Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night:
And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still

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Guiding its irresistible career

In thy devastating omnipotence,

Art king of this frail world, from the red field

Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital,
The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed
Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne,
A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls
His brother Death. A rare and regal prey
He hath prepared, prowling around the world;
Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men
Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,
Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine
The unheeded tribute of a broken heart.

When on the threshold of the green recess

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The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death
Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,

Did he resign his high and holy soul

To images of the majestic past,

That paused within his passive being now,

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Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place

Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe

His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk
Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone
Reclined his languid head, his limbs did rest,
Diffused and motionless, on the smooth_brink
Of that obscurest chasm;-and thus he lay,
Surrendering to their final impulses

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The hovering powers of life. Hope and despair,

The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear

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Marred his repose, the influxes of sense,

And his own being unalloyed by pain,

Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed

Was the great moon, which o'er the western line
Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended,

The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there
At peace, and faintly smiling:-his last sight

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With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed

To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills.
It rests, and still as the divided frame
Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood,
That ever beat in mystic sympathy

650

With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still:

And when two lessening points of light alone

Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp
Of his faint respiration scarce did stir
The stagnate night:-till the minutest ray

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Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.
It paused-it fluttered. But when heaven remained

Utterly black, the murky shades involved
An image, silent, cold, and motionless,
As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.
Even as a vapour fed with golden beams
That ministered on sunlight, ere the west
Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame-
No sense, no motion, no divinity-

A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings

The breath of heaven did wander-a bright stream
Once fed with many-voiced waves-a dream

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Of youth, which night and time have quenched for ever,
Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.
O, for Medea's wondrous alchemy,

Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam

With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! O, that God, 675 Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice

Which but one living man has drained, who now,

Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels
No proud exemption in the blighting curse
He bears, over the world wanders for ever,
Lone as incarnate death! O, that the dream
Of dark magician in his visioned cave,
Raking the cinders of a crucible

For life and power, even when his feeble hand
Shakes in its last decay, were the true law
Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled
Like some frail exhalation; which the dawn
Robes in its golden beams,-ah! thou hast fled!
The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,
The child of grace and genius. Heartless things
Are done and said i' the world, and many worms
And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth
From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,
In vesper low or joyous orison,

Lifts still its solemn voice :-but thou art fled-
Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes
Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee
Been purest ministers, who are, alas!
Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips
So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes

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That image sleep in death, upon that form
Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear

Be shed-not even in thought. Nor, when those hues
Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,

Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone
In the frail pauses of this simple strain,
Let not high verse, mourning the memory
Of that which is no more, or painting's woe
Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery
Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,

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And all the shows o' the world are frail and vain
To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.
It is a woe too deep for tears,' when all
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;
But pale despair and cold tranquillity,
Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,
Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.

NOTE ON ALASTOR, BY MRS. SHELLEY

Alastor is written in a very different tone from Queen Mab. In the latter, Shelley poured out all the cherished speculations of his youth-all the irrepressible emotions of sympathy, censure, and hope, to which the present suffering, and what he considers the proper destiny, of his fellowcreatures, gave birth. Alastor, on the contrary, contains an individual interest only. A very few years, with their attendant events, had checked the ardour of Shelley's hopes, though he still thought them well grounded, and that to advance their fulfilment was the noblest task man could achieve.

This is neither the time nor place to speak of the misfortunes that chequered his life. It will be sufficient to say that, in all he did, he at the time of doing it believed himself justified to his own conscience; while the various ills of poverty and loss of friends brought home to him the sad realities of life. Physical suffering had also considerable influence in causing him to turn his eyes inward; inclining him rather to brood over the thoughts and emotions of his own soul than to glance abroad, and to make, as in Queen Mab, the whole universe the object and subject of his song. In the Spring of 1815 an eminent physician pronounced

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that he was dying rapidly of a consumption; abscesses were formed on his lungs, and he suffered acute spasms. Suddenly a complete change took place ; and, though through life he was a martyr to pain and debility, every symptom of pulmonary disease vanished. His nerves, which nature had formed sensitive to an unexampled degree, were rendered still more susceptible by the state of his health.

In

As soon as the peace of 1814 had opened the Continent, he went abroad. He visited some of the more magnificent scenes of Switzerland, and returned to England from Lucerne, by the Reuss and the Rhine. The rivernavigation enchanted him. his favourite poem of Thalaba, his imagination had been excited by a description of such a voyage. In the summer of 1815, after a tour along the southern coast of Devonshire and a visit to Clifton, he rented a house on Bishopgate Heath, on the borders of Windsor Forest, where he enjoyed several months of comparative health and tranquil happiness. The later summer months were warm and

dry. Accompanied by a few friends, he visited the source of the Thames, making a voyage in a wherry from Windsor to Cricklade. His beautiful stanzas

in the churchyard of Lechlade were written on that occasion. Alastor was composed on his return. He spent his days under the oak-shades of Windsor Great Park; and the magnificent woodland was a fitting study to inspire the various descriptions of forestscenery we find in the poem.

None of Shelley's poems is more characteristic than this. The solemn spirit that reigns throughout, the worship of the majesty of nature, the broodings of a poet's heart in solitude-the mingling of the exulting joy which the various aspects of the visible universe inspires with the sad and struggling pangs which human passion im

parts-give a touching interest to the whole. The death which he had often contemplated during the last months as certain and near he here represented in such colours as had, in his lonely musings, soothed his soul to peace. The versification sustains the solemn spirit which breathes throughout: it is peculiarly melodious. The poem ought rather to be considered didactic than narrative it was the outpouring of his own emotions, embodied in the purest form he could conceive, painted in the ideal hues which his brilliant imagination inspired, and softened by the recent anticipation of death.

THE REVOLT OF ISLAM

A POEM IN TWELVE CANTOS

Οσαις δὲ βροτὸν ἔθνος ἀγλαίαις απτόμεσθα
περαίνει πρὸς ἔσχατον

πλέον ναυσὶ δ ̓ οὔτε πεζὸς ἰὼν ἂν εὔροις
ἐς Υπερβορέων ἀγῶνα θαυματὰν ὁδόν.
Πινδ. Πυθ. χ.

[Composed in the neighbourhood of Bisham Wood, near Great Marlow, Bucks, 1817 (April-Sept. 23); printed, with title (dated 1818), Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nineteenth Century, Oct., Nov., 1817, but suppressed, pending revision, by the publishers, C. & J. Ollier. (A few copies had got out, but these were recalled, and some recovered.) Published, with a fresh title-page and twenty-seven cancel-leaves, as The Revolt of Islam, Jan. 10, 1818. Sources of the text are (1) Laon and Cythna, 1818; (2) The Revolt of Islam, 1818; (3) Poetical Works, 1839, edd. 1st and 2nd-both edited by Mrs. Shelley. A copy, with several pages missing, of the Preface, the Dedication, and Canto I of Laon and Cythna is amongst the Shelley MSS. at the Bodleian. For a full collation of this MS. see Mr. C. D. Locock's Examination of the Shelley MSS. at the Bodleian Library. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903. Two MS. fragments from the Hunt papers are also extant: one (twentyfour lines) in the possession of Mr. W. M. Rossetti, another (IX. xxiii. 9-xxix. 6) in that of Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B. See The Shelley Library, pp. 83-86, for an account of the copy of Laon upon which Shelley worked in revising for publication.]

PREFACE