No rest within a pure and gentle mind;
Thou sealedst them with many a bare broad word,
And sear’dst my memory o’er them, — for I heard
And can forget not; — they were ministered
One after one, those curses. Mix them up
Like self-destroying poisons in one cup,
And they will make one blessing, which thou ne’er
Didst imprecate for on me, — death.
. . . . . . . . .
‘It were
A cruel punishment for one most cruel,
If such can love, to make that love the fuel 440
Of the mind’s hell — hate, scorn, remorse, despair;
But me, whose heart a stranger’s tear might wear
As water-drops the sandy fountain-stone,
Who loved and pitied all things, and could moan
For woes which others hear not, and could see
The absent with the glance of fantasy,
And with the poor and trampled sit and weep,
Following the captive to his dungeon deep;
Me — who am as a nerve o’er which do creep
The else unfelt oppressions of this earth, 450
And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth,
When all beside was cold: — that thou on me
Shouldst rain these plagues of blistering agony!
Such curses are from lips once eloquent
With love’s too partial praise! Let none relent
Who intend deeds too dreadful for a name
Henceforth, if an example for the same
They seek: — for thou on me look’dst so, and so —
And didst speak thus — and thus. I live to show
How much men bear and die not!
. . . . . . . . .
‘Thou wilt tell 460
With the grimace of hate how horrible
It was to meet my love when thine grew less;
Thou wilt admire how I could e’er address
Such features to love’s work. This taunt, though true,
(For indeed Nature nor in form nor hue
Bestowed on me her choicest workmanship)
Shall not be thy defence; for since thy lip
Met mine first, years long past, — since thine eye kindled
With soft fire under mine, — I have not dwindled,
Nor changed in mind or body, or in aught 470
But as love changes what it loveth not
After long years and many trials.
‘How vain
Are words! I thought never to speak again,
Not even in secret, not to mine own heart;
But from my lips the unwilling accents start,
And from my pen the words flow as I write,
Dazzling my eyes with scalding tears; my sight
Is dim to see that charactered in vain
On this unfeeling leaf, which burns the brain
And eats into it, blotting all things fair 480
And wise and good which time had written there.
Those who inflict must suffer, for they see
The work of their own hearts, and this must be
Our chastisement or recompense. — O child!
I would that thine were like to be more mild
For both our wretched sakes, — for thine the most
Who feelest already all that thou hast lost
Without the power to wish it thine again;
And as slow years pass, a funereal train,
Each with the ghost of some lost hope or friend 490
Following it like its shadow, wilt thou bend
No thought on my dead memory?
. . . . . . . . .
‘Alas, love!
Fear me not — against thee I would not move
A finger in despite. Do I not live
That thou mayst have less bitter cause to grieve?
I give thee tears for scorn, and love for hate;
And that thy lot may be less desolate
Than his on whom thou tramplest, I refrain
From that sweet sleep which medicines all pain.
Then, when thou speakest of me, never say 500
“He could forgive not.” Here I cast away
All human passions, all revenge, all pride;
I think, speak, act no ill; I do but hide
Under these words, like embers, every spark
Of that which has consumed me. Quick and dark
The grave is yawning — as its roof shall cover
My limbs with dust and worms under and over,
So let Oblivion hide this grief — the air
Closes upon my accents as despair
Upon my heart — let death upon despair!’ 510
He ceased, and overcome leant back awhile;
Then rising, with a melancholy smile,
Went to a sofa, and lay down, and slept
A heavy sleep, and in his dreams he wept,
And muttered some familiar name, and we
Wept without shame in his society.
I think I never was impressed so much;
The man who were not must have lacked a touch
Of human nature. — Then we lingered not,
Although our argument was quite forgot; 520
But, calling the attendants, went to dine
At Maddalo’s; yet neither cheer nor wine
Could give us spirits, for we talked of him
And nothing else, till daylight made stars dim;
And we agreed his was some dreadful ill
Wrought on him boldly, yet unspeakable,
By a dear friend; some deadly change in love
Of one vowed deeply, which he dreamed not of;
For whose sake he, it seemed, had fixed a blot
Of falsehood on his mind which flourished not 530
But in the light of all-beholding truth;
And having stamped this canker on his youth
She had abandoned him — and how much more
Might be his woe, we guessed not; he had store
Of friends and fortune once, as we could guess
From his nice habits and his gentleness;
These were now lost — it were a grief indeed
If he had changed one unsustaining reed
For all that such a man might else adorn.
The colors of his mind seemed yet unworn; 540
For the wild language of his grief was high —
Such as in measure were called poetry.
And I remember one remark which then
Maddalo made. He said—’Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.’
If I had been an unconnected man,
I, from this moment, should have formed some plan
Never to leave sweet Venice, — for to me
It was delight to ride by the lone sea; 550
And then the town is silent — one may write
Or read in gondolas by day or night,
Having the little brazen lamp alight,
Unseen, uninterrupted; books are there,
Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair
Which were twin-born with poetry, and all
We seek in towns, with little to recall
Regrets for the green country. I might sit
In Maddalo’s great palace, and his wit
And subtle talk would cheer the winter night 560
And make me know myself, and the firelight
Would flash upon our faces, till the day
Might dawn and make me wonder at my stay.
But I had friends in London too. The chief
Attraction here was that I sought relief
From the deep tenderness that maniac wrought
Within me—’t was perhaps an idle thought,
But I imagined that if day by day
I watched him, and but seldom went away,
And studied all the beatings of his heart 570
With zeal, as men study some stubborn art
For their own good, and could by patience find
An entrance to the caverns of his mind,
I might reclaim him from this dark estate.
In friendships I had been most fortunate,
Yet never saw I one whom I would call
More willingly my friend; and this was all
Accomplished not; such dreams of baseless good
Oft come and go in crowds and solitude
And leave no trace, — but what I now designed 580
Made, for long years, impression on my mind.
The following morning, urged by my affairs,
I left bright Venice.
After many years,
And many changes, I returned; the name
Of Venice, and its aspect, was the same;
But Maddalo was travelling far away
Among the mountains of Armenia.
His dog was dead. His child had now become
A woman; such as it has been my doom
To meet with few, a wonder of this earth, 590
Where there is little of transcendent worth,
Like one of Shakespeare’s women. Kindly she,
And with a manner beyond courtesy,
Received her father’s friend; and, when I asked
Of the lorn maniac, she her memory tasked,
And told, as she had heard, the mournful tale:
‘That the poor sufferer’s health began to fail
Two years from my departure, but that then
The lady, who had left him, came again.
Her mien had been imperious, but she now 600
Looked meek — perhaps remorse had brought her low.
Her coming made him better, and they stayed
Together at my father’s — for I played
As I remember with the lady’s shawl;
I might be six years old — but after all
She left him.’ ‘Why, her heart must have been tough.
How did it end?’ ‘And was not this enough?
They met — they parted.’ ‘Child, is there no more?’
‘Something within that interval which bore
The stamp of why they parted, how they met; 610
Yet if thine aged eyes disdain to wet
Those wrinkled cheeks with youth’s remembered tears,
Ask me no more, but let the silent years
Be closed and cered over their memory,
As yon mute marble where their corpses lie.’
I urged and questioned still; she told me how
All happened — but the cold world shall not know.
PETER BELL THE THIRD
BY MICHING MALLECHO, ESQ.
Is it a party in a parlour,
Crammed just as they on earth were crammed,
Some sipping punch — some sipping tea;
But, as you by their faces see,
All silent, and all — damned!
“Peter Bell”, by W.
Wordsworth.
OPHELIA. — What means this, my lord?
HAMLET. — Marry, this is Miching Mallecho; it means mischief.
Shakespeare.
Composed at Florence, October, 1819, and forwarded to Hunt (November 2) to be published by C. & J. Ollier without the author’s name; ultimately printed by Mrs. Shelley in the second edition of the “Poetical Works”, 1839. A skit by John Hamilton Reynolds, “Peter Bell, a Lyrical Ballad”, had already appeared (April, 1819), a few days before the publication of Wordsworth’s “Peter Bell, a Tale”. These productions were reviewed in Leigh Hunt’s “Examiner” (April 26, May 3, 1819); and to the entertainment derived from his perusal of Hunt’s criticisms the composition of Shelley’s “Peter Bell the Third” is chiefly owing.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE.
PART 1. DEATH.
PART 2. THE DEVIL.
PART 3. HELL.
PART 4. SIN.
PART 5. GRACE.
PART 6. DAMNATION.
PART 7. DOUBLE DAMNATION.
PETER BELL THE THIRD
DEDICATION.
TO THOMAS BROWN, ESQ., THE YOUNGER, H.F.
Dear Tom,
Allow me to request you to introduce Mr. Peter Bell to the respectable family of the Fudges. Although he may fall short of those very considerable personages in the more active properties which characterize the Rat and the Apostate, I suspect that even you, their historian, will confess that he surpasses them in the more peculiarly legitimate qualification of intolerable dulness.
You know Mr. Examiner Hunt; well — it was he who presented me to two of the Mr. Bells. My intimacy with the younger Mr. Bell naturally sprung from this introduction to his brothers. And in presenting him to you, I have the satisfaction of being able to assure you that he is considerably the dullest of the three.
There is this particular advantage in an acquaintance with any one of the Peter Bells, that if you know one Peter Bell, you know three Peter Bells; they are not one, but three; not three, but one. An awful mystery, which, after having caused torrents of blood, and having been hymned by groans enough to deafen the music of the spheres, is at length illustrated to the satisfaction of all parties in the theological world, by the nature of Mr. Peter Bell.
Peter is a polyhedric Peter, or a Peter with many sides. He changes colours like a chameleon, and his coat like a snake. He is a Proteus of a Peter. He was at first sublime, pathetic, impressive, profound; then dull; then prosy and dull; and now dull — oh so very dull! it is an ultra-legitimate dulness.
You will perceive that it is not necessary to consider Hell and the
Devil as supernatural machinery. The whole scene of my epic is in
‘this world which is’ — so Peter informed us before his conversion to
“White Obi” —
WE FIND OUR HAPPINESS, OR NOT AT ALL.’
Let me observe that I have spent six or seven days in composing this sublime piece; the orb of my moonlike genius has made the fourth part of its revolution round the dull earth which you inhabit, driving you mad, while it has retained its calmness and its splendour, and I have been fitting this its last phase ‘to occupy a permanent station in the literature of my country.’
Your works, indeed, dear Tom, sell better; but mine are far superior.
The public is no judge; posterity sets all to rights.
Allow me to observe that so much has been written of Peter Bell, that the present history can be considered only, like the Iliad, as a continuation of that series of cyclic poems, which have already been candidates for bestowing immortality upon, at the same time that they receive it from, his character and adventures. In this point of view I have violated no rule of syntax in beginning my composition with a conjunction; the full stop which closes the poem continued by me being, like the full stops at the end of the Iliad and Odyssey, a full stop of a very qualified import.
Hoping that the immortality which you have given to the Fudges, you will receive from them; and in the firm expectation, that when London shall be an habitation of bitterns; when St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey shall stand, shapeless and nameless ruins, in the midst of an unpeopled marsh; when the piers of Waterloo Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary stream, some transatlantic commentator will be weighing in the scales of some new and now unimagined system of criticism, the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges, and their historians. I remain, dear Tom, yours sincerely,
MICHING MALLECHO.
December 1, 1819.
P.S. — Pray excuse the date of place; so soon as the profits of the publication come in, I mean to hire lodgings in a more respectable street.
PROLOGUE.
Peter Bells, one, two and three,
O’er the wide world wandering be. —
First, the antenatal Peter,
Wrapped in weeds of the same metre,
The so-long-predestined raiment 5
Clothed in which to walk his way meant
The second Peter; whose ambition
Is to link the proposition,
As the mean of two extremes —
(This was learned from Aldric’s themes) 10
Shielding from the guilt of schism
The orthodoxal syllogism;
The First Peter — he who was
Like the shadow in the glass
Of the second, yet unripe, 15
His substantial antitype. —
Then came Peter Bell the Second,
Who henceforward must be reckoned
The body of a double soul,
And that portion of the whole 20
Without which the rest would seem
Ends of a disjointed dream. —
And the Third is he who has
O’er the grave been forced to pass
To the other side, which is, — 25
Go and try else, — just like this.
Peter Bell the First was Peter
Smugger, milder, softer, neater,
Like the soul before it is
Born from THAT world into THIS. 30
The next Peter Bell was he,
Predevote, like you and me,
To good or evil as may come;
His was the severer doom, —
For he was an evil Cotter, 35
And a polygamic Potter.
And the last is Peter Bell,
Damned since our first parents fell,
Damned eternally to Hell —
Surely he deserves it well! 40
PART 1. DEATH.
1.
And Peter Bell, when he had been
With fresh-imported Hell-fire warmed,
Grew serious — from his dress and mien
‘Twas very plainly to be seen
Peter was quite reformed. 5
2.
His eyes turned up, his mouth turned down;
His accent caught a nasal twang;
He oiled his hair; there might be heard
The grace of God in every word
Which Peter said or sang. 10
3.
But Peter now grew old, and had
An ill no doctor could unravel:
His torments almost drove him mad; —
Some said it was a fever bad —
Some swore it was the gravel. 15
4.
His holy friends then came about,
And with long preaching and persuasion
Convinced the patient that, without