The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface.
• Julian and Maddalo; a Conversation.
• The Witch of Atlas.
• Letter to —
• The Triumph of Life.
• Fragments From an Unfinished Drama.
• Prince Athanase: a Fragment.
• Ode to Naples. *
• Marianne’s Dream.
• Mont Blanc. Lines Written In the Vale of Chamouni.
• Miscellaneous Poems.
• On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci, In the Florentine Gallery.
• Song.
• To Constantia, Singing.
• The Fugitives.
• A Lament.
• The Pine Forest of the Cascine, Near Pisa.
• To Night.
• Evening. Ponte a Mare, Pisa.
• Arethusa.
• The Question.
• Lines to an Indian Air.
• Stanzas Written In Dejection, Near Naples.
• Autumn: a Dirge.
• Hymn of Apollo.
• Hymn of Pan.
• The Boat On the Serchio.
• The Zucca. *
• The Two Spirits. an Allegory.
• A Fragment.
• A Bridal Song.
• The Sunset.
• Song, On a Faded Violet.
• Lines to a Critic.
• Good Night.
• To-morrow.
• Death.
• A Lament.
• Love’s Philosophy.
• To E*** V***
• To —
• Lines.
• To William Shelley.
• An Allegory.
• Mutability.
• From the Arabic. an Imitation.
• To —
• Music.
• Lines.
• Death.
• To —
• Passage of the Apennines.
• To Mary —
• The Past.
• Song of a Spirit.
• Liberty.
• To —
• The Isle.
• To —
• Time.
• Lines.
• A Song.
• The World’s Wanderers.
• A Dirge.
• Lines.
• Dirge For the Year.
• Sonnet I.
• Sonnet II. Political Greatness.
• Sonnet III.
• Sonnet IV.
• Fragments.
• Ginevra. *
• Charles the First. Fragments.
• Prince Athanase. Part II.
• Mazenghi. *
• The Woodman and the Nightingale.
• To the Moon.
• Song For Tasso.
• The Waning Moon.
• Epitaph.
• Alastor; Or the Spirit of Solitude.
• Translations.
• Hymn to Mercury. Translated From the Greek of Homer
• The Cyclops; a Satyric Drama.
• Translation From Moschus.
• Scenes From the “magico Prodigioso” of Calderon.
• Scenes From the Faust of GoËthe.

PRINCE ATHANASE:

A FRAGMENT.

• • There was a youth, who, as with toil and travel,
  • Had grown quite weak and grey before his time;
  • Nor any could the restless griefs unravel
• • Which burned within him, withering up his prime
  • And goading him, like fiends, from land to land.
  • Not his the load of any secret crime,
• • For nought of ill his heart could understand,
  • But pity and wild sorrow for the same;—
  • Not his the thirst for glory or command
• • Baffled with blast of hope-consuming shame;
  • Nor evil joys which fire the vulgar breast
  • And quench in speedy smoke its feeble flame,
• • Had left within his soul their dark unrest:
  • Nor what religion fables of the grave
  • Feared he,—Philosophy’s accepted guest.
• • For none than he a purer heart could have,
  • Or that loved good more for itself alone;
  • Of nought in heaven or earth was he the slave.
• • What sorrow deep, and shadowy, and unknown,
  • Sent him, a hopeless wanderer, through mankind?—
  • If with a human sadness he did groan,
• • He had a gentle yet aspiring mind;
  • Just, innocent, with varied learning fed,
  • And such a glorious consolation find
• • In others’ joy, when all their own is dead:
  • He loved, and laboured for his kind in grief,
  • And yet, unlike all others, it is said,
• • That from such toil he never found relief;
  • Although a child of fortune and of power,
  • Of an ancestral name the orphan chief.
• • His soul had wedded wisdom, and her dower
  • Is love and justice, clothed in which he sate
  • Apart from men, as in a lonely tower,
• • Pitying the tumult of their dark estate—
  • Yet even in youth did he not e’er abuse
  • The strength of wealth or thought, to consecrate
• • Those false opinions which the harsh rich use
  • To blind the world they famish for their pride;
  • Nor did he hold from any man his dues,
• • But like a steward in honest dealings tried,
  • With those who toiled and wept, the poor and wise
  • His riches and his cares he did divide.
• • Fearless he was, and scorning all disguise,
  • What he dared do or think, though men might start,
  • He spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes;
• • Liberal he was of soul, and frank of heart,
  • And to his many friends—all loved him well—
  • Whate’er he knew or felt he would impart,
• • If words he found those inmost thoughts to tell;
  • If not, he smiled or wept; and his weak foes
  • He neither spurned nor hated, though with fell
• • And mortal hate their thousand voices rose,
  • They past like aimless arrows from his ear—
  • Nor did his heart or mind its portal close
• • To those, or them, or any whom life’s sphere
  • May comprehend within its wide array.
  • What sadness made that vernal spirit sere?
• • He knew not. Though his life, day after day,
  • Was failing like an unreplenished stream,
  • Though in his eyes a cloud and burthen lay,
• • Through which his soul, like Vespers’ serene beam
  • Piercing the chasms of ever rising clouds,
  • Shone, softly burning; though his lips did seem
• • Like reeds which quiver in impetuous floods;
  • And through his sleep, and o’er each waking hour,
  • Thoughts after thoughts, unresting multitudes,
• • Were driven within him, by some secret power,
  • Which bade them blaze, and live, and roll afar,
  • Like lights and sounds, from haunted tower to tower
• • O’er castled mountains borne, when tempest’s war
  • Is levied by the night-contending winds,
  • And the pale dalesmen watch with eager ear;—
• • Though such were in his spirit, as the fiends
  • Which wake and feed on everliving woe,—
  • What was this grief, which ne’er in other minds
• • A mirror found,—he knew not—none could know;
  • But on whoe’er might question him he turned
  • The light of his frank eyes, as if to show,
• • He knew not of the grief within that burned,
  • But asked forbearance with a mournful look;
  • Or spoke in words from which none ever learned
• • The cause of his disquietude; or shook
  • With spasms of silent passion; or turned pale:
  • So that his friends soon rarely undertook
• • To stir his secret pain without avail;—
  • For all who knew and loved him then perceived
  • That there was drawn an adamantine veil
• • Between his heart and mind,—both unrelieved
  • Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife.
  • Some said that he was mad, others believed
• • That memories of an antenatal life
  • Made this, where now he dwelt, a penal hell;
  • And others said that such mysterious grief
• • From God’s displeasure, like a darkness, fell
  • On souls like his which owned no higher law
  • Than love; love calm, stedfast, invincible
• • By mortal fear or supernatural awe;
  • And others,—“ ’Tis the shadow of a dream
  • Which the veiled eye of memory never saw
• • “But through the soul’s abyss, like some dark stream
  • Through shattered mines and caverns underground
  • Rolls, shaking its foundations; and no beam
• • “Of joy may rise, but it is quenched and drowned
  • In the dim whirlpools of this dream obscure,
  • Soon its exhausted waters will have found
• • “A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure,
  • O Athanase!—in one so good and great,
  • Evil or tumult cannot long endure.”
• • So spake they: idly of another’s state
  • Babbling vain words and fond philosophy;
  • This was their consolation; such debate
• • Men held with one another; nor did he
  • Like one who labours with a human woe
  • Decline this talk; as if its theme might be
• • Another, not himself, he to and fro
  • Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit,
  • And none but those who loved him best could know
• • That which he knew not, how it galled and bit
  • His weary mind, this converse vain and cold;
  • For like an eyeless night-mare grief did sit
• • Upon his being; a snake which fold by fold
  • Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend
  • Which clenched him if he stirred with deadlier hold;—
  • And so his grief remained—let it remain—untold.*

December, 1817.

[* ]The Author was pursuing a fuller development of the ideal character of Athanase, when it struck him that in an attempt at extreme refinement and analysis, his conceptions might be betrayed into the assuming a morbid character. The reader will judge whether he is a loser or gainer by this difference.—Author’s Note.