…
Weak Verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign’s feet,And say:—‘We are the masters of thy slave;What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine?’Then call your sisters from Oblivion’s cave, _595All singing loud: ‘Love’s very pain is sweet,But its reward is in the world divineWhich, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.’So shall ye live when I am there. Then hasteOver the hearts of men, until ye meet _600Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest,And bid them love each other and be blessed:And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,And come and be my guest,—for I am Love’s.
NOTES: _100 morning]morn may Rossetti cj. _118 of]on edition 1839. _405 it]he edition 1839. _501 many-twining]many twining editio prin. 1821. _504 winter-woof]inter-woof Rossetti cj.
[Of the fragments of verse that follow, lines 1-37, 62-92 were printed by Mrs. Shelley in “Posthumous Works”, 1839, 2nd edition; lines 1-174 were printed or reprinted by Dr. Garnett in “Relics of Shelley”, 1862; and lines 175-186 were printed by Mr. C.D. Locock from the first draft of “Epipsychidion” amongst the Shelley manuscripts in the Bodleian Library. See “Examination, etc.”, 1903, pages 12, 13. The three early drafts of the “Preface (Advertisement)” were printed by Mr. Locock in the same volume, pages 4, 5.]
The following Poem was found amongst other papers in the Portfolio of a young Englishman with whom the Editor had contracted an intimacy at Florence, brief indeed, but sufficiently long to render the Catastrophe by which it terminated one of the most painful events of his life.—
The literary merit of the Poem in question may not be considerable; but worse verses are printed every day, &
He was an accomplished & amiable person but his error was, thuntos on un thunta phronein,—his fate is an additional proof that ‘The tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.’—He had framed to himself certain opinions, founded no doubt upon the truth of things, but built up to a Babel height; they fell by their own weight, & the thoughts that were his architects, became unintelligible one to the other, as men upon whom confusion of tongues has fallen.
[These] verses seem to have been written as a sort of dedication of some work to have been presented to the person whom they address: but his papers afford no trace of such a work—The circumstances to which [they] the poem allude, may easily be understood by those to whom [the] spirit of the poem itself is [un]intelligible: a detail of facts, sufficiently romantic in [themselves but] their combinations
The melancholy [task] charge of consigning the body of my poor friend to the grave, was committed to me by his desolated family. I caused him to be buried in a spot selected by himself, & on the h
[Epips] T. E. V. EpipsychLines addressed tothe Noble Lady[Emilia] [E. V.]Emilia
[The following Poem was found in the PF. of a young Englishman, who died on his passage from Leghorn to the Levant. He had bought one of the Sporades] He was accompanied by a lady [who might have been] supposed to be his wife, & an effeminate looking youth, to whom he shewed an [attachment] so [singular] excessive an attachment as to give rise to the suspicion, that she was a woman—At his death this suspicion was confirmed;…object speedily found a refuge both from the taunts of the brute multitude, and from the…of her grief in the same grave that contained her lover.—He had bought one of the Sporades, & fitted up a Saracenic castle which accident had preserved in some repair with simple elegance, & it was his intention to dedicate the remainder of his life to undisturbed intercourse with his companions
These verses apparently were intended as a dedication of a longer poem or series of poems
The writer of these lines died at Florence in [January 1820] while he was preparing * * for one wildest of the of the Sporades, where he bought & fitted up the ruins of some old building—His life was singular, less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it, than the ideal tinge which they received from his own character & feelings—
The verses were apparently intended by the writer to accompany some longer poem or collection of poems, of which there* [are no remnants in his] * * * remains [in his] portfolio.—
The editor is induced to
The present poem, like the vita Nova of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter of fact history of the circumstances to which it relate, & to a certain other class, it must & ought ever to remain incomprehensible—It was evidently intended to be prefixed to a longer poem or series of poems—but among his papers there are no traces of such a collection.
Here, my dear friend, is a new book for you;I have already dedicated twoTo other friends, one female and one male,—What you are, is a thing that I must veil;What can this be to those who praise or rail? _5I never was attached to that great sectWhose doctrine is that each one should selectOut of the world a mistress or a friend,And all the rest, though fair and wise, commendTo cold oblivion—though ’tis in the code _10Of modern morals, and the beaten roadWhich those poor slaves with weary footsteps treadWho travel to their home among the deadBy the broad highway of the world—and soWith one sad friend, and many a jealous foe, _15The dreariest and the longest journey go.
Free love has this, different from gold and clay,That to divide is not to take away.Like ocean, which the general north wind breaksInto ten thousand waves, and each one makes _20A mirror of the moon—like some great glass,Which did distort whatever form might pass,Dashed into fragments by a playful child,Which then reflects its eyes and forehead mild;Giving for one, which it could ne’er express, _25A thousand images of loveliness.
If I were one whom the loud world held wise,I should disdain to quote authoritiesIn commendation of this kind of love:—Why there is first the God in heaven above, _30Who wrote a book called Nature, ’tis to beReviewed, I hear, in the next Quarterly;And Socrates, the Jesus Christ of Greece,And Jesus Christ Himself, did never ceaseTo urge all living things to love each other, _35And to forgive their mutual faults, and smotherThe Devil of disunion in their souls.
…
I love you!—Listen, O embodied RayOf the great Brightness; I must pass awayWhile you remain, and these light words must be _40Tokens by which you may remember me.Start not—the thing you are is unbetrayed,If you are human, and if but the shadeOf some sublimer spirit…
…
And as to friend or mistress, ’tis a form; _45Perhaps I wish you were one. Some declareYou a familiar spirit, as you are;Others with a … more inhumanHint that, though not my wife, you are a woman;What is the colour of your eyes and hair? _50Why, if you were a lady, it were fairThe world should know—but, as I am afraid,The Quarterly would bait you if betrayed;And if, as it will be sport to see them stumbleOver all sorts of scandals. hear them mumble _55Their litany of curses—some guess right,And others swear you’re a Hermaphrodite;Like that sweet marble monster of both sexes,Which looks so sweet and gentle that it vexesThe very soul that the soul is gone _60Which lifted from her limbs the veil of stone.
…
It is a sweet thing, friendship, a dear balm,A happy and auspicious bird of calm,Which rides o’er life’s ever tumultuous Ocean;A God that broods o’er chaos in commotion; _65A flower which fresh as Lapland roses are,Lifts its bold head into the world’s frore air,And blooms most radiantly when others die,Health, hope, and youth, and brief prosperity;And with the light and odour of its bloom, _70Shining within the dun eon and the tomb;Whose coming is as light and music are‘Mid dissonance and gloom—a starWhich moves not ‘mid the moving heavens alone—A smile among dark frowns—a gentle tone _75Among rude voices, a beloved light,A solitude, a refuge, a delight.If I had but a friend! Why, I have threeEven by my own confession; there may beSome more, for what I know, for ’tis my mind _80To call my friends all who are wise and kind,-And these, Heaven knows, at best are very few;But none can ever be more dear than you.Why should they be? My muse has lost her wings,Or like a dying swan who soars and sings, _85I should describe you in heroic style,But as it is, are you not void of guile?A lovely soul, formed to be blessed and bless:A well of sealed and secret happiness;A lute which those whom Love has taught to play _90Make music on to cheer the roughest day,And enchant sadness till it sleeps?…
…
To the oblivion whither I and thou,All loving and all lovely, hasten nowWith steps, ah, too unequal! may we meet _95In one Elysium or one winding-sheet!
If any should be curious to discoverWhether to you I am a friend or lover,Let them read Shakespeare’s sonnets, taking thenceA whetstone for their dull intelligence _100That tears and will not cut, or let them guessHow Diotima, the wise prophetess,Instructed the instructor, and why heRebuked the infant spirit of melodyOn Agathon’s sweet lips, which as he spoke _105Was as the lovely star when morn has brokeThe roof of darkness, in the golden dawn,Half-hidden, and yet beautiful.I’ll pawnMy hopes of Heaven-you know what they are worth —That the presumptuous pedagogues of Earth, _110If they could tell the riddle offered hereWould scorn to be, or being to appearWhat now they seem and are—but let them chide,They have few pleasures in the world beside;Perhaps we should be dull were we not chidden, _115Paradise fruits are sweetest when forbidden.Folly can season Wisdom, Hatred Love.
…
Farewell, if it can be to say farewellTo those who
…
I will not, as most dedicators do, _120Assure myself and all the world and you,That you are faultless—would to God they wereWho taunt me with your love! I then should wearThese heavy chains of life with a light spirit,And would to God I were, or even as near it _125As you, dear heart. Alas! what are we? CloudsDriven by the wind in warring multitudes,Which rain into the bosom of the earth,And rise again, and in our death and birth,And through our restless life, take as from heaven _130Hues which are not our own, but which are given,And then withdrawn, and with inconstant glanceFlash from the spirit to the countenance.There is a Power, a Love, a Joy, a GodWhich makes in mortal hearts its brief abode, _135A Pythian exhalation, which inspiresLove, only love—a wind which o’er the wiresOf the soul’s giant harpThere is a mood which language faints beneath;You feel it striding, as Almighty Death _140His bloodless steed…
…
And what is that most brief and bright delightWhich rushes through the touch and through the sight,And stands before the spirit’s inmost throne,A naked Seraph? None hath ever known. _145Its birth is darkness, and its growth desire;Untameable and fleet and fierce as fire,Not to be touched but to be felt alone,It fills the world with glory-and is gone.
…
It floats with rainbow pinions o’er the stream _150Of life, which flows, like a … dreamInto the light of morning, to the graveAs to an ocean…
…
What is that joy which serene infancyPerceives not, as the hours content them by, _155Each in a chain of blossoms, yet enjoysThe shapes of this new world, in giant toysWrought by the busy … ever new?Remembrance borrows Fancy’s glass, to showThese forms more … sincere _160Than now they are, than then, perhaps, they were.When everything familiar seemed to beWonderful, and the immortalityOf this great world, which all things must inherit,Was felt as one with the awakening spirit, _165Unconscious of itself, and of the strangeDistinctions which in its proceeding changeIt feels and knows, and mourns as if each wereA desolation…
…
Were it not a sweet refuge, Emily, _170For all those exiles from the dull insaneWho vex this pleasant world with pride and pain,For all that band of sister-spirits knownTo one another by a voiceless tone?
…
If day should part us night will mend division _175And if sleep parts us—we will meet in visionAnd if life parts us—we will mix in deathYielding our mite [?] of unreluctant breathDeath cannot part us—we must meet againIn all in nothing in delight in pain: _180How, why or when or where—it matters notSo that we share an undivided lot…
…
And we will move possessing and possessedWherever beauty on the earth’s bare [?] breastLies like the shadow of thy soul—till we _185Become one being with the world we see…
NOTES: _52-_53 afraid The cj. A.C. Bradley. _54 And as cj. Rossetti, A.C. Bradley. _61 stone… cj. A.C. Bradley. _155 them]trip or troop cj. A.C. Bradley. _157 in]as cj. A.C. Bradley.
***
Aster prin men elampes eni zooisin Eoos nun de thanon lampeis Esperos en phthimenois.—PLATO.
[“Adonais” was composed at Pisa during the early days of June, 1821, and printed, with the author’s name, at Pisa, ‘with the types of Didot,’ by July 13, 1821. Part of the impression was sent to the brothers Ollier for sale in London. An exact reprint of this Pisa edition (a few typographical errors only being corrected) was issued in 1829 by Gee & Bridges, Cambridge, at the instance of Arthur Hallam and Richard Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton). The poem was included in Galignani’s edition of “Coleridge, Shelley and Keats”, Paris, 1829, and by Mrs. Shelley in the “Poetical Works” of 1839. Mrs. Shelley’s text presents three important variations from that of the editio princeps. In 1876 an edition of the “Adonais”, with Introduction and Notes, was printed for private circulation by Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B. Ten years later a reprint ‘in exact facsimile’ of the Pisa edition was edited with a Bibliographical Introduction by Mr. T.J. Wise (“Shelley Society Publications”, 2nd Series, No. 1, Reeves & Turner, London, 1886). Our text is that of the editio princeps, Pisa, 1821, modified by Mrs. Shelley’s text of 1839. The readings of the editio princeps, wherever superseded, are recorded in the footnotes. The Editor’s Notes at the end of the Volume 3 should be consulted.]
Pharmakon elthe, Bion, poti son stoma, pharmakon eides. pos ten tois cheilessi potesrame, kouk eglukanthe; tis de Brotos tossouton anameros, e kerasai toi, e dounai laleonti to pharmakon; ekphugen odan. —MOSCHUS, EPITAPH. BION.
It is my intention to subjoin to the London edition of this poem a criticism upon the claims of its lamented object to be classed among the writers of the highest genius who have adorned our age. My known repugnance to the narrow principles of taste on which several of his earlier compositions were modelled prove at least that I am an impartial judge. I consider the fragment of “Hyperion” as second to nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years.
John Keats died at Rome of a consumption, in his twenty-fourth year, on the — of — 1821; and was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.
The genius of the lamented person to whose memory I have dedicated these unworthy verses was not less delicate and fragile than it was beautiful; and where cankerworms abound, what wonder if its young flower was blighted in the bud? The savage criticism on his “Endymion”, which appeared in the “Quarterly Review”, produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind; the agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgements from more candid critics of the true greatness of his powers were ineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted.
It may be well said that these wretched men know not what they do. They scatter their insults and their slanders without heed as to whether the poisoned shaft lights on a heart made callous by many blows or one like Keats’s composed of more penetrable stuff. One of their associates is, to my knowledge, a most base and unprincipled calumniator. As to “Endymion”, was it a poem, whatever might be its defects, to be treated contemptuously by those who had celebrated, with various degrees of complacency and panegyric, “Paris”, and “Woman”, and a “Syrian Tale”, and Mrs. Lefanu, and Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Howard Payne, and a long list of the illustrious obscure? Are these the men who in their venal good nature presumed to draw a parallel between the Reverend Mr. Milman and Lord Byron? What gnat did they strain at here, after having swallowed all those camels? Against what woman taken in adultery dares the foremost of these literary prostitutes to cast his opprobrious stone? Miserable man! you, one of the meanest, have wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God. Nor shall it be your excuse, that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers, but used none.
The circumstances of the closing scene of poor Keats’s life were not made known to me until the “Elegy” was ready for the press. I am given to understand that the wound which his sensitive spirit had received from the criticism of “Endymion” was exasperated by the bitter sense of unrequited benefits; the poor fellow seems to have been hooted from the stage of life, no less by those on whom he had wasted the promise of his genius, than those on whom he had lavished his fortune and his care. He was accompanied to Rome, and attended in his last illness by Mr. Severn, a young artist of the highest promise, who, I have been informed, ‘almost risked his own life, and sacrificed every prospect to unwearied attendance upon his dying friend.’ Had I known these circumstances before the completion of my poem, I should have been tempted to add my feeble tribute of applause to the more solid recompense which the virtuous man finds in the recollection of his own motives. Mr. Severn can dispense with a reward from ‘such stuff as dreams are made of.’ His conduct is a golden augury of the success of his future career—may the unextinguished Spirit of his illustrious friend animate the creations of his pencil, and plead against Oblivion for his name!
***
I weep for Adonais—he is dead!O, weep for Adonais! though our tearsThaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!And thou, sad Hour, selected from all yearsTo mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, _5And teach them thine own sorrow, say: “With meDied Adonais; till the Future daresForget the Past, his fate and fame shall beAn echo and a light unto eternity!”
2.Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, _10When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which fliesIn darkness? where was lorn UraniaWhen Adonais died? With veiled eyes,‘Mid listening Echoes, in her ParadiseShe sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath, _15Rekindled all the fading melodies,With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of Death.
3.Oh, weep for Adonais—he is dead!Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep! _20Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bedThy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keepLike his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;For he is gone, where all things wise and fairDescend;—oh, dream not that the amorous Deep _25Will yet restore him to the vital air;Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.
4.Most musical of mourners, weep again!Lament anew, Urania!—He died,Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, _30Blind, old and lonely, when his country’s pride,The priest, the slave, and the liberticide,Trampled and mocked with many a loathed riteOf lust and blood; he went, unterrified,Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite _35Yet reigns o’er earth; the third among the sons of light.
5.Most musical of mourners, weep anew!Not all to that bright station dared to climb;And happier they their happiness who knew,Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time _40In which suns perished; others more sublime,Struck by the envious wrath of man or god,Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;And some yet live, treading the thorny road,Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame’s serene abode. _45
6.But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perished—The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew;Most musical of mourners, weep anew! _50Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last,The bloom, whose petals nipped before they blewDied on the promise of the fruit, is waste;The broken lily lies—the storm is overpast.
7.To that high Capital, where kingly Death _55Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,He came; and bought, with price of purest breath,A grave among the eternal.—Come away!Haste, while the vault of blue Italian dayIs yet his fitting charnel-roof! while still _60He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay;Awake him not! surely he takes his fillOf deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.
8.He will awake no more, oh, never more!—Within the twilight chamber spreads apace _65The shadow of white Death, and at the doorInvisible Corruption waits to traceHis extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and aweSoothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface _70So fair a prey, till darkness and the lawOf change, shall o’er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.
9.Oh, weep for Adonais!—The quick Dreams,The passion-winged Ministers of thought,Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams _75Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taughtThe love which was its music, wander not,—Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lotRound the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain, _80They ne’er will gather strength, or find a home again.
10.And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries;‘Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead;See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, _85Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there liesA tear some Dream has loosened from his brain.’Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!She knew not ’twas her own; as with no stainShe faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. _90
11.One from a lucid urn of starry dewWashed his light limbs as if embalming them;Another clipped her profuse locks, and threwThe wreath upon him, like an anadem,Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem; _95Another in her wilful grief would breakHer bow and winged reeds, as if to stemA greater loss with one which was more weak;And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek.
12.Another Splendour on his mouth alit, _100That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breathWhich gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,And pass into the panting heart beneathWith lightning and with music: the damp deathQuenched its caress upon his icy lips; _105And, as a dying meteor stains a wreathOf moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse.
13.And others came…Desires and Adorations,Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies, _110Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering IncarnationsOf hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleamOf her own dying smile instead of eyes, _115Came in slow pomp;—the moving pomp might seemLike pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.
14.All he had loved, and moulded into thought,From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,Lamented Adonais. Morning sought _120Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,Dimmed the aereal eyes that kindle day;Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, _125And the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.
15.Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,And feeds her grief with his remembered lay,And will no more reply to winds or fountains,Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray, _130Or herdsman’s horn, or bell at closing day;Since she can mimic not his lips, more dearThan those for whose disdain she pined awayInto a shadow of all sounds:—a drearMurmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. _135
16.Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw downHer kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown,For whom should she have waked the sullen year?To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear _140Nor to himself Narcissus, as to bothThou, Adonais: wan they stand and sereAmid the faint companions of their youth,With dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing ruth.
17.Thy spirit’s sister, the lorn nightingale _145Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain;Not so the eagle, who like thee could scaleHeaven, and could nourish in the sun’s domainHer mighty youth with morning, doth complain,Soaring and screaming round her empty nest, _150As Albion wails for thee: the curse of CainLight on his head who pierced thy innocent breast,And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest!
18.Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone,But grief returns with the revolving year; _155The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear;Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons’ bier;The amorous birds now pair in every brake,And build their mossy homes in field and brere; _160And the green lizard, and the golden snake,Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.
19.Through wood and stream and field and hill and OceanA quickening life from the Earth’s heart has burstAs it has ever done, with change and motion, _165From the great morning of the world when firstGod dawned on Chaos; in its stream immersed,The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light;All baser things pant with life’s sacred thirst;Diffuse themselves; and spend in love’s delight, _170The beauty and the joy of their renewed might.
20.The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender,Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;Like incarnations of the stars, when splendourIs changed to fragrance, they illumine death _175And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath;Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knowsBe as a sword consumed before the sheathBy sightless lightning?—the intense atom glowsA moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose. _180
21.Alas! that all we loved of him should be,But for our grief, as if it had not been,And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!Whence are we, and why are we? of what sceneThe actors or spectators? Great and mean _185Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.
22.HE will awake no more, oh, never more! _190‘Wake thou,’ cried Misery, ‘childless Mother, riseOut of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart’s core,A wound more fierce than his, with tears and sighs.’And all the Dreams that watched Urania’s eyes,And all the Echoes whom their sister’s song _195Had held in holy silence, cried: ‘Arise!’Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung,From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung.
23.She rose like an autumnal Night, that springsOut of the East, and follows wild and drear _200The golden Day, which, on eternal wings,Even as a ghost abandoning a bier,Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fearSo struck, so roused, so rapped Urania;So saddened round her like an atmosphere _205Of stormy mist; so swept her on her wayEven to the mournful place where Adonais lay.
24.Out of her secret Paradise she sped,Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel,And human hearts, which to her aery tread _210Yielding not, wounded the invisiblePalms of her tender feet where’er they fell:And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they,Rent the soft Form they never could repel,Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, _215Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.
25.In the death-chamber for a moment Death,Shamed by the presence of that living Might,Blushed to annihilation, and the breathRevisited those lips, and Life’s pale light _220Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight.‘Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless,As silent lightning leaves the starless night!Leave me not!’ cried Urania: her distressRoused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress. _225
26.‘Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again;Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live;And in my heartless breast and burning brainThat word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,With food of saddest memory kept alive, _230Now thou art dead, as if it were a partOf thee, my Adonais! I would giveAll that I am to be as thou now art!But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!
27.‘O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, _235Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of menToo soon, and with weak hands though mighty heartDare the unpastured dragon in his den?Defenceless as thou wert, oh, where was thenWisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear? _240Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, whenThy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere,The monsters of life’s waste had fled from thee like deer.
28.‘The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead; _245The vultures to the conqueror’s banner trueWho feed where Desolation first has fed,And whose wings rain contagion;—how they fled,When, like Apollo, from his golden bowThe Pythian of the age one arrow sped _250And smiled!—The spoilers tempt no second blow,They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.
29.‘The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;He sets, and each ephemeral insect thenIs gathered into death without a dawn, _255And the immortal stars awake again;So is it in the world of living men:A godlike mind soars forth, in its delightMaking earth bare and veiling heaven, and whenIt sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light _260Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit’s awful night.’
30.Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came,Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent;The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fameOver his living head like Heaven is bent, _265An early but enduring monument,Came, veiling all the lightnings of his songIn sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sentThe sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,And Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue. _270
31.Midst others of less note, came one frail Form,A phantom among men; companionlessAs the last cloud of an expiring stormWhose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,Had gazed on Nature’s naked loveliness, _275Actaeon-like, and now he fled astrayWith feeble steps o’er the world’s wilderness,And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.
32.A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift— _280A Love in desolation masked;—a PowerGirt round with weakness;—it can scarce upliftThe weight of the superincumbent hour;It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,A breaking billow;—even whilst we speak _285Is it not broken? On the withering flowerThe killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheekThe life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.
33.His head was bound with pansies overblown,And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue; _290And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grewYet dripping with the forest’s noonday dew,Vibrated, as the ever-beating heartShook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew _295He came the last, neglected and apart;A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter’s dart.
34.All stood aloof, and at his partial moanSmiled through their tears; well knew that gentle bandWho in another’s fate now wept his own, _300As in the accents of an unknown landHe sung new sorrow; sad Urania scannedThe Stranger’s mien, and murmured: ‘Who art thou?’He answered not, but with a sudden handMade bare his branded and ensanguined brow, _305Which was like Cain’s or Christ’s—oh! that it should be so!
35.What softer voice is hushed over the dead?Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?What form leans sadly o’er the white death-bed,In mockery of monumental stone, _310The heavy heart heaving without a moan?If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise,Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one,Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs,The silence of that heart’s accepted sacrifice. _315
36.Our Adonais has drunk poison—oh!What deaf and viperous murderer could crownLife’s early cup with such a draught of woe?The nameless worm would now itself disown:It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone _320Whose prelude held all envy, hate and wrong,But what was howling in one breast alone,Silent with expectation of the song,Whose master’s hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.
37.Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame! _325Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!But be thyself, and know thyself to be!And ever at thy season be thou freeTo spill the venom when thy fangs o’erflow; _330Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee;Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow,And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt—as now.
38.Nor let us weep that our delight is fledFar from these carrion kites that scream below; _335He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now—Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flowBack to the burning fountain whence it came,A portion of the Eternal, which must glow _340Through time and change, unquenchably the same,Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.
39.Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep—He hath awakened from the dream of life—’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep _345With phantoms an unprofitable strife,And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knifeInvulnerable nothings.—WE decayLike corpses in a charnel; fear and griefConvulse us and consume us day by day, _350And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
40.He has outsoared the shadow of our night;Envy and calumny and hate and pain,And that unrest which men miscall delight,Can touch him not and torture not again; _355From the contagion of the world’s slow stainHe is secure, and now can never mournA heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn,With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. _360
41.He lives, he wakes—’tis Death is dead, not he;Mourn not for Adonais.—Thou young Dawn,Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from theeThe spirit thou lamentest is not gone;Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan! _365Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air,Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrownO’er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bareEven to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!
42.He is made one with Nature: there is heard _370His voice in all her music, from the moanOf thunder, to the song of night’s sweet bird;He is a presence to be felt and knownIn darkness and in light, from herb and stone,Spreading itself where’er that Power may move _375Which has withdrawn his being to its own;Which wields the world with never-wearied love,Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.
43.He is a portion of the lovelinessWhich once he made more lovely: he doth bear _380His part, while the one Spirit’s plastic stressSweeps through the dull dense world, compelling thereAll new successions to the forms they wear;Torturing th’ unwilling dross that checks its flightTo its own likeness, as each mass may bear; _385And bursting in its beauty and its mightFrom trees and beasts and men into the Heaven’s light.
44.The splendours of the firmament of timeMay be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;Like stars to their appointed height they climb, _390And death is a low mist which cannot blotThe brightness it may veil. When lofty thoughtLifts a young heart above its mortal lair,And love and life contend in it, for whatShall be its earthly doom, the dead live there _395And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.
45.The inheritors of unfulfilled renownRose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought,Far in the Unapparent. ChattertonRose pale,—his solemn agony had not _400Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he foughtAnd as he fell and as he lived and lovedSublimely mild, a Spirit without spot,Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved:Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved. _405
46.And many more, whose names on Earth are dark,But whose transmitted effluence cannot dieSo long as fire outlives the parent spark,Rose, robed in dazzling immortality.‘Thou art become as one of us,’ they cry, _410‘It was for thee yon kingless sphere has longSwung blind in unascended majesty,Silent alone amid a Heaven of Song.Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!’
47.Who mourns for Adonais? Oh, come forth, _415Fond wretch! and know thyself and him aright.Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth;As from a centre, dart thy spirit’s lightBeyond all worlds, until its spacious mightSatiate the void circumference: then shrink _420Even to a point within our day and night;And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sinkWhen hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink.
48.Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre,Oh, not of him, but of our joy: ’tis nought _425That ages, empires and religions thereLie buried in the ravage they have wrought;For such as he can lend,—they borrow notGlory from those who made the world their prey;And he is gathered to the kings of thought _430Who waged contention with their time’s decay,And of the past are all that cannot pass away.
49.Go thou to Rome,—at once the Paradise,The grave, the city, and the wilderness;And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, _435And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dressThe bones of Desolation’s nakednessPass, till the spirit of the spot shall leadThy footsteps to a slope of green accessWhere, like an infant’s smile, over the dead _440A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;
50.And gray walls moulder round, on which dull TimeFeeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,Pavilioning the dust of him who planned _445This refuge for his memory, doth standLike flame transformed to marble; and beneath,A field is spread, on which a newer bandHave pitched in Heaven’s smile their camp of death,Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath. _450
51.Here pause: these graves are all too young as yetTo have outgrown the sorrow which consignedIts charge to each; and if the seal is set,Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind,Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou findThine own well full, if thou returnest home,Of tears and gall. From the world’s bitter windSeek shelter in the shadow of the tomb.What Adonais is, why fear we to become?
52.The One remains, the many change and pass;Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,Stains the white radiance of Eternity,Until Death tramples it to fragments.—Die,If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!Follow where all is fled!—Rome’s azure sky,Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weakThe glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.
53.Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart?Thy hopes are gone before: from all things hereThey have departed; thou shouldst now depart!A light is passed from the revolving year,And man, and woman; and what still is dearAttracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.The soft sky smiles,—the low wind whispers near:’Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither,No more let Life divide what Death can join together.
54.That Light whose smile kindles the Universe,That Beauty in which all things work and move,That Benediction which the eclipsing CurseOf birth can quench not, that sustaining LoveWhich through the web of being blindly woveBy man and beast and earth and air and sea,Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors ofThe fire for which all thirst; now beams on me,Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.
55.The breath whose might I have invoked in songDescends on me; my spirit’s bark is driven,Far from the shore, far from the trembling throngWhose sails were never to the tempest given;The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,The soul of Adonais, like a star,Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. _495
NOTES: _49 true-love]true love editions 1821, 1839. _72 Of change, etc. so editions 1829 (Galignani), 1839; Of mortal change, shall fill the grave which is her maw edition 1821. _81 or edition 1821; nor edition 1839. _105 his edition 1821; its edition 1839. _126 round edition 1821; around edition 1839. _143 faint companions edition 1839; drooping comrades edition 1821. _204 See Editor’s Note. _252 lying low edition 1839; as they go edition 1821.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]
…the expression of my indignation and sympathy. I will allow myself a first and last word on the subject of calumny as it relates to me. As an author I have dared and invited censure. If I understand myself, I have written neither for profit nor for fame. I have employed my poetical compositions and publications simply as the instruments of that sympathy between myself and others which the ardent and unbounded love I cherished for my kind incited me to acquire. I expected all sorts of stupidity and insolent contempt from those…
…These compositions (excepting the tragedy of “The Cenci”, which was written rather to try my powers than to unburthen my full heart) are insufficiently…commendation than perhaps they deserve, even from their bitterest enemies; but they have not attained any corresponding popularity. As a man, I shrink from notice and regard; the ebb and flow of the world vexes me; I desire to be left in peace. Persecution, contumely, and calumny have been heaped upon me in profuse measure; and domestic conspiracy and legal oppression have violated in my person the most sacred rights of nature and humanity. The bigot will say it was the recompense of my errors; the man of the world will call it the result of my imprudence; but never upon one head…
…Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thieftaker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic. But a young spirit panting for fame, doubtful of its powers, and certain only of its aspirations, is ill qualified to assign its true value to the sneer of this world. He knows not that such stuff as this is of the abortive and monstrous births which time consumes as fast as it produces. He sees the truth and falsehood, the merits and demerits, of his case inextricably entangled…No personal offence should have drawn from me this public comment upon such stuff…
…The offence of this poor victim seems to have consisted solely in his intimacy with Leigh Hunt, Mr. Hazlitt, and some other enemies of despotism and superstition. My friend Hunt has a very hard skull to crack, and will take a deal of killing. I do not know much of Mr. Hazlitt, but…
…I knew personally but little of Keats; but on the news of his situation I wrote to him, suggesting the propriety of trying the Italian climate, and inviting him to join me. Unfortunately he did not allow me…
And ever as he went he swept a lyreOf unaccustomed shape, and … stringsNow like the … of impetuous fire,Which shakes the forest with its murmurings,Now like the rush of the aereal wings _5Of the enamoured wind among the treen,Whispering unimaginable things,And dying on the streams of dew serene,Which feed the unmown meads with ever-during green.
…
And the green Paradise which western waves _10Embosom in their ever-wailing sweep,Talking of freedom to their tongueless caves,Or to the spirits which within them keepA record of the wrongs which, though they sleep,Die not, but dream of retribution, heard _15His hymns, and echoing them from steep to steep,Kept—
…
And then came one of sweet and earnest looks,Whose soft smiles to his dark and night-like eyesWere as the clear and ever-living brooks _20Are to the obscure fountains whence they rise,Showing how pure they are: a ParadiseOf happy truth upon his forehead lowLay, making wisdom lovely, in the guiseOf earth-awakening morn upon the brow _25Of star-deserted heaven, while ocean gleams below.
His song, though very sweet, was low and faint,A simple strain—
…
A mighty Phantasm, half concealedIn darkness of his own exceeding light, _30Which clothed his awful presence unrevealed,Charioted on the … nightOf thunder-smoke, whose skirts were chrysolite.
And like a sudden meteor, which outstripsThe splendour-winged chariot of the sun, _35… eclipseThe armies of the golden stars, each onePavilioned in its tent of light—all strewnOver the chasms of blue night—
***
[“Hellas” was composed at Pisa in the autumn of 1821, and dispatchedto London, November 11. It was published, with the author’s name, byC. & J. Ollier in the spring of 1822. A transcript of the poem byEdward Williams is in the Rowfant Library. Ollier availed himself ofShelley’s permission to cancel certain passages in the notes; he alsostruck out certain lines of the text. These omissions were, some ofthem, restored in Galignani’s one-volume edition of “Coleridge,Shelley and Keats”, Paris, 1829, and also by Mrs. Shelley in the“Poetical Works”, 1839. A passage in the “Preface”, suppressed byOllier, was restored by Mr. Buxton Forman (1892) from a proof copy of“Hellas” in his possession. The “Prologue to Hellas” was edited by Dr.Garnett in 1862 (“Relics of Shelley”) from the manuscripts at BoscombeManor.
Our text is that of the editio princeps, 1822, corrected by a list of “Errata” sent by Shelley to Ollier, April 11, 1822. The Editor’s Notes at the end of Volume 3 should be consulted.]
Pisa, November 1, 1821.
The poem of “Hellas”, written at the suggestion of the events of the moment, is a mere improvise, and derives its interest (should it be found to possess any) solely from the intense sympathy which the Author feels with the cause he would celebrate.
The subject, in its present state, is insusceptible of being treated otherwise than lyrically, and if I have called this poem a drama from the circumstance of its being composed in dialogue, the licence is not greater than that which has been assumed by other poets who have called their productions epics, only because they have been divided into twelve or twenty-four books.
The “Persae” of Aeschylus afforded me the first model of my conception, although the decision of the glorious contest now waging in Greece being yet suspended forbids a catastrophe parallel to the return of Xerxes and the desolation of the Persians. I have, therefore, contented myself with exhibiting a series of lyric pictures, and with having wrought upon the curtain of futurity, which falls upon the unfinished scene, such figures of indistinct and visionary delineation as suggest the final triumph of the Greek cause as a portion of the cause of civilisation and social improvement.
The drama (if drama it must be called) is, however, so inartificial that I doubt whether, if recited on the Thespian waggon to an Athenian village at the Dionysiaca, it would have obtained the prize of the goat. I shall bear with equanimity any punishment, greater than the loss of such a reward, which the Aristarchi of the hour may think fit to inflict.
The only “goat-song” which I have yet attempted has, I confess, in spite of the unfavourable nature of the subject, received a greater and a more valuable portion of applause than I expected or than it deserved.
Common fame is the only authority which I can allege for the details which form the basis of the poem, and I must trespass upon the forgiveness of my readers for the display of newspaper erudition to which I have been reduced. Undoubtedly, until the conclusion of the war, it will be impossible to obtain an account of it sufficiently authentic for historical materials; but poets have their privilege, and it is unquestionable that actions of the most exalted courage have been performed by the Greeks—that they have gained more than one naval victory, and that their defeat in Wallachia was signalized by circumstances of heroism more glorious even than victory.
The apathy of the rulers of the civilised world to the astonishing circumstance of the descendants of that nation to which they owe their civilisation, rising as it were from the ashes of their ruin, is something perfectly inexplicable to a mere spectator of the shows of this mortal scene. We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece. But for Greece—Rome, the instructor, the conqueror, or the metropolis of our ancestors, would have spread no illumination with her arms, and we might still have been savages and idolaters; or, what is worse, might have arrived at such a stagnant and miserable state of social institution as China and Japan possess.
The human form and the human mind attained to a perfection in Greece which has impressed its image on those faultless productions, whose very fragments are the despair of modern art, and has propagated impulses which cannot cease, through a thousand channels of manifest or imperceptible operation, to ennoble and delight mankind until the extinction of the race.
The modern Greek is the descendant of those glorious beings whom the imagination almost refuses to figure to itself as belonging to our kind, and he inherits much of their sensibility, their rapidity of conception, their enthusiasm, and their courage. If in many instances he is degraded by moral and political slavery to the practice of the basest vices it engenders—and that below the level of ordinary degradation—let us reflect that the corruption of the best produces the worst, and that habits which subsist only in relation to a peculiar state of social institution may be expected to cease as soon as that relation is dissolved. In fact, the Greeks, since the admirable novel of Anastasius could have been a faithful picture of their manners, have undergone most important changes; the flower of their youth, returning to their country from the universities of Italy, Germany, and France, have communicated to their fellow-citizens the latest results of that social perfection of which their ancestors were the original source. The University of Chios contained before the breaking out of the revolution eight hundred students, and among them several Germans and Americans. The munificence and energy of many of the Greek princes and merchants, directed to the renovation of their country with a spirit and a wisdom which has few examples, is above all praise.
The English permit their own oppressors to act according to their natural sympathy with the Turkish tyrant, and to brand upon their name the indelible blot of an alliance with the enemies of domestic happiness, of Christianity and civilisation.
Russia desires to possess, not to liberate Greece; and is contented to see the Turks, its natural enemies, and the Greeks, its intended slaves, enfeeble each other until one or both fall into its net. The wise and generous policy of England would have consisted in establishing the independence of Greece, and in maintaining it both against Russia and the Turk;—but when was the oppressor generous or just?
[Should the English people ever become free, they will reflect upon the part which those who presume to represent their will have played in the great drama of the revival of liberty, with feelings which it would become them to anticipate. This is the age of the war of the oppressed against the oppressors, and every one of those ringleaders of the privileged gangs of murderers and swindlers, called Sovereigns, look to each other for aid against the common enemy, and suspend their mutual jealousies in the presence of a mightier fear. Of this holy alliance all the despots of the earth are virtual members. But a new race has arisen throughout Europe, nursed in the abhorrence of the opinions which are its chains, and she will continue to produce fresh generations to accomplish that destiny which tyrants foresee and dread. (This paragraph, suppressed in 1822 by Charles Ollier, was first restored in 1892 by Mr. Buxton Forman [“Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, volume 4 pages 40-41] from a proof copy of Hellas in his possession.]
The Spanish Peninsula is already free. France is tranquil in the enjoyment of a partial exemption from the abuses which its unnatural and feeble government are vainly attempting to revive. The seed of blood and misery has been sown in Italy, and a more vigorous race is arising to go forth to the harvest. The world waits only the news of a revolution of Germany to see the tyrants who have pinnacled themselves on its supineness precipitated into the ruin from which they shall never arise. Well do these destroyers of mankind know their enemy, when they impute the insurrection in Greece to the same spirit before which they tremble throughout the rest of Europe, and that enemy well knows the power and the cunning of its opponents, and watches the moment of their approaching weakness and inevitable division to wrest the bloody sceptres from their grasp.
HERALD OF ETERNITY:It is the day when all the sons of GodWait in the roofless senate-house, whose floorIs Chaos, and the immovable abyssFrozen by His steadfast word to hyaline
…
The shadow of God, and delegate _5Of that before whose breath the universeIs as a print of dew.Hierarchs and kingsWho from your thrones pinnacled on the pastSway the reluctant present, ye who sitPavilioned on the radiance or the gloom _10Of mortal thought, which like an exhalationSteaming from earth, conceals the … of heavenWhich gave it birth. … assemble hereBefore your Father’s throne; the swift decreeYet hovers, and the fiery incarnation _15Is yet withheld, clothed in which it shallannulThe fairest of those wandering isles that gemThe sapphire space of interstellar air,That green and azure sphere, that earth enwrapped _20Less in the beauty of its tender lightThan in an atmosphere of living spiritWhich interpenetrating all the …it rolls from realm to realmAnd age to age, and in its ebb and flow _25Impels the generationsTo their appointed place,Whilst the high ArbiterBeholds the strife, and at the appointed timeSends His decrees veiled in eternal… _30
Within the circuit of this pendent orbThere lies an antique region, on which fellThe dews of thought in the world’s golden dawnEarliest and most benign, and from it sprungTemples and cities and immortal forms _35And harmonies of wisdom and of song,And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair.And when the sun of its dominion failed,And when the winter of its glory came,The winds that stripped it bare blew on and swept _40That dew into the utmost wildernessesIn wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawedThe unmaternal bosom of the North.Haste, sons of God, … for ye beheld,Reluctant, or consenting, or astonished, _45The stern decrees go forth, which heaped on GreeceRuin and degradation and despair.A fourth now waits: assemble, sons of God,To speed or to prevent or to suspend,If, as ye dream, such power be not withheld, _50The unaccomplished destiny.
NOTE: _8 your Garnett; yon Forman, Dowden.
…
CHORUS:The curtain of the UniverseIs rent and shattered,The splendour-winged worlds disperseLike wild doves scattered. _55
Space is roofless and bare,And in the midst a cloudy shrine,Dark amid thrones of light.In the blue glow of hyalineGolden worlds revolve and shine. _60In … flightFrom every point of the Infinite,Like a thousand dawns on a single nightThe splendours rise and spread;And through thunder and darkness dread _65Light and music are radiated,And in their pavilioned chariots ledBy living wings high overheadThe giant Powers move,Gloomy or bright as the thrones they fill. _70
…
A chaos of light and motionUpon that glassy ocean.
…
The senate of the Gods is met,Each in his rank and station set;There is silence in the spaces— _75Lo! Satan, Christ, and MahometStart from their places!
CHRIST:Almighty Father!Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny
…
There are two fountains in which spirits weep _80When mortals err, Discord and Slavery named,And with their bitter dew two DestiniesFilled each their irrevocable urns; the thirdFiercest and mightiest, mingled both, and addedChaos and Death, and slow Oblivion’s lymph, _85And hate and terror, and the poisoned rain
…
The Aurora of the nations. By this browWhose pores wept tears of blood, by these wide wounds,By this imperial crown of agony,By infamy and solitude and death, _90For this I underwent, and by the painOf pity for those who would … for meThe unremembered joy of a revenge,For this I felt—by Plato’s sacred light,Of which my spirit was a burning morrow— _95By Greece and all she cannot cease to be.Her quenchless words, sparks of immortal truth,Stars of all night—her harmonies and forms,Echoes and shadows of what Love adoresIn thee, I do compel thee, send forth Fate, _100Thy irrevocable child: let her descend,A seraph-winged Victory [arrayed]In tempest of the omnipotence of GodWhich sweeps through all things.
From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms _105Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchiesTo stamp, as on a winged serpent’s seed,Upon the name of Freedom; from the stormOf faction, which like earthquake shakes and sickensThe solid heart of enterprise; from all _110By which the holiest dreams of highest spiritsAre stars beneath the dawn…She shall ariseVictorious as the world arose from Chaos!And as the Heavens and the Earth arrayedTheir presence in the beauty and the light _115Of Thy first smile, O Father,—as they gatherThe spirit of Thy love which paves for themTheir path o’er the abyss, till every sphereShall be one living Spirit,—so shall Greece—
SATAN:Be as all things beneath the empyrean, _120Mine! Art thou eyeless like old Destiny,Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns?Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reedWhich pierces thee! whose throne a chair of scorn;For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor _125The innumerable worlds of golden lightWhich are my empire, and the least of themwhich thou wouldst redeem from me?Know’st thou not them my portion?Or wouldst rekindle the … strife _130Which our great Father then did arbitrateWhich he assigned to his competing sonsEach his apportioned realm?Thou Destiny,Thou who art mailed in the omnipotenceOf Him who tends thee forth, whate’er thy task, _135Speed, spare not to accomplish, and be mineThy trophies, whether Greece again becomeThe fountain in the desert whence the earthShall drink of freedom, which shall give it strengthTo suffer, or a gulf of hollow death _140To swallow all delight, all life, all hope.Go, thou Vicegerent of my will, no lessThan of the Father’s; but lest thou shouldst faint,The winged hounds, Famine and Pestilence,Shall wait on thee, the hundred-forked snake _145Insatiate Superstition still shall…The earth behind thy steps, and War shall hoverAbove, and Fraud shall gape below, and ChangeShall flit before thee on her dragon wings,Convulsing and consuming, and I add _150Three vials of the tears which daemons weepWhen virtuous spirits through the gate of DeathPass triumphing over the thorns of life,Sceptres and crowns, mitres and swords and snares,Trampling in scorn, like Him and Socrates. _155The first is Anarchy; when Power and Pleasure,Glory and science and security,On Freedom hang like fruit on the green tree,Then pour it forth, and men shall gather ashes.The second Tyranny—