Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

worms,

      And men on men; each heart was as a hell of storms.

      III.

      Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied

      His generations under the pavilion

      Of the Sun’s throne: palace and pyramid,

      Temple and prison, to many a swarming million

      Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves.

      This human living multitude

      Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude,

      For thou wert not; but o’er the populous solitude,

      Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves,

      Hung Tyranny; beneath, sate deified

      The sister-pest, congregator of slaves;

      Into the shadow of her pinions wide

      Anarchs and priests, who feed on gold and blood

      Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed,

      Drove the astonished herds of men from every side.

      IV.

      The nodding promontories, and blue isles,

      And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves

      Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles

      Of favouring Heaven: from their enchanted caves

      Prophetic echoes flung dim melody.

      On the unapprehensive wild

      The vine, the corn, the olive mild,

      Grew savage yet, to human use unreconciled;

      And, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea,

      Like the man’s thought dark in the infant’s brain,

      Like aught that is which wraps what is to be,

      Art’s deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein

      Of Parian stone; and, yet a speechless child,

      Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain

      Her lidless eyes for thee; when o’er the Aegean main

      V.

      Athens arose: a city such as vision

      Builds from the purple crags and silver towers

      Of battlemented cloud, as in derision

      Of kingliest masonry: the ocean-floors

      Pave it; the evening sky pavilions it;

      Its portals are inhabited

      By thunder-zoned winds, each head

      Within its cloudy wings with sun-fire garlanded,—

      A divine work! Athens, diviner yet,

      Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will

      Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set;

      For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill

      Peopled, with forms that mock the eternal dead

      In marble immortality, that hill

      Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle.

      VI.

      Within the surface of Time’s fleeting river

      Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay

      Immovably unquiet, and for ever

      It trembles, but it cannot pass away!

      The voices of thy bards and sages thunder

      With an earth-awakening blast

      Through the caverns of the past:

      Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast:

      A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder,

      Which soars where Expectation never flew,

      Rending the veil of space and time asunder!

      One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew;

      One Sun illumines Heaven; one Spirit vast

      With life and love makes chaos ever new,

      As Athens doth the world with thy delight renew.

      VII.

      Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest,

      Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmaean Maenad,

      She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest

      From that Elysian food was yet unweaned;

      And many a deed of terrible uprightness

      By thy sweet love was sanctified;

      And in thy smile, and by thy side,

      Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died.

      But when tears stained thy robe of vestal-whiteness,

      And gold profaned thy Capitolian throne,

      Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness,

      The senate of the tyrants: they sunk prone

      Slaves of one tyrant: Palatinus sighed

      Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone

      Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown

      VIII.

      From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill,

      Or piny promontory of the Arctic main,

      Or utmost islet inaccessible,

      Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign,

      Teaching the woods and waves, and desert rocks,

      And every Naiad’s ice-cold urn,

      To talk in echoes sad and stern

      Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn?

      For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks

      Of the Scald’s dreams, nor haunt the Druid’s sleep.

      What if the tears rained through thy shattered locks

      Were quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not weep,

      When from its sea of death, to kill and burn,

      The Galilean serpent forth did creep,

      And made thy world an undistinguishable heap.

      IX.

      A thousand years the Earth cried, ‘Where art thou?’

      And then the shadow of thy coming fell

      On Saxon Alfred’s olive-cinctured brow:

      And many a warrior-peopled citadel.

      Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep,

      Arose in sacred Italy,

      Frowning o’er the tempestuous sea

      Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty;

      That multitudinous anarchy did sweep

      And burst around their walls, like idle foam,

      Whilst from the human spirit’s deepest deep

      Strange melody with love and awe struck dumb

      Dissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die,

      With divine wand traced on our earthly home

      Fit