Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
75 And thine doth like an angel sit
Beside the helm conducting it,
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
It seems to float ever, for ever,
Upon that many-winding river,
80 Between mountains, woods, abysses,
A paradise of wildernesses!
Till, like one in slumber bound,
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound.
85 Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions
In Music’s most serene dominions,
Catching the winds that fan that happy Heaven.
And we sail on, away, afar,
Without a course, without a star,
90But by the instinct of sweet music driven;
Till through Elysian garden islets
By thee, most beautiful of pilots,
Where never mortal pinnace glided,
The boat of my desire is guided:
95Realms where the air we breathe is Love,
Which in the winds and on the waves doth move,
Harmonizing this Earth with what we feel above.
We have past Age’s icy caves,
And Manhood’s dark and tossing waves,
100And Youth’s smooth ocean, smiling to betray:
Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee
Of shadow-peopled Infancy,
Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day;
A paradise of vaulted bowers
105 Lit by downward-gazing flowers,
And watery paths that wind between
Wildernesses calm and green,
Peopled by shapes too bright to see,
And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee;
110Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously!
End of the Second Act
ACT III
Scene i
Heaven. JUPITER on his Throne; THETIS and the other Deities assembled.
Jupiter
Ye congregated Powers of Heaven, who share
The glory and the strength of him ye serve,
Rejoice! henceforth I am omnipotent.
All else had been subdued to me; alone
5The soul of man, like unextinguished fire,
Yet burns towards Heaven with fierce reproach, and doubt,
And lamentation, and reluctant prayer,
Hurling up insurrection, which might make
Our antique empire insecure, though built
10On eldest faith, and Hell’s coeval, fear;
And though my curses through the pendulous air,
Like snow on herbless peaks, fall flake by flake,
And cling to it; though under my wrath’s night
It climb the crags of life, step after step,
15Which wound it, as ice wounds unsandalled feet,
It yet remains supreme o’er misery,
Aspiring, unrepressed; yet soon to fall:
Even now have I begotten a strange wonder,
That fatal child, the terror of the earth,
20Who waits but till the destined Hour arrive,
Bearing from Demogorgon’s vacant throne
The dreadful might of ever-living limbs
Which clothed that awful spirit unbeheld,
To redescend, and trample out the spark.
25Pour forth Heaven’s wine, Idaean Ganymede,
And let it fill the daedal cups like fire,
And from the flower-inwoven soil divine
Ye all-triumphant harmonies arise,
As dew from earth under the twilight stars:
30Drink! be the nectar circling through your veins
The soul of joy, ye ever-living Gods,
Till exultation burst in one wide voice
Like music from Elysian winds.
And thou
Ascend beside me, veiled in the light
35Of the desire which makes thee one with me,
Thetis, bright Image of Eternity!
When thou didst cry, ‘Insufferable might!
God! Spare me! I sustain not the quick flames,
The penetrating presence; all my being,
40Like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw
Into a dew with poison, is dissolved,
Sinking through its foundations’—even then
Two mighty spirits, mingling, made a third
Mightier than either, which, unbodied now
45Between us, floats, felt although unbeheld,
Waiting the incarnation, which ascends
(Hear ye the thunder of the fiery wheels
Griding the winds?) from Demogorgon’s throne.
Victory! victory! Feel’st thou not, O world,
50The earthquake of his chariot thundering up
Olympus?
[The Car of the HOUR arrives. DEMOGORGON descends and moves towards the Throne of JUPITER
Awful shape, what art thou? Speak!
Demogorgon
Eternity. Demand no direr name.
Descend, and follow me down the abyss.
I am thy child, as thou wert Saturn’s child;
55Mightier than thee: and we must dwell together
Henceforth in darkness. Lift thy lightnings not.
The tyranny of Heaven none may retain,
Or reassume, or hold, succeeding thee:
Yet if thou wilt—as ’tis the destiny
60Of trodden worms to writhe till they are dead—
Put forth thy might.
Jupiter
Detested prodigy!
Even thus beneath the deep Titanian prisons
I trample thee! thou lingerest?
Mercy! mercy!
No pity, no release, no respite! … Oh,
65That thou wouldst make mine enemy my judge,
Even where he hangs, seared by my long revenge,
On Caucasus!—he would not doom me thus.
Gentle, and just, and dreadless, is he not
The monarch of the world? What then art thou?
70No refuge! no appeal!
Sink with me then,
We two will sink on the wide waves of ruin,
Even as a vulture and a snake outspent
Drop, twisted in inextricable fight,
Into a shoreless sea. Let hell unlock
75Its mounded oceans of tempestuous fire,
And whelm on them into the bottomless void
This desolated world, and thee, and me,
The conqueror and the conquered, and the wreck
Of that for which they combated.
Ai! Ai!
80The elements obey me not … I sink …
Dizzily down—ever, for ever, down;
And, like a cloud, mine enemy above
Darkens my fall with victory! Ai! Ai!
Scene ii
The Mouth of a great River in the Island Atlantis. OCEAN is discovered reclining near the Shore; APOLLO stands beside him.
Ocean
He fell, thou sayest, beneath his conqueror’s frown?
Apollo
Aye, when the strife was ended which made dim
The orb I rule, and shook the solid stars.
The terrors of his eye illumined Heaven
5With sanguine light, through the thick ragged skirts
Of the victorious Darkness, as he fell:
Like the last glare of day’s red agony,
Which, from a rent among the fiery clouds,
Burns far along the tempest-wrinkled Deep.
Ocean
10He sunk to the abyss? to the dark void?
Apollo
An eagle so, caught in some bursting cloud
On Caucasus, his thunder-baffled wings
Entangled in the whirlwind, and his eyes
Which gazed on the undazzling sun, now blinded
15By the white lightning, while the ponderous hail
Beats on his struggling form
, which sinks at length
Prone, and the aërial ice clings over it.
Ocean
Henceforth the fields of Heaven-reflecting sea
Which are my realm, will heave, unstained with blood,
20Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of corn
Swayed by the summer air; my streams will flow
Round many-peopled continents, and round
Fortunate isles; and from their glassy thrones
Blue Proteus and his humid nymphs shall mark
25The shadow of fair ships, as mortals see
The floating bark of the light-laden moon
With that white star, its sightless pilot’s crest,
Borne down the rapid sunset’s ebbing sea;
Tracking their path no more by blood and groans,
30And desolation, and the mingled voice
Of slavery and command—but by the light
Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours,
And music soft, and mild, free, gentle voices,
That sweetest music, such as spirits love.
Apollo
35And I shall gaze not on the deeds which make
My mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipse
Darkens the sphere I guide—but list, I hear
The small, clear, silver lute of the young Spirit
That sits i’ the morning star.
Ocean
Thou must away?
40Thy steeds will pause at even—till when, farewell.
The loud deep calls me home even now to feed it
With azure calm out of the emerald urns
Which stand forever full beside my throne.
Behold the Nereids under the green sea,
45Their wavering limbs borne on the wind-like stream,
Their white arms lifted o’er their streaming hair
With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns,
Hastening to grace their mighty sister’s joy.
[A sound of waves is heard.
It is the unpastured sea hungering for calm.
50Peace, monster; I come now. Farewell.
Apollo
Farewell.
Scene iii
Caucasus. PROMETHEUS, HERCULES, IONE, the EARTH, SPIRITS; ASIA and PANTHEA borne in the Car with the SPIRIT OF THE HOUR.
[HERCULES unbinds PROMETHEUS, who descends.
Hercules
Most glorious among spirits, thus doth strength
To wisdom, courage, and long-suffering love,
And thee, who art the form they animate,
Minister like a slave.
Prometheus
Thy gentle words
5Are sweeter even than freedom long desired
And long delayed.
Asia, thou light of life,
Shadow of beauty unbeheld; and ye,
Fair sister nymphs, who made long years of pain
Sweet to remember, through your love and care;
10Henceforth we will not part. There is a Cave
All overgrown with trailing odorous plants,
Which curtain out the day with leaves and flowers,
And paved with veined emerald, and a fountain
Leaps in the midst with an awakening sound.
15From its curved roof the mountain’s frozen tears,
Like snow, or silver, or long diamond spires,
Hang downward, raining forth a doubtful light;
And there is heard the ever-moving air,
Whispering without from tree to tree, and birds,
20And bees; and all around are mossy seats,
And the rough walls are clothed with long soft grass;
A simple dwelling, which shall be our own;
Where we will sit and talk of time and change,
As the world ebbs and flows, ourselves unchanged—
25What can hide man from mutability?
And if ye sigh, then I will smile; and thou,
Ione, shalt chaunt fragments of sea-music,
Until I weep, when ye shall smile away
The tears she brought, which yet were sweet to shed.
30We will entangle buds and flowers and beams
Which twinkle on the fountain’s brim, and make
Strange combinations out of common things,
Like human babes in their brief innocence;
And we will search, with looks and words of love,
35For hidden thoughts, each lovelier than the last,
Our unexhausted spirits, and like lutes
Touched by the skill of the enamoured wind,
Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new,
From difference sweet where discord cannot be;
40And hither come, sped on the charmed winds
Which meet from all the points of heaven, as bees
From every flower aërial Enna feeds
At their known island-homes in Himera,
The echoes of the human world, which tell
45Of the low voice of love, almost unheard,
And dove-eyed pity’s murmured pain, and music,
Itself the echo of the heart, and all
That tempers or improves man’s life, now free;
And lovely apparitions, dim at first,
50Then radiant, as the mind, arising bright
From the embrace of beauty, whence the forms
Of which these are the phantoms, casts on them
The gathered rays which are reality,
Shall visit us, the progeny immortal
55Of Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy,
And arts, though unimagined, yet to be.
The wandering voices and the shadows these
Of all that man becomes, the mediators
Of that best worship, love, by him and us
60Given and returned; swift shapes and sounds, which grow
More fair and soft as man grows wise and kind,
And veil by veil, evil and error fall …
Such virtue has the cave and place around.
[Turning to the SPIRIT OF THE HOUR.
For thee, fair Spirit, one toil remains. Ione,
65Give her that curved shell, which Proteus old
Made Asia’s nuptial boon, breathing within it
A voice to be accomplished, and which thou
Didst hide in grass under the hollow rock.
Ione
Thou most desired Hour, more loved and lovely
70Than all thy sisters, this is the mystic shell;
See the pale azure fading into silver
Lining it with a soft yet glowing light:
Looks it not like lulled music sleeping there?
Spirit
It seems in truth the fairest shell of Ocean:
75Its sound must be at once both sweet and strange.
Prometheus
Go, borne over the cities of mankind
On whirlwind-footed coursers: once again
Outspeed the sun around the orbed world;
And as thy chariot cleaves the kindling air,
80Thou breathe into the many-folded shell,
Loosening its mighty music; it shall be
As thunder mingled with clear echoes: then
Return; and thou shalt dwell beside our cave.
[Kissing the ground.
And thou, O Mother Earth!—
The Earth
I hear, I feel;
85Thy lips are on me, and thy touch runs down
Even to the adamantine central gloom
Along these marble nerves; ’tis life, ’tis joy,
And through my withered, old, and icy frame
The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down
90Circling. Henceforth the many children fair
Folded in my sustaining arms—all plants,
And creeping forms, and insects rainbow-winged,
And birds, and beasts, and fish, and human shapes,
Which drew disease and pain from my wan bosom,
95Draining
the poison of despair—shall take
And interchange sweet nutriment; to me
Shall they become like sister-antelopes
By one fair dam, snow-white and swift as wind,
Nursed among lilies near a brimming stream.
100The dew-mists of my sunless sleep shall float
Under the stars like balm; night-folded flowers
Shall suck unwithering hues in their repose:
And men and beasts in happy dreams shall gather
Strength for the coming day, and all its joy:
105And death shall be the last embrace of her
Who takes the life she gave, even as a mother
Folding her child, says, ‘Leave me not again!’
Asia
O mother! wherefore speak the name of death?
Cease they to love, and move, and breathe, and speak,
110Who die?
The Earth
It would not avail to reply:
Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known
But to the uncommunicating dead.
Death is the veil which those who live call life:
They sleep, and it is lifted: and meanwhile
115In mild variety the seasons mild—
With rainbow-skirted showers, and odorous winds,
And long blue meteors cleansing the dull night,
And the life-kindling shafts of the keen sun’s
All-piercing bow, and the dew-mingled rain
120Of the calm moonbeams, a soft influence mild—
Shall clothe the forests and the fields—aye, even
The crag-built deserts of the barren deep—
With ever-living leaves, and fruits, and flowers.
And Thou! There is a Cavern where my spirit
125Was panted forth in anguish whilst thy pain
Made my heart mad, and those who did inhale it
Became mad too, and built a temple there,
And spoke, and were oracular, and lured
The erring nations round to mutual war,
130And faithless faith, such as Jove kept with thee;
Which breath now rises, as amongst tall weeds
A violet’s exhalation, and it fills
With a serener light and crimson air
Intense, yet soft, the rocks and woods around;
135It feeds the quick growth of the serpent vine,
And the dark linked ivy tangling wild,
And budding, blown, or odour-faded blooms
Which star the winds with points of coloured light
As they rain through them, and bright golden globes
Selected Poems and Prose Page 29