The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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None else beheld her eyes—in him they woke
Memories which found a tongue as thus he silence broke.
CANTO II
I
THE starlight smile of children, the sweet looks
Of women, the fair breast from which I fed,
The murmur of the unreposing brooks,
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And the green light which, shifting overhead,
Some tangled bower of vines around me shed,
The shells on the sea-sand, and the wild flowers,
The lamplight through the rafters cheerly spread,
And on the twining flax—in life’s young hours
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These sights and sounds did nurse my spirit’s folded powers.
II
In Argolis, beside the echoing sea,
Such impulses within my mortal frame
Arose, and they were dear to memory,
Like tokens of the dead:—but others came
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Soon, in another shape: the wondrous fame
Of the past world, the vital words and deeds
Of minds whom neither time nor change can tame,
Traditions dark and old, whence evil creeds
Start forth, and whose dim shade a stream of poison feeds.
III
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I heard, as all have heard, the various story
Of human life, and wept unwilling tears.
Feeble historians of its shame and glory,
False disputants on all its hopes and fears,
Victims who worshipped ruin,—chroniclers
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Of daily scorn, and slaves who loathed their state
Yet, flattering power, had given its ministers
A throne of judgement in the grave:—’twas fate,
That among such as these my youth should seek its mate.
IV
The land in which I lived, by a fell bane
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Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side,
And stabled in our homes,—until the chain
Stifled the captive’s cry, and to abide
That blasting curse men had no shame—all vied
In evil, slave and despot; fear with lust
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Strange fellowship through mutual hate had tied,
Like two dark serpents tangled in the dust,
Which on the paths of men their mingling poison thrust.
V
Earth, our bright home, its mountains and its waters,
And the ethereal shapes which are suspended
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Over its green expanse, and those fair daughters,
The clouds, of Sun and Ocean, who have blended
The colours of the air since first extended
It cradled the young world, none wandered forth
To see or feel: a darkness had descended
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On every heart: the light which shows its worth,
Must among gentle thoughts and fearless take its birth.
VI
This vital world, this home of happy spirits,
Was as a dungeon to my blasted kind;
All that despair from murdered hope inherits
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They sought, and in their helpless misery blind,
A deeper prison and heavier chains did find,
And stronger tyrants:—a dark gulf before,
The realm of a stern Ruler, yawned; behind,
Terror and Time conflicting drove, and bore
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On their tempestuous flood the shrieking wretch from shore.
VII
Out of that Ocean’s wrecks had Guilt and Woe
Framed a dark dwelling for their homeless thought,
And, starting at the ghosts which to and fro
Glide o’er its dim and gloomy strand, had brought
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The worship thence which they each other taught.
Well might men loathe their life, well might they turn
Even to the ills again from which they sought
Such refuge after death!—well might they learn
To gaze on this fair world with hopeless unconcern!
VIII
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For they all pined in bondage; body and soul,
Tyrant and slave, victim and torturer, bent
Before one Power, to which supreme control
Over their will by their own weakness lent,
Made all its many names omnipotent;
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All symbols of things evil, all divine;
And hymns of blood or mockery, which rent
The air from all its fanes, did intertwine
Imposture’s impious toils round each discordant shrine.
IX
I heard, as all have heard, life’s various story,
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And in no careless heart transcribed the tale;
But, from the sneers of men who had grown hoary
In shame and scorn, from groans of crowds made pale
By famine, from a mother’s desolate wail
O’er her polluted child, from innocent blood
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Poured on the earth, and brows anxious and pale
With the heart’s warfare; did I gather food
To feed my many thoughts: a tameless multitude!
X
I wandered through the wrecks of days departed
Far by the desolated shore, when even
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O’er the still sea and jagged islets darted
The light of moonrise; in the northern Heaven,
Among the clouds near the horizon driven,
The mountains lay beneath our planet pale;
Around me, broken tombs and columns riven
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Looked vast in twilight, and the sorrowing gale
Waked in those ruins gray its everlasting wail!
XI
I knew not who had framed these wonders then,
Nor had I heard the story of their deeds;
But dwellings of a race of mightier men,
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And monuments of less ungentle creeds
Tell their own tale to him who wisely heeds
The language which they speak; and now, to me
The moonlight making pale the blooming weeds,
The bright stars shining in the breathless sea,
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Interpreted those scrolls of mortal mystery.
XII
Such man has been, and such may yet become!
Ay, wiser, greater, gentler, even than they
Who on the fragments of yon shattered dome
Have stamped the sign of power—I felt the sway
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Of the vast stream of ages bear away
My floating thoughts—my heart beat loud and fast—
Even as a storm let loose beneath the ray
Of the still moon, my spirit onward past
Beneath truth’s steady beams upon its tumult cast.
XIII
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It shall be thus no more! too long, too long,
Sons of the glorious dead, have ye lain bound
In darkness and in ruin!—Hope is strong,
Justice and Truth their wingèd child have found—
Awake! arise! until the mighty sound
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Of your career shall scatter in its gust
The thrones of the oppressor, and the ground
Hide the last altar’s unregarded dust,
Whose Idol has so long betrayed your impious trust!
XIV
It must be so—I will arise and waken
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The multitude, and like a sulphurous hill,
Which on a sudden from its snows has shaken
The swoon of ages, it shall burst and fill
The world with cleansing fire: it must, it will—
I
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Amid the rocking earthquake steadfast still,
But Laon? on high Freedom’s desert land
A tower whose marble walls the leaguèd storms withstand!
XV
One summer night, in commune with the hope
Thus deeply fed, amid those ruins gray
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I watched, beneath the dark sky’s starry cope;
And ever from that hour upon me lay
The burden of this hope, and night or day,
In vision or in dream, clove to my breast:
Among mankind, or when gone far away
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To the lone shores and mountains, ’twas a guest
Which followed where I fled, and watched when I did rest.
XVI
These hopes found words through which my spirit sought
To weave a bondage of such sympathy,
As might create some response to the thought
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Which ruled me now—and as the vapours lie
Bright in the outspread morning’s radiancy,
So were these thoughts invested with the light
Of language: and all bosoms made reply
On which its lustre streamed, whene’er it might
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Through darkness wide and deep those trancèd spirits smite.
XVII
Yes, many an eye with dizzy tears was dim,
And oft I thought to clasp my own heart’s brother,
When I could feel the listener’s senses swim,
And hear his breath its own swift gaspings smother
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Even as my words evoked them—and another,
And yet another, I did fondly deem,
Felt that we all were sons of one great mother;
And the cold truth such sad reverse did seem,
As to awake in grief from some delightful dream.
XVIII
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Yes, oft beside the ruined labyrinth
Which skirts the hoary caves of the green deep,
Did Laon and his friend, on one gray plinth,
Round whose worn base the wild waves hiss and leap,
Resting at eve, a lofty converse keep:
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And that this friend was false, may now be said
Calmly—that he like other men could weep
Tears which are lies, and could betray and spread
Snares for that guileless heart which for his own had bled.
XIX
Then, had no great aim recompensed my sorrow,
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I must have sought dark respite from its stress
In dreamless rest, in sleep that sees no morrow—
For to tread life’s dismaying wilderness
Without one smile to cheer, one voice to bless,
Amid the snares and scoffs of human kind,
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Is hard—but I betrayed it not, nor less
With love that scorned return, sought to unbind
The interwoven clouds which make its wisdom blind.
XX
With deathless minds which leave where they have passed
A path of light, my soul communion knew;
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Till from that glorious intercourse, at last,
As from a mine of magic store, I drew
Words which were weapons;—round my heart there grew
The adamantine armour of their power,
And from my fancy wings of golden hue
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Sprang forth—yet not alone from wisdom’s tower,
A minister of truth, these plumes young Laon bore.
XXI
An orphan with my parents lived, whose eyes
Were lodestars of delight, which drew me home
When I might wander forth; nor did I prize
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Aught human thing beneath Heaven’s mighty dome
Beyond this child: so when sad hours were come,
And baffled hope like ice still clung to me,
Since kin were cold, and friends had now become
Heartless and false, I turned from all, to be,
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Cythna, the only source of tears and smiles to thee.
XXII
What wert thou then? A child most infantine,
Yet wandering far beyond that innocent age
In all but its sweet looks and mien divine:
Even then, methought, with the world’s tyrant rage
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A patient warfare thy young heart did wage,
When those soft eyes of scarcely conscious thought
Some tale, or thine own fancies, would engage
To overflow with tears, or converse fraught
With passion, o’er their depths its fleeting light had wrought.
XXIII
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She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness,
A power, that from its objects scarcely drew
One impulse of her being—in her lightness
Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew,
Which wanders through the waste air’s pathless blue,
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To nourish some far desert: she did seem
Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,
Like the bright shade of some immortal dream
Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life’s dark stream.
XXIV
As mine own shadow was this child to me,
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A second self, far dearer and more fair;
Which clothed in undissolving radiancy
All those steep paths which languor and despair
Of human things, had made so dark and bare,
But which I trod alone—nor, till bereft
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Of friends, and overcome by lonely care,
Knew I what solace for that loss was left,
Though by a bitter wound my trusting heart was cleft.
XXV
Once she was dear, now she was all I had
To love in human life—this playmate sweet,
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This child of twelve years old—so she was made
My sole associate, and her willing feet
Wandered with mine where earth and ocean meet,
Beyond the aëreal mountains whose vast cells
The unreposing billows ever beat.
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Through forests wide and old, and lawny dells
Where boughs of incense droop over the emerald wells.
XXVI
And warm and light I felt her clasping hand
When twined in mine: she followed where I went,
Through the lone paths of our immortal land.
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It had no waste but some memorial lent
Which strung me to my toil—some monument
Vital with mind: then, Cythna by my side,
Until the bright and beaming day were spent,
Would rest, with looks entreating to abide,
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Too earnest and too sweet ever to be denied.
XXVII
And soon I could not have refused her—thus
For ever, day and night, we two were ne’er
Parted, but when brief sleep divided us:
And when the pauses of the lulling air
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Of noon beside the sea, had made a lair
For her soothed senses, in my arms she slept,
And I kept watch over her slumbers there,
While, as the shifting visions o’er her swept,
Amid her innocent rest by turns she smiled and wept.
XXVIII
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And, in the murmur of her dreams was heard
Sometimes the name of Laon:—suddenly
She would arise, and, like the secret bird
Whom sunset wakens, fill the shore and sky
With her sweet accents—a wild melody!
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Hymns which my soul had woven to Freedom, strong
The source of passion, whence they rose, to be;
Triumphant strains, which, like a spirit’s tongue,
To the enchanted waves that child of glory sung—
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Her white arms lifted through the shadowy stream
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Of her loose hair—oh, excellently great
Seemed to me then my purpose, the vast theme
Of those impassioned songs, when Cythna sate
Amid the calm which rapture doth create
After its tumult, her heart vibrating,
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Her spirit o’er the ocean’s floating state
From her deep eyes far wandering, on the wing
Of visions that were mine, beyond its utmost spring.
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For, before Cythna loved it, had my song
Peopled with thoughts the boundless universe,
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A mighty congregation, which were strong
Where’er they trod the darkness to disperse
The cloud of that unutterable curse
Which clings upon mankind:—all things became
Slaves to my holy and heroic verse,
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Earth, sea and sky, the planets, life and fame
And fate, or whate’er else binds the world’s wondrous frame.
XXXI
And this beloved child thus felt the sway
Of my conceptions, gathering like a cloud
The very wind on which it rolls away:
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Hers too were all my thoughts, ere yet, endowed
With music and with light, their fountains flowed
In poesy; and her still and earnest face,
Pallid with feelings which intensely glowed
Within, was turned on mine with speechless grace,