Percy Bysshe Shelley

“ Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver,
For the sensitive plant has no bright flower;
Radiance and odour are not its dower;
It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full,
It desires what it has not, the beautiful!
The light winds which from unsustaining wings
Shed the music of many murmurings;
The beams which dart from many a star
Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar;
The plumed insects swift and free,
Like golden boats on a sunny sea,
Laden with light and odour, which pass
Over the gleam of the living grass ”

“ Their soft smiles light the air like a star's fire.
Chorus of Spirits.
⁠Hast thou beheld the form of Love?
Fifth Spirit.
⁠As over wide dominions
I sped, like some swift cloud that wings the wide air's wildernesses,
That planet-crested shape swept by on lightning-braided pinions,
Scattering the liquid joy of life from his ambrosial tresses:
His footsteps paved the world with light; but as I passed 'twas fading,
And hollow Ruin yawned behind: great sages bound in madness,
And headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, unupbraiding,
Gleamed in the night. ”

“ Thou art immortal and this tongue is known
But to the uncommunicating dead.
Death is the veil which those who live call life:
They sleep, and it is lifted: and meanwhile
In mild variety the seasons mild
With rainbow-skirted showers, and odorous winds,
And long blue meteors cleansing the dull night,
And the life-kindling shafts of the keen sun's
All-piercing bow, and the dew-mingled rain
Of the calm moonbeams, a soft influence mild,
Shall clothe the forests and the fields, aye, even
The crag-built deserts of the barren deep,
With ever-living leaves, and fruits, and flowers. ”

“ And hung out to the tempest, a wreck on the wreck.
No more? At the helm sits a woman more fair
Than heaven, when, unbinding its star-braided hair,
It sinks with the sun on the earth and the sea.
She clasps a bright child on her upgather'd knee,
It laughs at the lightning, it mocks the mixed thunder
Of the air and the sea, with desire and with wonder
It is beckoning the tygers to rise and come near,
It would play with those eyes where the radiance of fear
Is outshining the meteors; its bosom beats high,
The heart-fire of pleasure has kindled its eye ”

“ Brethren!
⁠The Earth They dare not.
⁠Pro. Who dares? for I would hear that curse again.
Ha, what an awful whisper rises up!
'Tis scarce like sound; it tingles thro' the frame
As lightning tingles, hovering ere it strike.
Speak, Spirit! from thine inorganic voice
I only know that thou art moving near
And love. How cursed I him?
⁠The Earth. How canst thou hear
Who knowest not the language of the dead?
⁠Pro. Thou art a living spirit; speak as they.
⁠The Earth. ”

“ The voices of thy bards and sages thunder
⁠With an earth-awakening blast
⁠Through the caverns of the past;
Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast:
⁠A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder,
⁠Which soars where Expectation never flew,
⁠Rending the veil of space and time asunder!
⁠One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew;
One sun illumines heaven; one spirit vast
⁠With life and love makes chaos ever new,
⁠As Athens doth the world with thy delight renew. ”

“ None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk
Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes,
Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy
With such a self-mistrust as has no name.
And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind,
As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew
On the wide earth, past; gentle, radiant forms,
From custom's evil taint exempt and pure;
Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,
Looking emotions once they feared to feel,
And changed to all which once they dared not be,
Yet being now, made earth like heaven ”

“ Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines
Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast,
Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow!
The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass,
Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there
Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds
As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth
Is loosened, and the nations echo round,
Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now.
⁠Pan. Look how the gusty sea of mist is breaking
In crimson foam, even at our feet! it rises
As Ocean at the enchantment of the moon
Round foodless men wrecked on some oozy isle. ”

“ Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded moon.
Prometheus, it is thine! depart not yet!
Say not those smiles that we shall meet again
Within that bright pavilion which their beams
Shall build on the waste world? The dream is told.
What shape is that between us? Its rude hair
Roughens the wind that lifts it, its regard
Is wild and quick, yet 'tis a thing of air,
For thro' its grey robe gleams the golden dew
Whose stars the noon has quench'd not. ”

“ The beauty of delight makes lovers glad,
Gazing on one another: so are we.
As from the rose which the pale priestess kneels
To gather for her festal crown of flowers
The aerial crimson falls, flushing her cheek,
So from our victim's destined agony
The shade which is our form invests us round,
Else we are shapeless as our mother Night.
⁠Pro. I laugh your power, and his who sent you here,
To lowest scorn. Pour forth the cup of pain.
⁠First Fury. Thou thinkest we will rend thee bone from bone,
And nerve from nerve, working like fire within?
⁠Pro. Pain is my element, as hate is thine ”

“ This was the shadow of the truth I saw.
⁠The Earth. I felt thy torture, son, with such mixed joy
As pain and virtue give. To cheer thy state
I bid ascend those subtle and fair spirits,
Whose homes are the dim caves of human thought,
And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind,
Its world-surrounding ether; they behold
Beyond that twilight realm, as in a glass,
The future; may they speak comfort to thee!
⁠Pan. Look, sister, where a troop of spirits gather,
Like flocks of clouds in spring's delightful weather,
Thronging in the blue air! ”

“ Of an elephant, bursts through the brakes of the waste.
Black as a cormorant the screaming blast,
Between ocean and heaven, like an ocean, past,
Till it came to the clouds on the verge of the world
Which, based on the sea and to heaven upcurl'd,
Like columns and walls did surround and sustain
The dome of the tempest; it rent them in twain,
As a flood rends its barriers of mountainous crag:
And the dense clouds in many a ruin and rag,
Like the stones of a temple ere earthquake has past,
Like the dust of its fall, on the whirlwind are cast ”

“ Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves.
He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
Which is the measure of the universe;
And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven,
Which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind
Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song;
And music lifted up the listening spirit
Until it walked, exempt from mortal care,
Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound;
And human hands first mimicked and then mocked,
With moulded limbs more lovely than its own,
The human form, till marble grew divine ”

“ Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and gold,
Such as the genii of the thunder-storm,
Pile on the floor of the illumined sea
When the sun rushes under it; they roll
And move and grow as with an inward wind;
Within it sits a winged infant, white
Its countenance, like the whiteness of bright snow,
Its plumes are as feathers of sunny frost,
Its limbs gleam white, through the wind-flowing folds
Of its white robe, woof of æthereal pearl. ”

“ And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
And folds over the world its healing wings.
Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance--
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
⁠Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
⁠The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o'er the disentangled doom.
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
⁠To defy Power, which seems omnipotent ”

“ The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.
⁠What thou art we know not;
⁠What is most like thee?
⁠From rainbow clouds there flow not
⁠Drops so bright to see,
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
⁠Like a poet hidden
⁠In the light of thought,
⁠Singing hymns unbidden,
⁠Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:
⁠Like a high-born maiden
⁠In a palace tower,
⁠Soothing her love-laden
⁠Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower ”

“ Ah, sister! Desolation is a delicate thing:
It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air,
But treads with killing footstep, and fans with silent wing
The tender hopes which in their hearts the best and gentlest bear;
Who, soothed to false repose by the fanning plumes above
And the music-stirring motion of its soft and busy feet,
Dream visions of aerial joy, and call the monster, Love,
And wake, and find the shadow Pain, as he whom now we greet. ”

“ And palm-like capital, and over-wrought,
And populous most with living imagery,
Praxitelean shapes, whose marble smiles
Fill the hushed air with everlasting love.
It is deserted now, but once it bore
Thy name, Prometheus; there the emulous youths
Bore to thy honor thro' the divine gloom
The lamp which was thine emblem; even as those
Who bear the untransmitted torch of hope
Into the grave, across the night of life,
As thou hast borne it most triumphantly
To this far goal of Time. Depart, farewell.
Beside that temple is the destined cave.
SCENE IV.
A Forest. ”

“ Under the moon, had spread their snowy flakes,
From the keen ice shielding our linked sleep.
Then two dreams came. One I remember not.
But in the other his pale wound-worn limbs
Fell from Prometheus, and the azure night
Grew radiant with the glory of that form
Which lives unchanged within, and his voice fell
Like music which makes giddy the dim brain,
Faint with intoxication of keen joy:
"Sister of her whose footsteps pave the world
With loveliness—more fair than aught but her,
Whose shadow thou art—lift thine eyes on me." ”

“ Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high,
Then wander like spirits among the spheres,
Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears;
The quivering vapours of dim noontide,
Which like a sea o'er the warm earth glide,
In which every sound, and odour, and beam,
Move, as reeds in a single stream;
Each and all like ministering angels were
For the sensitive plant sweet joy to bear,
Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by
Like windless clouds o'er a tender sky. ”

“ Semichorus I.
⁠We whirl, singing loud, round the gathering sphere,
⁠Till the trees, and the beasts, and the clouds appear
⁠From its chaos made calm by love, not fear.
Semichorus II.
⁠We encircle the ocean and mountains of earth,
⁠And the happy forms of its death and birth
⁠Change to the music of our sweet mirth.
Chorus of Hours and Spirits.
⁠Break the dance, and scatter the song,
⁠Let some depart, and some remain,
⁠Wherever we fly we lead along
⁠In leashes, like starbeams, soft yet strong,
⁠The clouds that are heavy with love's sweet rain.
⁠Pan. Ha! they are gone! ”

“ And on each herb, from which Heaven's dew had fallen,
The like was stamped, as with a withering fire,
A wind arose among the pines; it shook
The clinging music from their boughs, and then
Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts,
Were heard: Oh, follow, follow, follow me!
And then I said, "Panthea, look on me."
But in the depth of those beloved eyes
Still I saw, follow, follow!
Echo.
Follow, follow!
⁠Pan. The crags, this clear spring morning, mock our voices,
As they were spirit-tongued.
⁠Asia. It is some being
Around the crags. What fine clear sounds! Oh, list! ”

“ Call up the fiends.
⁠Ione. Oh, sister, look! White fire
Has cloven to the roots yon huge snow-loaded cedar;
How fearfully God's thunder howls behind!
⁠Mer. I must obey his words and thine: alas!
Most heavily remorse hangs at my heart!
⁠Pan. See where the child of Heaven, with winged feet,
Runs down the slanted sunlight of the dawn.
⁠Ione. Dear sister, close thy plumes over thine eyes
Lest thou behold and die: they come: they come
Blackening the birth of day with countless wings,
And hollow underneath, like death. ”