35
And the whirlwinds howl in the caves of Inisfallen,
Still secure mid the wildest war of the sky,
The phantom courser scours the waste,
And his rider howls in the thunder’s roar.
O’er him the fierce bolts of avenging Heaven
40
Pause, as in fear, to strike his head.
The meteors of midnight recoil from his figure,
Yet the ’wildered peasant, that oft passes by,
With wonder beholds the blue flesh through his form:
And his voice, though faint as the sighs of the dead,
45
The startled passenger shudders to hear,
More distinct than the thunder’s wildest roar.
Then does the dragon, who, chained in the caverns
To eternity, curses the champion of Erin,
Moan and yell loud at the lone hour of midnight,
And twine his vast wreaths round the forms of the daemons;
Then in agony roll his death-swimming eyeballs,
Though ’wildered by death, yet never to die!
Then he shakes from his skeleton folds the nightmares,
Who, shrieking in agony, seek the couch
55
Of some fevered wretch who courts sleep in vain;
Then the torn bless ghosts of the guilty dead
In horror pause on the fitful gale.
They float on the swell of the eddying tempest.
And scared seek the caves of gigantic …
60
Where their thin forms pour unearthly sounds
On the blast that sweeps the breast of the lake,
And mingles its swell with the moonlight air.
MELODY TO A SCENE OF FORMER TIMES
ART thou indeed forever gone,
Forever, ever, lost to me?
Must this poor bosom beat alone,
Or beat at all, if not for thee?
5
Ah! why was love to mortals given,
To lift them to the height of Heaven,
Or dash them to the depths of Hell?
Yet I do not reproach thee, dear!
Ah, no! the agonies that swell
10
This panting breast, this frenzied brain,
Might wake my —–’s slumb’ring tear.
Oh! Heaven is witness I did love,
And Heaven does know I love thee still,
Does know the fruitless sick’ning thrill,
15
When reason’s judgment vainly strove
To blot thee from my memory;
But which might never, never be.
Oh! I appeal to that blest day
When passion’s wildest ecstasy
20
Was coldness to the joys I knew,
When every sorrow sunk away.
Oh! I had never lived before,
But now those blisses are no more.
And now I cease to live again,
25
I do not blame thee, love; ah, no!
The breast that feels this anguished woe
Throbs for thy happiness alone.
Two years of speechless bliss are gone,
I thank thee, dearest, for the dream.
30
’Tis night—what faint and distant scream
Comes on the wild and fitful blast?
It moans for pleasures that are past,
It moans for days that are gone by.
Oh! lagging hours, how slow you fly!
35
I see a dark and lengthened vale,
The black view closes with the tomb;
But darker is the lowering gloom
That shades the intervening dale.
In visioned slumber for awhile
40
I seem again to share thy smile,
I seem to hang upon thy tone.
Again you say, ‘Confide in me,
For I am thine, and thine alone,
And thine must ever, ever be.’
45
But oh! awak’ning still anew,
Athwart my enanguished senses flew
A fiercer, deadlier agony!
[End of Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson.]
STANZA FROM A TRANSLATION OF THE MARSEILLAISE HYMN
TREMBLE, Kings despised of man!
Ye traitors to your Country,
Tremble! Your parricidal plan
At length shall meet its destiny …
5
We all are soldiers fit to fight,
But if we sink in glory’s night
Our mother Earth will give ye new
The brilliant pathway to pursue
Which leads to Death or Victory …
BIGOTRY’S VICTIM
I
DARES the lama, most fleet of the sons of the wind,
The lion to rouse from his skull-covered lair?
When the tiger approaches can the fast-fleeting hind
Repose trust in his footsteps of air?
5
No! Abandoned he sinks in a trance of despair,
The monster transfixes his prey,
On the sand flows his life-blood away;
Whilst India’s rocks to his death-yells reply,
Protracting the horrible harmony.
II
10
Yet the fowl of the desert, when danger encroaches,
Dares fearless to perish defending her brood,
Though the fiercest of cloud-piercing tyrants approaches
Thirsting—ay, thirsting for blood;
And demands, like mankind, his brother for food;
15
Yet more lenient, more gentle than they;
For hunger, not glory, the prey
Must perish. Revenge does not howl in the dead.
Nor ambition with fame crown the murderer’s head.
III
Though weak as the lama that bounds on the mountains,
20
And endued not with fast-fleeting footsteps of air,
Yet, yet will I draw from the purest of fountains,
Though a fiercer than tiger Is there.
Though, more dreadful than death, it scatters despair,
Though its shadow eclipses the day,
25
And the darkness of deepest dismay
Spreads the influence of soul-chilling terror around,
And lowers or the corpses, that rot on the ground.
IV
They came to the fountain to draw from its stream
Waves too pure, too celestial, for mortals to see;
30
They bathed for awhile in its silvery beam,
Then perished, and perished like me.
For in vain from the grasp of the Bigot I flee;
The most tenderly loved of my soul
Are slaves to his hated control.
35
He pursues me, he blasts me! ’Tis in vain that I fly:
What remains, but to curse him,—to curse him and die?
ON AN ICICLE THAT CLUNG TO THE GRASS OF A GRAVE
I
OH! take the pure gem to where southerly breezes,
Waft repose to some bosom as faithful as fair,
In which the warm current of love never freezes,
As it rises unmingled with selfishness there,
5
Which, untainted by pride, unpolluted by care,
Might dissolve the dim icedrop, might bid it arise,
Too pure for these regions, to gleam in the skies.
II
Or where the stern warrior, his country defending,
Dares fearless the dark-rolling battle to pour,
10
Or o’er the fell corpse of a dread tyrant bending,
Where patriotism red with his guilt-reeking gore
Plants Liberty’s flag on the slave-peopled shore,
With victory’s cry, with the shout of the
free,
Let it fly, taintless Spirit, to mingle with thee.
III
15
For I found the pure gem, when the daybeam returning,
Ineffectual gleams on the snow-covered plain,
When to others the wished-for arrival of morning
Brings relief to long visions of soul-racking pain;
But regret is an insult—to grieve is in vain:
20
And why should we grieve that a spirit so fair
Seeks Heaven to mix with its own kindred there?
IV
But still ’twas some Spirit of kindness descending
To share in the load of mortality’s woe,
Who over thy lowly-built sepulchre bending
25
Bade sympathy’s tenderest teardrop to flow.
Not for thee soft compassion celestials did know,
But if angels can weep, sure man may repine,
May weep in mute grief o’er thy low-laid shrine.
V
And did I then say, for the altar of glory,
30
That the earliest, the loveliest of flowers I’d entwine,
Though with millions of blood-reeking victims ’twas gory,
Though the tears of the widow polluted its shrine,
Though around it the orphans, the fatherless pine?
Oh! Fame, all thy glories I’d yield for a tear
35
To shed on the grave of a heart so sincere.
LOVE
WHY is it said thou canst not live
In a youthful breast and fair,
Since thou eternal life canst give,
Canst bloom for ever there?
5
Since withering pain no power possessed,
Nor age, to blanch thy vermeil hue,
Nor time’s dread victor, death, confessed,
Though bathed with his poison dew,
Still thou retain’st unchanging bloom,
10
Fixed tranquil, even in the tomb.
And oh! when on the blest, reviving,
The day-star dawns of love,
Each energy of soul surviving
More vivid, soars above,
15
Hast thou ne’er felt a rapturous thrill,
Like June’s warm breath, athwart thee fly,
O’er each idea then to steal,
When other passions die?
Felt it in some wild noonday dream,
When sitting by the lonely stream,
Where Silence says, ‘Mine is the dell’;
And not a murmur from the plain,
And not an echo from the fell,
Disputes her silent reign.
ON A FETE AT CARLTON HOUSE: FRAGMENT
BY the mossy brink,
With me the Prince shall sit and think;
Shall muse in visioned Regency,
Rapt in bright dreams of dawning Royalty.
TO A STAR
SWEET star, which gleaming o’er the darksome scene
Through fleecy clouds of silvery radiance fliest,
Spanglet of light on evening’s shadowy veil,
Which shrouds the day-beam from the waveless lake,
5
Lighting the hour of sacred love; more sweet
Than the expiring morn-star’s paly fires:—
Sweet star! When wearied Nature sinks to sleep,
And all is hushed,—all, save the voice of Love,
Whose broken murmurings swell the balmy blast
10
Of soft Favonius, which at intervals
Sighs in the ear of stillness, art thou aught but
Lulling the slaves of interest to repose
With that mild, pitying gaze? Oh, I would look
In thy dear beam till every bond of sense
15
Became enamoured—–
TO MARY, WHO DIED IN THIS OPINION
I
MAIDEN, quench the glare of sorrow
Struggling in thine haggard eye:
Firmness dare to borrow
From the wreck of destiny;
5
For the ray morn’s bloom revealing
Can never boast so bright an hue
As that which mocks concealing,
And sheds its loveliest light on you.
II
Yet is the tie departed
10
Which bound thy lovely soul to bliss?
Has it left thee broken-hearted
In a world so cold as this?
Yet, though, fainting fair one,
Sorrow’s self thy cup has given,
15
Dream thou’lt meet thy dear one,
Never more to part, in Heaven.
III
Existence would I barter
For a dream so dear as thine,
And smile to die a martyr
20
On affection’s bloodless shrine.
Nor would I change for pleasure
That withered hand and ashy cheek,
If my heart enshrined a treasure
Such as forces thine to break.
A TALE OF SOCIETY AS IT IS: FROM FACTS, 1811
I
SHE was an agèd woman; and the years
Which she had numbered on her toilsome way
Had bowed her natural powers to decay.
She was an agèd woman; yet the ray
5
Which faintly glimmered through her starting tears,
Pressed into light by silent misery,
Hath soul’s imperishable energy.
She was a cripple, and incapable
To add one mite to gold-fed luxury:
10
And therefore did her spirit dimly feel
That poverty, the crime of tainting stain,
Would merge her in its depths, never to rise again.
II
One only son’s love had supported her.
She long had struggled with infirmity,
15
Lingering to human life-scenes; for to die,
When fate has spared to rend some mental tie,
Would many wish, and surely fewer dare.
But, when the tyrant’s blood hounds forced the child
For his cursed power unhallowed arms to wield—
20
Bend to another’s will—be come a thing
More senseless than the sword of battlefield—
Then did she feel keen sorrow’s keenest sting;
And many years had passed ere comfort they would bring.
III
For seven years did this poor woman live
25
In unparticipated solitude.
Thou mightst have seen her in the forest rude
Picking the scattered remnants of its wood.
If human, thou mightst then have learned to grieve.
The gleanings of precarious charity
30
Her scantiness of food did scarce supply.
The proofs of an unspeaking sorrow dwelt
Within her ghastly hollowness of eye:
Each arrow of the season’s change she felt.
Yet still she groans, ere yet her race were run,
35
One only hope: it was—once more to see her son.
IV
It was an eve of June, when every star
Spoke peace from Heaven to those on earth that live.
She rested on the moor, ’Twas such an eve
When first her soul began indeed to grieve:
40
Then he was here; now he is very far.
The sweetness of the balmy evening
A sorrow o’er her agèd soul did fling,
Yet not devoid of rapture’s mingled tear:
A balm was in the poison of the sting.
45
This agèd sufferer for many a year
Had never felt such comfort. She suppressed
A sigh—and turning round, clasped William to her breast!
V
And, though his form was wasted by the woe
Which tyrants on their victims love to wreak,
50
Though his sunk eyeballs and his faded cheek
Of slavery’s violence and scorn did speak,
Yet did the agèd woman’s bosom glow.
The vital fire seemed re-illumed within
By this sweet unexpected welcoming.
55
Oh, consummation of the fondest hope
That ever soared on Fancy’s wildest wing!
Oh, tenderness that foundst so sweet a scope!
Prince who dost pride thee on thy mighty sway,
When thou canst feel such love, thou shalt be great as they!
VI
60
Her son, compelled, the country’s foes had fought,
Had bled in battle; and the stern control
Which ruled his sinews and coerced his soul
Utterly poisoned life’s unmingled bowl,
And unsubduable evils on him brought.
65
He was the shadow of the lusty child
Who, when the time of summer season smiled,
Did earn for her a meal of honesty,
And with affectionate discourse beguiled
The keen attacks of pain and poverty;
70
Till Power, as envying her this only joy,
From her maternal bosom tore the unhappy boy.
VII
And now cold charity’s unwelcome dole
Was insufficient to support the pair;
And they would perish rather than would bear
75
The law’; stern slavery, and the insolent stare
With which law loves to rend the poor man’s soul—
The bitter scorn, the spirit-sinking noise
The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley Page 128
