Where Desolation, clothed with loveliness, Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy, Gather thy blood into thy heart; repress

The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces.

XV

Oh, that the free would stamp the impious name

Of KING into the dust! or write it there,

So that this blot upon the page of fame

Were as a serpent's path, which the light air Erases, and the flat sands close behind!

Ye the oracle have heard:

Lift the victory-flashing sword,

And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word,
Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind
Into a mass, irrefragably firm,

The axes and the rods which awe mankind;
The sound has poison in it, 'tis the sperm
Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred;
Disdain not thou, at thine appointed term,

To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm.

XVI

Oh, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle
Such lamps within the dome of this dim world,
That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle
Into the hell from which it first was hurled,

A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure;
Till human thoughts might kneel alone,
Each before the judgement-throne

Of its own aweless soul, or of the Power unknown!
Oh, that the words which make the thoughts obscure
From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew
From a white lake blot Heaven's blue portraiture,
Were stripped of their thin masks and various hue
And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own,
Till in the nakedness of false and true

They stand before their Lord, each to receive its due!

XVII

He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever

Can be between the cradle and the grave

Crowned him the King of Life. Oh, vain endeavour!
If on his own high will, a willing slave,

He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor.
What if earth can clothe and feed
Amplest millions at their need,

And power in thought be as the tree within the seed?
Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor,

Driving on fiery wings to Nature's throne,

212 KING Boscombe MS.; **** 1820, 1839; CHRIST cj. Swinburne. 1839; 0, 1820.

250 Driving 1820; Diving 1839.

210

215

220

225

230

235

240

245

250

249 Or

Checks the great mother stooping to caress her,
And cries: Give me, thy child, dominion

Over all height and depth? if Life can breed

New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan,
Rend of thy gifts and hers a thousandfold for one!

XVIII

Come thou, but lead out of the inmost cave
Of man's deep spirit, as the morning-star
Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,
Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car
Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame;

Comes she not, and come ye not,
Rulers of eternal thought,

To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill-apportioned lot?
Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame

Of what has been, the Hope of what will be?

O Liberty! if such could be thy name

Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee:

If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought
By blood or tears, have not the wise and free
Wept tears, and blood like tears ?-The solemn harmony

XIX

Paused, and the Spirit of that mighty singing
To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn;
Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging
Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn,
Sinks headlong through the aëreal golden light

On the heavy-sounding plain,

When the bolt has pierced its brain;

255

260

265

270

275

As summer clouds dissolve, unburthened of their rain;

As a far taper fades with fading night,
As a brief insect dies with dying day,-

280

My song, its pinions disarrayed of might,
Drooped; o'er it closed the echoes far away

Of the great voice which did its flight sustain,
As waves which lately paved his watery way

Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play.

285

CANCELLED PASSAGE OF THE ODE TO LIBERTY
[Published by Dr. Garnett, Relics of Shelley, 1862.]

WITHIN a cavern of man's trackless spirit
Is throned an Image, so intensely fair

That the adventurous thoughts that wander near it
Worship, and as they kneel, tremble and wear
The splendour of its presence, and the light
Penetrates their dreamlike frame

Till they become charged with the strength of flame.

5

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.]

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824, and dated by her 'Pisa, 1820. There is a fair draft amongst the Shelley MSS. at the Bodleian Library. See Mr. C. D. Locock's Examination, &c., 1903, p. 24.]

With his trident the mountains With the brackish Dorian stream:

SONG OF PROSERPINE

WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, P. W., 1839, 1st ed. amongst the Shelley MSS. at the Bodleian Library. Examination, &c., 1903, p. 24.]

There is a fair draft See Mr. C. D. Locock's

SACRED Goddess, Mother Earth,
Thou from whose immortal bosom
Gods, and men, and beasts have birth,
Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom,
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.

II

If with mists of evening dew

Thou dost nourish these young flowers
Till they grow, in scent and hue,
Fairest children of the Hours,

Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.

HYMN OF APOLLO

5

ΤΟ

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. There is a fair draft amongst the Shelley MSS. at the Bodleian. See Mr. C. D. Locock's Examination, &c., 1903, p. 25.]

I

THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries
From the broad moonlight of the sky,

Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,—
69 Ocean's B.; ocean 1824.

Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn,
Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.

II

Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome,
I walk over the mountains and the waves,
Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam;

My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves
Are filled with my bright presence, and the air
Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare.

III

The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day:
All men who do or even imagine ill

Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
Good minds and open actions take new might,
Until diminished by the reign of Night.

IV

I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers
With their aethereal colours; the moon's globe
And the pure stars in their eternal bowers

Are cinctured with my power as with a robe;
Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine
Are portions of one power, which is mine.

I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven,
Then with unwilling steps I wander down
Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;

For grief that I depart they weep and frown:
What look is more delightful than the smile

With which I soothe them from the western isle?

All harmony of instrument or verse,
All prophecy, all medicine is mine,

30

All light of art or nature;-to my song
Victory and praise in its own right belong.

HYMN OF PAN

35

See Mr. C. D. Locock's Examina

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. There is a fair draft amongst the Shelley MSS. at the Bodleian. tion, &c., 1903, p. 25.]

I

FROM the forests and highlands
We come, we come;

From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb
32 itself divine] it is divine B.

Listening to my sweet pipings. 5
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,
34 is B.; are 1824. 36 its cj. Rossetti, 1870,

Hymn of Pan.-5, 12 Listening to] Listening B.