The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 116

2.

A ma.s.sy tower yet overhangs the town, A scattered group of ruined dwellings now...

3.

Another scene are wise Etruria knew Its second ruin through internal strife _10 And tyrants through the breach of discord threw The chain which binds and kills. As death to life, As winter to fair flowers (though some be poison) So Monarchy succeeds to Freedom's foison.

4.

In Pisa's church a cup of sculptured gold _15 Was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with the blood of feuds forsworn: A Sacrament more holy ne'er of old Etrurians mingled mid the shades forlorn Of moon-illumined forests, when...

5.

And reconciling factions wet their lips _20 With that dread wine, and swear to keep each spirit Undarkened by their country's last eclipse...

6.

Was Florence the liberticide? that band Of free and glorious brothers who had planted, Like a green isle mid Aethiopian sand, _25 A nation amid slaveries, disenchanted Of many impious faiths--wise, just--do they, Does Florence, gorge the sated tyrants' prey?

7.

O foster-nurse of man's abandoned glory, Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendour; _30 Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story, As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender:-- The light-invested angel Poesy Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee.

8.

And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught _35 By loftiest meditations; marble knew The sculptor's fearless soul--and as he wrought, The grace of his own power and freedom grew.

And more than all, heroic, just, sublime, Thou wart among the false...was this thy crime? _40

9.

Yes; and on Pisa's marble walls the twine Of direst weeds hangs garlanded--the snake Inhabits its wrecked palaces;--in thine A beast of subtler venom now doth make Its lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown, _45 And thus thy victim's fate is as thine own.

10.

The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare, And love and freedom blossom but to wither; And good and ill like vines entangled are, So that their grapes may oft be plucked together;-- _50 Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make Thy heart rejoice for dead Marenghi's sake.

10a.

[Albert] Marenghi was a Florentine; If he had wealth, or children, or a wife Or friends, [or farm] or cherished thoughts which twine _55 The sights and sounds of home with life's own life Of these he was despoiled and Florence sent...

11.

No record of his crime remains in story, But if the morning bright as evening shone, _60 It was some high and holy deed, by glory Pursued into forgetfulness, which won From the blind crowd he made secure and free The patriot's meed, toil, death, and infamy.

12.

For when by sound of trumpet was declared A price upon his life, and there was set _65 A penalty of blood on all who shared So much of water with him as might wet His lips, which speech divided not--he went Alone, as you may guess, to banishment.

13.

Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast, He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold, _70 Month after month endured; it was a feast Whene'er he found those globes of deep-red gold Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear, Suspended in their emerald atmosphere. _75

14.

And in the roofless huts of vast mora.s.ses, Deserted by the fever-stricken serf, All overgrown with reeds and long rank gra.s.ses, And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf, And where the huge and speckled aloe made, _80 Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade,--

15.

He housed himself. There is a point of strand Near Vado's tower and town; and on one side The treacherous marsh divides it from the land, Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide, _85 And on the other, creeps eternally, Through muddy weeds, the shallow sullen sea.

16.

Here the earth's breath is pestilence, and few But things whose nature is at war with life-- Snakes and ill worms--endure its mortal dew.

The trophies of the clime's victorious strife-- _90 And ringed horns which the buffalo did wear, And the wolf's dark gray scalp who tracked him there.

17.

And at the utmost point...stood there The relics of a reed-inwoven cot, _95 Thatched with broad flags. An outlawed murderer Had lived seven days there: the pursuit was hot When he was cold. The birds that were his grave Fell dead after their feast in Vado's wave.

18.

There must have burned within Marenghi's breast _100 That fire, more warm and bright than life and hope, (Which to the martyr makes his dungeon...

More joyous than free heaven's majestic cope To his oppressor), warring with decay,-- Or he could ne'er have lived years, day by day. _105

19.

Nor was his state so lone as you might think.

He had tamed every newt and snake and toad, And every seagull which sailed down to drink Those freshes ere the death-mist went abroad.

And each one, with peculiar talk and play, _110 Wiled, not untaught, his silent time away.

20.

And the marsh-meteors, like tame beasts, at night Came licking with blue tongues his veined feet; And he would watch them, as, like spirits bright, In many entangled figures quaint and sweet _115 To some enchanted music they would dance-- Until they vanished at the first moon-glance.

21.

He mocked the stars by grouping on each weed The summer dew-globes in the golden dawn; And, ere the h.o.a.r-frost languished, he could read _120 Its pictured path, as on bare spots of lawn Its delicate brief touch in silver weaves The likeness of the wood's remembered leaves.

22.

And many a fresh Spring morn would he awaken-- While yet the unrisen sun made glow, like iron _125 Quivering in crimson fire, the peaks unshaken Of mountains and blue isles which did environ With air-clad crags that plain of land and sea,-- And feel ... liberty.

23.

And in the moonless nights when the dun ocean _130 Heaved underneath wide heaven, star-impearled, Starting from dreams...

Communed with the immeasurable world; And felt his life beyond his limbs dilated, Till his mind grew like that it contemplated. _135

24.

His food was the wild fig and strawberry; The milky pine-nuts which the autumn-blast Shakes into the tall gra.s.s; or such small fry As from the sea by winter-storms are cast; And the coa.r.s.e bulbs of iris-flowers he found _140 Knotted in clumps under the spongy ground.

25.

And so were kindled powers and thoughts which made His solitude less dark. When memory came (For years gone by leave each a deepening shade), His spirit basked in its internal flame,-- _145 As, when the black storm hurries round at night, The fisher basks beside his red firelight.

26.

Yet human hopes and cares and faiths and errors, Like billows unawakened by the wind, Slept in Marenghi still; but that all terrors, _150 Weakness, and doubt, had withered in his mind.

His couch...

27.

And, when he saw beneath the sunset's planet A black s.h.i.+p walk over the crimson ocean,-- Its pennon streaming on the blasts that fan it, _155 Its sails and ropes all tense and without motion, Like the dark ghost of the unburied even Striding athwart the orange-coloured heaven,--

28.

The thought of his own kind who made the soul Which sped that winged shape through night and day,-- _160 The thought of his own country...