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The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley: (A Modern Library E-Book)

Page 38

by Percy Bysshe Shelley


  And distant.

  Panthea. List! the strain floats nearer now.

  Echoes.

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  In the world unknown

  Sleeps a voice unspoken;

  By thy step alone

  Can its rest be broken;

  Child of Ocean!

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  Asia. How the notes sink upon the ebbing wind!

  Echoes.

  O, follow, follow!

  Through the caverns hollow,

  As the song floats thou pursue,

  By the woodland noontide dew;

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  By the forest, lakes, and fountains,

  Through the many-folded mountains;

  To the rents, and gulfs, and chasms,

  Where the Earth reposed from spasms,

  On the day when He and thou

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  Parted, to commingle now;

  Child of Ocean!

  Asia. Come, sweet Panthea, link thy hand in mine,

  And follow, ere the voices fade away.

  SCENE II.—A Forest, intermingled with Rocks and Caverns. ASIA and PANTHEA pass into it. Two young Fauns are sitting on a Rock listening.

  Semichorus I. of Spirits.

  The path through which that lovely twain

  Have passed, by cedar, pine, and yew,

  And each dark tree that ever grew,

  Is curtained out from Heaven’s wide blue;

  5

  Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain,

  Can pierce its interwoven bowers,

  Nor aught, save where some cloud of dew,

  Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze,

  Between the trunks of the hoar trees,

  10

  Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers

  Of the green laurel, blown anew;

  And bends, and then fades silently,

  One frail and fair anemone:

  Or when some star of many a one

  15

  That climbs and wanders through steep night,

  Has found the cleft through which alone

  Beams fall from high those depths upon

  Ere it is borne away, away,

  By the swift Heavens that cannot stay,

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  It scatters drops of golden light,

  Like lines of rain that ne’er unite:

  And the gloom divine is all around,

  And underneath is the mossy ground.

  Semichorus II.

  There the voluptuous nightingales,

  25

  Are awake through all the broad noonday.

  When one with bliss or sadness fails,

  And through the windless ivy-boughs,

  Sick with sweet love, droops dying away

  On its mate’s music-panting bosom;

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  Another from the swinging blossom,

  Watching to catch the languid close

  Of the last strain, then lifts on high

  The wings of the weak melody,

  ’Till some new strain of feeling bear

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  The song, and all the woods are mute;

  When there is heard through the dim air

  The rush of wings, and rising there

  Like many a lake-surrounded flute,

  Sounds overflow the listener’s brain

  40

  So sweet, that joy is almost pain.

  Semichorus I.

  There those enchanted eddies play

  Of echoes, music-tongued, which draw,

  By Demogorgon’s mighty law,

  With melting rapture, or sweet awe,

  45

  All spirits on that secret way;

  As inland boats are driven to Ocean

  Down streams made strong with mountain-thaw:

  And first there comes a gentle sound

  To those in talk or slumber bound,

  50

  And wakes the destined soft emotion,—

  Attracts, impels them; those who saw

  Say from the breathing earth behind

  There steams a plume-uplifting wind

  Which drives them on their path, while they

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  Believe their own swift wings and feet

  The sweet desires within obey:

  And so they float upon their way,

  Until, still sweet, but loud and strong,

  The storm of sound is driven along,

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  Sucked up and hurrying: as they fleet

  Behind, its gathering billows meet

  And to the fatal mountain bear

  Like clouds amid the yielding air.

  First Faun. Canst thou imagine where those spirits live

  65

  Which make such delicate music in the woods?

  We haunt within the least frequented caves

  And closest coverts, and we know these wilds,

  Yet never meet them, though we hear them oft:

  Where may they hide themselves?

  Second Faun. ’Tis hard to tell:

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  I have heard those more skilled in spirits say,

  The bubbles, which the enchantment of the sun

  Sucks from the pale faint water-flowers that pave

  The oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools,

  Are the pavilions where such dwell and float

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  Under the green and golden atmosphere

  Which noontide kindles through the woven leaves;

  And when these burst, and the thin fiery air,

  The which they breathed within those lucent domes,

  Ascends to flow like meteors through the night,

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  They ride on them, and rein their headlong speed,

  And bow their burning crests, and glide in fire

  Under the waters of the earth again.

  First Faun. If such live thus, have others other lives,

  Under pink blossoms or within the bells

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  Of meadow flowers, or folded violets deep,

  Or on their dying odours, when they die,

  Or in the sunlight of the spherèd dew?

  Second Faun. Ay, many more which we may well divine.

  But, should we stay to speak, noontide would come,

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  And thwart Silenus find his goats undrawn,

  And grudge to sing those wise and lovely songs

  Of Fate, and Chance, and God, and Chaos old,

  And Love, and the chained Titan’s woful doom,

  And how he shall be loosed, and make the earth

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  One brotherhood: delightful strains which cheer

  Our solitary twilights, and which charm

  To silence the unenvying nightingales.

  SCENE III.—A Pinnacle of Rock among Mountains. ASIA and PANTHEA.

  Panthea. Hither the sound has borne us—to the realm

  Of Demogorgon, and the mighty portal,

  Like a volcano’s meteor-breathing chasm,

  Whence the oracular vapour is hurled up

  5

  Which lonely men drink wandering in their youth,

  And call truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy,

  That maddening wine of life, whose dregs they drain

  To deep intoxication; and uplift,

  Like Mænads who cry loud, Evoe! Evoe!

  10

  The voice which is contagion to the world.

  Asia. Fit throne for such a Power! Magnificent!

  How glorious art thou, Earth! And if thou be

  The shadow of some spirit lovelier still,

  Though evil stain its work, and it should be

  15

  Like its creation, weak yet beautiful,

  I could fall down and worship that and thee.

  Even now my heart adoreth: Wonderful!

  Look, sister, ere the vapour dim thy brain:

  Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist,

  20

  A
s a lake, paving in the morning sky,

  With azure waves which burst in silver light,

  Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on

  Under the curdling winds, and islanding

  The peak whereon we stand, midway, around,

  25

  Encinctured by the dark and blooming forests,

  Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumèd caves,

  And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist;

  And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains

  From icy spires of sun-like radiance fling

  30

  The dawn, as lifted Ocean’s dazzling spray,

  From some Atlantic islet scattered up,

  Spangles the wind with lamp-like water-drops.

  The vale is girdled with their walls, a howl

  Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines,

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  Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast,

  Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow!

  The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass,

  Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there

  Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds

  40

  As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth

  Is loosened, and the nations echo round,

  Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now.

  Panthea. Look how the gusty sea of mist is breaking

  In crimson foam, even at our feet! it rises

  45

  As Ocean at the enchantment of the moon

  Round foodless men wrecked on some oozy isle.

  Asia. The fragments of the clouds are scattered up;

  The wind that lifts them disentwines my hair;

  Its billows now sweep o’er mine eyes; my brain

  50

  Grows dizzy; see’st thou shapes within the mist?

  Panthea. A countenance with beckoning smiles: there burns

  An azure fire within its golden locks!

  Another and another: hark! they speak!

  Song of Spirits.

  To the deep, to the deep,

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  Down, down!

  Through the shade of sleep,

  Through the cloudy strife

  Of Death and of Life;

  Through the veil and the bar

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  Of things which seem and are

  Even to the steps of the remotest throne,

  Down, down!

  While the sound whirls around,

  Down, down!

  65

  As the fawn draws the hound,

  As the lightning the vapour,

  As a weak moth the taper;

  Death, despair; love, sorrow;

  Time both; to-day, to-morrow;

  70

  As steel obeys the spirit of the stone,

  Down, down!

  Through the gray, void abysm,

  Down, down!

  Where the air is no prism,

  75

  And the moon and stars are not,

  And the cavern-crags wear not

  The radiance of Heaven,

  Nor the gloom to Earth given,

  Where there is One pervading, One alone,

  80

  Down, down!

  In the depth of the deep,

  Down, down!

  Like veiled lightning asleep,

  Like the spark nursed in embers,

  85

  The last look Love remembers,

  Like a diamond, which shines

  On the dark wealth of mines,

  A spell is treasured but for thee alone.

  Down, down!

  90

  We have bound thee, we guide thee;

  Down, down!

  With the bright form beside thee;

  Resist not the weakness,

  Such strength is in meekness

  95

  That the Eternal, the Immortal,

  Must unloose through life’s portal

  The snake-like Doom coiled underneath his throne

  By that alone.

  SCENE IV.—The Cave of Demogorgon. ASIA and PANTHEA.

  Panthea. What veilèd form sits on that ebon throne?

  Asia. The veil has fallen.

  Panthea. I see a mighty darkness

  Filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom

  Dart round, as light from the meridian sun.

  5

  —Ungazed upon and shapeless; neither limb,

  Nor form, nor outline; yet we feel it is

  A living Spirit.

  Demogorgon. Ask what thou wouldst know.

  Asia. What canst thou tell?

  Demogorgon. All things thou dar’st demand.

  Asia. Who made the living world?

  Demogorgon. God.

  Asia. Who made all

  10

  That it contains? thought, passion, reason, will,

  Imagination?

  Demogorgon. God: Almighty God.

  Asia. Who made that sense which, when the winds of Spring

  In rarest visitation, or the voice

  Of one belovèd heard in youth alone,

  15

  Fills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim

  The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers,

  And leaves this peopled earth a solitude

  When it returns no more?

  Demogorgon. Merciful God.

  Asia. And who made terror, madness, crime, remorse,

  20

  Which from the links of the great chain of things,

  To every thought within the mind of man

  Sway and drag heavily, and each one reels

  Under the load towards the pit of death;

  Abandoned hope, and love that turns to hate;

  25

  And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood;

  Pain, whose unheeded and familiar speech

  Is howling, and keen shrieks, day after day;

  And Hell, or the sharp fear of Hell?

  Demogorgon. He reigns.

  Asia. Utter his name: a world pining in pain

  30

  Asks but his name: curses shall drag him down.

  Demogorgon. He reigns.

  Asia. I feel, I know it: who?

  Demogorgon. He reigns.

  Asia. Who reigns? There was the Heaven and Earth at first,

  And Light and Love; then Saturn, from whose throne

  Time fell, an envious shadow: such the state

  35

  Of the earth’s primal spirits beneath his sway,

  As the calm joy of flowers and living leaves

  Before the wind or sun has withered them

  And semivital worms; but he refused

  The birthright of their being, knowledge, power,

  40

  The skill which wields the elements, the thought

  Which pierces this dim universe like light,

  Self-empire, and the majesty of love;

  For thirst of which they fainted. Then Prometheus

  Gave wisdom, which is strength, to Jupiter,

  45

  And with this law alone, ‘Let man be free,’

  Clothed him with the dominion of wide Heaven.

  To know nor faith, nor love, nor law; to be

  Omnipotent but friendless is to reign;

  And Jove now reigned; for on the race of man

  50

  First famine, and then toil, and then disease,

  Strife, wounds, and ghastly death unseen before,

  Fell; and the unseasonable seasons drove

  With alternating shafts of frost and fire,

  Their shelterless, pale tribes to mountain caves:

  55

  And in their desert hearts fierce wants he sent,

  And mad disquietude, and shadows idle

  Of unreal good, which levied mutual war,

  So ruining the lair wherein they raged.

  Prometheus saw, and waked the
legioned hopes

  60

  Which sleep within folded Elysian flowers,

  Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth, fadeless blooms,

  That they might hide with thin and rainbow wings

  The shape of Death; and Love he sent to bind

  The disunited tendrils of that vine

  65

  Which bears the wine of life, the human heart;

  And he tamed fire which like some beast of prey,

  Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath

  The frown of man; and tortured to his will

  Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power,

  70

  And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms

  Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves.

  He gave man speech, and speech created thought,

  Which is the measure of the universe;

  And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven,

  75

  Which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind

  Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song;

  And music lifted up the listening spirit

  Until it walked, exempt from mortal care,

  Godlike, o’er the clear billows of sweet sound;

  80

  And human hands first mimicked and then mocked,

  With moulded limbs more lovely than its own,

  The human form, till marble grew divine;

  And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see

  Reflected in their race, behold, and perish.

  85

  He told the hidden power of herbs and springs,

  And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep.

  He taught the implicated orbits woven

  Of the wide-wandering stars; and how the sun

  Changes his lair, and by what secret spell

  90

  The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye

  Gazes not on the interlunar sea:

  He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs,

  The tempest-wingèd chariots of the Ocean,

  And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then

  Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed

 

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