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And not the fixed-he knew the way to To sounds which echo further west

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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;
For standing on the Persians' grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.

A king sate on the rocky brow
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,

And men in nations;-all were his!
And when the sun set, where were they?
He counted them at break of day-

And where are they? and where art thou,
My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now-

The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?
'Tis something, in the dearth of fame,
Though linked among a fettered race,
To feel at least a patriot's shame,

Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush-for Greece a tear.

Must we but weep o'er days more blest?
Must we but blush ?-Our fathers bled.
Earth! render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopyla!

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?

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48

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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-
Think ye he meant them for a slave?
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
We will not think of themes like these!
It made Anacreon's song divine;

He served but served Polycrates14-
A tyrant; but our masters then
Were still, at least, our countrymen.

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!

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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.

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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,

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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
Of the pine forest, and the silent shore
Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood,
Rooted where once the Adrian20 wave flowed
o'er,

To where the last Cæsarean fortress stood,
Evergreen forest! which Boccaccio's lore

And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to
me,21

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
throng

Which learned from this example not to fly
From a true lover,-shadowed my mind's eye.

107

Oh, Hesperus! thou bringest all good things-
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer,
To the young bird the parent's brooding wings,
The welcome stall to the o'erlaboured steer;
Whate 'er of peace about our hearthstone clings,

Whate'er our household gods protect of dear,
Are gathered round us by thy look of rest;
Thou bring 'st the child, too, to the mother's
breast.

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."
In this vain pursuit of ideal loveliness, said
Mrs. Shelley, is the deeper meaning of
Alastor to be found.

Like an inspired and desperate alchemist
Staking his very life on some dark hope,
Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks
With my most innocent love, until strange

tears

Uniting with those breathless kisses, made
Such magic as compels the charmèd night
To render up thy charge: and, though ne'er
yet

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,
Burn to the socket!"

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Mother of this unfathomable world!
Favour my solemn song, for I have loved
Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched
Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,
And my heart ever gazes on the depth
Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed
In charnels and on coffins,2 where black death
Keeps record of the trophies won from thee,
Hoping to still these obstinate questionings3
Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost,
Thy messenger, to render up the tale
Of what we are. In lone and silent hours,
When night makes a weird sound of its own
stillness,

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
And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre
Suspended in the solitary dome

Of some mysterious and deserted fane,

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I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my
strain

May modulate with murmurs of the air,
And motions of the forests and the sea,
And voice of living beings, and woven hymns
Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.

50

There was a Poet whose untimely tomb
No human hands with pious reverence reared,
But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds
Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid
Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness:-
A lovely youth,—no mourning maiden decked
With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath,
The lone couch of his everlasting sleep:-
Gentle, and brave, and generous, no lorn bard
Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh:
He lived, he died, he sung, in solitude.
Strangers have wept to hear his passionate
notes,

60

And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined
And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.
The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn,
And Silence, too enamoured of that voice,
Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.

70

By solemn vision, and bright silver dream,
His infancy was nurtured. Every sight
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses,
The fountains of divine philosophy
Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great,
Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past
In truth or fable consecrates, he felt
And knew. When early youth had passed, he

left

His cold fireside and alienated home

To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.
Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness
Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought

With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,

80
His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps
He like her shadow has pursued, where 'er
The red volcano overcanopies

Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice
With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes
On black bare pointed islets ever beat
With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves
Rugged and dark, winding among the springs
Of fire and poison, inaccessible

130

Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food,
Her daily portion, from her father's tent,
And spread her matting for his couch, and stole
From duties and repose to tend his steps:-
Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe
To speak her love:-and watched his nightly
sleep,

Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips
Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath
Of innocent dreams arose: then, when red morn
Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home

90 Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned.

To avarice or pride, their starry domes
Of diamond and of gold expand above
Numberless and immeasurable halls,
Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines
Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.
Nor had that scene of ampler majesty
Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven
And the green earth, lost in his heart its claims
To love and wonder; he would linger long
In lonesome vales, making the wild his home,
Until the doves and squirrels would partake
From his innocuous hand his bloodless food,
Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks,
And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er
'The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend
Her timid steps to gaze upon a form
More graceful than her own.

His wandering step,

Obedient to high thoughts, has visited
The awful ruins of the days of old:
Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste
Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers
Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids,

100

110

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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.
Her voice was like the voice of his own soul
Heard in the calm of thought; its music long,
Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held
His inmost sense suspended in its web
Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues.
Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,
And lofty hopes of divine liberty,
Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy, 160
Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood
Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame
A permeating fire: wild numbers then
She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs
Subdued by its own pathos: her fair hands
Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange

harp

170

Strange symphony, and in their branching veins
The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.
The beating of her heart was heard to fill
The pauses of her music, and her breath
Tumultuously accorded with those fits
of intermitted song. Sudden she rose,
As if her heart impatiently endured
Its bursting burthen: at the sound he turned,
And saw by the warm light of their own life
Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil
Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,
Her dark locks floating in the breath of night,
Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips

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.

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