Which, like the silence of a tempest’s birth,
When in its awful shadow it has wound
The sun, the wind, the ocean, and the earth,
Hung terrible, ere yet the lightnings have leaped forth.
XII
‘Like clouds inwoven in the silent sky
By winds from distant regions meeting there,
In the high name of Truth and Liberty
Around the City millions gathered were
By hopes which sprang from many a hidden lair, —
Words which the lore of truth in hues of grace
Arrayed, thine own wild songs which in the air
Like homeless odors floated, and the name
Of thee, and many a tongue which thou hadst dipped in flame.
XIII
‘The Tyrant knew his power was gone, but Fear,
The nurse of Vengeance, bade him wait the event —
That perfidy and custom, gold and prayer,
And whatsoe’er, when Force is impotent,
To Fraud the sceptre of the world has lent,
Might, as he judged, confirm his failing sway.
Therefore throughout the streets, the Priests he sent
To curse the rebels. To their gods did they
For Earthquake, Plague and Want, kneel in the public way.
XIV
‘And grave and hoary men were bribed to tell,
From seats where law is made the slave of wrong,
How glorious Athens in her splendor fell,
Because her sons were free, — and that among
Mankind, the many to the few belong
By Heaven, and Nature, and Necessity.
They said, that age was truth, and that the young
Marred with wild hopes the peace of slavery,
With which old times and men had quelled the vain and free.
XV
‘And with the falsehood of their poisonous lips
They breathed on the enduring memory
Of sages and of bards a brief eclipse.
There was one teacher, who necessity
Had armed with strength and wrong against mankind,
His slave and his avenger aye to be;
That we were weak and sinful, frail and blind,
And that the will of one was peace, and we
Should seek for nought on earth but toil and misery —
XVI
‘“For thus we might avoid the hell hereafter.”
So spake the hypocrites, who cursed and lied.
Alas, their sway was passed, and tears and laughter
Clung to their hoary hair, withering the pride
Which in their hollow hearts dared still abide;
And yet obscener slaves with smoother brow,
And sneers on their strait lips, thin, blue and wide,
Said that the rule of men was over now,
And hence the subject world to woman’s will must bow.
XVII
‘And gold was scattered through the streets, and wine
Flowed at a hundred feasts within the wall.
In vain! the steady towers in Heaven did shine
As they were wont, nor at the priestly call
Left Plague her banquet in the Æthiop’s hall,
Nor Famine from the rich man’s portal came,
Where at her ease she ever preys on all
Who throng to kneel for food; nor fear, nor shame,
Nor faith, nor discord, dimmed hope’s newly kindled flame.
XVIII
‘For gold was as a god whose faith began
To fade, so that its worshippers were few;
And Faith itself, which in the heart of man
Gives shape, voice, name, to spectral Terror, knew
Its downfall, as the altars lonelier grew,
Till the Priests stood alone within the fane;
The shafts of falsehood unpolluting flew,
And the cold sneers of calumny were vain
The union of the free with discord’s brand to stain.
XIX
‘The rest thou knowest. — Lo! we two are here —
We have survived a ruin wide and deep —
Strange thoughts are mine. I cannot grieve or fear.
Sitting with thee upon this lonely steep
I smile, though human love should make me weep.
We have survived a joy that knows no sorrow,
And I do feel a mighty calmness creep
Over my heart, which can no longer borrow
Its hues from chance or change, dark children of to-morrow.
XX
‘We know not what will come. Yet, Laon, dearest,
Cythna shall be the prophetess of Love;
Her lips shall rob thee of the grace thou wearest,
To hide thy heart, and clothe the shapes which rove
Within the homeless Future’s wintry grove;
For I now, sitting thus beside thee, seem
Even with thy breath and blood to live and move,
And violence and wrong are as a dream
Which rolls from steadfast truth, — an unreturning stream.
XXI
‘The blasts of Autumn drive the wingèd seeds
Over the earth; next come the snows, and rain,
And frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads
Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train.
Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again,
Shedding soft dews from her ethereal wings;
Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain,
And music on the waves and woods she flings,
And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things.
XXII
‘O Spring, of hope and love and youth and gladness
Wind-wingèd emblem! brightest, best and fairest!
Whence comest thou, when, with dark Winter’s sadness
The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest?
Sister of joy! thou art the child who wearest
Thy mother’s dying smile, tender and sweet;
Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest
Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet,
Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding sheet.
XXIII
‘Virtue and Hope and Love, like light and Heaven,
Surround the world. We are their chosen slaves.
Has not the whirlwind of our spirit driven
Truth’s deathless germs to thought’s remotest caves?
Lo, Winter comes! — the grief of many graves,
The frost of death, the tempest of the sword,
The flood of tyranny, whose sanguine waves
Stagnate like ice at Faith the enchanter’s word,
And bind all human hearts in its repose abhorred.
XXIV
‘The seeds are sleeping in the soil. Meanwhile
The Tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey;
Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile
Because they cannot speak; and, day by day,
The moon of wasting Science wanes away
Among her stars, and in that darkness vast
The sons of earth to their foul idols pray,
And gray Priests triumph, and like blight or blast
A shade of selfish care o’er human looks is cast.
XXV
‘This is the Winter of the world; and here
We die, even as the winds of Autumn fade,
Expiring in the frore and foggy air.
Behold! Spring comes, though we must pass who made
The promise of its birth, — even as the shade
Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings
The future, a broad sunrise; thus arrayed
As with the plumes of overshadowing wings,
From its dark gulf of chains Earth like an eagle springs.
XXVI
‘O dearest love! we shall be
dead and cold
Before this morn may on the world arise.
Wouldst thou the glory of its dawn behold?
Alas! gaze not on me, but turn thine eyes
On thine own heart — it is a Paradise
Which everlasting spring has made its own,
And while drear winter fills the naked skies,
Sweet streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh blown,
Are there, and weave their sounds and odors into one.
XXVII
‘In their own hearts the earnest of the hope
Which made them great the good will ever find;
And though some envious shade may interlope
Between the effect and it, One comes behind,
Who aye the future to the past will bind —
Necessity, whose sightless strength forever
Evil with evil, good with good, must wind
In bands of union, which no power may sever;
They must bring forth their kind, and be divided never!
XXVIII
‘The good and mighty of departed ages
Are in their graves, the innocent and free,
Heroes, and Poets, and prevailing Sages,
Who leave the vesture of their majesty
To adorn and clothe this naked world; — and we
Are like to them — such perish, but they leave
All hope, or love, or truth, or liberty,
Whose forms their mighty spirits could conceive,
To be a rule and law to ages that survive.
XXIX
‘So be the turf heaped over our remains
Even in our happy youth, and that strange lot,
Whate’er it be, when in these mingling veins
The blood is still, be ours; let sense and thought
Pass from our being, or be numbered not
Among the things that are; let those who come
Behind, for whom our steadfast will has bought
A calm inheritance, a glorious doom,
Insult with careless tread our undivided tomb.
XXX
‘Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love,
Our happiness, and all that we have been,
Immortally must live and burn and move
When we shall be no more; — the world has seen
A type of peace; and as some most serene
And lovely spot to a poor maniac’s eye —
After long years some sweet and moving scene
Of youthful hope returning suddenly —
Quells his long madness, thus Man shall remember thee.
XXXI
‘And Calumny meanwhile shall feed on us
As worms devour the dead, and near the throne
And at the altar most accepted thus
Shall sneers and curses be; — what we have done
None shall dare vouch, though it be truly known;
That record shall remain when they must pass
Who built their pride on its oblivion,
And fame, in human hope which sculptured was,
Survive the perished scrolls of unenduring brass.
XXXII
‘The while we two, belovèd, must depart,
And Sense and Reason, those enchanters fair,
Whose wand of power is hope, would bid the heart
That gazed beyond the wormy grave despair;
These eyes, these lips, this blood, seems darkly there
To fade in hideous ruin; no calm sleep,
Peopling with golden dreams the stagnant air,
Seems our obscure and rotting eyes to steep
In joy; — but senseless death — a ruin dark and deep!
XXXIII
‘These are blind fancies. Reason cannot know
What sense can neither feel nor thought conceive;
There is delusion in the world — and woe,
And fear, and pain — we know not whence we live,
Or why, or how, or what mute Power may give
Their being to each plant, and star, and beast,
Or even these thoughts. — Come near me! I do weave
A chain I cannot break — I am possessed
With thoughts too swift and strong for one lone human breast.
XXXIV
‘Yes, yes — thy kiss is sweet, thy lips are warm —
Oh, willingly, belovèd, would these eyes
Might they no more drink being from thy form,
Even as to sleep whence we again arise,
Close their faint orbs in death. I fear nor prize
Aught that can now betide, unshared by thee.
Yes, Love when Wisdom fails makes Cythna wise;
Darkness and death, if death be true, must be
Dearer than life and hope if unenjoyed with thee.
XXXV
‘Alas! our thoughts flow on with stream whose waters
Return not to their fountain; Earth and Heaven,
The Ocean and the Sun, the clouds their daughters,
Winter, and Spring, and Morn, and Noon, and Even —
All that we are or know, is darkly driven
Towards one gulf. — Lo! what a change is come
Since I first spake — but time shall be forgiven,
Though it change all but thee!’ She ceased — night’s gloom
Meanwhile had fallen on earth from the sky’s sunless dome.
XXXVI
Though she had ceased, her countenance uplifted
To Heaven still spake with solemn glory bright;
Her dark deep eyes, her lips, whose motions gifted
The air they breathed with love, her locks undight;
‘Fair star of life and love,’ I cried, ‘my soul’s delight,
Why lookest thou on the crystalline skies?
Oh, that my spirit were yon Heaven of night,
Which gazes on thee with its thousand eyes!’
She turned to me and smiled — that smile was Paradise!
REVOLT OF ISLAM: Canto Tenth
I
WAS there a human spirit in the steed
That thus with his proud voice, ere night was gone,
He broke our linkèd rest? or do indeed
All living things a common nature own,
And thought erect an universal throne,
Where many shapes one tribute ever bear?
And Earth, their mutual mother, does she groan
To see her sons contend? and makes she bare
Her breast that all in peace its drainless stores may share?
II
I have heard friendly sounds from many a tongue
Which was not human; the lone nightingale
Has answered me with her most soothing song,
Out of her ivy bower, when I sate pale
With grief, and sighed beneath; from many a dale
The antelopes who flocked for food have spoken
With happy sounds and motions that avail
Like man’s own speech; and such was now the token
Of waning night, whose calm by that proud neigh was broken.
III
Each night that mighty steed bore me abroad,
And I returned with food to our retreat,
And dark intelligence; the blood which flowed
Over the fields had stained the courser’s feet;
Soon the dust drinks that bitter dew, — then meet
The vulture, and the wild-dog, and the snake,
The wolf, and the hyena gray, and eat
The dead in horrid truce; their throngs did make
Behind the steed a chasm like waves in a ship’s wake.
IV
For from the utmost realms of earth came pouring
The banded slaves whom every despot sent
At that throned traitor’s summons; like the roaring
Of fire, whose floods the wild deer circumvent
In the scorched pastures of the south, so bent
The armies of the
leaguèd kings around
Their files of steel and flame; the continent
Trembled, as with a zone of ruin bound,
Beneath their feet — the sea shook with their Navies’ sound.
V
From every nation of the earth they came,
The multitude of moving heartless things,
Whom slaves call men; obediently they came,
Like sheep whom from the fold the shepherd brings
To the stall, red with blood; their many kings
Led them, thus erring, from their native land —
Tartar and Frank, and millions whom the wings
Of Indian breezes lull; and many a band
The Arctic Anarch sent, and Idumea’s sand
VI
Fertile in prodigies and lies. So there
Strange natures made a brotherhood of ill.
The desert savage ceased to grasp in fear
His Asian shield and bow when, at the will
Of Europe’s subtler son, the bolt would kill
Some shepherd sitting on a rock secure;
But smiles of wondering joy his face would fill,
And savage sympathy; those slaves impure
Each one the other thus from ill to ill did lure.
VII
For traitorously did that foul Tyrant robe
His countenance in lies; even at the hour
When he was snatched from death, then o’er the globe,
With secret signs from many a mountain tower,
With smoke by day, and fire by night, the power
Of Kings and Priests, those dark conspirators,
He called; they knew his cause their own, and swore
Like wolves and serpents to their mutual wars
Strange truce, with many a rite which Earth and Heaven abhors.
VIII
Myriads had come — millions were on their way;
The Tyrant passed, surrounded by the steel
Of hired assassins, through the public way,
Choked with his country’s dead; his footsteps reel
On the fresh blood — he smiles. ‘Ay, now I feel
I am a King in truth!’ he said, and took
His royal seat, and bade the torturing wheel
Be brought, and fire, and pincers, and the hook,
And scorpions, that his soul on its revenge might look.
IX
‘But first, go slay the rebels — why return
The victor bands?’ he said, ‘millions yet live,
Of whom the weakest with one word might turn
The scales of victory yet; let none survive
But those within the walls — each fifth shall give
The expiation for his brethren here.
Go forth, and waste and kill!’—’O king, forgive
My speech,’ a soldier answered, ‘but we fear
The spirits of the night, and morn is drawing near;
X
‘For we were slaying still without remorse,
Percy Bysshe Shelley Page 59