Percy Bysshe Shelley

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  I do not presume to enter into competition with our greatest contemporary poets. Yet I am unwilling to tread in the footsteps of any who have preceded me. I have sought to avoid the imitation of any style of language or versification peculiar to the original minds of which it is the character, designing that even if what I have produced be worthless, it should still be properly my own. Nor have I permitted any system relating to mere words to divert the attention of the reader from whatever interest I may have succeeded in creating, to my own ingenuity in contriving to disgust them according to the rules of criticism. I have simply clothed my thoughts in what appeared to me the most obvious and appropriate language. A person familiar with Nature, and with the most celebrated productions of the human mind, can scarcely err in following the instinct, with respect to selection of language, produced by that familiarity.

  There is an education peculiarly fitted for a poet, without which genius and sensibility can hardly fill the circle of their capacities. No education indeed can entitle to this appellation a dull and unobservant mind, or one, though neither dull nor unobservant, in which the channels of communication between thought and expression have been obstructed or closed. How far it is my fortune to belong to either of the latter classes I cannot know. I aspire to be something better. The circumstances of my accidental education have been favorable to this ambition. I have been familiar from boyhood with mountains and lakes, and the sea, and the solitude of forests; Danger which sports upon the brink of precipices has been my playmate. I have trodden the glaciers of the Alps, and lived under the eye of Mont Blanc. I have been a wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers, and seen the sun rise and set, and the stars come forth, whilst I have sailed night and day down a rapid stream among mountains. I have seen populous cities, and have watched the passions which rise and spread, and sink and change, amongst assembled multitudes of men. I have seen the theatre of the more visible ravages of tyranny and war, cities and villages reduced to scattered groups of black and roofless houses, and the naked inhabitants sitting famished upon their desolated thresholds. I have conversed with living men of genius. The poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, and modern Italy, and our own country, has been to me like external nature, a passion and an enjoyment. Such are the sources from which the materials for the imagery of my Poem have been drawn. I have considered poetry in its most comprehensive sense, and have read the poets and the historians, and the metaphysicians whose writings have been accessible to me, and have looked upon the beautiful and majestic scenery of the earth, as common sources of those elements which it is the province of the poet to embody and combine. Yet the experience and the feelings to which I refer do not in themselves constitute men poets, but only prepares them to be the auditors of those who are. How far I shall be found to possess that more essential attribute of poetry, the power of awakening in others sensations like those which animate my own bosom, is that which, to speak sincerely, I know not; and which, with an acquiescent and contented spirit, I expect to be taught by the effect which I shall produce upon those whom I now address.

  I have avoided, as I have said before, the imitation of any contemporary style. But there must be a resemblance, which does not depend upon their own will, between all the writers of any particular age. They cannot escape from subjection to a common influence which arises out of an infinite combination of circumstances belonging to the times in which they live, though each is in a degree the author of the very influence by which his being is thus pervaded. Thus, the tragic poets of the age of Pericles; the Italian revivers of ancient learning; those mighty intellects of our own country that succeeded the Reformation, the translators of the Bible, Shakespeare, Spenser, the Dramatists of the reign of Elizabeth, and Lord Bacon; the colder spirits of the interval that succeeded; — all resemble each other, and differ from every other in their several classes. In this view of things, Ford can no more be called the imitator of Shakespeare than Shakespeare the imitator of Ford. There were perhaps few other points of resemblance between these two men than that which the universal and inevitable influence of their age produced. And this is an influence which neither the meanest scribbler nor the sublimest genius of any era can escape; and which I have not attempted to escape.

  I have adopted the stanza of Spenser (a measure inexpressibly beautiful) not because I consider it a finer model of poetical harmony than the blank verse of Shakespeare and Milton, but because in the latter there is no shelter for mediocrity; you must either succeed or fail. This perhaps an aspiring spirit should desire. But I was enticed also by the brilliancy and magnificence of sound which a mind that has been nourished upon musical thoughts can produce by a just and harmonious arrangement of the pauses of this measure. Yet there will be found some instances where I have completely failed in this attempt, and one, which I here request the reader to consider as an erratum, where there is left most inadvertently an alexandrine in the middle of a stanza.

  But in this, as in every other respect, I have written fearlessly. It is the misfortune of this age that its writers, too thoughtless of immortality, are exquisitely sensible to temporary praise or blame. They write with the fear of Reviews before their eyes. This system of criticism sprang up in that torpid interval when poetry was not. Poetry and the art which professes to regulate and limit its powers cannot subsist together. Longinus could not have been the contemporary of Homer, nor Boileau of Horace. Yet this species of criticism never presumed to assert an understanding of its own; it has always, unlike true science, followed, not preceded the opinion of mankind, and would even now bribe with worthless adulation some of our greatest poets to impose gratuitous fetters on their own imaginations and become unconscious accomplices in the daily murder of all genius either not so aspiring or not so fortunate as their own. I have sought therefore to write, as I believe that Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton wrote, with an utter disregard of anonymous censure. I am certain that calumny and misrepresentation, though it may move me to compassion, cannot disturb my peace. I shall understand the expressive silence of those sagacious enemies who dare not trust themselves to speak. I shall endeavor to extract from the midst of insult and contempt and maledictions those admonitions which may tend to correct whatever imperfections such censurers may discover in this my first serious appeal to the public. If certain critics were as clear-sighted as they are malignant, how great would be the benefit to be derived from their virulent writings! As it is, I fear I shall be malicious enough to be amused with their paltry tricks and lame invectives. Should the public judge that my composition is worthless, I shall indeed bow before the tribunal from which Milton received his crown of immortality, and shall seek to gather, if I live, strength from that defeat, which may nerve me to some new enterprise of thought which may not be worthless. I cannot conceive that Lucretius, when he meditated that poem whose doctrines are yet the basis of our metaphysical knowledge and whose eloquence has been the wonder of mankind, wrote in awe of such censure as the hired sophists of the impure and superstitious noblemen of Rome might affix to what he should produce. It was at the period when Greece was led captive and Asia made tributary to the Republic, fast verging itself to slavery and ruin, that a multitude of Syrian captives, bigoted to the worship of their obscene Ashtaroth, and the unworthy successors of Socrates and Zeno, found there a precarious subsistence by administering, under the name of freedmen, to the vices and vanities of the great. These wretched men were skilled to plead, with a superficial but plausible set of sophisms, in favor of that contempt for virtue which is the portion of slaves, and that faith in portents, the most fatal substitute for benevolence in the imaginations of men, which arising from the enslaved communities of the East then first began to overwhelm the western nations in its stream. Were these the kind of men whose disapprobation the wise and lofty-minded Lucretius should have regarded with a salutary awe? The latest and perhaps the meanest of those who follow in his footsteps would disdain to hold life on such conditions.

  The P
oem now presented to the public occupied little more than six months in the composition. That period has been devoted to the task with unremitting ardor and enthusiasm. I have exercised a watchful and earnest criticism on my work as it grew under my hands. I would willingly have sent it forth to the world with that perfection which long labor and revision is said to bestow. But I found that if I should gain something in exactness by this method, I might lose much of the newness and energy of imagery and language as it flowed fresh from my mind. And although the mere composition occupied no more than six months, the thoughts thus arranged were slowly gathered in as many years.

  I trust that the reader will carefully distinguish between those opinions which have a dramatic propriety in reference to the characters which they are designed to elucidate, and such as are properly my own. The erroneous and degrading idea which men have conceived of a Supreme Being, for instance, is spoken against, but not the Supreme Being itself. The belief which some superstitious persons whom I have brought upon the stage entertain of the Deity, as injurious to the character of his benevolence, is widely different from my own. In recommending also a great and important change in the spirit which animates the social institutions of mankind, I have avoided all flattery to those violent and malignant passions of our nature which are ever on the watch to mingle with and to alloy the most beneficial innovations. There is no quarter given to revenge, or envy, or prejudice. Love is celebrated everywhere as the sole law which should govern the moral world.

  In Laon and Cythna the following passage was added, in conclusion:

  In the personal conduct of my hero and heroine, there is one circumstance which was intended to startle the reader from the trance of ordinary life. It was my object to break through the crust of those outworn opinions on which established institutions depend. I have appealed therefore to the most universal of all feelings, and have endeavored to strengthen the moral sense by forbidding it to waste its energies in seeking to avoid actions which are only crimes of convention. It is because there is so great a multitude of artificial vices that there are so few real virtues. Those feelings alone which are benevolent or malevolent are essentially good or bad. The circumstance of which I speak was introduced, however, merely to accustom men to that charity and toleration which the exhibition of a practice widely differing from their own has a tendency to promote. Nothing indeed can be more mischievous than many actions innocent in themselves which might bring down upon individuals the bigoted contempt and rage of the multitude.

  Dedication

  There is no danger to a man that knows

  What life and death is: there’s not any law

  Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful

  That he should stoop to any other law.

  CHAPMAN.

  To Mary —— ——

  I

  SO now my summer-task is ended, Mary,

  And I return to thee, mine own heart’s home;

  As to his Queen some victor knight of Faëry,

  Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome;

  Nor thou disdain, that ere my fame become

  A star among the stars of mortal night,

  If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom,

  Its doubtful promise thus I would unite

  With thy belovèd name, thou Child of love and light.

  II

  The toil which stole from thee so many an hour,

  Is ended, — and the fruit is at thy feet!

  No longer where the woods to frame a bower

  With interlacèd branches mix and meet,

  Or where, with sound like many voices sweet,

  Water-falls leap among wild islands green,

  Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat

  Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen;

  But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been.

  III

  Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first

  The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass.

  I do remember well the hour which burst

  My spirit’s sleep. A fresh May-dawn it was,

  When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,

  And wept, I knew not why; until there rose

  From the near school-room voices that, alas!

  Were but one echo from a world of woes —

  The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.

  IV

  And then I clasped my hands and looked around,

  But none was near to mock my streaming eyes,

  Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground —

  So without shame I spake:—’I will be wise,

  And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies

  Such power, for I grow weary to behold

  The selfish and the strong still tyrannize

  Without reproach or check.’ I then controlled

  My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold.

  V

  And from that hour did I with earnest thought

  Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore;

  Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught

  I cared to learn, but from that secret store

  Wrought linkèd armor for my soul, before

  It might walk forth to war among mankind;

  Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more

  Within me, till there came upon my mind

  A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined.

  VI

  Alas, that love should be a blight and snare

  To those who seek all sympathies in one!

  Such once I sought in vain; then black despair,

  The shadow of a starless night, was thrown

  Over the world in which I moved alone: —

  Yet never found I one not false to me,

  Hard hearts, and cold, like weights of icy stone

  Which crushed and withered mine, that could not be

  Aught but a lifeless clog, until revived by thee.

  VII

  Thou Friend, whose presence on my wintry heart

  Fell, like bright Spring upon some herbless plain;

  How beautiful and calm and free thou wert

  In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain

  Of Custom thou didst burst and rend in twain,

  And walked as free as light the clouds among,

  Which many an envious slave then breathed in vain

  From his dim dungeon, and my spirit sprung

  To meet thee from the woes which had begirt it long!

  VIII

  No more alone through the world’s wilderness,

  Although I trod the paths of high intent,

  I journeyed now; no more companionless,

  Where solitude is like despair, I went.

  There is the wisdom of a stern content

  When Poverty can blight the just and good,

  When Infamy dares mock the innocent,

  And cherished friends turn with the multitude

  To trample: this was ours, and we unshaken stood!

  IX

  Now has descended a serener hour,

  And with inconstant fortune, friends return;

  Though suffering leaves the knowledge and the power

  Which says, — Let scorn be not repaid with scorn.

  And from thy side two gentle babes are born

  To fill our home with smiles, and thus are we

  Most fortunate beneath life’s beaming morn;

  And these delights, and thou, have been to me

  The parents of the Song I consecrate to thee.

  X

  Is it that now my inexperienced fingers

  But strike the prelude of a loftier strain?

  Or must the lyre on which my spirit lingers

  Soon pause in silence, ne’er to sound again,

  Though it might shake the Anarch Custom’s reign,

  And charm the minds of men to Truth’s own sway,r />
  Holier than was Amphion’s? I would fain

  Reply in hope — but I am worn away,

  And Death and Love are yet contending for their prey.

  XI

  And what art thou? I know, but dare not speak:

  Time may interpret to his silent years.

  Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek,