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FRAGMENTS.

GINEVRA.*

- Wild, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one
- Who staggers forth into the air and sun
- From the dark chamber of a mortal fever,
- Bewildered, and incapable, and ever
- Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain
- Of usual shapes, till the familiar train
- Of objects and of persons passed like things
- Strange as a dreamer’s mad imaginings,
- Ginevra from the nuptial altar went;
- The vows to which her lips had sworn assent
- Rung in her brain still with a jarring din,
- Deafening the lost intelligence within.
- And so she moved under the bridal veil,
- Which made the paleness of her cheek more pale,
- And deepened the faint crimson of her mouth,
- And darkened her dark locks, as moonlight doth,—
- And of the gold and jewels glittering there
- She scarce felt conscious,—but the weary glare
- Lay like a chaos of unwelcome light,
- Vexing the sense with gorgeous undelight.
- A moonbeam in the shadow of a cloud
- Was less heavenly fair—her face was bowed,
- And as she passed, the diamonds in her hair
- Were mirrored in the polished marble stair
- Which led from the cathedral to the street;
- And ever as she went her light fair feet
- Erased these images.
- The bride-maidens who round her thronging came,
- Some with a sense of self-rebuke and shame,
- Envying the unenviable; and others
- Making the joy which should have been another’s
- Their own by gentle sympathy; and some
- Sighing to think of an unhappy home:
- Some few admiring what can ever lure
- Maidens to leave the heaven serene and pure
- Of parents’ smiles for life’s great cheat; a thing
- Better to taste sweet in imagining.
- But they are all dispersed—and, lo! she stands
- Looking in idle grief on her white hands,
- Alone within the garden now her own;
- And through the sunny air, with jangling tone,
- The music of the merry marriage bells,
- Killing the azure silence, sinks and swells;—
- Absorbed like one within a dream who dreams
- That he is dreaming, until slumber seems
- A mockery of itself—when suddenly
- Antonio stood before her, pale as she.
- With agony, with sorrow, and with pride,
- He lifted his wan eyes upon the bride,
- And said—“Is this thy faith?” and then as one
- Whose sleeping face is stricken by the sun
- With light like a harsh voice, which bids him rise
- And look upon his day of life with eyes
- Which weep in vain that they can dream no more,
- Ginevra saw her lover, and forbore
- To shriek or faint, and checked the stifling blood
- Rushing upon her heart, and unsubdued
- Said—“Friend, if earthly violence or ill,
- Suspicion, doubt, or the tyrannic will
- Of parents, chance, or custom, time or change,
- Or circumstance, or terror, or revenge,
- Or wildered looks, or words, or evil speech,
- With all their stings [[ ]] can impeach
- Our love,—we love not:—if the grave which hides
- The victim from the tyrant, and divides
- The cheek that whitens from the eyes that dart
- Imperious inquisition to the heart
- That is another’s, could dissever ours,
- We love not.”—“What do not the silent hours
- Beckon thee to Gherardi’s bridal bed?
- Is not that ring”—a pledge, he would have said,
- Of broken vows, but she with patient look
- The golden circle from her finger took,
- And said—“Accept this token of my faith,
- The pledge of vows to be absolved by death;
- And I am dead or shall be soon—my knell
- Will mix it’s music with that merry bell,
- Does it not sound as if they sweetly said
- ‘We toll a corpse out of the marriage bed?’
- The flowers upon my bridal chamber strewn
- Will serve unfaded for my bier—so soon
- That even the dying violet will not die
- Before Ginevra.” The strong fantasy
- Had made her accents weaker and more weak,
- And quenched the crimson life upon her cheek,
- And glazed her eyes, and spread an atmosphere
- Round her, which chilled the burning noon with fear,
- Making her but an image of the thought,
- Which, like a prophet or a shadow, brought
- News of the terrors of the coming time.
- Like an accuser branded with the crime
- He would have cast on a beloved friend,
- Whose dying eyes reproach not to the end
- The pale betrayer—he then with vain repentance
- Would share, he cannot now avert, the sentence—
- Antonio stood and would have spoken, when
- The compound voice of women and of men
- Was heard approaching; he retired, while she
- Was led amid the admiring company
- Back to the palace,—and her maidens soon
- Changed her attire for the afternoon,
- And left her at her own request to keep
- An hour of quiet and rest:—like one asleep
- With open eyes and folded hands she lay,
- Pale in the light of the declining day.
- Meanwhile the day sinks fast, the sun is set,
- And in the lighted hall the guests are met;
- The beautiful looked lovelier in the light
- Of love, and admiration, and delight
- Reflected from a thousand hearts and eyes
- Kindling a momentary Paradise.
- This crowd is safer than the silent wood,
- Where love’s own doubts disturb the solitude;
- On frozen hearts the fiery rain of wine
- Falls, and the dew of music more divine
- Tempers the deep emotions of the time
- To spirits cradled in a sunny clime:—
- How many meet, who never yet have met,
- To part too soon, but never to forget.
- How many saw the beauty, power and wit
- Of looks and words which ne’er enchanted yet;
- But life’s familiar veil was now withdrawn,
- As the world leaps before an earthquake’s dawn,
- And unprophetic of the coming hours,
- The matin winds from the expanded flowers,
- Scatter their hoarded incense, and awaken
- The earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken
- From every living heart which it possesses,
- Through seas and winds, cities and wildernesses,
- As if the future and the past were all
- Treasured i’the instant;—so Gherardi’s hall
- Laughed in the mirth of its lord’s festival,
- Till some one asked—“Where is the Bride?” And then
- A bride’s-maid went,—and ere she came again
- A silence fell upon the guests—a pause
- Of expectation, as when beauty awes
- All hearts with its approach, though unbeheld;
- Then wonder, and then fear that wonder quelled;—
- For whispers passed from mouth to ear which drew
- The colour from the hearer’s cheeks, and flew
- Louder and swifter round the company;
- And then Gherardi entered with an eye
- Of ostentatious trouble, and a crowd
- Surrounded him, and some were weeping loud.
- They found Ginevra dead! if it be death,
- To lie without motion, or pulse, or breath,
- With waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, and white,
- And open eyes, whose fixed and glassy light
- Mocked at the speculation they had owned.
- If it be death, when there is felt around
- A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare,
- And silence, and a sense that lifts the hair
- From the scalp to the ancles, as it were
- Corruption from the spirit passing forth,
- And giving all it shrouded to the earth,
- And leaving as swift lightning in its flight
- Ashes, and smoke, and darkness: in our night
- Of thought we know thus much of death,—no more
- Than the unborn dream of our life before
- Their barks are wrecked on its inhospitable shore.
- The marriage feast and its solemnity
- Was turned to funeral pomp—the company
- With heavy hearts and looks, broke up; nor they
- Who loved the dead went weeping on their way
- Alone, but sorrow mixed with sad surprize
- Loosened the springs of pity in all eyes,
- On which that form, whose fate they weep in vain,
- Will never, thought they, kindle smiles again.
- The lamps which half extinguished in their haste
- Gleamed few and faint o’er the abandoned feast,
- Shewed as it were within the vaulted room
- A cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloom
- Had passed out of men’s minds into the air.
- Some few yet stood around Gherardi there,
- Friends and relations of the dead,—and he,
- A loveless man, accepted torpidly
- The consolation that he wanted not,
- Awe in the place of grief within him wrought.
- Their whispers made the solemn silence seem
- More still—some wept, []
- Some melted into tears without a sob,
- And some with hearts that might be heard to throb
- Leant on the table, and at intervals
- Shuddered to hear through the deserted halls
- And corridors the thrilling shrieks which came
- Upon the breeze of night, that shook the flame
- Of every torch and taper as it swept
- From out the chamber where the women kept;—
- Their tears fell on the dear companion cold
- Of pleasures now departed; then was knolled
- The bell of death, and soon the priests arrived,
- And finding death their penitent had shrived,
- Returned like ravens from a corpse whereon
- A vulture has just feasted to the bone.
- And then the mourning women came.—
- * * * * * *

THE DIRGE.
- Old winter was gone
- In his weakness back to the mountains hoar,
- And the spring came down
- From the planet that hovers upon the shore
- Where the sea of sunlight encroaches
- On the limits of wintry night;—
- If the land, and the air, and the sea
- Rejoice not when spring approaches,
- We did not rejoice in thee,
- Ginevra!
- She is still, she is cold
- On the bridal couch,
- One step to the white death bed,
- And one to the bier,
- And one to the charnel—and one, O where?
- The dark arrow fled
- In the noon.
- Ere the sun through heaven once more has rolled,
- The rats in her heart
- Will have made their nest,
- And the worms be alive in her golden hair,
- While the spirit that guides the sun,
- Sits throned in his flaming chair,
- She shall sleep.
- * * * * * *

Pisa, 1821.

CHARLES THE FIRST.

FRAGMENTS.

ACT I. SCENE I.

The Pageant to [celebrate] the arrival of the Queen.

a pursuivant.

Place, for the Marshal of the Masque!

first speaker.

What thinkest thou of this quaint masque, which turns,
Like morning from the shadow of the night,
The night to day, and London to a place
Of peace and joy?

second speaker.

And Hell to Heaven.
Eight years are gone,
And they seem hours, since in this populous street
I trod on grass made green by summer’s rain,
For the red plague kept state within that palace
Where now reigns vanity—in nine years more
The roots will be refreshed with civil blood;
And thank the mercy of insulted Heaven
That sin and wrongs wound as an orphan’s cry,
The patience of the great avenger’s ear.

third speaker.(a youth).

Yet, father, tis a happy sight to see,
Beautiful, innocent, and unforbidden
By God or man;—’tis like the bright procession
Of skiey visions in a solemn dream
From which men wake as from a paradise,
And draw new strength to tread the thorns of life.
If God be good, wherefore should this be evil?
And if this be not evil, dost thou not draw
Unseasonable poison from the flowers
Which bloom so rarely in this barren world?
O, kill these bitter thoughts which make the present
Dark as the future!—
* * * * * * *
When avarice and tyranny, vigilant fear,
And open-eyed conspiracy lie sleeping
As on Hell’s threshold; and all gentle thoughts
Waken to worship him who giveth joys
With his own gift.

second speaker.

How young art thou in this old age of time!
How green in this grey world! Canst thou not think
Of change in that low scene, in which thou art
Not a spectator but an actor? []
The day that dawns in fire will die in storms,
Even though the noon be calm. My travel’s done;
Before the whirlwind wakes I shall have found
My inn of lasting rest, but thou must still
Be journeying on in this inclement air.
* * * * * * *

first speaker.

That
Is the Archbishop.

second speaker.

Rather say the Pope.
London will be soon his Rome: he walks
As if he trod upon the heads of men.
He looks elate, drunken with blood and gold;—
Beside him moves the Babylonian woman
Invisibly, and with her as with his shadow,
Mitred adulterer! he is joined in sin,
Which turns Heaven’s milk of mercy to revenge.

another citizen(lifting up his eyes).

Good Lord! rain it down upon him. [[ ]]
Amid her ladies walks the papist queen,
As if her nice feet scorned our English earth.
There’s old Sir Henry Vane, the Earl of Pembroke,
Lord Essex, and Lord Keeper Coventry,
And others who make base their English breed
By vile participation of their honours
With papists, atheists, tyrants, and apostates.
When lawyers mask ’tis time for honest men
To strip the vizor from their purposes.
* * * * * * *

fourth speaker(a pursuirant)

Give place, give place!—
You torch-bearers advance to the great gate,
And then attend the Marshal of the Masque
Into the Royal presence.

fifth speaker(a law student).

What thinkest thou
Of this quaint show of ours, my aged friend?

first speaker.

I will not think but that our country’s wounds
May yet be healed—The king is just and gracious,
Though wicked counsels now pervert his will:
These once cast off—

second speaker.

As adders cast their skins
And keep their venom, so kings often change;
Councils and counsellors hang on one another,
Hiding the loathsome []
Like the base patchwork of a leper’s rags.

third speaker.

O, still those dissonant thoughts—List! loud music
Grows on the enchanted air! And see, the torches
Restlessly flashing, and the crowd divided
Like waves before an Admiral’s prow.
* * * * * *

another speaker.

Give place—
To the Marshal of the Masque!

third speaker.

How glorious! See those thronging chariots
Rolling like painted clouds before the wind:
Some are
Like curved shells dyed by the azure depths
Of Indian seas; some like the new-born moon;
And some like cars in which the Romans climbed
(Canopied by Victory’s eagle wings outspread)
The Capitolian—See how gloriously
The mettled horses in the torchlight stir
Their gallant riders, while they check their pride,
Like shapes of some diviner element!

second speaker.

Aye, there they are—
Nobles, and sons of nobles, patentees,
Monopolists, and stewards of this poor farm,
On whose lean sheep sit the prophetic crows.
Here is the pomp that strips the houseless orphan,
Here is the pride that breaks the desolate heart.
These are the lilies glorious as Solomon,
Who toil not, neither do they spin,—unless
It be the webs they catch poor rogues withal.
Here is the surfeit which to them who earn
The niggard wages of the earth, scarce leaves
The tithe that will support them till they crawl
Back to its cold hard bosom. Here is health
Followed by grim disease, glory by shame,
Waste by lame famine, wealth by squalid want,
And England’s sin by England’s punishment.
And, as the effect pursues the cause foregone,
Lo, giving substance to my words, behold
At once the sign and the thing signified—
A troop of cripples, beggars, and lean outcasts,
Horsed upon stumbling shapes, carted with dung,
Dragged for a day from cellars and low cabins
And rotten hiding-holes to point the moral
Of this presentiment, and bring up the rear
Of painted pomp with misery!

speaker.

’Tis but
The anti-masque, and serves as discords do
In sweetest music. Who would love May flowers
If they succeeded not to Winter’s flaw;
Or day unchanged by night; or joy itself
Without the touch of sorrow?
* * * * * *

SCENE II.

A Chamber in Whitehall.

Enter theKing, Queen, Laud, Wentworth,andArchy.

king.

Thanks, gentlemen, I heartily accept
This token of your service: your gay masque
Was performed gallantly.

queen.

And, gentlemen,
Call your poor Queen your debtor. Your quaint pageant
Rose on me like the figures of past years,
Treading their still path back to infancy,
More beautiful and mild as they draw nearer
The quiet cradle. I could have almost wept
To think I was in Paris, where these shows
Are well devised—such as I was ere yet
My young heart shared with [[ ]] the task,
The careful weight of this great monarchy.
There, gentlemen, between the sovereign’s pleasure
And that which it regards, no clamour lifts
Its proud interposition.
* * * * * *

king.

My lord of Canterbury.

archy.

The fool is here.

laud.

I crave permission of your Majesty
To order that this insolent fellow be
Chastised, he mocks the sacred character,
Scoffs at the stake, and—

king.

What, my Archy!
He mocks and mimics all he sees and hears,
Yet with a quaint and graceful license—Prithee
For this once do not as Prynne would, were he
Primate of England.
He lives in his own world; and, like a parrot,
Hung in his gilded prison from the window
Of a queen’s bower over the public way,
Blasphemes with a bird’s mind:—his words, like arrows
Which know no aim beyond the archer’s wit,
Strike sometimes what eludes philosophy.

queen.

Go, sirrah, and repent of your offence
Ten minutes in the rain: be it your penance
To bring news how the world goes there. Poor Archy!
He weaves about himself a world of mirth
Out of this wreck of ours.

laud.

I take with patience, as my master did,
All scoffs permitted from above.

king.

My Lord,
Pray overlook these papers. Archy’s words
Had wings, but these have talons.

queen.

And the lion
That wears them must be tamed. My dearest lord,
I see the new-born courage in your eye
Armed to strike dead the spirit of the time.
* * * * *
Do thou persist: for, faint but in resolve,
And it were better thou hadst still remained
The slave of thine own slaves, who tear like curs
The fugitive, and flee from the pursuer;
And Opportunity, that empty wolf,
Flies at his throat who falls. Subdue thy actions
Even to the disposition of thy purpose,
And be that tempered as the Ebro’s steel;
And banish weak-eyed Mercy to the weak
Whence she will greet thee with a gift of peace,
And not betray thee with a traitor’s kiss,
As when she keeps the company of rebels,
Who think that she is fear. This do, lest we
Should fall as from a glorious pinnacle
In a bright dream, and wake as from a dream
Out of our worshipped state.
* * * * *

laud.

* * And if this suffice not,
Unleash the sword and fire, that in their thirst
They may lick up that scum of schismatics.
I laugh at those weak rebels who, desiring
What we possess, still prate of christian peace,
As if those dreadful messengers of wrath,
Which play the part of God ’twixt right and wrong,
Should be let loose against innocent sleep
Of templed cities and the smiling fields,
For some poor argument of policy
Which touches our own profit or our pride,
Where it indeed were christian charity
To turn the cheek even to the smiter’s hand:
And when our great Redeemer, when our God
Is scorned in his immediate ministers,
They talk of peace!
Such peace as Canaan found, let Scotland now.
* * * * *

queen.

My beloved lord,
Have you not noted that the fool of late
Has lost his careless mirth, and that his words
Sound like the echoes of our saddest fears?
What can it mean? I should be loth to think
Some factious slave had tutored him.

king.

It partly is,
That our minds piece the vacant intervals
Of his wild words with their own fashioning;
As in the imagery of summer clouds,
Or coals in the winter fire, idlers find
The perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts:
And partly, that the terrors of the time
Are sown by wandering Rumour in all spirits;
And in the lightest and the least, may best
Be seen the current of the coming wind.

queen.

Your brain is overwrought with these deep thoughts;
Come, I will sing to you; let us go try
These airs from Italy,—and you shall see
A cradled miniature of yourself asleep,
Stamped on the heart by never-erring love;
Liker than any Vandyke ever made,
A pattern to the unborn age of thee,
Over whose sweet beauty I have wept for joy
A thousand times, and now should weep for sorrow,
Did I not think that after we were dead
Our fortunes would spring high in him, and that
The cares we waste upon our heavy crown
Would make it light and glorious as a wreath
Of heaven’s beams for his dear innocent brow.

king.

Dear Henrietta!
* * * * *

SCENE III.

Hamiden, Pym, Cromwell,and the youngerVane.

hampden.

England, farewell! thou, who hast been my cradle,
Shalt never be my dungeon or my grave!
I held what I inherited in thee,
As pawn for that inheritance of freedom
Which thou hast sold for thy despoiler’s smile:—
How can I call thee England, or my country?
Does the wind hold?

vane.

The vanes sit steady
Upon the Abbey towers. The silver lightnings
Of the evening star, spite of the city’s smoke,
Tell that the north wind reigns in the upper air.
Mark too that flock of fleecy winged clouds
Sailing athwart St. Margaret’s.

hampden.

Hail, fleet herald
Of tempest! that wild pilot who shall guide
Hearts free as his, to realms as pure as thee,
Beyond the shot of tyranny! And thou,
Fair star, whose beam lies on the wide Atlantic,
Athwart its zones of tempest and of calm,
Bright as the path to a beloved home,
O light us to the isles of th’ evening land!
Like floating Edens, cradled in the glimmer
Of sunset, through the distant mist of years
Tinged by departing Hope, they gleam! Lone regions,
Where power’s poor dupes and victims, yet have never
Propitiated the savage fear of kings
With purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew
Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake
To weep each day the wrongs on which it dawns;
Whose sacred silent air owns yet no echo
Of formal blasphemies; nor impious rites
Wrest man’s free worship from the God who loves
Towards the worm, who envies us his love,
Receive thou young [[ ]] of Paradise,
These exiles from the old and sinful world!
This glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights
Dart mitigated influence through the veil
Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears keep green
The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth,
This vaporous horizon; whose dim round
Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea,
Repelling invasion from the sacred towers,
Presses upon me like a dungeon’s grate,
A low dark roof, a damp and narrow vault:
The mighty universe becomes a cell
Too narrow for the soul that owns no master.
While the loathliest spot
Of this wide prison, England, is a nest
Of cradled peace built on the mountain tops,
To which the eagle-spirits of the free,
Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn the storm
Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth,
Return to brood over the [[ ]] thoughts
That cannot die, and may not be repelled.
* * * * *

PRINCE ATHANASE.

PART II.

FRAGMENT I.

- Prince Athanase had one beloved friend,
- An old, old man, with hair of silver white,
- And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend
- With his wise words; and eyes whose arrowy light
- Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds.
- He was the last whom superstition’s blight
- Had spared in Greece—the blight that cramps and blinds,—
- And in his olive bower at Œnoe
- Had sate from earliest youth. Like one who finds
- A fertile island in the barren sea,
- One mariner who has survived his mates
- Many a drear month in a great ship—so he
- With soul-sustaining songs, and sweet debates
- Of ancient lore, there fed his lonely being:—
- “The mind becomes that which it contemplates,”—
- And thus Zonoras, by forever seeing
- Their bright creations, grew like wisest men;
- And when he heard the crash of nations fleeing
- A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then,
- O sacred Hellas! many weary years
- He wandered, till the path of Laian’s glen
- Was grass-grown—and the unremembered tears
- Were dry in Laian for their honoured chief,
- Who fell in Byzant, pierced by Moslem spears:—
- And as the lady looked with faithful grief
- From her high lattice o’er the rugged path,
- Where she once saw that horseman toil, with brief
- And blighting hope, who with the news of death
- Struck body and soul as with a mortal blight,
- She saw beneath the chesnuts, far beneath,
- An old man toiling up, a weary wight;
- And soon within her hospitable hall
- She saw his white hairs glittering in the light
- Of the wood fire, and round his shoulders fall;
- And his wan visage and his withered mien
- Yet calm and [[ ]] and majestical.
- And Athanase, her child, who must have been
- Then three years old, sate opposite and gazed.

FRAGMENT II.

Such was Zonoras; and as daylight finds
An amaranth glittering on the path of frost,
When autumn nights have nipt all weaker kinds,

Thus had his age, dark, cold, and tempest-tost,
Shone truth upon Zonoras; and he filled
From fountains pure, nigh overgrown and lost,

The spirit of Prince Athanase, a child,
With soul-sustaining songs of ancient lore
And philosophic wisdom, clear and mild.

And sweet and subtle talk they evermore,
The pupil and master shared; until,
Sharing the undiminishable store,

The youth, as shadows on a grassy hill
Outrun the winds that chase them, soon outran
His teacher, and did teach with native skill

Strange truths and new to that experienced man;
Still they were friends, as few have ever been
Who mark the extremes of life’s discordant span.

And in the caverns of the forest green,
Or by the rocks of echoing ocean hoar,
Zonoras and Prince Athanase were seen

By summer woodmen; and when winter’s roar
Sounded o’er earth and sea its blast of war,
The Balearic fisher, driven from shore,

Hanging upon the peaked wave afar,
Then saw their lamp from Laian’s turret gleam,
Piercing the stormy darkness like a star,

Which pours beyond the sea one stedfast beam,
Whilst all the constellations of the sky
Seemed wrecked. [ ] They did but seem—

For, lo! the wintry clouds are all gone by,
And bright Arcturus through you pines is glowing,
And far o’er southern waves, immoveably

Belted Orion hangs—warm light is flowing
From the young moon into the sunset’s chasm.—
“O, summer night! with power divine, bestowing

“On thine own bird the sweet enthusiasm
Which overflows in notes of liquid gladness,
Filling the sky like light! How many a spasm

“Of fevered brains, oppressed with grief and madness,
Were lulled by thee, delightful nightingale!
And these soft waves, murmuring a gentle sadness,

“And the far sighings of you piny dale
Made vocal by some wind, we feel not here,—
I bear alone what nothing may avail

“To lighten—a strange load!”—No human ear
Heard this lament; but o’er the visage wan
Of Athanase, a ruffling atmosphere

Of dark emotion, a swift shadow ran,
Like wind upon some forest-bosomed lake,
Glassy and dark.—And that divine old man

Beheld his mystic friend’s whole being shake,
Even where its inmost depths were gloomiest—
And with a calm and measured voice he spake,

And with a soft and equal pressure, prest
That cold lean hand:—“Dost thou remember yet
When the curved moon then lingering in the west

“Paused in you waves her mighty horns to wet,
How in those beams we walked, half resting on the sea?
’Tis just one year—sure thou dost not forget—

“Then Plato’s words of light in thee and me
Lingered like moonlight in the moonless east,
For we had just then read—thy memory

“Is faithful now—the story of the feast;
And Agathon and Diotima seemed
From death and [] released.

FRAGMENT III.

- ’Twas at the season when the Earth upsprings
- From slumber, as a sphered angel’s child,
- Shadowing its eyes with green and golden wings,
- Stands up before its mother bright and mild,
- Of whose soft voice the air expectant seems—
- So stood before the sun, which shone and smiled
- To see it rise thus joyous from its dreams,
- The fresh and radiant Earth. The hoary grove
- Waxed green—and flowers burst forth like starry beams;—
- The grass in the warm sun did start and move,
- And sea-buds burst under the waves serene:—
- How many a one, though none be near to love,
- Loves then the shade of his own soul, half seen
- In any mirror—or the spring’s young minions,
- The winged leaves amid the copses green;—
- How many a spirit then puts on the pinions
- Of fancy, and outstrips the lagging blast,
- And his own steps—and over wide dominions
- Sweeps in his dream-drawn chariot, far and fast,
- More fleet than storms—the wide world shrinks below,
- When winter and despondency are past.
- ’Twas at this season that Prince Athanase
- Past the white Alps—those eagle-baffling mountains
- Slept in their shrouds of snow;—beside the ways
- The waterfalls were voiceless—for their fountains
- Were changed to mines of sunless crystal now,
- Or by the curdling winds—like brazen wings
- Which clanged alone the mountain’s marble brow,
- Warped into adamantine fretwork, hung
- And filled with frozen light the chasm below.

FRAGMENT IV.

- Thou art the wine whose drunkenness is all
- We can desire, O Love! and happy souls,
- Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall,
- Catch thee, and feed from their o’erflowing bowls
- Thousands who thirst for thy ambrosial dew;—
- Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls
- Invests it; and when heavens are blue
- Thou fillest them; and when the earth is fair
- The shadow of thy moving wings imbue
- Its desarts and its mountains, till they wear
- Beauty like some bright robe;—thou ever soarest
- Among the towers of men, and as soft air
- In spring, which moves the unawakened forest,
- Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak,
- Thou floatest among men; and aye implorest
- That which from thee they should implore:—the weak
- Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts
- The strong have broken—yet where shall any seek
- A garment whom thou clothest not?

Marlow, 1817.

MAZENGHI.*

- Oh! foster-nurse of man’s abandoned glory,
- Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendour;
- Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story,
- As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender:—
- The light-invested angel Poesy
- Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee.
- And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught
- By loftiest meditations; marble knew
- The sculptor’s fearless soul—and as he wrought,
- The grace of his own power and freedom grew.
- And more than all, heroic, just, sublime
- Thou wert among the false—was this thy crime?
- Yes; and on Pisa’s marble walls the twine
- Of direst weeds hangs garlanded—the snake
- Inhabits its wrecked palaces;—in thine
- A beast of subtler venom now doth make
- Its lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown,
- And thus thy victim’s fate is as thine own.
- The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare,
- And love and freedom blossom but to wither;
- And good and ill like vines entangled are,
- So that their grapes may oft be plucked together;—
- Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make
- Thy heart rejoice for dead Mazenghi’s sake.
- No record of his crime remains in story,
- But if the morning bright as evening shone,
- It was some high and holy deed, by glory
- Pursued into forgetfulness, which won
- From the blind crowd he made secure and free
- The patriot’s meed, toil, death, and infamy.
- For when by sound of trumpet was declared
- A price upon his life, and there was set
- A penalty of blood on all who shared
- So much of water with him as might wet
- His lips, which speech divided not—he went
- Alone, as you may guess, to banishment.
- Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,
- He hid himself, and hunger, cold, and toil,
- Month after month endured; it was a feast
- Whene’er he found those globes of deep red gold
- Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,
- Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.
- And in the roofless huts of vast morasses,
- Deserted by the fever-stricken serf,
- All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses,
- And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf,
- And where the huge and speckled aloe made,
- Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade,
- He housed himself. There is a point of strand
- Near Vada’s tower and town; and on one side
- The treacherous marsh divides it from the land,
- Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide,
- And on the other creeps eternally,
- Through muddy weeds, the shallow, sullen sea.

Naples, 1818.

THE WOODMAN AND THE NIGHTINGALE.

- A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune
- (I think such hearts yet never came to good)
- Hated to hear, under the stars or moon
- One nightingale in an interfluous wood
- Satiate the hungry dark with melody;—
- And as a vale is watered by a flood,
- Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
- Struggling with darkness—as a tuberose
- Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie
- Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,
- The singing of that happy nightingale
- In this sweet forest, from the golden close
- Of evening, till the star of dawn may fail,
- Was interfused upon the silentness;
- The folded roses and the violets pale
- Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
- Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
- Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness
- Of the circumfluous waters,—every sphere
- And every flower and beam and cloud and wave,
- And every wind of the mute atmosphere,
- And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,
- And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,
- And every silver moth fresh from the grave,
- Which is its cradle—ever from below
- Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,
- To be consumed within the purest glow
- Of one serene and unapproached star,
- As if it were a lamp of earthly light,
- Unconscious, as some human lovers are,
- Itself how low, how high beyond all height
- The heaven where it would perish!—and every form
- That worshipped in the temple of the night
- Was awed into delight, and by the charm
- Girt as with an interminable zone,
- Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm
- Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion
- Out of their dreams; harmony became love
- In every soul but one . . . .
- And so this man returned with axe and saw
- At evening close from killing the tall treen,
- The soul of whom by nature’s gentle law
- Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green
- The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,
- Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene
- With jagged leaves,—and from the forest tops
- Singing the winds to sleep—or weeping oft
- Fast showers of aerial water drops
- Into their mother’s bosom, sweet and soft,
- Nature’s pure tears which have no bitterness;—
- Around the cradles of the birds aloft
- They spread themselves into the loveliness
- Of fan-like leaves, and over palid flowers
- Hang like moist clouds:—or, where high branches kiss,
- Make a green space among the silent bowers,
- Like a vast fane in a metropolis,
- Surrounded by the columns and the towers
- All overwrought with branch-like traceries
- In which there is religion—and the mute
- Persuasion of unkindled melodies,
- Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute
- Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast
- Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,
- Wakening the leaves and waves ere it has past
- To such brief unison as on the brain
- One tone, which never can recur, has cast,
- One accent never to return again.

TO THE MOON.

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,—
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

SONG FOR TASSO.

- I loved—alas! our life is love;
- But when we cease to breathe and move
- I do suppose love ceases too.
- I thought, but not as now I do,
- Keen thoughts and bright of linked lore,
- Of all that men had thought before,
- And all that nature shows, and more.
- And still I love and still I think,
- But strangely, for my heart can drink
- The dregs of such despair, and live,
- And love; []
- And if I think, my thoughts come fast,
- I mix the present with the past,
- And each seems uglier than the last.
- Sometimes I see before me flee
- A silver spirit’s form, like thee,
- O Leonora, and I sit
- [[ ]] still watching it,
- Till by the grated casement’s ledge
- It fades, with such a sigh, as sedge
- Breathes o’er the breezy streamlet’s edge.

THE WANING MOON.

And like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky earth,
A white and shapeless mass.

EPITAPH.

These are two friends whose lives were undivided,
So let their memory be, now they have glided
Under the grave; let not their bones be parted,
For their two hearts in life were single hearted.

[* ]This fragment is part of a poem which Mr. Shelley intended to write, founded on a story to be found in the first volume of a book entitled “L’Osservatore Fiorentino.”

[* ]This fragment refers to an event, told in Sismodi’s Histoire des Republiques Italiennes, which occurred during the war when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a province. The opening stanzas are addressed to the conquering city.

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FRAGMENTS. - Percy Bysshe Shelley, Posthumous Poems [1824]

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FRAGMENTS.

GINEVRA.*

CHARLES THE FIRST. FRAGMENTS.

ACT I. SCENE I.

a pursuivant.

first speaker.

second speaker.

third speaker.(a youth).

second speaker.

first speaker.

second speaker.

another citizen(lifting up his eyes).

fourth speaker(a pursuirant)

fifth speaker(a law student).

first speaker.

second speaker.

third speaker.

another speaker.

third speaker.

second speaker.

speaker.

SCENE II.

king.

queen.

king.

archy.

laud.

king.

queen.

laud.

king.

queen.

laud.

queen.

king.

queen.

king.

SCENE III.

hampden.

vane.

hampden.

PRINCE ATHANASE. PART II.

FRAGMENT I.

FRAGMENT II.

FRAGMENT III.

FRAGMENT IV.

MAZENGHI.*

THE WOODMAN AND THE NIGHTINGALE.

TO THE MOON.

SONG FOR TASSO.

THE WANING MOON.

EPITAPH.

CHARLES THE FIRST.

FRAGMENTS.

PRINCE ATHANASE.

PART II.