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The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I

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Obedient to the light
That shone within his soul, he went, pursuing
The windings of the dell.--The rivulet,
Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine _495
Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell
Among the moss with hollow harmony
Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones
It danced; like childhood laughing as it went:
Then, through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept, _500
Reflecting every herb and drooping bud
That overhung its quietness.--'O stream!
Whose source is inaccessibly profound,
Whither do thy mysterious waters tend?
Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness, _505
Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulfs,
Thy searchless fountain, and invisible course
Have each their type in me; and the wide sky.
And measureless ocean may declare as soon
What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud _510
Contains thy waters, as the universe
Tell where these living thoughts reside, when stretched
Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste
I' the passing wind!'

Beside the grassy shore
Of the small stream he went; he did impress _515
On the green moss his tremulous step, that caught
Strong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one
Roused by some joyous madness from the couch
Of fever, he did move; yet, not like him,
Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame _520
Of his frail exultation shall be spent,
He must descend. With rapid steps he went
Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow
Of the wild babbling rivulet; and now
The forest's solemn canopies were changed _525
For the uniform and lightsome evening sky.
Grey rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed
The struggling brook; tall spires of windlestrae
Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope,
And nought but gnarled roots of ancient pines _530
Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots
The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here,
Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away,
The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin
And white, and where irradiate dewy eyes _535
Had shone, gleam stony orbs:--so from his steps
Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade
Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds
And musical motions. Calm, he still pursued
The stream, that with a larger volume now _540
Rolled through the labyrinthine dell; and there
Fretted a path through its descending curves
With its wintry speed. On every side now rose
Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms,
Lifted their black and barren pinnacles _545
In the light of evening, and its precipice
Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above,
Mid toppling stones, black gulfs and yawning caves,
Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues
To the loud stream. Lo! where the pass expands _550
Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks,
And seems, with its accumulated crags,
To overhang the world: for wide expand
Beneath the wan stars and descending moon
Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams, _555
Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom
Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills
Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge
Of the remote horizon. The near scene,
In naked and severe simplicity, _560
Made contrast with the universe. A pine,
Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy
Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast
Yielding one only response, at each pause
In most familiar cadence, with the howl _565
The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams
Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river
Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged path,
Fell into that immeasurable void
Scattering its waters to the passing winds. _570

Yet the grey precipice and solemn pine
And torrent were not all;--one silent nook
Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain,
Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks,
It overlooked in its serenity _575
The dark earth, and the bending vault of stars.
It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile
Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped
The fissured stones with its entwining arms,
And did embower with leaves for ever green, _580
And berries dark, the smooth and even space
Of its inviolated floor, and here
The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore,
In wanton sport, those bright leaves, whose decay,
Red, yellow, or ethereally pale, _585
Rivals the pride of summer. 'Tis the haunt
Of every gentle wind, whose breath can teach
The wilds to love tranquillity. One step,
One human step alone, has ever broken
The stillness of its solitude:--one voice _590
Alone inspired its echoes;--even that voice
Which hither came, floating among the winds,
And led the loveliest among human forms
To make their wild haunts the depository
Of all the grace and beauty that endued _595
Its motions, render up its majesty,
Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm,
And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould,
Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss,
Commit the colours of that varying cheek, _600
That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.

The dim and horned moon hung low, and poured
A sea of lustre on the horizon's verge
That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist
Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank _605
Wan moonlight even to fulness; not a star
Shone, not a sound was heard; the very winds,
Danger's grim playmates, on that precipice
Slept, clasped in his embrace.--O, storm of death!
Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night: 610
And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still
Guiding its irresistible career
In thy devastating omnipotence,
Art king of this frail world, from the red field
Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital, _615
The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed
Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne,
A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls
His brother Death. A rare and regal prey
He hath prepared, prowling around the world; _620
Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men
Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,
Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine
The unheeded tribute of a broken heart.

When on the threshold of the green recess _625
The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death
Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,
Did he resign his high and holy soul
To images of the majestic past,
That paused within his passive being now, _630
Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe
Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place
His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk
Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone
Reclined his languid head, his limbs did rest, _635
Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink
Of that obscurest chasm;--and thus he lay,
Surrendering to their final impulses
The hovering powers of life. Hope and despair,
The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear _640
Marred his repose; the influxes of sense,
And his own being unalloyed by pain,
Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed
The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there
At peace, and faintly smiling:--his last sight _645
Was the great moon, which o'er the western line
Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended,
With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed
To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills
It rests; and still as the divided frame _650
Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood,
That ever beat in mystic sympathy
With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still:
And when two lessening points of light alone
Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp _655
Of his faint respiration scarce did stir
The stagnate night:--till the minutest ray
Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.
It paused--it fluttered. But when heaven remained
Utterly black, the murky shades involved _660
An image, silent, cold, and motionless,
As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.
Even as a vapour fed with golden beams
That ministered on sunlight, ere the west
Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame-- _665
No sense, no motion, no divinity--
A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings
The breath of heaven did wander--a bright stream
Once fed with many-voiced waves--a dream
Of youth, which night and time have quenched for ever, _670
Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.

Oh, for Medea's wondrous alchemy,
Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam
With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale
From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! O, that God, _675
Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice
Which but one living man has drained, who now,
Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels
No proud exemption in the blighting curse
He bears, over the world wanders for ever, _680
Lone as incarnate death! O, that the dream
Of dark magician in his visioned cave,
Raking the cinders of a crucible
For life and power, even when his feeble hand
Shakes in its last decay, were the true law _685
Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled,
Like some frail exhalation; which the dawn
Robes in its golden beams,--ah! thou hast fled!
The brave, the gentle and the beautiful,
The child of grace and genius. Heartless things _690
Are done and said i' the world, and many worms
And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth
From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,
In vesper low or joyous orison,
Lifts still its solemn voice:--but thou art fled-- _695
Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes
Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee
Been purest ministers, who are, alas!
Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips
So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes _700
That image sleep in death, upon that form
Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear
Be shed--not even in thought. Nor, when those hues
Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,
Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone _705
In the frail pauses of this simple strain,
Let not high verse, mourning the memory
Of that which is no more, or painting's woe
Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery
Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence, _710
And all the shows o' the world are frail and vain
To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.
It is a woe "too deep for tears," when all
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves _715
Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;
But pale despair and cold tranquillity,
Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,
Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. _720


Notes:
_219 Conduct edition 1816. See "Editor's Notes".
_530 roots edition 1816: query stumps or trunks. See "Editor's Notes".


NOTE ON ALASTOR, BY MRS. SHELLEY.

"Alastor" is written in a very different tone from "Queen Mab". In the
latter, Shelley poured out all the cherished speculations of his
youth--all the irrepressible emotions of sympathy, censure, and hope,
to which the present suffering, and what he considers the proper
destiny of his fellow-creatures, gave birth. "Alastor", on the
contrary, contains an individual interest only. A very few years, with
their attendant events, had checked the ardour of Shelley's hopes,
though he still thought them well-grounded, and that to advance their
fulfilment was the noblest task man could achieve.

This is neither the time nor place to speak of the misfortunes that
chequered his life. It will be sufficient to say that, in all he did,
he at the time of doing it believed himself justified to his own
conscience; while the various ills of poverty and loss of friends
brought home to him the sad realities of life. Physical suffering had
also considerable influence in causing him to turn his eyes inward;
inclining him rather to brood over the thoughts and emotions of his
own soul than to glance abroad, and to make, as in "Queen Mab", the
whole universe the object and subject of his song. In the Spring of
1815, an eminent physician pronounced that he was dying rapidly of a
consumption; abscesses were formed on his lungs, and he suffered acute
spasms. Suddenly a complete change took place; and though through life
he was a martyr to pain and debility, every symptom of pulmonary
disease vanished. His nerves, which nature had formed sensitive to an
unexampled degree, were rendered still more susceptible by the state
of his health.

As soon as the peace of 1814 had opened the Continent, he went abroad.
He visited some of the more magnificent scenes of Switzerland, and
returned to England from Lucerne, by the Reuss and the Rhine. This
river-navigation enchanted him. In his favourite poem of "Thalaba",
his imagination had been excited by a description of such a voyage. In
the summer of 1815, after a tour along the southern coast of
Devonshire and a visit to Clifton, he rented a house on Bishopgate
Heath, on the borders of Windsor Forest, where he enjoyed several
months of comparative health and tranquil happiness. The later summer
months were warm and dry. Accompanied by a few friends, he visited the
source of the Thames, making a voyage in a wherry from Windsor to
Crichlade. His beautiful stanzas in the churchyard of Lechlade were
written on that occasion. "Alastor" was composed on his return. He
spent his days under the oak-shades of Windsor Great Park; and the
magnificent woodland was a fitting study to inspire the various
descriptions of forest scenery we find in the poem.

None of Shelley's poems is more characteristic than this. The solemn
spirit that reigns throughout, the worship of the majesty of nature,
the broodings of a poet's heart in solitude--the mingling of the
exulting joy which the various aspects of the visible universe
inspires with the sad and struggling pangs which human passion
imparts--give a touching interest to the whole. The death which he had
often contemplated during the last months as certain and near he here
represented in such colours as had, in his lonely musings, soothed his
soul to peace. The versification sustains the solemn spirit which
breathes throughout: it is peculiarly melodious. The poem ought rather
to be considered didactic than narrative: it was the outpouring of his
own emotions, embodied in the purest form he could conceive, painted
in the ideal hues which his brilliant imagination inspired, and
softened by the recent anticipation of death.

***


THE REVOLT OF ISLAM.

A POEM IN TWELVE CANTOS.

Osais de Broton ethnos aglaiais aptomestha
perainei pros eschaton
ploon nausi d oute pezos ion an eurois
es Uperboreon agona thaumatan odon.

Pind. Pyth. x.

[Composed in the neighbourhood of Bisham Wood, near Great Marlow,
Bucks, 1817 (April-September 23); printed, with title (dated 1818),
"Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of
the Nineteenth Century", October, November, 1817, but suppressed,
pending revision, by the publishers, C & J. Ollier. (A few copies had
got out, but these were recalled, and some recovered.) Published, with
a fresh title-page and twenty-seven cancel-leaves, as "The Revolt of
Islam", January 10, 1818. Sources of the text are (1) "Laon and
Cythna", 1818; (2) "The Revolt of Islam", 1818; (3) "Poetical Works",
1839, editions 1st and 2nd--both edited by Mrs. Shelley. A copy, with
several pages missing, of the "Preface", the Dedication", and "Canto
1" of "Laon and Cythna" is amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the
Bodleian. For a full collation of this manuscript see Mr. C.D.
Locock's "Examination of the Shelley Manuscripts at the Bodleian
Library". Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903. Two manuscript fragments from
the Hunt papers are also extant: one (twenty-four lines) in the
possession of Mr. W.M. Rossetti, another (9 23 9 to 29 6) in that of
Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B. See "The Shelley Library", pages 83-86, for
an account of the copy of "Laon" upon which Shelley worked in revising
for publication.]

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

The Poem which I now present to the world is an attempt from which I
scarcely dare to expect success, and in which a writer of established
fame might fail without disgrace. It is an experiment on the temper of
the public mind, as to how far a thirst for a happier condition of
moral and political society survives, among the enlightened and
refined, the tempests which have shaken the age in which we live. I
have sought to enlist the harmony of metrical language, the ethereal
combinations of the fancy, the rapid and subtle transitions of human
passion, all those elements which essentially compose a Poem, in the
cause of a liberal and comprehensive morality; and in the view of
kindling within the bosoms of my readers a virtuous enthusiasm for
those doctrines of liberty and justice, that faith and hope in
something good, which neither violence nor misrepresentation nor
prejudice can ever totally extinguish among mankind.

For this purpose I have chosen a story of human passion in its most
universal character, diversified with moving and romantic adventures,
and appealing, in contempt of all artificial opinions or institutions,
to the common sympathies of every human breast. I have made no attempt
to recommend the motives which I would substitute for those at present
governing mankind, by methodical and systematic argument. I would only
awaken the feelings, so that the reader should see the beauty of true
virtue, and be incited to those inquiries which have led to my moral
and political creed, and that of some of the sublimest intellects in
the world. The Poem therefore (with the exception of the first canto,
which is purely introductory) is narrative, not didactic. It is a
succession of pictures illustrating the growth and progress of
individual mind aspiring after excellence, and devoted to the love of
mankind; its influence in refining and making pure the most daring and
uncommon impulses of the imagination, the understanding, and the
senses; its impatience at 'all the oppressions which are done under
the sun;' its tendency to awaken public hope, and to enlighten and
improve mankind; the rapid effects of the application of that
tendency; the awakening of an immense nation from their slavery and
degradation to a true sense of moral dignity and freedom; the
bloodless dethronement of their oppressors, and the unveiling of the
religious frauds by which they had been deluded into submission; the
tranquillity of successful patriotism, and the universal toleration
and benevolence of true philanthropy; the treachery and barbarity of
hired soldiers; vice not the object of punishment and hatred, but
kindness and pity; the faithlessness of tyrants; the confederacy of
the Rulers of the World and the restoration of the expelled Dynasty by
foreign arms; the massacre and extermination of the Patriots, and the
victory of established power; the consequences of legitimate
despotism,--civil war, famine, plague, superstition, and an utter
extinction of the domestic affections; the judicial murder of the
advocates of Liberty; the temporary triumph of oppression, that secure
earnest of its final and inevitable fall; the transient nature of
ignorance and error and the eternity of genius and virtue. Such is the
series of delineations of which the Poem consists. And, if the lofty
passions with which it has been my scope to distinguish this story
shall not excite in the reader a generous impulse, an ardent thirst
for excellence, an interest profound and strong such as belongs to no
meaner desires, let not the failure be imputed to a natural unfitness
for human sympathy in these sublime and animating themes. It is the
business of the Poet to communicate to others the pleasure and the
enthusiasm arising out of those images and feelings in the vivid
presence of which within his own mind consists at once his inspiration
and his reward.

The panic which, like an epidemic transport, seized upon all classes
of men during the excesses consequent upon the French Revolution, is
gradually giving place to sanity. It has ceased to be believed that
whole generations of mankind ought to consign themselves to a hopeless
inheritance of ignorance and misery, because a nation of men who had
been dupes and slaves for centuries were incapable of conducting
themselves with the wisdom and tranquillity of freemen so soon as some
of their fetters were partially loosened. That their conduct could not
have been marked by any other characters than ferocity and
thoughtlessness is the historical fact from which liberty derives all
its recommendations, and falsehood the worst features of its
deformity. There is a reflux in the tide of human things which bears
the shipwrecked hopes of men into a secure haven after the storms are
past. Methinks, those who now live have survived an age of despair.

The French Revolution may be considered as one of those manifestations
of a general state of feeling among civilised mankind produced by a
defect of correspondence between the knowledge existing in society and
the improvement or gradual abolition of political institutions. The
year 1788 may be assumed as the epoch of one of the most important
crises produced by this feeling. The sympathies connected with that
event extended to every bosom. The most generous and amiable natures
were those which participated the most extensively in these
sympathies. But such a degree of unmingled good was expected as it was
impossible to realise. If the Revolution had been in every respect
prosperous, then misrule and superstition would lose half their claims
to our abhorrence, as fetters which the captive can unlock with the
slightest motion of his fingers, and which do not eat with poisonous
rust into the soul. The revulsion occasioned by the atrocities of the
demagogues, and the re-establishment of successive tyrannies in
France, was terrible, and felt in the remotest corner of the civilised
world. Could they listen to the plea of reason who had groaned under
the calamities of a social state according to the provisions of which
one man riots in luxury whilst another famishes for want of bread? Can
he who the day before was a trampled slave suddenly become
liberal-minded, forbearing, and independent? This is the consequence
of the habits of a state of society to be produced by resolute
perseverance and indefatigable hope, and long-suffering and
long-believing courage, and the systematic efforts of generations of
men of intellect and virtue. Such is the lesson which experience
teaches now. But, on the first reverses of hope in the progress of
French liberty, the sanguine eagerness for good overleaped the
solution of these questions, and for a time extinguished itself in the
unexpectedness of their result. Thus, many of the most ardent and
tender-hearted of the worshippers of public good have been morally
ruined by what a partial glimpse of the events they deplored appeared
to show as the melancholy desolation of all their cherished hopes.
Hence gloom and misanthropy have become the characteristics of the age
in which we live, the solace of a disappointment that unconsciously
finds relief only in the wilful exaggeration of its own despair. This
influence has tainted the literature of the age with the hopelessness
of the minds from which it flows. Metaphysics (I ought to except sir
W. Drummond's "Academical Questions"; a volume of very acute and
powerful metaphysical criticism.), and inquiries into moral and
political science, have become little else than vain attempts to
revive exploded superstitions, or sophisms like those of Mr. Malthus
(It is remarkable, as a symptom of the revival of public hope, that
Mr. Malthus has assigned, in the later editions of his work, an
indefinite dominion to moral restraint over the principle of
population. This concession answers all the inferences from his
doctrine unfavourable to human improvement, and reduces the "Essay on
Population" to a commentary illustrative of the unanswerableness of
"Political Justice".), calculated to lull the oppressors of mankind
into a security of everlasting triumph. Our works of fiction and
poetry have been overshadowed by the same infectious gloom. But
mankind appear to me to be emerging from their trance. I am aware,
methinks, of a slow, gradual, silent change. In that belief I have
composed the following Poem.

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