The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley

part

Henceforth, if death be not division; If so, the dead feel no contrition. But wilt thou hear since last we parted 580

(We see it o'er the flood of cloud, 540 | Its express image; but thou art Which sunrise from its eastern caves More wretched. Sweet! we will not Drives, wrinkling into golden waves, Hung with its precipices proud, From that gray stone where first we met) There-now who knows the dead feel nought?545 Should be my grave; for he who yet Is my soul's soul, once said: "Twere sweet

But these things might our spirits
make,

Amid the all-surrounding air,
Their own eternity partake?"
Then 'twas a wild and playful saying
At which I laughed, or seemed to
laugh:
They were his words: now heed
praying,

560

And let them be my epitaph.
Thy memory for a term may be
My monument. Wilt remember
me?

I know thou wilt, and canst for-
give
565
Whilst in this erring world to live
My soul disdained not, that I thought
Its lying forms were worthy aught
And much less thee.
Helen.

O speak not so,
But come to me and pour thy woe 570
Into this heart, full though it be,
Ay, overflowing with its own:
I thought that grief had severed me
From all beside who weep and groan;
Its likeness upon earth to be,
551 Where] When ed. 1819.

All that has left me broken hearted?
Rosalind. Yes, speak. The faint-
est stars are scarcely shorn
Of their thin beams by that delusive

Was labouring in that mighty birth,
Which many a poet and a sage
Has aye foreseen-the happy age 605
When truth and love shall dwell
below

575 Among the works and ways of men ;
572 Ay, overflowing] Aye overflowing ed. 1819,

Which on this world not power but | Along the brink of the gloomy seas

will

And hope, and courage mute in death;

For love and life in him were twins, Born at one birth: in every other First life then love its course begins, Though they be children of one mother;

625 And so through this dark world they fleet

Divided, till in death they meet: But he loved all things ever. Then He passed amid the strife of men, And stood at the throne of armèd power 630

Pleading for a world of woe:
Secure as one on a rock-built tower
O'er the wrecks which the surge
trails to and fro,

'Mid the passions wild of human kind He stood, like a spirit calming them; 635 For, it was said, his words could bind Like music the lulled crowd, and stem

That torrent of unquiet dream, Which mortals truth and reason deem,

But is revenge and fear and pride. 640 Joyous he was; and hope and peace On all who heard him did abide, Raining like dew from his sweet talk, As where the evening star may walk

Liquid mists of splendour quiver. His very gestures touched to tears The unpersuaded tyrant, never So moved before: his presence stung The torturers with their victim's pain, 650

And none knew how; and through their ears,

The subtle witchcraft of his tongue Unlocked the hearts of those who keep

Gold, the world's bond of slavery. Men wondered, and some sneered to see 655 One sow what he could never reap: For he is rich, they said, and young, And might drink from the depths of luxury.

If he seeks Fame, Fame never crowned

The champion of a trampled creed : If he seeks Power, Power is enthroned

'Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed

Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil,

Those who would sit near Power must toil;

And such, there sitting, all may

What seeks he? All that others seek He casts away, like a vile weed Which the sea casts unreturningly. That poor and hungry men should break

The laws which wreak them toil and scorn, 670

We understand; but Lionel
We know is rich and nobly born.
So wondered they: yet all men loved
Young Lionel, though few approved;
All but the priests, whose hatred fell
Like the unseen blight of a smiling
day,

The withering honey dew, which clings

Under the bright green buds of May, Whilst they unfold their emerald wings:

For he made verses wild and queer On the strange creeds priests hold so dear,

Because they bring them land and gold.

Of devils and saints and all such gear,

He made tales which whoso heard
or read

Would laugh till he were almost
dead.
685
So this grew a proverb: 'Don't
get old
Till Lionel's "Banquet in Hell"
you hear,
And then you will laugh yourself
young again.'

So the priests hated him, and he
Repaid their hate with cheerful glee.

Ah, smiles and joyance quickly died,
For public hope grew pale and dim
In an altered time and tide,
And in its wasting withered him,
As a summer flower that blows too
695
Droops in the smile of the waning

soon

night

The frozen dews of wrinkling blight.
None now hoped more. Gray Power
was seated

Safely on her ancestral throne; 700
And Faith, the Python, undefeated,
Even to its blood-stained steps

dragged on

Her foul and wounded train, and men
Were trampled and deceived again,
And words and shows again could
bind

705

The wailing tribes of human kind
In scorn and famine. Fire and blood
Raged round the raging multitude,
To fields remote by tyrants sent
To be the scorned instrument 710
With which they drag from mines

of gore

The chains their slaves yet ever

wore:

Did all desires and thoughts, that
Men's care-ambition, friendship,
Love, hope, though hope was now
fame,
despair-

As from the all-surrounding air
Indue the colours of this change,
The earth takes hues obscure and
strange,
When storm and earthquake linger
there.

730

And so, my friend, it then befell
To many, most to Lionel,
Whose hope was like the life of
youth

Within him, and when dead, became
A spirit of unresting flame.
Which goaded him in his distress
Over the world's vast wilderness.
Three years he left his native land,
And on the fourth, when he re-
turned,

740 None knew him: he was stricken deep

With some disease of mind, and
turned

Into aught unlike Lionel.
On him, on whom, did he pause
in sleep,

Serenest smiles were wont to keep, | And, did he wake, a winged band' 711 gore edd. 1819, 1839. See Editor's Note.

ght persuasions, which had fed
s sweet lips and liquid eyes,
their swift pinions half out-
spread,

To do on men his least command; 750
On him, whom once 'twas paradise
Even to behold, now misery lay:
In his own heart 'twas merciless,
To all things else none may express
Its innocence and tenderness. 755
"Twas said that he had refuge sought
In love from his unquiet thought
In distant lands, and been deceived
By some strange show; for there
were found,

Blotted with tears as those relieved
By their own words are wont to do,
These mournful verses on the
ground,
By all who read them blotted too.
'How am I changed! my hopes were
once like fire:

I loved, and I believed that life was love. 765 How am I lost! on wings of swift desire

Among Heaven's winds my spirit

once did move.

I slept, and silver dreams did aye inspire

My liquid sleep: I woke, and did

borne

His soul seemed hovering in his eyes,
Like some bright spirit newly born
Floating amid the sunny skies,
Sprang forth from his rent heart anew.
Yet o'er his talk, and looks, and mien,
Tempering their loveliness too keen,
Past woe its shadow backward threw,
Till like an exhalation, spread
From flowers half drunk with even-
ing dew,

They did become infectious: sweet And subtile mists of sense and thought:

Which wrapped us soon, when we might meet, 810 Almost from our own looks and aught

The wide world holds. And so, his mind

Was healed, while mine grew sick with fear:

For ever now his health declined,

weep,

840

And say with flattery false, yet sweet,
That death and he could never meet,
If I would never part with him.
And so we loved, and did unite
All that in us was yet divided: 845
For when he said, that many a rite,
By men to bind but once provided,
Could not be shared by him and me,
Or they would kill him in their glee,
I shuddered, and then laughing
said-
850

'We will have rites our faith to bind, But our church shall be the starry night,

Our altar the grassy earth outspread, And our priest the muttering wind.'

Against their gods keen blasphemy, For which, though his soul must roasted be

In hell's red lakes immortally,
Yet even on earth must he abide 865
The vengeance of their slaves: a
trial,

I think, men call it. What avail Are prayers and tears, which chase denial

From the fierce savage, nursed in hate?

What the knit soul that pleading and pale 870 Makes wan the quivering cheek, which late

It painted with its own delight?
We were divided. As I could,
I stilled the tingling of my blood,
And followed him in their despite,
As a widow follows, pale and wild,
The murderers and corse of her only
child;

And when we came to the prison door

And I prayed to share his dungeon floor

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The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Including Materials Never Before ...