The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 128

Thou dost float and run; Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. _15

The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of Heaven, In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight, _20

Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear Until we hardly see--we feel that it is there. _25

All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflowed. _30

What thou art we know not; What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. _35

Like a Poet hidden In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: _40

Like a high-born maiden In a palace-tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: _45

Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aereal hue Among the flowers and gra.s.s, which screen it from the view! _50

Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves: _55

Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling gra.s.s, Rain-awakened flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpa.s.s: _60

Teach us, Sprite or Bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. _65

Chorus Hymeneal, Or triumphal chant, Matched with thine would be all But an empty vaunt, A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. _70

What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? _75

With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be: Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest--but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. _80

Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? _85

We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. _90

Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. _95

Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! _100

Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow The world should listen then--as I am listening now. _105

NOTE: _55 those Harvard ma.n.u.script: these 1820, 1839.

ODE TO LIBERTY.

[Composed early in 1820, and published, with "Prometheus Unbound", in the same year. A transcript in Sh.e.l.ley's hand of lines 1-21 is included in the Harvard ma.n.u.script book, and amongst the Bos...o...b.. ma.n.u.scripts there is a fragment of a rough draft (Garnett). For further particulars concerning the text see Editor's Notes.]

Yet, Freedom, yet, thy banner, torn but flying, Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind.--BYRON.

1.

A glorious people vibrated again The lightning of the nations: Liberty From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain, Scattering contagious fire into the sky, Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay, _5 And in the rapid plumes of song Clothed itself, sublime and strong; As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among, Hovering inverse o'er its accustomed prey; Till from its station in the Heaven of fame _10 The Spirit's whirlwind rapped it, and the ray Of the remotest sphere of living flame Which paves the void was from behind it flung, As foam from a s.h.i.+p's swiftness, when there came A voice out of the deep: I will record the same. _15

2.

The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth: The burning stars of the abyss were hurled Into the depths of Heaven. The daedal earth, That island in the ocean of the world, Hung in its cloud of all-sustaining air: _20 But this divinest universe Was yet a chaos and a curse, For thou wert not: but, power from worst producing worse, The spirit of the beasts was kindled there, And of the birds, and of the watery forms, _25 And there was war among them, and despair Within them, raging without truce or terms: The bosom of their violated nurse Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms on worms, And men on men; each heart was as a h.e.l.l of storms. _30

3.

Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied His generations under the pavilion Of the Sun's throne: palace and pyramid, Temple and prison, to many a swarming million Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves. _35 This human living mult.i.tude Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude, For thou wert not; but o'er the populous solitude, Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves, Hung Tyranny; beneath, sate deified _40 The sister-pest, congregator of slaves; Into the shadow of her pinions wide Anarchs and priests, who feed on gold and blood Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed, Drove the astonished herds of men from every side. _45

4.

The nodding promontories, and blue isles, And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles Of favouring Heaven: from their enchanted caves Prophetic echoes flung dim melody. _50 On the unapprehensive wild The vine, the corn, the olive mild, Grew savage yet, to human use unreconciled; And, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea, Like the man's thought dark in the infant's brain, _55 Like aught that is which wraps what is to be, Art's deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein Of Parian stone; and, yet a speechless child, Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain Her lidless eyes for thee; when o'er the Aegean main _60

5.

Athens arose: a city such as vision Builds from the purple crags and silver towers Of battlemented cloud, as in derision Of kingliest masonry: the ocean-floors Pave it; the evening sky pavilions it; _65 Its portals are inhabited By thunder-zoned winds, each head Within its cloudy wings with sun-fire garlanded,-- A divine work! Athens, diviner yet, Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will _70 Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set; For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill Peopled, with forms that mock the eternal dead In marble immortality, that hill Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle. _75

6.

Within the surface of Time's fleeting river Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay Immovably unquiet, and for ever It trembles, but it cannot pa.s.s away!

The voices of thy bards and sages thunder _80 With an earth-awakening blast Through the caverns of the past: (Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast:) A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder, Which soars where Expectation never flew, _85 Rending the veil of s.p.a.ce and time asunder!

One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew; One Sun illumines Heaven; one Spirit vast With life and love makes chaos ever new, As Athens doth the world with thy delight renew. _90

7.

Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest, Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmaean Maenad, She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest From that Elysian food was yet unweaned; And many a deed of terrible uprightness _95 By thy sweet love was sanctified; And in thy smile, and by thy side, Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died.

But when tears stained thy robe of vestal-whiteness, And gold profaned thy Capitolian throne, _100 Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness, The senate of the tyrants: they sunk p.r.o.ne Slaves of one tyrant: Palatinus sighed Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown _105

8.

From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill, Or piny promontory of the Arctic main, Or utmost islet inaccessible, Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign, Teaching the woods and waves, and desert rocks, _110 And every Naiad's ice-cold urn, To talk in echoes sad and stern Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn?

For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks Of the Scald's dreams, nor haunt the Druid's sleep. _115 What if the tears rained through thy shattered locks Were quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not weep, When from its sea of death, to kill and burn, The Galilean serpent forth did creep, And made thy world an undistinguishable heap. _120

9.

A thousand years the Earth cried, 'Where art thou?'

And then the shadow of thy coming fell On Saxon Alfred's olive-cinctured brow: And many a warrior-peopled citadel.

Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep, _125 Arose in sacred Italy, Frowning o'er the tempestuous sea Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty; That mult.i.tudinous anarchy did sweep And burst around their walls, like idle foam, _130 Whilst from the human spirit's deepest deep Strange melody with love and awe struck dumb Dissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die, With divine wand traced on our earthly home Fit imagery to pave Heaven's everlasting dome. _135

10.

Thou huntress swifter than the Moon! thou terror Of the world's wolves! thou bearer of the quiver, Whose sunlike shafts pierce tempest-winged Error, As light may pierce the clouds when they dissever In the calm regions of the orient day! _140 Luther caught thy wakening glance; Like lightning, from his leaden lance Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay; And England's prophets hailed thee as their queen, _145 In songs whose music cannot pa.s.s away, Though it must flow forever: not unseen Before the spirit-sighted countenance Of Milton didst thou pa.s.s, from the sad scene Beyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien. _150

11.

The eager hours and unreluctant years As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood.

Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears, Darkening each other with their mult.i.tude, And cried aloud, 'Liberty!' Indignation _155 Answered Pity from her cave; Death grew pale within the grave, And Desolation howled to the destroyer, Save!

When like Heaven's Sun girt by the exhalation Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise. _160 Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation Like shadows: as if day had cloven the skies At dreaming midnight o'er the western wave, Men started, staggering with a glad surprise, Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes. _165

12.

Thou Heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee then In ominous eclipse? a thousand years Bred from the slime of deep Oppression's den.

Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears.

Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away; _170 How like Baccha.n.a.ls of blood Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood Destruction's sceptred slaves, and Folly's mitred brood!

When one, like them, but mightier far than they, The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers, _175 Rose: armies mingled in obscure array, Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowers Of serene Heaven. He, by the past pursued, Rests with those dead, but unforgotten hours, Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers. _180