by Mary Shelley
Priests before their altars tremble,
Courtiers shudder, kings dissemble,
Pensioners and place-men quake,
All the sons of rapine shake;
Guillotines are lordly themes,
Barricades haunt royal dreams,
Bigots frighted to their souls,
Shrink into their narrow holes,
To den of filth corruption steals,
Reform fierce-barking at his heels, —
All expect disastrous doom,
All the things that love the gloom,
All that crouch, and skulk, and prowl,
Wolf and tiger, bat and owl:
Yet still to thee, their bounteous patroness,
They lift adoring eyes;
And none apostatize,
Nor aught the less
Thy name they bless,
Because thy kingdom hath been rudely torn,
And of a mist or two thy stupid skull been shorn.
Oh! for thy loyal sons
Hast thou no guerdon fair, no just reward?
No new resource,
No untried force,
To save them from their foe abhorr’d?
Come with a host of Huns!
Unlock once more thy garners of the North:
Unleash the Goth and send the Vandal forth;
Exert thy waning might;
Rally the powers of Night;
Renew the desp’rate fight!
That tyrants may rebuild thy mouldering fanes:
So may’st thou hope,
Loading thy foes with slavery’s ponderous chains,
With holy, heavenly light, triumphantly to cope!
M. W. S.
January 1834.
Fame
“What boots the laurel, if the throbbing brow
Burn with the agony of thought o’erstrained?
All thou hadst hoped — nay, more, is won; and now
Say, dearest Edward! what has ardour gained?
Pallid thy cheek, and blear the fringeless lids
That o’er thy faded eyes all sadly droop;
And ah! what Power Omnipotent thus bids
Thy shoulders bend in everlasting stoop?
Pelham it was not that could do this wrong;
Nor Falkland, Clifford, Aram, the Disowned;
Or any which, when youth and hope were strong,
Revealed thy energies, whilst Envy groaned.
It was, it was th’ old Monthly Magazine,
By Granny Colborn madly christened ‘New;’
This lured thy spirit to Contention’s scene.
And taught thee Mischiefs muddy drink to brew.
Why, Edward dear! defy that press, whose doom
Did in thy time of trial favour thee?
You see they’re far too strong for reckless Brougham,
And — although great — thou’rt not so great as he!
Then lay thy pen and paper calmly down
Beside the long-adored Castalian brink;
Twine no more wreaths in thine abundant crown,
But list to me, and learn to eat and drink!”
The Drawing-Room Scrap-Book. 1835.
Stanzas: How like a star you rose upon my life
How like a star you rose upon my life,
Shedding fair radiance o’er my darkened hour!
At your uprise swift fled the turbid strife
Of grief and fear, — so mighty was your power!
And I must weep that you now disappear,
Casting eclipse upon my cheerless night —
My heaven deserting for another sphere,
Shedding elsewhere your aye-regretted light.
An Hesperus no more to gild my eve,
You glad the morning of another heart;
And my fond soul must mutely learn to grieve,
While thus from every joy it swells apart
Yet I may worship still those gentle beams,
Though not on me they shed their silver rain;
And thought of you may linger in my dreams,
And Memory pour balm upon my pain.
Oh listen while I sing to thee
Oh listen while I sing to thee,
My song is meant for thee alone;
My thought imparts its melody.
And gives the soft impassioned tone.
I sing of joy, and see thy smile
That to the swelling note replies;
I sing of love, and feel the while
The gaze of thy love-beaming eyes.
If thou wert far, my voice would die
In murmurs faint and sorrowing;
If thou wert fake in agony
My heart would break, I could not sing.
Then listen while I sing to thee,
My song is meant for thee alone;
And now that thou art near to me
I pour a full impassioned tone.
12 March 1838
Stanzas: Oh, come to me in dreams, my love!
Oh, come to me in dreams, my love!
I will not ask a dearer bliss;
Come with the starry beams, my love,
And press mine eyelids with thy kiss.
‘Twas thus, as ancient fables tell,
Love visited a Grecian maid,
Till she disturbed the sacred spell,
And woke to find her hopes betrayed.
But gentle sleep shall veil my sight,
And Psyche’s lamp shall darkling be,
When, in the visions of the night,
Thou dost renew thy vows to me.
Then come to me in dreams, my love,
I will not ask a dearer bliss;
Come with the starry beams, my love,
And press mine eyelids with thy kiss.
The Choice
.My choice! My choice - alas was had & gone
With the red gleam of the last summer’s sun-
Lost in the deep in which he bathed his head,
My choice, my life, my hope together fled:-
A wanderer - here, no more I seek a home
The sky a vault - & Italy a tomb!
Yet as some days a pilgrim I remain
Linked to my orphan child by duty’s chain;
And since I have a faith that I must earn
By suffering & by patience, a return
Of that companionship & love, which first
upon my young life’s cloud, like sunlight burst,
And now has left me dark as when it beams
Quenched by the might of dreadful ocean stream,
Leave that one cloud, a gloomy speck on high,
Beside one star in the else darkened sky;-
Since I must live, how would I pass the day,
How meet with fewest tear’s the morning’s ray
How sleep with calmest dreams, how find delights,
As fireflies gleam through interlunar nights?
First let me call on thee, lost as thou art
Thy name aye fills my sense, the love my heart-
Oh! Gentle spirit, thou hast often sung
How fall’n on evil days thy heart was wrung;
Now fierce remorse and unreplying death
Wakend a chord within my heart, whose breath,
Thrilling and keen, in accents audible,
A tale of unrequited love doth tell.
It was not anger - while thy earthly dress
Encompassed still thy soul’s rare loveliness,
All anger was atoned by many a kind
Caress or tear that spoke the softened mind:-
It speaks of cold neglect, averted eyes
That blindly crushed thy heart’s fond sacrifice:-
Mine heart was all thy own - but yet a shell
Closed in it’s core, which seemed impenetrable,
Till sharp-toothed misery tore the husk in twain
Which gaping lies nor may unite again-
Forgive me! let thy love descend in dew
Of soft repenta
nce and regret most true;-
In a strange guise dost thou descend - or how
Could love soothe fell remorse? - as it does now! -
By this remorse and love - and by the years
Through which we shared our common hopes & fears,
By all our best companionship, I dare
Call on thy sacred name without a fear
And thus I pray to thee, my Friend, my Heart,
That in thy new abode thou’lt bear a part
In soothing the poor Mary’s lonely pain,
As link by link she wears her heavy chain!
And thou, strange Star! ascendent at my birth
Which rained, they said, kind influence on earth,
So from great parents sprung I dared to boast
Fortune my friend, till set, thy beams were lost!
And thou - Inscrutable! by whose decree
Has burst this hideous storm of misery!
here let me cling, here to these solitudes,
These myrtle shaded streams and chestnut woods;
Tear me not hence - here let me live & die,
In my adopted land, my country, Italy!
A happy Mother first I saw its sun-
Beneath er sky my race of joy was run-
First my sweet girl - whose face resembled His,
Slept on bleak Lido, near Venetian seas.-
Yet still my eldest born, my loveliest, dearest-
Clung to my side - most joyful when nearest -
An English home had given this angel birth-
Near those royal towers - where the grass-clad earth
Is shadowed o’er my England’s loftiest trees:-
Then our companion o’er the swift-passed seas
Had dwelt beside the Alps - or gently slept,
Rocked by the waves, o’ver which our vessel swept,
Beside his father - nurst upon my breast,
While Leman’s waters shook with fierce unrest
His fairest limbs had bathed in Serchio’s stream;
His eyes had watched Italian lightnings gleam;
His childish voice had with it’s loudest call,
The echoes waked of Este’s Castle wall;
Had paced Pompeii’s roman market Place
Had gazed with infant wonder on the grace
Of stone wrought deities and pictured saints
In Rome’s high palaces - there were no taints
Of ruin on his cheek - all shadowless
Grim death approached - the boy met his caress-
And while his glowing limbs with life’s warmth shone,
Around those limbs his icy arms were thrown-
His spoils were strewed beneath the land of Rome
Whose flowers now star the dark earth near his tomb-
Its airs & plants received the mortal part,
His spirit beats within his Mother’s heart!
Infant immortal! Chosen of the Sky!
No grief upon grief upon thy brows young purity
Entrenched sad lines, or blotted with its might
The sunshine of the smile’s celestial light -
The image scattered - thy bright spirit fled,
Thou shin’st the evening star among the dead.
And thou his playmate - whose deep lucid eyes,
Were a reflection of these bluest skies;
Child of our hearts, divided in ill hour,
We could not watch the bud’s expanding flower,
Now thou art gone, one lovely victim more
To the black death which rules this sunny shore.
Companion of my griefs! thy sinking frame
Has often drooped - & then erect again
With shews of health had mocked forbodings dark;
Watching the changes of that quivering spark
I feared and hoped - and dared to trust at length
Thy very weakness was my tower of strength-
Methought thou wert a spirit from the sky,
Which struggled within it’s chains, yet could not die,
And that destruction had no power to win,
From out those limbs the soul that burnt within.
Tell me, ye ancient walls, and weed-grown towers,
Ye Roman aires, and brightly painted flowers,
Does not this spirit visit that recess
Which built by love, enshrined his earthly dress?
No more! No more! What tho’ that form be fled
My trembling hands shall never write thee - dead -
Thou liv’st in Nature - love - my Memory,
With frathless faith for aye adoring thee-
The wife of time no more - I wed Eternity
‘Tis thus the past on which my spirit leans,
Makes dearest to my soul Italian scenes.-
In Tuscan fields, the winds in odours steeped
From flowers and cypresses - when skies have wept,
Shall like the notes of music - once most dear,
Which brings the unstrung voice upon my ear
Of one beloved, to memory display
Past scenes - past joys - past hopes, in long array.
The Serchio’s stream upon which whose banks he stood-
The pools reflecting Pisa’s old pine wood,
The fire-flies beam - the aziolo’s cry-
All breath his spirit, which shall never die.-
Such memories have linked these hills and caves,
These woodland paths, & streams - & knelling waves
Fast to each sad pulsation of my breast
And made their melancholy arms the haven of my rest
Here will I live within a little dell,
Which but a month ago I saw full well;
A dream then pictured forth the solitude
Deep in the shelter of a lovely wood;
A voice then whispered a strange prophecy,
My dearest widowed friend, that thou and I
Should there together pass the livelong day,
As we have done before in Spezia’s bay,
As through long hours we watched the sails that neared
O’er the far sea, their vessel ne’er appeared;
One pang of agony, one dying gleam
Of hope led us along, beside the ocean stream,
But keen-eyes fear, the while all hope departs,
Stabbed with a million sting our heart of hearts.
The sad revolving year has not allayed
The poison of these bleeding wounds, or made
The anguish less of that corroding thought
Which had with grief each single moment fraught,
Edward, thy voice was hushed - thy noble heart
With aspiration heaves no more - a part
Of heaven resumèd past thou art become,
The spirit waits with this in our far home.
On Reading Wordsworth’s Lines on Peele Castle
It is with me, as erst with you,
Oh poet, nature’s chronicler,
The summer seas have lost their hue
And storm sits brooding everywhere.
The gentlest rustling of the deep
Is but the dirge of him I lost,
And when waves raise their furrows steep,
And bring foam in which is tossed
A voice I hear upon the wind
Which bids me haste to join him there,
And woo the tempest’s breath unkind
Which gives to me a kindred bier.
And when all smooth are ocean’s plains
And sails afar are glittering,
The fairest skiff his form contains
To my poor heart’s fond picturing.
Then wildly to the beach I rush,
And fain would seize the frailest boat,
And from dull earth the slight hull push,
On dancing waves towards him to float.
Nor may I e’er again behold
The sea, and be as I have been;
My bitter grief wil
l ne’er grow old,
Nor say I this with mind serene.
For oft I weep in solitude
And shed so many bitter tears,
While on past joys I vainly brood
And shrink in fear from coming years.
1822.
Tribute for thee dear solace of my life
Tribute for thee dear solace of my life
Reject not thou thy Mary’s offering,
A tale of woe, with many sorrows rife,
Tribute unmeet, with cypress bound, I bring —
It is the echo, sweet
Sadly borne across the waves
Tempo e’ piu di Morire
Io ho tardato piu ch’ i’ non vorrei
Sadly borne across the waves
Hark! a voice from many graves,
Whispers — Come!
We for thee too long have waited,
Haste, before thou art belated,
To our home!
And the voice of my life’s Lord,
Voice heard soon & aye adored,
Cries still — Come!
Canst thou stay, my gentle Bride,
I no longer at thy side, In our home?
Dark was this wild world to thee,
Till I, in youthful extasy,
Cried — Come! Come!
Gladly we together fled
And across the sea we sped
To our home. Tender love & constancy
Formed our nuptial revelry
And welcome.
Ah! those days too quickly flew,
Till, enforced, I bade adieu
To our home.
Storm & Ocean bore me here,
Thou remainest, Mary dear,
Yet. Ah! Come!
Life is but a sickly dream,
Swiftly cross the turbid stream
To my home.
Never more will human love
Woes requite which thou must prove,
Why not come?
Never more in forest sweet
Will be built a fair retreat
For thy home.
La Vida es sueno
The tide of Time was at my feet
Flowing with calm & equal motion;
With gladdened heart my eyes might greet
