Peace thus, and but in you I found it not.
V
Full half an hour, to-day, I tried my lot
With various flowers, and every one still said,
35
‘She loves me—loves me not.’
And if this meant a vision long since fled—
If it meant fortune, fame, or peace of thought—
If it meant,—but I dread
To speak what you may know too well:
40
Still there was truth in the sad oracle.
VI
The crane o’er seas and forests seeks her home;
No bird so wild but has its quiet nest,
When it no more would roam;
The sleepless billows on the ocean’s breast
45
Break like a bursting heart, and die in foam,
And thus at length find rest:
Doubtless there is a place of peace
Where my weak heart and all its throbs will cease.
VII
I asked her, yesterday, if she believed
50
That I had resolution. One who had
Would ne’er have thus relieved
His heart with words,—but what his judgement bade
Would do, and leave the scorner unrelieved.
These verses are too sad
55
To send to you, but that I know,
Happy yourself, you feel another’s woe.
TO—–
I
ONE word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it;
5
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
II
I can give not what men call love,
10
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not,—
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
15
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?
TO—–
I
WHEN passion’s trance is overpast,
If tenderness and truth could last,
Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep
Some mortal slumber, dark and deep,
5
I should not weep, I should not weep!
II
It were enough to feel, to see,
Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly,
And dream the rest—and burn and be
The secret food of fires unseen,
10
Couldst thou but be as thou hast been.
III
After the slumber of the year
The woodland violets reappear;
All things revive in field or grove,
And sky and sea, but two, which move
15
And form all others, life and love.
A BRIDAL SONG
I
THE golden gates of Sleep unbar
Where Strength and Beauty, met together,
Kindle their image like a star
In a sea of glassy weather!
5
Night, with all thy stars look down,—
Darkness, weep thy holiest dew,—
Never smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair so true.
Let eyes not see their own de light;—
Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight
Oft renew.
II
Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!
Holy stars, permit no wrong!
And return to wake the sleeper,
15
Dawn,—ere it be long!
O joy! O fear! what will be done
In the absence of the sun!
Come along!
EPITHALAMIUM
ANOTHER VERSION OF THE PRECEDING
NIGHT, with all thine eyes look down!
Darkness shed its holiest dew!
When ever smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair so true?
5
Hence, coy hour! and quench thy light,
Lest eyes see their own delight!
Hence, swift hour! and thy loved flight
Oft renew.
Boys.
O joy! O fear! what may be done
10
In the absence of the sun?
Come along!
The golden gates of sleep unbar!
When strength and beauty meet together,
Kindles their image like a star
15
In a sea of glassy weather.
Hence, coy hour! and quench thy light,
Lest eyes see their own delight!
Hence, swift hour! and thy loved flight
Oft renew.
Girls.
O joy! O fear! what may be done
In the absence of the sun?
Come along!
Fairies! sprites! and angels, keep her!
Holiest powers, permit no wrong!
25
And return, to wake the sleeper,
Dawn, ere it be long.
Hence, swift hour! and quench thy light,
Lest eyes see their own delight!
Hence, coy hour! and thy loved flight
30
Oft renew!
Boys and Girls.
O joy! O fear! what will be done
In the absence of the sun?
Come along!
ANOTHER VERSION OF THE SAME
Boys Sing.
NIGHT! with all thine eyes look down!
Darkness! weep thy holiest dew!
Never smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair so true.
5
Haste, coy hour! and quench all light,
Lest eyes see their own delight!
Haste, swift hour! and thy loved flight
Oft renew!
Girls Sing.
Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!
10
Holy stars! permit no wrong!
And return, to wake the sleeper,
Dawn, ere it be long!
O joy! O fear! there is not one
Of us can guess what may be done
15
In the absence of the sun:—
Come along!
Boys.
Oh! linger long, thou envious eastern lamp
In the damp
Caves of the deep!
Girls.
20
Nay, return, Vesper! urge thy lazy car!
Swift unbar
The gates of Sleep!
Chorus.
The golden gate of Sleep unbar,
When Strength and Beauty, met together,
25
Kindle their image, like a star
In a sea of glassy weather.
May the purple mist of love
Round them rise, and with them move,
Nourishing each tender gem
30
Which, like flowers, will burst from them.
As the fruit is to the tree
May their children ever be!
LOVE, HOPE, DESIRE, AND FEAR
· · · · · · ·
AND many there were hurt by that strong boy,
His name, they said, was Pleasure,
And near him stood, glorious beyond measure,
Four Ladies who possess all empery
5
In earth and air and sea,
Nothing that lives from their award is free.
Their names will I declare to thee,
Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear,
And they the regents are
10
Of the four elements that frame the heart,
And each diversely exercised her
art
By force or circumstance or sleight
To prove her dreadful might
Upon that poor domain.
15
Desire presented her [false] glass, and then
The spirit dwelling there
Was spellbound to embrace what seemed so fair
Within that magic mirror,
And dazed by that bright error,
20
It would have scorned the [shafts] of the avenger,
And death, and penitence, and danger,
Had not then silent Fear
Touched with her palsying spear,
So that as if a frozen torrent
25
The blood was curdled in its current;
It dared not speak, even in look or motion,
But chained within itself its proud devotion.
Between Desire and Fear thou wert
A wretched thing, poor heart!
30
Sad was his life who bore thee in his breast,
Wild bird for that weak nest.
Till Love even from fierce Desire it bought,
And from the very wound of tender thought
Drew solace, and the pity of sweet eyes
35
Gave strength to bear those gentle agonies,
Surmount the loss, the terror, and the sorrow.
Then Hope approached, she who can borrow
For poor to-day, from rich to-morrow,
And Fear withdrew, as night when day
40
Descends upon the orient ray,
And after long and vain endurance
The poor heart woke to her assurance.
—At one birth these four were born
With the world’s forgotten morn,
And from Pleasure still they hold
All it circles, as of old.
When, as summer lures the swallow,
Pleasure lures the heart to follow—
O weak heart of little wit!
50
The fair hand that wounded it,
Seeking, like a panting hare,
Refuge in the lynx’s lair,
Love, Desire, Hope, and Fear.
Ever will be near.
FRAGMENTS WRITTEN FOR HELLAS
I
FAIREST of the Destinies,
Disarray thy dazzling eyes:
Keener far thy lightnings are
Than the wingèd [bolts] thou bearest,
5
And the smile thou wearest
Wraps thee as a star
Is wrapped in light.
II
Could Arethuse to her forsaken urn
From Alpheus and the bitter Doris run,
10
Or could the morning shafts of purest light
Again into the quivers of the Sun
Be gathered—could one thought from its wild flight
Return into the temple of the brain
Without a change, without a stain,—
15
Could aught that is, ever again
Be what it once has ceased to be.
Greece might again be free!
III
A star has fallen upon the earth
Mid the benighted nations,
20
A quenchless atom of immortal light,
A living spark of Night,
A cresset shaken from the constellations.
Swifter than the thunder fell
To the heart of Earth, the well
25
Where its pulses flow and beat,
And unextinct in that cold source
Burns, and on course
Guides the sphere which is its prison,
Like an angelic spirit pent
30
In a form of mortal birth,
Till, as a spirit half-arisen
Shatters its charnel, it has rent,
In the rapture of its mirth,
The thin and painted garment of the Earth,
Ruining its chaos—a fierce breath
Consuming all its forms of living death.
FRAGMENT: ‘I WOULD NOT BE A KING’
I WOULD not be a king—enough
Of woe it is to love;
The path to power is steep and rough,
And tempests reign above.
5
I would not climb the imperial throne;
’Tis built on ice which fortune’s sun
Thaws in the height of noon.
Then farewell, king, yet were I one,
Care would not come so soon.
10
Would he and I were far away
Keeping flocks on Himalay!
GINEVRA
WILD, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one
Who staggers forth into the air and sun
From the dark chamber of a mortal fever,
Bewildered, and incapable, and ever
5
Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain
Of usual shapes, till the familiar train
Of objects and of persons passed like things
Strange as a dreamer’s mad imaginings,
Ginevra from the nuptial altar went;
10
The vows to which her lips had sworn assent
Rung in her brain still with a jarring din,
Deafening the lost intelligence within.
And so she moved under the bridal veil,
Which made the paleness of her cheek more pale,
And deepened the faint crimson of her mouth,
15
And darkened her dark locks, as moonlight doth,—
And of the gold and jewels glittering there
She scarce felt conscious,—but the weary glare
Lay like a chaos of unwelcome light,
20
Vexing the sense with gorgeous undelight,
A moonbeam in the shadow of a cloud
Was less heavenly fair—her face was bowed,
And as she passed, the diamonds in her hair
Were mirrored in the polished marble stair
25
Which led from the cathedral to the street;
And ever as she went her light fair feet
Erased these images.
The bride-maidens who round her thronging came,
Some with a sense of self-rebuke and shame,
30
Envying the unenviable; and others
Making the joy which should have been another’s
Their own by gentle sympathy; and some
Sighing to think of an unhappy home:
Some few admiring what can ever lure
35
Maidens to leave the heaven serene and pure
Of parents’ smiles for life’s great cheat; a thing
Bitter to taste, sweet in imagining.
But they are all dispersed—and, lo! she stands
Looking in idle grief on her white hands,
40
Alone within the garden now her own;
And through the sunny air, with jangling tone,
The music of the merry marriage-bells,
Killing the azure silence, sinks and swells;—
Absorbed like one within a dream who dreams
45
That he is dreaming, until slumber seems
A mockery of itself—when suddenly
Antonio stood before her, pale as she.
With agony, with sorrow, and with pride,
He lifted his wan eyes upon the bride,
50
And said—‘Is this thy faith?’ and then as one
Whose sleeping face is stricken by the sun
With light like a harsh voice, which bids him rise
And look upon his day of life with eyes
Which weep in vain that they can dream no more,
55
Ginevra saw her lover, and forbore
To shriek or faint, and checked the stifling blood
Rushin
g upon her heart, and unsubdued
Said—‘Friend, if earthly violence or ill,
Suspicion, doubt, or the tyrannic will
60
Of parents, chance or custom, time or change,
Or circumstance, or terror, or revenge,
Or wildered looks, or words, or evil speech,
With all their stings and venom can impeach
Our love,—we love not:—if the grave which hides
65
The victim from the tyrant, and divides
The cheek that whitens from the eyes that dart
Imperious inquisition to the heart
That is another’s, could dissever ours,
We love not.’—‘What! do not the silent hours
70
Beckon thee to Gherardi’s bridal bed?
Is not that ring’—a pledge, he would have said,
Of broken vows, but she with patient look
The golden circle from her finger took,
And said—‘Accept this token of my faith,
75
The pledge of vows to be absolved by death;
And I am dead or shall be soon—my knell
Will mix its music with that merry bell,
Does it not sound as if they sweetly said
“We toll a corpse out of the marriage-bed”?
80
The flowers upon my bridal chamber strewn
Will serve unfaded for my bier—so soon
That even the dying violet will not die
Before Ginevra.’ The strong fantasy
Had made her accents weaker and more weak,
85
And quenched the crimson life upon her cheek,
And glazed her eyes, and spread an atmosphere
Round her, which chilled the burning noon with fear,
Making her but an image of the thought
The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley Page 98