And not the fixed-he knew the way to To sounds which echo further west Than your sires' "Islands of the Blest. ''10 The mountains look on Marathon And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dreamed that Greece might still be free; A king sate on the rocky brow And men in nations;-all were his! And where are they? and where art thou, The heroic bosom beats no more! Even as I sing, suffuse my face; Must we but weep o'er days more blest? What, silent still? and silent all? Ah! no;-the voices of the dead Sound like a distant torrent's fall, And answer, "Let one living head, But one arise,-we come, we come!'' 'Tis but the living who are dumb. In vain-in vain: strike other chords; Fill high the cup with Samian wine! Leave battles to the Turkish hordes, And shed the blood of Scio's vine! Hark! rising to the ignoble callHow answers each bold Bacchanal! You have the Pyrrhic dance11 as yet; Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx12 gone? Of two such lessons, why forget The nobler and the manlier one? 12 18 24 30 36 42 48 54 10 The fabled Western Isles, lying somewhere in the Atlantic. 11 A war-dance. 12 The Greek phalanx as employed by the great general, Pyrrhus. You have the letters Cadmus13 gave- He served but served Polycrates14- The tyrant of the Chersonese15 Was freedom's best and bravest friend; That tyrant was Miltiades! Oh! that the present hour would lend Another despot of the kind! Such chains as his were sure to bind. Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore, 16 Exists the remnant of a line Such as the Doric mothers bore; And there, perhaps, some seed is sown, The Heracleidan17 blood might own. Trust not for freedom to the FranksThey have a king who buys and sells; In native swords and native ranks, The only hope of courage dwells: But Turkish force, and Latin fraud, Would break your shield, however broad. Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! Our virgins dance beneath the shadeI see their glorious black eyes shine; But gazing on each glowing maid, My own the burning tear-drop laves, To think such breasts must suckle slaves. Place me on Sunium 's18 marbled steep, Where nothing, save the waves and I, May hear our mutual murmurs sweep; There, swan-like, let me sing and die: A land of slaves shall ne'er be mineDash down yon cup of Samian wine! 87 Thus sung, or would, or could, or should have sung, The modern Greek, in tolerable verse; If not like Orpheus quite, when Greece was young, Yet in these times he might have done much worse: 13 Cadmus was said to have introduced the Greek alphabet from Phoenicia. 102 Ave Maria! blessed be the hour! The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft Have felt that moment in its fullest power Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft, While swung the deep bell in the distant tower, Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft, And not a breath crept through the rosy air, And yet the forest leaves seemed stirred with prayer. 103 Ave Maria! 't is the hour of prayer! Ave Maria! 't is the hour of love! Ave Maria! may our spirits dare Look up to thine and to thy Son's above! Ave Maria! oh that face so fair! Those downcast eyes beneath the Almighty dove What though 't is but a pictured image? strike That painting is no idol,—'t is too like. 104 14 Tyrant (ruler) of Samos, who gave refuge to Some kinder casuists are pleased to say, Anacreon. 15 A Thracian peninsula. 16 In western Greece. 17 i. e., ancient Greek 18 The southernmost promontory of Attica. In nameless print-that I have no devotion; But set those persons down with me to pray, And you shall see who has the properest notion Of getting into heaven the shortest way; My altars are the mountains and the ocean, Earth, air, stars, all that springs from the great Whole, Who hath produced, and will receive the soul. 105 Sweet hour of twilight!-in the solitude To where the last Cæsarean fortress stood, And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to How have I loved the twilight hour and thee! 106 The shrill cicalas, people of the pine, Making their summer lives one ceaseless song, Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine, And vesper bell's that rose the boughs along; The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line, His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair Which learned from this example not to fly 107 Oh, Hesperus! thou bringest all good things- Whate'er our household gods protect of dear, 108 Soft hour! which wakes the wish and melts the heart Of those who sail the seas, on the first day When they from their sweet friends are torn apart; Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way As the far bell of vesper makes him start, Seeming to weep the dying day's decay; Is this a fancy which our reason scorns? Ah! surely, nothing dies but something mourns! 20 The Adriatic. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822) ALASTOR, OR THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE* Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quærebam quid amarem, amans amare.†-Confes. St. August. PREFACE The poem entitled Alastor may be considered as allegorical of one of the most interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, and affords to their modifications a variety not to be exhausted. So long as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous, and tranquil, and self-possessed. But the period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He images to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant with speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in which he embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or wise, or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover, could depicture. The tions of sense, have their respective requisitions on intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functhe sympathy of corresponding powers in other human beings. The Poet is represented as uniting these requisitions, and attaching them to a single image. He seeks in vain for a prototype of his conception. Blasted by his disappointment, he descends to an untimely grave. The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The Poet's self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Power which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influ*The word Alastor means "the spirit of solitude," which is treated here as a spirit of evil, or a spirit leading to disaster; it must not be mistaken for the name of the hero of the poem. In the introduction (lines 1-49) Shelley speaks in his own person; but the Poet whose history he then proceeds to relate bears very markedly his own traits, and the whole must be considered as largely a spiritual autobiography. It is difficult to resist calling attention to some of the features of this impressive poem; to its quiet mastery of theme and sustained poetic power; to its blank-verse harmonies subtler than rhymes; to the graphic descriptions, as in lines 239369, whence Bryant, l'oe, and Tennyson have manifestly all drawn inspiration to occasional lines of an impelling swiftness (612, 613), or occasional phrases of startling strength (676, 681); to the fervent exaltation of self-sacrifice in the prayer that one life might answer for all, and the pangs of death be henceforth banished from the world (609-624); or to the unapproachable beauty of the description of slow-coming death itself -a euthanasia in which life passes away like a strain of music or like an "exhalation." There can be no higher definition of poetry than is implicit in these things. 21 Dryden's Theodore and Tonoria is a translation + "Not yet did I love, yet I yearned to love; from Boccaccio of the tale of a spectre huntsman who haunted this region. Byron lived for some time at Ravenna and frequently rode in the adjoining forest. sought what I might love, yearning to love." Like an inspired and desperate alchemist tears Uniting with those breathless kisses, made ences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those meaner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorious as their delinquency is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by no generous error. instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from sympathies with their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy nor mourning with human grief; these, and such as they, have their apportioned curse. They languish, because none feel with them their common nature. They are morally dead. They are neither friends, nor Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary, lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their country. Among those who Enough from incommunicable dream, attempt to exist without human sympathy, the And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday pure and tender-hearted perish through the intensity and passion of their search after its communities, when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who constitute, together with their own, the lasting misery and loneliness of the world. Those who love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave. "The good die first, And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust, 20 Mother of this unfathomable world! Up, p. 422. 30 1 Wordsworth's phrase; see his My Heart Leaps 2 According to Hogg, Shelley had actually done this. 3 Wordsworth's Ode on Immortality, line 142. thought, Has shone within me, that serenely now Of some mysterious and deserted fane, 40 I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my May modulate with murmurs of the air, 50 There was a Poet whose untimely tomb 60 And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined 70 By solemn vision, and bright silver dream, left His cold fireside and alienated home To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, 80 Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice 130 Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food, Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips 90 Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned. To avarice or pride, their starry domes His wandering step, Obedient to high thoughts, has visited 100 110 140 The Poet wandering on, through Arabie And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,2 And o'er the aërial mountains which pour down Indus and Oxus from their icy caves, In joy and exultation held his way; Till in the vale of Cashmire,3 far within Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower, Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep 149 There came, a dream of hopes that never yet Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones. harp 170 Strange symphony, and in their branching veins 2 The desert of Kirman, Persia. 179 1 Figures on the temple of Denderah in Upper 3 In central Asia; poetically regarded as an earthly Egypt. paradise. |