Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

is fed;

      I was not heard; I saw them not;

      When musing deeply on the lot

      Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing

      All vital things that wake to bring

      News of birds and blossoming,

      Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;

      I shriek’d, and clasp’d my hands in ecstasy!

      VI.

      I vow’d that I would dedicate my powers

      To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow?

      With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now

      I call the phantoms of a thousand hours

      Each from his voiceless grave: they have in vision’d bowers

      Of studious zeal or love’s delight

      Outwatch’d with me the envious night:

      They know that never joy illum’d my brow

      Unlink’d with hope that thou wouldst free

      This world from its dark slavery,

      That thou, O awful Loveliness,

      Wouldst give whate’er these words cannot express.

      VII.

      The day becomes more solemn and serene

      When noon is past; there is a harmony

      In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,

      Which through the summer is not heard or seen,

      As if it could not be, as if it had not been!

      Thus let thy power, which like the truth

      Of nature on my passive youth

      Descended, to my onward life supply

      Its calm, to one who worships thee,

      And every form containing thee,

      Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind

      To fear himself, and love all human kind.

      JULIAN AND MADDALO

      A Conversation

      The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme,

      The goats with the green leaves of budding spring,

      Are saturated not—nor Love with tears.

      Virgil’s Gallus.

      Count Maddalo is a Venetian nobleman of ancient family and of great fortune, who, without mixing much in the society of his countrymen, resides chiefly at his magnificent palace in that city. He is a person of the most consummate genius, and capable, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his weakness to be proud: he derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men; and, instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength. His ambition preys upon itself, for want of objects which it can consider worthy of exertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can find no other word to express the concentered and impatient feelings which consume him; but it is on his own hopes and affections only that he seems to trample, for in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient, and unassuming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication; men are held by it as by a spell. He has travelled much; and there is an inexpressible charm in his relation of his adventures in different countries.

      Julian is an Englishman of good family, passionately attached to those philosophical notions which assert the power of man over his own mind, and the immense improvements of which, by the extinction of certain moral superstitions, human society may be yet susceptible. Without concealing the evil in the world he is forever speculating how good may be made superior. He is a complete infidel and a scoffer at all things reputed holy; and Maddalo takes a wicked pleasure in drawing out his taunts against religion. What Maddalo thinks on these matters is not exactly known. Julian, in spite of his heterodox opinions, is conjectured by his friends to possess some good qualities. How far this is possible the pious reader will determine. Julian is rather serious.

      Of the Maniac I can give no information. He seems, by his own account, to have been disappointed in love. He was evidently a very cultivated and amiable person when in his right senses. His story, told at length, might be like many other stories of the same kind. The unconnected exclamations of his agony will perhaps be found a sufficient comment for the text of every heart.

      I rode one evening with Count Maddalo

      Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow

      Of Adria towards Venice:—A bare strand

      Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,

      Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,

      Such as from earth’s embrace the salt ooze breeds,

      Is this;—an uninhabited sea-side,

      Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,

      Abandons; and no other object breaks

      The waste but one dwarf tree and some few stakes

      Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes

      A narrow space of level sand thereon,—

      Where ’twas our wont to ride while day went down.

      This ride was my delight.—I love all waste

      And solitary places; where we taste

      The pleasure of believing what we see

      Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be;

      And such was this wide ocean, and this shore

      More barren than its billows;—and yet more

      Than all, with a remembered friend I love

      To ride as then I rode;—for the winds drove

      The living spray along the sunny air

      Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,

      Stripped to their depths by the awakening north;

      And from the waves sound like delight broke forth

      Harmonizing with solitude, and sent

      Into our hearts aerial merriment…

      So, as we rode, we talked; and the swift thought,

      Winging itself with laughter, lingered not,

      But flew from brain to brain,—such glee was ours—

      Charged with light memories of remembered hours,

      None slow enough for sadness; till we came

      Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.

      This day had been cheerful but cold, and now

      The sun was sinking, and the wind also.

      Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be

      Talk interrupted with such raillery

      As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn

      The thoughts it would extinguish:—’Twas forlorn,

      Yet pleasing; such as once, so poets tell,

      The devils held within the dales of Hell,

      Concerning God, freewill and destiny;

      Of