And presaging the truth of visioned bliss. Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene Of linked and gradual being has confirmed? Hopes that not vainly thou, and living fires Of mind as radiant and as pure as thou, Have shone upon the paths of men-return, Surpassing Spirit, to that world, where thou Art destined an eternal war to wage With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot The germs of misery from the human heart. Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe The thorny pillow of unhappy crime, Whose impotence an easy pardon gains, Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease: Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will, When fenced by power and master of the world. Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind, Free from heart-withering custom's cold control, Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued.
Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish thee, And therefore art thou worthy of the boon
Which thou hast now received: virtue shall keep
Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod, And many days of beaming hope shall bless Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love. Go, happy one, and give that bosom joy Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch Light, life and rapture from thy smile. The Daemon called its wingèd ministers. Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car, That rolled beside the crystal battlement, Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness. The burning wheels inflame
The steep descent of Heaven's untrodden way. Fast and far the chariot flew:
Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;
Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained: She looked around in wonder and beheld
Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch, Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love, And the bright beaming stars
That through the casement shone.
[Composed at Bishopsgate Heath, near Windsor Park, 1815 (autumn); published, as the title-piece of a slender volume containing other poems (see Bibliographical List,) by Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, London, 1816 (March). Reprinted the first edition being sold out -amongst the Posthumous Poems, 1824. Sources of the text are (1) the editio princeps, 1816; (2) Posth. Poems, 1824; (3) Poetical Works, 1839, edd. 1st and 2nd. For (2) and (3) Mrs. Shelley is responsible.]
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 intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functions of sense, have their respective requisitions on the 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
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 influences, 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. are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their country. Among those who at- tempt to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tender- hearted perish through the inten- sity 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 un- foreseeing multitudes who consti- tute, 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!' December 14, 1815.
Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare.-Confess. St. August.
EARTH, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood! If our great Mother has imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel
Your love, and recompense the boon with mine; If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even, With sunset and its gorgeous ministers, And solemn midnight's tingling silentness; If autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood, And winter robing with pure snow and crowns Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs; If spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me; If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast I consciously have injured, but still loved And cherished these my kindred; then forgive This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw No portion of your wonted favour now!
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, where black death Keeps record of the trophies won from thee, Hoping to still these obstinate questionings 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, Like an inspired and desperate alchymist 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 charmed night
To render up thy charge: . . . and, though ne'er yet Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary, Enough from incommunicable dream,
And twilight phantasms, and deep noon-day thought, 40 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,
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.
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 forn 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, 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.
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 75 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,
Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice
His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps He like her shadow has pursued, where'er The red volcano overcanopies
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
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,
Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange Sculptured on alabaster obelisk,
Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphynx, Dark Aethiopia in her desert hills
Conceals. Among the ruined temples there, Stupendous columns, and wild images
Of more than man, where marble daemons watch The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men
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