4.
Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child, 30
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea 35
Breathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony.
5.
Some might lament that I were cold,
As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan; 40
They might lament — for I am one
Whom men love not, — and yet regret,
Unlike this day, which, when the sun
Shall on its stainless glory set,
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet. 45
THE WOODMAN AND THE NIGHTINGALE.
(Published in part (1-67) by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824; the remainder (68-70) by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.)
A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune
(I think such hearts yet never came to good)
Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,
One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody; — 5
And as a vale is watered by a flood,
Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness — as a tuberose
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie
Like clouds above the flower from which they rose, 10
The singing of that happy nightingale
In this sweet forest, from the golden close
Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale 15
Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness
Of the circumfluous waters, — every sphere
And every flower and beam and cloud and wave, 20
And every wind of the mute atmosphere,
And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,
And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,
And every silver moth fresh from the grave
Which is its cradle — ever from below 25
Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,
To be consumed within the purest glow
Of one serene and unapproached star,
As if it were a lamp of earthly light,
Unconscious, as some human lovers are, 30
Itself how low, how high beyond all height
The heaven where it would perish! — and every form
That worshipped in the temple of the night
Was awed into delight, and by the charm
Girt as with an interminable zone, 35
Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm
Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion
Out of their dreams; harmony became love
In every soul but one.
…
And so this man returned with axe and saw 40
At evening close from killing the tall treen,
The soul of whom by Nature’s gentle law
Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green
The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,
Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene 45
With jagged leaves, — and from the forest tops
Singing the winds to sleep — or weeping oft
Fast showers of aereal water-drops
Into their mother’s bosom, sweet and soft,
Nature’s pure tears which have no bitterness; — 50
Around the cradles of the birds aloft
They spread themselves into the loveliness
Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers
Hang like moist clouds: — or, where high branches kiss,
Make a green space among the silent bowers, 55
Like a vast fane in a metropolis,
Surrounded by the columns and the towers
All overwrought with branch-like traceries
In which there is religion — and the mute
Persuasion of unkindled melodies, 60
Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute
Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast
Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,
Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed
One tone, which never can recur, has cast,
One accent never to return again.
…
The world is full of Woodmen who expel
Love’s gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,
And vex the nightingales in every dell. 70
MARENGHI.
(This fragment refers to an event told in Sismondi’s “Histoire des Republiques Italiennes”, which occurred during the war when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a province. — )
(Published in part (stanzas 7-15.) by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824; stanzas 1-28 by W.M. Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870. The Boscombe manuscript — evidently a first draft — from which (through Dr. Garnett) Rossetti derived the text of 1870 is now at the Bodleian, and has recently been collated by Mr. C.D. Locock, to whom the enlarged and amended text here printed is owing. The substitution, in title and text, of “Marenghi” for “Mazenghi” (1824) is due to Rossetti. Here as elsewhere in the footnotes B. = the Bodleian manuscript.)
1.
Let those who pine in pride or in revenge,
Or think that ill for ill should be repaid,
Who barter wrong for wrong, until the exchange
Ruins the merchants of such thriftless trade,
Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn 5
Such bitter faith beside Marenghi’s urn.
2.
A massy tower yet overhangs the town,
A scattered group of ruined dwellings now…
…
3.
Another scene are wise Etruria knew
Its second ruin through internal strife 10
And tyrants through the breach of discord threw
The chain which binds and kills. As death to life,
As winter to fair flowers (though some be poison)
So Monarchy succeeds to Freedom’s foison.
4.
In Pisa’s church a cup of sculptured gold 15
Was brimming with the blood of feuds forsworn:
A Sacrament more holy ne’er of old
Etrurians mingled mid the shades forlorn
Of moon-illumined forests, when…
5.
And reconciling factions wet their lips 20
With that dread wine, and swear to keep each spirit
Undarkened by their country’s last eclipse…
…
6.
Was Florence the liberticide? that band
Of free and glorious brothers who had planted,
Like a green isle mid Aethiopian sand, 25
A nation amid slaveries, disenchanted
Of many impious faiths — wise, just — do they,
Does Florence, gorge the sated tyrants’ prey?
7.
O foster-nurse of man’s abandoned glory,
Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendour; 30
Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story,
As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender: —
The light-invested angel Poesy
Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee.
8.
And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught 35
By loftiest meditation
s; marble knew
The sculptor’s fearless soul — and as he wrought,
The grace of his own power and freedom grew.
And more than all, heroic, just, sublime,
Thou wart among the false…was this thy crime? 40
9.
Yes; and on Pisa’s marble walls the twine
Of direst weeds hangs garlanded — the snake
Inhabits its wrecked palaces; — in thine
A beast of subtler venom now doth make
Its lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown, 45
And thus thy victim’s fate is as thine own.
10.
The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare,
And love and freedom blossom but to wither;
And good and ill like vines entangled are,
So that their grapes may oft be plucked together; — 50
Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make
Thy heart rejoice for dead Marenghi’s sake.
10a.
(Albert) Marenghi was a Florentine;
If he had wealth, or children, or a wife
Or friends, (or farm) or cherished thoughts which twine 55
The sights and sounds of home with life’s own life
Of these he was despoiled and Florence sent…
…
11.
No record of his crime remains in story,
But if the morning bright as evening shone, 60
It was some high and holy deed, by glory
Pursued into forgetfulness, which won
From the blind crowd he made secure and free
The patriot’s meed, toil, death, and infamy.
12.
For when by sound of trumpet was declared
A price upon his life, and there was set 65
A penalty of blood on all who shared
So much of water with him as might wet
His lips, which speech divided not — he went
Alone, as you may guess, to banishment.
13.
Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,
He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold, 70
Month after month endured; it was a feast
Whene’er he found those globes of deep-red gold
Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,
Suspended in their emerald atmosphere. 75
14.
And in the roofless huts of vast morasses,
Deserted by the fever-stricken serf,
All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses,
And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf,
And where the huge and speckled aloe made, 80
Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade, —
15.
He housed himself. There is a point of strand
Near Vado’s tower and town; and on one side
The treacherous marsh divides it from the land,
Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide, 85
And on the other, creeps eternally,
Through muddy weeds, the shallow sullen sea.
16.
Here the earth’s breath is pestilence, and few
But things whose nature is at war with life —
Snakes and ill worms — endure its mortal dew.
The trophies of the clime’s victorious strife — 90
And ringed horns which the buffalo did wear,
And the wolf’s dark gray scalp who tracked him there.
17.
And at the utmost point…stood there
The relics of a reed-inwoven cot, 95
Thatched with broad flags. An outlawed murderer
Had lived seven days there: the pursuit was hot
When he was cold. The birds that were his grave
Fell dead after their feast in Vado’s wave.
18.
There must have burned within Marenghi’s breast 100
That fire, more warm and bright than life and hope,
(Which to the martyr makes his dungeon…
More joyous than free heaven’s majestic cope
To his oppressor), warring with decay, —
Or he could ne’er have lived years, day by day. 105
19.
Nor was his state so lone as you might think.
He had tamed every newt and snake and toad,
And every seagull which sailed down to drink
Those freshes ere the death-mist went abroad.
And each one, with peculiar talk and play, 110
Wiled, not untaught, his silent time away.
20.
And the marsh-meteors, like tame beasts, at night
Came licking with blue tongues his veined feet;
And he would watch them, as, like spirits bright,
In many entangled figures quaint and sweet 115
To some enchanted music they would dance —
Until they vanished at the first moon-glance.
21.
He mocked the stars by grouping on each weed
The summer dew-globes in the golden dawn;
And, ere the hoar-frost languished, he could read 120
Its pictured path, as on bare spots of lawn
Its delicate brief touch in silver weaves
The likeness of the wood’s remembered leaves.
22.
And many a fresh Spring morn would he awaken —
While yet the unrisen sun made glow, like iron 125
Quivering in crimson fire, the peaks unshaken
Of mountains and blue isles which did environ
With air-clad crags that plain of land and sea, —
And feel … liberty.
23.
And in the moonless nights when the dun ocean 130
Heaved underneath wide heaven, star-impearled,
Starting from dreams…
Communed with the immeasurable world;
And felt his life beyond his limbs dilated,
Till his mind grew like that it contemplated. 135
24.
His food was the wild fig and strawberry;
The milky pine-nuts which the autumn-blast
Shakes into the tall grass; or such small fry
As from the sea by winter-storms are cast;
And the coarse bulbs of iris-flowers he found 140
Knotted in clumps under the spongy ground.
25.
And so were kindled powers and thoughts which made
His solitude less dark. When memory came
(For years gone by leave each a deepening shade),
His spirit basked in its internal flame, — 145
As, when the black storm hurries round at night,
The fisher basks beside his red firelight.
26.
Yet human hopes and cares and faiths and errors,
Like billows unawakened by the wind,
Slept in Marenghi still; but that all terrors, 150
Weakness, and doubt, had withered in his mind.
His couch…
…
27.
And, when he saw beneath the sunset’s planet
A black ship walk over the crimson ocean, —
Its pennon streaming on the blasts that fan it, 155
Its sails and ropes all tense and without motion,
Like the dark ghost of the unburied even
Striding athwart the orange-coloured heaven, —
28.
The thought of his own kind who made the soul
Which sped that winged shape through night and day, — 160
The thought of his own country…
SONNET.
(Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.
Our text is that of the “Poetical Works”, 1839.)
Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly sprea
d, — behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave 5
Their shadows, o’er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it — he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve. 10
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.
TO BYRON. (FRAGMENT)
(Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.)
O mighty mind, in whose deep stream this age
Shakes like a reed in the unheeding storm,
Why dost thou curb not thine own sacred rage?
APOSTROPHE TO SILENCE. (FRAGMENT)
(Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862. A transcript by Mrs. Shelley, given to Charles Cowden Clarke, presents one or two variants.)
Silence! Oh, well are Death and Sleep and Thou
Three brethren named, the guardians gloomy-winged
Of one abyss, where life, and truth, and joy
Are swallowed up — yet spare me, Spirit, pity me,
Until the sounds I hear become my soul, 5
And it has left these faint and weary limbs,
To track along the lapses of the air
This wandering melody until it rests
Among lone mountains in some…
THE LAKE’S MARGIN. (FRAGMENT)
(Published by W.M. Rossetti, 1870.)
The fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses
Track not the steps of him who drinks of it;
For the light breezes, which for ever fleet
Around its margin, heap the sand thereon.
MY HEAD IS WILD WITH WEEPING. (FRAGMENT)
(Published by W.M. Rossetti, 1870.)
My head is wild with weeping for a grief
Which is the shadow of a gentle mind.
I walk into the air (but no relief
To seek, — or haply, if I sought, to find;
It came unsought); — to wonder that a chief 5
Among men’s spirits should be cold and blind.
THE VINE-SHROUD. (FRAGMENT)
(Published by W.M. Rossetti, 1870.)
Flourishing vine, whose kindling clusters glow
Beneath the autumnal sun, none taste of thee;
For thou dost shroud a ruin, and below
The rotting bones of dead antiquity.
POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819.
LINES WRITTEN DURING THE CASTLEREAGH ADMINISTRATION.