Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

do more mischief.—Next

      Lie bills and calculations much perplexed,

      With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint

      Traced over them in blue and yellow paint.

      Then comes a range of mathematical

      Instruments, for plans nautical and statical,

      A heap of rosin, a queer broken glass

      With ink in it;—a china cup that was

      What it will never be again, I think,—

      A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink

      The liquor doctors rail at—and which I

      Will quaff in spite of them—and when we die

      We’ll toss up who died first of drinking tea,

      And cry out,—‘Heads or tails?’ where’er we be.

      Near that a dusty paint-box, some odd hooks,

      A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books,

      Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms,

      To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims,

      Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray

      Of figures,—disentangle them who may.

      Baron de Tott’s Memoirs beside them lie,

      And some odd volumes of old chemistry.

      Near those a most inexplicable thing,

      With lead in the middle—I’m conjecturing

      How to make Henry understand; but no—

      I’ll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo,

      This secret in the pregnant womb of time,

      Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme.

      And here like some weird Archimage sit I,

      Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery,

      The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind

      Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind

      The gentle spirit of our meek reviews

      Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,

      Ruffling the ocean of their self-content;—

      I sit—and smile or sigh as is my bent,

      But not for them—Libeccio rushes round

      With an inconstant and an idle sound,

      I heed him more than them—the thunder-smoke

      Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak

      Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;

      The ripe corn under the undulating air

      Undulates like an ocean;—and the vines

      Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines—

      The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill

      The empty pauses of the blast;—the hill

      Looks hoary through the white electric rain,

      And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain,

      The interrupted thunder howls; above

      One chasm of Heaven smiles, like the eye of Love

      On the unquiet world;—while such things are,

      How could one worth your friendship heed the war

      Of worms? the shriek of the world’s carrion jays,

      Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise?

      You are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees,

      In vacant chairs, your absent images,

      And points where once you sat, and now should be

      But are not.—I demand if ever we

      Shall meet as then we met;—and she replies.

      Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;

      ‘I know the past alone—but summon home

      My sister Hope,—she speaks of all to come.’

      But I, an old diviner, who knew well

      Every false verse of that sweet oracle,

      Turned to the sad enchantress once again,

      And sought a respite from my gentle pain,

      In citing every passage o’er and o’er

      Of our communion—how on the sea-shore

      We watched the ocean and the sky together,

      Under the roof of blue Italian weather;

      How I ran home through last year’s thunder-storm,

      And felt the transverse lightning linger warm

      Upon my cheek—and how we often made

      Feasts for each other, where good will outweighed

      The frugal luxury of our country cheer,

      As well it might, were it less firm and clear

      Than ours must ever be;—and how we spun

      A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun

      Of this familiar life, which seems to be

      But is not:—or is but quaint mockery

      Of all we would believe, and sadly blame

      The jarring and inexplicable frame

      Of this wrong world:—and then anatomize

      The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes

      Were closed in distant years;—or widely guess

      The issue of the earth’s great business,

      When we shall be as we no longer are—

      Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war

      Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not;—or how

      You listened to some interrupted flow

      Of visionary rhyme,—in joy and pain

      Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,

      With little skill perhaps;—or how we sought

      Those deepest wells of passion or of thought

      Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,

      Staining their sacred waters with our tears;

      Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed!

      Or how I, wisest lady! then endued

      The language of a land which now is free,

      And, winged with thoughts of truth and majesty,

      Flits round the tyrant’s sceptre like a cloud,

      And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,

      ‘My name is Legion!’—that majestic tongue

      Which Calderon over the desert flung

      Of ages and of nations; and which found

      An echo in our hearts, and with the sound

      Startled oblivion;—thou wert then to me

      As is a nurse—when inarticulately

      A child would talk as its grown parents do.

      If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,

      If