The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley by Percy Bysshe Shelley
All sorts of cozening for trepanning
Corpses less corrupt than they.
III
There is a * * *, who has lost
His wits, or sold them, none knows which;
He walks about a double ghost,
160
And though as thin as Fraud almost—
Ever grows more grim and rich.
IV
There is a Chancery Court; a King;
A manufacturing mob; a set
Of thieves who by themselves are sent
165
Similar thieves to represent;
An army; and a public debt.
V
Which last is a scheme of paper money,
And means—being interpreted—
‘Bees, keep your wax—give us the honey,
170
And we will plant, while skies are sunny,
Flowers, which in winter serve instead.’
VI
There is a great talk of revolution—
And a great chance of despotism—
German soldiers—camps—confusion—
175
Tumults — lotteries — rage — delusion—
Gin—suicide—and methodism;
VII
Taxes too, on wine and bread,
And meat, and beer, and tea, and cheese,
From which those patriots pure are fed,
Who gorge before they reel to bed
The tenfold essence of all these.
VIII
There are mincing women, mewing,
(Like cats, who amant miserè,3)
Of their own virtue, and pursuing
Their gentler sisters to that ruin,
Without which—what were chastity?4
IX
Lawyers—judges—old hobnobbers
Are there — bailiffs — chancellors—
Bishops—great and little robbers—
190
Rhymesters—pamphleteers—stock-jobbers—
Men of glory in the wars,—
X
Things whose trade is, over ladies
To lean, and flirt, and stare, and simper,
Till all that is divine in woman
195
Grows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman,
Crucified ’twixt a smile and whimper.
XI
Thrusting, toiling, wailing, moiling,
Frowning, preaching — such a riot!
Each with never-ceasing labour,
200
Whilst he thinks he cheats his neighbour,
Cheating his own heart of quiet.
XII
And all these meet at levees;—
Dinners convivial and political;—
Suppers of epic poets;—teas,
Where small talk dies in agonies;—
Breakfasts professional and critical;
XIII
Lunches and snacks so aldermanic
That one would furnish forth ten dinners,
Where reigns a Cretan-tonguèd panic,
210
Lest news Russ, Dutch, or Alemannic
Should make some losers, and some winners;—
XIV
At conversazioni—balls—
Conventicles—and drawing-rooms—
Courts of law—committees—calls
Of a morning—clubs—book stalls—
Churches—masquerades—and tombs.
XV
And this is Hell—and in this smother
All are damnable and damned;
Each one damning, damns the other;
They are damned by one another,
By none other are they damned.
XVI
’Tis a lie to say, ‘God damns5!’
Where was Heaven’s Attorney General
When they first gave out such flams?
225
Let there be an end of shams,
They are mines of poisonous mineral.
XVII
Statesmen damn themselves to be
Cursed; and lawyers damn their souls
To the auction of a fee;
Churchmen damn themselves to see
God’s sweet love in burning coals.
XVIII
The rich are damned, beyond all cure,
To taunt, and starve, and trample on
The weak and wretched; and the poor
Damn their broken hearts to endure
Stripe on stripe, with groan on groan.
XIX
Sometimes the poor are damned indeed
To take,—not means for being blessed,—
But Cobbett’s snuff, revenge; that weed
240
From which the worms that it doth feed
Squeeze less than they before possessed.
XX
And some few, like we know who,
Damned—but God alone knows why—
To believe their minds are given
To make this ugly Hell a Heaven;
In which faith they live and die.
XXI
Thus, as in a town, plague-stricken,
Each man be he sound or no
Must indifferently sicken;
250
As when day begins to thicken,
None knows a pigeon from a crow,—
XXII
So good and bad, sane and mad,
The oppressor and the oppressed;
Those who weep to see what others
Smile to inflict upon their brothers;
Lovers, haters, worst and best;
XXIII
All are damned—they breathe an air,
Thick infected, joy-dispelling:
Each pursues what seems most fair,
260
Mining like moles, through mind, and there
Scoop palace-caverns vast, where Care
In thronéd state is ever dwelling.
PART THE FOURTH
SIN
I
LO, Peter in Hell’s Grosvenor Square,
A footman in the Devil’s service!
265
And the misjudging world would swear
That every man in service there
To virtue would prefer vice.
II
But Peter, though now damned, was not
What Peter was before damnation.
270
Men oftentimes prepare a lot
Which ere it finds them, is not what
Suits with their genuine station.
III
All things that Peter saw and felt
Had a peculiar aspect to him;
275
And when they came within the belt
Of his own nature, seemed to melt,
Like cloud to cloud, into him.
IV
And so the outward world uniting
To that within him, he became
280
Considerably uninviting
To those who, meditation slighting,
Were moulded in a different frame.
V
And he scorned them, and they scorned him;
And he scorned all they did; and they
Did all that men of their own trim
Are wont to do to please their whim,
Drinking, lying, swearing, play.
VI
Such were his fellow-servants; thus
His virtue, like our own, was built
290
Too much on that indignant fuss
Hypocrite Pride stirs up in us
To bully one another’s guilt.
VII
He had a mind which was somehow
At once circumference and centre
295
Of all he might or feel or know;
Nothing went ever out, although
Something did ever enter.
VIII
He had as much imagination
As a pint-pot;—he never could
&
Fancy another situation,
From which to dart his contemplation,
Than that wherein he stood.
IX
Yet his was individual mind,
And new created all he saw
305
In a new manner, and refined
Those new creations, and combined
Them, by a master-spirit’s law.
X
Thus—though unimaginative—
An apprehension clear, intense,
Of his mind’s work, had made alive
The things it wrought on; I believe
Wakening a sort of thought in sense.
XI
But from the first ’twas Peter’s drift
To be a kind of moral eunuch,
315
He touched the hem of Nature’s shift,
Felt faint—and never dared uplift
The closest, all-concealing tunic.
XII
She laughed the while, with an arch smile,
And kissed him with a sister’s kiss,
320
And said—‘My best Diogenes,
I love you well—but, if you please,
Tempt not again my deepest bliss.
XIII
‘’Tis you are cold—for I, not coy,
Yield love for love, frank, warm, and true;
325
And Burns, a Scottish peasant boy—
His errors prove it—knew my joy
More, learned friend, than you.
XIV
‘Bocca bacciata non perde ventura,
Anzi rinnuova come fa la luna:—
330
So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might cure a
Male prude, like you, from what you now endure, a
Low-tide in soul, like a stagnant laguna.’
XV
Then Peter rubbed his eyes severe,
And smoothed his spacious forehead down
335
With his broad palm;—’twixt love and fear,
He looked, as he no doubt felt, queer,
And in his dream sate down.
XVI
The Devil was no uncommon creature,
A leaden-witted thief—just huddled
Out of the dross and scum of nature;
A toad-like lump of limb and feature,
With mind, and heart, and fancy muddled.
XVII
He was that heavy, dull, cold thing,
The spirit of evil well may be:
A drone too base to have a sting;
Who gluts, and grimes his lazy wing,
And calls lust, luxury.
XVIII
Now he was quite the kind of wight
Round whom collect, at a fixed aera,
Venison, turtle, hock, and claret,—
Good cheer—and those who come to share it—
And best East Indian madeira!
XIX
It was his fancy to invite
Men of science, wit, and learning,
Who came to lend each other light;
He proudly thought that his gold’s might
Had set those spirits burning.
XX
And men of learning, science, wit,
Considered him as you and I
Think of some rotten tree, and sit
Lounging and dining under it,
Exposed to the wide sky.
XXI
And all the while, with loose fat smile,
The willing wretch sat winking there,
Believing ’twas his power that made
That jovial scene—and that all paid
Homage to his unnoticed chair.
XXII
Though to be sure this place was Hell;
He was the Devil—and all they—
What though the claret circled well,
And wit, like ocean, rose and fell?—
Were damned eternally.
PART THE FIFTH
GRACE
I
AMONG the guests who often stayed
Till the Devil’s petits-soupers,
375
A man there came, fair as a maid,
And Peter noted what he said,
Standing behind his master’s chair.
II
He was a mighty poet—and
A subtle-souled psychologist;
All things he seemed to understand,
Of old or new—of sea or land—
But his own mind—which was a mist.
III
This was a man who might have turned
Hell into Heaven—and so in gladness
A Heaven unto himself have earned;
But he in shadows undiscerned
Trusted,—and damned himself to madness.
IV
He spoke of poetry, and how
‘Divine it was—a light—a love—
A spirit which like wind doth blow
As it listeth, to and fro;
A dew rained down from God above;
V
‘A power which comes and goes like dream,
And which none can ever trace—
395
Heaven’s light on earth—Truth’s brightest beam.’
And when he ceased there lay the gleam
Of those words upon his face.
VI
Now Peter, when he heard such talk,
Would, heedless of a broken pate,
400
Stand like a man asleep, or balk
Some wishing guest of knife or fork,
Or drop and break his master’s plate.
VII
At night he oft would start and wake
Like a lover, and began
405
In a wild measure songs to make
On moor, and glen, and rocky lake,
And on the heart of man—
VIII
And on the universal sky—
And the wide earth’s bosom green,—
410
And the sweet, strange mystery
Of what beyond these things may lie,
And yet remain unseen.
IX
For in his thought he visited
The spots in which, ere dead and damned,
415
He his wayward life had led;
Yet knew not whence the thoughts were fed
Which thus his fancy crammed.
X
And these obscure remembrances
Stirred such harmony in Peter,
That, whensoever he should please,
He could speak of rocks and trees
In poetic metre.
XI
For though it was without a sense
Of memory, yet he remembered well
Many a ditch and quick-set fence;
Of lakes he had intelligence,
He knew something of heath and fell.
XII
He had also dim recollections
Of pedlars tramping on their rounds;
430
Milk-pans and pails; and odd collections
Of saws, and proverbs; and reflections
Old parsons make in burying-grounds.
XIII
But Peter’s verse was clear, and came
Announcing from the frozen hearth
435
Of a cold age, that none might tame
The soul of that diviner flame
It augured to the Earth:
XIV
Like gentle rains, on the dry plains,
Making that green which late was gray,
Or like the sudden moon, that stains
Some gloomy chamber’s window-panes
With a broad light like day.
XV
For language was in Peter’s hand
Like clay while he was yet a potter;
445
And he made songs for all the land,
Sweet both to feel and under
As pipkins late to mountain Cotter.
XVI
And Mr.—–, the bookseller,
Gave twenty pounds for some;—then scorning
A footman’s yellow coat to wear,
Peter, too proud of heart, I fear,
Instantly gave the Devil warning.
XVII
Whereat the Devil took offence,
And swore in his soul a great oath then,
‘That for his damned impertinence
He’d bring him to a proper sense
Of what was due to gentlemen!’
PART THE SIXTH
DAMNATION
I
‘O THAT mine enemy had written
A book!’—cried Job:—a fearful curse,
460
If to the Arab, as the Briton,
’Twas galling to be critic-bitten:—
The Devil to Peter wished no worse.
II
When Peter’s next new book found vent,
The Devil to all the first Reviews
465
A copy of it slyly sent,
With five-pound note as compliment,
And this short notice—‘Pray abuse.’
III
Then seriatim, month and quarter,
Appeared such mad tirades.—One said—
‘Peter seduced Mrs. Foy’s daughter,
Then drowned the mother in Ullswater,
The last thing as he went to bed.’
IV
Another—‘Let him shave his head!
Where’s Dr. Willis?—Or is he joking?
475
What does the rascal mean or hope,
No longer imitating Pope,
In that barbarian Shakespeare poking?’