C Satan bow'd, and was silent. 'Well, if you, My offer, what says Michael? There are few As it was once, but I would make you shine CI 'But talking about trumpets, here's my Vision ! 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 CIII Those grand heroics acted as a spell: 800 810 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! CIV Saint Peter, who has hitherto been known 830 CV He first sank to the bottom-like his works, Vision,' It may be, still, like dull books on a shelf, CVI As for the rest, to come to the conclusion And show'd me what I in my turn have shown; 840 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 And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust, December 14, 1815. Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid EARTH, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood! Your love, and recompense the boon with mine: Mother of this unfathomable world! Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, 10 20 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, And twilight phantasms, and deep noon-day thought, 40 Of some mysterious and deserted fane, I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain There was a Poet whose untimely tomb 50 50 60 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. 70 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 To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice 80 |