A strain too learned for a shallow age,
Too wise for selfish bigots; let his page,
Which charms the chosen spirits of the time,
Fold itself up for the serener clime 245
Of years to come, and find its recompense
In that just expectation. — Wit and sense,
Virtue and human knowledge; all that might
Make this dull world a business of delight,
Are all combined in Horace Smith. — And these. 250
With some exceptions, which I need not tease
Your patience by descanting on, — are all
You and I know in London.
I recall
My thoughts, and bid you look upon the night.
As water does a sponge, so the moonlight 255
Fills the void, hollow, universal air —
What see you? — unpavilioned Heaven is fair,
Whether the moon, into her chamber gone,
Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan
Climbs with diminished beams the azure steep; 260
Or whether clouds sail o’er the inverse deep,
Piloted by the many-wandering blast,
And the rare stars rush through them dim and fast: —
All this is beautiful in every land. —
But what see you beside? — a shabby stand 265
Of Hackney coaches — a brick house or wall
Fencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl
Of our unhappy politics; — or worse —
A wretched woman reeling by, whose curse
Mixed with the watchman’s, partner of her trade, 270
You must accept in place of serenade —
Or yellow-haired Pollonia murmuring
To Henry, some unutterable thing.
I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit
Built round dark caverns, even to the root 275
Of the living stems that feed them — in whose bowers
There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers;
Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn
Trembles not in the slumbering air, and borne
In circles quaint, and ever-changing dance, 280
Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance,
Pale in the open moonshine, but each one
Under the dark trees seems a little sun,
A meteor tamed; a fixed star gone astray
From the silver regions of the milky way; — 285
Afar the Contadino’s song is heard,
Rude, but made sweet by distance — and a bird
Which cannot be the Nightingale, and yet
I know none else that sings so sweet as it
At this late hour; — and then all is still — 290
Now — Italy or London, which you will!
Next winter you must pass with me; I’ll have
My house by that time turned into a grave
Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care,
And all the dreams which our tormentors are; 295
Oh! that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock, and Smith were there,
With everything belonging to them fair! —
We will have books, Spanish, Italian, Greek;
And ask one week to make another week
As like his father, as I’m unlike mine, 300
Which is not his fault, as you may divine.
Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
Yet let’s be merry: we’ll have tea and toast;
Custards for supper, and an endless host
Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies, 305
And other such lady-like luxuries, —
Feasting on which we will philosophize!
And we’ll have fires out of the Grand Duke’s wood,
To thaw the six weeks’ winter in our blood.
And then we’ll talk; — what shall we talk about? 310
Oh! there are themes enough for many a bout
Of thought-entangled descant; — as to nerves —
With cones and parallelograms and curves
I’ve sworn to strangle them if once they dare
To bother me — when you are with me there. 315
And they shall never more sip laudanum,
From Helicon or Himeros (1); — well, come,
And in despite of God and of the devil,
We’ll make our friendly philosophic revel
Outlast the leafless time; till buds and flowers 320
Warn the obscure inevitable hours,
Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew; —
‘To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.’
THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE
This poem was the last major work by Shelley before his death in 1822. Shelley wrote the poem at Casa Magni in Lerici, Italy, modelling it on Petrarch’s Trionfi and Dante’s Divine Comedy. The Triumph of Love was first published in the collection Posthumous Poems (1824) published in London by John and Henry L. Hunt which was edited by the poet’s wife Mary Shelley, who had stressed the importance of the work. The theme of the poem is an exploration of the nature of being and reality. Shelley portrays life as a “painted veil” that obscures and disguises the immortal spirit and the poem explains how natural life corrupts and triumphs over the spirit. Sadly, the poem was left unifinished, with the poet dying in a storm on a boat voyage near Leghorn.
The surviving manuscript of the first page
THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE.
Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth —
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows 5
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth
Of light, the Ocean’s orison arose,
To which the birds tempered their matin lay.
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day, 10
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air;
And, in succession due, did continent, 15
Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear
The form and character of mortal mould,
Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear
Their portion of the toil, which he of old
Took as his own, and then imposed on them: 20
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep 25
Of a green Apennine: before me fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the deep
Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head, —
When a strange trance over my fancy grew
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread 30
Was so transparent, that the scene came through
As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
O’er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew
That I had felt the freshness of that dawn
Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair, 35
And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
Under the self-same bough, and heard as there
The birds, the fountains and the ocean hold
Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air,
And then a vision on my train was rolled. 40
…
As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay,
This was the tenour of my waking dream: —
Methought I sate beside a public way
Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream
Of people there w
as hurrying to and fro, 45
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,
All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
Whither he went, or whence he came, or why
He made one of the multitude, and so
Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky 50
One of the million leaves of summer’s bier;
Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,
Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear,
Some flying from the thing they feared, and some
Seeking the object of another’s fear; 55
And others, as with steps towards the tomb,
Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,
And others mournfully within the gloom
Of their own shadow walked, and called it death;
And some fled from it as it were a ghost, 60
Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath:
But more, with motions which each other crossed,
Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw,
Or birds within the noonday aether lost,
Upon that path where flowers never grew, —
And, weary with vain toil and faint for thirst,
Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew
Out of their mossy cells forever burst;
Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
Of grassy paths and wood-lawns interspersed 70
With overarching elms and caverns cold,
And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they
Pursued their serious folly as of old.
And as I gazed, methought that in the way
The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June 75
When the south wind shakes the extinguished day,
And a cold glare, intenser than the noon,
But icy cold, obscured with blinding light
The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon —
When on the sunlit limits of the night 80
Her white shell trembles amid crimson air,
And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might —
Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear
The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim form
Bends in dark aether from her infant’s chair, — 85
So came a chariot on the silent storm
Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape
So sate within, as one whom years deform,
Beneath a dusky hood and double cape,
Crouching within the shadow of a tomb; 90
And o’er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape
Was bent, a dun and faint aethereal gloom
Tempering the light. Upon the chariot-beam
A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume
The guidance of that wonder-winged team; 95
The shapes which drew it in thick lightenings
Were lost: — I heard alone on the air’s soft stream
The music of their ever-moving wings.
All the four faces of that Charioteer
Had their eyes banded; little profit brings 100
Speed in the van and blindness in the rear,
Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun, —
Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere
Of all that is, has been or will be done;
So ill was the car guided — but it passed 105
With solemn speed majestically on.
The crowd gave way, and I arose aghast,
Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance,
And saw, like clouds upon the thunder-blast,
The million with fierce song and maniac dance 110
Raging around — such seemed the jubilee
As when to greet some conqueror’s advance
Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea
From senate-house, and forum, and theatre,
When … upon the free 115
Had bound a yoke, which soon they stooped to bear.
Nor wanted here the just similitude
Of a triumphal pageant, for where’er
The chariot rolled, a captive multitude
Was driven; — all those who had grown old in power 120
Or misery, — all who had their age subdued
By action or by suffering, and whose hour
Was drained to its last sand in weal or woe,
So that the trunk survived both fruit and flower; —
All those whose fame or infamy must grow 125
Till the great winter lay the form and name
Of this green earth with them for ever low; —
All but the sacred few who could not tame
Their spirits to the conquerors — but as soon
As they had touched the world with living flame, 130
Fled back like eagles to their native noon,
Or those who put aside the diadem
Of earthly thrones or gems…
Were there, of Athens or Jerusalem.
Were neither mid the mighty captives seen, 135
Nor mid the ribald crowd that followed them,
Nor those who went before fierce and obscene.
The wild dance maddens in the van, and those
Who lead it — fleet as shadows on the green,
Outspeed the chariot, and without repose 140
Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
To savage music, wilder as it grows,
They, tortured by their agonizing pleasure,
Convulsed and on the rapid whirlwinds spun
Of that fierce Spirit, whose unholy leisure 145
Was soothed by mischief since the world begun,
Throw back their heads and loose their streaming hair;
And in their dance round her who dims the sun,
Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air
As their feet twinkle; they recede, and now 150
Bending within each other’s atmosphere,
Kindle invisibly — and as they glow,
Like moths by light attracted and repelled,
Oft to their bright destruction come and go,
Till like two clouds into one vale impelled, 155
That shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle
And die in rain — the fiery band which held
Their natures, snaps — while the shock still may tingle
One falls and then another in the path
Senseless — nor is the desolation single, 160
Yet ere I can say WHERE — the chariot hath
Passed over them — nor other trace I find
But as of foam after the ocean’s wrath
Is spent upon the desert shore; — behind,
Old men and women foully disarrayed, 165
Shake their gray hairs in the insulting wind,
And follow in the dance, with limbs decayed,
Seeking to reach the light which leaves them still
Farther behind and deeper in the shade.
But not the less with impotence of will 170
They wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose
Round them and round each other, and fulfil
Their work, and in the dust from whence they rose
Sink, and corruption veils them as they lie,
And past in these performs what … in those. 175
Struck to the heart by this sad pageantry,
Half to myself I said—’And what is this?
Whose shape is that within the car? And why—’
I would have added—’is all here amiss?—’
But a voice answered—’Life!’ — I turned, and knew 180
(O Heaven, have mercy on such wretchedness!)
That what I thought was an old root which grew
To strange distortion out of the hill side,
Was indeed one of those deluded crew,
And that the grass, which methought hung so wide 185
And white, was but his t
hin discoloured hair,
And that the holes he vainly sought to hide,
Were or had been eyes:—’If thou canst forbear
To join the dance, which I had well forborne,’
Said the grim Feature, of my thought aware, 190
‘I will unfold that which to this deep scorn
Led me and my companions, and relate
The progress of the pageant since the morn;
‘If thirst of knowledge shall not then abate,
Follow it thou even to the night, but I 195
Am weary.’ — Then like one who with the weight
Of his own words is staggered, wearily
He paused; and ere he could resume, I cried:
‘First, who art thou?’—’Before thy memory,
‘I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did and died, 200
And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit
Had been with purer nutriment supplied,
‘Corruption would not now thus much inherit
Of what was once Rousseau, — nor this disguise
Stain that which ought to have disdained to wear it; 205
‘If I have been extinguished, yet there rise
A thousand beacons from the spark I bore’ —
‘And who are those chained to the car?’—’The wise,
‘The great, the unforgotten, — they who wore
Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths of light, 210
Signs of thought’s empire over thought — their lore
‘Taught them not this, to know themselves; their might
Could not repress the mystery within,
And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night
‘Caught them ere evening.’—’Who is he with chin 215
Upon his breast, and hands crossed on his chain?’ —
‘The child of a fierce hour; he sought to win
‘The world, and lost all that it did contain
Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; and more
Of fame and peace than virtue’s self can gain 220
‘Without the opportunity which bore
Him on its eagle pinions to the peak
From which a thousand climbers have before
‘Fallen, as Napoleon fell.’ — I felt my cheek
Alter, to see the shadow pass away, 225
Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak
That every pigmy kicked it as it lay;
And much I grieved to think how power and will
In opposition rule our mortal day,
And why God made irreconcilable 230
Good and the means of good; and for despair
I half disdained mine eyes’ desire to fill
With the spent vision of the times that were
And scarce have ceased to be.—’Dost thou behold,’
Percy Bysshe Shelley Page 83