The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Through all my limbs with the speed of fire;

  And his keen eyes, glittering through mine,

  1135

  Filled me with the flame divine,

  Which in their orbs was burning far,

  Like the light of an unmeasured star,

  In the sky of midnight dark and deep:

  Yes, ’twas his soul that did inspire

  1140

  Sounds, which my skill could ne’er awaken;

  And first, I felt my fingers sweep

  The harp, and a long quivering cry

  Burst from my lips in symphony:

  The dusk and solid air was shaken,

  1145

  As swift and swifter the notes came

  From my touch, that wandered like quick flame,

  And from my bosom, labouring

  With some unutterable thing:

  The awful sound of my own voice made

  1150

  My faint lips tremble; in some mood

  Of wordless thought Lionel stood

  So pale that even beside his cheek

  The snowy column from its shade

  Caught whiteness: yet his countenance

  1155

  Raised upward, burned with radiance

  Of spirit-piercing joy, whose light,

  Like the moon struggling through the night

  Of whirlwind-rifted clouds, did break

  With beams that might not be confined.

  1160

  I paused, but soon his gestures kindled

  New power, as by the moving wind

  The waves are lifted, and my song

  To low soft notes now changed and dwindled,

  And from the twinkling wires among,

  My languid fingers drew and flung

  Circles of life-dissolving sound,

  Yet faint; in aëry rings they bound

  My Lionel, who, as every strain

  Grew fainter but more sweet, his mien

  1170

  Sunk with the sound relaxedly;

  And slowly now he turned to me,

  As slowly faded from his face

  That awful joy: with looks serene

  He was soon drawn to my embrace,

  And my wild song then died away

  In murmurs: words I dare not say

  We mixed, and on his lips mine fed

  Till they methought felt still and cold:

  ‘What is it with thee, love?’ I said:

  No word, no look, no motion! yes,

  There was a change, but spare to guess,

  Nor let that moment’s hope be told.

  I looked, and knew that he was dead,

  And fell, as the eagle on the plain

  1185

  Falls when life deserts her brain,

  And the mortal lightning is veiled again.

  O that I were now dead! but such

  (Did they not, love, demand too much,

  Those dying murmurs?) he forbade.

  1190

  O that I once again were mad!

  And yet, dear Rosalind, not so,

  For I would live to share thy woe.

  Sweet boy, did I forget thee too?

  Alas, we know not what we do

  When we speak words.

  1195

  No memory more

  Is in my mind of that sea shore.

  Madness came on me, and a troop

  Of misty shapes did seem to sit

  Beside me, on a vessel’s poop,

  1200

  And the clear north wind was driving it.

  Then I heard strange tongues, and saw strange flowers,

  And the stars methought grew unlike ours,

  And the azure sky and the stormless sea

  Made me believe that I had died,

  1205

  And waked in a world, which was to me

  Drear hell, though heaven to all beside:

  Then a dead sleep fell on my mind,

  Whilst animal life many long years

  Had rescue from a chasm of tears;

  1210

  And when I woke, I wept to find

  That the same lady, bright and wise,

  With silver locks and quick brown eyes,

  The mother of my Lionel,

  Had tended me in my distress,

  1215

  And died some months before. Nor less

  Wonder, but far more peace and joy

  Brought in that hour my lovely boy;

  For through that trance my soul had well

  The impress of thy being kept;

  1220

  And if I waked, or if I slept,

  No doubt, though memory faithless be,

  Thy image ever dwelt on me;

  And thus, O Lionel, like thee

  Is our sweet child. ’Tis sure most strange

  1225

  I knew not of so great a change,

  As that which gave him birth, who now

  Is all the solace of my woe.

  That Lionel great wealth had left

  By will to me, and that of all

  1230

  The ready lies of law bereft

  My child and me, might well befall.

  But let me think not of the scorn,

  Which from the meanest I have borne,

  When, for my child’s belovèd sake,

  1235

  I mixed with slaves, to vindicate

  The very laws themselves do make:

  Let me not say scorn is my fate,

  Lest I be proud, suffering the same

  With those who live in deathless fame.

  1240

  She ceased.—‘Lo, where red morning thro’ the woods

  Is burning o’er the dew;’ said Rosalind.

  And with these words they rose, and towards the flood

  Of the blue lake, beneath the leaves now wind

  With equal steps and fingers intertwined:

  1245

  Thence to a lonely dwelling, where the shore

  Is shadowed with deep rocks, and cypresses

  Cleave with their dark green cones the silent skies,

  And with their shadows the clear depths below,

  And where a little terrace from its bowers,

  1250

  Of blooming myrtle and faint lemon-flowers,

  Scatters its sense-dissolving fragrance o’er

  The liquid marble of the windless lake;

  And where the agèd forest’s limbs look hoar,

  Under the leaves which their green garments make,

  1255

  They come: ’tis Helen’s home, and clean and white,

  Like one which tyrants spare on our own land

  In some such solitude, its casements bright

  Shone through their vine-leaves in the morning sun,

  And even within ’twas scarce like Italy.

  1260

  And when she saw how all things there were planned,

  As in an English home, dim memory

  Disturbed poor Rosalind: she stood as one

  Whose mind is where his body cannot be,

  Till Helen led her where her child yet slept,

  1265

  And said, ‘Observe, that brow was Lionel’s,

  Those lips were his, and so he ever kept

  One arm in sleep, pillowing his head with it.

  You cannot see his eyes, they are two wells

  Of liquid love: let us not wake him yet.’

  1270

  But Rosalind could bear no more, and wept

  A shower of burning tears, which fell upon

  His face, and so his opening lashes shone

  With tears unlike his own, as he did leap

  In sudden wonder from his innocent sleep.

  So Rosalind and Helen lived together

  Thenceforth, changed in all else, yet friends again,

  Such as they were, when o’er the mountain heather

  They wandered in their youth, through sun and
rain.

  And after many years, for human things

  1280

  Change even like the ocean and the wind,

  Her daughter was restored to Rosalind,

  And in their circle thence some visitings

  Of joy ’mid their new calm would intervene:

  A lovely child she was, of looks serene,

  1285

  And motions which o’er things indifferent shed

  The grace and gentleness from whence they came.

  And Helen’s boy grew with her, and they fed

  From the same flowers of thought, until each mind

  Like springs which mingle in one ] flood became,

  1290

  And in their union soon their parents saw

  The shadow of the peace denied to them.

  And Rosalind, for when the living-stem

  Is cankered in its heart, the tree must fall,

  Died ere her time; and with deep grief and awe

  1295

  The pale survivors followed her remains

  Beyond the region of dissolving rains,

  Up the cold mountain she was wont to call

  Her tomb; and on Chiavenna’s precipice

  They raised a pyramid of lasting ice,

  1300

  Whose polished sides, ere day had yet begun,

  Caught the first glow of the unrisen sun,

  The last, when it had sunk; and thro’ the night

  The charioteers of Arctos wheelèd round

  Its glittering point, as seen from Helen’s home,

  1305

  Whose sad inhabitants each year would come,

  With willing steps climbing that rugged height,

  And hang long locks of hair, and garlands bound

  With amaranth flowers, which, in the clime’s despite,

  Filled the frore air with unaccustomed light:

  1310

  Such flowers, as in the wintry memory bloom

  Of one friend left, adorned that frozen tomb.

  Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould,

  Whose sufferings too were less, Death slowlier led

  Into the peace of his dominion cold:

  1315

  She died among her kindred, being old.

  And know, that if love die not in the dead

  As in the living, none of mortal kind

  Are blest, as now Helen and Rosalind.

  NOTE BY MRS. SHELLEY

  Rosalind and Helen was begun at Marlow, and thrown aside—till I found it; and, at my request, it was completed. Shelley had no care for any of his poems that did not emanate from the depths of his mind and develop some high or abstruse truth. When he does touch on human life and the human heart, no pictures can be more faithful, more delicate, more subtle, or more pathetic. He never mentioned Love but he shed a grace borrowed from his own nature, that scarcely any other poet has bestowed, on that passion. When he spoke of it as the law of life, which inasmuch as we rebel against we err and injure ourselves and others, he promulgated that which he considered an irrefragable truth. In his eyes it was the essence of our being, and all woe and pain arose from the war made against it by selfishness, or insensibility, or mistake. By reverting in his mind to this first principle, he discovered the source of many emotions, and could disclose the secrets of all hearts; and his delineations of passion and emotion touch the finest chords of our nature.

  Rosalind and Helen was finished during the summer of 1818, while we were at the baths of Lucca.

  * * *

  1 ‘Lines written among the Euganean Hills.’

  JULIAN AND MADDALO

  A CONVERSATION

  PREFACE

  The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme,

  The goats with the green leaves of budding Spring,

  Are saturated not—nor Love with tears.

  —VIRGIL’S Gallus.

  COUNT MADDALO is a Venetian nobleman of ancient family and of great fortune, who, without mixing much in the society of his countrymen, resides chiefly at his magnificent palace in that city. He is a person of the most consummate genius, and capable, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his weakness to be proud: he derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men; and, instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength. His ambition preys upon itself, for want of objects which it can consider worthy of exertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can find no other word to express the concentered and impatient feelings which consume him; but it is on his own hopes and affections only that he seems to trample, for in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient, and unassuming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication; men are held by it as by a spell. He has travelled much; and there is an inexpressible charm in his relation of his adventures in different countries.

  Julian is an Englishman of good family, passionately attached to those philosophical notions which assert the power of man over his own mind, and the immense improvements of which, by the extinction of certain moral superstitions, human society may be yet susceptible. Without concealing the evil in the world, he is for ever speculating how good may be made superior. He is a complete infidel, and a scoffer at all things reputed holy; and Maddalo takes a wicked pleasure in drawing out his taunts against religion. What Maddalo thinks on these matters is not exactly known. Julian, in spite of his heterodox opinions, is conjectured by his friends to possess some good qualities. How far this is possible the pious reader will determine. Julian is rather serious.

  Of the Maniac I can give no information. He seems, by his own account, to have been disappointed in love. He was evidently a very cultivated and amiable person when in his right senses. His story, told at length, might be like many other stories of the same kind: the unconnected exclamations of his agony will perhaps be found a sufficient comment for the text of every heart.

  I RODE one evening with Count Maddalo

  Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow

  Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand

  Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,

  5

  Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,

  Such as from earth’s embrace the salt ooze breeds,

  Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,

  Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,

  Abandons; and no other object breaks

  10

  The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes

  Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes

  A narrow space of level sand thereon,

  Where ’twas our wont to ride while day went down.

  This ride was my delight. I love all waste

  15

  And solitary places; where we taste

  The pleasure of believing what we see

  Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:

  And such was this wide ocean, and this shore

  More barren than its billows; and yet more

  20

  Than all, with a remembered friend I love

  To ride as then I rode;—for the winds drove

  The living spray along the sunny air

  Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,

  Stripped to their depths by the awakening north;

  25

  And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth

  Harmonising with solitude, and sent

  Into our hearts aëreal merriment.

  So, as we rode, we talked; and the swift thought,

  Winging itself with laughter, lingered not,

  30

  But flew from brain to brain,—such glee was ours,

  Charged with light memories
, of remembered hours,

  None slow enough for sadness: till we came

  Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.

  This day had been cheerful but cold, and now

  35

  The sun was sinking, and the wind also.

  Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be

  Talk interrupted with such raillery

  As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn

  The thoughts it would extinguish:—’twas forlorn,

  40

  Yet pleasing, such as once, so poets tell,

  The devils held within the dales of Hell

  Concerning God, freewill and destiny:

  Of all that earth has been or yet may be,

  All that vain men imagine or believe,

  45

  Or hope can paint or suffering may achieve,

  We descanted, and I (for ever still

  Is it not wise to make the best of ill?)

  Argued against despondency, but pride

  Made my companion take the darker side.

  50

  The sense that he was greater than his kind

  Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind

  By gazing on its own exceeding light.

  Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight,

  Over the horizon of the mountains:—Oh,

  55

  How beautiful is sunset, when the glow

  Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee,

  Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!

  Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers

  Of cities they encircle!—it was ours

  60

  To stand on thee, beholding it: and then,

  Just where we had dismounted, the Count’s men

  Were waiting for us with the gondola.—

  As those who pause on some delightful way

  Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood

  65

  Looking upon the evening, and the flood

  Which lay between the city and the shore,