Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

hope and terror,—

      Alas for Love!

      And Truth, who wanderest lone and unbefriended,

      If thou canst veil thy lie-consuming mirror

      Before the dazzled eyes of Error,

      Alas for thee! Image of the Above.

      SEMICHORUS II.

      Repulse, with plumes from conquest torn,

      Led the ten thousand from the limits of the morn

      Through many an hostile Anarchy!

      At length they wept aloud, and cried, ‘The Sea! the Sea!’

      Through exile, persecution, and despair,

      Rome was, and young Atlantis shall become

      The wonder, or the terror, or the tomb

      Of all whose step wakes Power lulled in her savage lair.

      But Greece was as a hermit-child,

      Whose fairest thoughts and limbs were built

      To woman’s growth, by dreams so mild,

      She knew not pain or guilt;

      And now, O Victory, blush! and Empire, tremble

      When ye desert the free—

      If Greece must be

      A wreck, yet shall its fragments reassemble,

      And build themselves again impregnably

      In a diviner clime,

      To Amphionic music on some Cape sublime,

      Which frowns above the idle foam of Time.

      SEMICHORUS I.

      Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made;

      Let the free possess the Paradise they claim;

      Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighed

      With our ruin, our resistance, and our name!

      SEMICHORUS II.

      Our dead shall be the seed of their decay,

      Our survivors be the shadow of their pride,

      Our adversity a dream to pass away—

      Their dishonour a remembrance to abide!

      VOICE WITHOUT. Victory! Victory! The bought Briton sends

      The keys of ocean to the Islamite.—

      Now shall the blazon of the cross be veiled,

      And British skill directing Othman might,

      Thunder-strike rebel victory. Oh, keep holy

      This jubilee of unrevenged blood!

      Kill! crush! despoil! Let not a Greek escape!

      SEMICHORUS I.

      Darkness has dawned in the East

      On the noon of time.

      The death-birds descend to their feast

      From the hungry clime.

      Let Freedom and Peace flee far

      To a sunnier strand,

      And follow Love’s folding-star

      To the Evening land!

      SEMICHORUS II.

      The young moon has fed

      Her exhausted horn

      With the sunset’s fire.

      The weak day is dead,

      But the night is not born;

      And, like loveliness panting with wild desire

      While it trembles with fear and delight,

      Hesperus flies from awakening night,

      And pants in its beauty and speed with light

      Fast-flashing, soft, and bright.

      Thou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free!

      Guide us far, far away,

      To climes where now veiled by the ardour of day

      Thou art hidden

      From waves on which weary Noon

      Faints in her summer swoon,

      Between kingless continents sinless as Eden,

      Around mountains and islands inviolably

      Pranked on the sapphire sea.

      SEMICHORUS I.

      Through the sunset of hope,

      Like the shapes of a dream.

      What Paradise islands of glory gleam!

      Beneath Heaven’s cope,

      Their shadows more clear float by—

      The sound of their oceans, the light of their sky,

      The music and fragrance their solitudes breathe

      Burst, like morning on dream, or like Heaven on death,

      Through the walls of our prison;

      And Greece, which was dead, is arisen!

      CHORUS.

      The world’s great age begins anew,

      The golden years return,

      The earth doth like a snake renew

      Her winter weeds outworn.

      Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,

      Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

      A brighter Hellas rears its mountains

      From waves serener far;

      A new Peneus rolls his fountains

      Against the morning star.

      Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep

      Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

      A loftier Argo cleaves the main,

      Fraught with a later prize;

      Another Orpheus sings again,

      And loves, and weeps, and dies.

      A new Ulysses leaves once more

      Calypso for his native shore.

      Oh, write no more the tale of Troy,

      If earth Death’s scroll must be!

      Nor mix with Laian rage the joy

      Which dawns upon the free.

      Although a subtler Sphinx renew

      Riddles of death Thebes never knew.

      Another Athens shall arise,

      And to remoter time

      Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,

      The splendour of its prime;

      And leave, if nought so bright may live,

      All earth can take or Heaven can give.

      Saturn and Love their long repose

      Shall burst, more bright and good

      Than all who fell, than One who rose,

      Than many unsubdued.

      Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,

      But votive tears and symbol flowers.