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C

Satan bow'd, and was silent. 'Well, if you,
With amiable modesty, decline

My offer, what says Michael? There are few
Whose memoirs could be render'd more divine.
Mine is a pen of all work; not so new

As it was once, but I would make you shine
Like your own trumpet. By the way, my own
Has more of brass in it, and is as well blown.

CI

'But talking about trumpets, here's my Vision !
Now you shall judge, all people; yes, you shall
Judge with my judgement, and by my decision
Be guided who shall enter heaven or fall.

I settle all these things by intuition,

Times present, past, to come, heaven, hell, and all, Like King Alfonso. When I thus see double,

I save the Deity some worlds of trouble.'

CII

He ceased, and drew forth an MS.; and no
Persuasion on the part of devils, saints,
Or angels, now could stop the torrent; so
He read the first three lines of the contents;
But at the fourth, the whole spiritual show
Had vanish'd, with variety of scents,
Ambrosial and sulphureous, as they sprang,
Like lightning, off from his melodious twang.'

CIII

Those grand heroics acted as a spell:

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The angels stopp'd their ears and plied their pinions;

The devils ran howling, deafen'd, down to hell;

The ghosts fled, gibbering, for their own dominions— 820 (For 'tis not yet decided where they dwell,

And I leave every man to his opinions)

Michael took refuge in his trump-but, lo!
His teeth were set on edge, he could not blow!

CIV

Saint Peter, who has hitherto been known
For an impetuous saint, upraised his keys,
And at the fifth line knock'd the poet down;
Who fell like Phaeton, but more at ease,
Into his lake, for there he did not drown;
A different web being by the Destinies
Woven for the Laureate's final wreath, whene'er
Reform shall happen either here or there.

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CV

He first sank to the bottom-like his works,
But soon rose to the surface-like himself;
For all corrupted things are buoy'd like corks,
By their own rottenness, light as an elf,
Or wisp that flits o'er a morass: he lurks,

Vision,'

It may be, still, like dull books on a shelf,
In his own den, to scrawl some 'Life' or
As Welborn says 'the devil turn'd precisian.'

CVI

As for the rest, to come to the conclusion
Of this true dream, the telescope is gone
Which kept my optics free from all delusion,

And show'd me what I in my turn have shown;
All I saw farther, in the last confusion,

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Was, that King George slipp'd into heaven for one; And when the tumult dwindled to a calm,

I left him practising the hundredth psalm.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

ALASTOR

OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE

PREFACE

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 Poet's

The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. 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. They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their country. Among those who attempt to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tender-hearted perish through the intensity 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 unforeseeing
multitudes who constitute, 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,

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When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness, 30 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 charmèd 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 lorn 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.

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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.

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Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great,

The fountains of divine philosophy

Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past

In truth or fable consecrates, he felt

And knew. When early youth had passed, he left
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,
His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps
He like her shadow has pursued, where'er
The red volcano overcanopies

Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice
With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes
On black bare pointed islets ever beat

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