Books: Percy Bysshe Shelley
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John Addington Symonds >> Percy Bysshe Shelley
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He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he;
Mourn not for Adonais.--Thou young Dawn,
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone;
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown
O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!
He is made one with Nature: there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move
Which has withdrawn his being to its own;
Which wields the world with never wearied love,
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.
He is a portion of the loveliness
Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear
His part, while the One Spirit's plastic stress
Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there
All new successions to the forms they wear;
Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear;
And bursting in its beauty and its might
From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light.
But the absorption of the human soul into primeval nature-forces, the
blending of the principle of thought with the universal spirit of
beauty, is not enough to satisfy man's yearning after immortality.
Therefore in the next three stanzas the indestructibility of the
personal self is presented to us, as the soul of Adonais passes into the
company of the illustrious dead who, like him, were untimely slain:--
The splendours of the firmament of time
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not:
Like stars to their appointed height they climb,
And death is a low mist which cannot blot
The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought
Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,
And love and life contend in it, for what
Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there,
And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.
The inheritors of unfulfilled renown
Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought,
Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton
Rose pale, his solemn agony had not
Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought
And as he fell, and as he lived and loved,
Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot,
Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved:--
Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved.
And many more, whose names on Earth are dark,
But whose transmitted effluence cannot die
So long as fire outlives the parent spark,
Rose, robed in dazzling immortality.
"Thou art become as one of us," they cry;
"It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long
Swung blind in unascended majesty,
Silent alone amid an Heaven of song.
Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!"
From the more universal and philosophical aspects of his theme, the poet
once more turns to the special subject that had stirred him. Adonais
lies dead; and those who mourn him must seek his grave. He has escaped:
to follow him is to die; and where should we learn to dote on death
unterrified, if not in Rome? In this way the description of Keat's
resting-place beneath the pyramid of Cestius, which was also destined to
be Shelley's own, is introduced:--
Who mourns for Adonais? oh come forth,
Fond wretch! and show thyself and him aright.
Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth;
As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light
Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might
Satiate the void circumference: then shrink
Even to a point within our day and night;
And keep thy heart light, let it make thee sink
When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink.
Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre,
Oh, not of him, but of our joy: 'tis nought
That ages, empires, and religions there
Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought;
For such as he can lend,--they borrow not
Glory from those who made the world their prey;
And he is gathered to the kings of thought
Who waged contention with their time's decay,
And of the past are all that cannot pass away.
Go thou to Rome,--at once the Paradise,
The grave, the city, and the wilderness;
And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,
And flowering weeds and fragrant corpses dress
The bones of Desolation's nakedness,
Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access,
Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;
And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time
Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;
And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned
This refuge for his memory, doth stand
Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath,
A field is spread, on which a newer band
Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death,
Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.
Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet
To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned
Its charge to each; and if the seal is set,
Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind,
Break if not thou! too surely shalt thou find
Thine own well full, if thou returnest home,
Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb.
What Adonais is, why fear we to become?
Yet again the thought of Death as the deliverer, the revealer, and the
mystagogue, through whom the soul of man is reunited to the spirit of
the universe, returns; and on this solemn note the poem closes. The
symphony of exultation which had greeted the passage of Adonais into the
eternal world, is here subdued to a graver key, as befits the mood of
one whom mystery and mourning still oppress on earth. Yet even in the
somewhat less than jubilant conclusion we feel that highest of all
Shelley's qualities--the liberation of incalculable energies, the
emancipation and expansion of a force within the soul, victorious over
circumstance, exhilarated and elevated by contact with such hopes as
make a feebler spirit tremble:
The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.--Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled!--Rome's azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.
Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart?
Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here
They have departed; thou shouldst now depart!
A light is past from the revolving year,
And man and woman; and what still is dear
Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.
The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near:
'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither!
No more let Life divide what Death can join together.
That light whose smile kindles the Universe,
That beauty in which all things work and move,
That benediction which the eclipsing curse
Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love
Which through the web of being blindly wove
By man and beast and earth and air and sea,
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of
The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me,
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.
The breath whose might I have invoked in song
Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given.
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!
I am borne darkly, fearfully afar;
Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.
It will be seen that, whatever Shelley may from time to time have said
about the immortality of the soul, he was no materialist, and no
believer in the extinction of the spiritual element by death. Yet he was
too wise to dogmatize upon a problem which by its very nature admits of
no solution in this world. "I hope," he said, "but my hopes are not
unmixed with fear for what will befall this inestimable spirit when we
appear to die." On another occasion he told Trelawny, "I am content to
see no farther into futurity than Plato and Bacon. My mind is tranquil;
I have no fears and some hopes. In our present gross material state our
faculties are clouded; when Death removes our clay coverings, the
mystery will be solved." How constantly the thought of death as the
revealer was present to his mind, may be gathered from an incident
related by Trelawny. They were bathing in the Arno, when Shelley, who
could not swim, plunged into deep water, and "lay stretched out at the
bottom like a conger eel, not making the least effort or struggle to
save himself." Trelawny fished him out, and when he had taken breath he
said: "I always find the bottom of the well, and they say Truth lies
there. In another minute I should have found it, and you would have
found an empty shell. Death is the veil which those who live call life;
they sleep, and it is lifted." Yet being pressed by his friend, he
refused to acknowledge a formal and precise belief in the
imperishability of the human soul. "We know nothing; we have no
evidence; we cannot express our inmost thoughts. They are
incomprehensible even to ourselves." The clear insight into the
conditions of the question conveyed by the last sentence is very
characteristic of Shelley. It makes us regret the non-completion of his
essay on a "Future Life", which would certainly have stated the problem
with rare lucidity and candour, and would have illuminated the abyss of
doubt with a sense of spiritual realities not often found in combination
with wise suspension of judgment. What he clung to amid all perplexities
was the absolute and indestructible existence of the universal as
perceived by us in love, beauty, and delight. Though the destiny of the
personal self be obscure, these things cannot fail. The conclusion of
the "Sensitive Plant" might be cited as conveying the quintessence of
his hope upon this most intangible of riddles.
Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that
Which within its boughs like a spirit sat,
Ere its outward form had known decay,
Now felt this change, I cannot say.
I dare not guess; but in this life
Of error, ignorance, and strife,
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we the shadows of the dream:
It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant, if one considers it,
To own that death itself must be,
Like all the rest, a mockery.
That garden sweet, that lady fair,
And all sweet shapes and odours there,
In truth have never passed away:
'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they.
For love, and beauty, and delight,
There is no death nor change; their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.
But it is now time to return from this digression to the poem which
suggested it, and which, more than any other, serves to illustrate its
author's mood of feeling about the life beyond the grave. The last lines
of "Adonais" might be read as a prophecy of his own death by drowning.
The frequent recurrence of this thought in his poetry is, to say the
least, singular. In "Alastor" we read:--
A restless impulse urged him to embark
And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste;
For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves
The slimy caverns of the populous deep.
The "Ode to Liberty" closes on the same note: --
As a far taper fades with fading night;
As a brief insect dies with dying day,
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.
The "Stanzas written in Dejection, near Naples", echo the thought with a slight variation:--
Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne, and yet must bear,--
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.
Trelawny tells a story of his friend's life at Lerici, which further
illustrates his preoccupation with the thought of death at sea. he took
Mrs. Williams and her children out upon the bay in his little boat one
afternoon, and starting suddenly from a deep reverie, into which he had
fallen, exclaimed with a joyful and resolute voice, "Now let us together
solve the great mystery!" Too much value must not be attached to what
might have been a mere caprice of utterance. Yet the proposal not
unreasonably frightened Mrs. Williams, for Shelley's friends were
accustomed to expect the realisation of his wildest fancies. It may
incidentally be mentioned that before the water finally claimed its
victim, he had often been in peril of life upon his fatal
element--during the first voyage to Ireland, while crossing the Channel
with Mary in an open boat, again at Meillerie with Byron, and once at
least with Williams.
A third composition of the year 1821 was inspired by the visit of Prince
Mavrocordato to Pisa. He called on Shelley in April, showed him a copy
of Prince Ipsilanti's proclamation, and announced that Greece was
determined to strike a blow for freedom. The news aroused all Shelley's
enthusiasm, and he began the lyrical drama of "Hellas", which he has
described as "a sort of imitation of the 'Persae' of Aeschylus." We find
him at work upon it in October; and it must have been finished by the
end of that month, since the dedication bears the date of November 1st,
1821. Shelley did not set great store by it. "It was written," he says,
"without much care, and in one of those few moments of enthusiasm which
now seldom visit me, and which make me pay dear for their visits." The
preface might, if space permitted, be cited as a specimen of his sound
and weighty judgment upon one of the greatest political questions of
this century. What he says about the debt of the modern world to ancient
Hellas, is no less pregnant than his severe strictures upon the part
played by Russia in dealing with Eastern questions. For the rest, the
poem is distinguished by passages of great lyrical beauty, rising at
times to the sublimest raptures, and closing on the half-pathetic
cadence of that well-known Chorus, "The world's great age begins anew."
Of dramatic interest it has but little; nor is the play, as finished,
equal to the promise held forth by the superb fragment of its so-called
Prologue. (Forman, 4 page 95.) This truly magnificent torso must, I
think, have been the commencement of the drama as conceived upon a
different and more colossal plan, which Shelley rejected for some
unknown reason. It shows the influence not only of the Book of Job, but
also of the Prologue in Heaven to Faust, upon his mind.
The lyric movement of the Chorus from "Hellas", which I propose to
quote, marks the highest point of Shelley's rhythmical invention. As for
the matter expressed in it, we must not forget that these stanzas are
written for a Chorus of Greek captive women, whose creed does not
prevent their feeling a regret for the "mightier forms of an older,
austerer worship." Shelley's note reminds the reader, with
characteristic caution and frankness, that "the popular notions of
Christianity are represented in this Chorus as true in their relation to
the worship they superseded, and that which in all probability they will
supersede, without considering their merits in a relation more
universal."
Worlds on worlds are rolling over
From creation to decay,
Like the bubbles on a river
Sparkling, bursting, borne away.
But they are still immortal
Who, through birth's orient portal,
And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro,
Clothe their unceasing flight
In the brief dust and light
Gathered around their chariots as they go;
New shapes they still may weave,
New gods, new laws receive;
Bright or dim are they, as the robes they last
On Death's bare ribs had cast.
A power from the unknown God,
A Promethan conqueror came;
Like a triumphal path he trod
The thorns of death and shame.
A mortal shape to him
Was like the vapour dim
Which the orient planet animates with light.
Hell, Sin, and Slavery came,
Like bloodhounds mild and tame,
Nor preyed until their Lord had taken flight.
The moon of Mahomet
Arose, and it shall set:
While blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon
The cross leads generations on.
Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep
From one whose dreams are paradise,
Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep,
And day peers forth with her blank eyes;
So fleet, so faint, so fair,
The Powers of earth and air
Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem:
Apollo, Pan, and Love
And even Olympian Jove,
Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them.
Our hills, and seas, and streams,
Dispeopled of their dreams,
Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears,
Wailed for the golden years.
In the autumn of this year Shelley paid Lord Byron a visit at Ravenna,
where he made acquaintance with the Countess Guiccoli. It was then
settled that Byron, who had formed the project of starting a journal to
be called "The Liberal" in concert with Leigh Hunt, should himself
settle in Pisa. Leigh Hunt was to join his brother poets in the same
place. The prospect gave Shelley great pleasure, for he was sincerely
attached to Hunt; and though he would not promise contributions to the
journal, partly lest his name should bring discredit on it, and partly
because he did not choose to appear before the world as a hanger-on of
Byron's, he thoroughly approved of a plan which would be profitable to
his friend by bringing him into close relation with the most famous poet
of the age. (See the Letter to Leigh Hunt, Pisa, August 26, 1821.) That
he was not without doubts as to Byron's working easily in harness with
Leigh Hunt, may be seen in his correspondence; and how fully these
doubts were destined to be confirmed, is only too well known.
At Ravenna he was tormented by the report of some more than usually
infamous calumny. What it was, we do not know; but that it made profound
impression on his mind, appears from a remarkable letter addressed to
his wife on the 16th and 17th of August from Ravenna. In it he repeats
his growing weariness, and his wish to escape from society to solitude;
the weariness of a nature wounded and disappointed by commerce with the
world, but neither soured nor driven to fury by cruel wrongs. It is
noticeable at the same time that he clings to his present place of
residence:--"our roots never struck so deeply as at Pisa, and the
transplanted tree flourishes not." At Pisa he had found real rest and
refreshment in the society of his two friends, the Williamses. Some of
his saddest and most touching lyrics of this year are addressed to
Jane--for so Mrs. Williams was called; and attentive students may
perceive that the thought of Emilia was already blending by subtle
transitions with the new thought of Jane. One poem, almost terrible in
its intensity of melancholy, is hardly explicable on the supposition
that Shelley was quite happy in his home. ("The Serpent is shut out from
Paradise.") These words must be taken as implying no reflection either
upon Mary's love for him, or upon his own power to bear the slighter
troubles of domestic life. He was not a spoiled child of fortune, a weak
egotist, or a querulous complainer. But he was always seeking and never
finding the satisfaction of some deeper craving. In his own words, he
had loved Antigone before he visited this earth: and no one woman could
probably have made him happy, because he was for ever demanding more
from love than it can give in the mixed circumstances of mortal life.
Moreover, it must be remembered that his power of self-expression has
bestowed permanent form on feelings which may have been but transitory;
nor can we avoid the conclusion that, sincere as Shelley was, he, like
all poets, made use of the emotion of the moment for purposes of art,
converting an ephemeral mood into something typical and universal. This
was almost certainly the case with "Epipsychidion."
So much at any rate had to be said upon this subject; for careful
readers of Shelley's minor poems are forced to the conviction that
during the last year of his life he often found relief from a
wretchedness, which, however real, can hardly be defined, in the
sympathy of this true-hearted woman. The affection he felt for Jane was
beyond question pure and honourable. All the verses he addressed to her
passed through her husband's hands without the slightest interruption to
their intercourse; and Mrs. Shelley, who was not unpardonably jealous of
her Ariel, continued to be Mrs. Williams's warm friend. A passage from
Shelley's letter of June 18, 1822, expresses the plain prose of his
relation to the Williamses:--"They are people who are very pleasing to
me. But words are not the instruments of our intercourse. I like Jane
more and more, and I find Williams the most amiable of companions. She
has a taste for music, and an eloquence of form and motions that
compensate in some degree for the lack of literary refinement."
Two lyrics of this period may here be introduced, partly for the sake of
their intrinsic beauty, and partly because they illustrate the fecundity
of Shelley's genius during the months of tranquil industry which he
passed at Pisa. The first is an Invocation to Night:--
Swiftly walk over the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave,
Where all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear,--
Swift be thy flight!
Wrap thy form in a mantle grey
Star-inwrought!
Blind with thine hair the eyes of day,
Kiss her until she be wearied out.
Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land,
Touching all with thin opiate wand-
Come, long-sought!
When I arose and saw the dawn,
I sighed for thee;
When light rode high, and the dew was gone,
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary Day turned to his rest,
Lingering like an unloved guest,
I sighed for thee.
Thy brother Death came, and cried,
"Wouldst thou me?"
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmured like a noon-tide bee,
"Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me?"--and I replied,
"No, not thee!"
Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon--
Sleep will come when thou art fled;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night--
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!
The second is an Epithalamium composed for a drama which his friend
Williams was writing. Students of the poetic art will find it not
uninteresting to compare the three versions of this Bridal Song, given
by Mr. Forman. (Volume 4 page 89.) They prove that Shelley was no
careless writer.
The golden gates of sleep unbar
Where strength and beauty, met together,
Kindle their image like a star
In a sea of glassy weather!
Night, with all thy stars look down--
Darkness, weep thy holiest dew!
Never smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair so true.
Let eyes not see their own delight;
Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight
Oft renew.
Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!
Holy stars, permit no wrong!
And return to wake the sleeper,
Dawn, ere it be long.
O joy! O fear! what will be done
In the absence of the sun!
Come along!
Lyrics like these, delicate in thought and exquisitely finished in form,
were produced with a truly wonderful profusion in this season of his
happiest fertility. A glance at the last section of Mr. Palgrave's
"Golden Treasury" shows how large a place they occupy among the
permanent jewels of our literature.
The month of January added a new and most important member to the little
Pisan circle. This was Captain Edward John Trelawny, to whom more than
to any one else but Hogg and Mrs. Shelley, the students of the poet's
life are indebted for details at once accurate and characteristic.
Trelawny had lived a free life in all quarters of the globe, far away
from literary cliques and the society of cities, in contact with the
sternest realities of existence, which had developed his self-reliance
and his physical qualities to the utmost. The impression, therefore,
made on him by Shelley has to be gravely estimated by all who still
incline to treat the poet as a pathological specimen of humanity. This
true child of nature recognized in his new friend far more than in Byron
the stuff of a real man. "To form a just idea of his poetry, you should
have witnessed his daily life; his words and actions best illustrated
his writings." "The cynic Byron acknowledged him to be the best and
ablest man he had ever known. The truth was, Shelley loved everything
better than himself." "I have seen Shelley and Byron in society, and the
contrast was as marked as their characters. The former, not thinking of
himself, was as much at ease in his own home, omitting no occasion of
obliging those whom he came in contact with, readily conversing with all
or any who addressed him, irrespective of age or rank, dress or
address." "All who heard him felt the charm of his simple, earnest
manner: while Byron knew him to be exempt from the egotism, pedantry,
coxcombry, and more than all the rivalry of authorship." "Shelley's
mental activity was infectious; he kept your brain in constant action."
"He was always in earnest." "He never laid aside his book and magic
mantle; he waved his wand, and Byron, after a faint show of defiance,
stood mute.... Shelley's earnestness and just criticism held him
captive." These sentences, and many others, prove that Trelawny, himself
somewhat of a cynic, cruelly exposing false pretensions, and detesting
affectation in any for, paid unreserved homage to the heroic qualities
this "dreamy bard,"--"uncommonly awkward," as he also called him--bad
rider and poor seaman as he was--"over-sensitive," and "eternally
brooding on his own thoughts," who "had seen no more of the waking-day
than a girl at a boarding-school." True to himself, gentle, tender, with
the courage of a lion, "frank and outspoken, like a well-conditioned
boy, well-bred and considerate for others, because he was totally devoid
of selfishness and vanity," Shelley seemed to this unprejudiced
companion of his last few months that very rare product for which
Diogenes searched in vain--a man.
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