Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

our country bends,

      May ask some willing victim; or ye, friends,

      May fall under some sorrow, which this heart

      Or hand may share or vanquish or avert;

      I am prepared—in truth, with no proud joy—

      To do or suffer aught, as when a boy

      I did devote to justice and to love

      My nature, worthless now!...

      ‘I must remove

      A veil from my pent mind. ’Tis torn aside!

      O pallid as Death’s dedicated bride,

      Thou mockery which art sitting by my side,

      Am I not wan like thee? at the grave’s call

      I haste, invited to thy wedding-ball,

      To greet the ghastly paramour for whom

      Thou hast deserted me…and made the tomb

      Thy bridal bed…but I beside your feet

      Will lie and watch ye from my winding-sheet—

      Thus…wide-awake though dead…yet stay, oh, stay!

      Go not so soon—know not what I say—

      Hear but my reasons…I am mad, I fear,

      My fancy is o’erwrought…thou art not here;

      Pale art thou, ’tis most true—but thou art gone,

      Thy work is finished—I am left alone.

      * * * * *

      ‘Nay, was it I who wooed thee to this breast,

      Which like a serpent thou envenomest

      As in repayment of the warmth it lent?

      Didst thou not seek me for thine own content?

      Did not thy love awaken mine? I thought

      That thou wert she who said “You kiss me not

      Ever; I fear you do not love me now”—

      In truth I loved even to my overthrow

      Her who would fain forget these words; but they

      Cling to her mind, and cannot pass away.

      * * * * *

      ‘You say that I am proud—that when I speak

      My lip is tortured with the wrongs which break

      The spirit it expresses.—Never one

      Humbled himself before, as I have done!

      Even the instinctive worm on which we tread

      Turns, though it wound not—then with prostrate head

      Sinks in the dust and writhes like me—and dies?

      No: wears a living death of agonies!

      As the slow shadows of the pointed grass

      Mark the eternal periods, his pangs pass,

      Slow, ever-moving, making moments be

      As mine seem,—each an immortality!

      * * * * *

      ‘That you had never seen me—never heard

      My voice, and more than all had ne’er endured

      The deep pollution of my loathed embrace—

      That your eyes ne’er had lied love in my face—

      That, like some maniac monk, I had torn out

      The nerves of manhood by their bleeding root

      With mine own quivering fingers, so that ne’er

      Our hearts had for a moment mingled there

      To disunite in horror—these were not

      With thee like some suppressed and hideous thought

      Which flits athwart our musings but can find

      No rest within a pure and gentle mind;

      Thou sealedst them with many a bare broad word,

      And cearedst my memory o’er them,—for I heard

      And can forget not…they were ministered

      One after one, those curses. Mix them up

      Like self-destroying poisons in one cup,

      And they will make one blessing, which thou ne’er

      Didst imprecate for on me,—death.

      * * * * *

      ‘It were

      A cruel punishment for one most cruel,

      If such can love, to make that love the fuel

      Of the mind’s hell—hate, scorn, remorse, despair;

      But me—whose heart a stranger’s tear might wear

      As water-drops the sandy fountain-stone,

      Who loved and pitied all things, and could moan

      For woes which others hear not, and could see

      The absent with the glance of fantasy,

      And with the poor and trampled sit and weep,

      Following the captive to his dungeon deep;

      Me—who am as a nerve o’er which do creep

      The else unfelt oppressions of this earth,

      And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth,

      When all beside was cold—that thou on me

      Shouldst rain these plagues of blistering agony—

      Such curses are from lips once eloquent

      With love’s too partial praise—Let none relent

      Who intend deeds too dreadful for a name

      Henceforth, if an example for the same

      They seek…for thou on me look’dst so, and so—

      And didst speak thus…and thus…I live to show

      How much men bear and die not!

      * * * * *

      ‘Thou wilt tell

      With the grimace of hate how horrible

      It was to meet my love when thine grew less;

      Thou wilt admire how I could e’er address

      Such features to love’s work…This taunt, though true,

      (For indeed Nature nor in form nor hue

      Bestowed on me her choicest workmanship)

      Shall not be thy defence…for since thy lip

      Met mine first, years long past,—since thine eye kindled

      With soft fire under mine,—I have not dwindled,

      Nor changed in mind or body, or in aught

      But as love changes what it loveth not

      After long years and many trials.

      ‘How vain

      Are words! I thought never to speak again,

      Not even in secret,—not to mine own heart—

      But from my lips the unwilling accents start,

      And from my pen the words flow as I write,

      Dazzling my eyes