Selected Poems and Prose

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  The relations of things remain unchanged by whatever system. By the word things is to be understood any object of thought, that is, any thought upon which any other thought is employed, with an apprehension of distinction. The relations of these remain unchanged; and such is the material of our knowledge.

  What is the cause of life?—that is, how was it preceded,10 or what agencies distinct from life, have acted or act upon life? All recorded generations of mankind have wearily busied themselves in inventing answers to this question. And the result has been … Religion. Yet, that the basis of11 all things cannot be, as the popular philosophy alledges, mind is sufficiently evident. Mind, as far as we have any experience of its properties, and beyond that experience how vain is argument, cannot create, it can only perceive. It is said also to be the Cause. But cause is only a word expressing a certain state of the human mind with regard to the manner in which two thoughts12 are apprehended to be related to each other.—If any one desires to know how unsatisfactorily the popular philosophy employs itself upon this great question, they need only impartially reflect upon the manner in which thoughts develope themselves in their minds.—It is infinitely improbable that the cause of mind, that is, of existence, is similar to mind. It is said that mind produces motion and it might as well have been said that motion produces mind.

  The Coliseum1

  At the hour of noon on the feast of the passover, an old man accompanied by a girl apparently his daughter entered the Coliseum at Rome. They immediately past thro’ the Arena, and seeking a solitary chasm among the arches of the southern part of the ruin, selected a fallen column for their seat, and, clasping each other’s hands, sate as in silent contemplation of the scene. But the eyes of the girl were fixed upon her father’s lips, and his countenance sublime and sweet, but motionless as some Praxitelean image of the greatest of poets,2 filled the silent air with smiles not reflected from external forms.

  It was the great feast of the resurrection, and the whole native population of Rome, together with all the foreigners who flock from all parts of the earth to contemplate its celebration, were assembled round the Vatican. The most awful3 religion of the world went forth surrounded by the emblazonry of mortal greatness, and mankind had assembled to wonder at and to worship the creations of their own power. No straggler was to be met with in the streets and grassy lanes which led to the Coliseum—the father and daughter had sought this spot immediately on their arrival.

  A figure only visible at Rome in night or solitude, and then only to be seen amid the desolated temples of the Forum,4 or gliding among the weed-grown galleries of the Coliseum, crost their path—His form which, tho’ emaciated, displayed the elementary outlines of exquisite grace, was enveloped in an antient clamys5—which half-concealed his face. His snow white feet were fitted with ivory sandals delicately sculptured in the likeness of two female figures whose wings met upon the heel and whose eager and half-divided lips seemed quivering to meet. It was a face once seen never to be forgotten—the mouth and the moulding of the chin resembled the eager and impassioned tenderness of the statues of Antinous6—but instead of the effeminate sullenness of the eye and the narrow smoothness of the forehead shone an expression of profound and piercing thought; the brow was clear and open and his eyes deep, like two wells of christalline water which reflect the all-beholding heavens. Over all was spread a timid expression of womanish tenderness and hesitation which contrasted yet intermingled strangely with the abstracted and fearless character that predominated in his form and gestures.7

  He avoided in an extraordinary degree all communication with the Italians, whose language he seemed scarcely to understand, but was occasionally seen to converse with some accomplished foreigner whose gestures and appearance might attract him amid his solemn haunts. He spoke Latin and especially Greek with fluency and with a peculiar but sweet accent—he had apparently acquired a knowledge of the northern languages of Europe. There was no circumstance connected with him that gave the least intimation of his country, his origin or his occupations. His dress was strange but splendid and solemn. He was forever alone. The literati of Rome thought him a curiosity but there was something in his manner unintelligible but impressive which awed their obtrusions8 into distance and silence. The countrymen whose path he rarely crost returning by starlight from their market at Campo Vaccino called him with that strange mixture of religious and historical ideas so common in Italy, Il Diavolo di Bruto.9

  Such was the figure which interrupted the contemplations (if they were so engaged) of the strangers by addressing them in the clear and exact but unidiomatic phrases of their native language—

  ‘Strangers, you are two—behold the third in this great city to whom alone the spectacle of these mighty ruins is more delightful than the mockeries of a superstition which destroyed them.’

  ‘I see nothing,’ said the old man.

  ‘What do you here then?’

  ‘I listen to the sweet singing of the birds, and the sound of my daughter’s breathing composes me like the soft murmur of waters—and I feel the sun-warm wind, and this is pleasant to me.’

  ‘Wretched old man, know you not that these are the ruins of the Coliseum?’

  ‘Alas! stranger,’ said the girl in a voice like mournful music, ‘speak not so—he is blind.’

  The stranger’s eyes were suddenly filled with tears and the lines of his countenance became relaxed. ‘Blind!’ he exclaimed in a tone of suffering which was more than an apology and seated himself apart on a flight of shattered and mossy stairs which wound up among the labyrinths of the ruin.

  ‘My sweet Helen,’ said the old man, ‘you did not tell me that this was the Coliseum.’

  ‘How should I tell you, dearest father, what I knew not—I was on the point of enquiring the way to that building when we entered this circle of ruins—and until the stranger accosted us I remained silent, subdued by the greatness of what I see.’

  ‘It is your custom, sweetest child, to describe to me the objects that give you delight—you array them in the soft radiance of your words, and whilst you speak I only feel the infirmity which holds me in such dear dependance as a blessing. Why have you been silent now?’

  ‘I know not—first the wonder and pleasure of the sight—then the words of the stranger, and then thinking on what he had said and how he had looked—and now, beloved father, your own words.’

  ‘Well, I speak no more. What do you see?’

  ‘I see a great circle of arches built upon arches, and walls giddily hanging upon walls, and stones like shattered crags overhanging the solid wall. In the crevices and on the vaulted roofs grow a multitude of shrubs, the wild olive and the myrtle—and intricate brambles and entangled weeds and plants I never saw before. The stones are immensely massive and they jut out one from the other. There are terrible rifts in the wall, and broad windows through which you see the blue heaven—There seems to be more than a thousand arches—some ruined, some entire, and they are all immensely high and wide—Some are shattered and stand forth in great heaps and the underwood is tufted on their crumbling summits—Around us lie enormous columns shattered and shapeless—and fragments of capitals and cornice fretted with delicate sculptures.’

  ‘It is open to the blue sky?’ said the old man.

  ‘Yes. We see the liquid depth of Heaven above through the rifts and the windows; and the flowers and the weeds and the grass and creeping moss are nourished by its unforbidden rain—The blue sky is above, the wide bright blue sky—it flows thro’ the great rents on high—and through the bare boughs of the marble-rooted fig-tree, and through the leaves and flowers of the weeds even to the dark arcades beneath—I see—I feel its clear and piercing beams fill the universe10 and impregnate the joy-inspiring wind with warmth and light and interpenetrate all things, even me. Yes, and through the highest rift the noonday waning moon is hanging as it were out of the solid sky and this shews that the atmosphere has all the clearness which it rejoices me that you feel.’


  ‘What else see you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Only the bright green mossy ground, speckled by tufts of dewy clover grass that run into the interstices of the shattered arches and round the isolated pinnacles of ruin.’

  ‘Like the lawny dells of soft short grass which wind among the pine forests and precipices in the Alps of Savoy.’

  ‘Indeed, father, your eye has a vision more serene than mine.’

  ‘And the great wrecked arches—the shattered masses of precipitous ruin, overgrown with the younglings of the forest and more like chasms rent by an earthquake among the mountains than like the vestige of what was human workmanship—What are they?’

  ‘Things awe-inspiring and wonderful.’

  ‘Are they not caverns such as the untamed elephant might chuse amid the Indian wilderness wherein to hide her cubs—such as, were the sea to overflow the earth, the mightiest monsters of the deep would change into their spacious chambers?’11

  ‘Father, your words image forth what I would have expressed, but alas could not.’

  ‘I hear the rustling of leaves and the sound of waters, but it does not rain, like the fast drops of a fountain among woods.’

  ‘It falls from among the heaps of ruin over our heads—it is, I suppose—the water collected in the rifts by the showers—’

  ‘A nursling of Man’s art abandoned by his care and transformed by the inchantment of Nature into a likeness of her own creations, and destined to partake their immortality. Changed into a mountain cloven with woody dells which overhang its labyrinthine glades, and shattered into toppling precipices—Even the clouds intercepted by its craggy summit12 feed its eternal fountains with their rain. By the column on which I sit I should judge that it had once been crowned by a temple or a theatre, and that on sacred days the radiant multitude wound up its craggy path to the spectacle of the sacrifize. It was such itself! Helen, what sound of wings is that?’

  ‘It is the wild pigeons returning to their young. Do you not hear the murmur of those that are brooding in their nests?’

  ‘Aye, it is the language of their happiness. They are as happy as we are, child, but in a different manner. They know not the sensations which this ruin excites within us. Yet it is pleasure to them to inhabit it, and the succession of its forms as they pass is connected with associations in their minds sacred to them as these to us. The internal nature of each being is surrounded by a circle not to be surmounted by his fellows; and it is this repulsion which constitutes the misfortune of the condition of life.13 But there is a circle which comprehends as well as one which mutually excludes all things which feel. And with respect to man, his public and private happiness consists in diminishing the circumference which includes those resembling himself until they become one with him and he with them. It is because we enter into the meditations, designs and destinies of something beyond ourselves that the contemplation of the ruins of human power excites an elevating sense of awfulness and beauty. It is therefore that the Ocean, the glacier, the cataract, the tempest, the Volcano, have each a Spirit which animates the extremities of our frame with tingling joy.14 It is therefore that the singing of birds and the motion of leaves, the sensation of the odorous earth beneath and the freshness of the living wind around, is sweet. And this is Love. This is the religion of eternity whose votaries have been exiled from among the multitude of mankind. O Power,’ cried the old man, lifting his sightless eyes towards the undazzling sun, ‘thou which interpenetratest all things, and without whom this glorious world were a blind and formless Chaos; Love, Author of good, God, King, Father, Friend of these thy worshippers. Two solitary hearts invoke thee. May they be divided never. If the contentions of mankind have been their misery, if to give and seek that happiness which thou art has been their choice and destiny, if in the contemplation of these majestic records of the power of their kind they see the shadow and [?the] prophecy of that which thou mayst have decreed that he should become; if the justice, the liberty, the loveliness, the truth which are thy footsteps [?have been sought by them,]15 divide them not. It is thine to unite, to eternize, to make outlive the grave those who have left the living memorials of thee. When this frame shall be senseless dust, may the hopes and the desires and the delights which animate it now, never be extinguished in my child; even, as if she were borne into the tomb, my memory would be the written monument of all her nameless excellencies.’

  The old man’s countenance and gestures radiant with the inspiration of his words sunk as he ceased into more than their accustomed calmness, for he heard his daughter’s sobs, and remembered that he had spoken of death.

  ‘My father, how can I outlive you?’ said Helen.

  ‘Do not let us talk of death,’ said the old man, suddenly changing his tone. ‘Heraclitus indeed died at my age, and if I had so sour a disposition,16 there might be some danger for me. But Democritus reached 120 by the mere dint of a joyous and unconquerable mind; he only died at last because he had no gentle and beloved ministering spirit like my Helen for whom it would have been his delight to live. You remember his gay old sister requested him to put off starving himself to death until he had returned from the festival of Ceres, alledging that it would spoil her holiday if he refused to comply, as it was not permitted to appear in the procession immediately after the death of a relation; and how good-temperedly the sage acceded to her request.’17

  The old man could not see his daughter’s grateful smile but he felt the pressure of her hand by which it was expressed. ‘In truth,’ he continued, ‘that mystery, Death, is a change which neither for ourselves nor for others is a just object of hope or fear. We know not if it be good or evil, we only know, it is. The old, the young, may alike die; no time, no place, no age, no foresight exempts us from death and the chance of death. We have no knowledge if death be a state of sensation, of any precaution which can make those sensations fortunate, if the existing series of events shall not produce that effect. Think not of death, or think of it as something common to us all. It has happened,’ said he with a deep and suffering voice, ‘that men have buried their children.’

  ‘Alas! then, dearest father, how I pity you.—Let us speak no more.’

  They arose to depart from the Coliseum, but the figure which had first accosted them interposed itself.

  ‘Lady,’ he said, ‘if grief be an expiation of error, I have grieved deeply for the words which I spoke to your father. The men who antiently inhabited this spot, and those from whom they learned their wisdom,18 respected infirmity and age. If I have rashly violated that venerable form at once majestic and defenceless, may I be forgiven?’

  ‘It gives me pain to see how much your mistake afflicts you. That is my father,’ she said; ‘if you can forget, doubt not that we forgive.’

  ‘You thought me one of those who are blind in spirit,’ said the old man, ‘and who deserve, if any human being can deserve, contempt and blame. Assuredly, contemplating this monument as I do, tho’ in the mirror of my daughter’s mind, I am filled with astonishment and delight; the spirit of departed generations seems to animate my limbs19 and the life of extinguished ages circulate thro’ all the fibres of my frame. Stranger, if I have expressed what you have ever felt, let us know each other more.’

  ‘The sound of your voice and the harmony of your thoughts is delightful to me,’ said the youth, ‘and it is pleasure to see any form which expresses so much beauty and goodness as your daughter’s; if you reward me for my rudeness by allowing me to know you, my error is already expiated; and you remember my ill words no more. I live a solitary life, and it is rare that I encounter any stranger with whom it is pleasant to talk; besides, their meditations, even though they be learned, do not always agree with mine, and though I can pardon this difference, they cannot. Nor have I ever explained the cause of the dress I wear and the difference which I perceive between my language and manners and those with whom I have intercourse. Not but that it is painful to me to live without c
ommunion with intelligent and affectionate beings. You are such, I feel: and20

  Related Passage

  Nor does a recollection of the use to which it may have been destined interfere with these emotions. Time has thrown its purple shadow athwart this scene, and no more is visible than the broad and everlasting character of human strength and genius, that pledge of all that is to be admirable and lovely in ages yet to come. Solemn temples, [?palaces]1 where the senate of the world assembled, triumphal arches and cloud-surrounded columns loaded with the sculptured annals of conquest and domination—What actions and deliberations have they been destined to inclose and to commemorate? Superstitious rites, which in their mildest form outrage reason and obscure the moral sense of mankind; schemes for wide extended murder and devastation and misrule and servitude; and lastly these schemes brought to their tremendous consummations and a human being returning in the midst of festival and solemn joy2 with thousands and thousands of his inslaved and desolated species chained behind his chariot exhibiting, as titles to renown, the labour of ages and the admired creations of genius overthrown by the brutal force which was placed as a sword within his hand; and, contemplation fearful and abhorred! he himself, a being capable of the gentlest and best emotions, inspired with the persuasion that he has done a virtuous deed—We forget not these things.