And all the winds wandering along the shore
Undulate with the undulating tide:
There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide; 435
And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,
As clear as elemental diamond,
Or serene morning air; and far beyond,
The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer
(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year) 440
Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls
Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls
Illumining, with sound that never fails
Accompany the noonday nightingales;
And all the place is peopled with sweet airs; 445
The light clear element which the isle wears
Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,
Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers.
And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;
And from the moss violets and jonquils peep, 450
And dart their arrowy odour through the brain
Till you might faint with that delicious pain.
And every motion, odour, beam and tone,
With that deep music is in unison:
Which is a soul within the soul — they seem 455
Like echoes of an antenatal dream. —
It is an isle ‘twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea,
Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;
Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer,
Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air. 460
It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight,
Pestilence, War and Earthquake, never light
Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they
Sail onward far upon their fatal way:
The winged storms, chanting their thunder-psalm 465
To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm
Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,
From which its fields and woods ever renew
Their green and golden immortality.
And from the sea there rise, and from the sky 470
There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright.
Veil after veil, each hiding some delight,
Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside,
Till the isle’s beauty, like a naked bride
Glowing at once with love and loveliness, 475
Blushes and trembles at its own excess:
Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less
Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,
An atom of th’ Eternal, whose own smile
Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen 480
O’er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green,
Filling their bare and void interstices. —
But the chief marvel of the wilderness
Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how
None of the rustic island-people know: 485
‘Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height
It overtops the woods; but, for delight,
Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime
Had been invented, in the world’s young prime,
Reared it, a wonder of that simple time, 490
An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house
Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.
It scarce seems now a wreck of human art,
But, as it were Titanic; in the heart
Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown 495
Out of the mountains, from the living stone,
Lifting itself in caverns light and high:
For all the antique and learned imagery
Has been erased, and in the place of it
The ivy and the wild-vine interknit 500
The volumes of their many-twining stems;
Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems
The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky
Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery
With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen, 505
Or fragments of the day’s intense serene; —
Working mosaic on their Parian floors.
And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers
And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem
To sleep in one another’s arms, and dream 510
Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we
Read in their smiles, and call reality.
This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed
Thee to be lady of the solitude. —
And I have fitted up some chambers there 515
Looking towards the golden Eastern air,
And level with the living winds, which flow
Like waves above the living waves below. —
I have sent books and music there, and all
Those instruments with which high Spirits call 520
The future from its cradle, and the past
Out of its grave, and make the present last
In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die,
Folded within their own eternity.
Our simple life wants little, and true taste 525
Hires not the pale drudge Luxury, to waste
The scene it would adorn, and therefore still,
Nature with all her children haunts the hill.
The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet
Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit 530
Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance
Between the quick bats in their twilight dance;
The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight
Before our gate, and the slow, silent night
Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep. 535
Be this our home in life, and when years heap
Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay,
Let us become the overhanging day,
The living soul of this Elysian isle,
Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile 540
We two will rise, and sit, and walk together,
Under the roof of blue Ionian weather,
And wander in the meadows, or ascend
The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend
With lightest winds, to touch their paramour; 545
Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore,
Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea
Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy, —
Possessing and possessed by all that is
Within that calm circumference of bliss, 550
And by each other, till to love and live
Be one: — or, at the noontide hour, arrive
Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep
The moonlight of the expired night asleep,
Through which the awakened day can never peep; 555
A veil for our seclusion, close as night’s,
Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights:
Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain
Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.
And we will talk, until thought’s melody 560
Become too sweet for utterance, and it die
In words, to live again in looks, which dart
With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,
Harmonizing silence without a sound.
Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound, 565
And our veins beat together; and our lips
With other eloquence than words, eclipse
The soul that burns between them, and the wells
Which boil under our being’s inmost cells,
The fountains of our deepest life, shall be 570
Confused in Passion’s golden purity,
As mountain-springs under the morning sun.
We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?
One passion in twin-
hearts, which grows and grew, 575
Till like two meteors of expanding flame,
Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still
Burning, yet ever inconsumable:
In one another’s substance finding food, 580
Like flames too pure and light and unimbued
To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,
Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away:
One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, 585
One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,
And one annihilation. Woe is me!
The winged words on which my soul would pierce
Into the height of Love’s rare Universe,
Are chains of lead around its flight of fire — 590
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!
…
Weak Verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign’s feet,
And say:—’We are the masters of thy slave;
What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine?’
Then call your sisters from Oblivion’s cave, 595
All singing loud: ‘Love’s very pain is sweet,
But its reward is in the world divine
Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.’
So shall ye live when I am there. Then haste
Over the hearts of men, until ye meet 600
Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest,
And bid them love each other and be blessed:
And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,
And come and be my guest, — for I am Love’s.
FRAGMENTS CONNECTED WITH EPIPSYCHIDION.
[Of the fragments of verse that follow, lines 1-37, 62-92 were printed by Mrs. Shelley in “Posthumous Works”, 1839, 2nd edition; lines 1-174 were printed or reprinted by Dr. Garnett in “Relics of Shelley”, 1862; and lines 175-186 were printed by Mr. C.D. Locock from the first draft of “Epipsychidion” amongst the Shelley manuscripts in the Bodleian Library. See “Examination, etc.”, 1903, pages 12, 13. The three early drafts of the “Preface (Advertisement)” were printed by Mr. Locock in the same volume, pages 4, 5.]
THREE EARLY DRAFTS OF THE PREFACE.
(ADVERTISEMENT.)
PREFACE 1.
The following Poem was found amongst other papers in the Portfolio of a young Englishman with whom the Editor had contracted an intimacy at Florence, brief indeed, but sufficiently long to render the Catastrophe by which it terminated one of the most painful events of his life. —
The literary merit of the Poem in question may not be considerable; but worse verses are printed every day, &
He was an accomplished & amiable person but his error was, thuntos on un thunta phronein, — his fate is an additional proof that ‘The tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.’ — He had framed to himself certain opinions, founded no doubt upon the truth of things, but built up to a Babel height; they fell by their own weight, & the thoughts that were his architects, became unintelligible one to the other, as men upon whom confusion of tongues has fallen.
[These] verses seem to have been written as a sort of dedication of some work to have been presented to the person whom they address: but his papers afford no trace of such a work — The circumstances to which [they] the poem allude, may easily be understood by those to whom [the] spirit of the poem itself is [un]intelligible: a detail of facts, sufficiently romantic in [themselves but] their combinations
The melancholy [task] charge of consigning the body of my poor friend to the grave, was committed to me by his desolated family. I caused him to be buried in a spot selected by himself, & on the h
PREFACE 2.
[Epips] T. E. V. Epipsych
Lines addressed to
the Noble Lady
[Emilia] [E. V.]
Emilia
[The following Poem was found in the PF. of a young Englishman, who died on his passage from Leghorn to the Levant. He had bought one of the Sporades] He was accompanied by a lady [who might have been] supposed to be his wife, & an effeminate looking youth, to whom he shewed an [attachment] so [singular] excessive an attachment as to give rise to the suspicion, that she was a woman — At his death this suspicion was confirmed;…object speedily found a refuge both from the taunts of the brute multitude, and from the…of her grief in the same grave that contained her lover. — He had bought one of the Sporades, & fitted up a Saracenic castle which accident had preserved in some repair with simple elegance, & it was his intention to dedicate the remainder of his life to undisturbed intercourse with his companions
These verses apparently were intended as a dedication of a longer poem or series of poems
PREFACE 3.
The writer of these lines died at Florence in [January 1820] while he was preparing * * for one wildest of the of the Sporades, where he bought & fitted up the ruins of some old building — His life was singular, less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it, than the ideal tinge which they received from his own character & feelings —
The verses were apparently intended by the writer to accompany some longer poem or collection of poems, of which there* [are no remnants in his] * * * remains [in his] portfolio. —
The editor is induced to
The present poem, like the vita Nova of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter of fact history of the circumstances to which it relate, & to a certain other class, it must & ought ever to remain incomprehensible — It was evidently intended to be prefixed to a longer poem or series of poems — but among his papers there are no traces of such a collection.
PASSAGES OF THE POEM, OR CONNECTED THEREWITH.
Here, my dear friend, is a new book for you;
I have already dedicated two
To other friends, one female and one male, —
What you are, is a thing that I must veil;
What can this be to those who praise or rail? 5
I never was attached to that great sect
Whose doctrine is that each one should select
Out of the world a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
To cold oblivion — though ‘tis in the code 10
Of modern morals, and the beaten road
Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread
Who travel to their home among the dead
By the broad highway of the world — and so
With one sad friend, and many a jealous foe, 15
The dreariest and the longest journey go.
Free love has this, different from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away.
Like ocean, which the general north wind breaks
Into ten thousand waves, and each one makes 20
A mirror of the moon — like some great glass,
Which did distort whatever form might pass,
Dashed into fragments by a playful child,
Which then reflects its eyes and forehead mild;
Giving for one, which it could ne’er express, 25
A thousand images of loveliness.
If I were one whom the loud world held wise,
I should disdain to quote authorities
In commendation of this kind of love: —
Why there is first the God in heaven above, 30
Who wrote a book called Nature, ‘tis to be
Reviewed, I hear, in the next Quarterly;
And Socrates, the Jesus Christ of Greece,
And Jesus Christ Himself, did never cease
To urge all living things to love each other, 35
And to forgive their mutual faults, and smother
The Devil of disunion in their souls.
…
I love you! — Listen, O embodied Ray
Of the great Brightness; I must pass away
; While you remain, and these light words must be 40
Tokens by which you may remember me.
Start not — the thing you are is unbetrayed,
If you are human, and if but the shade
Of some sublimer spirit…
…
And as to friend or mistress, ‘tis a form; 45
Perhaps I wish you were one. Some declare
You a familiar spirit, as you are;
Others with a … more inhuman
Hint that, though not my wife, you are a woman;
What is the colour of your eyes and hair? 50
Why, if you were a lady, it were fair
The world should know — but, as I am afraid,
The Quarterly would bait you if betrayed;
And if, as it will be sport to see them stumble
Over all sorts of scandals. hear them mumble 55
Their litany of curses — some guess right,
And others swear you’re a Hermaphrodite;
Like that sweet marble monster of both sexes,
Which looks so sweet and gentle that it vexes
The very soul that the soul is gone 60
Which lifted from her limbs the veil of stone.
…
It is a sweet thing, friendship, a dear balm,
A happy and auspicious bird of calm,
Which rides o’er life’s ever tumultuous Ocean;
A God that broods o’er chaos in commotion; 65
A flower which fresh as Lapland roses are,
Lifts its bold head into the world’s frore air,
And blooms most radiantly when others die,
Health, hope, and youth, and brief prosperity;
And with the light and odour of its bloom, 70
Shining within the dun eon and the tomb;
Whose coming is as light and music are
‘Mid dissonance and gloom — a star
Which moves not ‘mid the moving heavens alone —
A smile among dark frowns — a gentle tone 75
Among rude voices, a beloved light,
A solitude, a refuge, a delight.
If I had but a friend! Why, I have three
Even by my own confession; there may be
Some more, for what I know, for ‘tis my mind 80
To call my friends all who are wise and kind,-
And these, Heaven knows, at best are very few;
But none can ever be more dear than you.
Why should they be? My muse has lost her wings,
Or like a dying swan who soars and sings, 85
I should describe you in heroic style,
But as it is, are you not void of guile?
Percy Bysshe Shelley Page 76