Selected Poems and Prose

  And, by the light of her poison eye,

  Did her work o’er the wide earth frightfully:

  The dreadful stench of her torches’ flare,

  Fed with human fat, polluted the air:

  The curses, the shrieks, the ceaseless cries

  Of the many-mingling miseries,

  As on she trod, ascended high

  And trumpeted my victory!—

  Brother, tell what thou hast done.

  VICE

  I have extinguished the noon-day sun,

  In the carnage-smoke of battles won:

  Famine, murder, hell and power

  Were glutted in that glorious hour

  Which searchless fate had stamped for me

  With the seal of her security …

  For the bloated wretch on yonder throne

  Commanded the bloody fray to rise.

  Like me he joyed at the stifled moan

  Wrung from a nation’s miseries;

  While the snakes, whose slime even him defiled,

  In ecstacies of malice smiled:

  They thought ’twas theirs,—but mine the deed!

  Theirs is the toil, but mine the meed—

  Ten thousand victims madly bleed.

  They dream that tyrants goad them there

  With poisonous war to taint the air:

  These tyrants, on their beds of thorn,

  Swell with the thoughts of murderous fame,

  And with their gains to lift my name.

  Restless they plan from night to morn:

  I—I do all; without my aid

  Thy daughter, that relentless maid,

  Could never o’er a death-bed urge

  The fury of her venomed scourge.

  FALSHOOD

  Brother, well:—the world is ours;

  And whether thou or I have won,

  The pestilence expectant lowers

  On all beneath yon blasted sun.

  Our joys, our toils, our honors meet

  In the milk-white and wormy winding-sheet:

  A short-lived hope, unceasing care,

  Some heartless scraps of godly prayer,

  A moody curse, and a frenzied sleep

  Ere gapes the grave’s unclosing deep,

  A tyrant’s dream, a coward’s start,

  The ice that clings to a priestly heart,

  A judge’s frown, a courtier’s smile,

  Make the great whole for which we toil;

  And, brother, whether thou or I

  Have done the work of misery,

  It little boots: thy toil and pain,

  Without my aid, were more than vain;

  And but for thee I ne’er had sate

  The guardian of heaven’s palace gate.

  [4] V.1–2

  Thus do the generations of the earth

  Go to the grave, and issue from the womb.

  One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south and turneth about unto the north, it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; unto the place whence the rivers come, thither shall they return again.

  Ecclesiastes, chap. i.

  [5] V.4–6

      Even as the leaves

     Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year

     Has scattered on the forest soil.

  [Shelley’s note quotes in Greek Homer’s Iliad VI.146–9.]

  [6] V.58

     The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings.

  [Shelley’s note quotes in Latin Lucretius, De Rerum Natura II.1–14.]

  [7] V. 93–4

         And statesmen boast

        Of wealth!

  [Shelley’s note, which begins, ‘There is no real wealth but the labour of man’, draws largely on the work of William Godwin to deplore the inequality in contemporary England and the legal system and social customs that perpetuate it, arguing that the taste for luxury and display and the unequal distribution of labour deny to rich and poor alike the benefits of that ‘cultivated leisure’ which promotes ‘moral improvement’.]

  [8] V.112–13

  or religion

  Drives his wife raving mad.

  I am acquainted with a lady of considerable accomplishments, and the mother of a numerous family, whom the Christian religion has goaded to incurable insanity. A parallel case is, I believe, within the experience of every physician.

  Nam iam saepe homines patriam, carosque parentes

  Prodiderunt, vitare Acherusia templa petentes.

  Lucretius.

  [9] V.189

  Even love is sold.

  Not even the intercourse of the sexes is exempt from the despotism of positive institution. Law pretends even to govern the indisciplinable wanderings of passion, to put fetters on the clearest deductions of reason, and, by appeals to the will, to subdue the involuntary affections of our nature. Love is inevitably consequent upon the perception of loveliness. Love withers under constraint: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear: it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited, where its votaries live in confidence, equality, and unreserve.

  How long then ought the sexual connection to last? what law ought to specify the extent of the grievances which should limit its duration? A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each other: any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection, would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration. How odious an usurpation of the right of private judgment should that law be considered, which should make the ties of friendship indissoluble, in spite of the caprices, the inconstancy, the fallibility, and capacity for improvement of the human mind. And by so much would the fetters of love be heavier and more unendurable than those of friendship, as love is more vehement and capricious, more dependent on those delicate peculiarities of imagination, and less capable of reduction to the ostensible merits of the object.

  The state of society in which we exist is a mixture of feudal savageness and imperfect civilization. The narrow and unenlightened morality of the Christian religion is an aggravation of these evils. It is not even until lately that mankind have admitted that happiness is the sole end of the science of ethics, as of all other sciences; and that the fanatical idea of mortifying the flesh for the love of God has been discarded. I have heard, indeed, an ignorant collegian adduce, in favour of Christianity, its hostility to every worldly feeling!*

  But if happiness be the object of morality, of all human unions and disunions; if the worthiness of every action is to be estimated by the quantity of pleasurable sensation it is calculated to produce, then the connection of the sexes is so long sacred as it contributes to the comfort of the parties, and is naturally dissolved when its evils are greater than its benefits. There is nothing immoral in this separation. Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in proportion as it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the object of its indiscreet choice. Love is free: to promise for ever to love the same woman, is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed: such a vow, in both cases, excludes us from all enquiry. The language of the votarist is this: The woman I now love may be infinitely inferior to many others; the creed I now profess may be a mass of errors and absurdities; but I exclude myself from all future information as to the amiability of the one and the truth of the other, resolving blindly, and in spite of conviction, to adhere to them. Is this the language of delicacy and reason? Is the love of such a frigid heart of more worth than its belief?

  The present system of constraint does no more, in the majority of instances, than make hypocrites or open enemies. Persons
of delicacy and virtue, unhappily united to one whom they find it impossible to love, spend the loveliest season of their life in unproductive efforts to appear otherwise than they are, for the sake of the feelings of their partner or the welfare of their mutual offspring: those of less generosity and refinement openly avow their disappointment, and linger out the remnant of that union, which only death can dissolve, in a state of incurable bickering and hostility. The early education of their children takes its colour from the squabbles of the parents; they are nursed in a systematic school of ill humour, violence, and falshood. Had they been suffered to part at the moment when indifference rendered their union irksome, they would have been spared many years of misery: they would have connected themselves more suitably, and would have found that happiness in the society of more congenial partners which is for ever denied them by the despotism of marriage. They would have been separately useful and happy members of society, who, whilst united, were miserable, and rendered misanthropical by misery. The conviction that wedlock is indissoluble holds out the strongest of all temptations to the perverse: they indulge without restraint in acrimony, and all the little tyrannies of domestic life, when they know that their victim is without appeal. If this connection were put on a rational basis, each would be assured that habitual ill temper would terminate in separation, and would check this vicious and dangerous propensity.

  Prostitution is the legitimate offspring of marriage and its accompanying errors. Women, for no other crime than having followed the dictates of a natural appetite, are driven with fury from the comforts and sympathies of society. It is less venial than murder; and the punishment which is inflicted on her who destroys her child to escape reproach, is lighter than the life of agony and disease to which the prostitute is irrecoverably doomed. Has a woman obeyed the impulse of unerring nature;—society declares war against her, pityless and eternal war: she must be the tame slave, she must make no reprisals; theirs is the right of persecution, hers the duty of endurance. She lives a life of infamy: the loud and bitter laugh of scorn scares her from all return. She dies of long and lingering disease: yet she is in fault, she is the criminal, she the froward and untameable child,—and society, forsooth, the pure and virtuous matron, who casts her as an abortion from her undefiled bosom! Society avenges herself on the criminals of her own creation; she is employed in anathematizing the vice to-day, which yesterday she was the most zealous to teach. Thus is formed one tenth of the population of London: meanwhile the evil is twofold. Young men, excluded by the fanatical idea of chastity from the society of modest and accomplished women, associate with these vicious and miserable beings, destroying thereby all those exquisite and delicate sensibilities whose existence cold-hearted worldlings have denied; annihilating all genuine passion, and debasing that to a selfish feeling which is the excess of generosity and devotedness. Their body and mind alike crumble into a hideous wreck of humanity; idiotcy and disease become perpetuated in their miserable offspring, and distant generations suffer for the bigotted morality of their forefathers. Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half of the human race to misery, that some few may monopolize according to law. A system could not well have been devised more studiously hostile to human happiness than marriage.

  I conceive that, from the abolition of marriage, the fit and natural arrangement of sexual connection would result. I by no means assert that the intercourse would be promiscuous: on the contrary; it appears, from the relation of parent to child, that this union is generally of long duration, and marked above all others with generosity and self-devotion. But this is a subject which it is perhaps premature to discuss. That which will result from the abolition of marriage, will be natural and right, because choice and change will be exempted from restraint.

  In fact, religion and morality, as they now stand, compose a practical code of misery and servitude: the genius of human happiness must tear every leaf from the accursed book of God, ere man can read the inscription on his heart. How would morality, dressed up in stiff stays and finery, start from her own disgusting image, should she look in the mirror of nature!

  [10] VI.45–6

  To the red and baleful sun

  That faintly twinkles there.

  [Shelley’s note proposes, citing contemporary scientific authorities, that the earth’s axis in the planet’s orbit round the sun is steadily becoming perpendicular to the equator; and that this phenomenon should gradually result in a mild and temperate climate over the entire globe conducive to ‘true and comprehensive’ health and to the development of human wisdom.]

  [11] VI.171–3

  No atom of this turbulence fulfils

  A vague and unnecessitated task,

  Or acts but as it must and ought to act.

  [Shelley’s note quotes in French from the Baron d’Holbach’s Système de la Nature (1770) a passage setting out the principle that in physical as well as mental life every action is determined by the operation of material causes on the agent.]

  [12] VI.198

  Necessity! thou mother of the world!

  [Following on from the previous note, Shelley defines the idea of Necessity:] He who asserts the doctrine of Necessity, means that, contemplating the events which compose the moral and material universe, he beholds only an immense and uninterrupted chain of causes and effects, no one of which could occupy any other place than it does occupy, or acts in any other place than it does act. The idea of necessity is obtained by our experience of the connection between objects, the uniformity of the operations of nature, the constant conjunction of similar events, and the consequent inference of one from the other. Mankind are therefore agreed in the admission of necessity, if they admit that these two circumstances take place in voluntary action. Motive is, to voluntary action in the human mind, what cause is to effect in the material universe. The word liberty, as applied to mind, is analogous to the word chance, as applied to matter: they spring from an ignorance of the certainty of the conjunction of antecedents and consequents. [The note goes on to deploy Necessity as a critical tool for impugning established doctrines of religion and canons of morality, borrowing arguments from Hume, Holbach and Godwin.]

  [13] VII.13

  There is no God!

  This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit coeternal with the universe, remains unshaken.

  A close examination of the validity of the proofs adduced to support any proposition, is the only secure way of attaining truth, on the advantages of which it is unnecessary to descant: our knowledge of the existence of a Deity is a subject of such importance, that it cannot be too minutely investigated; in consequence of this conviction we proceed briefly and impartially to examine the proofs which have been adduced. It is necessary first to consider the nature of belief.

  When a proposition is offered to the mind, it perceives the agreement or disagreement of the ideas of which it is composed. A perception of their agreement is termed belief. Many obstacles frequently prevent this perception from being immediate; these the mind attempts to remove, in order that the perception may be distinct. The mind is active in the investigation, in order to perfect the state of perception of the relation which the component ideas of the proposition bear to each, which is passive: the investigation being confused with the perception, has induced many falsely to imagine that the mind is active in belief,—that belief is an act of volition,—in consequence of which it may be regulated by the mind. Pursuing, continuing this mistake, they have attached a degree of criminality to disbelief; of which, in its nature, it is incapable: it is equally incapable of merit.

  Belief, then, is a passion, the strength of which, like every other passion, is in precise proportion to the degrees of excitement.

  The degrees of excitement are three.

  The senses are the sources of a
ll knowledge to the mind; consequently their evidence claims the strongest assent.

  The decision of the mind, founded upon our own experience, derived from these sources, claims the next degree.

  The experience of others, which addresses itself to the former one, occupies the lowest degree.

  (A graduated scale, on which should be marked the capabilities of propositions to approach to the test of the senses, would be a just barometer of the belief which ought to be attached to them.)

  Consequently no testimony can be admitted which is contrary to reason; reason is founded on the evidence of our senses.

  Every proof may be referred to one of these three divisions: it is to be considered what arguments we receive from each of them, which should convince us of the existence of a Deity.

  1st. The evidence of the senses. If the Deity should appear to us, if he should convince our senses of his existence, this revelation would necessarily command belief. Those to whom the Deity has thus appeared have the strongest possible conviction of his existence. But the God of Theologians is incapable of local visibility.

  2d. Reason. It is urged that man knows that whatever is, must either have had a beginning, or have existed from all eternity: he also knows, that whatever is not eternal must have had a cause. When this reasoning is applied to the universe, it is necessary to prove that it was created: until that is clearly demonstrated, we may reasonably suppose that it has endured from all eternity. We must prove design before we can infer a designer. The only idea which we can form of causation is derivable from the constant conjunction of objects, and the consequent inference of one from the other. In a case where two propositions are diametrically opposite, the mind believes that which is least incomprehensible;—it is easier to suppose that the universe has existed from all eternity, than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it: if the mind sinks beneath the weight of one, is it an alleviation to increase the intolerability of the burthen?