The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE

  LEGHORN, July 1, 1820,

  THE spider spreads her webs, whether she be

  In poet’s tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;

  The silk-worm in the dark green mulberry leaves

  His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;

  5

  So I, a thing whom moralists call worm,

  Sit spinning still round this decaying form,

  From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought—

  No net of words in garish colours wrought

  To catch the idle buzzers of the day—

  10

  But a soft cell, where when that fades away,

  Memory may clothe in wings my living name

  And feed it with the asphodels of fame,

  Which in those hearts which must remember me

  Grow, making love an immortality.

  15

  Whoever should behold me now, I wist,

  Would think I were a mighty mechanist,

  Bent with sublime Archimedean art

  To breathe a soul into the iron heart

  Of some machine portentous, or strange gin,

  20

  Which by the force of figured spells might win

  Its way over the sea, and sport therein;

  For round the walls are hung dread engines, such

  As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch

  Ixion or the Titan:—or the quick

  25

  Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic,

  To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic,

  Or those in philanthropic council met,

  Who thought to pay some interest for the debt

  They owed to Jesus Chirst for their salvation,

  30

  By giving a faint foretaste of damnation

  To Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, and the rest

  Who made our land an island of the blest.

  When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire

  On Freedom’s hearth, grew dim with Empire:—

  With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag,

  Which fishers found under the utmost crag

  Of Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles,

  Where to the sky the rude sea rarely smiles

  Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn

  40

  When the exulting elements in scorn,

  Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay

  Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey,

  As panthers sleep;—and other strange and dread

  Magical forms the brick floor overspread,—

  45

  Proteus transformed to metal did not make

  More figures, or more strange; nor did he take

  Such shapes of unintelligible brass,

  Or heap himself in such a horrid mass

  Of tin and iron not to be understood;

  50

  And forms of unimaginable wood,

  To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood:

  Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and groovèd blocks,

  The elements of what will stand the shocks

  Of wave and wind and time.—Upon the table

  55

  More knacks and quips there be than I am able

  To catalogize in this verse of mine:—

  A pretty bowl of wood—not full of wine,

  But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink

  When at their subterranean toil they swink,

  60

  Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who

  Reply to them in lava—cry halloo!

  And call out to the cities o’er their head,—

  Roofs, towers, and shrines, the dying and the dead,

  Crash through the chinks of earth—and then all quaff

  65

  Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh.

  This quicksilver no gnome has drunk—within

  The walnut bowl it lies, veinèd and thin,

  In colour like the wake of light that stains

  The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains

  70

  The inmost shower of its white fire—the breeze

  Is still—blue Heaven smiles over the pale seas,

  And in this bowl of quicksilver—for I

  Yield to the impulse of an infancy

  Outlasting manhood—I have made to float

  75

  A rude idealism of a paper boat:—

  A hollow screw with cogs—Henry will know

  The thing I mean and laugh at me,—if so

  He fears not I should do more mischief.—Next

  Lie bills and calculations much perplexed,

  80

  With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint

  Traced over them in blue and yellow paint.

  Then comes a range of mathematical

  Instruments, for plans nautical and statical;

  A heap of rosin, a queer broken glass

  85

  With ink in it;—a china cup that was

  What it will never be again, I think,—

  A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink

  The liquor doctors rail at—and which I

  Will quaff in spite of them—and when we die

  90

  We’ll toss up who died first of drinking tea,

  And cry out,—‘Heads or tails?’ where’er we be.

  Near that a dusty paint-box, some odd hooks,

  A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books,

  Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms,

  95

  To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims,

  Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray

  Of figures,—disentangle them who may.

  Baron de Tott’s Memoirs beside them lie,

  And some odd volumes of old chemistry.

  100

  Near those a most inexplicable thing,

  With lead in the middle—I’m conjecturing

  How to make Henry understand; but no—

  I’ll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo,

  This secret in the pregnant womb of time,

  105

  Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme.

  And here like some weird Archimage sit I,

  Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery,

  The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind

  Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind

  110

  The gentle spirit of our meek reviews

  Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,

  Ruffling the ocean of their self-content;—

  I sit—and smile or sigh as is my bent,

  But not for them—Libeccio rushes round

  115

  With an inconstant and an idle sound,

  I heed him more than them—the thunder-smoke

  Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak

  Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;

  The ripe corn under the undulating air

  120

  Undulates like an ocean;—and the vines

  Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines—

  The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill

  The empty pauses of the blast;—the hill

  Looks hoary through the white electric rain,

  125

  And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain,

  The interrupted thunder howls; above

  One chasm of Heaven smiles, like the eye of Love

  On the unquiet world;—while such things are,

  How could one worth your friendship heed the war

  130

  Of worms? the shriek of the world’s carrion jays,

  Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise?

  You are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees,

  In vacant chairs, your absent images,

  And points where once you sat, and now shou
ld be

  135

  But are not.—I demand if ever we

  Shall meet as then we met;—and she replies,

  Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;

  ‘I know the past alone—but summon home

  My sister Hope,—she speaks of all to come.’

  140

  But I, an old diviner, who knew well

  Every false verse of that sweet oracle,

  Turned to the sad enchantress once again,

  And sought a respite from my gentle pain,

  In citing every passage o’er and o’er

  145

  Of our communion—how on the sea-shore

  We watched the ocean and the sky together,

  Under the roof of blue Italian weather;

  How I ran home through last year’s thunder-storm,

  And felt the transverse lightning linger warm

  150

  Upon my cheek—and how we often made

  Feasts for each other, where good will outweighed

  The frugal luxury of our country cheer,

  As well it might, were it less firm and clear

  Than ours must ever be;—and how we spun

  155

  A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun

  Of this familiar life, which seems to be

  But is not:—or is but quaint mockery

  Of all we would believe, and sadly blame

  The jarring and inexplicable frame

  160

  Of this wrong world:—and then anatomize

  The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes

  Were closed in distant years;—or widely guess

  The issue of the earth’s great business,

  When we shall be as we no longer are—

  165

  Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war

  Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not;—or how

  You listened to some interrupted flow

  Of visionary rhyme,—in joy and pain

  Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,

  170

  With little skill perhaps;—or how we sought

  Those deepest wells of passion or of thought

  Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,

  Staining their sacred waters with our tears;

  Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed!

  175

  Or how I, wisest lady! then endued

  The language of a land which now is free,

  And, winged with thoughts of truth and majesty,

  Flits round the tyrant’s sceptre like a cloud,

  And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,

  180

  ‘My name is Legion!’—that majestic tongue

  Which Calderon over the desert flung

  Of ages and of nations; and which found

  An echo in our hearts, and with the sound

  Startled oblivion;—thou wert then to me

  185

  As is a nurse—when inarticulately

  A child would talk as its grown parents do.

  If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,

  If hawks chase doves through the aethereal way,

  Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey,

  190

  Why should not we rouse with the spirit’s blast

  Out of the forest of the pathless past

  These recollected pleasures?

  You are now

  In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow

  At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore

  195

  Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.

  Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see

  That which was Godwin,—greater none than he

  Though fallen—and fallen on evil times—to stand

  Among the spirits of our age and land,

  200

  Before the dread tribunal of to come

  The foremost,—while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb.

  You will see Coleridge—he who sits obscure

  In the exceeding lustre and the pure

  Intense irradiation of a mind,

  205

  Which, with its own internal lightning blind,

  Flags wearily through darkness and despair—

  A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,

  A hooded eagle among blinking owls.—

  You will see Hunt—one of those happy souls

  210

  Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom

  This world would smell like what it is—a tomb;

  Who is, what others seem; his room no doubt

  Is still adorned with many a cast from Shout,

  With graceful flowers tastefully placed about;

  215

  And coronals of bay from ribbons hung,

  And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung;

  The gifts of the most learned among some dozens

  Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins.

  And there is he with his eternal puns,

  220

  Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns

  Thundering for money at a poet’s door;

  Alas! it is no use to say, ‘I’m poor!’

  Or oft in graver mood, when he will look

  Things wiser than were ever read in book,

  225

  Except in Shakespeare’s wisest tenderness.—

  You will see Hogg,—and I cannot express

  His virtues,—though I know that they are great,

  Because he locks, then barricades the gate

  Within which they inhabit;—of his wit

  230

  And wisdom, you’ll cry out when you are bit.

  He is a pearl within an oyster shell,

  One of the richest of the deep;—and there

  Is English Peacock, with his mountain Fair,

  Turned into a Flamingo;—that shy bird

  235

  That gleams i’ the Indian air—have you not heard

  When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,

  His best friends hear no more of him?—but you

  Will see him, and will like him too, I hope,

  With the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope

  240

  Matched with this cameleopard—his fine wit

  Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it;

  A strain too learnèd for a shallow age,

  Too wise for selfish bigots; let his page,

  Which charms the chosen spirits of the time,

  245

  Fold itself up for the serener clime

  Of years to come, and find its recompense

  In that just expectation.—Wit and sense,

  Virtue and human knowledge; all that might

  Make this dull world a business of delight,

  250

  Are all combined in Horace Smith.—And these,

  With some exceptions, which I need not tease

  Your patience by descanting on,—are all

  You and I know in London.

  I recall

  My thoughts, and bid you look upon the night.

  255

  As water does a sponge, so the moonlight

  Fills the void, hollow, universal air—

  What see you?—unpavilioned Heaven is fair,

  Whether the moon, into her chamber gone,

  Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan

  260

  Climbs with diminished beams the azure steep;

  Or whether clouds sail o’er the inverse deep,

  Piloted by the many-wandering blast,

  And the rare stars rush through them dim and fast:—

  All this is beautiful in every land.—

  265

  But what see you beside?—a shabby stand

  Of Hackney coaches—a brick house or wall

  Fencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl

  Of our unhappy polit
ics;—or worse—

  A wretched woman reeling by, whose curse

  270

  Mixed with the watchman’s, partner of her trade,

  You must accept in place of serenade—

  Or yellow-haired Pollonia murmuring

  To Henry, some unutterable thing.

  I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit

  275

  Built round dark caverns, even to the root

  Of the living stems that feed them—in whose bowers

  There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers;

  Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn

  Trembles not in the slumbering air, and borne

  280

  In circles quaint, and ever-changing dance,

  Like wingèd stars the fire-flies flash and glance,

  Pale in the open moonshine, but each one

  Under the dark trees seems a little sun,

  A meteor tamed; a fixed star gone astray

  285

  From the silver regions of the milky way;—

  Afar the Contadino’s song is heard,

  Rude, but made sweet by distance—and a bird

  Which cannot be the Nightingale, and yet

  I know none else that sings so sweet as it

  290

  At this late hour;—and then all is still—

  Now—Italy or London, which you will!

  Next winter you must pass with me; I’ll have

  My house by that time turned into a grave

  Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care,

  295

  And all the dreams which our tormentors are;

  Oh! that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock, and Smith were there,

  With everything belonging to them fair!—

  We will have books, Spanish, Italian, Greek;

  And ask one week to make another week

  300

  As like his father, as I’m unlike mine,

  Which is not his fault, as you may divine.

  Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,

  Yet let’s be merry: we’ll have tea and toast;

  Custards for supper, and an endless host