Percy Bysshe Shelley - Delphi Poets Series

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Percy Bysshe Shelley - Delphi Poets Series Page 113

by Percy Bysshe Shelley


  Which star the winds with points of colored light

  As they rain through them, and bright golden globes

  Of fruit suspended in their own green heaven, 140

  And through their veinèd leaves and amber stems

  The flowers whose purple and translucid bowls

  Stand ever mantling with aërial dew,

  The drink of spirits; and it circles round,

  Like the soft waving wings of noonday dreams,

  Inspiring calm and happy thoughts, like mine,

  Now thou art thus restored. This cave is thine.

  Arise! Appear!

  [A SPIRIT rises in the likeness of a winged child.

  This is my torch-bearer;

  Who let his lamp out in old time with gazing

  On eyes from which he kindled it anew 150

  With love, which is as fire, sweet daughter mine,

  For such is that within thine own. Run, wayward,

  And guide this company beyond the peak

  Of Bacchic Nysa, Mænad-haunted mountain,

  And beyond Indus and its tribute rivers,

  Trampling the torrent streams and glassy lakes

  With feet unwet, unwearied, undelaying,

  And up the green ravine, across the vale,

  Beside the windless and crystalline pool,

  Where ever lies, on unerasing waves, 160

  The image of a temple, built above,

  Distinct with column, arch, and architrave,

  And palm-like capital, and overwrought,

  And populous most with living imagery,

  Praxitelean shapes, whose marble smiles

  Fill the hushed air with everlasting love.

  It is deserted now, but once it bore

  Thy name, Prometheus; there the emulous youths

  Bore to thy honor through the divine gloom

  The lamp which was thine emblem; even as those 170

  Who bear the untransmitted torch of hope

  Into the grave, across the night of life,

  As thou hast borne it most triumphantly

  To this far goal of Time. Depart, farewell!

  Beside that temple is the destined cave.

  SCENE IV. — A Forest. In the background a Cave. PROMETHEUS, ASIA, PANTHEA, IONE, and the SPIRIT OF THE EARTH.

  IONE

  Sister, it is not earthly; how it glides

  Under the leaves! how on its head there burns

  A light, like a green star, whose emerald beams

  Are twined with its fair hair! how, as it moves,

  The splendor drops in flakes upon the grass!

  Knowest thou it?

  PANTHEA

  It is the delicate spirit

  That guides the earth through heaven. From afar

  The populous constellations call that light

  The loveliest of the planets; and sometimes

  It floats along the spray of the salt sea, 10

  Or makes its chariot of a foggy cloud,

  Or walks through fields or cities while men sleep,

  Or o’er the mountain tops, or down the rivers,

  Or through the green waste wilderness, as now,

  Wondering at all it sees. Before Jove reigned

  It loved our sister Asia, and it came

  Each leisure hour to drink the liquid light

  Out of her eyes, for which it said it thirsted

  As one bit by a dipsas, and with her

  It made its childish confidence, and told her 20

  All it had known or seen, for it saw much,

  Yet idly reasoned what it saw; and called her,

  For whence it sprung it knew not, nor do I,

  Mother, dear mother.

  THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH, running to ASIA

  Mother, dearest mother!

  May I then talk with thee as I was wont?

  May I then hide my eyes in thy soft arms,

  After thy looks have made them tired of joy?

  May I then play beside thee the long noons,

  When work is none in the bright silent air?

  ASIA

  I love thee, gentlest being, and henceforth 30

  Can cherish thee unenvied. Speak, I pray;

  Thy simple talk once solaced, now delights.

  SPIRIT OF THE EARTH

  Mother, I am grown wiser, though a child

  Cannot be wise like thee, within this day;

  And happier too; happier and wiser both.

  Thou knowest that toads, and snakes, and loathly worms,

  And venomous and malicious beasts, and boughs

  That bore ill berries in the woods, were ever

  An hindrance to my walks o’er the green world;

  And that, among the haunts of humankind, 40

  Hard-featured men, or with proud, angry looks,

  Or cold, staid gait, or false and hollow smiles,

  Or the dull sneer of self-loved ignorance,

  Or other such foul masks, with which ill thoughts

  Hide that fair being whom we spirits call man;

  And women too, ugliest of all things evil,

  (Though fair, even in a world where thou art fair,

  When good and kind, free and sincere like thee)

  When false or frowning made me sick at heart

  To pass them, though they slept, and I unseen. 50

  Well, my path lately lay through a great city

  Into the woody hills surrounding it;

  A sentinel was sleeping at the gate;

  When there was heard a sound, so loud, it shook

  The towers amid the moonlight, yet more sweet

  Than any voice but thine, sweetest of all;

  A long, long sound, as it would never end;

  And all the inhabitants leapt suddenly

  Out of their rest, and gathered in the streets,

  Looking in wonder up to Heaven, while yet 60

  The music pealed along. I hid myself

  Within a fountain in the public square,

  Where I lay like the reflex of the moon

  Seen in a wave under green leaves; and soon

  Those ugly human shapes and visages

  Of which I spoke as having wrought me pain,

  Passed floating through the air and fading still

  Into the winds that scattered them; and those

  From whom they passed seemed mild and lovely forms

  After some foul disguise had fallen, and all 70

  Were somewhat changed, and after brief surprise

  And greetings of delighted wonder, all

  Went to their sleep again; and when the dawn

  Came, wouldst thou think that toads, and snakes, and efts,

  Could e’er be beautiful? yet so they were,

  And that with little change of shape or hue;

  All things had put their evil nature off;

  I cannot tell my joy, when o’er a lake,

  Upon a drooping bough with nightshade twined,

  I saw two azure halcyons clinging downward 80

  And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries,

  With quick long beaks, and in the deep there lay

  Those lovely forms imaged as in a sky;

  So with my thoughts full of these happy changes,

  We meet again, the happiest change of all.

  ASIA

  And never will we part, till thy chaste sister,

  Who guides the frozen and inconstant moon,

  Will look on thy more warm and equal light

  Till her heart thaw like flakes of April snow,

  And love thee.

  SPIRIT OF THE EARTH

  What! as Asia loves Prometheus? 90

  ASIA

  Peace, wanton! thou art yet not old enough.

  Think ye by gazing on each other’s eyes

  To multiply your lovely selves, and fill

  With spherèd fires the interlunar air?

  SPIRIT OF THE EARTH

  Nay, mother, while m
y sister trims her lamp

  ‘T is hard I should go darkling.

  ASIA

  Listen; look!

  The SPIRIT OF THE HOUR enters

  PROMETHEUS

  We feel what thou hast heard and seen; yet speak.

  SPIRIT OF THE HOUR

  Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled

  The abysses of the sky and the wide earth,

  There was a change; the impalpable thin air 100

  And the all-circling sunlight were transformed,

  As if the sense of love, dissolved in them,

  Had folded itself round the spherèd world.

  My vision then grew clear, and I could see

  Into the mysteries of the universe.

  Dizzy as with delight I floated down;

  Winnowing the lightsome air with languid plumes,

  My coursers sought their birthplace in the sun,

  Where they henceforth will live exempt from toil,

  Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire, 110

  And where my moonlike car will stand within

  A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms

  Of thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and me,

  And you, fair nymphs, looking the love we feel, —

  In memory of the tidings it has borne, —

  Beneath a dome fretted with graven flowers,

  Poised on twelve columns of resplendent stone,

  And open to the bright and liquid sky.

  Yoked to it by an amphisbenic snake

  The likeness of those wingèd steeds will mock 120

  The flight from which they find repose. Alas,

  Whither has wandered now my partial tongue

  When all remains untold which ye would hear?

  As I have said, I floated to the earth;

  It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss

  To move, to breathe, to be. I wandering went

  Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind,

  And first was disappointed not to see

  Such mighty change as I had felt within

  Expressed in outward things; but soon I looked, 130

  And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked

  One with the other even as spirits do —

  None fawned, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear,

  Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows

  No more inscribed, as o’er the gate of hell,

  ‘All hope abandon, ye who enter here.’

  None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear

  Gazed on another’s eye of cold command,

  Until the subject of a tyrant’s will

  Became, worse fate, the abject of his own, 140

  Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death.

  None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines

  Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak.

  None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart

  The sparks of love and hope till there remained

  Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed,

  And the wretch crept a vampire among men,

  Infecting all with his own hideous ill.

  None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk

  Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes, 150

  Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy

  With such a self-mistrust as has no name.

  And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind,

  As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew

  On the wide earth, passed; gentle, radiant forms,

  From custom’s evil taint exempt and pure;

  Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,

  Looking emotions once they feared to feel,

  And changed to all which once they dared not be,

  Yet being now, made earth like heaven; nor pride, 160

  Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame,

  The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall,

  Spoiled the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love.

  Thrones, altars, judgment-seats, and prisons, wherein,

  And beside which, by wretched men were borne

  Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes

  Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance,

  Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes,

  The ghosts of a no-more-remembered fame

  Which from their unworn obelisks, look forth 170

  In triumph o’er the palaces and tombs

  Of those who were their conquerors; mouldering round,

  Those imaged to the pride of kings and priests

  A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide

  As is the world it wasted, and are now

  But an astonishment; even so the tools

  And emblems of its last captivity,

  Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth,

  Stand, not o’erthrown, but unregarded now.

  And those foul shapes, — abhorred by god and man, 180

  Which, under many a name and many a form

  Strange, savage, ghastly, dark, and execrable,

  Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world,

  And which the nations, panic-stricken, served

  With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love

  Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandless,

  And slain among men’s unreclaiming tears,

  Flattering the thing they feared, which fear was hate, —

  Frown, mouldering fast, o’er their abandoned shrines.

  The painted veil, by those who were, called life, 190

  Which mimicked, as with colors idly spread,

  All men believed and hoped, is torn aside;

  The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains

  Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man

  Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,

  Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king

  Over himself; just, gentle, wise; but man

  Passionless — no, yet free from guilt or pain,

  Which were, for his will made or suffered them;

  Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves, 200

  From chance, and death, and mutability,

  The clogs of that which else might oversoar

  The loftiest star of unascended heaven,

  Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.

  Act IV

  SCENE — A part of the Forest near the Cave of PROMETHEUS. PANTHEA and IONE are sleeping: they awaken gradually during the first Song.

  VOICE OF UNSEEN SPIRITS

  THE pale stars are gone!

  For the sun, their swift shepherd

  To their folds them compelling,

  In the depths of the dawn,

  Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and the flee

  Beyond his blue dwelling,

  As fawns flee the leopard,

  But where are ye?

  A Train of dark Forms and Shadows passes by confusedly, singing.

  Here, oh, here!

  We bear the bier 10

  Of the father of many a cancelled year!

  Spectres we

  Of the dead Hours be;

  We bear Time to his tomb in eternity.

  Strew, oh, strew

  Hair, not yew!

  Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew!

  Be the faded flowers

  Of Death’s bare bowers

  Spread on the corpse of the King of Hours! 20

  Haste, oh, haste!

  As shades are chased,

  Trembling, by day, from heaven’s blue waste,

  We melt away,

  Like dissolving spray,

  From the children of a diviner day,

  With the lullaby

  Of winds that die

  On the bosom of their own harmony!

  IONE

  What dark forms were they? 30

  PANTHEA

  The past Hours weak and gray,

&nbs
p; With the spoil which their toil

  Raked together

  From the conquest but One could foil.

  IONE

  Have they passed?

  PANTHEA

  They have passed;

  They outspeeded the blast,

  While ‘t is said, they are fled!

  IONE

  Whither, oh, whither?

  PANTHEA

  To the dark, to the past, to the dead.

  VOICE OF UNSEEN SPIRITS

  Bright clouds float in heaven, 40

  Dew-stars gleam on earth,

  Waves assemble on ocean,

  They are gathered and driven

  By the storm of delight, by the panic of glee!

  They shake with emotion,

  They dance in their mirth.

  But where are ye?

  The pine boughs are singing

  Old songs with new gladness,

  The billows and fountains 50

  Fresh music are flinging,

  Like the notes of a spirit from land and from sea;

  The storms mock the mountains

  With the thunder of gladness,

  But where are ye?

  IONE

  What charioteers are these?

  PANTHEA

  Where are their chariots?

  SEMICHORUS OF HOURS

  The voice of the Spirits of Air and of Earth

  Has drawn back the figured curtain of sleep,

  Which covered our being and darkened our birth

  In the deep.

  A VOICE

  In the deep?

  SEMICHORUS II

  Oh! below the deep. 60

  SEMICHORUS I

  An hundred ages we had been kept

  Cradled in visions of hate and care,

  And each one who waked as his brother slept

  Found the truth —

  SEMICHORUS II

  Worse than his visions were!

  SEMICHORUS I

  We have heard the lute of Hope in sleep;

  We have known the voice of Love in dreams;

  We have felt the wand of Power, and leap —

  SEMICHORUS II

  As the billows leap in the morning beams!

  CHORUS

  Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze,

  Pierce with song heaven’s silent light, 70

  Enchant the day that too swiftly flees,

  To check its flight ere the cave of night.

  Once the hungry Hours were hounds

  Which chased the day like a bleeding deer,

  And it limped and stumbled with many wounds

  Through the nightly dells of the desert year.

  But now, oh, weave the mystic measure

  Of music, and dance, and shapes of light,

  Let the Hours, and the Spirits of might and pleasure,

  Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite —

  A VOICE

  Unite! 80

  PANTHEA

  See, where the Spirits of the human mind,

  Wrapped in sweet sounds, as in bright veils, approach.

 

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