The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley: (A Modern Library E-Book)
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To soar above the heights where others [climb],
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Nor fame, that shadow of the unborn hour
Cast from the envious future on the time,
Move one regret for his unhonoured name
Who dares these words:—the worm beneath the sod
May lift itself in homage of the God.
FRAGMENT ON KEATS
WHO DESIRED THAT ON HIS TOMB SHOULD BE INSCRIBED—
‘HERE lieth One whose name was writ on water.’
But, ere the breath that could erase it blew,
Death, in remorse for that fell slaughter,
Death, the immortalizing winter, flew
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Athwart the stream,—and time’s printless torrent grew
A scroll of crystal, blazoning the name
Of Adonais!
FRAGMENT: ‘METHOUGHT I WAS A BILLOW IN THE CROWD’
METHOUGHT I was a billow in the crowd
Of common men, that stream without a shore,
That ocean which at once is deaf and loud;
That I, a man, stood amid many more
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By a wayside …, which the aspect bore
Of some imperial metropolis,
Where mighty shapes—pyramid, dome, and tower—
Gleamed like a pile of crags—
TO-MORROW
WHERE art thou, beloved To-morrow?
When young and old, and strong and weak,
Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow,
Thy sweet smiles we ever seek,—
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In thy place—ah! well-a-day!
We find the thing we fled—To-day.
STANZA
IF I walk in Autumn’s even
While the dead leaves pass,
If I look on Spring’s soft heaven,—
Something is not there which was.
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Winter’s wondrous frost and snow,
Summer’s clouds, where are they now?
FRAGMENT: A WANDERER
HE wanders, like a day-appearing dream,
Through the dim wildernesses of the mind;
Through desert woods and tracts, which seem
Like ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined.
FRAGMENT: LIFE ROUNDED WITH SLEEP
THE babe is at peace within the womb;
The corpse is at rest within the tomb:
We begin in what we end.
FRAGMENT: ‘I FAINT, I PERISH WITH MY LOVE!’
I FAINT, I perish with my love! I grow
Frail as a cloud whose [splendours] pale
Under the evening’s ever-changing glow:
I die like mist upon the gale,
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And like a wave under the calm I fail.
FRAGMENT: THE LADY OF THE SOUTH
FAINT with love, the Lady of the South
Lay in the paradise of Lebanon
Under a heaven of cedar boughs: the drouth
Of love was on her lips; the light was gone
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Out of her eyes—
FRAGMENT: ZEPHYRUS THE AWAKENER
COME, thou awakener of the spirit’s ocean,
Zephyr, whom to thy cloud or cave
No thought can trace! speed with thy gentle motion!
FRAGMENT: RAIN
THE gentleness of rain was in the wind.
FRAGMENT: ‘WHEN SOFT WINDS AND SUNNY SKIES’
WHEN soft winds and sunny skies
With the green earth harmonize,
And the young and dewy dawn,
Bold as an unhunted fawn,
Up the windless heaven is gone,—
Laugh—for ambushed in the day,—
Clouds and whirlwinds watch their prey.
FRAGMENT: ‘AND THAT I WALK THUS PROUDLY CROWNED’
AND that I walk thus proudly crowned withal
Is that ’tis my distinction; if I fall,
I shall not weep out of the vital day,
To-morrow dust, nor wear a dull decay.
FRAGMENT: ‘THE RUDE WIND IS SINGING’
THE rude wind is singing
The dirge of the music dead;
The cold worms are clinging
Where kisses were lately fed.
FRAGMENT: ‘GREAT SPIRIT’
GREAT Spirit whom the sea of boundless thought
Nurtures within its unimagined caves,
In which thou sittest sole, as in my mind,
Giving a voice to its mysterious waves—
FRAGMENT: ‘O THOU IMMORTAL DEITY’
O THOU immortal deity
Whose throne is in the depth of human thought,
I do adjure thy power and thee
By all that man may be, by all that he is not,
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By all that he has been and yet must be!
FRAGMENT: THE FALSE LAUREL AND THE TRUE
‘WHAT art thou, Presumptuous, who profanest
The wreath to mighty poets only due,
Even whilst like a forgotten moon thou wanest?
Touch not those leaves which for the eternal few
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Who wander o’er the Paradise of fame,
In sacred dedication ever grew:
One of the crowd thou art without a name.’
‘Ah, friend, ’tis the false laurel that I wear;
Bright though it seem, it is not the same
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As that which bound Milton’s immortal hair;
Its dew is poison; and the hopes that quicken
Under its chilling shade, though seeming fair,
Are flowers which die almost before they sicken.’
FRAGMENT: MAY THE LIMNER
WHEN May is painting with her colours gay
The landscape sketched by April her sweet twin …
FRAGMENT: BEAUTY’S HALO
THY beauty hangs around thee like
Splendour around the moon—
Thy voice, as silver bells that strike
Upon
FRAGMENT: ‘THE DEATH KNELL IS RINGING’
THE death knell is ringing
The raven is singing
The earth worm is creeping
The mourners are weeping
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Ding dong, bell—
FRAGMENT: ‘I STOOD UPON A HEAVEN-CLEAVING TURRET’
I STOOD upon a heaven-cleaving turret
Which overlooked a wide Metropolis—
And in the temple of my heart my Spirit
Lay prostrate, and with parted lips did kiss
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The dust of Desolations [altar] hearth—
And with a voice too faint to falter
It shook that trembling fane with its weak prayer
’Twas noon,—the sleeping skies were blue
The city
NOTE ON POEMS OF 1821, BY MRS. SHELLEY
MY task becomes inexpressibly painful as the year draws near that which sealed our earthly fate, and each poem, and each event it records, has a real or mysterious connexion with the fatal catastrophe. I feel that I am incapable of putting on paper the history of those times. The heart of the man, abhorred of the poet, who could
‘peep and botanize
Upon his mother’s grave,’
does not appear to me more inexplicably framed than that of one who can dissect and probe past woes, and repeat to the public ear the groans drawn from them in the throes of their agony.
The year 1821 was spent in Pisa, or at the Baths of San Giuliano. We were not, as our wont had been, alone; friends had gathered round us. Nearly all are dead, and, when Memory recurs to the past, she wanders among tombs. The genius, with all his blighting errors and mighty powers; the companion of Shelley’s ocean-wanderings, and the sharer of his fate, than whom no man ever existed more gentle, generous, and fearless; and others, who found in Shelley’s society, and in his great knowledge and warm sympathy, delight, instruction, and solace; have joined him beyond the grave. A few sur
vive who have felt life a desert since he left it. What misfortune can equal death? Change can convert every other into a blessing, or heal its sting—death alone has no cure. It shakes the foundations of the earth on which we tread; it destroys its beauty; it casts down our shelter; it exposes us bare to desolation. When those we love have passed into eternity, ‘life is the desert and the solitude’ in which we are forced to linger—but never find comfort more.
There is much in the Adonais which seems now more applicable to Shelley himself than to the young and gifted poet whom he mourned. The poetic view he takes of death, and the lofty scorn he displays towards his calumniators, are as a prophecy on his own destiny when received among immortal names, and the poisonous breath of critics has vanished into emptiness before the fame he inherits.
Shelley’s favourite taste was boating; when living near the Thames or by the Lake of Geneva, much of his life was spent on the water. On the shore of every lake or stream or sea near which he dwelt, he had a boat moored. He had latterly enjoyed this pleasure again. There are no pleasure-boats on the Arno; and the shallowness of its waters (except in winter-time, when the stream is too turbid and impetuous for boating) rendered it difficult to get any skiff light enough to float. Shelley, however, overcame the difficulty; he, together with a friend, contrived a boat such as the huntsmen carry about with them in the Maremma, to cross the sluggish but deep streams that intersect the forests,—a boat of laths and pitched canvas. It held three persons; and he was often seen on the Arno in it, to the horror of the Italians, who remonstrated on the danger and could not understand how any one could take pleasure in an exercise that risked life. ‘Ma va per la vita!’ they exclaimed. I little thought how true their words would prove. He once ventured, with a friend, on the glassy sea of a calm day, down the Arno and round the coast to Leghorn, which, by keeping close in shore, was very practicable. They returned to Pisa by the canal, when, missing the direct cut, they got entangled among weeds, and the boat upset; a wetting was all the harm done, except that the intense cold of his drenched clothes made Shelley faint. Once I went down with him to the mouth of the Arno, where the stream, then high and swift, met the tideless sea, and disturbed its sluggish waters. It was a waste and dreary scene; the desert sand stretched into a point surrounded by waves that broke idly though perpetually around; it was a scene very similar to Lido, of which he had said—
‘I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:
And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
More barren than its billows.’
Our little boat was of greater use, unaccompanied by any danger, when we removed to the Baths. Some friends lived at the village of Pugnano, four miles off, and we went to and fro to see them, in our boat, by the canal; which, fed by the Serchio, was, though an artificial, a full and picturesque stream, making its way under verdant banks, sheltered by trees that dipped their boughs into the murmuring waters. By day, multitudes of ephemera darted to and fro on the surface; at night, the fireflies came out among the shrubs on the banks; the cicale at noon-day kept up their hum; the aziola cooed in the quiet evening. It was a pleasant summer, bright in all but Shelley’s health and inconstant spirits; yet he enjoyed himself greatly, and became more and more attached to the part of the country where chance appeared to cast us. Sometimes he projected taking a farm situated on the height of one of the near hills, surrounded by chestnut and pine woods, and overlooking a wide extent of country: or settling still farther in the maritime Apennines, at Massa. Several of his slighter and unfinished poems were inspired by these scenes, and by the companions around us. It is the nature of that poetry, however, which overflows from the soul oftener to express sorrow and regret than joy; for it is when oppressed by the weight of life, and away from those he loves, that the poet has recourse to the solace of expression in verse.
Still, Shelley’s passion was the ocean; and he wished that our summers, instead of being passed among the hills near Pisa, should be spent on the shores of the sea. It was very difficult to find a spot. We shrank from Naples from a fear that the heats would disagree with Percy: Leghorn had lost its only attraction, since our friends who had resided there were returned to England; and, Monte Nero being the resort of many English, we did not wish to find ourselves in the midst of a colony of chance travellers. No one then thought it possible to reside at Via Reggio, which latterly has become a summer resort. The low lands and bad air of Maremma stretch the whole length of the western shores of the Mediterranean, till broken by the rocks and hills of Spezia. It was a vague idea, but Shelley suggested an excursion to Spezia, to see whether it would be feasible to spend a summer there. The beauty of the bay enchanted him. We saw no house to suit us; but the notion took root, and many circumstances, enchained as by fatality, occurred to urge him to execute it.
He looked forward this autumn with great pleasure to the prospect of a visit from Leigh Hunt. When Shelley visited Lord Byron at Ravenna, the latter had suggested his coming out, together with the plan of a periodical work in which they should all join. Shelley saw a prospect of good for the fortunes of his friend, and pleasure in his society; and instantly exerted himself to have the plan executed. He did not intend himself joining in the work: partly from pride, not wishing to have the air of acquiring readers for his poetry by associating it with the compositions of more popular writers; and also because he might feel shackled in the free expression of his opinions, if any friends were to be compromised. By those opinions, carried even to their utmost extent, he wished to live and die, as being in his conviction not only true, but such as alone would conduce to the moral improvement and happiness of mankind. The sale of the work might meanwhile, either really or supposedly, be injured by the free expression of his thoughts; and this evil be resolved to avoid.
POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822
THE ZUCCA
I
SUMMER was dead and Autumn was expiring,
And infant Winter laughed upon the land
All cloudlessly and cold;—when I, desiring
More in this world than any understand,
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Wept o’er the beauty, which, like sea retiring,
Had left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand
Of my lorn heart, and o’er the grass and flowers
Pale for the falsehood of the flattering Hours.
II
Summer was dead, but I yet lived to weep
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The instability of all but weeping;
And on the Earth lulled in her winter sleep
I woke, and envied her as she was sleeping.
Too happy Earth! over thy face shall creep
The wakening vernal airs, until thou, leaping
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From unremembered dreams, shalt see
No death divide thy immortality.
III
I loved—oh, no, I mean not one of ye,
Or any earthly one, though ye are dear
As human heart to human heart may be;—
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I loved, I know not what—but this low sphere
And all that it contains, contains not thee,
Thou, whom, seen nowhere, I feel everywhere.
From Heaven and Earth, and all that in them are,
Veiled art thou, like a star.
IV
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By Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou flowest,
Neither to be contained, delayed, nor hidden;
Making divine the loftiest and the lowest,
When for a moment thou art not forbidden
To live within the life which thou bestowest;
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And leaving noblest things vacant and chidden,
Cold as a corpse after the spirit’s flight,
Blank as the sun after the birth of night.
V
In winds, and tree
s, and streams, and all things common,
In music and the sweet unconscious tone
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Of animals, and voices which are human,
Meant to express some feelings of their own;
In the soft motions and rare smile of woman,
In flowers and leaves, and in the grass fresh-shown,
Or dying in the autumn, I the most
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Adore thee present or lament thee lost.
VI
And thus I went lamenting, when I saw
A plant upon the river’s margin lie,
Like one who loved beyond his nature’s law,
And in despair had cast him down to die;
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Its leaves, which had outlived the frost, the thaw
Had blighted; like a heart which hatred’s eye
Can blast not, but which pity kills; the dew
Lay on its spotted leaves like tears too true.
VII
The Heavens had wept upon it, but the Earth
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Had crushed it on her unmaternal breast
· · · · · · ·
VIII
I bore it to my chamber, and I planted
It in a vase full of the lightest mould;
The winter beams which out of Heaven slanted
Fell through the window-panes, disrobed of cold,