Now Time his dusky pennons o’er the sceneCloses in steadfast darkness, and the pastFades from our charmed sight. My task is done:Thy lore is learned. Earth’s wonders are thine own,With all the fear and all the hope they bring. _525My spells are past: the present now recurs.Ah me! a pathless wilderness remainsYet unsubdued by man’s reclaiming hand.
Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course,Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue _530The gradual paths of an aspiring change:For birth and life and death, and that strange stateBefore the naked powers that thro’ the worldWander like winds have found a human home,All tend to perfect happiness, and urge _535The restless wheels of being on their way,Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal:For birth but wakes the universal mindWhose mighty streams might else in silence flow _540Thro’ the vast world, to individual senseOf outward shows, whose unexperienced shapeNew modes of passion to its frame may lend;Life is its state of action, and the storeOf all events is aggregated there _545That variegate the eternal universe;Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom,That leads to azure isles and beaming skiesAnd happy regions of eternal hope.Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on: _550Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk,Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom,Yet spring’s awakening breath will woo the earth,To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower,That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens, _555Lighting the green wood with its sunny smile.
Fear not then, Spirit, death’s disrobing hand,So welcome when the tyrant is awake,So welcome when the bigot’s hell-torch flares;’Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour, _560The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep.For what thou art shall perish utterly,But what is thine may never cease to be;Death is no foe to virtue: earth has seenLove’s brightest roses on the scaffold bloom, _565Mingling with freedom’s fadeless laurels there,And presaging the truth of visioned bliss.Are there not hopes within thee, which this sceneOf linked and gradual being has confirmed?Hopes that not vainly thou, and living fires _570Of mind as radiant and as pure as thou,Have shone upon the paths of men—return,Surpassing Spirit, to that world, where thouArt destined an eternal war to wageWith tyranny and falsehood, and uproot _575The germs of misery from the human heart.Thine is the hand whose piety would sootheThe thorny pillow of unhappy crime,Whose impotence an easy pardon gains,Watching its wanderings as a friend’s disease: _580Thine is the brow whose mildness would defyIts fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will,When fenced by power and master of the world.Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind,Free from heart-withering custom’s cold control, _585Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued.Earth’s pride and meanness could not vanquish thee,And therefore art thou worthy of the boonWhich thou hast now received: virtue shall keepThy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod, _590And many days of beaming hope shall blessThy spotless life of sweet and sacred love.Go, happy one, and give that bosom joyWhose sleepless spirit waits to catchLight, life and rapture from thy smile. _595
The Daemon called its winged ministers.Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car,That rolled beside the crystal battlement,Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness.The burning wheels inflame _600The steep descent of Heaven’s untrodden way.Fast and far the chariot flew:The mighty globes that rolledAround the gate of the Eternal FaneLessened by slow degrees, and soon appeared _605Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbsThat ministering on the solar powerWith borrowed light pursued their narrower way.Earth floated then below:The chariot paused a moment; _610The Spirit then descended:And from the earth departingThe shadows with swift wingsSpeeded like thought upon the light of Heaven.
The Body and the Soul united then, _615A gentle start convulsed Ianthe’s frame:Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained:She looked around in wonder and beheldHenry, who kneeled in silence by her couch, _620Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love,And the bright beaming starsThat through the casement shone.
Notes: _87 Regarding cj. A.C. Bradley.)
***
[Composed at Bishopsgate Heath, near Windsor Park, 1815 (autumn); published, as the title-piece of a slender volume containing other poems (see “Biographical List”, by Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, London, 1816 (March). Reprinted—the first edition being sold out—amongst the “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. Sources of the text are (1) the editio princeps, 1816; (2) “Posthumous Poems”, 1824; (3) “Poetical Works”, 1839, editions 1st and 2nd. For (2) and (3) Mrs. Shelley is responsible.]
The poem entitled “Alastor” may be considered as allegorical of one of the most interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, and affords to their modifications at variety not to be exhausted. so long as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous, and tranquil, and self-possessed. But the period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He images to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant with speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in which he embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or wise, or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover could depicture. The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functions of sense, have their respective requisitions on the sympathy of corresponding powers in other human beings. The Poet is represented as uniting these requisitions, and attaching them to a single image. He seeks in vain for a prototype of his conception. Blasted by his disappointment, he descends to an untimely grave.
The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The Poet’s self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Power which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those manner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorious as their delinquency is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by no generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from sympathies with their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy nor mourning with human grief; these, and such as they, have their apportioned curse. They languish, because none feel with them their common nature. They are morally dead. They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their country. Among those who attempt to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tender-hearted perish through the intensity and passion of their search after its communities, when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who constitute, together with their own, the lasting misery and loneliness of the world. Those who love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.
‘The good die first,And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust,Burn to the socket!’
December 14, 1815.
Earth, Ocean, Air, beloved brotherhood!If our great Mother has imbued my soulWith aught of natural piety to feelYour love, and recompense the boon with mine;If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even, _5With sunset and its gorgeous ministers,And solemn midnight’s tingling silentness;If autumn’s hollow sighs in the sere wood,And winter robing with pure snow and crownsOf starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs; _10If spring’s voluptuous pantings when she breathesHer first sweet kisses, have been dear to me;If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beastI consciously have injured, but still lovedAnd cherished these my kindred; then forgive _15This boast, beloved brethren, and withdrawNo portion of your wonted favour now!
Mother of this unfathomable world!Favour my solemn song, for I have lovedThee ever, and thee only; I have watched _20Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,And my heart ever gazes on the depthOf thy deep mysteries. I have made my bedIn charnels and on coffins, where black deathKeeps record of the trophies won from thee, _25Hoping to still these obstinate questioningsOf thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost,Thy messenger, to render up the taleOf what we are. In lone and silent hours,When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness, _30Like an inspired and desperate alchymistStaking his very life on some dark hope,Have I mixed awful talk and asking looksWith my most innocent love, until strange tears,Uniting with those breathless kisses, made _35Such magic as compels the charmed nightTo render up thy charge:…and, though ne’er yetThou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,Enough from incommunicable dream,And twilight phantasms, and deep noon-day thought, _40Has shone within me, that serenely nowAnd moveless, as a long-forgotten lyreSuspended in the solitary domeOf some mysterious and deserted fane,I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain _45May modulate with murmurs of the air,And motions of the forests and the sea,And voice of living beings, and woven hymnsOf night and day, and the deep heart of man.
There was a Poet whose untimely tomb _50No human hands with pious reverence reared,But the charmed eddies of autumnal windsBuilt o’er his mouldering bones a pyramidOf mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness:—A lovely youth,—no mourning maiden decked _55With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath,The lone couch of his everlasting sleep:—Gentle, and brave, and generous,—no lorn bardBreathed o’er his dark fate one melodious sigh:He lived, he died, he sung in solitude. _60Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes,And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pinedAnd wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn,And Silence, too enamoured of that voice, _65Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.
By solemn vision, and bright silver dreamHis infancy was nurtured. Every sightAnd sound from the vast earth and ambient air,Sent to his heart its choicest impulses. _70The fountains of divine philosophyFled not his thirsting lips, and all of great,Or good, or lovely, which the sacred pastIn truth or fable consecrates, he feltAnd knew. When early youth had passed, he left _75His cold fireside and alienated homeTo seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.Many a wide waste and tangled wildernessHas lured his fearless steps; and he has boughtWith his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, _80His rest and food. Nature’s most secret stepsHe like her shadow has pursued, where’erThe red volcano overcanopiesIts fields of snow and pinnacles of iceWith burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes _85On black bare pointed islets ever beatWith sluggish surge, or where the secret caves,Rugged and dark, winding among the springsOf fire and poison, inaccessibleTo avarice or pride, their starry domes _90Of diamond and of gold expand aboveNumberless and immeasurable halls,Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrinesOf pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.Nor had that scene of ampler majesty _95Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heavenAnd the green earth lost in his heart its claimsTo love and wonder; he would linger longIn lonesome vales, making the wild his home,Until the doves and squirrels would partake _100From his innocuous hand his bloodless food,Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks,And the wild antelope, that starts whene’erThe dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspendHer timid steps, to gaze upon a formMore graceful than her own. _105His wandering step,Obedient to high thoughts, has visitedThe awful ruins of the days of old:Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the wasteWhere stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers _110Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids,Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe’er of strange,Sculptured on alabaster obelisk,Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphynx,Dark Aethiopia in her desert hills _115Conceals. Among the ruined temples there,Stupendous columns, and wild imagesOf more than man, where marble daemons watchThe Zodiac’s brazen mystery, and dead menHang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around, _120He lingered, poring on memorialsOf the world’s youth: through the long burning dayGazed on those speechless shapes; nor, when the moonFilled the mysterious halls with floating shadesSuspended he that task, but ever gazed _125And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mindFlashed like strong inspiration, and he sawThe thrilling secrets of the birth of time.
Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food,Her daily portion, from her father’s tent, _130And spread her matting for his couch, and stoleFrom duties and repose to tend his steps,Enamoured, yet not daring for deep aweTo speak her love:—and watched his nightly sleep,Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips _135Parted in slumber, whence the regular breathOf innocent dreams arose; then, when red mornMade paler the pale moon, to her cold homeWildered, and wan, and panting, she returned.
The Poet, wandering on, through Arabie, _140And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,And o’er the aerial mountains which pour downIndus and Oxus from their icy caves,In joy and exultation held his way;Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within _145Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwineBeneath the hollow rocks a natural bower,Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretchedHis languid limbs. A vision on his sleepThere came, a dream of hopes that never yet _150Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maidSate near him, talking in low solemn tones.Her voice was like the voice of his own soulHeard in the calm of thought; its music long,Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held _155His inmost sense suspended in its webOf many-coloured woof and shifting hues.Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,And lofty hopes of divine liberty,Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy, _160Herself a poet. Soon the solemn moodOf her pure mind kindled through all her frameA permeating fire; wild numbers thenShe raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobsSubdued by its own pathos; her fair hands _165Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harpStrange symphony, and in their branching veinsThe eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.The beating of her heart was heard to fillThe pauses of her music, and her breath _170Tumultuously accorded with those fitsOf intermitted song. Sudden she rose,As if her heart impatiently enduredIts bursting burthen: at the sound he turned,And saw by the warm light of their own life _175Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veilOf woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,Her dark locks floating in the breath of night,Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lipsOutstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly. _180His strong heart sunk and sickened with excessOf love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelledHis gasping breath, and spread his arms to meetHer panting bosom:…she drew back a while,Then, yielding to the irresistible joy, _185With frantic gesture and short breathless cryFolded his frame in her dissolving arms.Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and nightInvolved and swallowed up the vision; sleep,Like a dark flood suspended in its course, _190Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.
Roused by the shock he started from his trance—The cold white light of morning, the blue moonLow in the west, the clear and garish hills,The distinct valley and the vacant woods, _195Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fledThe hues of heaven that canopied his bowerOf yesternight? The sounds that soothed his sleep,The mystery and the majesty of Earth,The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes _200Gaze on the empty scene as vacantlyAs ocean’s moon looks on the moon in heaven.The spirit of sweet human love has sentA vision to the sleep of him who spurnedHer choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues _205Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade;He overleaps the bounds. Alas! Alas!Were limbs, and breath, and being intertwinedThus treacherously? Lost, lost, for ever lostIn the wide pathless desert of dim sleep, _210That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of deathConduct to thy mysterious paradise,O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rainbow cloudsAnd pendent mountains seen in the calm lake,Lead only to a black and watery depth, _215While death’s blue vault, with loathliest vapours hung,Where every shade which the foul grave exhalesHides its dead eye from the detested day,Conducts, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms?This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart; _220The insatiate hope which it awakened, stungHis brain even like despair.While daylight heldThe sky, the Poet kept mute conferenceWith his still soul. At night the passion came,Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream, _225And shook him from his rest, and led him forthInto the darkness.—As an eagle, graspedIn folds of the green serpent, feels her breastBurn with the poison, and precipitatesThrough night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud, _230Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flightO’er the wide aery wilderness: thus drivenBy the bright shadow of that lovely dream,Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night,Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells, _235Startling with careless step the moonlight snake,He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight,Shedding the mockery of its vital huesUpon his cheek of death. He wandered onTill vast Aornos seen from Petra’s steep _240Hung o’er the low horizon like a cloud;Through Balk, and where the desolated tombsOf Parthian kings scatter to every windTheir wasting dust, wildly he wandered on,Day after day a weary waste of hours, _245Bearing within his life the brooding careThat ever fed on its decaying flame.And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair,Sered by the autumn of strange sufferingSung dirges in the wind; his listless hand _250Hung like dead bone within its withered skin;Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shoneAs in a furnace burning secretlyFrom his dark eyes alone. The cottagers,Who ministered with human charity _255His human wants, beheld with wondering aweTheir fleeting visitant. The mountaineer,Encountering on some dizzy precipiceThat spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of windWith lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet _260Disturbing not the drifted snow, had pausedIn its career: the infant would concealHis troubled visage in his mother’s robeIn terror at the glare of those wild eyes,To remember their strange light in many a dream _265Of after-times; but youthful maidens, taughtBy nature, would interpret half the woeThat wasted him, would call him with false namesBrother and friend, would press his pallid handAt parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path _270Of his departure from their father’s door.
At length upon the lone Chorasmian shoreHe paused, a wide and melancholy wasteOf putrid marshes. A strong impulse urgedHis steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, _275Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds.It rose as he approached, and, with strong wingsScaling the upward sky, bent its bright courseHigh over the immeasurable main.His eyes pursued its flight:—‘Thou hast a home, _280Beautiful bird; thou voyagest to thine home,Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neckWith thine, and welcome thy return with eyesBright in the lustre of their own fond joy.And what am I that I should linger here, _285With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes,Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attunedTo beauty, wasting these surpassing powersIn the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heavenThat echoes not my thoughts?’ A gloomy smile _290Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips.For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlesslyIts precious charge, and silent death exposed,Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure,With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms. _295
Startled by his own thoughts he looked around.There was no fair fiend near him, not a sightOr sound of awe but in his own deep mind.A little shallop floating near the shoreCaught the impatient wandering of his gaze. _300It had been long abandoned, for its sidesGaped wide with many a rift, and its frail jointsSwayed with the undulations of the tide.A restless impulse urged him to embarkAnd meet lone Death on the drear ocean’s waste; _305For well he knew that mighty Shadow lovesThe slimy caverns of the populous deep.
The day was fair and sunny; sea and skyDrank its inspiring radiance, and the windSwept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves. _310Following his eager soul, the wandererLeaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloftOn the bare mast, and took his lonely seat,And felt the boat speed o’er the tranquil seaLike a torn cloud before the hurricane. _315
As one that in a silver vision floatsObedient to the sweep of odorous windsUpon resplendent clouds, so rapidlyAlong the dark and ruffled waters fledThe straining boat.—A whirlwind swept it on, _320With fierce gusts and precipitating force,Through the white ridges of the chafed sea.The waves arose. Higher and higher stillTheir fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest’s scourgeLike serpents struggling in a vulture’s grasp. _325Calm and rejoicing in the fearful warOf wave ruining on wave, and blast on blastDescending, and black flood on whirlpool drivenWith dark obliterating course, he sate:As if their genii were the ministers _330Appointed to conduct him to the lightOf those beloved eyes, the Poet sate,Holding the steady helm. Evening came on,The beams of sunset hung their rainbow huesHigh ‘mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray _335That canopied his path o’er the waste deep;Twilight, ascending slowly from the east,Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locksO’er the fair front and radiant eyes of day;Night followed, clad with stars. On every side _340More horribly the multitudinous streamsOf ocean’s mountainous waste to mutual warRushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mockThe calm and spangled sky. The little boatStill fled before the storm; still fled, like foam _345Down the steep cataract of a wintry river;Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave;Now leaving far behind the bursting massThat fell, convulsing ocean: safely fled—As if that frail and wasted human form, _350Had been an elemental god.
At midnightThe moon arose; and lo! the ethereal cliffsOf Caucasus, whose icy summits shoneAmong the stars like sunlight, and aroundWhose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves _355Bursting and eddying irresistiblyRage and resound forever.—Who shall save?—The boat fled on,—the boiling torrent drove,—The crags closed round with black and jagged arms,The shattered mountain overhung the sea, _360And faster still, beyond all human speed,Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave,The little boat was driven. A cavern thereYawned, and amid its slant and winding depthsIngulfed the rushing sea. The boat fled on _365With unrelaxing speed.—‘Vision and Love!’The Poet cried aloud, ‘I have beheldThe path of thy departure. Sleep and deathShall not divide us long.’
The boat pursuedThe windings of the cavern. Daylight shone _370At length upon that gloomy river’s flow;Now, where the fiercest war among the wavesIs calm, on the unfathomable streamThe boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, riven,Exposed those black depths to the azure sky, _375Ere yet the flood’s enormous volume fellEven to the base of Caucasus, with soundThat shook the everlasting rocks, the massFilled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm:Stair above stair the eddying waters rose, _380Circling immeasurably fast, and lavedWith alternating dash the gnarled rootsOf mighty trees, that stretched their giant armsIn darkness over it. I’ the midst was left,Reflecting, yet distorting every cloud, _385A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm.Seized by the sway of the ascending stream,With dizzy swiftness, round, and round, and round,Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose,Till on the verge of the extremest curve, _390Where, through an opening of the rocky bank,The waters overflow, and a smooth spotOf glassy quiet mid those battling tidesIs left, the boat paused shuddering.—Shall it sinkDown the abyss? Shall the reverting stress _395Of that resistless gulf embosom it?Now shall it fall?—A wandering stream of wind,Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail,And, lo! with gentle motion, between banksOf mossy slope, and on a placid stream, _400Beneath a woven grove it sails, and, hark!The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar,With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods.Where the embowering trees recede, and leaveA little space of green expanse, the cove _405Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowersFor ever gaze on their own drooping eyes,Reflected in the crystal calm. The waveOf the boat’s motion marred their pensive task,Which naught but vagrant bird, or wanton wind, _410Or falling spear-grass, or their own decayHad e’er disturbed before. The Poet longedTo deck with their bright hues his withered hair,But on his heart its solitude returned,And he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid _415In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frameHad yet performed its ministry: it hungUpon his life, as lightning in a cloudGleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floodsOf night close over it.The noonday sun _420Now shone upon the forest, one vast massOf mingling shade, whose brown magnificenceA narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves,Scooped in the dark base of their aery rocks,Mocking its moans, respond and roar for ever. _425The meeting boughs and implicated leavesWove twilight o’er the Poet’s path, as ledBy love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death,He sought in Nature’s dearest haunt some bank,Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark _430And dark the shades accumulate. The oak,Expanding its immense and knotty arms,Embraces the light beech. The pyramidsOf the tall cedar overarching frameMost solemn domes within, and far below, _435Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,The ash and the acacia floating hangTremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothedIn rainbow and in fire, the parasites,Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around _440The grey trunks, and, as gamesome infants’ eyes,With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles,Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love,These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughsUniting their close union; the woven leaves _445Make net-work of the dark blue light of day,And the night’s noontide clearness, mutableAs shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawnsBeneath these canopies extend their swells,Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms _450Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glenSends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with jasmine,A soul-dissolving odour to inviteTo some more lovely mystery. Through the dell,Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep _455Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades,Like vaporous shapes half-seen; beyond, a well,Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave,Images all the woven boughs above,And each depending leaf, and every speck _460Of azure sky, darting between their chasms;Nor aught else in the liquid mirror lavesIts portraiture, but some inconstant starBetween one foliaged lattice twinkling fair,Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon, _465Or gorgeous insect floating motionless,Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wingsHave spread their glories to the gaze of noon.
Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheldTheir own wan light through the reflected lines _470Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depthOf that still fountain; as the human heart,Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave,Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heardThe motion of the leaves, the grass that sprung _475Startled and glanced and trembled even to feelAn unaccustomed presence, and the soundOf the sweet brook that from the secret springsOf that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemedTo stand beside him—clothed in no bright robes _480Of shadowy silver or enshrining light,Borrowed from aught the visible world affordsOf grace, or majesty, or mystery;—But, undulating woods, and silent well,And leaping rivulet, and evening gloom _485Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming,Held commune with him, as if he and itWere all that was,—only…when his regardWas raised by intense pensiveness,…two eyes,Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought, _490And seemed with their serene and azure smilesTo beckon him.
Obedient to the lightThat shone within his soul, he went, pursuingThe windings of the dell.—The rivulet,Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine _495Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fellAmong the moss with hollow harmonyDark and profound. Now on the polished stonesIt danced; like childhood laughing as it went:Then, through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept, _500Reflecting every herb and drooping budThat overhung its quietness.—‘O stream!Whose source is inaccessibly profound,Whither do thy mysterious waters tend?Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness, _505Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulfs,Thy searchless fountain, and invisible courseHave each their type in me; and the wide sky.And measureless ocean may declare as soonWhat oozy cavern or what wandering cloud _510Contains thy waters, as the universeTell where these living thoughts reside, when stretchedUpon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall wasteI’ the passing wind!’
Beside the grassy shoreOf the small stream he went; he did impress _515On the green moss his tremulous step, that caughtStrong shuddering from his burning limbs. As oneRoused by some joyous madness from the couchOf fever, he did move; yet, not like him,Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame _520Of his frail exultation shall be spent,He must descend. With rapid steps he wentBeneath the shade of trees, beside the flowOf the wild babbling rivulet; and nowThe forest’s solemn canopies were changed _525For the uniform and lightsome evening sky.Grey rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmedThe struggling brook; tall spires of windlestraeThrew their thin shadows down the rugged slope,And nought but gnarled roots of ancient pines _530Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping rootsThe unwilling soil. A gradual change was here,Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away,The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thinAnd white, and where irradiate dewy eyes _535Had shone, gleam stony orbs:—so from his stepsBright flowers departed, and the beautiful shadeOf the green groves, with all their odorous windsAnd musical motions. Calm, he still pursuedThe stream, that with a larger volume now _540Rolled through the labyrinthine dell; and thereFretted a path through its descending curvesWith its wintry speed. On every side now roseRocks, which, in unimaginable forms,Lifted their black and barren pinnacles _545In the light of evening, and its precipiceObscuring the ravine, disclosed above,Mid toppling stones, black gulfs and yawning caves,Whose windings gave ten thousand various tonguesTo the loud stream. Lo! where the pass expands _550Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks,And seems, with its accumulated crags,To overhang the world: for wide expandBeneath the wan stars and descending moonIslanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams, _555Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloomOf leaden-coloured even, and fiery hillsMingling their flames with twilight, on the vergeOf the remote horizon. The near scene,In naked and severe simplicity, _560Made contrast with the universe. A pine,Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancyIts swinging boughs, to each inconstant blastYielding one only response, at each pauseIn most familiar cadence, with the howl _565The thunder and the hiss of homeless streamsMingling its solemn song, whilst the broad riverFoaming and hurrying o’er its rugged path,Fell into that immeasurable voidScattering its waters to the passing winds. _570
Yet the grey precipice and solemn pineAnd torrent were not all;—one silent nookWas there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain,Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks,It overlooked in its serenity _575The dark earth, and the bending vault of stars.It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smileEven in the lap of horror. Ivy claspedThe fissured stones with its entwining arms,And did embower with leaves for ever green, _580And berries dark, the smooth and even spaceOf its inviolated floor, and hereThe children of the autumnal whirlwind bore,In wanton sport, those bright leaves, whose decay,Red, yellow, or ethereally pale, _585Rivals the pride of summer. ’Tis the hauntOf every gentle wind, whose breath can teachThe wilds to love tranquillity. One step,One human step alone, has ever brokenThe stillness of its solitude:—one voice _590Alone inspired its echoes;—even that voiceWhich hither came, floating among the winds,And led the loveliest among human formsTo make their wild haunts the depositoryOf all the grace and beauty that endued _595Its 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, _600That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.
The dim and horned moon hung low, and pouredA sea of lustre on the horizon’s vergeThat overflowed its mountains. Yellow mistFilled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank _605Wan moonlight even to fulness; not a starShone, not a sound was heard; the very winds,Danger’s grim playmates, on that precipiceSlept, clasped in his embrace.—O, storm of death!Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night: 610And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, stillGuiding its irresistible careerIn thy devastating omnipotence,Art king of this frail world, from the red fieldOf slaughter, from the reeking hospital, _615The patriot’s sacred couch, the snowy bedOf innocence, the scaffold and the throne,A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin callsHis brother Death. A rare and regal preyHe hath prepared, prowling around the world; _620Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and menGo to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrineThe unheeded tribute of a broken heart.
When on the threshold of the green recess _625The wanderer’s footsteps fell, he knew that deathWas on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,Did he resign his high and holy soulTo images of the majestic past,That paused within his passive being now, _630Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breatheThrough some dim latticed chamber. He did placeHis pale lean hand upon the rugged trunkOf the old pine. Upon an ivied stoneReclined his languid head, his limbs did rest, _635Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brinkOf that obscurest chasm;—and thus he lay,Surrendering to their final impulsesThe hovering powers of life. Hope and despair,The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear _640Marred his repose; the influxes of sense,And his own being unalloyed by pain,Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fedThe stream of thought, till he lay breathing thereAt peace, and faintly smiling:—his last sight _645Was the great moon, which o’er the western lineOf the wide world her mighty horn suspended,With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemedTo mingle. Now upon the jagged hillsIt rests; and still as the divided frame _650Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet’s blood,That ever beat in mystic sympathyWith nature’s ebb and flow, grew feebler still:And when two lessening points of light aloneGleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp _655Of his faint respiration scarce did stirThe stagnate night:—till the minutest rayWas quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.It paused—it fluttered. But when heaven remainedUtterly black, the murky shades involved _660An image, silent, cold, and motionless,As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.Even as a vapour fed with golden beamsThat ministered on sunlight, ere the westEclipses it, was now that wondrous frame— _665No sense, no motion, no divinity—A fragile lute, on whose harmonious stringsThe breath of heaven did wander—a bright streamOnce fed with many-voiced waves—a dreamOf youth, which night and time have quenched for ever, _670Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.
Oh, for Medea’s wondrous alchemy,Which wheresoe’er it fell made the earth gleamWith bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhaleFrom vernal blooms fresh fragrance! O, that God, _675Profuse of poisons, would concede the chaliceWhich but one living man has drained, who now,Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feelsNo proud exemption in the blighting curseHe bears, over the world wanders for ever, _680Lone as incarnate death! O, that the dreamOf dark magician in his visioned cave,Raking the cinders of a crucibleFor life and power, even when his feeble handShakes in its last decay, were the true law _685Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled,Like some frail exhalation; which the dawnRobes in its golden beams,—ah! thou hast fled!The brave, the gentle and the beautiful,The child of grace and genius. Heartless things _690Are done and said i’ the world, and many wormsAnd beasts and men live on, and mighty EarthFrom sea and mountain, city and wilderness,In vesper low or joyous orison,Lifts still its solemn voice:—but thou art fled— _695Thou canst no longer know or love the shapesOf this phantasmal scene, who have to theeBeen purest ministers, who are, alas!Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lipsSo sweet even in their silence, on those eyes _700That image sleep in death, upon that formYet safe from the worm’s outrage, let no tearBe shed—not even in thought. Nor, when those huesAre gone, and those divinest lineaments,Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone _705In the frail pauses of this simple strain,Let not high verse, mourning the memoryOf that which is no more, or painting’s woeOr sculpture, speak in feeble imageryTheir own cold powers. Art and eloquence, _710And all the shows o’ the world are frail and vainTo weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.It is a woe “too deep for tears,” when allIs reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves _715Those 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”.
“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.
***
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.]
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.
I do not presume to enter into competition with our greatest contemporary Poets. Yet I am unwilling to tread in the footsteps of any who have preceded me. I have sought to avoid the imitation of any style of language or versification peculiar to the original minds of which it is the character; designing that, even if what I have produced be worthless, it should still be properly my own. Nor have I permitted any system relating to mere words to divert the attention of the reader, from whatever interest I may have succeeded in creating, to my own ingenuity in contriving to disgust them according to the rules of criticism. I have simply clothed my thoughts in what appeared to me the most obvious and appropriate language. A person familiar with nature, and with the most celebrated productions of the human mind, can scarcely err in following the instinct, with respect to selection of language, produced by that familiarity.
There is an education peculiarly fitted for a Poet, without which genius and sensibility can hardly fill the circle of their capacities. No education, indeed, can entitle to this appellation a dull and unobservant mind, or one, though neither dull nor unobservant, in which the channels of communication between thought and expression have been obstructed or closed. How far it is my fortune to belong to either of the latter classes I cannot know. I aspire to be something better. The circumstances of my accidental education have been favourable to this ambition. I have been familiar from boyhood with mountains and lakes and the sea, and the solitude of forests: Danger, which sports upon the brink of precipices, has been my playmate. I have trodden the glaciers of the Alps, and lived under the eye of Mont Blanc. I have been a wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers, and seen the sun rise and set, and the stars come forth, whilst I have sailed night and day down a rapid stream among mountains. I have seen populous cities, and have watched the passions which rise and spread, and sink and change, amongst assembled multitudes of men. I have seen the theatre of the more visible ravages of tyranny and war, cities and villages reduced to scattered groups of black and roofless houses, and the naked inhabitants sitting famished upon their desolated thresholds. I have conversed with living men of genius. The poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, and modern Italy, and our own country, has been to me, like external nature, a passion and an enjoyment. Such are the sources from which the materials for the imagery of my Poem have been drawn. I have considered Poetry in its most comprehensive sense; and have read the Poets and the Historians and the Metaphysicians (In this sense there may be such a thing as perfectibility in works of fiction, notwithstanding the concession often made by the advocates of human improvement, that perfectibility is a term applicable only to science.) whose writings have been accessible to me, and have looked upon the beautiful and majestic scenery of the earth, as common sources of those elements which it is the province of the Poet to embody and combine. Yet the experience and the feelings to which I refer do not in themselves constitute men Poets, but only prepares them to be the auditors of those who are. How far I shall be found to possess that more essential attribute of Poetry, the power of awakening in others sensations like those which animate my own bosom, is that which, to speak sincerely, I know not; and which, with an acquiescent and contented spirit, I expect to be taught by the effect which I shall produce upon those whom I now address.
I have avoided, as I have said before, the imitation of any contemporary style. But there must be a resemblance, which does not depend upon their own will, between all the writers of any particular age. They cannot escape from subjection to a common influence which arises out of an infinite combination of circumstances belonging to the times in which they live; though each is in a degree the author of the very influence by which his being is thus pervaded. Thus, the tragic poets of the age of Pericles; the Italian revivers of ancient learning; those mighty intellects of our own country that succeeded the Reformation, the translators of the Bible, Shakespeare, Spenser, the Dramatists of the reign of Elizabeth, and Lord Bacon (Milton stands alone in the age which he illumined.); the colder spirits of the interval that succeeded;—all resemble each other, and differ from every other in their several classes. In this view of things, Ford can no more be called the imitator of Shakespeare than Shakespeare the imitator of Ford. There were perhaps few other points of resemblance between these two men than that which the universal and inevitable influence of their age produced. And this is an influence which neither the meanest scribbler nor the sublimest genius of any era can escape; and which I have not attempted to escape.
I have adopted the stanza of Spenser (a measure inexpressibly beautiful), not because I consider it a finer model of poetical harmony than the blank verse of Shakespeare and Milton, but because in the latter there is no shelter for mediocrity; you must either succeed or fail. This perhaps an aspiring spirit should desire. But I was enticed also by the brilliancy and magnificence of sound which a mind that has been nourished upon musical thoughts can produce by a just and harmonious arrangement of the pauses of this measure. Yet there will be found some instances where I have completely failed in this attempt, and one, which I here request the reader to consider as an erratum, where there is left, most inadvertently, an alexandrine in the middle of a stanza.
But in this, as in every other respect, I have written fearlessly. It is the misfortune of this age that its Writers, too thoughtless of immortality, are exquisitely sensible to temporary praise or blame. They write with the fear of Reviews before their eyes. This system of criticism sprang up in that torpid interval when Poetry was not. Poetry, and the art which professes to regulate and limit its powers, cannot subsist together. Longinus could not have been the contemporary of Homer, nor Boileau of Horace. Yet this species of criticism never presumed to assert an understanding of its own; it has always, unlike true science, followed, not preceded, the opinion of mankind, and would even now bribe with worthless adulation some of our greatest Poets to impose gratuitous fetters on their own imaginations, and become unconscious accomplices in the daily murder of all genius either not so aspiring or not so fortunate as their own. I have sought therefore to write, as I believe that Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton wrote, with an utter disregard of anonymous censure. I am certain that calumny and misrepresentation, though it may move me to compassion, cannot disturb my peace. I shall understand the expressive silence of those sagacious enemies who dare not trust themselves to speak. I shall endeavour to extract, from the midst of insult and contempt and maledictions, those admonitions which may tend to correct whatever imperfections such censurers may discover in this my first serious appeal to the Public. If certain Critics were as clear-sighted as they are malignant, how great would be the benefit to be derived from their virulent writings! As it is, I fear I shall be malicious enough to be amused with their paltry tricks and lame invectives. Should the Public judge that my composition is worthless, I shall indeed bow before the tribunal from which Milton received his crown of immortality, and shall seek to gather, if I live, strength from that defeat, which may nerve me to some new enterprise of thought which may not be worthless. I cannot conceive that Lucretius, when he meditated that poem whose doctrines are yet the basis of our metaphysical knowledge, and whose eloquence has been the wonder of mankind, wrote in awe of such censure as the hired sophists of the impure and superstitious noblemen of Rome might affix to what he should produce. It was at the period when Greece was led captive and Asia made tributary to the Republic, fast verging itself to slavery and ruin, that a multitude of Syrian captives, bigoted to the worship of their obscene Ashtaroth, and the unworthy successors of Socrates and Zeno, found there a precarious subsistence by administering, under the name of freedmen, to the vices and vanities of the great. These wretched men were skilled to plead, with a superficial but plausible set of sophisms, in favour of that contempt for virtue which is the portion of slaves, and that faith in portents, the most fatal substitute for benevolence in the imaginations of men, which, arising from the enslaved communities of the East, then first began to overwhelm the western nations in its stream. Were these the kind of men whose disapprobation the wise and lofty-minded Lucretius should have regarded with a salutary awe? The latest and perhaps the meanest of those who follow in his footsteps would disdain to hold life on such conditions.
The Poem now presented to the Public occupied little more than six months in the composition. That period has been devoted to the task with unremitting ardour and enthusiasm. I have exercised a watchful and earnest criticism on my work as it grew under my hands. I would willingly have sent it forth to the world with that perfection which long labour and revision is said to bestow. But I found that, if I should gain something in exactness by this method, I might lose much of the newness and energy of imagery and language as it flowed fresh from my mind. And, although the mere composition occupied no more than six months, the thoughts thus arranged were slowly gathered in as many years.
I trust that the reader will carefully distinguish between those opinions which have a dramatic propriety in reference to the characters which they are designed to elucidate, and such as are properly my own. The erroneous and degrading idea which men have conceived of a Supreme Being, for instance, is spoken against, but not the Supreme Being itself. The belief which some superstitious persons whom I have brought upon the stage entertain of the Deity, as injurious to the character of his benevolence, is widely different from my own. In recommending also a great and important change in the spirit which animates the social institutions of mankind, I have avoided all flattery to those violent and malignant passions of our nature which are ever on the watch to mingle with and to alloy the most beneficial innovations. There is no quarter given to Revenge, or Envy, or Prejudice. Love is celebrated everywhere as the sole law which should govern the moral world.
There is no danger to a man that knowsWhat life and death is: there’s not any lawExceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawfulThat he should stoop to any other law.—CHAPMAN.
1.So now my summer-task is ended, Mary,And I return to thee, mine own heart’s home;As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faery,Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome;Nor thou disdain, that ere my fame become _5A star among the stars of mortal night,If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom,Its doubtful promise thus I would uniteWith thy beloved name, thou Child of love and light.
2.The toil which stole from thee so many an hour, _10Is ended,—and the fruit is at thy feet!No longer where the woods to frame a bowerWith interlaced branches mix and meet,Or where with sound like many voices sweet,Waterfalls leap among wild islands green, _15Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreatOf moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen;But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been.
3.Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when firstThe clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass. _20I do remember well the hour which burstMy spirit’s sleep. A fresh May-dawn it was,When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,And wept, I knew not why; until there roseFrom the near schoolroom, voices that, alas! _25Were but one echo from a world of woes—The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.
4.And then I clasped my hands and looked around——But none was near to mock my streaming eyes,Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground— _30So without shame I spake:—‘I will be wise,And just, and free, and mild, if in me liesSuch power, for I grow weary to beholdThe selfish and the strong still tyranniseWithout reproach or check.’ I then controlled _35My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold.
5.And from that hour did I with earnest thoughtHeap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore;Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taughtI cared to learn, but from that secret store _40Wrought linked armour for my soul, beforeIt might walk forth to war among mankind;Thus power and hope were strengthened more and moreWithin me, till there came upon my mindA sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined. _45
6.Alas, that love should be a blight and snareTo those who seek all sympathies in one!—Such once I sought in vain; then black despair,The shadow of a starless night, was thrownOver the world in which I moved alone:— _50Yet never found I one not false to me,Hard hearts, and cold, like weights of icy stoneWhich crushed and withered mine, that could not beAught but a lifeless clod, until revived by thee.
7.Thou Friend, whose presence on my wintry heart _55Fell, like bright Spring upon some herbless plain;How beautiful and calm and free thou wertIn thy young wisdom, when the mortal chainOf Custom thou didst burst and rend in twain,And walked as free as light the clouds among, _60Which many an envious slave then breathed in vainFrom his dim dungeon, and my spirit sprungTo meet thee from the woes which had begirt it long!