat,

  635

  And on the right hand of the sunlike throne

  Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat

  The chatterings of the monkey.—Every one

  Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet

  Of their great Emperor, when the morning came,

  640

  And kissed—alas, how many kiss the same!

  LXXV

  The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and

  Walked out of quarters in somnambulism;

  Round the red anvils you might see them stand

  Like Cyclopses in Vulcan’s sooty abysm,

  645

  Beating their swords to ploughshares;—in a band

  The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism

  Free through the streets of Memphis, much, I wis,

  To the annoyance of king Amasis.

  LXXVI

  And timid lovers who had been so coy,

  650

  They hardly knew whether they loved or not,

  Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy,

  To the fulfilment of their inmost thought;

  And when next day the maiden and the boy

  Met one another, both, like sinners caught,

  655

  Blushed at the thing which each believed was done

  Only in fancy—till the tenth moon shone;

  LXXVII

  And then the Witch would let them take no ill:

  Of many thousand schemes which lovers find,

  The Witch found one,—and so they took their fill

  660

  Of happiness in marriage warm and kind.

  Friends who, by practice of some envious skill,

  Were torn apart—a wide wound, mind from mind!—

  She did unite again with visions clear

  Of deep affection and of truth sincere.

  LXXVIII

  665

  These were the pranks she played among the cities

  Of mortal men, and what she did to Sprites

  And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties

  To do her will, and show their subtle sleights,

  I will declare another time; for it is

  670

  A tale more fit for the weird winter nights

  Than for these garish summer days, when we

  Scarcely believe much more than we can see.

  NOTE ON THE WITCH OF ATLAS, BY MRS. SHELLEY

  WE spent the summer of 1820 at the Baths of San Giuliano, four miles from Pisa. These baths were of great use to Shelley in soothing his nervous irritability. We made several excursions in the neighbourhood. The country around is fertile, and diversified and rendered picturesque by ranges of near hills and more dis
tant mountains. The peasantry are a handsome intelligent race; and there was a gladsome sunny heaven spread over us, that rendered home and every scene we visited cheerful and bright. During some of the hottest days of August, Shelley made a solitary journey on foot to the summit of Monte San Pellegrino—a mountain of some height, on the top of which there is a chapel the object, during certain days of the year, of many pilgrimages. The excursion delighted him while it lasted; though he exerted himself too much, and the effect was considerable lassitude and weakness on his return. During the expedition he conceived the idea, and wrote, in the three days immediately succeeding to his return, the Witch of Atlas. This poem is peculiarly characteristic of his tastes—wildly fanciful, full of brilliant imagery, and discarding human interest and passion, to revel in the fantastic ideas that his imagination suggested.

  The surpassing excellence of The Cenci had made me greatly desire that Shelley should increase his popularity by adopting subjects that would more suit the popular taste than a poem conceived in the abstract and dreamy spirit of the Witch of Atlas. It was not only that I wished him to acquire popularity as redounding to his fame; but I believed that he would obtain a greater mastery over his own powers, and greater happiness in his mind, if public applause crowned his endeavours. The few stanzas that precede the poem were addressed to me on my representing these ideas to him. Even now I believe that I was in the right. Shelley did not expect sympathy and approbation from the public; but the want of it took away a portion of the ardour that ought to have sustained him while writing. He was thrown on his own resources, and on the inspiration of his own soul; and wrote because his mind overflowed, without the hope of being appreciated. I had not the most distant wish that he should truckle in opinion, or submit his lofty aspirations for the human race to the low ambition and pride of the many; but I felt sure that, if his poems were more addressed to the common feelings of men, his proper rank among the writers of the day would be acknowledged, and that popularity as a poet would enable his countrymen to do justice to his character and virtues, which in those days it was the mode to attack with the most flagitious calumnies and insulting abuse. That he felt these things deeply cannot be doubted, though he armed himself with the consciousness of acting from a lofty and heroic sense of right. The truth burst from his heart sometimes in solitude, and he would write a few unfinished verses that showed that he felt the sting; among such I find the following:—

  ‘Alas! this is not what I thought Life was.

  I knew that there were crimes and evil men,

  Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass

  Untouched by suffering through the ruggèd

  glen. In mine own heart I saw as in a glass

  The hearts of others.… And, when

  I went among my kind, with triple brass

  Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed,

  To bear scorn, fear, and hate—a woful mass!’

  I believed that all this morbid feeling would vanish if the chord of sympathy between him and his countrymen were touched. But my persuasions were vain, the mind could not be bent from its natural inclination. Shelley shrunk instinctively from portraying human passion, with its mixture of good and evil, of disappointment and disquiet. Such opened again the wounds of his own heart; and he loved to shelter himself rather in the airiest flights of fancy, forgetting love and hate, and regret and lost hope, in such imaginations as borrow their hues from sunrise or sunset, from the yellow moonshine or paly twilight, from the aspect of the far ocean or the shadows of the woods,—which celebrated the singing of the winds among the pines, the flow of a murmuring stream, and the thousand harmonious sounds which Nature creates in her solitudes. These are the materials which form the Witch of Atlas: it is a brilliant congregation of ideas such as his senses gathered, and his fancy coloured, during his rambles in the sunny land he so much loved.

  EPIPSYCHIDION

  VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE LADY, EMILIA V—–,

  NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF—–

  L’ anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nell’ infinito un Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro. HER OWN WORDS

  ADVERTISEMENT

  THE Writer of the following lines died at Florence, as he was preparing for a voyage to one of the wildest of the Sporades, which he had bought, and where he had fitted up the ruins of an old building, and where it was his hope to have realised a scheme of life, suited perhaps, to that happier and better world of which he is now an inhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. His life was singular; less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it, than the ideal tinge which it received from his own character and feelings. The present Poem, like the Vita Nuova of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter-of-fact history of the circumstances to which it relates; and to a certain other class it must ever remain incomprehensible, from a defect of a common organ of perception for the ideas of which it treats. Not but that gran vergogna sarebbe a colui, che rimasse cosa sotto veste di figura, o di colore rettorico: e domandato non sapesse denudare le sue parole da cotal veste, in guisa che avessero verace intendmento.

  The present poem appears to have been intended by the Writer as the dedication to some longer one. The stanza on the opposite page is almost a literal translation from Dante’s famous Canzone

  Voi, ch’ intendendo, il terzo ciel movete, etc.

  The presumptuous application of the concluding lines to his own composition will raise a smile at the expense of my unfortunate friend: be it a smile not of contempt, but pity.

  S.

  MY Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few

  Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning,

  Of such hard matter dost thou entertain;

  Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring

  5

  Thee to base company (as chance may do),

  Quite unaware of what thou dost contain,

  I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again,

  My last delight! tell them that they are dull,

  And bid them own that thou art beautiful.

  EPIPSYCHIDION

  SWEET Spirit! Sister of that orphan one,

  Whose empire is the name thou weepest on,

  In my heart’s temple I suspend to thee

  These votive wreaths of withered memory.

  5

  Poor captive bird! who, from thy narrow cage,

  Pourest such music, that it might assuage

  The ruggèd hearts of those who prisoned thee,

  Were they not deaf to all sweet melody;

  This song shall be thy rose: its petals pale

  10

  Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale!

  But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom,

  And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom.

  High, spirit-wingèd Heart! who dost for ever

  Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour,

  15

  Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed

  It over-soared this low and worldly shade,

  Lie shattered; and thy panting, wounded breast

  Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest!

  I weep vain tears: blood would less bitter be,

  20

  Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee.

  Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human,

  Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman

  All that is insupportable in thee

  Of light, and love, and immortality!

  25

  Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse!

  Veilèd Glory of this lampless Universe!

  Thou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form

  Among the Dead! Thou Star above the Storm!

  Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror!

  30

  Thou Harmony of Nature’s art! Thou Mirror

  In whom, as
in the splendour of the Sun,

  All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on!

  Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now

  Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow;

  35

  I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song

  All of its much mortality and wrong,

  With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew

  From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through,

  Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy:

  40

  Then smile on it, so that it may not die.

  I never thought before my death to see

  Youth’s vision thus made perfect. Emily,

  I love thee; though the world by no thin name

  Will hide that love from its unvalued shame.

  45

  Would we two had been twins of the same mother!

  Or, that the name my heart lent to another

  Could be a sister’s bond for her and thee,

  Blending two beams of one eternity!

  Yet were one lawful and the other true,

  50

  These names, though dear, could paint not, as is due,

  How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me!

  I am not thine: I am a part of thee.

  Sweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burned its wings

  Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings,

  55

  Young Love should teach Time, in his own gray style,

  All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile,

  A lovely soul formed to be blessed and bless?

  A well of sealed and secret happiness,

  Whose waters like blithe light and music are,

  60

  Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? A Star