And not the fixed-he knew the way to To sounds which echo further west 966 Than your sires' 'Islands of the Blest.''10 12 The mountains look on Marathon— I dreamed that Greece might still be free; A king sate on the rocky brow Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis; 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? 18 24 30 36 42 48 54 ou have the letters Cadmus13 gavehink ye he meant them for a slave? ill high the bowl with Samian wine! We will not think of themes like these! made Anacreon's song divine; He served but served Polycrates14tyrant; but our masters then Vere still, at least, our countrymen. he tyrant of the Chersonese15 Was freedom's best and bravest friend; hat tyrant was Miltiades! Oh! that the present hour would lend nother despot of the kind! uch chains as his were sure to bind. ill 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; ll high the bowl with Samian wine! o think such breasts must suckle slaves. 87 us sung, or would, or could, or should have sung, The modern Greek, in tolerable verse; E not like Orpheus quite, when Greece was young, Yet in these times he might have done much worse: 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 Tyrant (ruler) of Samos, who gave refuge to Some kinder casuists are pleased to say, Anacreon. In nameless print-that I have no devotion; But set those persons down with me to pray, 19 Shakespeare: Sonnet 111. 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 me,21 How have I loved the twilight hour and thee! 106 The shrill cicalas, people of the pine, 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- 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. 21 Dryden's Theodore and Tonoria is a translation 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. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY ALASTOR, OR THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDI Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quæreba quid amarem, amans amare.†-Confes. St. Augu PREFACE The poem entitled Alastor may be considered allegorical of one of the most interesting situatio of the human mind. It represents a youth of u corrupted feelings and adventurous genius led for by an imagination inflamed and purified throu familiarity with all that is excellent and majest to the contemplation of the universe. He drin deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is st insatiate. The magnificence and beauty of t external world sinks profoundly into the frame his conceptions, and affords to their modificatio a variety not to be exhausted. So long as it possible for his desires to point towards objed thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous, a tranquil, and self-possessed. But the period arriv when these objects cease to suffice. His mind at length suddenly awakened and thirsts for inte course with an intelligence similar to itself. images to himself the Being whom he loves. Co versant with speculations of the sublimest a most perfect natures, the vision in which he e bodies his own imaginations unites all of wonde ful, or wise, or beautiful, which the poet, t philosopher, or the lover, could depicture. tions of sense, have their respective requisitions intellectual faculties, the imagination, the fun the sympathy of corresponding powers in oth human beings. The Poet is represented as uniti these requisitions, and attaching them to a sing image. He seeks in vain for a prototype of b conception. Blasted by his disappointment, descends to an untimely grave. T The picture is not barren of instruction actual men. The Poet's self-centred seclusion w avenged by the furies of an irresistible passi pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Pow which strikes the luminaries of the world wi sudden darkness and extinction, by awakeni them to too exquisite a perception of its inf The word Alastor means "the spirit of solitude which is treated here as a spirit of evil, a spirit leading to disaster; it must not mistaken for the name of the hero of t poem. In the introduction (lines 1-49) She ley speaks in his own person; but the Po whose history he then proceeds to relate bea very markedly his own traits, and the who must be considered as largely a spiritual a tobiography. It is difficult to resist callin attention to some of the features of th impressive poem; to its quiet mastery theme and sustained poetic power; to i blank-verse harmonies subtler than rhyme to the graphic descriptions, as in lines 23 369, whence Bryant, Poe, and Tennyson ha manifestly all drawn inspiration: to ୦୯୯ sional lines of an impelling swiftness (61 613), or startlin occasional phrases of strength (676, 681); to the fervent exalt tion of self-sacrifice in the prayer that of life might answer for all, and the pangs death be henceforth banished from the wor (609-624) or to the unapproachable beaut of the description of slow-coming death itse -a euthanasia in which life passes away lil a strain of music or like an "exhalation There can be no higher definition of poeti than is implicit in these things. : "Not yet did I love, yet I yearned to love: sought what I might love, yearning to love In this vain pursuit of ideal loveliness, sal Mrs. Shelley, is the deeper meaning Alastor to be found. Like an inspired and desperate alchemist tears ences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those Uniting with those breathless kisses, made thought, Has shone within me, that serenely now 40 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! Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, 30 Of some mysterious and deserted fane, 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, And knew. When early youth had passed, he His cold fireside and alienated home 1 Wordsworth's phrase; see his My Heart Leaps To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. this. 3 Wordsworth's Ode on Immortality, line 142. 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 To avarice or pride, their starry domes His wandering step, Obedient to high thoughts, has visited 100 110 Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe 'er of strange Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphinx, He lingered, poring on memorials 120 Of the world's youth, through the long burning day Gazed on those speechless shapes, nor, when the moon Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades 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 There came, a dream of hopes that never yet Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veilèd maid 149 Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones. harp 160 170 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. |