Yet let’s be merry: we’ll have tea and toast;
Custards for supper, and an endless host
305
Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies,
And other such lady-like luxuries,—
Feasting on which we will philosophize!
And we’ll have fires out of the Grand Duke’s wood,
To thaw the six weeks’ winter in our blood.
310
And then we’ll talk;—what shall we talk about?
Oh! there are themes enough for many a bout
Of thought-entangled descant;—as to nerves—
With cones and parallelograms and curves
I’ve sworn to strangle them if once they dare
315
To bother me—when you are with me there.
And they shall never more sip laudanum,
From Helicon or Himeros1;—well, come,
And in despite of God and of the devil,
We’ll make our friendly philosophic revel
320
Outlast the leafless time; till buds and flowers
Warn the obscure inevitable hours,
Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew;—
‘To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.’
* * *
1, from which the river Himera was named, is, with some slight shade of difference, a synonym of Love.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.]
THE WITCH OF ATLAS
TO MARY
(ON HER OBJECTING TO THE FOLLOWING POEM, UPON THE SCORE OF ITS CONTAINING NO HUMAN INTEREST)
I
How, my dear Mary,—are you critic-bitten
(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written,
Because they tell no story, false or true?
5
What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,
May it not leap and play as grown cats do,
Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,
Content thee with a visionary rhyme.
II
What hand would crush the silken-wingèd fly,
10
The youngest of inconstant April’s minions,
Because it cannot climb the purest sky,
Where the swan sings, amid the sun’s dominions?
Not thine. Thou knowest ’tis its doom to die,
When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions
15
The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile,
Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.
III
To thy fair feet a wingèd Vision came,
Whose date should have been longer than a day,
And o’er thy head did beat its wings for fame,
20
And in thy sight its fading plumes display;
The watery bow burned in the evening flame,
But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way—
And that is dead.—O, let me not believe
That anything of mine is fit to live!
IV
25
Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years
Considering and retouching Peter Bell;
Watering his laurels with the killing tears
Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to Hell
Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres
30
Of Heaven, with lewy leaves and flowers; this well
May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil
The over-busy gardener’s blundering toil.
V
My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature
As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise
35
Clothes for our grandsons—but she matches Peter,
Though he took nineteen years, and she three days
In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre
She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays,
Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress
40
Like King Lear’s ‘looped and windowed raggedness.’
VI
If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow
Scorched by Hell’s hyperequatorial climate
Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow:
A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at;
45
In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello.
If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate
Can shrive you of that sin,—if sin there be
In love, when it becomes idolatry.
THE WITCH OF ATLAS
I
BEFORE those cruel Twins, whom at one birth
50
Incestuous Change bore to her father Time,
Error and Truth, had hunted from the Earth
All those bright natures which adorned its prime,
And left us nothing to believe in, worth
The pains of putting into learnèd rhyme,
55
A lady-witch there lived on Atlas’ mountain
Within a cavern, by a secret fountain.
II
Her mother was one of the Atlantides:
The all-beholding Sun had ne’er beholden
In his wide voyage o’er continents and seas
60
So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden
In the warm shadow of her loveliness;—
He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden
The chamber of gray rock in which she lay—
She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.
III
65
’Tis said, she first was changed into a vapour,
And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit,
Like splendour-wingèd moths about a taper,
Round the red west when the sun dies in it:
And then into a meteor, such as caper
70
On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit:
Then, into one of those mysterious stars
Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars.
IV
Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent
Her bow beside the folding-star, and hidden
75
With that bright sign the billows to indent
The sea-deserted sand—like children chidden,
At her command they ever came and went—
Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden
Took shape and motion: with the living form
80
Of this embodied Power, the cave grew warm.
V
A lovely lady garmented in light
From her own beauty—deep her eyes, as are
Two openings of unfathomable night
Seen through a Temple’s cloven roof—her hair
85
Dark—the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight,
Picturing her form; her soft smiles shone afar,
And her low voice was heard like love, and drew
All living things towards this wonder new.
VI
And first the spotted cameleopard came,
90
And then the wise and fearless elephant;
Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame
Of his own volumes intervolved;—all gaunt
And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame.
They drank before her at her sacred fount;
95
And every beast of beating heart grew bold,
Such gentleness and power even to behold.
VII
The brinded lioness led forth her young,
That she might teach them how they should forego
Their inborn thirst of death; the pard unstrung
100
His sinews at her feet, and sought to know
With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue
How he might be as gentle as the doe.
The magi
c circle of her voice and eyes
All savage natures did imparadise.
VIII
105
And old Silenus, shaking a green stick
Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew
Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick
Cicadae are, drunk with the noonday dew:
And Dryope and Faunus followed quick,
110
Teasing the God to sing them something new;
Till in this cave they found the lady lone,
Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone.
IX
And universal Pan, ’tis said, was there,
And though none saw him,—through the adamant
115
Of the deep mountains, through the trackless air,
And through those living spirits, like a want,
He passed out of his everlasting lair
Where the quick heart of the great world doth pant,
And felt that wondrous lady all alone,—
120
And she felt him, upon her emerald throne.
X
And every nymph of stream and spreading tree,
And every shepherdess of Ocean’s flocks,
Who drives her white waves over the green sea,
And Ocean with the brine on his gray locks,
125
And quaint Priapus with his company,
All came, much wondering how the enwombèd rocks
Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth;—
Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth.
XI
The herdsmen and the mountain maidens came,
130
And the rude kings of pastoral Garamant—
Their spirits shook within them, as a flame
Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt:
Pigmies, and Polyphemes, by many a name,
Centaurs, and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt
135
Wet clefts,—and lumps neither alive nor dead,
Dog-headed, bosom-eyed, and bird-footed.
XII
For she was beautiful—her beauty made
The bright world dim, and everything beside
Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade:
140
No thought of living spirit could abide,
Which to her looks had ever been betrayed,
On any object in the world so wide,
On any hope within the circling skies,
But on her form, and in her inmost eyes.
XIII
145
Which when the lady knew, she took her spindle
And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three
Long lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle
The clouds and waves and mountains with; and she
As many star-beams, ere their lamps could dwindle
150
In the belated moon, wound skilfully;
And with these threads a subtle veil she wove—
A shadow for the splendour of her love.
XIV
The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling
Were stored with magic treasures—sounds of air,
155
Which had the power all spirits of compelling,
Folded in cells of crystal silence there;
Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling
Will never die—yet ere we are aware,
The feeling and the sound are fled and gone,
160
And the regret they leave remains alone.
XV
And there lay Visions swift, and sweet, and quaint,
Each in its thin sheath, like a chrysalis,
Some eager to burst forth, some weak and faint
With the soft burthen of intensest bliss.
165
It was its work to bear to many a saint
Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is,
Even Love’s:—and others white, green, gray, and black,
And of all shapes—and each was at her beck.
XVI
And odours in a kind of aviary
170
Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept,
Clipped in a floating net, a love-sick Fairy
Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet slept;
As bats at the wired window of a dairy,
They beat their vans; and each was an adept,
175
When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds,
To stir sweet thoughts or sad, in destined minds.
XVII
And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might
Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep,
And change eternal death into a night
180
Of glorious dreams—or if eyes needs must weep,
Could make their tears all wonder and delight,
She in her crystal vials did closely keep:
If men could drink of those clear vials, ’tis said
The living were not envied of the dead.
XVIII
185
Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device,
The works of some Saturnian Archimage,
Which taught the expiations at whose price
Men from the Gods might win that happy age
Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice;
190
And which might quench the Earth-consuming rage
Of gold and blood—till men should live and move
Harmonious as the sacred stars above;
XIX
And how all things that seem untameable,
Not to be checked and not to be confined,
195
Obey the spells of Wisdom’s wizard skill;
Time, earth, and fire—the ocean and the wind,
And all their shapes—and man’s imperial will;
And other scrolls whose writings did unbind
The inmost lore of Love—let the profane
200
Tremble to ask what secrets they contain.
XX
And wondrous works of substances unknown,
To which the enchantment of her father’s power
Had changed those ragged blocks of savage stone,
Were heaped in the recesses of her bower;
205
Carved lamps and chalices, and vials which shone
In their own golden beams—each like a flower,
Out of whose depth a fire-fly shakes his light
Under a cypress in a starless night.
XXI
At first she lived alone in this wild home,
210
And her own thoughts were each a minister,
Clothing themselves, or with the ocean foam,
Or with the wind, or with the speed of fire,
To work whatever purposes might come
Into her mind; such power her mighty Sire
215
Had girt them with, whether to fly or run,
Through all the regions which he shines upon.
XXII
The Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades,
Oreads and Naiads, with long weedy locks,
Offered to do her bidding through the seas,
220
Under the earth, and in the hollow rocks,
And far beneath the matted roots of trees,
And in the gnarlèd heart of stubborn oaks,
So they might live for ever in the light
Of her sweet presence—each a satellite.
XXIII
225
‘This may not be,’ the wizard maid replied;
‘The fountains where the Naiades bedew
Their shining hair, at length are drained and dried;
The solid oaks forget their strength, and strew
Their latest leaf upon the mountains wide;
230
The boundless ocean like a
drop of dew
Will be consumed—the stubborn centre must
Be scattered, like a cloud of summer dust.
XXIV
‘And ye with them will perish, one by one;—
If I must sigh to think that this shall be,
235
If I must weep when the surviving Sun
Shall smile on your decay—oh, ask not me
To love you till your little race is run;
I cannot die as ye must—over me
Your leaves shall glance—the streams in which ye dwell
240
Shall be my paths henceforth, and so—farewell!’—
XXV
She spoke and wept:—the dark and azure well
Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears,
And every little circlet where they fell
Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres
245
And intertangled lines of light:—a knell
Of sobbing voices came upon her ears
From those departing Forms, o’er the serene
Of the white streams and of the forest green.
XXVI
All day the wizard lady sate aloof,
250
Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity,
Under the cavern’s fountain-lighted roof;
Or broidering the pictured poesy
Of some high tale upon her growing woof,
Which the sweet splendour of her smiles could dye
255
In hues outshining heaven—and ever she
Added some grace to the wrought poesy.
XXVII
While on her hearth lay blazing many a piece
Of sandal wood, rare gums, and cinnamon;
Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is—
260
The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley: (A Modern Library E-Book) Page 65