The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 113

O Mary dear, that you were here With your brown eyes bright and clear.

And your sweet voice, like a bird Singing love to its lone mate In the ivy bower disconsolate; _5 Voice the sweetest ever heard!

And your brow more...

Than the ... sky Of this azure Italy.

Mary dear, come to me soon, _10 I am not well whilst thou art far; As sunset to the sphered moon, As twilight to the western star, Thou, beloved, art to me.

O Mary dear, that you were here; _15 The Castle echo whispers 'Here!'

ON A FADED VIOLET.

[Published by Hunt, "Literary Pocket-Book", 1821. Reprinted by Mrs.

Sh.e.l.ley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. Again reprinted, with several variants, "Poetical Works", 1839, 1st edition. Our text is that of the editio princeps, 1821. A transcript is extant in a letter from Sh.e.l.ley to Sophia Stacey, dated March 7, 1820.]

1.

The odour from the flower is gone Which like thy kisses breathed on me; The colour from the flower is flown Which glowed of thee and only thee!

2.

A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form, _5 It lies on my abandoned breast, And mocks the heart which yet is warm, With cold and silent rest.

3.

I weep,--my tears revive it not!

I sigh,--it breathes no more on me; _10 Its mute and uncomplaining lot Is such as mine should be.

NOTES: _1 odour]colour 1839.

_2 kisses breathed]sweet eyes smiled 1839.

_3 colour]odour 1839.

_4 glowed]breathed 1839.

_5 shrivelled]withered 1839.

_8 cold and silent all editions; its cold, silent Stacey ma.n.u.script.

LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS.

OCTOBER, 1818.

[Composed at Este, October, 1818. Published with "Rosalind and Helen", 1819. Amongst the late Mr. Fredk. Locker-Lampson's collections at Rowfant there is a ma.n.u.script of the lines (167-205) on Byron, interpolated after the completion of the poem.]

Many a green isle needs must be In the deep wide sea of Misery, Or the mariner, worn and wan, Never thus could voyage on-- Day and night, and night and day, _5 Drifting on his dreary way, With the solid darkness black Closing round his vessel's track: Whilst above the sunless sky, Big with clouds, hangs heavily, _10 And behind the tempest fleet Hurries on with lightning feet, Riving sail, and cord, and plank, Till the s.h.i.+p has almost drank Death from the o'er-br.i.m.m.i.n.g deep; _15 And sinks down, down, like that sleep When the dreamer seems to be Weltering through eternity; And the dim low line before Of a dark and distant sh.o.r.e _20 Still recedes, as ever still Longing with divided will, But no power to seek or shun, He is ever drifted on O'er the unreposing wave _25 To the haven of the grave.

What, if there no friends will greet; What, if there no heart will meet His with love's impatient beat; Wander wheresoe'er he may, _30 Can he dream before that day To find refuge from distress In friends.h.i.+p's smile, in love's caress?

Then 'twill wreak him little woe Whether such there be or no: _35 Senseless is the breast, and cold, Which relenting love would fold; Bloodless are the veins and chill Which the pulse of pain did fill; Every little living nerve _40 That from bitter words did swerve Round the tortured lips and brow, Are like sapless leaflets now Frozen upon December's bough.

On the beach of a northern sea _45 Which tempests shake eternally, As once the wretch there lay to sleep, Lies a solitary heap, One white skull and seven dry bones, On the margin of the stones, _50 Where a few gray rushes stand, Boundaries of the sea and land: Nor is heard one voice of wail But the sea-mews, as they sail O'er the billows of the gale; _55 Or the whirlwind up and down Howling, like a slaughtered town, When a king in glory rides Through the pomp of fratricides: Those unburied bones around _60 There is many a mournful sound; There is no lament for him, Like a sunless vapour, dim, Who once clothed with life and thought What now moves nor murmurs not. _65

Ay, many flowering islands lie In the waters of wide Agony: To such a one this morn was led, My bark by soft winds piloted: 'Mid the mountains Euganean _70 I stood listening to the paean With which the legioned rooks did hail The sun's uprise majestical; Gathering round with wings all h.o.a.r, Through the dewy mist they soar _75 Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven Bursts, and then, as clouds of even, Flecked with fire and azure, lie In the unfathomable sky, So their plumes of purple grain, _80 Starred with drops of golden rain, Gleam above the sunlight woods, As in silent mult.i.tudes On the morning's fitful gale Through the broken mist they sail, _85 And the vapours cloven and gleaming Follow, down the dark steep streaming, Till all is bright, and clear, and still, Round the solitary hill.

Beneath is spread like a green sea _90 The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vaporous air, Islanded by cities fair; Underneath Day's azure eyes Ocean's nursling, Venice lies, _95 A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls, Which her h.o.a.ry sire now paves With his blue and beaming waves.

Lo! the sun upsprings behind, _100 Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined On the level quivering line Of the waters crystalline; And before that chasm of light, As within a furnace bright, _105 Column, tower, and dome, and spire, s.h.i.+ne like obelisks of fire, Pointing with inconstant motion From the altar of dark ocean To the sapphire-tinted skies; _110 As the flames of sacrifice From the marble shrines did rise, As to pierce the dome of gold Where Apollo spoke of old.

Sun-girt City, thou hast been _115 Ocean's child, and then his queen; Now is come a darker day, And thou soon must be his prey, If the power that raised thee here Hallow so thy watery bier. _120 A less drear ruin then than now, With thy conquest-branded brow Stooping to the slave of slaves From thy throne, among the waves Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew _125 Flies, as once before it flew, O'er thine isles depopulate, And all is in its ancient state, Save where many a palace gate _130 With green sea-flowers overgrown Like a rock of Ocean's own, Topples o'er the abandoned sea As the tides change sullenly.

The fisher on his watery way, Wandering at the close of day, _135 Will spread his sail and seize his oar Till he pa.s.s the gloomy sh.o.r.e, Lest thy dead should, from their sleep Bursting o'er the starlight deep, Lead a rapid masque of death _140 O'er the waters of his path.

Those who alone thy towers behold Quivering through aereal gold, As I now behold them here, Would imagine not they were _145 Sepulchres, where human forms, Like pollution-nourished worms, To the corpse of greatness cling, Murdered, and now mouldering: But if Freedom should awake _150 In her omnipotence, and shake From the Celtic Anarch's hold All the keys of dungeons cold, Where a hundred cities lie Chained like thee, ingloriously, _155 Thou and all thy sister band Might adorn this sunny land, Twining memories of old time With new virtues more sublime; If not, perish thou and they!-- _160 Clouds which stain truth's rising day By her sun consumed away-- Earth can spare ye: while like flowers, In the waste of years and hours, From your dust new nations spring _165 With more kindly blossoming.

Perish--let there only be Floating o'er thy hearthless sea As the garment of thy sky Clothes the world immortally, _170 One remembrance, more sublime Than the tattered pall of time, Which scarce hides thy visage wan;-- That a tempest-cleaving Swan Of the songs of Albion, _175 Driven from his ancestral streams By the might of evil dreams, Found a nest in thee; and Ocean Welcomed him with such emotion That its joy grew his, and sprung _180 From his lips like music flung O'er a mighty thunder-fit, Chastening terror:--what though yet Poesy's unfailing River, Which through Albion winds forever _185 Las.h.i.+ng with melodious wave Many a sacred Poet's grave, Mourn its latest nursling fled?

What though thou with all thy dead Scarce can for this fame repay _190 Aught thine own? oh, rather say Though thy sins and slaveries foul Overcloud a sunlike soul?

As the ghost of Homer clings Round Scamander's wasting springs; _195 As divinest Shakespeare's might Fills Avon and the world with light Like omniscient power which he Imaged 'mid mortality; As the love from Petrarch's urn, _200 Yet amid yon hills doth burn, A quenchless lamp by which the heart Sees things unearthly;--so thou art, Mighty spirit--so shall be The City that did refuge thee. _205

Lo, the sun floats up the sky Like thought-winged Liberty, Till the universal light Seems to level plain and height; From the sea a mist has spread, _210 And the beams of morn lie dead On the towers of Venice now, Like its glory long ago.

By the skirts of that gray cloud Many-domed Padua proud _215 Stands, a peopled solitude, 'Mid the harvest-s.h.i.+ning plain, Where the peasant heaps his grain In the garner of his foe, And the milk-white oxen slow _220 With the purple vintage strain, Heaped upon the creaking wain, That the brutal Celt may swill Drunken sleep with savage will; And the sickle to the sword _225 Lies unchanged, though many a lord, Like a weed whose shade is poison, Overgrows this region's foison, Sheaves of whom are ripe to come To destruction's harvest-home: _230 Men must reap the things they sow, Force from force must ever flow, Or worse; but 'tis a bitter woe That love or reason cannot change The despot's rage, the slave's revenge. _235

Padua, thou within whose walls Those mute guests at festivals, Son and Mother, Death and Sin, Played at dice for Ezzelin, Till Death cried, "I win, I win!" _240 And Sin cursed to lose the wager, But Death promised, to a.s.suage her, That he would pet.i.tion for Her to be made Vice-Emperor, When the destined years were o'er, _245 Over all between the Po And the eastern Alpine snow, Under the mighty Austrian.

Sin smiled so as Sin only can, And since that time, ay, long before, _250 Both have ruled from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e,-- That incestuous pair, who follow Tyrants as the sun the swallow, As Repentance follows Crime, And as changes follow Time. _255

In thine halls the lamp of learning, Padua, now no more is burning; Like a meteor, whose wild way Is lost over the grave of day, It gleams betrayed and to betray: _260 Once remotest nations came To adore that sacred flame, When it lit not many a hearth On this cold and gloomy earth: Now new fires from antique light _265 Spring beneath the wide world's might; But their spark lies dead in thee, Trampled out by Tyranny.

As the Norway woodman quells, In the depth of piny dells, _270 One light flame among the brakes, While the boundless forest shakes, And its mighty trunks are torn By the fire thus lowly born: The spark beneath his feet is dead, _275 He starts to see the flames it fed Howling through the darkened sky With a myriad tongues victoriously, And sinks down in fear: so thou, O Tyranny, beholdest now _280 Light around thee, and thou hearest The loud flames ascend, and fearest: Grovel on the earth; ay, hide In the dust thy purple pride!

Noon descends around me now: _285 'Tis the noon of autumn's glow, When a soft and purple mist Like a vaporous amethyst, Or an air-dissolved star Mingling light and fragrance, far _290 From the curved horizon's bound To the point of Heaven's profound, Fills the overflowing sky; And the plains that silent lie Underneath, the leaves unsodden _295 Where the infant Frost has trodden With his morning-winged feet, Whose bright print is gleaming yet; And the red and golden vines, Piercing with their trellised lines _300 The rough, dark-skirted wilderness; The dun and bladed gra.s.s no less, Pointing from this h.o.a.ry tower In the windless air; the flower Glimmering at my feet; the line _305 Of the olive-sandalled Apennine In the south dimly islanded; And the Alps, whose snows are spread High between the clouds and sun; And of living things each one; _310 And my spirit which so long Darkened this swift stream of song,-- Interpenetrated lie By the glory of the sky: Be it love, light, harmony, _315 Odour, or the soul of all Which from Heaven like dew doth fall, Or the mind which feeds this verse Peopling the lone universe.

Noon descends, and after noon _320 Autumn's evening meets me soon, Leading the infantine moon, And that one star, which to her Almost seems to minister Half the crimson light she brings _325 From the sunset's radiant springs: And the soft dreams of the morn (Which like winged winds had borne To that silent isle, which lies Mid remembered agonies, _330 The frail bark of this lone being) Pa.s.s, to other sufferers fleeing, And its ancient pilot, Pain, Sits beside the helm again.

Other flowering isles must be _335 In the sea of Life and Agony: Other spirits float and flee O'er that gulf: even now, perhaps, On some rock the wild wave wraps, With folded wings they waiting sit _340 For my bark, to pilot it To some calm and blooming cove, Where for me, and those I love, May a windless bower be built, Far from pa.s.sion, pain, and guilt, _345 In a dell mid lawny hills, Which the wild sea-murmur fills, And soft suns.h.i.+ne, and the sound Of old forests echoing round, And the light and smell divine _350 Of all flowers that breathe and s.h.i.+ne: We may live so happy there, That the Spirits of the Air, Envying us, may even entice To our healing Paradise _355 The polluting mult.i.tude; But their rage would be subdued By that clime divine and calm, And the winds whose wings rain balm On the uplifted soul, and leaves _360 Under which the bright sea heaves; While each breathless interval In their whisperings musical The inspired soul supplies With its own deep melodies; _365 And the love which heals all strife Circling, like the breath of life, All things in that sweet abode With its own mild brotherhood, They, not it, would change; and soon _370 Every sprite beneath the moon Would repent its envy vain, And the earth grow young again.

NOTES: _54 seamews 1819; seamew's Rossetti.

_115 Sun-girt]Sea-girt cj. Palgrave.

_165 From your dust new 1819; From thy dust shall Rowfant ma.n.u.script (heading of lines 167-205).

_175 songs 1819; sons cj. Forman.

_278 a 1819; wanting, 1839.

SCENE FROM 'Ta.s.sO'.

[Composed, 1818. Published by Dr. Garnett, "Relics of Sh.e.l.ley", 1862.]

MADDALO, A COURTIER.

MALPIGLIO, A POET.

PIGNA, A MINISTER.

ALBANO, AN USHER.

MADDALO: No access to the Duke! You have not said That the Count Maddalo would speak with him?

PIGNA: Did you inform his Grace that Signor Pigna Waits with state papers for his signature?