XV
She won them, though unwilling, her to bind
Near me, among the snakes. When then had fled
One soft reproach that was most thrilling kind,
She smiled on me, and nothing then we said,
But each upon the other’s countenance fed
Looks of insatiate love; the mighty veil
Which doth divide the living and the dead
Was almost rent, the world grew dim and pale —
All light in Heaven or Earth beside our love did fail.
XVI
Yet — yet — one brief relapse, like the last beam
Of dying flames, the stainless air around
Hung silent and serene — a blood-red gleam
Burst upwards, hurling fiercely from the ground
The globèd smoke; I heard the mighty sound
Of its uprise, like a tempestuous ocean;
And, through its chasms I saw, as in a swound,
The Tyrant’s child fall without life or motion
Before his throne, subdued by some unseen emotion. —
XVII
And is this death? — The pyre has disappeared,
The Pestilence, the Tyrant, and the throng;
The flames grow silent — slowly there is heard
The music of a breath-suspending song,
Which, like the kiss of love when life is young,
Steeps the faint eyes in darkness sweet and deep;
With ever-changing notes it floats along,
Till on my passive soul there seemed to creep
A melody, like waves on wrinkled sands that leap.
XVIII
The warm touch of a soft and tremulous hand
Wakened me then; lo, Cythna sate reclined
Beside me, on the waved and golden sand
Of a clear pool, upon a bank o’ertwined
With strange and star-bright flowers which to the wind
Breathed divine odor; high above was spread
The emerald heaven of trees of unknown kind,
Whose moonlike blooms and bright fruit overhead
A shadow, which was light, upon the waters shed.
XIX
And round about sloped many a lawny mountain
With incense-bearing forests and vast caves
Of marble radiance, to that mighty fountain;
And, where the flood its own bright margin laves,
Their echoes talk with its eternal waves,
Which from the depths whose jagged caverns breed
Their unreposing strife it lifts and heaves,
Till through a chasm of hills they roll, and feed
A river deep, which flies with smooth but arrowy speed.
XX
As we sate gazing in a trance of wonder,
A boat approached, borne by the musical air
Along the waves which sung and sparkled under
Its rapid keel. A wingèd Shape sate there,
A child with silver-shining wings, so fair
That, as her bark did through the waters glide,
The shadow of the lingering waves did wear
Light, as from starry beams; from side to side
While veering to the wind her plumes the bark did guide.
XXI
The boat was one curved shell of hollow pearl,
Almost translucent with the light divine
Of her within; the prow and stern did curl,
Hornèd on high, like the young moon supine,
When o’er dim twilight mountains dark with pine
It floats upon the sunset’s sea of beams,
Whose golden waves in many a purple line
Fade fast, till, borne on sunlight’s ebbing streams,
Dilating, on earth’s verge the sunken meteor gleams.
XXII
Its keel has struck the sands beside our feet.
Then Cythna turned to me, and from her eyes,
Which swam with unshed tears, a look more sweet
Than happy love, a wild and glad surprise,
Glanced as she spake: ‘Ay, this is Paradise
And not a dream, and we are all united!
Lo, that is mine own child, who in the guise
Of madness came, like day to one benighted
In lonesome woods; my heart is now too well requited!’
XXIII
And then she wept aloud, and in her arms
Clasped that bright Shape, less marvellously fair
Than her own human hues and living charms,
Which, as she leaned in passion’s silence there,
Breathed warmth on the cold bosom of the air,
Which seemed to blush and tremble with delight;
The glossy darkness of her streaming hair
Fell o’er that snowy child, and wrapped from sight
The fond and long embrace which did their hearts unite.
XXIV
Then the bright child, the plumèd Seraph, came,
And fixed its blue and beaming eyes on mine,
And said, ‘I was disturbed by tremulous shame
When once we met, yet knew that I was thine
From the same hour in which thy lips divine
Kindled a clinging dream within my brain,
Which ever waked when I might sleep, to twine
Thine image with her memory dear; again
We meet, exempted now from mortal fear or pain.
XXV
‘When the consuming flames had wrapped ye round,
The hope which I had cherished went away;
I fell in agony on the senseless ground,
And hid mine eyes in dust, and far astray
My mind was gone, when bright, like dawning day,
The Spectre of the Plague before me flew,
And breathed upon my lips, and seemed to say,
“They wait for thee, belovèd!” — then I knew
The death-mark on my breast, and became calm anew.
XXVI
‘It was the calm of love — for I was dying.
I saw the black and half-extinguished pyre
In its own gray and shrunken ashes lying;
The pitchy smoke of the departed fire
Still hung in many a hollow dome and spire
Above the towers, like night, — beneath whose shade,
Awed by the ending of their own desire,
The armies stood; a vacancy was made
In expectation’s depth, and so they stood dismayed.
XXVII
‘The frightful silence of that altered mood
The tortures of the dying clove alone,
Till one uprose among the multitude,
And said—”The flood of time is rolling on;
We stand upon its brink, whilst they are gone
To glide in peace down death’s mysterious stream.
Have ye done well? they moulder, flesh and bone,
Who might have made this life’s envenomed dream
A sweeter draught than ye will ever taste, I deem.
XXVIII
‘“These perish as the good and great of yore
Have perished, and their murderers will repent;
Yes, vain and barren tears shall flow before
Yon smoke has faded from the firmament,
Even for this cause, that ye, who must lament
The death of those that made this world so fair,
Cannot recall them now; but then is lent
To man the wisdom of a high despair,
When such can die, and he live on and linger here.
XXIX
‘“Ay, ye may fear not now the Pestilence,
From fabled hell as by a charm withdrawn;
All power and faith must pass, since calmly hence
In pain and fire have unbelievers gone;
And ye must sadly turn away, and moan
In secret, to his home each one returning;
And to long ages shall this hour be known
,
And slowly shall its memory, ever burning,
Fill this dark night of things with an eternal morning.
XXX
‘“For me that world is grown too void and cold,
Since hope pursues immortal destiny
With steps thus slow — therefore shall ye behold
How those who love, yet fear not, dare to die;
Tell to your children this!” then suddenly
He sheathed a dagger in his heart, and fell;
My brain grew dark in death, and yet to me
There came a murmur from the crowd to tell
Of deep and mighty change which suddenly befell.
XXXI
‘Then suddenly I stood, a wingèd Thought,
Before the immortal Senate, and the seat
Of that star-shining Spirit, whence is wrought
The strength of its dominion, good and great,
The Better Genius of this world’s estate.
His realm around one mighty Fane is spread,
Elysian islands bright and fortunate,
Calm dwellings of the free and happy dead,
Where I am sent to lead!’ These wingèd words she said,
XXXII
And with the silence of her eloquent smile,
Bade us embark in her divine canoe;
Then at the helm we took our seat, the while
Above her head those plumes of dazzling hue
Into the winds’ invisible stream she threw,
Sitting beside the prow; like gossamer
On the swift breath of morn the vessel flew
O’er the bright whirlpools of that fountain fair,
Whose shores receded fast while we seemed lingering there;
XXXIII
Till down that mighty stream dark, calm and fleet,
Between a chasm of cedarn mountains riven,
Chased by the thronging winds whose viewless feet,
As swift as twinkling beams, had under Heaven
From woods and waves wild sounds and odors driven,
The boat fled visibly; three nights and days,
Borne like a cloud through morn, and noon, and even,
We sailed along the winding watery ways
Of the vast stream, a long and labyrinthine maze.
XXXIV
A scene of joy and wonder to behold, —
That river’s shapes and shadows changing ever,
Where the broad sunrise filled with deepening gold
Its whirlpools where all hues did spread and quiver;
And where melodious falls did burst and shiver
Among rocks clad with flowers, the foam and spray
Sparkled like stars upon the sunny river;
Or, when the moonlight poured a holier day,
One vast and glittering lake around green islands lay.
XXXV
Morn, noon and even, that boat of pearl outran
The streams which bore it, like the arrowy cloud
Of tempest, or the speedier thought of man,
Which flieth forth and cannot make abode;
Sometimes through forests, deep like night, we glode,
Between the walls of mighty mountains crowned
With Cyclopean piles, whose turrets proud,
The homes of the departed, dimly frowned
O’er the bright waves which girt their dark foundations round.
XXXVI
Sometimes between the wide and flowering meadows
Mile after mile we sailed, and ‘t was delight
To see far off the sunbeams chase the shadows
Over the grass; sometimes beneath the night
Of wide and vaulted caves, whose roofs were bright
With starry gems, we fled, whilst from their deep
And dark green chasms shades beautiful and white,
Amid sweet sounds across our path would sweep,
Like swift and lovely dreams that walk the waves of sleep.
XXXVII
And ever as we sailed, our minds were full
Of love and wisdom, which would overflow
In converse wild, and sweet, and wonderful;
And in quick smiles whose light would come and go,
Like music o’er wide waves, and in the flow
Of sudden tears, and in the mute caress;
For a deep shade was cleft, and we did know,
That virtue, though obscured on Earth, not less
XXXVIII
Three days and nights we sailed, as thought and feeling
Number delightful hours — for through the sky
The spherèd lamps of day and night, revealing
New changes and new glories, rolled on high,
Sun, Moon and moonlike lamps, the progeny
Of a diviner Heaven, serene and fair;
On the fourth day, wild as a wind-wrought sea
The stream became, and fast and faster bare
The spirit-wingèd boat, steadily speeding there.
XXXIX
Steady and swift, where the waves rolled like mountains
Within the vast ravine, whose rifts did pour
Tumultuous floods from their ten thousand fountains,
The thunder of whose earth-uplifting roar
Made the air sweep in whirlwinds from the shore,
Calm as a shade, the boat of that fair child
Securely fled that rapid stress before,
Amid the topmost spray and sunbows wild
Wreathed in the silver mist; in joy and pride we smiled.
XL
The torrent of that wide and raging river
Is passed, and our aërial speed suspended.
We look behind; a golden mist did quiver
When its wild surges with the lake were blended;
Our bark hung there, as on a line suspended
Between two heavens, — that windless, waveless lake,
Which four great cataracts from four vales, attended
By mists, aye feed; from rocks and clouds they break,
And of that azure sea a silent refuge make.
XLI
Motionless resting on the lake awhile,
I saw its marge of snow-bright mountains rear
Their peaks aloft; I saw each radiant isle;
And in the midst, afar, even like a sphere
Hung in one hollow sky, did there appear
The Temple of the Spirit; on the sound
Which issued thence drawn nearer and more near
Like the swift moon this glorious earth around,
The charmèd boat approached
ROSALIND AND HELEN
Rosalind and Helen was begun at Marlow as early as the summer of 1817, and was sufficiently far advanced to encourage Shelley to send a copy to the publisher before leaving England in March, 1818. The work was finished in August, at the Baths of Lucca, and published in the spring of 1819. Shelley’s original Advertisement to the volume, dated Naples, December 20, 1818, opens with the following:
‘The story of Rosalind and Helen is, undoubtedly, not an attempt in the highest style of poetry. It is in no degree calculated to excite profound meditation; and if, by interesting the affections and amusing the imagination, it awaken a certain ideal melancholy favorable to the reception of more important impressions, it will produce in the reader all that the writer experienced in the composition. I resigned myself, as I wrote, to the impulses of the feelings which moulded the conception of the story; and this impulse determined the pauses of a measure, which only pretends to be regular inasmuch as it corresponds with, and expresses, the irregularity of the imaginations which inspired it.’
The feelings here spoken of ‘which moulded the conception of the story’ were suggested, in part, by the relation of Mrs. Shelley with a friend of her girlhood, Isabel Baxter, who fell away from her early attachment in consequence of Mrs. Shelley’s flight with Shelley in July, 1814, and was a
fterward reconciled with her. (Dowden, Life, ii. 130, 131.) Forman (Type Facsimile of the original edition, Shelley Society’s Publications, Second Series, No. 17, Introduction) discusses the matter at length, together with the reflection of political events in England possibly to be detected in the poem. Shelley wrote to Peacock, ‘I lay no stress on it one way or the other.’ Mrs. Shelley’s note develops the reason for this indifference:
‘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 in our nature. Rosalind and Helen was finished during the summer of 1818, while we were at the Baths of Lucca.’
ROSALIND AND HELEN
ROSALIND, HELEN, and her Child.
SCENE. The Shore of the Lake of Como.
HELEN
COME hither, my sweet Rosalind.
‘T is long since thou and I have met;
And yet methinks it were unkind
Those moments to forget.
Come, sit by me. I see thee stand
By this lone lake, in this far land,
Thy loose hair in the light wind flying,
Thy sweet voice to each tone of even
United, and thine eyes replying
To the hues of yon fair heaven. 10
Come, gentle friend! wilt sit by me?
And be as thou wert wont to be
Ere we were disunited?
None doth behold us now; the power
That led us forth at this lone hour
Will be but ill requited
If thou depart in scorn. Oh, come,
And talk of our abandoned home!
Remember, this is Italy,
And we are exiles. Talk with me 20
Of that our land, whose wilds and floods,
Barren and dark although they be,
Were dearer than these chestnut woods;
Those heathy paths, that inland stream,
And the blue mountains, shapes which seem