Like a calm flock of silver-fleeced sheep,
His waters on the plain: and crested heads
Of cities and proud temples gleam amid,
And many a vapour-belted pyramid.
58.
By Moeris and the Mareotid lakes, 505
Strewn with faint blooms like bridal chamber floors,
Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes,
Or charioteering ghastly alligators,
Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes
Of those huge forms — within the brazen doors 510
Of the great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast,
Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast.
59.
And where within the surface of the river
The shadows of the massy temples lie,
And never are erased — but tremble ever 515
Like things which every cloud can doom to die,
Through lotus-paven canals, and wheresoever
The works of man pierced that serenest sky
With tombs, and towers, and fanes, ‘twas her delight
To wander in the shadow of the night. 520
60.
With motion like the spirit of that wind
Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet
Passed through the peopled haunts of humankind.
Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet,
Through fane, and palace-court, and labyrinth mined 525
With many a dark and subterranean street
Under the Nile, through chambers high and deep
She passed, observing mortals in their sleep.
61.
A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see
Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep. 530
Here lay two sister twins in infancy;
There, a lone youth who in his dreams did weep;
Within, two lovers linked innocently
In their loose locks which over both did creep
Like ivy from one stem; — and there lay calm 535
Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm.
62.
But other troubled forms of sleep she saw,
Not to be mirrored in a holy song —
Distortions foul of supernatural awe,
And pale imaginings of visioned wrong; 540
And all the code of Custom’s lawless law
Written upon the brows of old and young:
‘This,’ said the wizard maiden, ‘is the strife
Which stirs the liquid surface of man’s life.’
63.
And little did the sight disturb her soul. — 545
We, the weak mariners of that wide lake
Where’er its shores extend or billows roll,
Our course unpiloted and starless make
O’er its wild surface to an unknown goal: —
But she in the calm depths her way could take, 550
Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide
Beneath the weltering of the restless tide.
64.
And she saw princes couched under the glow
Of sunlike gems; and round each temple-court
In dormitories ranged, row after row, 555
She saw the priests asleep — all of one sort —
For all were educated to be so. —
The peasants in their huts, and in the port
The sailors she saw cradled on the waves,
And the dead lulled within their dreamless graves. 560
65.
And all the forms in which those spirits lay
Were to her sight like the diaphanous
Veils, in which those sweet ladies oft array
Their delicate limbs, who would conceal from us
Only their scorn of all concealment: they 565
Move in the light of their own beauty thus.
But these and all now lay with sleep upon them,
And little thought a Witch was looking on them.
66.
She, all those human figures breathing there,
Beheld as living spirits — to her eyes 570
The naked beauty of the soul lay bare,
And often through a rude and worn disguise
She saw the inner form most bright and fair —
And then she had a charm of strange device,
Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone, 575
Could make that spirit mingle with her own.
67.
Alas! Aurora, what wouldst thou have given
For such a charm when Tithon became gray?
Or how much, Venus, of thy silver heaven
Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina 580
Had half (oh! why not all?) the debt forgiven
Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pay,
To any witch who would have taught you it?
The Heliad doth not know its value yet.
68.
‘Tis said in after times her spirit free 585
Knew what love was, and felt itself alone —
But holy Dian could not chaster be
Before she stooped to kiss Endymion,
Than now this lady — like a sexless bee
Tasting all blossoms, and confined to none, 590
Among those mortal forms, the wizard-maiden
Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen.
69.
To those she saw most beautiful, she gave
Strange panacea in a crystal bowl: —
They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave, 595
And lived thenceforward as if some control,
Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave
Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul,
Was as a green and overarching bower
Lit by the gems of many a starry flower. 600
70.
For on the night when they were buried, she
Restored the embalmers’ ruining, and shook
The light out of the funeral lamps, to be
A mimic day within that deathy nook;
And she unwound the woven imagery 605
Of second childhood’s swaddling bands, and took
The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche,
And threw it with contempt into a ditch.
71.
And there the body lay, age after age.
Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying, 610
Like one asleep in a green hermitage,
With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing,
And living in its dreams beyond the rage
Of death or life; while they were still arraying
In liveries ever new, the rapid, blind 615
And fleeting generations of mankind.
72.
And she would write strange dreams upon the brain
Of those who were less beautiful, and make
All harsh and crooked purposes more vain
Than in the desert is the serpent’s wake 620
Which the sand covers — all his evil gain
The miser in such dreams would rise and shake
Into a beggar’s lap; — the lying scribe
Would his own lies betray without a bribe.
73.
The priests would write an explanation full, 625
Translating hieroglyphics into Greek,
How the God Apis really was a bull,
And nothing more; and bid the herald stick
The same against the temple doors, and pull
The old cant down; they licensed all to speak 630
Whate’er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese,
By pastoral letters to each diocese.
74.
The king would dress an ape up in his crown
And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat,
And on the right hand of the sunlike throne 635
Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat
The chatterings of the monkey. — Every one
Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet
Of their great Emperor, when the morning came,
And kissed — alas, how many kiss the same! 640
75.
The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and
Walked out of quarters in somnambulism;
Round the red anvils you might see them stand
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan’s sooty abysm,
Beating their swords to ploughshares; — in a band 645
The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism
Free through the streets of Memphis, much, I wis,
To the annoyance of king Amasis.
76.
And timid lovers who had been so coy,
They hardly knew whether they loved or not, 650
Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy,
To the fulfilment of their inmost thought;
And when next day the maiden and the boy
Met one another, both, like sinners caught,
Blushed at the thing which each believed was done 655
Only in fancy — till the tenth moon shone;
77.
And then the Witch would let them take no ill:
Of many thousand schemes which lovers find,
The Witch found one, — and so they took their fill
Of happiness in marriage warm and kind. 660
Friends who, by practice of some envious skill,
Were torn apart — a wide wound, mind from mind! —
She did unite again with visions clear
Of deep affection and of truth sincere.
80.
These were the pranks she played among the cities 665
Of mortal men, and what she did to Sprites
And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties
To do her will, and show their subtle sleights,
I will declare another time; for it is
A tale more fit for the weird winter nights 670
Than for these garish summer days, when we
Scarcely believe much more than we can see.
EPIPSYCHIDION
VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE LADY, EMILIA V — ,
NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF — .
L’anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nell’ infinito un
Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro.
HER OWN WORDS.
Epipsychidion was composed at Pisa, January, February, 1821, and published without the author’s name, in the following summer, by C. & J. Ollier, London. The poem was included by Mrs. Shelley in the “Poetical Works”, 1839, both editions. Amongst the Shelley manuscripts in the Bodleian is a first draft of “Epipsychidion”, ‘consisting of three versions, more or less complete, of the “Preface [Advertisement]”, a version in ink and pencil, much cancelled, of the last eighty lines of the poem, and some additional lines which did not appear in print’ (“Examination of the Shelley manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, by C.D. Locock”. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1903, page 3). This draft, the writing of which is ‘extraordinarily confused and illegible,’ has been carefully deciphered and printed by Mr. Locock in the volume named above. Our text follows that of the editio princeps, 1821.
ADVERTISEMENT.
The Writer of the following lines died at Florence, as he was preparing for a voyage to one of the wildest of the Sporades, which he had bought, and where he had fitted up the ruins of an old building, and where it was his hope to have realised a scheme of life, suited perhaps to that happier and better world of which he is now an inhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. His life was singular; less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it, than the ideal tinge which it received from his own character and feelings. The present Poem, like the “Vita Nuova” of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter-of-fact history of the circumstances to which it relates and to a certain other class it must ever remain incomprehensible, from a defect of a common organ of perception for the ideas of which it treats. Not but that gran vergogna sarebbe a colui, che rimasse cosa sotto veste di figura, o di colore rettorico: e domandato non sapesse denudare le sue parole da cotal veste, in guisa che avessero verace intendimento.
The present poem appears to have been intended by the Writer as the dedication to some longer one. The stanza on the opposite page is almost a literal translation from Dante’s famous Canzone
Voi, ch’ intendendo, il terzo ciel movete, etc.
The presumptuous application of the concluding lines to his own composition will raise a smile at the expense of my unfortunate friend: be it a smile not of contempt, but pity. S.
i.e. the nine lines which follow, beginning, ‘My Song, I fear,’ etc. — ED.
My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few
Who fitly shalt conceive thy reasoning,
Of such hard matter dost thou entertain;
Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring
Thee to base company (as chance may do), 5
Quite unaware of what thou dost contain,
I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again,
My last delight! tell them that they are dull,
And bid them own that thou art beautiful.
EPIPSYCHIDION.
Sweet Spirit! Sister of that orphan one,
Whose empire is the name thou weepest on,
In my heart’s temple I suspend to thee
These votive wreaths of withered memory.
Poor captive bird! who, from thy narrow cage, 5
Pourest such music, that it might assuage
The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee,
Were they not deaf to all sweet melody;
This song shall be thy rose: its petals pale
Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale! 10
But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom,
And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom.
High, spirit-winged Heart! who dost for ever
Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour,
Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed 15
It over-soared this low and worldly shade,
Lie shattered; and thy panting, wounded breast
Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest!
I weep vain tears: blood would less bitter be,
Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee. 20
Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman
All that is insupportable in thee
Of light, and love, and immortality!
Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse! 25
Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe!
Thou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form
Among the Dead! Thou Star above the Storm!
Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror!
Thou Harmony of Nature’s art! Thou Mirror 30
In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun,
All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on!
Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now
Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow;
I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song 35
All of its much mortality and wrong,
With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew
From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through,
Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy:
Then smile on it, so that it may not die. 40
I never thought before my death to see
Youth’s vision thus made perfect. Emily,
I love thee; though the world by no thin name
Will hide that love from its unvalued shame.
Would we two had been twins of the same mother! 45
Or, that the name my heart lent to another
Could be a sister’s bond for her and thee,
Blending two beams of one eternity!
Yet were one lawful and the other true,
These names, though dear, could paint not, as is due. 50
How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me!
I am not thine: I am a part of THEE.
Sweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burned its wings
Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings,
Young Love should teach Time, in his own gray style, 55
All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile,
A lovely soul formed to be blessed and bless?
A well of sealed and secret happiness,
Whose waters like blithe light and music are,
Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? A Star 60
Which moves not in the moving heavens, alone?
A Smile amid dark frowns? a gentle tone
Amid rude voices? a beloved light?
A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight?
A Lute, which those whom Love has taught to play 65
Make music on, to soothe the roughest day
And lull fond Grief asleep? a buried treasure?
A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure?
A violet-shrouded grave of Woe? — I measure
The world of fancies, seeking one like thee, 70
And find — alas! mine own infirmity.
She met me, Stranger, upon life’s rough way,
And lured me towards sweet Death; as Night by Day,
Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope,
Led into light, life, peace. An antelope, 75
In the suspended impulse of its lightness,
Were less aethereally light: the brightness
Of her divinest presence trembles through
Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew
Embodied in the windless heaven of June 80
Amid the splendour-winged stars, the Moon
Burns, inextinguishably beautiful:
And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full
Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops,
Killing the sense with passion; sweet as stops 85
Of planetary music heard in trance.
In her mild lights the starry spirits dance,
The sunbeams of those wells which ever leap
Under the lightnings of the soul — too deep
For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense. 90
The glory of her being, issuing thence,
Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade
Of unentangled intermixture, made
By Love, of light and motion: one intense
Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence, 95
Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing,
Percy Bysshe Shelley Page 74