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 may'st 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
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,
Like winds that bear sweet music, when they
Through some dim latticed chamber. He did
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
The hovering powers of life. Hope and despair, The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear Marred his repose; the influxes of sense And his own being, unalloyed by pain, Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed
The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there
At peace, and faintly smiling. His last sight Was the great moon, which o'er the western line Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended, 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 With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still; And when two lessening points of light alone Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate
Of his faint respiration scarce did stir
The stagnate night;—till the minutest ray
Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart. It paused-it fluttered.
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 Of youth, which night and time have quenched
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,
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
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, And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain To weep a loss that turns their light 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 nor sobs nor 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.
"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 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
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