Selected Poems and Prose

  535Of friends and fortune once, as we could guess

  From his nice habits and his gentleness;

  These were now lost … it were a grief indeed

  If he had changed one unsustaining reed

  For all that such a man might else adorn.

  540The colours of his mind seemed yet unworn;

  For the wild language of his grief was high,

  Such as in measure were called poetry,

  And I remember one remark which then

  Maddalo made. He said: ‘Most wretched men

  545Are cradled into poetry by wrong;

  They learn in suffering what they teach in song.’

  If I had been an unconnected man

  I, from this moment, should have formed some plan

  Never to leave sweet Venice,—for to me

  550It was delight to ride by the lone sea;

  And then, the town is silent—one may write

  Or read in gondolas by day or night

  Having the little brazen lamp alight,

  Unseen, uninterrupted; books are there,

  555Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair

  Which were twin-born with poetry, and all

  We seek in towns, with little to recall

  Regrets for the green country. I might sit

  In Maddalo’s great palace, and his wit

  560And subtle talk would cheer the winter night

  And make me know myself, and the firelight

  Would flash upon our faces, till the day

  Might dawn and make me wonder at my stay.

  But I had friends in London too: the chief

  565Attraction here, was that I sought relief

  From the deep tenderness that maniac wrought

  Within me—’twas perhaps an idle thought,

  But I imagined that if day by day

  I watched him, and but seldom went away,

  570And studied all the beatings of his heart

  With zeal, as men study some stubborn art

  For their own good, and could by patience find

  An entrance to the caverns of his mind,

  I might reclaim him from his dark estate:

  575In friendships I had been most fortunate—

  Yet never saw I one whom I would call

  More willingly my friend; and this was all

  Accomplished not; such dreams of baseless good

  Oft come and go in crowds and solitude

  580And leave no trace—but what I now designed

  Made for long years impression on my mind.

  The following morning urged by my affairs

  I left bright Venice.

  After many years

  And many changes I returned; the name

  585Of Venice, and its aspect was the same;

  But Maddalo was travelling far away

  Among the mountains of Armenia.

  His dog was dead. His child had now become

  A woman; such as it has been my doom

  590To meet with few, a wonder of this earth

  Where there is little of transcendent worth,

  Like one of Shakespeare’s women: kindly she

  And with a manner beyond courtesy

  Received her father’s friend; and when I asked

  595Of the lorn maniac, she her memory tasked

  And told as she had heard the mournful tale:

  That the poor sufferer’s health began to fail

  Two years from my departure, but that then

  The Lady who had left him, came again.

  600‘Her mien had been imperious, but she now

  Looked meek—perhaps remorse had brought her low.

  Her coming made him better, and they stayed

  Together at my father’s—for I played

  As I remember with the lady’s shawl—

  605I might be six years old—but after all

  She left him.’ … ‘Why, her heart must have been tough:

  How did it end?’ ‘And was this not enough?

  They met—they parted.’—‘Child, is there no more?

  Something within that interval which bore

  610The stamp of why they parted, how they met?’

  ‘Yet if thine aged eyes disdain to wet

  Those wrinkled cheeks with youth’s remembered tears,

  Ask me no more, but let the silent years

  Be closed and ceared over their memory

  615As yon mute marble where their corpses lie.’

  I urged and questioned still, she told me how

  All happened—but the cold world shall not know.

  Stanzas Written in Dejection—December 1818, near Naples

  The Sun is warm, the sky is clear,

  The waves are dancing fast and bright,

  Blue isles and snowy mountains wear

  The purple noon’s transparent might,

  5 The breath of the moist earth is light

  Around its unexpanded buds;

  Like many a voice of one delight

  The winds, the birds, the Ocean-floods;

  The City’s voice itself is soft, like Solitude’s.

  10 I see the Deep’s untrampled floor

  With green and purple seaweeds strown,

  I see the waves upon the shore

  Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown;

  I sit upon the sands alone;

  15 The lightning of the noontide Ocean

  Is flashing round me, and a tone

  Arises from its measured motion,

  How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.

  Alas, I have nor hope nor health,

  20 Nor peace within nor calm around,

  Nor that content surpassing wealth

  The sage in meditation found,

  And walked with inward glory crowned;

  Nor fame, nor power nor love nor leisure—

  25 Others I see whom these surround,

  Smiling they live and call life pleasure:

  To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

  Yet now despair itself is mild

  Even as the winds and waters are;

  30 I could lie down like a tired child

  And weep away the life of care

  Which I have borne and yet must bear

  Till Death like Sleep might steal on me,

  And I might feel in the warm air

  35 My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea

  Breathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony.

  Some might lament that I were cold,

  As I, when this sweet day is gone,

  Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,

  40 Insults with this untimely moan—

  They might lament,—for I am one

  Whom men love not, and yet regret;

  Unlike this Day, which, when the Sun

  Shall on its stainless glory set,

  45Will linger though enjoyed, like joy in Memory yet.

  The Two Spirits—An Allegory

  First Spirit

  O Thou who plumed with strong desire

  Would float above the Earth—beware!

  A shadow tracks thy flight of fire—

  Night is coming.

  5Bright are the regions of the air

  And when winds and beams [  ]

  It were delight to wander there—

  Night is coming!

  Second Spirit

  The deathless stars are bright above;

  10If I should cross the shade of night

  Within my heart is the lamp of love

  And that is day—

  And the moon will smile with gentle light

  On my golden plumes where’er they move;

  15The meteors will linger around my flight

  And make night day.

  First Spirit

  But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken

  Hail and Lightning and stormy rain—

  See, the bounds of the air are shaken,
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  20 Night is coming.

  The red swift clouds of the hurricane

  Yon declining sun have overtaken,

  The clash of the hail sweeps o’er the plain—

  Night is coming.

  Second Spirit

  25I see the glare and I hear the sound—

  I’ll sail on the flood of the tempest dark

  With the calm within and light around

  Which make night day;

  And thou when the gloom is deep and stark

  30Look from thy dull earth slumberbound—

  My moonlike flight thou then mayst mark

  On high, far away.

  Some say there is a precipice

  Where one vast pine hangs frozen to ruin

  35O’er piles of snow and chasms of ice

  Mid Alpine mountains,

  And that the leagued storm pursuing

  That winged shape forever flies

  Round those hoar branches, aye renewing

  40 Its aery fountains.

  Some say when the nights are dry and clear

  And the death dews sleep on the morass,

  Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller

  Which make night day—

  45And a shape like his early love doth pass

  Upborne by her wild and glittering hair,

  And when he awakes on the fragrant grass

  He finds night day.

  Sonnet (‘Lift not the painted veil’)

  Lift not the painted veil which those who live

  Call Life; though unreal shapes be pictured there,

  And it but mimic all we would believe

  With colours idly spread,—behind, lurk Fear

  5And Hope, twin Destinies, who ever weave

  Their shadows o’er the chasm, sightless and drear.

  I knew one who had lifted it—he sought,

  For his lost heart was tender, things to love,

  But found them not, alas! nor was there aught

  10The world contains, the which he could approve.

  Through the unheeding many he did move,

  A splendour among shadows, a bright blot

  Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove

  For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.

  PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

  A LYRICAL DRAMA IN FOUR ACTS

  AUDISNE HAEC AMPHIARAE, SUB TERRAM ABDITE?

  PREFACE

  The Greek tragic writers, in selecting as their subject any portion of their national history or mythology, employed in their treatment of it a certain arbitrary discretion. They by no means conceived themselves bound to adhere to the common interpretation or to imitate in story as in title their rivals and predecessors. Such a system would have amounted to a resignation of those claims to preference over their competitors which incited the composition. The Agamemnonian story was exhibited on the Athenian theatre with as many variations as dramas.

  I have presumed to employ a similar licence. The Prometheus Unbound of Aeschylus supposed the reconciliation of Jupiter with his victim as the price of the disclosure of the danger threatened to his empire by the consummation of his marriage with Thetis. Thetis, according to this view of the subject, was given in marriage to Peleus, and Prometheus, by the permission of Jupiter, delivered from his captivity by Hercules. Had I framed my story on this model, I should have done no more than have attempted to restore the lost drama of Aeschylus; an ambition, which, if my preference to this mode of treating the subject had incited me to cherish, the recollection of the high comparison such an attempt would challenge might well abate. But, in truth, I was averse from a catastrophe so feeble as that of reconciling the Champion with the Oppressor of mankind. The moral interest of the fable, which is so powerfully sustained by the sufferings and endurance of Prometheus, would be annihilated if we could conceive of him as unsaying his high language and quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary. The only imaginary being resembling in any degree Prometheus, is Satan; and Prometheus is, in my judgement, a more poetical character than Satan, because, in addition to courage, and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force, he is susceptible of being described as exempt from the taints of ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggrandisement, which, in the Hero of Paradise Lost, interfere with the interest. The character of Satan engenders in the mind a pernicious casuistry which leads us to weigh his faults with his wrongs, and to excuse the former because the latter exceed all measure. In the minds of those who consider that magnificent fiction with a religious feeling, it engenders something worse. But Prometheus is, as it were, the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature, impelled by the purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends.

  This Poem was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, among the flowery glades, and thickets of odoriferous blossoming trees, which are extended in ever winding labyrinths upon its immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in the air. The bright blue sky of Rome, and the effect of the vigorous awakening of spring in that divinest climate, and the new life with which it drenches the spirits even to intoxication, were the inspiration of this drama.

  The imagery which I have employed will be found, in many instances, to have been drawn from the operations of the human mind, or from those external actions by which they are expressed. This is unusual in modern poetry, although Dante and Shakespeare are full of instances of the same kind: Dante indeed more than any other poet, and with greater success. But the Greek poets, as writers to whom no resource of awakening the sympathy of their contemporaries was unknown, were in the habitual use of this power; and it is the study of their works (since a higher merit would probably be denied to me) to which I am willing that my readers should impute this singularity.

  One word is due in candour to the degree in which the study of contemporary writings may have tinged my composition, for such has been a topic of censure with regard to poems far more popular, and indeed more deservedly popular, than mine. It is impossible that any one who inhabits the same age with such writers as those who stand in the foremost ranks of our own, can conscientiously assure himself that his language and tone of thought may not have been modified by the study of the productions of those extraordinary intellects. It is true, that, not the spirit of their genius, but the forms in which it has manifested itself, are due less to the peculiarities of their own minds than to the peculiarity of the moral and intellectual condition of the minds among which they have been produced. Thus a number of writers possess the form, whilst they want the spirit of those whom, it is alleged, they imitate; because the former is the endowment of the age in which they live, and the latter must be the uncommunicated lightning of their own mind.

  The peculiar style of intense and comprehensive imagery which distinguishes the modern literature of England, has not been, as a general power, the product of the imitation of any particular writer. The mass of capabilities remains at every period materially the same; the circumstances which awaken it to action perpetually change. If England were divided into forty republics, each equal in population and extent to Athens, there is no reason to suppose but that, under institutions not more perfect than those of Athens, each would produce philosophers and poets equal to those who (if we except Shakespeare) have never been surpassed. We owe the great writers of the golden age of our literature to that fervid awakening of the public mind which shook to dust the oldest and most oppressive form of the Christian religion. We owe Milton to the progress and development of the same spirit: the sacred Milton was, let it ever be remembered, a republican, and a bold inquirer into morals and religion. The great writers of our own age are, we have reason to suppose, the companions and forerunners of some unimagined change in our social condition or the opinions which cement it. The cloud of mind is discharging its collected lightning, and the equilibrium between institutions and opinions is now restoring, or is about to be restored.

  As t
o imitation, poetry is a mimetic art. It creates, but it creates by combination and representation. Poetical abstractions are beautiful and new, not because the portions of which they are composed had no previous existence in the mind of man or in nature, but because the whole produced by their combination has some intelligible and beautiful analogy with those sources of emotion and thought, and with the contemporary condition of them: one great poet is a masterpiece of nature, which another not only ought to study but must study. He might as wisely and as easily determine that his mind should no longer be the mirror of all that is lovely in the visible universe, as exclude from his contemplation the beautiful which exists in the writings of a great contemporary. The pretence of doing it would be a presumption in any but the greatest; the effect, even in him, would be strained, unnatural, and ineffectual. A poet is the combined product of such internal powers as modify the nature of others; and of such external influences as excite and sustain these powers; he is not one, but both. Every man’s mind is, in this respect, modified by all the objects of nature and art; by every word and every suggestion which he ever admitted to act upon his consciousness; it is the mirror upon which all forms are reflected, and in which they compose one form. Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age. From this subjection the loftiest do not escape. There is a similarity between Homer and Hesiod, between Aeschylus and Euripides, between Virgil and Horace, between Dante and Petrarch, between Shakespeare and Fletcher, between Dryden and Pope; each has a generic resemblance under which their specific distinctions are arranged. If this similarity be the result of imitation, I am willing to confess that I have imitated.

  Let this opportunity be conceded to me of acknowledging that I have, what a Scotch philosopher characteristically terms, ‘a passion for reforming the world’: what passion incited him to write and publish his book, he omits to explain. For my part I had rather be damned with Plato and Lord Bacon, than go to Heaven with Paley and Malthus. But it is a mistake to suppose that I dedicate my poetical compositions solely to the direct enforcement of reform, or that I consider them in any degree as containing a reasoned system on the theory of human life. Didactic poetry is my abhorrence; nothing can be equally well expressed in prose that is not tedious and supererogatory in verse. My purpose has hitherto been simply to familiarize the highly refined imagination of the more select classes of poetical readers with beautiful idealisms of moral excellence; aware that until the mind can love, and admire, and trust, and hope, and endure, reasoned principles of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life which the unconscious passenger tramples into dust, although they would bear the harvest of his happiness. Should I live to accomplish what I purpose, that is, produce a systematical history of what appear to me to be the genuine elements of human society, let not the advocates of injustice and superstition flatter themselves that I should take Aeschylus rather than Plato as my model.