A cresset shaken from the constellations.
Swifter than the thunder fell
To the heart of Earth, the well
Where its pulses flow and beat, 25
And unextinct in that cold source
Burns, and on … course
Guides the sphere which is its prison,
Like an angelic spirit pent
In a form of mortal birth, 30
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 35
Consuming all its forms of living death.
I WOULD NOT BE A KING. (FRAGMENT)
(Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.)
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.
I would not climb the imperial throne; 5
‘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.
Would he and I were far away 10
Keeping flocks on Himalay!
GINEVRA.
(Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, and dated ‘Pisa, 1821.’)
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
Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain 5
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;
The vows to which her lips had sworn assent 10
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,
Vexing the sense with gorgeous undelight, 20
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
Which led from the cathedral to the street; 25
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,
Envying the unenviable; and others
Making the joy which should have been another’s 30
Their own by gentle sympathy; and some
Sighing to think of an unhappy home:
Some few admiring what can ever lure
Maidens to leave the heaven serene and pure
Of parents’ smiles for life’s great cheat; a thing 35
Bitter to taste, sweet in imagining.
But they are all dispersed — and, lo! she stands
Looking in idle grief on her white hands,
Alone within the garden now her own; 40
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
That he is dreaming, until slumber seems 45
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,
And said—’Is this thy faith?’ and then as one 50
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,
Ginevra saw her lover, and forbore 55
To shriek or faint, and checked the stifling blood
Rushing upon her heart, and unsubdued
Said—’Friend, if earthly violence or ill,
Suspicion, doubt, or the tyrannic will
Of parents, chance or custom, time or change, 60
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
The victim from the tyrant, and divides 65
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
Beckon thee to Gherardi’s bridal bed? 70
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,
The pledge of vows to be absolved by death; 75
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”?
The flowers upon my bridal chamber strewn 80
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,
And quenched the crimson life upon her cheek, 85
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
Which, like a prophet or a shadow, brought
News of the terrors of the coming time. 90
Like an accuser branded with the crime
He would have cast on a beloved friend,
Whose dying eyes reproach not to the end
The pale betrayer — he then with vain repentance
Would share, he cannot now avert, the sentence — 95
Antonio stood and would have spoken, when
The compound voice of women and of men
Was heard approaching; he retired, while she
Was led amid the admiring company
Back to the palace, — and her maidens soon 100
Changed her attire for the afternoon,
And left her at her own request to keep
An hour of quiet rest: — like one asleep
With open eyes and folded hands she lay,
Pale in the light of the declining day. 105
Meanwhile the day sinks fast, the sun is set,
And in the lighted hall the guests are met;
The beautiful looked lovelier in the light
Of love, and admiration, and delight
Reflected from a thousand hearts and eyes, 110
Kindling a momentary Paradise.
This crowd is safer than the silent wood,
Where love’s own doubts disturb the solitude;
On frozen hearts the fiery rain of wine
Falls, and the dew of music more divine 115
Tempers the deep emotions of the time
To spirits cradled in a sunny clime: —
How many meet, who never yet have met,
To part too soon
, but never to forget.
How many saw the beauty, power and wit 120
Of looks and words which ne’er enchanted yet;
But life’s familiar veil was now withdrawn,
As the world leaps before an earthquake’s dawn,
And unprophetic of the coming hours,
The matin winds from the expanded flowers 125
Scatter their hoarded incense, and awaken
The earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken
From every living heart which it possesses,
Through seas and winds, cities and wildernesses,
As if the future and the past were all 130
Treasured i’ the instant; — so Gherardi’s hall
Laughed in the mirth of its lord’s festival,
Till some one asked—’Where is the Bride?’ And then
A bridesmaid went, — and ere she came again
A silence fell upon the guests — a pause 135
Of expectation, as when beauty awes
All hearts with its approach, though unbeheld;
Then wonder, and then fear that wonder quelled; —
For whispers passed from mouth to ear which drew
The colour from the hearer’s cheeks, and flew 140
Louder and swifter round the company;
And then Gherardi entered with an eye
Of ostentatious trouble, and a crowd
Surrounded him, and some were weeping loud.
They found Ginevra dead! if it be death 145
To lie without motion, or pulse, or breath,
With waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, and white,
And open eyes, whose fixed and glassy light
Mocked at the speculation they had owned.
A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare,
And silence, and a sense that lifts the hair
From the scalp to the ankles, as it were
Corruption from the spirit passing forth,
And giving all it shrouded to the earth, 155
And leaving as swift lightning in its flight
Ashes, and smoke, and darkness: in our night
Of thought we know thus much of death, — no more
Than the unborn dream of our life before
Their barks are wrecked on its inhospitable shore. 160
The marriage feast and its solemnity
Was turned to funeral pomp — the company,
With heavy hearts and looks, broke up; nor they
Who loved the dead went weeping on their way
Alone, but sorrow mixed with sad surprise 165
Loosened the springs of pity in all eyes,
On which that form, whose fate they weep in vain,
Will never, thought they, kindle smiles again.
The lamps which, half extinguished in their haste,
Gleamed few and faint o’er the abandoned feast, 170
Showed as it were within the vaulted room
A cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloom
Had passed out of men’s minds into the air.
Some few yet stood around Gherardi there,
Friends and relations of the dead, — and he, 175
A loveless man, accepted torpidly
The consolation that he wanted not;
Awe in the place of grief within him wrought.
Their whispers made the solemn silence seem
More still — some wept,… 180
Some melted into tears without a sob,
And some with hearts that might be heard to throb
Leaned on the table and at intervals
Shuddered to hear through the deserted halls
And corridors the thrilling shrieks which came 185
Upon the breeze of night, that shook the flame
Of every torch and taper as it swept
From out the chamber where the women kept; —
Their tears fell on the dear companion cold
Of pleasures now departed; then was knolled 190
The bell of death, and soon the priests arrived,
And finding Death their penitent had shrived,
Returned like ravens from a corpse whereon
A vulture has just feasted to the bone.
And then the mourning women came. — 195
…
THE DIRGE.
Old winter was gone
In his weakness back to the mountains hoar,
And the spring came down
From the planet that hovers upon the shore
Where the sea of sunlight encroaches 200
On the limits of wintry night; —
If the land, and the air, and the sea,
Rejoice not when spring approaches,
We did not rejoice in thee,
Ginevra! 205
She is still, she is cold
On the bridal couch,
One step to the white deathbed,
And one to the bier,
And one to the charnel — and one, oh where? 210
The dark arrow fled
In the noon.
Ere the sun through heaven once more has rolled,
The rats in her heart
Will have made their nest, 215
And the worms be alive in her golden hair,
While the Spirit that guides the sun,
Sits throned in his flaming chair,
She shall sleep.
EVENING: PONTE AL MARE, PISA
(Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.
There is a draft amongst the Boscombe manuscripts.)
1.
The sun is set; the swallows are asleep;
The bats are flitting fast in the gray air;
The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep,
And evening’s breath, wandering here and there
Over the quivering surface of the stream, 5
Wakes not one ripple from its summer dream.
2.
There is no dew on the dry grass to-night,
Nor damp within the shadow of the trees;
The wind is intermitting, dry, and light;
And in the inconstant motion of the breeze 10
The dust and straws are driven up and down,
And whirled about the pavement of the town.
3.
Within the surface of the fleeting river
The wrinkled image of the city lay,
Immovably unquiet, and forever 15
It trembles, but it never fades away;
Go to the…
You, being changed, will find it then as now.
4.
The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut
By darkest barriers of cinereous cloud, 20
Like mountain over mountain huddled — but
Growing and moving upwards in a crowd,
And over it a space of watery blue,
Which the keen evening star is shining through..
THE BOAT ON THE SERCHIO.
(Published in part (lines 1-61, 88-118) by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous
Poems”, 1824; revised and enlarged by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical
Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.)
Our boat is asleep on Serchio’s stream,
Its sails are folded like thoughts in a dream,
The helm sways idly, hither and thither;
Dominic, the boatman, has brought the mast,
And the oars, and the sails; but ‘tis sleeping fast, 5
Like a beast, unconscious of its tether.
The stars burnt out in the pale blue air,
And the thin white moon lay withering there;
To tower, and cavern, and rift, and tree,
The owl and the bat fled drowsily. 10
Day had kindled the dewy woods,
And the rocks above and the stream below,
And the vapours in their multitudes,
And the Apennine’s shroud of summer snow,
And
clothed with light of aery gold 15
The mists in their eastern caves uprolled.
Day had awakened all things that be,
The lark and the thrush and the swallow free,
And the milkmaid’s song and the mower’s scythe
And the matin-bell and the mountain bee: 20
Fireflies were quenched on the dewy corn,
Glow-worms went out on the river’s brim,
Like lamps which a student forgets to trim:
The beetle forgot to wind his horn,
The crickets were still in the meadow and hill: 25
Like a flock of rooks at a farmer’s gun
Night’s dreams and terrors, every one,
Fled from the brains which are their prey
From the lamp’s death to the morning ray.
All rose to do the task He set to each, 30
Who shaped us to His ends and not our own;
The million rose to learn, and one to teach
What none yet ever knew or can be known.
And many rose
Whose woe was such that fear became desire; — 35
Melchior and Lionel were not among those;
They from the throng of men had stepped aside,
And made their home under the green hill-side.
It was that hill, whose intervening brow
Screens Lucca from the Pisan’s envious eye, 40
Which the circumfluous plain waving below,
Like a wide lake of green fertility,
With streams and fields and marshes bare,
Divides from the far Apennines — which lie
Islanded in the immeasurable air. 45
‘What think you, as she lies in her green cove,
Our little sleeping boat is dreaming of?’
‘If morning dreams are true, why I should guess
That she was dreaming of our idleness,
And of the miles of watery way 50
We should have led her by this time of day.’-
‘Never mind,’ said Lionel,
‘Give care to the winds, they can bear it well
About yon poplar-tops; and see
The white clouds are driving merrily, 55
And the stars we miss this morn will light
More willingly our return to-night. —
How it whistles, Dominic’s long black hair!
List, my dear fellow; the breeze blows fair:
Hear how it sings into the air—’ 60
—’Of us and of our lazy motions,’
Impatiently said Melchior,
‘If I can guess a boat’s emotions;
And how we ought, two hours before,
To have been the devil knows where.’ 65
And then, in such transalpine Tuscan
As would have killed a Della-Cruscan,
…
So, Lionel according to his art