And selfish cares, its trembling satellites, A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey, Is as a tempest-wingèd ship, whose helm Love rules, through waves which dare not overwhelm,

Forcing life's wildest shores to own its sovereign sway.

All things confess his strength. Through the cold mass

Of marble and of color his dreams pass; Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear;

Language is a perpetual Orphic song, Which rules with Dædal harmony a throng Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were.

The lightning is his slave; heaven's utmost deep

Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep

They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on!

The tempest is his steed, he strides the air; And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare,

Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.

A VISION OF THE FUTURE 1 [From Prometheus Unbound] Prometheus. We feel what thou hast heard and seen; yet speak.

Spirit of the Hour. Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled

The abysses of the sky and the wide earth,
There was a change: the impalpable thin air
And the all-circling sunlight were trans-
formed,

As if the sense of love dissolved in them
Had folded itself round the sphered world.
My vision then grew clear, and I could see
Into the mysteries of the universe:
Dizzy as with delight I floated down;
Winnowing the lightsome air with languid
plumes,

My coursers sought their birthplace in the

sun,

Where they henceforth will live exempt from toil

Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire;

And where my moonlike car will stand within

1 This passage is a poetic rendering of Godwin's Political Justice.

A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms
Of thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and me,
And you, fair nymphs, looking the love we
feel,-

In memory of the tidings it has borne,-
Beneath a dome fretted with graven flowers,
Poised on twelve columns of resplendent
stone,

And open to the bright and liquid sky.
Yoked to it by an amphisbenic snake
The likeness of those wingèd steeds will mock
The flight from which they find repose. Alas,
Whither has wandered now my partial
tongue

When all remains untold which ye would hear?

As I have said I floated to the earth:
It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss
To move, to breathe, to be; I wandering
went

Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind,
And first was disappointed not to see
Such mighty change as I had felt within
Expressed in outward things; but soon I
looked,

And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked

One with the other even as spirits doNone fawned, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear,

Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows, No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell, "All hope abandon ye who enter here"; None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear

Gazed on another's eye of cold command,
Until the subject of the tyrant's will
Became, worse fate, the abject of his own,
Which spurred him, like an outspent horse,
to death.

None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines

Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak;

None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart

The sparks of love and hope till there remained

Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed,
And the wretch crept a vampire among men,
Infecting all with his own hideous ill;
None talked that common, false, cold, hollow
talk

Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes,

Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy

With such a self-mistrust as has no name.

Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame, The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall,

Spoilt the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love. Thrones, altars, judgment-seats, and prisons, wherein,

And beside which, by wretched men were borne

Scepters, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes

Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance, Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes,

The ghosts of a no-more-remembered fame, Which, from their unworn obelisks, look forth

In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs Of those who were their conquerors: moldering round

Those imaged to the pride of kings and priests,

A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide
As is the world it wasted, and are now
But an astonishment; even so the tools
And emblems of its last captivity,

Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth,
Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded now.
And those foul shapes, abhorred by god and
man,

Which, under many a name and many a form,

Strange, savage, ghastly, dark, and execrable,

Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world;
And which the nations, panic-stricken, served
With blood, and hearts broken by long hope,
and love

Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandless,
And slain among men's unreclaiming tears,
Flattering the thing they feared, which fear

The painted veil, by those who were, called life,

Which mimicked, as with colors idly spread, All men believed and hoped, is torn aside; The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains

Scepterless, free, uncircumscribed, but man Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless, Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king Over himself; just, gentle, wise: but man Passionless; no, yet free from guilt or pain, Which were, for his will made or suffered them;

Nor yet exempt, tho' ruling them like slaves, From chance, and death, and mutability, The clogs of that which else might oversoar The loftiest star of unascended heaven, Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.

THE DAY!

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

[From Prometheus Unbound]

This is the day, which down the void abysm At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism,

And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep:

Love, from its awful throne of patient power In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour Of dead endurance, from the slippery, steep,

And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs And folds over the world its healing wings.

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endur

ance,

These are the seals of that most firm assur

ance

Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;

And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his
length;

These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;

To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;

Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great, and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

THE WORLD'S GREAT AGE BEGINS ANEW1

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

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 splendor 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.

1 Hellas, the dramatic poem from which this selection is taken, is an idealized account of the revolt in Greece. The temporary failure of the rising is converted into a prophecy not only of the ultimate triumph of this cause but of the great cause of humanity of which it constitutes a part. In this lyric Shelley is influenced by the Platonic notion of the great cycle in human affairs which will in its revolution bring back the golden age of Greece, elevated to a still higher plane.

Oh, cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
Of bitter prophecy.

The world is weary of the past,
Oh, might it die or rest at last!

I

ADONAIS

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

weep for Adonais-he is dead!

O, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!

And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years

To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,

And teach them thine own sorrow! Say: "With me

Died Adonais; till the Future dares Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity."

Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,

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