With iron chains might smile to talk (?) of bands
Twined round her lover’s neck by some blithe maiden,
And said…
FRAGMENT 4.
‘Twas at the season when the Earth upsprings 240
From slumber, as a sphered angel’s child,
Shadowing its eyes with green and golden wings,
Stands up before its mother bright and mild,
Of whose soft voice the air expectant seems —
So stood before the sun, which shone and smiled 245
To see it rise thus joyous from its dreams,
The fresh and radiant Earth. The hoary grove
Waxed green — and flowers burst forth like starry beams; —
The grass in the warm sun did start and move,
And sea-buds burst under the waves serene: — 250
How many a one, though none be near to love,
Loves then the shade of his own soul, half seen
In any mirror — or the spring’s young minions,
The winged leaves amid the copses green; —
How many a spirit then puts on the pinions 255
Of fancy, and outstrips the lagging blast,
And his own steps — and over wide dominions
Sweeps in his dream-drawn chariot, far and fast,
More fleet than storms — the wide world shrinks below,
When winter and despondency are past. 260
FRAGMENT 5.
‘Twas at this season that Prince Athanase
Passed the white Alps — those eagle-baffling mountains
Slept in their shrouds of snow; — beside the ways
The waterfalls were voiceless — for their fountains
Were changed to mines of sunless crystal now, 265
Or by the curdling winds — like brazen wings
Which clanged along the mountain’s marble brow —
Warped into adamantine fretwork, hung
And filled with frozen light the chasms below.
Vexed by the blast, the great pines groaned and swung 270
Under their load of [snow] —
…
…
Such as the eagle sees, when he dives down
From the gray deserts of wide air, [beheld] 275
[Prince] Athanase; and o’er his mien (?) was thrown
The shadow of that scene, field after field,
Purple and dim and wide…
FRAGMENT 6.
Thou art the wine whose drunkenness is all
We can desire, O Love! and happy souls, 280
Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall,
Catch thee, and feed from their o’erflowing bowls
Thousands who thirst for thine ambrosial dew; —
Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls
Investeth it; and when the heavens are blue 285
Thou fillest them; and when the earth is fair
The shadow of thy moving wings imbue
Its deserts and its mountains, till they wear
Beauty like some light robe; — thou ever soarest
Among the towers of men, and as soft air 290
In spring, which moves the unawakened forest,
Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak,
Thou floatest among men; and aye implorest
That which from thee they should implore: — the weak
Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts 295
The strong have broken — yet where shall any seek
A garment whom thou clothest not? the darts
Of the keen winter storm, barbed with frost,
Which, from the everlasting snow that parts
The Alps from Heaven, pierce some traveller lost 300
In the wide waved interminable snow
Ungarmented,…
ANOTHER FRAGMENT (A)
Yes, often when the eyes are cold and dry,
And the lips calm, the Spirit weeps within
Tears bitterer than the blood of agony 305
Trembling in drops on the discoloured skin
Of those who love their kind and therefore perish
In ghastly torture — a sweet medicine
Of peace and sleep are tears, and quietly
Them soothe from whose uplifted eyes they fall 310
But…
ANOTHER FRAGMENT (B)
Her hair was brown, her sphered eyes were brown,
And in their dark and liquid moisture swam,
Like the dim orb of the eclipsed moon;
Yet when the spirit flashed beneath, there came 315
The light from them, as when tears of delight
Double the western planet’s serene flame.
LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE
Composed during Shelley’s occupation of the Gisbornes’ house at Leghorn, July, 1820; published in “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. Sources of the text are (1) a draft in Shelley’s hand, ‘partly illegible’ (Forman), amongst the Boscombe manuscripts; (2) a transcript by Mrs. Shelley; (3) the editio princeps, 1824; the text in “Poetical Works”, 1839, let and 2nd editions. The text provided here is that of Mrs. Shelley’s transcript, modified by the Boscombe manuscript.
LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE
The spider spreads her webs, whether she be
In poet’s tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;
The silk-worm in the dark green mulberry leaves
His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;
So I, a thing whom moralists call worm, 5
Sit spinning still round this decaying form,
From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought —
No net of words in garish colours wrought
To catch the idle buzzers of the day —
But a soft cell, where when that fades away, 10
Memory may clothe in wings my living name
And feed it with the asphodels of fame,
Which in those hearts which must remember me
Grow, making love an immortality.
Whoever should behold me now, I wist, 15
Would think I were a mighty mechanist,
Bent with sublime Archimedean art
To breathe a soul into the iron heart
Of some machine portentous, or strange gin,
Which by the force of figured spells might win 20
Its way over the sea, and sport therein;
For round the walls are hung dread engines, such
As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch
Ixion or the Titan: — or the quick
Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic, 25
To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic,
Or those in philanthropic council met,
Who thought to pay some interest for the debt
They owed to Jesus Christ for their salvation,
By giving a faint foretaste of damnation 30
To Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, and the rest
Who made our land an island of the blest,
When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire
On Freedom’s hearth, grew dim with Empire: —
With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag, 35
Which fishers found under the utmost crag
Of Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles,
Where to the sky the rude sea rarely smiles
Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn
When the exulting elements in scorn, 40
Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay
Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey,
As panthers sleep; — and other strange and dread
Magical forms the brick floor overspread, —
Proteus transformed to metal did not make 45
More figures, or more strange; nor did he take
Such shapes of unintelligible brass,
Or heap himself in such a horrid mass
Of tin and iron not to be understood;
And forms of unima
ginable wood, 50
To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood:
Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and grooved blocks,
The elements of what will stand the shocks
Of wave and wind and time. — Upon the table
More knacks and quips there be than I am able 55
To catalogize in this verse of mine: —
A pretty bowl of wood — not full of wine,
But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink
When at their subterranean toil they swink,
Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who 60
Reply to them in lava — cry halloo!
And call out to the cities o’er their head, —
Roofs, towers, and shrines, the dying and the dead,
Crash through the chinks of earth — and then all quaff
Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh. 65
This quicksilver no gnome has drunk — within
The walnut bowl it lies, veined and thin,
In colour like the wake of light that stains
The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains
The inmost shower of its white fire — the breeze 70
Is still — blue Heaven smiles over the pale seas.
And in this bowl of quicksilver — for I
Yield to the impulse of an infancy
Outlasting manhood — I have made to float
A rude idealism of a paper boat: — 75
A hollow screw with cogs — Henry will know
The thing I mean and laugh at me, — if so
He fears not I should do more mischief. — Next
Lie bills and calculations much perplexed,
With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint 80
Traced over them in blue and yellow paint.
Then comes a range of mathematical
Instruments, for plans nautical and statical,
A heap of rosin, a queer broken glass
With ink in it; — a china cup that was 85
What it will never be again, I think, —
A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink
The liquor doctors rail at — and which I
Will quaff in spite of them — and when we die
We’ll toss up who died first of drinking tea, 90
And cry out,—’Heads or tails?’ where’er we be.
Near that a dusty paint-box, some odd hooks,
A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books,
Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms,
To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims, 95
Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray
Of figures, — disentangle them who may.
Baron de Tott’s Memoirs beside them lie,
And some odd volumes of old chemistry.
Near those a most inexplicable thing, 100
With lead in the middle — I’m conjecturing
How to make Henry understand; but no —
I’ll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo,
This secret in the pregnant womb of time,
Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme. 105
And here like some weird Archimage sit I,
Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery,
The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind
Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind
The gentle spirit of our meek reviews 110
Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,
Ruffling the ocean of their self-content; —
I sit — and smile or sigh as is my bent,
But not for them — Libeccio rushes round
With an inconstant and an idle sound, 115
I heed him more than them — the thunder-smoke
Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak
Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;
The ripe corn under the undulating air
Undulates like an ocean; — and the vines 120
Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines —
The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill
The empty pauses of the blast; — the hill
Looks hoary through the white electric rain,
And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain, 125
The interrupted thunder howls; above
One chasm of Heaven smiles, like the eye of Love
On the unquiet world; — while such things are,
How could one worth your friendship heed the war
Of worms? the shriek of the world’s carrion jays, 130
Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise?
You are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees,
In vacant chairs, your absent images,
And points where once you sat, and now should be
But are not. — I demand if ever we 135
Shall meet as then we met; — and she replies.
Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;
‘I know the past alone — but summon home
My sister Hope, — she speaks of all to come.’
But I, an old diviner, who knew well 140
Every false verse of that sweet oracle,
Turned to the sad enchantress once again,
And sought a respite from my gentle pain,
In citing every passage o’er and o’er
Of our communion — how on the sea-shore 145
We watched the ocean and the sky together,
Under the roof of blue Italian weather;
How I ran home through last year’s thunder-storm,
And felt the transverse lightning linger warm
Upon my cheek — and how we often made 150
Feasts for each other, where good will outweighed
The frugal luxury of our country cheer,
As well it might, were it less firm and clear
Than ours must ever be; — and how we spun
A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun 155
Of this familiar life, which seems to be
But is not: — or is but quaint mockery
Of all we would believe, and sadly blame
The jarring and inexplicable frame
Of this wrong world: — and then anatomize 160
The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes
Were closed in distant years; — or widely guess
The issue of the earth’s great business,
When we shall be as we no longer are —
Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war 165
Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not; — or how
You listened to some interrupted flow
Of visionary rhyme, — in joy and pain
Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,
With little skill perhaps; — or how we sought 170
Those deepest wells of passion or of thought
Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
Staining their sacred waters with our tears;
Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed!
Or how I, wisest lady! then endued 175
The language of a land which now is free,
And, winged with thoughts of truth and majesty,
Flits round the tyrant’s sceptre like a cloud,
And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,
‘My name is Legion!’ — that majestic tongue 180
Which Calderon over the desert flung
Of ages and of nations; and which found
An echo in our hearts, and with the sound
Startled oblivion; — thou wert then to me
As is a nurse — when inarticulately 185
A child would talk as its grown parents do.
If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,
If hawks chase doves through the aethereal way,
Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey,
Why should not we rouse with the spirit’s blast 190
Out of the forest of t
he pathless past
These recollected pleasures?
You are now
In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow
At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. 195
Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see
That which was Godwin, — greater none than he
Though fallen — and fallen on evil times — to stand
Among the spirits of our age and land,
Before the dread tribunal of “to come” 200
The foremost, — while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb.
You will see Coleridge — he who sits obscure
In the exceeding lustre and the pure
Intense irradiation of a mind,
Which, with its own internal lightning blind, 200
Flags wearily through darkness and despair —
A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
A hooded eagle among blinking owls. —
You will see Hunt — one of those happy souls
Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom 210
This world would smell like what it is — a tomb;
Who is, what others seem; his room no doubt
Is still adorned with many a cast from Shout,
With graceful flowers tastefully placed about;
And coronals of bay from ribbons hung, 215
And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung;
The gifts of the most learned among some dozens
Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins.
And there is he with his eternal puns,
Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns 220
Thundering for money at a poet’s door;
Alas! it is no use to say, ‘I’m poor!’
Or oft in graver mood, when he will look
Things wiser than were ever read in book,
Except in Shakespeare’s wisest tenderness. — 225
You will see Hogg, — and I cannot express
His virtues, — though I know that they are great,
Because he locks, then barricades the gate
Within which they inhabit; — of his wit
And wisdom, you’ll cry out when you are bit. 230
He is a pearl within an oyster shell.
One of the richest of the deep; — and there
Is English Peacock, with his mountain Fair,
Turned into a Flamingo; — that shy bird
That gleams i’ the Indian air — have you not heard 235
When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,
His best friends hear no more of him? — but you
Will see him, and will like him too, I hope,
With the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope
Matched with this cameleopard — his fine wit 240
Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it;
Percy Bysshe Shelley Page 82