Romantic Writings: An Anthology - Arab Open University

A210

APPROACHING LITERATURE

RomanticWritings:

An AnthologyVolume 2

Edited by W.R.Owens and Hamish Johnson

The Open University (UK) and the Arab Open University (AOU) acknowledge the contributionof Professor Mohammad Awwad in reviewing this book and suggesting the modifications andadaptations subsequently adopted in this version.

The Arab Open University has opted to use for its programs of study high-quality educationalmaterials produced for the United Kingdom Open University and originally intended for itsBritish and worldwide student body.

However, the AOU finds that there are certain viewpoints contained in these materials thatcannot be endorsed by the AOU. Therefore, in conformity with Arab traditions and Islamicbeliefs, the AOU has modified these educational materials either by way of complete deletionof certain statements, or by adding appropriate footnotes to them.

This volume has been adapted for use by the Arab Open University by Jessica Davies.

The Open UniversityWalton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA

Published 2004

Copyright # 2004 The Open University

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism andreview, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, ortransmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording orotherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from theCopyright Licensing Agency Limited. Details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction)may be obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London,W1T 4LP.

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Contents

Preface vi

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)The Eolian Harp 1

Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement 2

Frost at Midnight 4

Kubla Khan Or, A Vision in a Dream 5

The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, in Seven Parts 8

Dejection: An Ode 46

The Pains of Sleep 49

from Biographia Literaria 50

Chapter XIII 50

Chapter XIV 50

Charlotte Bury (1775–1861)False and Faithless as Thou Art 55

[Mary] Mathilda Betham (1776–1852)In a Letter to A.R.C. on her Wishing to be Called Anna 56

[The Power of Women] 56

Charlotte Dacre (1782–1841)Il Trionfo del Amor 58

To Him who Says he Loves 58

Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859)from Confessions of an English Opium-Eater 60

The Malay 60

The Pains of Opium 61

Oriental Dreams 63

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824)from English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. A Satire 66

from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, A Romaunt 67

Canto II 67

Canto III 68

Canto IV 69

from Hebrew Melodies 73

She Walks in Beauty 73

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)Alastor or the Spirit of Solitude 74

To Wordsworth 90

Mont Blanc 90

Ozymandias 93

Sonnet: England in 1819 93

The Mask of Anarchy 94

Ode to the West Wind 105

A Defence of Poetry 107

Felicia Hemans (1793–1835)Indian Woman’s Death Song 131

The Grave of a Poetess 132

John Clare (1793–1864)Sudden Shower 134

Winter Evening 134

Hedge Sparrow 134

[Autumn Evening] 135

Hares at Play 135

Spring 135

A Vision 136

‘I Am’ 137

John Gibson Lockhart (1794–1854)from The Cockney School of Poetry 138

John Keats (1795–1821)On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer 141

On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again 141

When I have fears that I may cease to be 141

The Eve of St Agnes 142

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art 151

La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad 152

Ode on a Grecian Urn 153

To Autumn 154

Laetitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–38)When Should Lovers Breathe Their Vows 156

Stanzas on the Death of Mrs Hemans 156

A Poet’s Love 159

Elizabeth Barrett (1806–61)Stanzas Addressed to Miss Landon 160

L.E.L.’s Last Question 161

Sonnet on Mr Haydon’s Portrait of Mr Wordsworth 162

Notes 164

Index of Authors 203

Index of Titles and First Lines 203

PrefaceThe Introduction to Volume 1 of Romantic Writings: An Anthology explainsthe purpose of the Anthology and suggests ways in which it can be used inA210 Approaching Literature. You are encouraged to refer to thatIntroduction when studying the poems in this Volume.

The first Volume contains selections from the work of two of the six‘canonical’ male Romantic poets, William Blake (17571827), and WilliamWordsworth (17701850), as well as from ‘first generation’ women poetssuch as Mary Alcock (c. 174298), Anna Laetitia Barbauld (17431825),Charlotte Smith (17491806), Mary Robinson (17581800), Helen MariaWilliams (17621827), and Dorothy Wordsworth (17711855).

This second Volume includes work from the remaining four ‘canonical’male Romantic poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge (17721834), George Gordon,Lord Byron (17881824), Percy Bysshe Shelley (17921822) and John Keats(17951821) as well as selections from the works of other male poets suchas John Clare (17931864) and ‘second generation’ women poets such asCharlotte Bury (17751861), Charlotte Dacre (17821841), Felicia Hemans(17931835) and Elizabeth Barratt (18061861). There is a discussion of thedifferences between ‘first’ and ‘second’ generation Romantic poets in theIntroduction to the first Volume.

As with the first Volume, the texts of the works presented in the Anthologyhave not been altered except in a few instances, for example where wehave supplied new titles, or removed superscript reference numbers. Linenumbering has been added to prose texts.

In order to show clearly the effect of the changes Coleridge made to TheRime of the Ancyent Marinere, we have printed two versions of the poemside by side, on facing pages. The text on the left-hand pages is that of thefirst version, published in 1798. The text on the right-hand pages is that of aversion published in 1817, as reprinted, with minor alterations, inColeridge’s Poetical Works of 1828. The notes to this poem at the end ofthe Anthology refer to the 1798 version, except where indicated by ‘(1828)’after the line number.

Where possible, we have presented works complete; in the case of longerworks, if we present extracts only, omissions are indicated thus: [...].Original page numbers and running heads have been removed andreplaced by new ones. Full details of the source texts are given in the notesat the back of each volume.

Jessica Davies

Samuel Taylor Coleridge(1772–1834)

The Eolian Harp

My pensive SARA! thy soft cheek reclin’dThus on mine arm, most soothing sweet it isTo sit beside our cot, our cot o’er grownWith white-flower’d Jasmin, and the broad-leav’d Myrtle,(Meet emblems they of Innocence and Love!)And watch the clouds, that late were rich with light,Slow sad’ning round, and mark the star of eveSerenely brilliant (such should Wisdom be)Shine opposite! How exquisite the scentsSnatch’d from yon bean-field! and the world so hush’d!The stilly murmur of the distant SeaTells us of Silence. And that simplest Lute,Plac’d length-ways in the clasping casement, hark!How by the desultory breeze caress’d,Like some coy Maid half-yielding to her Lover,It pours such sweet upbraidings, as must needsTempt to repeat the wrong! And now its stringsBoldlier swept, the long sequacious notesOver delicious surges sink and rise,Such a soft floating witchery of soundAs twilight Elfins make, when they at eveVoyage on gentle gales from Faery Land,Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers,Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untam’d wing[O! the one Life within us and abroad,Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,Rhythm in all thought, and joyance every where –

Methinks, it should have been impossibleNot to love all things in a world so fill’d;Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still airIs Music slumbering on her instrument.]And thus, my Love! as on the midway slopeOf yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon,Whilst thro’ my half-clos’d eyelids I beholdThe sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main,And tranquil muse upon tranquillity;Full many a thought uncall’d and undetain’d,And many idle flitting phantasies,Traverse my indolent and passive brainAs wild and various, as the random galesThat swell or flutter on this subject Lute!And what if all of animated natureBe but organic Harps diversly fram’d,

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THE EOLIAN HARP 1

That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweepsPlastic and vast, one intellectual Breeze,At once the Soul of each, and God of all?But thy more serious eye a mild reproofDarts, O beloved Woman! nor such thoughtsDim and unhallow’d dost thou not reject,And biddest me walk humbly with my God.

Meek Daughter in the Family of Christ,Well hast thou said and holily disprais’dThese shapings of the unregenerate mind,Bubbles that glitter as they rise and breakOn vain Philosophy’s aye-babbling spring.For never guiltless may I speak of Him,Th’ INCOMPREHENSIBLE! save when with aweI praise him, and with Faith that inly feels;Who with his saving mercies healéd me,A sinful and most miserable man,Wilder’d and dark, and gave me to possessPEACE, and this COT, and THEE, heart-honor’d Maid!

Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement

Sermoni propriora. – Hor.

Low was our pretty Cot: our tallest RosePeep’d at the chamber-window. We could hearAt silent noon, and eve, and early morn,The Sea’s faint murmur. In the open airOur Myrtles blossom’d; and across the porchThick Jasmins twined: the little landscape roundWas green and woody, and refresh’d the eye.It was a spot which you might aptly callThe Valley of Seclusion! Once I saw(Hallowing his Sabbath-day by quietness)A wealthy son of Commerce saunter by,Bristowa’s citizen: methought, it calm’dHis thirst of idle gold, and made him museWith wiser feelings: for he paus’d, and look’dWith a pleas’d sadness, and gaz’d all around,Then eyed our Cottage, and gaz’d round again,And sigh’d, and said, it was a Blesséd Place.And we were bless’d. Oft with patient earLong-listening to the viewless sky-lark’s note(Viewless, or haply for a moment seenGleaming on sunny wings) in whisper’d tonesI’ve said to my Belovéd, ‘Such, sweet Girl!The inobtrusive song of Happiness,Unearthly minstrelsy! then only heardWhen the Soul seeks to hear; when all is hush’d,And the Heart listens!’

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2 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

But the time, when firstFrom that low Dell, steep up the stony MountI climb’d with perilous toil and reach’d the top,Oh! what a goodly scene! Here the bleak mount,The bare bleak mountain speckled thin with sheep;Grey clouds, that shadowing spot the sunny fields;And river, now with bushy rocks o’er-brow’d,Now winding bright and full, with naked banks;And seats, and lawns, the Abbey and the wood,And cots, and hamlets, and faint city-spire;The Channel there, the Islands and white sails,Dim coasts, and cloud-like hills, and shoreless Ocean –

It seem’d like Omnipresence! God, methought,Had built him there a Temple: the whole WorldSeem’d imag’d in its vast circumference:No wish profan’d my overwhelméd heart.Blest hour! It was a luxury, – to be!

Ah! quiet Dell! dear Cot, and Mount sublime!I was constrain’d to quit you. Was it right,While my unnumber’d brethren toil’d and bled,That I should dream away the entrusted hoursOn rose-leaf beds, pampering the coward heartWith feelings all too delicate for use?Sweet is the tear that from some Howard’s eyeDrops on the cheek of one he lifts from earth:And he that works me good with unmov’d face,Does it but half: he chills me while he aids,My benefactor, not my brother man!Yet even this, this cold beneficencePraise, praise it, O my Soul! oft as thou scann’stThe sluggard Pity’s vision-weaving tribe!Who sigh for Wretchedness, yet shun the Wretched,Nursing in some delicious solitudeTheir slothful loves and dainty sympathies!I therefore go, and join head, heart, and hand,Active and firm, to fight the bloodless fightOf Science, Freedom, and the Truth in Christ.

Yet oft when after honourable toilRests the tir’d mind, and waking loves to dream,My spirit shall revisit thee, dear Cot!Thy Jasmin and thy window-peeping Rose,And Myrtles fearless of the mild sea-air.And I shall sigh fond wishes – sweet Abode!Ah! – had none greater! And that all had such!It might be so – but the time is not yet.Speed it, O Father! Let thy Kingdom come!

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REFLECTIONS ON HAVING LEFT A PLACE OF RETIREMENT 3

Frost at Midnight

The Frost performs its secret ministry,Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cryCame loud – and hark, again! loud as before.The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,Have left me to that solitude, which suitsAbstruser musings: save that at my sideMy cradled infant slumbers peacefully.’Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbsAnd vexes meditation with its strangeAnd extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,With all the numberless goings-on of life,Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flameLies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.Methinks, its motion in this hush of natureGives it dim sympathies with me who live,Making it a companionable form,Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling SpiritBy its own moods interprets, every whereEcho or mirror seeking of itself,And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,How oft, at school, with most believing mind,Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oftWith unclosed lids, already had I dreamtOf my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,Whose bells, the poor man’s only music, rangFrom morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted meWith a wild pleasure, falling on mine earMost like articulate sounds of things to come!So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!And so I brooded all the following morn,Awed by the stern preceptor’s face, mine eyeFixed with mock study on my swimming book:Save if the door half opened, and I snatchedA hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face,Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

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Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,Fill up the intersperséd vacanciesAnd momentary pauses of the thought!My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heartWith tender gladness, thus to look at thee,And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,And in far other scenes! For I was rearedIn the great city, pent ’mid cloisters dim,And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breezeBy lakes and sandy shores, beneath the cragsOf ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,Which image in their bulk both lakes and shoresAnd mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hearThe lovely shapes and sounds intelligibleOf that eternal language, which thy GodUtters who from eternity doth teachHimself in all, and all things in himself.Great universal Teacher! he shall mouldThy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,Whether the summer clothe the general earthWith greenness, or the redbreast sit and singBetwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branchOr mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatchSmokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fallHeard only in the trances of the blast,Or if the secret ministry of frostShall hang them up in silent icicles,Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

Kubla Khanor, A Vision in a Dream

A Fragment

The following fragment is here published at the request of a poet of greatand deserved celebrity [Lord Byron], and, as far as the Author’s ownopinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on theground of any supposed poetic merits.

In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired toa lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confinesof Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, ananodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep inhis chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, orwords of the same substance, in ‘Purchas’s Pilgrimage’: ‘Here the KhanKubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto.

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KUBLA KHAN 5

And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.’ The Authorcontinued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the externalsenses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he couldnot have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if thatindeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up beforehim as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions,without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awaking he appearedto himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen,ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are herepreserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person onbusiness from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on hisreturn to his room found, to his no small surprise and mortification, thatthough he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the generalpurport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scatteredlines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on thesurface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without theafter restoration of the latter!

Then all the charmIs broken – all that phantom-world so fairVanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,And each mis-shape[s] the other. Stay awhile,Poor youth! who scarcely dar’st lift up thine eyes –

The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soonThe visions will return! And lo, he stays,And soon the fragments dim of lovely formsCome trembling back, unite, and now once moreThe pool becomes a mirror.

Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the Author hasfrequently purposed to finish for himself what had been originally, as itwere, given to him. : but the to-morrow is yet to come.

As a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a very differentcharacter, describing with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease.

In Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree:Where Alph, the sacred river, ranThrough caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.So twice five miles of fertile groundWith walls and towers were girdled round:And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;And here were forests ancient as the hills,Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

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But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slantedDown the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!A savage place! as holy and enchantedAs e’er beneath a waning moon was hauntedBy woman wailing for her demon-lover!And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,A mighty fountain momently was forced:Amid whose swift half-intermitted burstHuge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:And ’mid these dancing rocks at once and everIt flung up momently the sacred river.Five miles meandering with a mazy motionThrough wood and dale the sacred river ran,Then reached the caverns measureless to man,And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from farAncestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasureFloated midway on the waves;Where was heard the mingled measureFrom the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimerIn a vision once I saw:It was an Abyssinian maid,And on her dulcimer she played,Singing of Mount Abora.Could I revive within meHer symphony and song,To such a deep delight ’twould win me,

That with music loud and long,I would build that dome in air,That sunny dome! those caves of ice!And all who heard should see them there,And all should cry, Beware! Beware!His flashing eyes, his floating hair!Weave a circle round him thrice,And close your eyes with holy dread,For he on honey-dew hath fed,And drunk the milk of Paradise.

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KUBLA KHAN 7

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner


THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 9

;


Dejection: An Ode

Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,With the old Moon in her arms;And I fear, I fear, my Master dear!We shall have a deadly storm.

Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence

I

Well! If the Bard was weather-wise, who madeThe grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence

Unrous’d by winds, that ply a busier tradeThan those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes,Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and rakesUpon the strings of this Óolian lute,

Which better far were mute.For lo! the New-moon winter-bright!And overspread with phantom-light,(With swimming phantom-light o’erspreadBut rimm’d and circled by a silver thread)

I see the old Moon in her lap, foretellingThe coming on of rain and squally blast.

And oh! that even now the gust were swelling,And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast!

Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed,And sent my soul abroad,

Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give,Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live!

II

A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,A stifled, drowsy, unimpassion’d grief,Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,

In word, or sigh, or tear –O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood,To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo’d,

All this long eve, so balmy and serene,Have I been gazing on the western sky,

And its peculiar tint of yellow green:And still I gaze – and with how blank an eye!And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,That give away their motion to the stars;Those stars, that glide behind them or between,Now sparkling, now bedimm’d, but always seen:Yon crescent Moon, as fix’d as if it grewIn its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;I see them all so excellently fair,I see, not feel how beautiful they are!

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III

My genial spirits fail;And what can these avail

To lift the smoth’ring weight from off my breast?It were a vain endeavour,Though I should gaze for ever

On that green light that lingers in the west:I may not hope from outward forms to winThe passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

IV

O Lady! we receive but what we give,And in our life alone does Nature live:Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud!

And would we aught behold, of higher worth,Than that inanimate cold world allow’dTo the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd,

Ah! from the soul itself must issue forthA light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud

Enveloping the Earth –

And from the soul itself must there be sentA sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,

Of all sweet sounds the life and element!

V

O pure of heart! thou need’st not ask of meWhat this strong music in the soul may be!What, and wherein it doth exist,This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist,This beautiful, and beauty-making power.

Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy that ne’er was given,Save to the pure, and in their purest hour,Life, and Life’s effluence, cloud at once and shower,Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power,Which wedding Nature to us gives in dow’r

A new Earth and new Heaven,Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud –

Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud –

We in ourselves rejoice!And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,

All melodies the echoes of that voice,All colours a suffusion from that light.

VI

There was a time when, though my path was rough,This joy within me dallied with distress,

And all misfortunes were but as the stuffWhence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:

For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,

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DEJECTION: AN ODE 47

And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.But now afflictions bow me down to earth:Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth,

But oh! each visitationSuspends what nature gave me at my birth,

My shaping spirit of Imagination.For not to think of what I needs must feel,

But to be still and patient, all I can;And haply by abstruse research to steal

From my own nature all the natural Man –

This was my sole resource, my only plan:Till that which suits a part infects the whole,And now is almost grown the habit of my Soul.

VII

Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,Reality’s dark dream!

I turn from you, and listen to the wind,Which long has rav’d unnotic’d. What a scream

Of agony by torture lengthen’d outThat lute sent forth! Thou Wind, that rav’st without,

Bare crag, or mountain-tairn,1 or blasted tree,Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb,Or lonely house, long held the witches’ home,

Methinks were fitter instruments for thee,Mad Lutanist! who in this month of show’rs,Of dark-brown gardens, and of peeping flow’rs,Mak’st Devils’ yule, with worse than wint’ry song,The blossoms, buds, and tim’rous leaves among.

Thou Actor, perfect in all tragic sounds!Thou mighty Poet, e’en to Frenzy bold!

What tell’st thou now about?’Tis of the Rushing of an Host in rout,

With groans of trampled men, with smarting wounds –

At once they groan with pain, and shudder with the cold!

But hush! there is a pause of deepest silence!And all that noise, as of a rushing crowd,

With groans, and tremulous shudderings – all is over –It tells another tale, with sounds less deep and loud!

A tale of less affright,And tempered with delight,

As Otway’s self had fram’d the tender lay, –’Tis of a little childUpon a lonesome wild,

Not far from home, but she hath lost her way:And now moans low in bitter grief and fear,And now screams loud, and hopes to make her mother hear.

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VIII

’Tis midnight, but small thoughts have I of sleep:Full seldom may my friend such vigils keep!Visit her, gentle Sleep! with wings of healing,

And may this storm be but a mountain-birth,May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling,

Silent as though they watch’d the sleeping Earth!With light heart may she rise,

Gay fancy, cheerful eyes,Joy lift her spirit, joy attune her voice;

To her may all things live, from Pole to Pole,Their life the eddying of her living soul!

O simple spirit, guided from above,Dear Lady! friend devoutest of my choice,Thus may’st thou ever, evermore rejoice.

The Pains of Sleep

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,It hath not been my use to prayWith moving lips or bended knees;But silently, by slow degrees,My spirit I to Love compose,In humble trust mine eye-lids close,With reverential resignation,No wish conceived, no thought exprest,Only a sense of supplication;A sense o’er all my soul imprestThat I am weak, yet not unblest,Since in me, round me, every whereEternal Strength and Wisdom are.But yester-night I prayed aloudIn anguish and in agony,Up-starting from the fiendish crowdOf shapes and thoughts that tortured me:A lurid light, a trampling throng,Sense of intolerable wrong,And whom I scorned, those only strong!Thirst of revenge, the powerless willStill baffled, and yet burning still!Desire with loathing strangely mixedOn wild or hateful objects fixed.Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!And shame and terror over all!Deeds to be hid which were not hid,Which all confused I could not know,Whether I suffered, or I did:For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,My own or others still the sameLife-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.

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THE PAINS OF SLEEP 49

So two nights passed: the night’s dismaySaddened and stunned the coming day.Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to meDistemper’s worst calamity.The third night, when my own loud screamHad waked me from the fiendish dream,O’ercome with sufferings strange and wild,I wept as I had been a child;And having thus by tears subduedMy anguish to a milder mood,Such punishments, I said, were dueTo natures deepliest stained with sin, –For aye entempesting anewThe unfathomable hell within,The horror of their deeds to view,To know and loathe, yet wish and do!Such griefs with such men well agree,But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?To be beloved is all I need,And whom I love, I love indeed.

from Biographia Literaria

Chapter XIII

[...]

The IMAGINATION then, I consider either as primary, or secondary. Theprimary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of allhuman Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal actof creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary Imagination I consider as anecho of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identicalwith the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, andin the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order torecreate; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all eventsit struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects(as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.

FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities anddefinites. The Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of Memoryemancipated from the order of time and space; while it is blended with,and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we expressby the word CHOICE. But equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy mustreceive all its materials ready made from the law of association.

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Chapter XIV

DURING the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, ourconversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the

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power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to thetruth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by themodifying colors of imagination. The sudden charm, which accidents oflight and shade, which moon-light or sun-set diffused over a known andfamiliar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combiningboth. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested itself (to whichof us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed of twosorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least,supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interestingof the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturallyaccompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense theyhave been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion,has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the secondclass, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters andincidents were to be such, as will be found in every village and its vicinity,where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or tonotice them, when they present themselves.

In this idea originated the plan of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’; in which it wasagreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characterssupernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inwardnature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure forthese shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for themoment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand,was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty tothings of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural,by awakening the mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom, anddirecting it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; aninexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film offamiliarity and selfish solicitude we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hearnot, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.

With this view I wrote ‘The Ancient Mariner’, and was preparing amongother poems, ‘The Dark Ladie’, and the ‘Christabel’, in which I should havemore nearly realized my ideal, than I had done in my first attempt. But Mr.Wordsworth’s industry had proved so much more successful, and thenumber of his poems so much greater, that my compositions, instead offorming a balance, appeared rather an interpolation of heterogeneousmatter. Mr. Wordsworth added two or three poems written in his owncharacter, in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction, which ischaracteristic of his genius. In this form the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ were published;and were presented by him, as an experiment, whether subjects, whichfrom their nature rejected the usual ornaments and extra-colloquial style ofpoems in general, might not be so managed in the language of ordinary lifeas to produce the pleasureable interest, which it is the peculiar business ofpoetry to impart. To the second edition he added a preface of considerable

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FROM BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA 51

length; in which, notwithstanding some passages of apparently a contraryimport, he was understood to contend for the extension of this style topoetry of all kinds, and to reject as vicious and indefensible all phrases andforms of style that were not included in what he (unfortunately, I think,adopting an equivocal expression) called the language of real life. Fromthis preface, prefixed to poems in which it was impossible to deny thepresence of original genius, however mistaken its direction might bedeemed, arose the whole long-continued controversy. For from theconjunction of perceived power with supposed heresy I explain theinveteracy and in some instances, I grieve to say, the acrimonious passions,with which the controversy has been conducted by the assailants.

Had Mr. Wordsworth’s poems been the silly, the childish things, which theywere for a long time described as being; had they been really distinguishedfrom the compositions of other poets merely by meanness of language andinanity of thought; had they indeed contained nothing more than what isfound in the parodies and pretended imitations of them; they must havesunk at once, a dead weight, into the slough of oblivion, and have draggedthe preface along with them. But year after year increased the number ofMr. Wordsworth’s admirers. They were found too not in the lower classes ofthe reading public, but chiefly among young men of strong sensibility andmeditative minds; and their admiration (inflamed perhaps in some degreeby opposition) was distinguished by its intensity, I might almost say, by itsreligious fervor. These facts, and the intellectual energy of the author,which was more or less consciously felt, where it was outwardly and evenboisterously denied, meeting with sentiments of aversion to his opinions,and of alarm at their consequences, produced an eddy of criticism, whichwould of itself have borne up the poems by the violence, with which itwhirled them round and round. With many parts of this preface, in thesense attributed to them, and which the words undoubtedly seem toauthorize, I never concurred; but on the contrary objected to them aserroneous in principle, and as contradictory (in appearance at least) both toother parts of the same preface, and to the author’s own practice in thegreater number of the poems themselves. Mr. Wordsworth in his recentcollection has, I find, degraded this prefatory disquisition to the end of hissecond volume, to be read or not at the reader’s choice. But he has not, asfar as I can discover, announced any change in his poetic creed. At allevents, considering it as the source of a controversy, in which I have beenhonored more than I deserve by the frequent conjunction of my name withhis, I think it expedient to declare once for all, in what points I coincidewith his opinions, and in what points I altogether differ. But in order torender myself intelligible I must previously, in as few words as possible,explain my ideas, first, of a POEM; and secondly, of POETRY itself, in kindand in essence.

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Controversy is not seldom excited in consequence of the disputantsattaching each a different meaning to the same word; and in few instanceshas this been more striking, than in disputes concerning the presentsubject. If a man chooses to call every composition a poem, which isrhyme, or measure, or both, I must leave his opinion uncontroverted. Thedistinction is at least competent to characterize the writer’s intention. If itwere subjoined, that the whole is likewise entertaining or affecting, as atale, or as a series of interesting reflections, I of course admit this asanother fit ingredient of a poem, and an additional merit. But if thedefinition sought for be that of a legitimate poem, I answer, it must be one,the parts of which mutually support and explain each other; all in theirproportion harmonizing with, and supporting the purpose and knowninfluences of metrical arrangement. The philosophic critics of all agescoincide with the ultimate judgement of all countries, in equally denyingthe praises of a just poem, on the one hand, to a series of striking lines ordistiches, each of which, absorbing the whole attention of the reader toitself, disjoins it from its context, and makes it a separate whole, instead ofan harmonizing part; and on the other hand, to an unsustainedcomposition, from which the reader collects rapidly the general result,unattracted by the component parts. The reader should be carried forward,not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity, or by arestless desire to arrive at the final solution; but by the pleasureable activityof mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself. Like the motion of aserpent, which the Egyptians made the emblem of intellectual power; orlike the path of sound through the air; at every step he pauses and halfrecedes, and from the retrogressive movement collects the force whichagain carries him onward. ‘Præcipitandus est liber spiritus’, says PetroniusArbiter most happily. The epithet, liber, here balances the preceding verb;and it is not easy to conceive more meaning condensed in fewer words.

But if this should be admitted as a satisfactory character of a poem, wehave still to seek for a definition of poetry. The writings of PLATO, andBishop TAYLOR, and the ‘Theoria Sacra’ of BURNET, furnish undeniableproofs that poetry of the highest kind may exist without metre, and evenwithout the contra-distinguishing objects of a poem. The first chapter ofIsaiah (indeed a very large portion of the whole book) is poetry in themost emphatic sense; yet it would be not less irrational than strange toassert, that pleasure, and not truth, was the immediate object of theprophet. In short, whatever specific import we attach to the word, poetry,there will be found involved in it, as a necessary consequence, that a poemof any length neither can be, or ought to be, all poetry. Yet if anharmonious whole is to be produced, the remaining parts must bepreserved in keeping with the poetry; and this can be no otherwiseeffected than by such a studied selection and artificial arrangement, as willpartake of one, though not a peculiar property of poetry. And this again

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FROM BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA 53

can be no other than the property of exciting a more continuous and equalattention than the language of prose aims at, whether colloquial or written.

My own conclusions on the nature of poetry, in the strictest use of theword, have been in part anticipated in the preceding disquisition on thefancy and imagination. What is poetry? is so nearly the same question with,what is a poet? that the answer to the one is involved in the solution of theother. For it is a distinction resulting from the poetic genius itself, whichsustains and modifies the images, thoughts, and emotions of the poet’s ownmind.

The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man intoactivity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other, according totheir relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, thatblends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magicalpower, to which we have exclusively appropriated the name ofimagination. This power, first put in action by the will and understanding,and retained under their irremissive, though gentle and unnoticed, controul(laxis effertur habenis) reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation ofopposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; of thegeneral, with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the individual, with therepresentative; the sense of novelty and freshness, with old and familiarobjects; a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order;judgement ever awake and steady self-possession, with enthusiasm andfeeling profound or vehement; and while it blends and harmonizes thenatural and the artificial, still subordinates art to nature; the manner to thematter; and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry.

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Charlotte Bury(1775–1861)

False and Faithless as Thou Art

False and faithless as thou art,Alas! you still possess my heart;

Nor e’er can time effaceThe thought of joys which now are flown,Though with them ev’ry hope is gone

Which soothes keen sorrow’s trace.

Whate’er appearances may be,In secret still I sigh for thee

And mourn that I’m forgot;Thy fragile vows, to me still dear,Are still remembered with a tear –

But yet, whate’er my lot.

May all thy life with pleasure teem,May every sun’s revolving beam

Bring health and joy to thee;And lest remorse thy heart should gain,Ah! may you never know the pain

Which you have caused to me.

Where Happiness (celestial maid!)With sprightly Fancy ever swayed

O’er Sorrow’s gloomy power,There Melancholy sits, confessedQueen of my soul – for now unblessed

Is each sad lingering hour.

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FALSE AND FAITHLESS AS THOU ART 55

[Mary] Mathilda Betham(1776–1852)

In a Letter to A.R.C. on her Wishing to be Called Anna

Forgive me, if I wound your earBy calling of you Nancy,

Which is the name of my sweet friend,The other’s but her fancy.

Ah, dearest girl! how could your mindThe strange distinction frame?

The whimsical, unjust caprice,Which robs you of your name.

Nancy agrees with what we see,A being wild and airy;

Gay as a nymph of Flora’s train,Fantastic as a fairy.

But Anna’s of a different kind,A melancholy maid;

Boasting a sentimental soul,In solemn pomp arrayed.

Oh ne’er will I forsake the sound,So artless and so free!

Be what you will with all mankind,But Nancy still with me.

[The Power of Women]

We wish not the mechanic arts to scan,But leave the slavish work to selfish man!He claims alone the privilege to war,But ’tis our smiles that must reward the scar!We need not these heroic dangers brave,Who hold the laurelled conqueror a slave.We need not search the world for sordid gain,While we its proud possessors can enchain,When their pursuit is only meant to prove,How much they’d venture to deserve our love;For wealth and honours they can only prize,As making them more worthy in our eyes.Their insufficiency they would supply,And to these glittering resources fly!Let the poor boasters then indulge their pride,And think they o’er the universe preside;Let them recount their numerous triumphs o’er,And tell the tales, so often told before;Their own much-doubted merit to enhance;And gain the great reward – a favouring glance!

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56 [MARY] MATHILDA BETHAM

Let them, in bondage, fancy themselves free;And while fast fettered, vaunt their liberty!Because they do not massy chains behold,Suppose that they are monarchs uncontrolled!How vain! to hope ’twould be to them revealedThe flame burns strongest that is most concealed!Then with what potent, what resistless art,Those hidden bonds are twined about the heart,So that the captive wanders unconfined,And has no sovereign but o’er his mind!The prize is mutual, either power or fame;We have the substance, they may keep the name!

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[THE POWER OF WOMEN] 57

Charlotte Dacre(1782–1841)

Il Trionfo del Amor

So full my thoughts are of thee, that I swearAll else is hateful to my troubled soul;How thou hast o’er me gained such vast control,How charmed my stubborn spirit, is most rare!

Sure thou hast mingled philtres in my bowl,Or what thine high enchantedarts declareFearless of blame – for truth I will not care(So charms the witchery), whether fair or foul.

Yet well my lovesick mind thine arts can tell;No magic potions gav’st thou, save what IDrank from those lustrous eyes when they did dwellWith dying fondness on me – or thy sigh

Which sent its perfumed poison to my brain.Thus known thy spells, thou bland seducer, see –

Come practice them again, and oh! again;Spellbound I am, and spellbound wish to be.

To Him who Says he Loves

You tell me that you truly love;Ah! know you well what love does mean?

Does neither whim nor fancy moveThe rapture of your transient dream?

Tell me, when absent do you thinkO’er ev’ry look and ev’ry sigh?

Do you in melancholy sink,And hope and doubt you know not why?

When present, do you die to sayHow much you love, yet fear to tell?

Does her breath melt your soul away?A touch, your nerves with transport swell?

Or do you faint with sweet excessOf pleasure rising into pain,

When hoping you may e’er possessThe object you aspire to gain?

The charms of every other fairWith coldness could you learn to view?

Fondly unchanged to her repair,With transports ever young and new?

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58 CHARLOTTE DACRE

Could you for her, fame, wealth despise?In poverty and toil feel blessed?

Drink sweet delusion from her eyesOr smile at ruin on her breast?

And tell me, at her loss or hate,Would death your only refuge prove?

Ah! if in aught you hesitate –

Coward! you dare not say you love.

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TO HIM WHO SAYS HE LOVES 59

Thomas De Quincey(1785–1859)

from Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

The Malay

One day a Malay knocked at my door. What business a Malay could have totransact amongst English mountains I cannot conjecture, but possibly hewas on his road to a seaport about forty miles distant.

The servant who opened the door to him was a young girl born and bredamongst the mountains, who had never seen an Asiatic dress of any sort –his turban, therefore, confounded her not a little – and as it turned out thathis attainments in English were exactly of the same extent as hers in theMalay, there seemed to be an impassable gulf fixed between allcommunication of ideas (if either party had happened to possess any). Inthis dilemma, the girl, recollecting the reputed learning of her master (anddoubtless giving me credit for a knowledge of all the languages of theearth, besides, perhaps, a few of the lunar ones), came and gave me tounderstand that there was a sort of demon below, whom she clearlyimagined that my art could exorcise from the house.

I did not immediately go down, but when I did, the group which presenteditself – arranged as it was by accident, though not very elaborate, took holdof my fancy and my eye in a way that none of the statuesque attitudesexhibited in the ballets at the opera-house, though so ostentatiouslycomplex, had ever done. In a cottage kitchen, but panelled on the wallwith dark wood that from age and rubbing resembled oak, and lookingmore like a rustic hall of entrance than a kitchen, stood the Malay, histurban and loose trousers of dingy white relieved upon the dark panelling.He had placed himself nearer to the girl than she seemed to relish, thoughher native spirit of mountain intrepidity contended with the feeling ofsimple awe which her countenance expressed as she gazed upon the tiger-cat before her. And a more striking picture there could not be imagined,than the beautiful English face of the girl, and its exquisite fairness, togetherwith her erect and independent attitude, contrasted with the sallow andbilious skin of the Malay, enamelled or veneered with mahogany, bymarine air, his small fierce restless eyes, thin lips, slavish gestures andadorations. Half-hidden by the ferocious-looking Malay was a little childfrom a neighbouring cottage who had crept in after him and was now inthe act of reverting its head, and gazing upwards at the turban and the fieryeyes beneath it, whilst with one hand he caught at the dress of the youngwoman for protection.

My knowledge of the oriental tongues is not remarkably extensive, beingindeed confined to two words: the Arabic word for barley, and the Turkishfor opium (madjoon), which I have learnt from Anastasius. And as I had

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60 THOMAS DE QUINCEY

neither a Malay dictionary, nor even Adelung’s Mithridates, which mighthave helped me to a few words, I addressed him in some lines from theIliad, considering that, of such languages as I possessed, Greek, in point oflongitude, came geographically nearest to an oriental one. He worshippedme in a most devout manner, and replied in what I suppose was Malay. Inthis way I saved my reputation with my neighbours, for the Malay had nomeans of betraying the secret. He lay down upon the floor for about anhour, and then pursued his journey.

On his departure, I presented him with a piece of opium. To him, as anorientalist, I concluded that opium must be familiar, and the expression ofhis face convinced me that it was. Nevertheless, I was struck with somelittle consternation when I saw him suddenly raise his hand to his mouthand (in the schoolboy phrase) bolt the whole, divided into three pieces, atone mouthful. The quantity was enough to kill three dragoons and theirhorses, and I felt some alarm for the poor creature – but what could bedone? I had given him the opium in compassion for his solitary life, onrecollecting that, if he had travelled on foot from London, it must be nearlythree weeks since he could have exchanged a thought with any humanbeing. I could not think of violating the laws of hospitality by having himseized and drenched with an emetic, and thus frightening him into a notionthat we were going to sacrifice him to some English idol. No – there wasclearly no help for it. He took his leave, and for some days I felt anxious;but as I never heard of any Malay being found dead, I became convincedthat he was used to opium, and that I must have done him the service Idesigned, by giving him one night of respite from the pains of wandering.

This incident I have digressed to mention because this Malay (partly fromthe picturesque exhibition he assisted to frame, partly from the anxiety Iconnected with his image for some days) fastened afterwards upon mydreams, and brought other Malays with him worse than himself, that ranamuck at me, and led me into a world of troubles.

The Pains of Opium

I now pass to what is the main subject of these latter confessions – to thehistory and journal of what took place in my dreams, for these were theimmediate and proximate cause of my acutest suffering.

The first notice I had of any important change going on in this part of myphysical economy, was from the reawakening of a state of eye generallyincident to childhood or exalted states of irritability. I know not whethermy reader is aware that many children – perhaps most – have a power ofpainting, as it were, upon the darkness, all sorts of phantoms. In some, thatpower is simply a mechanic affection of the eye; others have a voluntary ora semi-voluntary power to dismiss or to summon them – or, as a child oncesaid to me when I questioned him on this matter, ‘I can tell them to go andthey go, but sometimes they come when I don’t tell them to come.’

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FROM CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 61

Whereupon I told him that he had almost as unlimited a command overapparitions as a Roman centurion over his soldiers.

In the middle of 1817, I think it was, that this faculty became positivelydistressing to me. At night, when I lay awake in bed, vast processionspassed along in mournful pomp, friezes of never-ending stories that to myfeelings were as sad and solemn as if they were stories drawn from timesbefore Oedipus or Priam – before Tyre, before Memphis. And at the sametime a corresponding change took place in my dreams; a theatre seemedsuddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which presented nightlyspectacles of more than earthly splendour. And the four following facts maybe mentioned as noticeable at this time:

1. That, as the creative state of the eye increased, a sympathy seemed toarise between the waking and the dreaming states of the brain in one point– that whatsoever I happened to call up and to trace by a voluntary actupon the darkness was very apt to transfer itself to my dreams, so that Ifeared to exercise this faculty, for, as Midas turned all things to gold that yetbaffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires, so whatsoever thingscapable of being visually represented I did but think of in the darkness,immediately shaped themselves into phantoms of the eye, and, by aprocess apparently no less inevitable, when thus once traced in faint andvisionary colours, like writings in sympathetic ink, they were drawn out bythe fierce chemistry of my dreams into insufferable splendour that frettedmy heart.

2. For this and all other changes in my dreams were accompanied by deep-seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such as are whollyincommunicable by words. I seemed every night to descend – notmetaphorically, but literally to descend, into chasms and sunless abysses,depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I could ever re-ascend. Nor did I, by waking, feel that I had re-ascended. This I do notdwell upon, because the state of gloom which attended these gorgeousspectacles, amounting at least to utter darkness, as of some suicidaldespondency, cannot be approached by words.

3. The sense of space and, in the end, the sense of time, were bothpowerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, etc., were exhibited inproportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelledand was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This however did notdisturb me so much as the vast expansion of time: I sometimes seemed tohave lived for 70 or 100 years in one night – nay, sometimes had feelingsrepresentative of a millennium passed in that time, or, however, of aduration far beyond the limits of any human experience.

4. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten scenes of later years,were often revived. I could not be said to recollect them, for if I had beentold of them when waking, I should not have been able to acknowledge

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them as parts of my past experience. But placed as they were before me, indreams like intuitions, and clothed in all their evanescent circumstancesand accompanying feelings, I recognized them instantaneously. I was oncetold by a near relative of mine that, having in her childhood fallen into ariver, and being on the very verge of death but for the critical assistancewhich reached her, she saw in a moment her whole life, in its minutestincidents, arrayed before her simultaneously as in a mirror, and she had afaculty developed as suddenly for comprehending the whole and everypart. This, from some opium experiences of mine, I can believe; I haveindeed seen the same thing asserted twice in modern books, andaccompanied by a remark which I am convinced is true – viz. that thedread book of account which the scriptures speak of is, in fact, the minditself of each individual. Of this at least I feel assured: that there is no suchthing as forgetting possible to the mind; a thousand accidents may and willinterpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secretinscriptions on the mind – accidents of the same sort will also rend awaythis veil. But alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains forever, just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day,whereas in fact we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them asa veil, and that they are waiting to be revealed when the obscuring daylightshall have withdrawn.

Oriental Dreams

May 1818

The Malay has been a fearful enemy for months. I have been every night,through his means, transported into Asiatic scenes. I know not whetherothers share in my feelings on this point, but I have often thought that if Iwere compelled to forego England and to live in China and among Chinesemanners and modes of life and scenery, I should go mad.

The causes of my horror lie deep, and some of them must be common toothers. Southern Asia, in general, is the seat of awful images andassociations. As the cradle of the human race, it would alone have a dimand reverential feeling connected with it. But there are other reasons. Noman can pretend that the wild, barbarous, and capricious superstitions ofAfrica, or of savage tribes elsewhere, affect him in the way that he isaffected by the ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions ofIndostan, etc. The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions,histories, modes of faith, etc., is so impressive, that to me the vast age ofthe race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. Ayoung Chinese seems to me an antediluvian man renewed. EvenEnglishmen, though not bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannotbut shudder at the mystic sublimity of castes that have flowed apart andrefused to mix, through such immemorial tracts of time – nor can any manfail to be awed by the names of the Ganges or the Euphrates.

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It contributes much to these feelings that southern Asia is, and has been forthousands of years, the part of the earth most swarming with human life –

the great officina gentium. Man is a weed in those regions. The vastempires also, into which the enormous population of Asia has always beencast, give a further sublimity to the feelings associated with all orientalnames or images. In China, over and above what it has in common with therest of southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes of life, by the manners,and the barrier of utter abhorrence and want of sympathy placed betweenus by feelings deeper than I can analyze. I could sooner live with lunaticsor brute animals. All this, and much more than I can say or have time tosay, the reader must enter into before he can comprehend theunimaginable horror which these dreams of oriental imagery andmythological tortures impressed upon me.

Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights, Ibrought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants,usages and appearances that are found in all tropical regions, andassembled them together in China or Indostan. From kindred feelings Isoon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I was stared at,hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by paroquets, bycockatoos. I ran into pagodas and was fixed for centuries at the summit, orin secret rooms. I was the idol, I was the priest, I was worshipped, I wassacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia.Vishnu hated me. Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis andOsiris. I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodiletrembled at. I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, withmummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternalpyramids. I was kissed with cancerous kisses by crocodiles, and laidconfounded with all unutterable slimy things amongst reeds and Niloticmud.

I thus give the reader some slight abstraction of my oriental dreams, whichalways filled me with such amazement at the monstrous scenery, thathorror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner or latercame a reflux of feeling that swallowed up the astonishment, and left menot so much in terror as in hatred and abomination of what I saw. Overevery form, and threat, and punishment, and dim sightless incarceration,brooded a sense of eternity and infinity that drove me into an oppressionas of madness. Into these dreams only it was (with one or two slightexceptions) that any circumstances of physical horror entered. All beforehad been moral and spiritual terrors, but here the main agents were uglybirds, or snakes, or crocodiles – especially the last. The cursed crocodilebecame to me the object of more horror than almost all the rest. I wascompelled to live with him, and (as was always the case almost in mydreams) for centuries. I escaped sometimes, and found myself in Chinesehouses with cane tables, etc. All the feet of the tables, sofas, etc., soon

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became instinct with life. The abominable head of the crocodile, and hisleering eyes, looked out at me, multiplied into a thousand repetitions – andI stood loathing and fascinated. And so often did this hideous reptile hauntmy dreams, that many times the very same dream was broken up in thevery same way: I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear everythingwhen I am sleeping), and instantly I awoke.

It was broad noon, and my children were standing, hand in hand, at mybedside, come to show me their coloured shoes or new frocks, or to let mesee them dressed for going out. I protest that so awful was the transitionfrom the damned crocodile and the other unutterable monsters andabortions of my dreams to the sight of innocent human natures and ofinfancy, that, in the mighty and sudden revulsion of mind, I wept, andcould not forbear it, as I kissed their faces.

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George Gordon, Lord Byron(1788–1824)

from English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. A Satire

Oh! SOUTHEY, SOUTHEY! cease thy varied song!A Bard may chaunt too often, and too long:As thou art strong in verse, in mercy spare!A fourth, alas! were more than we could bear.But if, in spite of all the world can say,Thou still wilt verseward plod thy weary way;If still in Berkeley-Ballads most uncivil,Thou wilt devote old women to the devil,The babe unborn thy dread intent may rue:‘God help thee’, SOUTHEY, and thy readers too.

Next comes the dull disciple of thy school,That mild apostate from poetic rule,The simple WORDSWORTH, framer of a layAs soft as evening in his favourite May;Who warns his friend ‘to shake off toil and trouble,And quit his books, for fear of growing double’;Who, both by precept and example, showsThat prose is verse, and verse is merely prose,Convincing all by demonstration plain,Poetic souls delight in prose insane;And Christmas stories tortured into rhyme,Contain the essence of the true sublime:Thus when he tells the tale of Betty Foy,The idiot mother of ‘an idiot Boy’;A moon-struck silly lad who lost his way,And, like his bard, confounded night with day,So close on each pathetic part he dwells,And each adventure so sublimely tells,That all who view the ‘idiot in his glory’,Conceive the Bard the hero of the story.

Shall gentle COLERIDGE pass unnoticed here,To turgid ode, and tumid stanza dear?Though themes of innocence amuse him best,Yet still obscurity’s a welcome guest.If inspiration should her aid refuse,To him who takes a Pixy for a Muse, 260Yet none in lofty numbers can surpassThe bard who soars to elegize an ass:So well the subject suits his noble mind,He brays the Laureat of the long-ear’d kind!

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66 GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, A Romaunt

CANTO II

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To sit on rocks, to muse o’er flood and fell,To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene,Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell,And mortal foot hath ne’er, or rarely been;To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,With the wild flock that never needs a fold;Alone o’er steeps and foaming falls to lean;This is not solitude; ’tis but to hold

Converse with Nature’s charms, and view her stores unroll’d.

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But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,And roam along, the world’s tir’d denizen,With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!None that, with kindred consciousness endued,If we were not, would seem to smile the lessOf all that flatter’d, follow’d, sought and sued;

This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!

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More blest the life of godly Eremite,Such as on lonely Athos may be seen,Watching at Eve upon the giant height,That looks o’er waves so blue, skies so serene,That he who there at such an hour hath beenWill wistful linger on that hallow’d spot;Then slowly tear him from the ’witching scene,Sigh forth one wish that such had been his lot,

Then turn to hate a world he had almost forgot.

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Pass we the long, unvarying course, the trackOft trod, that never leaves a trace behind;Pass we the calm, the gale, the change, the tack,And each well known caprice of wave and wind;Pass we the joys and sorrows sailors find,Coop’d in their winged sea-girt citadel;The foul, the fair, the contrary, the kind,As breezes rise and fall and billows swell,

Till on some jocund morn – lo, land! and all is well.

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FROM CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE, A ROMAUNT 67

CANTO III

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Secure in guarded coldness, he had mix’dAgain in fancied safety with his kind,And deem’d his spirit now so firmly fix’dAnd sheath’d with an invulnerable mind,That, if no joy, no sorrow lurk’d behind;And he, as one, might midst the many standUnheeded, searching through the crowd to findFit speculation! such as in strange land

He found in wonder-works of God and Nature’s hand.

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But who can view the ripened rose, nor seekTo wear it? who can curiously beholdThe smoothness and the sheen of beauty’s cheek,Nor feel the heart can never all grow old?Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfoldThe star which rises o’er her steep, nor climb?Harold, once more within the vortex, roll’dOn with the giddy circle, chasing Time,

Yet with a nobler aim than in his youth’s fond prime.

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But soon he knew himself the most unfitOf men to herd with Man; with whom he heldLittle in common; untaught to submitHis thoughts to others, though his soul was quell’dIn youth by his own thoughts; still uncompell’d,He would not yield dominion of his mindTo spirits against whom his own rebell’d;Proud though in desolation; which could find

A life within itself, to breathe without mankind.

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Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends;Where roll’d the ocean, thereon was his home;Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends,He had the passion and the power to roam;The desert, forest, cavern, breaker’s foam,Were unto him companionship; they spakeA mutual language, clearer than the tomeOf his land’s tongue, which he would oft forsake

For Nature’s pages glass’d by sunbeams on the lake.

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Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars,Till he had peopled them with beings brightAs their own beams; and earth, and earth-born jars,And human frailties, were forgotten quite:Could he have kept his spirit to that flightHe had been happy; but this clay will sinkIts spark immortal, envying it the lightTo which it mounts, as if to break the link

That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink.

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But in Man’s dwellings he became a thingRestless and worn, and stern and wearisome,Droop’d as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing,To whom the boundless air alone were home:Then came his fit again, which to o’ercome,As eagerly the barr’d-up bird will beatHis breast and beak against his wiry domeTill the blood tinge his plumage, so the heat

Of his impeded soul would through his bosom eat.

CANTO IV

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And here the buzz of eager nations ran,In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause,As man was slaughtered by his fellow man.And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but becauseSuch were the bloody Circus’ genial laws,And the imperial pleasure. – Wherefore not?What matters where we fall to fill the mawsOf worms – on battle-plains or listed spot?

Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot.

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I see before me the Gladiator lie:He leans upon his hand – his manly browConsents to death, but conquers agony,And his drooped head sinks gradually low –

And through his side the last drops, ebbing slowFrom the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,Like the first of a thunder-shower; and nowThe arena swims around him – he is gone,

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail’d the wretch whowon.

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He heard it, but he heeded not – his eyesWere with his heart, and that was far away;He reck’d not of the life he lost nor prize,But where his rude hut by the Danube layThere were his young barbarians all at play,There was their Dacian mother – he, their sire,Butcher’d to make a Roman holiday –

All this rush’d with his blood – Shall he expireAnd unavenged? – Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!

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But here, where Murder breathed her bloody stream;And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways,And roar’d or murmured like a mountain streamDashing or winding as its torrent strays;Here, where the Roman million’s blame or praiseWas death or life, the playthings of a crowd,My voice sounds much – and fall the stars’ faint raysOn the arena void – seats crush’d – walls bow’d –

And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.

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A ruin – yet what ruin! from its massWalls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared;Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye passAnd marvel where the spoil could have appeared.Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared?Alas! developed, opens the decay,When the colossal fabric’s form is neared:It will not bear the brightness of the day,

Which streams too much on all years, man, have reft away.

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But when the rising moon begins to climbIts topmost arch, and gently pauses there;When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,And the low night-breeze waves along the airThe garland-forest, which the grey walls wear,Like laurels on the bald first Caesar’s head;When the light shines serene but doth not glare,

[...]

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There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,There is a rapture on the lonely shore,There is society, where none intrudes,By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:I love not Man the less, but Nature more,

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From these our interviews, in which I stealFrom all I may be, or have been before,To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne’er express, yet can not all conceal.

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Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean – roll!Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;Man marks the earth with ruin – his controlStops with the shore; – upon the watery plainThe wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remainA shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,

Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown.

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His steps are not upon thy paths, – thy fieldsAre not a spoil for him, – thou dost ariseAnd shake him from thee; the vile strength he wieldsFor earth’s destruction thou dost all despise,Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,And send’st him, shivering in thy playful sprayAnd howling, to his Gods, where haply liesHis petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth: – there let him lay.

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The armaments which thunderstrike the wallsOf rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,And monarchs tremble in their capitals,The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs makeTheir clay creator the vain title takeOf lord of thee, and arbiter of war;These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar

Alike the Armada’s pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

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Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee –

Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?Thy waters washed them power while they were free,And many a tyrant since; their shores obeyThe stranger, slave, or savage; their decayHas dried up realms to desarts: – not so thou,Unchangeable save to thy wild waves’ play –

Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow –

Such as creation’s dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

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Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty’s formGlasses itself in tempests; in all time,Calm or convuls’d – in breeze, or gale, or storm,Icing the pole, or in the torrid climeDark-heaving; – boundless, endless, and sublime –

The image of Eternity – the throneOf the Invisible; even from out thy slimeThe monsters of the deep are made; each zone

Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

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And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joyOf youthful sports was on thy breast to beBorne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boyI wantoned with thy breakers – they to meWere a delight; and if the freshening seaMade them a terror – ’twas a pleasing fear,For I was as it were a child of thee,And trusted to thy billows far and near,

And laid my hand upon thy mane – as I do here.

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My task is done – my song hath ceased – my themeHas died into an echo; it is fitThe spell should break of this protracted dream.The torch shall be extinguish’d which hath litMy midnight lamp – and what is writ, is writ, –Would it were worthier! but I am not nowThat which I have been – and my visions flitLess palpably before me – and the glow

Which in my spirit dwelt, is fluttering, faint, and low.

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Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been –

A sound which makes us linger; – yet – farewell!Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the sceneWhich is his last, if in your memories dwellA thought which once was his, if on ye swellA single recollection, not in vainHe wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell;Farewell! with him alone may rest the pain,

If such there were – with you, the moral of his strain!

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from Hebrew Melodies

She Walks in Beauty

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She walks in beauty, like the nightOf cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and brightMeet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellow’d to that tender lightWhich heaven to gaudy day denies.

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One shade the more, one ray the less,Had half impair’d the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,Or softly lightens o’er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet expressHow pure, how dear their dwelling place.

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And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,A heart whose love is innocent!

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FROM HEBREW MELODIES 73

Percy Bysshe Shelley(1792–1822)

Alastoror, The Spirit of Solitude

Preface

THE poem entitled Alastor may be considered as allegorical of one of themost interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a youth ofuncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imaginationinflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent andmajestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He drinks deep of thefountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magnificence and beautyof the external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions,and affords to their modifications a variety not to be exhausted. So long asit is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite andunmeasured, he is joyous, and tranquil, and self-possessed. But the periodarrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenlyawakened and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself.He images to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant withspeculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in whichhe embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or wise, orbeautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover could depicture.The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functions of sense, have theirrespective requisitions on the sympathy of corresponding powers in otherhuman beings. The Poet is represented as uniting these requisitions, andattaching them to a single image. He seeks in vain for a prototype of hisconception. Blasted by his disappointment, he descends to an untimelygrave.

The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The Poet’s self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible passionpursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Power which strikes the luminaries ofthe world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to tooexquisite a perception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonousdecay those meaner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their destiny ismore abject and inglorious as their delinquency is more contemptible andpernicious. They who, deluded by no generous error, instigated by nosacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition,loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keepaloof from sympathies with their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy normourning with human grief; these, and such as they, have theirapportioned curse. They languish, because none feel with them theircommon nature. They are morally dead. They are neither friends, norlovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of theircountry. Among those who attempt to exist without human sympathy, the

74 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

pure and tender-hearted perish through the intensity and passion of theirsearch after its communities, when the vacancy of their spirit suddenlymakes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeingmultitudes who constitute, together with their own, the lasting misery andloneliness of the world. Those who love not their fellow-beings liveunfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.

‘The good die first,And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust,Burn to the socket!’

December 14, 1815

Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare.

– Confess. St August.

EARTH, ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood!If our great Mother has imbued my soulWith aught of natural piety to feelYour love, and recompense the boon with mine;If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,With sunset and its gorgeous ministers,And solemn midnight’s tingling silentness;If autumn’s hollow sighs in the sere wood,And winter robing with pure snow and crownsOf starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs;If spring’s voluptuous pantings when she breathesHer first sweet kisses, have been dear to me;If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beastI consciously have injured, but still lovedAnd cherished these my kindred; then forgiveThis boast, beloved brethren, and withdrawNo portion of your wonted favour now!

Mother of this unfathomable world!Favour my solemn song, for I have lovedThee ever, and thee only; I have watchedThy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,And my heart ever gazes, on the depthOf thy deep mysteries. I have made my bedIn charnels and on coffins, where black deathKeeps record of the trophies won from thee,Hoping to still these obstinate questioningsOf thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghostThy messenger, to render up the taleOf what we are. In lone and silent hours,When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,Like an inspired and desperate alchymistStaking his very life on some dark hope,Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks

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ALASTOR 75

With my most innocent love, until strange tearsUniting with those breathless kisses, madeSuch magic as compels the charmèd nightTo render up thy charge: ... and, though ne’er yetThou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,Enough from incommunicable dream,And twilight phantasms, and deep noon-day thought,Has shone within me, that serenely nowAnd moveless, as a long-forgotten lyreSuspended in the solitary domeOf some mysterious and deserted fane,I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strainMay modulate with murmurs of the air,And motions of the forests and the sea,And voice of living beings, and woven hymnsOf night and day, and the deep heart of man.

There was a Poet whose untimely tombNo human hands with pious reverence reared,But the charmed eddies of autumnal windsBuilt o’er his mouldering bones a pyramidOf mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness: –A lovely youth, – no mourning maiden deckedWith weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath,The lone couch of his everlasting sleep: –Gentle, and brave, and generous, – no lorn bardBreathed o’er his dark fate one melodious sigh:He lived, he died, he sung, in solitude.Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes,And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pinedAnd wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn,And Silence, too enamoured of that voice,Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.

By solemn vision, and bright silver dream,His infancy was nurtured. Every sightAnd sound from the vast earth and ambient air,Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.The fountains of divine philosophyFled not his thirsting lips, and all of great,Or good, or lovely, which the sacred pastIn truth or fable consecrates, he feltAnd knew. When early youth had passed, he leftHis cold fireside and alienated homeTo seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.Many a wide waste and tangled wildernessHas lured his fearless steps; and he has boughtWith his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,His rest and food. Nature’s most secret steps

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He like her shadow has pursued, where’erThe red volcano overcanopiesIts fields of snow and pinnacles of iceWith burning smoke, or where bitumen lakesOn black bare pointed islets ever beatWith sluggish surge, or where the secret cavesRugged and dark, winding among the springsOf fire and poison, inaccessibleTo avarice or pride, their starry domesOf diamond and of gold expand aboveNumberless and immeasurable halls,Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrinesOf pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.Nor had that scene of ampler majestyThan gems or gold, the varying roof of heavenAnd the green earth lost in his heart its claimsTo love and wonder; he would linger longIn lonesome vales, making the wild his home,Until the doves and squirrels would partakeFrom his innocuous hand his bloodless food,Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks,And the wild antelope, that starts whene’erThe dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspendHer timid steps to gaze upon a formMore graceful than her own.

His wandering stepObedient to high thoughts, has visitedThe awful ruins of the days of old:Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the wasteWhere stood Jerusalem, the fallen towersOf Babylon, the eternal pyramids,Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe’er of strangeSculptured on alabaster obelisk,Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphynx,Dark Óthiopia in her desert hillsConceals. Among the ruined temples there,Stupendous columns, and wild imagesOf more than man, where marble daemons watchThe Zodiac’s brazen mystery, and dead menHang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,He lingered, poring on memorialsOf the world’s youth, through the long burning dayGazed on those speechless shapes, nor, when the moonFilled the mysterious halls with floating shadesSuspended he that task, but ever gazedAnd gazed, till meaning on his vacant mindFlashed like strong inspiration, and he sawThe thrilling secrets of the birth of time.

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ALASTOR 77

Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food,Her daily portion, from her father’s tent,And spread her matting for his couch, and stoleFrom duties and repose to tend his steps: –Enamoured, yet not daring for deep aweTo speak her love: – and watched his nightly sleep,Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lipsParted in slumber, whence the regular breathOf innocent dreams arose: then, when red mornMade paler the pale moon, to her cold homeWildered, and wan, and panting, she returned.

The Poet wandering on, through ArabieAnd Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,And o’er the aerial mountains which pour downIndus and Oxus from their icy caves,In joy and exultation held his way;Till in the vale of Cashmire, far withinIts loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwineBeneath the hollow rocks a natural bower,Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretchedHis languid limbs. A vision on his sleepThere came, a dream of hopes that never yetHad flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veilèd maidSate near him, talking in low solemn tones.Her voice was like the voice of his own soulHeard in the calm of thought; its music long,Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, heldHis inmost sense suspended in its webOf many-coloured woof and shifting hues.Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,And lofty hopes of divine liberty,Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,Herself a poet. Soon the solemn moodOf her pure mind kindled through all her frameA permeating fire: wild numbers thenShe raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobsSubdued by its own pathos: her fair handsWere bare alone, sweeping from some strange harpStrange symphony, and in their branching veinsThe eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.The beating of her heart was heard to fillThe pauses of her music, and her breathTumultuously accorded with those fitsOf intermitted song. ...

Roused by the shock he started from his trance –

The cold white light of morning, the blue moonLow in the west, the clear and garish hills,The distinct valley and the vacant woods,

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Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fledThe hues of heaven that canopied his bowerOf yesternight? The sounds that soothed his sleep,The mystery and the majesty of Earth,The joy, the exultation? His wan eyesGaze on the empty scene as vacantlyAs ocean’s moon looks on the moon in heaven.The spirit of sweet human love has sentA vision to the sleep of him who spurnedHer choicest gifts. He eagerly pursuesBeyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade;He overleaps the bounds. Alas! Alas!Were limbs, and breath, and being intertwinedThus treacherously? Lost, lost, for ever lost,In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep,That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of deathConduct to thy mysterious paradise,O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds,And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake,Lead only to a black and watery depth,While death’s blue vault, with loathliest vapours hung,Where every shade which the foul grave exhalesHides its dead eye from the detested day,Conducts, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms?This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart,The insatiate hope which it awakened, stungHis brain even like despair.

While daylight heldThe sky, the Poet kept mute conferenceWith his still soul. At night the passion came,Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream,And shook him from his rest, and led him forthInto the darkness. – As an eagle graspedIn folds of the green serpent, feels her breastBurn with the poison, and precipitatesThrough night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud,Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flightO’er the wide aëry wilderness: thus drivenBy the bright shadow of that lovely dream,Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night,Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells,Startling with careless step the moonlight snake,He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight,Shedding the mockery of its vital huesUpon his cheek of death. He wandered onTill vast Aornos seen from Petra’s steepHung o’er the low horizon like a cloud;Through Balk, and where the desolated tombsOf Parthian kings scatter to every wind

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ALASTOR 79

Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on,Day after day a weary waste of hours,Bearing within his life the brooding careThat ever fed on its decaying flame.And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hairSered by the autumn of strange sufferingSung dirges in the wind; his listless handHung like dead bone within its withered skin;Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shoneAs in a furnace burning secretlyFrom his dark eyes alone. The cottagers,Who ministered with human charityHis human wants, beheld with wondering aweTheir fleeting visitant. The mountaineer,Encountering on some dizzy precipiceThat spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of windWith lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feetDisturbing not the drifted snow, had pausedIn its career: the infant would concealHis troubled visage in his mother’s robeIn terror at the glare of those wild eyes,To remember their strange light in many a dreamOf after-times; but youthful maidens, taughtBy nature, would interpret half the woeThat wasted him, would call him with false namesBrother, and friend, would press his pallid handAt parting, and watch, dim through tears, the pathOf his departure from their father’s door.

At length upon the lone Chorasmian shoreHe paused, a wide and melancholy wasteOf putrid marshes. A strong impulse urgedHis steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there,Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds.It rose as he approached, and with strong wingsScaling the upward sky, bent its bright courseHigh over the immeasurable main.His eyes pursued its flight. – ‘Thou hast a home,Beautiful bird; thou voyagest to thine home,Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neckWith thine, and welcome thy return with eyesBright in the lustre of their own fond joy.And what am I that I should linger here,With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes,Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attunedTo beauty, wasting these surpassing powersIn the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heavenThat echoes not my thoughts?’ A gloomy smileOf desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips.

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For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlesslyIts precious charge, and silent death exposed,Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure,With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.

Startled by his own thoughts he looked around.There was no fair fiend near him, not a sightOr sound of awe but in his own deep mind.A little shallop floating near the shoreCaught the impatient wandering of his gaze.It had been long abandoned, for its sidesGaped wide with many a rift, and its frail jointsSwayed with the undulations of the tide.A restless impulse urged him to embarkAnd meet lone Death on the drear ocean’s waste;For well he knew that mighty Shadow lovesThe slimy caverns of the populous deep.

The day was fair and sunny, sea and skyDrank its inspiring radiance, and the windSwept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves.Following his eager soul, the wandererLeaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloftOn the bare mast, and took his lonely seat,And felt the boat speed o’er the tranquil seaLike a torn cloud before the hurricane.

As one that in a silver vision floatsObedient to the sweep of odorous windsUpon resplendent clouds, so rapidlyAlong the dark and ruffled waters fledThe straining boat. – A whirlwind swept it on,With fierce gusts and precipitating force,Through the white ridges of the chafèd sea.The waves arose. Higher and higher stillTheir fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest’s scourgeLike serpents struggling in a vulture’s grasp.Calm and rejoicing in the fearful warOf wave ruining on wave, and blast on blastDescending, and black flood on whirlpool drivenWith dark obliterating course, he sate:As if their genii were the ministersAppointed to conduct him to the lightOf those beloved eyes, the Poet sateHolding the steady helm. Evening came on,The beams of sunset hung their rainbow huesHigh ’mid the shifting domes of sheeted sprayThat canopied his path o’er the waste deep;Twilight, ascending slowly from the east,Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locksO’er the fair front and radiant eyes of day;

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ALASTOR 81

Night followed, clad with stars. On every sideMore horribly the multitudinous streamsOf ocean’s mountainous waste to mutual warRushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mockThe calm and spangled sky. The little boatStill fled before the storm; still fled, like foamDown the steep cataract of a wintry river;Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave;Now leaving far behind the bursting massThat fell, convulsing ocean: safely fled –

As if that frail and wasted human form,Had been an elemental god.

At midnightThe moon arose: and lo! the ethereal cliffsOf Caucasus, whose icy summits shoneAmong the stars like sunlight, and aroundWhose caverned base the whirlpools and the wavesBursting and eddying irresistiblyRage and resound for ever. – Who shall save? –The boat fled on, – the boiling torrent drove, –The crags closed round with black and jaggèd arms,The shattered mountain overhung the sea,And faster still, beyond all human speed,Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave,The little boat was driven. A cavern thereYawned, and amid its slant and winding depthsIngulfed the rushing sea. The boat fled onWith unrelaxing speed. – ‘Vision and Love!’The Poet cried aloud, ‘I have beheldThe path of thy departure. Sleep and deathShall not divide us long!’

The boat pursuedThe windings of the cavern. Daylight shoneAt length upon that gloomy river’s flow;Now, where the fiercest war among the wavesIs calm, on the unfathomable streamThe boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, riven,Exposed those black depths to the azure sky,Ere yet the flood’s enormous volume fellEven to the base of Caucasus, with soundThat shook the everlasting rocks, the massFilled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm;Stair above stair the eddying waters rose,Circling immeasurably fast, and lavedWith alternating dash the gnarlèd rootsOf mighty trees, that stretched their giant armsIn darkness over it. I’ the midst was left,Reflecting, yet distorting every cloud,

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A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm.Seized by the sway of the ascending stream,With dizzy swiftness, round, and round, and round,Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose,Till on the verge of the extremest curve,Where, through an opening of the rocky bank,The waters overflow, and a smooth spotOf glassy quiet mid those battling tidesIs left, the boat paused shuddering. – Shall it sinkDown the abyss? Shall the reverting stressOf that resistless gulf embosom it?Now shall it fall? – A wandering stream of wind,Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail,And, lo! with gentle motion, between banksOf mossy slope, and on a placid stream,Beneath a woven grove it sails, and, hark!The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar,With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods.Where the embowering trees recede, and leaveA little space of green expanse, the coveIs closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowersFor ever gaze on their own drooping eyes,Reflected in the crystal calm. The waveOf the boat’s motion marred their pensive task,Which nought but vagrant bird, or wanton wind,Or falling spear-grass, or their own decayHad e’er disturbed before. The Poet longedTo deck with their bright hues his withered hair,But on his heart its solitude returned,And he forbore. Not the strong impulse hidIn those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frameHad yet performed its ministry: it hungUpon his life, as lightning in a cloudGleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floodsOf night close over it.

The noonday sunNow shone upon the forest, one vast massOf mingling shade, whose brown magnificenceA narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves,Scooped in the dark base of their aëry rocksMocking its moans, respond and roar for ever.The meeting boughs and implicated leavesWove twilight o’er the Poet’s path, as ledBy love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death,He sought in Nature’s dearest haunt, some bank,Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More darkAnd dark the shades accumulate. The oak,Expanding its immense and knotty arms,Embraces the light beech. The pyramids

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ALASTOR 83

Of the tall cedar overarching, frameMost solemn domes within, and far below,Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,The ash and the acacia floating hangTremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothedIn rainbow and in fire, the parasites,Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow aroundThe grey trunks, and, as gamesome infants’ eyes,With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles,Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love,These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughsUniting their close union; the woven leavesMake net-work of the dark blue light of day,And the night’s noontide clearness, mutableAs shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawnsBeneath these canopies extend their swells,Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with bloomsMinute yet beautiful. One darkest glenSends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with jasmine,A soul-dissolving odour, to inviteTo some more lovely mystery. Through the dell,Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keepTheir noonday watch, and sail among the shades,Like vaporous shapes half seen; beyond, a well,Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave,Images all the woven boughs above,And each depending leaf, and every speckOf azure sky, darting between their chasms;Nor aught else in the liquid mirror lavesIts portraiture, but some inconstant starBetween one foliaged lattice twinkling fair,Or, painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon,Or gorgeous insect floating motionless,Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wingsHave spread their glories to the gaze of noon.

Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheldTheir own wan light through the reflected linesOf his thin hair, distinct in the dark depthOf that still fountain; as the human heart,Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave,Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heardThe motion of the leaves, the grass that sprungStartled and glanced and trembled even to feelAn unaccustomed presence, and the soundOf the sweet brook that from the secret springsOf that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemedTo stand beside him – clothed in no bright robesOf shadowy silver or enshrining light,Borrowed from aught the visible world affords

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Of grace, or majesty, or mystery; –But, undulating woods, and silent well,And leaping rivulet, and evening gloomNow deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming,Held commune with him, as if he and itWere all that was, – only ... when his regardWas raised by intense pensiveness, ... two eyes,Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought,And seemed with their serene and azure smilesTo beckon him.

Obedient to the lightThat shone within his soul, he went, pursuingThe windings of the dell. – The rivuletWanton and wild, through many a green ravineBeneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fellAmong the moss with hollow harmonyDark and profound. Now on the polished stonesIt danced; like childhood laughing as it went:Then, through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept,Reflecting every herb and drooping budThat overhung its quietness. – ‘O stream!Whose source is inaccessibly profound,Whither do thy mysterious waters tend?Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness,Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulfs,Thy searchless fountain, and invisible courseHave each their type in me: and the wide sky,And measureless ocean may declare as soonWhat oozy cavern or what wandering cloudContains thy waters, as the universeTell where these living thoughts reside, when stretchedUpon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall wasteI’ the passing wind!’

Beside the grassy shoreOf the small stream he went; he did impressOn the green moss his tremulous step, that caughtStrong shuddering from his burning limbs. As oneRoused by some joyous madness from the couchOf fever, he did move; yet, not like him,Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flameOf his frail exultation shall be spent,He must descend. With rapid steps he wentBeneath the shade of trees, beside the flowOf the wild babbling rivulet; and nowThe forest’s solemn canopies were changedFor the uniform and lightsome evening sky.Grey rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmedThe struggling brook: tall spires of windlestrae

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ALASTOR 85

Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope,And nought but gnarled roots of ancient pinesBranchless and blasted, clenched with grasping rootsThe unwilling soil. A gradual change was here,Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away,The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thinAnd white, and where irradiate dewy eyesHad shone, gleam stony orbs: – so from his stepsBright flowers departed, and the beautiful shadeOf the green groves, with all their odorous windsAnd musical motions. Calm, he still pursuedThe stream, that with a larger volume nowRolled through the labyrinthine dell; and thereFretted a path through its descending curvesWith its wintry speed. On every side now roseRocks, which, in unimaginable forms,Lifted their black and barren pinnaclesIn the light of evening, and, its precipiceObscuring the ravine, disclosed above,Mid toppling stones, black gulfs and yawning caves,Whose windings gave ten thousand various tonguesTo the loud stream. Lo! where the pass expandsIts stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks,And seems, with its accumulated crags,To overhang the world: for wide expandBeneath the wan stars and descending moonIslanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams,Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloomOf leaden-coloured even, and fiery hillsMingling their flames with twilight, on the vergeOf the remote horizon. The near scene,In naked and severe simplicity,Made contrast with the universe. A pine,Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancyIts swinging boughs, to each inconstant blastYielding one only response, at each pauseIn most familiar cadence, with the howlThe thunder and the hiss of homeless streamsMingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river,Foaming and hurrying o’er its rugged path,Fell into that immeasurable voidScattering its waters to the passing winds.

Yet the grey precipice and solemn pineAnd torrent, were not all; – one silent nookWas there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain,Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks,It overlooked in its serenityThe dark earth, and the bending vault of stars.It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile

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Even in the lap of horror. Ivy claspedThe fissured stones with its entwining arms,And did embower with leaves for ever green,And berries dark, the smooth and even spaceOf its inviolated floor, and hereThe children of the autumnal whirlwind bore,In wanton sport, those bright leaves, whose decay,Red, yellow, or ethereally pale,Rivals the pride of summer. ’Tis the hauntOf every gentle wind, whose breath can teachThe wilds to love tranquillity. One step,One human step alone, has ever brokenThe stillness of its solitude: – one voiceAlone inspired its echoes; – even that voiceWhich hither came, floating among the winds,And led the loveliest among human formsTo make their wild haunts the depositoryOf all the grace and beauty that enduedIts motions, render up its majesty,Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm,And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould,Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss,Commit the colours of that varying cheek,That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.

The dim and hornèd moon hung low, and pouredA sea of lustre on the horizon’s vergeThat overflowed its mountains. Yellow mistFilled the unbounded atmosphere, and drankWan moonlight even to fulness: not a starShone, not a sound was heard; the very winds,Danger’s grim playmates, on that precipiceSlept, clasped in his embrace. – O, storm of death!Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night:And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, stillGuiding its irresistible careerIn thy devastating omnipotence,Art king of this frail world, from the red fieldOf slaughter, from the reeking hospital,The patriot’s sacred couch, the snowy bedOf innocence, the scaffold and the throne,A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin callsHis brother Death. A rare and regal preyHe hath prepared, prowling around the world;Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and menGo to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrineThe unheeded tribute of a broken heart.

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ALASTOR 87

When on the threshold of the green recessThe wanderer’s footsteps fell, he knew that deathWas on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,Did he resign his high and holy soulTo images of the majestic past,That paused within his passive being now,Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breatheThrough some dim latticed chamber. He did placeHis pale lean hand upon the rugged trunkOf the old pine. Upon an ivied stoneReclined his languid head, his limbs did rest,Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brinkOf that obscurest chasm; – and thus he lay,Surrendering to their final impulsesThe hovering powers of life. Hope and despair,The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fearMarred his repose, the influxes of sense,And his own being unalloyed by pain,Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fedThe stream of thought, till he lay breathing thereAt peace, and faintly smiling: – his last sightWas the great moon, which o’er the western lineOf the wide world her mighty horn suspended,With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemedTo mingle. Now upon the jaggèd hillsIt rests, and still as the divided frameOf the vast meteor sunk, the Poet’s blood,That ever beat in mystic sympathyWith nature’s ebb and flow, grew feebler still:And when two lessening points of light aloneGleamed through the darkness, the alternate gaspOf his faint respiration scarce did stirThe stagnate night: – till the minutest rayWas quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.It paused – it fluttered. But when heaven remainedUtterly black, the murky shades involvedAn image, silent, cold, and motionless,As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.Even as a vapour fed with golden beamsThat ministered on sunlight, ere the westEclipses it, was now that wondrous frame –

No sense, no motion, no divinity –

A fragile lute, on whose harmonious stringsThe breath of heaven did wander – a bright streamOnce fed with many-voicèd waves – a dreamOf youth, which night and time have quenched for ever,Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.

O, for Medea’s wondrous alchemy,Which wheresoe’er it fell made the earth gleam

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With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhaleFrom vernal blooms fresh fragrance! O, that God,Profuse of poisons, would concede the chaliceWhich but one living man has drained, who now,Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feelsNo proud exemption in the blighting curseHe bears, over the world wanders for ever,Lone as incarnate death! O, that the dreamOf dark magician in his visioned cave,Raking the cinders of a crucibleFor life and power, even when his feeble handShakes in its last decay, were the true lawOf this so lovely world! But thou art fledLike some frail exhalation; which the dawnRobes in its golden beams, – ah! thou hast fled!The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,The child of grace and genius. Heartless thingsAre done and said i’ the world, and many wormsAnd beasts and men live on, and mighty EarthFrom sea and mountain, city and wilderness,In vesper low or joyous orison,Lifts still its solemn voice: – but thou art fled –

Thou canst no longer know or love the shapesOf this phantasmal scene, who have to theeBeen purest ministers, who are, alas!Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lipsSo sweet even in their silence, on those eyesThat image sleep in death, upon that formYet safe from the worm’s outrage, let no tearBe shed – not even in thought. Nor, when those huesAre gone, and those divinest lineaments,Worn by the senseless wind, shall live aloneIn the frail pauses of this simple strain,Let not high verse, mourning the memoryOf that which is no more, or painting’s woeOr sculpture, speak in feeble imageryTheir own cold powers. Art and eloquence,And all the shows o’ the world are frail and vainTo weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.It is a woe too ‘deep for tears,’ when allIs reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,Whose light adorned the world around it, leavesThose who remain behind, not sobs or groans,The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;But pale despair and cold tranquillity,Nature’s vast frame, the web of human things,Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.

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ALASTOR 89

To Wordsworth

POET of Nature, thou hast wept to knowThat things depart which never may return:Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow,Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.These common woes I feel. One loss is mineWhich thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shineOn some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stoodAbove the blind and battling multitude:In honoured poverty thy voice did weaveSongs consecrate to truth and liberty, –Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

Mont Blanc

LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI

I

THE everlasting universe of thingsFlows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,Now dark – now glittering – now reflecting gloom –

Now lending splendour, where from secret springsThe source of human thought its tribute bringsOf waters, – with a sound but half its own,Such as a feeble brook will oft assumeIn the wild woods, among the mountains lone,Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,Where woods and winds contend, and a vast riverOver its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

II

Thus thou, Ravine of Arve – dark, deep Ravine –

Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale,Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sailFast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene,Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes downFrom the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,Bursting through these dark mountains like the flameOf lightning through the tempest; – thou dost lie,Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,Children of elder time, in whose devotionThe chainless winds still come and ever cameTo drink their odours, and their mighty swingingTo hear – an old and solemn harmony;Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweepOf the aethereal waterfall, whose veilRobes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep

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Which when the voices of the desert failWraps all in its own deep eternity; –Thy caverns echoing to the Arve’s commotion,A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame;Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion,Thou art the path of that unresting sound –

Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on theeI seem as in a trance sublime and strangeTo muse on my own separate fantasy,My own, my human mind, which passivelyNow renders and receives fast influencings,Holding an unremitting interchangeWith the clear universe of things around;One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wingsNow float above thy darkness, and now restWhere that or thou art no unbidden guest,In the still cave of the witch Poesy,Seeking among the shadows that pass byGhosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,Some phantom, some faint image; till the breastFrom which they fled recalls them, thou art there!

III

Some say that gleams of a remoter worldVisit the soul in sleep, – that death is slumber,And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumberOf those who wake and live. – I look on high;Has some unknown omnipotence unfurledThe veil of life and death? or do I lieIn dream, and does the mightier world of sleepSpread far around and inaccessiblyIts circles? For the very spirit fails,Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steepThat vanishes among the viewless gales!Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,Mont Blanc appears, – still, snowy, and serene –

Its subject mountains their unearthly formsPile around it, ice and rock; broad vales betweenOf frozen floods, unfathomable deeps,Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spreadAnd wind among the accumulated steeps;A desert peopled by the storms alone,Save when the eagle brings some hunter’s bone,And the wolf tracks her there – how hideouslyIts shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high,Ghastly, and scarred, and riven. – Is this the sceneWhere the old Earthquake-daemon taught her youngRuin? Were these their toys? or did a seaOf fire envelop once this silent snow?

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None can reply – all seems eternal now.The wilderness has a mysterious tongueWhich teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,So solemn, so serene, that man may be,But for such faith, with nature reconciled;Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repealLarge codes of fraud and woe; not understoodBy all, but which the wise, and great, and goodInterpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.

IV

The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,Ocean, and all the living things that dwellWithin the daedal earth; lightning, and rain,Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane,The torpor of the year when feeble dreamsVisit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleepHolds every future leaf and flower; – the boundWith which from that detested trance they leap;The works and ways of man, their death and birth,And that of him and all that his may be;All things that move and breathe with toil and soundAre born and die; revolve, subside, and swell.Power dwells apart in its tranquillity,Remote, serene, and inaccessible:And this, the naked countenance of earth,On which I gaze, even these primaeval mountainsTeach the adverting mind. The glaciers creepLike snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice,Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal powerHave piled: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,A city of death, distinct with many a towerAnd wall impregnable of beaming ice.Yet not a city, but a flood of ruinIs there, that from the boundaries of the skyRolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewingIts destined path, or in the mangled soilBranchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn downFrom yon remotest waste, have overthrownThe limits of the dead and living world,Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-placeOf insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoilTheir food and their retreat for ever gone,So much of life and joy is lost. The raceOf man flies far in dread; his work and dwellingVanish, like smoke before the tempest’s stream,And their place is not known. Below, vast cavesShine in the rushing torrents’ restless gleam,

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Which from those secret chasms in tumult wellingMeet in the vale, and one majestic River,The breath and blood of distant lands, for everRolls its loud waters to the ocean-waves,Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.

V

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high: – the power is there,The still and solemn power of many sights,And many sounds, and much of life and death.In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,In the lone glare of day, the snows descendUpon that Mountain; none beholds them there,Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,Or the star-beams dart through them: – Winds contendSilently there, and heap the snow with breathRapid and strong, but silently! Its homeThe voiceless lightning in these solitudesKeeps innocently, and like vapour broodsOver the snow. The secret Strength of thingsWhich governs thought, and to the infinite domeOf Heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,If to the human mind’s imaginingsSilence and solitude were vacancy?

Ozymandias

I MET a traveller from an antique landWho said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert ... Near them, on the sand,Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,Tell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:And on the pedestal these words appear:‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away.

Sonnet: England in 1819

AN old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, –Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flowThrough public scorn, – mud from a muddy spring, –Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,But leech-like to their fainting country cling,

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OZYMANDIAS 93

Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, –A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field, –An army, which liberticide and preyMakes as a two-edged sword to all who wield, –Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;Religion Christless, Godless – a book sealed;A Senate, – Time’s worst statute unrepealed. –Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom mayBurst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

The Mask of Anarchy

WRITTEN ON THE OCCASION OF THE MASSACRE AT MANCHESTER

I

As I lay asleep in ItalyThere came a voice from over the Sea,And with great power it forth led meTo walk in the visions of Poesy.

II

I met Murder on the way –

He had a mask like Castlereagh –

Very smooth he looked, yet grim;Seven blood-hounds followed him:

III

All were fat; and well they mightBe in admirable plight,For one by one, and two by two,He tossed them human hearts to chewWhich from his wide cloak he drew.

IV

Next came Fraud, and he had on,Like Eldon, an ermined gown;His big tears, for he wept well,Turned to mill-stones as they fell.

V

And the little children, whoRound his feet played to and fro,Thinking every tear a gem,Had their brains knocked out by them.

VI

Clothed with the Bible, as with light,And the shadows of the night,Like Sidmouth, next, HypocrisyOn a crocodile rode by.

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VII

And many more Destructions playedIn this ghastly masquerade,All disguised, even to the eyes,Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.

VIII

Last came Anarchy: he rodeOn a white horse, splashed with blood;He was pale even to the lips,Like Death in the Apocalypse.

IX

And he wore a kingly crown;And in his grasp a sceptre shone;On his brow this mark I saw –

‘I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!’

X

With a pace stately and fast,Over English land he passed,Trampling to a mire of bloodThe adoring multitude.

XI

And a mighty troop around,With their trampling shook the ground,Waving each a bloody sword,For the service of their Lord.

XII

And with glorious triumph, theyRode through England proud and gay,Drunk as with intoxicationOf the wine of desolation.

XIII

O’er fields and towns, from sea to sea,Passed the Pageant swift and free,Tearing up, and trampling down;Till they came to London town.

XIV

And each dweller, panic-stricken,Felt his heart with terror sickenHearing the tempestuous cryOf the triumph of Anarchy.

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XV

For with pomp to meet him came,Clothed in arms like blood and flame,The hired murderers, who did sing‘Thou art God, and Law, and King.

XVI

‘We have waited, weak and loneFor thy coming, Mighty One!Our purses are empty, our swords are cold,Give us glory, and blood, and gold.’

XVII

Lawyers and priests, a motley crowd,To the earth their pale brows bowed;Like a bad prayer not over loud,Whispering – ‘Thou art Law and God.’ –

XVIII

Then all cried with one accord,‘Thou art King, and God, and Lord;Anarchy, to thee we bow,Be thy name made holy now!’

XIX

And Anarchy, the Skeleton,Bowed and grinned to everyone,As well as if his educationHad cost ten millions to the nation.

XX

For he knew the PalacesOf our Kings were rightly his;His the sceptre, crown, and globe,And the gold-inwoven robe.

XXI

So he sent his slaves beforeTo seize upon the Bank and Tower,And was proceeding with intentTo meet his pensioned Parliament

XXII

When one fled past, a maniac maid,And her name was Hope, she said:But she looked more like Despair,And she cried out in the air:

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XXIII

‘My father Time is weak and grayWith waiting for a better day;See how idiot-like he stands,Fumbling with his palsied hands!

XXIV

‘He has had child after child,And the dust of death is piledOver every one but me –

Misery, oh, Misery!’

XXV

Then she lay down in the street,Right before the horses’ feet,Expecting, with a patient eye, tooMurder, Fraud, and Anarchy.

XXVI

When between her and her foesA mist, a light, an image rose,Small at first, and weak, and frailLike the vapour of a vale:

XXVII

Till as clouds grow on the blast,Like tower-crowned giants striding fast,And glare with lightnings as they fly,And speak in thunder to the sky,

XXVIII

It grew – a Shape arrayed in mailBrighter than the viper’s scale,And upborne on wings whose grainWas as the light of sunny rain.

XXIX

On its helm, seen far away,A planet, like the Morning’s, lay;And those plumes its light rained throughLike a shower of crimson dew.

XXX

With step as soft as wind it passedO’er the heads of men – so fastThat they knew the presence there,And looked, – but all was empty air.

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XXXI

As flowers beneath May’s footstep waken,As stars from Night’s loose hair are shaken,As waves arise when loud winds call,Thoughts sprung where’er that step did fall.

XXXII

And the prostrate multitudeLooked – and ankle-deep in blood,Hope, that maiden most serene,Was walking with a quiet mien:

XXXIII

And Anarchy, the ghastly birth,Lay dead earth upon the earth;The Horse of Death tameless as windFled, and with his hoofs did grindTo dust the murderers thronged behind.

XXXIV

A rushing light of clouds and splendour,A sense awakening and yet tenderWas heard and felt – and at its closeThese words of joy and fear arose

XXXV

As if their own indignant EarthWhich gave the sons of England birthHad felt their blood upon her brow,And shuddering with a mother’s throe

XXXVI

Had turnèd every drop of bloodBy which her face had been bedewedTo an accent unwithstood, –As if her heart had cried aloud:

XXXVII

‘Men of England, heirs of Glory,Heroes of unwritten story,Nurslings of one mighty Mother,Hopes of her, and one another;

XXXVIII

‘Rise like Lions after slumberIn unvanquishable number,Shake your chains to earth like dewWhich in sleep had fallen on you –

Ye are many – they are few.

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XXXIX

‘What is Freedom? – ye can tellThat which slavery is, too well –For its very name has grownTo an echo of your own.

XL

‘’Tis to work and have such payAs just keeps life from day to dayIn your limbs, as in a cellFor the tyrants’ use to dwell,

XLI

‘So that ye for them are madeLoom, and plough, and sword, and spade,With or without your own will bentTo their defence and nourishment.

XLII

‘’Tis to see your children weakWith their mothers pine and peak,When the winter winds are bleak, –They are dying whilst I speak.

XLIII

‘’Tis to hunger for such dietAs the rich man in his riotCasts to the fat dogs that lieSurfeiting beneath his eye;

XLIV

‘’Tis to let the Ghost of GoldTake from Toil a thousandfoldMore than e’er its substance couldIn the tyrannies of old.

XLV

‘Paper coin – that forgeryOf the title-deeds, which yeHold to something of the worthOf the inheritance of Earth.

XLVI

‘’Tis to be a slave in soulAnd to hold no strong controlOver your own wills, but beAll that others make of ye.

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XLVII

‘And at length when ye complainWith a murmur weak and vain’Tis to see the Tyrant’s crewRide over your wives and you –

Blood is on the grass like dew.

XLVIII

‘Then it is to feel revengeFiercely thirsting to exchangeBlood for blood – and wrong for wrong –

Do not thus when ye are strong.

XLIX

‘Birds find rest, in narrow nestWhen weary of their winged quest;Beasts find fare, in woody lairWhen storm and snow are in the air.

L

‘Asses, swine, have litter spreadAnd with fitting food are fed;All things have a home but one –

Thou, Oh, Englishman, hast none!

LI

‘This is Slavery – savage men,Or wild beasts within a denWould endure not as ye do –

But such ills they never knew.

LII

‘What art thou Freedom? O! could slavesAnswer from their living graves.This demand – tyrants would fleeLike a dream’s dim imagery:

LIII

‘Thou art not, as impostors say,A shadow soon to pass away,A superstition, and a nameEchoing from the cave of Fame.

LIV

‘For the labourer thou art bread,And a comely table spreadFrom his daily labour comeIn a neat and happy home.

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LV

‘Thou art clothes, and fire, and foodFor the trampled multitude –

No – in countries that are freeSuch starvation cannot beAs in England now we see.

LVI

‘To the rich thou art a check,When his foot is on the neckOf his victim, thou dost makeThat he treads upon a snake.

LVII

‘Thou art Justice – ne’er for goldMay thy righteous laws be soldAs laws are in England – thouShield’st alike the high and low.

LVIII

‘Thou art Wisdom – Freemen neverDream that God will damn for everAll who think those things untrueOf which Priests make such ado.

LIX

‘Thou art Peace – never by theeWould blood and treasure wasted beAs tyrants wasted them, when allLeagued to quench thy flame in Gaul.

LX

‘What if English toil and bloodWas poured forth, even as a flood?It availed, Oh, Liberty,To dim, but not extinguish thee.

LXI

‘Thou art Love – the rich have kissedThy feet, and like him following Christ,Give their substance to the freeAnd through the rough world follow thee,

LXII

‘Or turn their wealth to arms, and makeWar for thy belovèd sakeOn wealth, and war, and fraud – whence theyDrew the power which is their prey.

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LXIII

‘Science, Poetry, and ThoughtAre thy lamps; they make the lotOf the dwellers in a cotSo serene, they curse it not.

LXIV

‘Spirit, Patience, Gentleness,All that can adorn and blessArt thou – let deeds, not words, expressThine exceeding loveliness.

LXV

‘Let a great Assembly beOf the fearless and the freeOn some spot of English groundWhere the plains stretch wide around.

LXVI

‘Let the blue sky overhead,The green earth on which ye tread,All that must eternal beWitness the solemnity.

LXVII

‘From the corners uttermostOf the bounds of English coast;From every hut, village, and townWhere those who live and suffer moanFor others’ misery or their own,

LXVIII

‘From the workhouse and the prisonWhere pale as corpses newly risen,Women, children, young and oldGroan for pain, and weep for cold –

LXIX

‘From the haunts of daily lifeWhere is waged the daily strifeWith common wants and common caresWhich sows the human heart with tares –

LXX

‘Lastly from the palacesWhere the murmur of distressEchoes, like the distant soundOf a wind alive around

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LXXI

‘Those prison halls of wealth and fashion,Where some few feel such compassionFor those who groan, and toil, and wailAs must make their brethren pale –

LXXII

‘Ye who suffer woes untold,Or to feel, or to beholdYour lost country bought and soldWith a price of blood and gold –

LXXIII

‘Let a vast assembly be,And with great solemnityDeclare with measured words that yeAre, as God has made ye, free –

LXXIV

‘Be your strong and simple wordsKeen to wound as sharpened swords,And wide as targes let them be,With their shade to cover ye.

LXXV

‘Let the tyrants pour aroundWith a quick and startling sound,Like the loosening of a sea,Troops of armed emblazonry.

LXXVI

‘Let the charged artillery driveTill the dead air seems aliveWith the clash of clanging wheels,And the tramp of horses’ heels.

LXXVII

‘Let the fixèd bayonetGleam with sharp desire to wetIts bright point in English bloodLooking keen as one for food.

LXXVIII

‘Let the horsemen’s scimitarsWheel and flash, like sphereless starsThirsting to eclipse their burningIn a sea of death and mourning.

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LXXIX

‘Stand ye calm and resolute,Like a forest close and mute,With folded arms and looks which areWeapons of unvanquished war,

LXXX

‘And let Panic, who outspeedsThe career of armed steedsPass, a disregarded shadeThrough your phalanx undismayed.

LXXXI

‘Let the laws of your own land,Good or ill, between ye standHand to hand, and foot to foot,Arbiters of the dispute,

LXXXII

‘The old laws of England – theyWhose reverend heads with age are gray,Children of a wiser day;And whose solemn voice must beThine own echo – Liberty!

LXXXIII

‘On those who first should violateSuch sacred heralds in their stateRest the blood that must ensue,And it will not rest on you.

LXXXIV

‘And if then the tyrants dareLet them ride among you there,Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew, –What they like, that let them do.

LXXXV

‘With folded arms and steady eyes,And little fear, and less surprise,Look upon them as they slayTill their rage has died away.

LXXXVI

‘Then they will return with shameTo the place from which they came,And the blood thus shed will speakIn hot blushes on their cheek.

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LXXXVII

‘Every woman in the landWill point at them as they stand –

They will hardly dare to greetTheir acquaintance in the street.

LXXXVIII

‘And the bold, true warriorsWho have hugged Danger in warsWill turn to those who would be free,Ashamed of such base company.

LXXXIX

‘And that slaughter to the NationShall steam up like inspiration,Eloquent, oracular;A volcano heard afar.

XC

‘And these words shall then becomeLike Oppression’s thundered doomRinging through each heart and brain,Heard again – again – again –

XCI

‘Rise like Lions after slumberIn unvanquishable number –Shake your chains to earth like dewWhich in sleep had fallen on you –

Ye are many – they are few.’

Ode to the West Wind

I

O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves deadAre driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,Each like a corpse within its grave, untilThine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)With living hues and odours plain and hill:

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ODE TO THE WEST WIND 105

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

II

Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion,Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spreadOn the blue surface of thine aëry surge,Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim vergeOf the horizon to the zenith’s height,The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing nightWill be the dome of a vast sepulchre,Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphereBlack rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!

III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreamsThe blue Mediterranean, where he lay,Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,And saw in sleep old palaces and towersQuivering within the wave’s intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowersSo sweet, the sense faints picturing them! ThouFor whose path the Atlantic’s level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far belowThe sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wearThe sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less freeThan thou, O uncontrollable! If evenI were as in my boyhood, and could be

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The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speedScarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowedOne too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:What if my leaves are falling like its own!The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universeLike withered leaves to quicken a new birth!And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearthAshes and sparks, my words among mankind!Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

A Defence of Poetry

According to one mode of regarding those two classes of mental actionwhich are called reason and imagination, the former may be considered asmind contemplating the relations borne by one thought to another,however produced, and the latter, as mind acting upon those thoughts soas to colour them with its own light and composing from them, as fromelements, other thoughts, each containing within itself the principle of itsown integrity. The one is the , or the principle of synthesis, and has for itsobjects those forms which are common to universal nature and existenceitself; the other is the z, or principle of analysis, and its action regards therelations of things simply as relations; considering thoughts, not in theirintegral unity, but as the algebraical representations which conduct tocertain general results. Reason is the enumeration of quantities alreadyknown; imagination is the perception of the value of those quantities, bothseparately and as a whole. Reason respects the differences, and imaginationthe similitudes of things. Reason is to imagination as the instrument to theagent; as the body to the spirit; as the shadow to the substance.

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A DEFENCE OF POETRY 107

Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be ‘the expression of theimagination’; and poetry is connate with the origin of man. Man is aninstrument over which a series of external and internal impressions aredriven like the alternations of an ever-changing wind over an Aeolian lyrewhich move it by their motion to ever-changing melody. But there is aprinciple within the human being, and perhaps within all sentient beings,which acts otherwise than in a lyre, and produces not melody alone butharmony, by an internal adjustment of the sounds and motions thus excitedto the impressions which excite them. It is as if the lyre couldaccommodate its chords to the motions of that which strikes them in adetermined proportion of sound, even as the musician can accommodatehis voice to the sound of the lyre. A child at play by itself will express itsdelight by its voice and motions; and every inflection of tone and everygesture will bear exact relation to a corresponding antitype in thepleasurable impressions which awakened it; it will be the reflected imageof that impression; and as the lyre trembles and sounds after the wind hasdied away, so the child seeks, by prolonging in its voice and motions theduration of the effect, to prolong also a consciousness of the cause. Inrelation to the objects which delight a child, these expressions are, whatpoetry is to higher objects. The savage (for the savage is to ages what thechild is to years) expresses the emotions produced in him by surroundingobjects in a similar manner; and language and gesture, together with plasticor pictorial imitation, become the image of the combined effect of thoseobjects and of his apprehension of them. Man in society, with all hispassions and his pleasures, next becomes the object of the passions andpleasures of man; an additional class of emotions produces an augmentedtreasure of expressions; and language, gesture, and the imitative artsbecome at once the representation and the medium, the pencil and thepicture, the chisel and the statue, the chord and the harmony. The socialsympathies, or those laws from which as from its elements society results,begin to develop themselves from the moment that two human beingscoexist; the future is contained within the present as the plant within theseed; and equality, diversity, unity, contrast, mutual dependence becomethe principles alone capable of affording the motives according to whichthe will of a social being is determined to action inasmuch as he is social;and constitute pleasure in sensation, virtue in sentiment, beauty in art, truthin reasoning, and love in the intercourse of kind. Hence men, even in theinfancy of society, observe a certain order in their words and actions,distinct from that of the objects and the impressions represented by them,all expression being subject to the laws of that from which it proceeds. Butlet us dismiss those more general considerations which might involve aninquiry into the principles of society itself, and restrict our view to themanner in which the imagination is expressed upon its forms.

In the youth of the world, men dance and sing and imitate natural objects,observing in these actions, as in all others, a certain rhythm or order. And,

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although all men observe a similar, they observe not the same order, in themotions of the dance, in the melody of the song, in the combinations oflanguage, in the series of their imitations of natural objects. For there is acertain order or rhythm belonging to each of these classes of mimeticrepresentation, from which the hearer and the spectator receive an intenserand purer pleasure than from any other. The sense of an approximation tothis order has been called taste by modern writers. Every man in theinfancy of art, observes an order which approximates more or less closelyto that from which this highest delight results; but the diversity is notsufficiently marked, as that its gradations should be sensible, except inthose instances where the predominance of this faculty of approximation tothe beautiful (for so we may be permitted to name the relation betweenthis highest pleasure and its cause) is very great. Those in whom it exists inexcess are poets, in the most universal sense of the word; and the pleasureresulting from the manner in which they express the influence of society ornature upon their own minds, communicates itself to others and gathers asort of reduplication from that community. Their language is vitallymetaphorical; that is, it marks the before unapprehended relations ofthings, and perpetuates their apprehension until the words which representthem become, through time, signs for portions or classes of thoughtsinstead of pictures of integral thoughts; and then, if no new poets shouldarise to create afresh the associations which have been thus disorganized,language will be dead to all the nobler purposes of human intercourse.These similitudes or relations are finely said by Lord Bacon to be ‘the samefootsteps of nature impressed upon the various subjects of the world’, andhe considers the faculty which perceives them as the storehouse of axiomscommon to all knowledge. In the infancy of society every author isnecessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry; and to be a poet is toapprehend the true and the beautiful – in a word, the good which exists inthe relation subsisting, first between existence and perception, andsecondly between perception and expression. Every original language nearto its source is in itself the chaos of a cyclic poem; the copiousness oflexicography and the distinctions of grammar are the works of a later ageand are merely the catalogue and the form of the creations of poetry.

But poets, or those who imagine and express this indestructible order, arenot only the authors of language and of music, of the dance, andarchitecture, and statuary and painting: they are the institutors of laws andthe founders of civil society and the inventors of the arts of life and theteachers, who draw into a certain propinquity with the beautiful and thetrue that partial apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world whichis called religion. Hence all original religions are allegorical, or susceptibleof allegory, and like Janus have a double face of false and true. Poets,according to the circumstances of the age and nation in which theyappeared, were called in the earlier epochs of the world legislators orprophets; a poet essentially comprises and unites both these characters. For

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he not only beholds intensely the present as it is and discovers those lawsaccording to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds thefuture in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and thefruit of latest time. Not that I assert poets to be prophets in the gross senseof the word, or that they can foretell the form as surely as they foreknowthe spirit of events: such is the pretence of superstition which would makepoetry an attribute of prophecy rather than prophecy an attribute of poetry.A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relatesto his conceptions, time and place and number are not. The grammaticalforms which express the moods of time, and the difference of persons, andthe distinction of place are convertible with respect to the highest poetrywithout injuring it as poetry; and the choruses of Aeschylus, and the bookof Job, and Dante’s Paradiso would afford, more than any other writings,examples of this fact, if the limits of this essay did not forbid citation. Thecreations of sculpture, painting, and music are illustrations still moredecisive.

Language, colour, form, and religious and civil habits of action are all theinstruments and materials of poetry; they may be called poetry by thatfigure of speech which considers the effect as a synonym of the cause. Butpoetry in a more restricted sense expresses those arrangements oflanguage, and especially metrical language, which are created by thatimperial faculty whose throne is curtained within the invisible nature ofman. And this springs from the nature itself of language, which is a moredirect representation of the actions and passions of our internal being, andis susceptible of more various and delicate combinations than colour, form,or motion, and is more plastic and obedient to the control of that faculty ofwhich it is the creation. For language is arbitrarily produced by theimagination and has relation to thoughts alone; but all other materials,instruments, and conditions of art have relations among each other whichlimit and interpose between conception and expression. The former is as amirror which reflects, the latter as a cloud which enfeebles, the light ofwhich both are mediums of communication. Hence the fame of sculptors,painters, and musicians, although the intrinsic powers of the great mastersof these arts may yield in no degree to that of those who have employedlanguage as the hieroglyphic of their thoughts, has never equalled that ofpoets in the restricted sense of the term; as two performers of equal skillwill produce unequal effects from a guitar and a harp. The fame oflegislators and founders of religion, so long as their institutions last, aloneseems to exceed that of poets in the restricted sense; but it can scarcely bea question whether, if we deduct the celebrity which their flattery of thegross opinions of the vulgar usually conciliates, together with that whichbelonged to them in their higher character of poets, any excess will remain.

We have thus circumscribed the meaning of the word poetry within thelimits of that art which is the most familiar and the most perfect expression

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of the faculty itself. It is necessary, however, to make the circle stillnarrower, and to determine the distinction between measured andunmeasured language; for the popular division into prose and verse isinadmissible in accurate philosophy.

Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both between each other andtowards that which they represent, and a perception of the order of thoserelations has always been found connected with a perception of the orderof the relations of thoughts. Hence the language of poets has ever affecteda certain uniform and harmonious recurrence of sound, without which itwere not poetry, and which is scarcely less indispensable to thecommunication of its influence than the words themselves, withoutreference to that peculiar order. Hence the vanity of translation; it were aswise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formalprinciple of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one languageinto another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from itsseed, or it will bear no flower – and this is the burthen of the curse ofBabel.

An observation of the regular mode of the recurrence of this harmony inthe language of poetical minds, together with its relation to music,produced metre, or a certain system of traditional forms of harmony oflanguage. Yet it is by no means essential that a poet should accommodatehis language to this traditional form so that the harmony, which is its spirit,be observed. The practice is indeed convenient and popular and to bepreferred, especially in such composition as includes much form andaction; but every great poet must inevitably innovate upon the example ofhis predecessors in the exact structure of his peculiar versification. Thedistinction between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error. Thedistinction between philosophers and poets has been anticipated. Plato wasessentially a poet – the truth and splendour of his imagery and the melodyof his language are the most intense that it is possible to conceive. Herejected the harmony of the epic, dramatic, and lyrical forms, because hesought to kindle a harmony in thoughts divested of shape and action, andhe forbore to invent any regular plan of rhythm which would include underdeterminate forms the varied pauses of his style. Cicero sought to imitatethe cadence of his periods, but with little success. Lord Bacon was a poet.His language has a sweet and majestic rhythm which satisfies the sense, noless than the almost superhuman wisdom of his philosophy satisfies theintellect; it is a strain which distends and then bursts the circumference ofthe hearer’s mind and pours itself forth together with it into the universalelement with which it has perpetual sympathy. All the authors ofrevolutions in opinion are not only necessarily poets as they are inventors,nor even as their words unveil the permanent analogy of things by imageswhich participate in the life of truth, but as their periods are harmoniousand rhythmical and contain in themselves the elements of verse, being the

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echo of the eternal music. Nor are those supreme poets, who haveemployed traditional forms of rhythm on account of the form and action oftheir subjects, less capable of perceiving and teaching the truth of thingsthan those who have omitted that form. Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton (toconfine ourselves to modern writers) are philosophers of the very loftiestpower.

A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. There is thisdifference between a story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue ofdetached facts which have no other bond of connection than time, place,circumstance, cause, and effect; the other is the creation of actionsaccording to the unchangeable forms of human nature as existing in themind of the creator, which is itself the image of all other minds. The one ispartial and applies only to a definite period of time and a certaincombination of events which can never again recur; the other is universaland contains within itself the germ of a relation to whatever motives oractions have place in the possible varieties of human nature. Time, whichdestroys the beauty and the use of the story of particular facts stripped ofthe poetry which should invest them, augments that of poetry, and foreverdevelops new and wonderful applications of the eternal truth which itcontains. Hence epitomes have been called the moths of just history; theyeat out the poetry of it. A story of particular facts is a mirror whichobscures and distorts that which should be beautiful; poetry is a mirrorwhich makes beautiful that which is distorted.

The parts of a composition may be poetical, without the composition as awhole being a poem. A single sentence may be considered as a whole,though it may be found in the midst of a series of unassimilated portions; asingle word even may be a spark of inextinguishable thought. And thus allthe great historians, Herodotus, Plutarch, Livy were poets; and although theplan of these writers, especially that of Livy, restrained them fromdeveloping this faculty in its highest degree, they make copious and ampleamends for their subjection by filling all the interstices of their subjects withliving images.

Having determined what is poetry, and who are poets, let us proceed toestimate its effects upon society.

Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure: all spirits on which it falls, openthemselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its delight. In theinfancy of the world, neither poets themselves nor their auditors are fullyaware of the excellence of poetry, for it acts in a divine andunapprehended manner, beyond and above consciousness; and it isreserved for future generations to contemplate and measure the mightycause and effect in all the strength and splendour of their union. Even inmodern times, no living poet ever arrived at the fullness of his fame; thejury which sits in judgement upon a poet, belonging as he does to all time,

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must be composed of his peers; it must be impanelled by Time from theselectest of the wise of many generations. A poet is a nightingale, who sitsin darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; hisauditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, whofeel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why. Thepoems of Homer and his contemporaries were the delight of infant Greece;they were the elements of that social system which is the column uponwhich all succeeding civilization has reposed. Homer embodied the idealperfection of his age in human character; nor can we doubt that those whoread his verses were awakened to an ambition of becoming like to Achilles,Hector, and Ulysses; the truth and beauty of friendship, patriotism, andpersevering devotion to an object, were unveiled to their depths in theseimmortal creations; the sentiments of the auditors must have been refinedand enlarged by a sympathy with such great and lovely impersonations,until from admiring they imitated, and from imitation they identifiedthemselves with, the objects of their admiration. Nor let it be objected thatthese characters are remote from moral perfection and that they can by nomeans be considered as edifying patterns for general imitation. Everyepoch, under names more or less specious, has deified its peculiar errors;revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age; and self-deceit is the veiled image of unknown evil, before which luxury and satietylie prostrate. But a poet considers the vices of his contemporaries as thetemporary dress in which his creations must be arrayed, and which coverwithout concealing the eternal proportions of their beauty. An epic ordramatic personage is understood to wear them around his soul, as he maythe ancient armour or modern uniform around his body while it is easy toconceive a dress more graceful than either. The beauty of the internalnature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture, but that thespirit of its form shall communicate itself to the very disguise, and indicatethe shape it hides from the manner in which it is worn. A majestic form andgraceful motions will express themselves through the most barbarous andtasteless costume. Few poets of the highest class have chosen to exhibit thebeauty of their conceptions in its naked truth and splendour; and it isdoubtful whether the alloy of costume, habit, etc., be not necessary totemper this planetary music for mortal ears.

The whole objection, however, of the immorality of poetry rests upon amisconception of the manner in which poetry acts to produce the moralimprovement of man. Ethical science arranges the elements which poetryhas created and propounds schemes and proposes examples of civil anddomestic life; nor is it for want of admirable doctrines that men hate, anddespise, and censure, and deceive, and subjugate one another. But poetryacts in another and diviner manner. It awakens and enlarges the mind itselfby rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinationsof thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world andmakes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar; it re-produces all that

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it represents, and the impersonations clothed in its Elysian light standthenceforward in the minds of those who have once contemplated them asmemorials of that gentle and exalted content which extends itself over allthoughts and actions with which it coexists. The great secret of morals islove; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselveswith the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own.A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively;he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the painsand pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument ofmoral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect byacting upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the circumference of theimagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, whichhave the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all otherthoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void forevercraves fresh food. Poetry strengthens that faculty which is the organ of themoral nature of man in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb. Apoet therefore would do ill to embody his own conceptions of right andwrong, which are usually those of his place and time, in his poeticalcreations which participate in neither. By this assumption of the inferioroffice of interpreting the effect, in which perhaps after all he might acquithimself but imperfectly, he would resign the glory in a participation in thecause. There was little danger that Homer, or any of the eternal poets,should have so far misunderstood themselves as to have abdicated thisthrone of their widest dominion. Those in whom the poetical faculty,though great, is less intense, as Euripides, Lucan, Tasso, Spenser, havefrequently affected a moral aim, and the effect of their poetry is diminishedin exact proportion to the degree in which they compel us to advert to thispurpose.

Homer and the cyclic poets were followed at a certain interval by thedramatic and lyrical poets of Athens, who flourished contemporaneouslywith all that is most perfect in the kindred expressions of the poeticalfaculty: architecture, painting, music, the dance, sculpture, philosophy and –

we may add – the forms of civil life. For although the scheme of Atheniansociety was deformed by many imperfections which the poetry existing inChivalry and Christianity has erased from the habits and institutions ofmodern Europe, yet never at any other period has so much energy, beauty,and virtue been developed; never was blind strength and stubborn form sodisciplined and rendered subject to the will of man, or that will lessrepugnant to the dictates of the beautiful and the true, as during thecentury which preceded the death of Socrates. Of no other epoch in thehistory of our species have we records and fragments stamped so visiblywith the image of the divinity in man. But it is poetry alone, in form, inaction, or in language, which has rendered this epoch memorable above allothers and the storehouse of examples to everlasting time. For writtenpoetry existed at that epoch simultaneously with the other arts, and it is an

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idle inquiry to demand which gave and which received the light which all,as from a common focus, have scattered over the darkest periods ofsucceeding time. We know no more of cause and effect than a constantconjunction of events; poetry is ever found to coexist with whatever otherarts contribute to the happiness and perfection of man. I appeal to whathas already been established to distinguish between the cause and theeffect.

It was at the period here adverted to that the drama had its birth; andhowever a succeeding writer may have equalled or surpassed those fewgreat specimens of the Athenian drama which have been preserved to us, itis indisputable that the art itself never was understood or practisedaccording to the true philosophy of it, as at Athens. For the Atheniansemployed language, action, music, painting, the dance, and religiousinstitutions to produce a common effect in the representation of the highestidealisms of passion and of power; each division in the art was madeperfect in its kind by artists of the most consummate skill and wasdisciplined into a beautiful proportion and unity one towards another. Onthe modern stage a few only of the elements capable of expressing theimage of the poet’s conception are employed at once. We have tragedywithout music and dancing; and music and dancing without the highestimpersonations of which they are the fit accompaniment, and both withoutreligion and solemnity. Religious institution has indeed been usuallybanished from the stage. Our system of divesting the actor’s face of a mask,on which the many expressions appropriate to his dramatic character mightbe moulded into one permanent and unchanging expression, is favourableonly to a partial and inharmonious effect; it is fit for nothing but amonologue, where all the attention may be directed to some great masterof ideal mimicry. The modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy,though liable to great abuse in point of practice, is undoubtedly anextension of the dramatic circle; but the comedy should be as in King Learuniversal, ideal, and sublime. It is perhaps the intervention of this principlewhich determines the balance in favour of King Lear against the OedipusTyrannus, or the Agamemnon, or, if you will, the trilogies with which theyare connected, unless the intense power of the choral poetry, especiallythat of the latter, should be considered as restoring the equilibrium. KingLear, if it can sustain this comparison, may be judged to be the most perfectspecimen of the dramatic art existing in the world, in spite of the narrowconditions to which the poet was subjected by the ignorance of thephilosophy of the drama which has prevailed in modern Europe. Calderonin his religious Autos has attempted to fulfil some of the high conditions ofdramatic representation neglected by Shakespeare, such as the establishinga relation between the drama and religion, and the accommodating them tomusic and dancing; but he omits the observation of conditions still moreimportant, and more is lost than gained by a substitution of the rigidly

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defined and ever-repeated idealisms of a distorted superstition for the livingimpersonations of the truth of human passion.

But I digress. – The author of the Four Ages of Poetry has prudentlyomitted to dispute on the effect of the drama upon life and manners. For, ifI know the knight by the device of his shield, I have only to inscribePhiloctetes or Agamemnon or Othello upon mine to put to flight the giantsophisms which have enchanted him, as the mirror of intolerable light,though on the arm of one of the weakest of the Paladins, could blind andscatter whole armies of necromancers and pagans. The connection ofscenic exhibitions with the improvement or corruption of the manners ofmen has been universally recognized; in other words, the presence orabsence of poetry, in its most perfect and universal form, has been found tobe connected with good and evil in conduct and habit. The corruptionwhich has been imputed to the drama as an effect begins when the poetryemployed in its constitution ends; I appeal to the history of mannerswhether the periods of the growth of the one and the decline of the otherhave not corresponded with an exactness equal to any other example ofmoral cause and effect.

The drama at Athens, or wheresoever else it may have approached to itsperfection, ever coexisted with the moral and intellectual greatness of theage. The tragedies of the Athenian poets are as mirrors in which thespectator beholds himself, under a thin disguise of circumstance, stript ofall but that ideal perfection and energy which everyone feels to be theinternal type of all that he loves, admires, and would become. Theimagination is enlarged by a sympathy with pains and passions so mightythat they distend in their conception the capacity of that by which they areconceived; the good affections are strengthened by pity, indignation, terror,and sorrow; and an exalted calm is prolonged from the satiety of this highexercise of them into the tumult of familiar life; even crime is disarmed ofhalf its horror and all its contagion by being represented as the fatalconsequence of the unfathomable agencies of nature; error is thus divestedof its wilfulness; men can no longer cherish it as the creation of theirchoice. In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure orhatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect. Neither the eyenor the mind can see itself unless reflected upon that which it resembles.The drama, so long as it continues to express poetry, is as a prismatic andmany-sided mirror, which collects the brightest rays of human nature anddivides and reproduces them from the simplicity of these elementary forms,and touches them with majesty and beauty, and multiplies all that itreflects, and endows it with the power of propagating its like wherever itmay fall.

But in periods of the decay of social life, the drama sympathizes with thatdecay. Tragedy becomes a cold imitation of the form of the greatmasterpieces of antiquity, divested of all harmonious accompaniment of the

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kindred arts, and often the very form misunderstood, or a weak attempt toteach certain doctrines which the writer considers as moral truths andwhich are usually no more than specious flatteries of some gross vice orweakness with which the author, in common with his auditors, are infected.Hence what has been called the classical and domestic drama. Addison’sCato is a specimen of the one; and would it were not superfluous to citeexamples of the other! To such purposes poetry cannot be madesubservient. Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, whichconsumes the scabbard that would contain it. And thus we observe that alldramatic writings of this nature are unimaginative in a singular degree; theyaffect sentiment and passion which, divested of imagination, are othernames for caprice and appetite. The period in our own history of thegrossest degradation of the drama is the reign of Charles II, when all formsin which poetry had been accustomed to be expressed became hymns tothe triumph of kingly power over liberty and virtue. Milton stood aloneilluminating an age unworthy of him. At such periods the calculatingprinciple pervades all the forms of dramatic exhibition, and poetry ceasesto be expressed upon them. Comedy loses its ideal universality; witsucceeds to humour; we laugh from self-complacency and triumph, insteadof pleasure; malignity, sarcasm, and contempt succeed to sympatheticmerriment; we hardly laugh, but we smile. Obscenity, which is everblasphemy against the divine beauty in life, becomes, from the very veilwhich it assumes, more active if less disgusting; it is a monster for whichthe corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours insecret.

The drama being that form under which a greater number of modes ofexpression of poetry are susceptible of being combined than any other, theconnection of poetry and social good is more observable in the drama thanin whatever other form. And it is indisputable that the highest perfection ofhuman society has ever corresponded with the highest dramatic excellence;and that the corruption or the extinction of the drama in a nation where ithas once flourished is a mark of a corruption of manners and an extinctionof the energies which sustain the soul of social life. But, as Machiavelli saysof political institutions, that life may be preserved and renewed if menshould arise capable of bringing back the drama to its principles. And thisis true with respect to poetry in its most extended sense; all language,institution, and form require not only to be produced but to be sustained;the office and character of a poet participates in the divine nature asregards providence, no less than as regards creation.

Civil war, the spoils of Asia, and the fatal predominance first of theMacedonian and then of the Roman arms, were so many symbols of theextinction or suspension of the creative faculty in Greece. The bucolicwriters, who found patronage under the lettered tyrants of Sicily and Egypt,were the latest representatives of its most glorious reign. Their poetry is

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intensely melodious; like the odour of the tuberose, it overcomes andsickens the spirit with excess of sweetness, while the poetry of thepreceding age was as a meadow-gale of June which mingles the fragranceof all the flowers of the field and adds a quickening and harmonizing spiritof its own which endows the sense with a power of sustaining its extremedelight. The bucolic and erotic delicacy in written poetry is correlative withthat softness in statuary, music, and the kindred arts, and even in mannersand institutions which distinguished the epoch to which we now refer. Noris it the poetical faculty itself, or any misapplication of it, to which this wantof harmony is to be imputed. An equal sensibility to the influence of thesenses and the affections is to be found in the writings of Homer andSophocles; the former, especially, has clothed sensual and pathetic imageswith irresistible attractions. Their superiority over these succeeding writersconsists in the presence of those thoughts which belong to the innerfaculties of our nature, not in the absence of those which are connectedwith the external; their incomparable perfection consists in a harmony ofthe union of all. It is not what the erotic writers have, but what they havenot, in which their imperfection consists. It is not inasmuch as they werepoets, but inasmuch as they were not poets, that they can be consideredwith any plausibility as connected with the corruption of their age. Had thatcorruption availed so as to extinguish in them the sensibility to pleasure,passion and natural scenery which is imputed to them as an imperfection,the last triumph of evil would have been achieved. For the end of socialcorruption is to destroy all sensibility to pleasure; and, therefore, it iscorruption. It begins at the imagination and the intellect as at the core anddistributes itself thence as a paralysing venom through the affections intothe very appetites, until all become a torpid mass in which sense hardlysurvives. At the approach of such a period, poetry ever addresses itself tothose faculties which are the last to be destroyed, and its voice is heard,like the footsteps of Astraea, departing from the world. Poetry evercommunicates all the pleasure which men are capable of receiving; it isever still the light of life – the source of whatever of beautiful or generousor true can have place in an evil time. It will readily be confessed that thoseamong the luxurious citizens of Syracuse and Alexandria who weredelighted with the poems of Theocritus, were less cold, cruel, and sensualthan the remnant of their tribe. But corruption must utterly have destroyedthe fabric of human society before poetry can ever cease. The sacred linksof that chain have never been entirely disjoined, which descending throughthe minds of many men is attached to those great minds, whence as from amagnet the invisible effluence is sent forth, which at once connects,animates, and sustains the life of all. It is the faculty which contains withinitself the seeds at once of its own and of social renovation. And let us notcircumscribe the effects of the bucolic and erotic poetry within the limits ofthe sensibility of those to whom it was addressed. They may haveperceived the beauty of those immortal compositions simply as fragments

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and isolated portions; those who are more finely organized, or born in ahappier age, may recognize them as episodes to that great poem which allpoets, like the co-operating thoughts of one great mind, have built up sincethe beginning of the world.

The same revolutions within a narrower sphere had place in ancient Rome;but the actions and forms of its social life never seem to have beenperfectly saturated with the poetical element. The Romans appear to haveconsidered the Greeks as the selectest treasuries of the selectest forms ofmanners and of nature, and to have abstained from creating in measuredlanguage, sculpture, music, or architecture, anything which might bear aparticular relation to their own condition, whilst it should bear a generalone to the universal constitution of the world. But we judge from partialevidence, and we judge perhaps partially. Ennius, Varro, Pacuvius, andAccius, all great poets, have been lost. Lucretius is in the highest, and Virgilin a very high sense, a creator. The chosen delicacy of the expressions ofthe latter is as a mist of light which conceals from us the intense andexceeding truth of his conceptions of nature. Livy is instinct with poetry.Yet Horace, Catullus, Ovid, and generally the other great writers of theVirgilian age, saw man and nature in the mirror of Greece. The institutionsalso, and the religion of Rome were less poetical than those of Greece, asthe shadow is less vivid than the substance. Hence poetry in Rome seemedto follow rather than accompany the perfection of political and domesticsociety. The true poetry of Rome lived in its institutions; for whatever ofbeautiful, true, and majestic they contained could have sprung only fromthe faculty which creates the order in which they consist. The life ofCamillus, the death of Regulus; the expectation of the senators, in theirgodlike state, of the victorious Gauls; the refusal of the Republic to makepeace with Hannibal after the battle of Cannae, were not the consequencesof a refined calculation of the probable personal advantage to result fromsuch a rhythm and order in the shows of life to those who were at once thepoets and the actors of these immortal dramas. The imagination, beholdingthe beauty of this order, created it out of itself according to its own idea;the consequence was empire, and the reward everliving fame. These thingsare not the less poetry, quia carent vate sacro. They are episodes of thatcyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of men. The Past, like aninspired rhapsodist, fills the theatre of everlasting generations with theirharmony.

At length the ancient system of religion and manners had fulfilled the circleof its revolutions. And the world would have fallen into utter anarchy anddarkness but that there were found poets among the authors of theChristian and Chivalric systems of manners and religion who created formsof opinion and action never before conceived, which, copied into theimaginations of men, became as generals to the bewildered armies of theirthoughts. It is foreign to the present purpose to touch upon the evil

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produced by these systems, except that we protest on the ground of theprinciples already established that no portion of it can be imputed to thepoetry they contain.

It is probable that the astonishing poetry of Moses, Job, David, Solomon,and Isaiah had produced a great effect upon the mind of Jesus and hisdisciples. The scattered fragments preserved to us by the biographers ofthis extraordinary person are all instinct with the most vivid poetry. But hisdoctrines seem to have been quickly distorted. At a certain period after theprevalence of a system of opinions founded upon those promulgated byhim, the three forms into which Plato had distributed the faculties of mindunderwent a sort of apotheosis and became the object of the worship ofthe civilized world. Here it is to be confessed that ‘Light seems to thicken’,and

The crow makes wing to the rooky wood,Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,And night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.

But mark how beautiful an order has sprung from the dust and blood ofthis fierce chaos! How the world, as from a resurrection, balancing itself onthe golden wings of knowledge and of hope, has reassumed its yetunwearied flight into the heaven of time. Listen to the music, unheard byoutward ears, which is as a ceaseless and invisible wind nourishing itseverlasting course with strength and swiftness.

The poetry in the doctrines of Jesus Christ, and the mythology andinstitutions of the Celtic conquerors of the Roman empire, outlived thedarkness and the convulsions connected with their growth and victory andblended themselves into a new fabric of manners and opinion. It is an errorto impute the ignorance of the Dark Ages to the Christian doctrines or thepredominance of the Celtic nations. Whatever of evil their agencies mayhave contained sprang from the extinction of the poetical principle,connected with the progress of despotism and superstition. Men, fromcauses too intricate to be here discussed, had become insensible andselfish; their own will had become feeble, and yet they were its slaves, andthence the slaves of the will of others; lust, fear, avarice, cruelty, and fraudcharacterized a race among whom no one was to be found capable ofcreating in form, language, or institution. The moral anomalies of such astate of society are not justly to be charged upon any class of eventsimmediately connected with them, and those events are most entitled toour approbation which could dissolve it most expeditiously. It isunfortunate for those who cannot distinguish words from thoughts thatmany of these anomalies have been incorporated into our popular religion.

It was not until the eleventh century that the effects of the poetry of theChristian and Chivalric systems began to manifest themselves. The principleof equality had been discovered and applied by Plato in his Republic as the

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theoretical rule of the mode in which the materials of pleasure and ofpower produced by the common skill and labour of human beings ought tobe distributed among them. The limitations of this rule were asserted byhim to be determined only by the sensibility of each, or the utility to resultto all. Plato, following the doctrines of Timaeus and Pythagoras, taught alsoa moral and intellectual system of doctrine, comprehending at once thepast, the present, and the future condition of man. Jesus Christ divulged thesacred and eternal truths contained in these views to mankind, andChristianity in its abstract purity became the exoteric expression of theesoteric doctrines of the poetry and wisdom of antiquity. The incorporationof the Celtic nations with the exhausted population of the south, impressedupon it the figure of the poetry existing in their mythology and institutions.The result was a sum of the action and reaction of all the causes includedin it; for it may be assumed as a maxim that no nation or religion cansupersede any other without incorporating into itself a portion of thatwhich it supersedes. The abolition of personal and domestic slavery andthe emancipation of women from a great part of the degrading restraints ofantiquity were among the consequences of these events.

The abolition of personal slavery is the basis of the highest political hopethat it can enter into the mind of man to conceive. ... It was as if the statuesof Apollo and the Muses had been endowed with life and motion and hadwalked forth among their worshippers; so that earth became peopled bythe inhabitants of a diviner world. The familiar appearance and proceedingsof life became wonderful and heavenly, and a paradise was created as outof the wrecks of Eden. And as this creation itself is poetry, so its creatorswere poets; and language was the instrument of their art: ‘Galeotto fu illibro, e chi lo scrisse.’ The Provençal Trouveurs, or inventors, precededPetrarch, whose verses are as spells which unseal the inmost enchantedfountains of the delight which is in the grief of love. It is impossible to feelthem without becoming a portion of that beauty which we contemplate; itwere superfluous to explain how the gentleness and the elevation of mindconnected with these sacred emotions can render men more amiable, moregenerous, and wise, and lift them out of the dull vapours of the little worldof self. Dante understood the secret things of love even more than Petrarch.His Vita Nuova is an inexhaustible fountain of purity of sentiment andlanguage; it is the idealized history of that period, and those intervals of hislife which were dedicated to love. His apotheosis of Beatrice in Paradise,and the gradations of his own love and her loveliness, by which as by stepshe feigns himself to have ascended to the throne of the Supreme Cause, isthat most glorious imagination of modern poetry. The acutest critics havejustly reversed the judgement of the vulgar and the order of the great actsof the Divine Drama in the measure of the admiration which they accordto the Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The latter is a perpetual hymn ofeverlasting love. Love, which found a worthy poet in Plato alone of all theancients, has been celebrated by a chorus of the greatest writers of the

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renovated world; and the music has penetrated the caverns of society andits echoes still drown the dissonance of arms and superstition. At successiveintervals Ariosto, Tasso, Shakespeare, Spenser, Calderon, Rousseau, and thegreat writers of our own age, have celebrated the dominion of love,planting as it were trophies in the human mind of that sublimest victoryover sensuality and force. The true relation borne to each other by thesexes into which human kind is distributed has become less misunderstood;and if the error which confounded diversity with inequality of the powersof the two sexes has been partially recognized in the opinions andinstitutions of modern Europe, we owe this great benefit to the worship ofwhich Chivalry was the law, and poets the prophets.

The poetry of Dante may be considered as the bridge thrown over thestream of time, which unites the modern and ancient world. The distortednotions of invisible things which Dante and his rival Milton have idealizedare merely the mask and the mantle in which these great poets walkthrough eternity enveloped and disguised. It is a difficult question todetermine how far they were conscious of the distinction which must havesubsisted in their minds between their own creeds and that of the people.Dante at least appears to wish to mark the full extent of it by placingRiphaeus, whom Virgil calls justissimus unus, in Paradise, and observing amost heretical caprice in his distribution of rewards and punishments. AndMilton’s poem contains within itself a philosophical refutation of thatsystem of which, by a strange and natural antithesis, it has been a chiefpopular support. Nothing can exceed the energy and magnificence of thecharacter of Satan as expressed in Paradise Lost. It is a mistake to supposethat he could ever have been intended for the popular personification ofevil. Implacable hate, patient cunning, and a sleepless refinement of deviceto inflict the extremest anguish on an enemy – these things are evil; and,although venial in a slave, are not to be forgiven in a tyrant; althoughredeemed by much that ennobles his defeat in one subdued, are marked byall that dishonours his conquest in the victor. Milton’s Devil as a moralbeing is as far superior to his God as one who perseveres in some purposewhich he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture, isto one who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the mosthorrible revenge upon his enemy, not from any mistaken notion ofinducing him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the allegeddesign of exasperating him to deserve new torments. Milton has so farviolated the popular creed (if this shall be judged to be a violation) as tohave alleged no superiority of moral virtue to his God over his Devil. Andthis bold neglect of a direct moral purpose is the most decisive proof of thesupremacy of Milton’s genius. He mingled, as it were, the elements ofhuman nature as colours upon a single palette and arranged them in thecomposition of his great picture according to the laws of epic truth; that is,according to the laws of that principle by which a series of actions of theexternal universe and of intelligent and ethical beings is calculated to excite

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the sympathy of succeeding generations of mankind. The DivinaCommedia and Paradise Lost have conferred upon modern mythology asystematic form; and when change and time shall have added one moresuperstition to the mass of those which have arisen and decayed upon theearth, commentators will be learnedly employed in elucidating the religionof ancestral Europe, only not utterly forgotten because it will have beenstamped with the eternity of genius.

Homer was the first, and Dante the second epic poet; that is, the secondpoet, the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible relationto the knowledge and sentiment and religion and political conditions of theage in which he lived, and of the ages which followed it, developing itselfin correspondence with their development. For Lucretius had limed thewings of his swift spirit in the dregs of the sensible world; and Virgil, with amodesty which ill became his genius, had affected the fame of an imitator,even whilst he created anew all that he copied; and none among the flockof mockbirds, though their notes were sweet, Apollonius Rhodius, QuintusCalaber Smyrnaeus, Nonnus, Lucan, Statius, or Claudian have sought evento fulfil a single condition of epic truth. Milton was the third epic poet. Forif the title of epic in its highest sense be refused to the Aeneid, still less canit be conceded to the Orlando Furioso, the Gerusalemme Liberata, theLusiad, or the Fairy Queen.

Dante and Milton were both deeply penetrated with the ancient religion ofthe civilized world, and its spirit exists in their poetry probably in the sameproportion as its forms survived in the unreformed worship of modernEurope. The one preceded and the other followed the Reformation atalmost equal intervals. Dante was the first religious reformer, and Luthersurpassed him rather in the rudeness and acrimony than in the boldness ofhis censures of papal usurpation, Dante was the first awakener of entrancedEurope; he created a language, in itself music and persuasion, out of achaos of inharmonious barbarisms. He was the congregator of those greatspirits who presided over the resurrection of learning, the Lucifer of thatstarry flock which in the thirteenth century shone forth from republicanItaly, as from a heaven, into the darkness of the benighted world. His verywords are instinct with spirit; each is as a spark, a burning atom ofinextinguishable thought; and many yet lie covered in the ashes of theirbirth, and pregnant with a lightning which has yet found no conductor. Allhigh poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn, which contained all oakspotentially. Veil after veil may be undrawn and the inmost naked beauty ofthe meaning never exposed. A great poem is a fountain foreveroverflowing with the waters of wisdom and delight; and after one personand one age has exhausted all of its divine effluence which their peculiarrelations enable them to share, another and yet another succeeds, and newrelations are ever developed, the source of an unforeseen and anunconceived delight.

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The age immediately succeeding to that of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccacciowas characterized by a revival of painting, sculpture, music, andarchitecture. Chaucer caught the sacred inspiration, and the superstructureof English literature is based upon the materials of Italian invention.

But let us not be betrayed from a defence into a critical history of poetryand its influence on society. Be it enough to have pointed out the effects ofpoets, in the large and true sense of the word, upon their own and allsucceeding times, and to revert to the partial instances cited as illustrationsof an opinion the reverse of that attempted to be established by the authorof The Four Ages of Poetry.

But poets have been challenged to resign the civic crown to reasoners andmechanists, on another plea. It is admitted that the exercise of theimagination is most delightful, but it is alleged that that of reason is moreuseful. Let us examine as the grounds of this distinction what is here meantby utility. Pleasure or good, in a general sense, is that which theconsciousness of a sensitive and intelligent being seeks and in which, whenfound, it acquiesces. There are two kinds of pleasure, one durable,universal, and permanent; the other transitory and particular. Utility mayeither express the means of producing the former or the latter. In theformer sense, whatever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges theimagination, and adds spirit to sense is useful. But the meaning in whichthe author of The Four Ages of Poetry seems to have employed the wordUtility is the narrower one of banishing the importunity of the wants of ouranimal nature, the surrounding men with security of life, the dispersing thegrosser delusions of superstition, and the conciliating such a degree ofmutual forbearance among men as may consist with the motives ofpersonal advantage.

Undoubtedly the promoters of utility, in the limited sense, have theirappointed office in society. They follow the footsteps of poets and copy thesketches of their creations into the book of common life. They make spaceand give time. Their exertions are of the highest value so long as theyconfine their administration of the concerns of the inferior powers of ournature within the limits due to the superior ones. But whilst the scepticdestroys gross superstitions, let him spare to deface, as some of the Frenchwriters have defaced, the eternal truths charactered upon the imaginationsof men. Whilst the mechanist abridges, and the political economistcombines labour, let them beware that their speculations, for want ofcorrespondence with those first principles which belong to the imagination,do not tend, as they have in modern England, to exasperate at once theextremes of luxury and want. They have exemplified the saying, ‘To himthat hath, more shall be given; and from him that hath not, the little that hehath shall be taken away.’ The rich have become richer, and the poor havebecome poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and

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Charybdis of anarchy and despotism. Such are the effects which must everflow from an unmitigated exercise of the calculating faculty.

It is difficult to define pleasure in its highest sense – the definition involvinga number of apparent paradoxes. For, from an inexplicable defect ofharmony in the constitution of human nature, the pain of the inferior isfrequently connected with the pleasures of the superior portions of ourbeing. Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosenexpressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy intragic fiction depends on this principle: tragedy delights by affording ashadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of themelancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasurethat is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself. And hencethe saying, ‘It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house ofmirth.’ Not that this highest species of pleasure is necessarily linked withpain. The delight of love and friendship, the ecstasy of the admiration ofnature, the joy of the perception and still more of the creation of poetry, isoften wholly unalloyed.

The production and assurance of pleasure in this highest sense is trueutility. Those who produce and preserve this pleasure are poets or poeticalphilosophers.

The exertions of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau, and theirdisciples in favour of oppressed and deluded humanity are entitled to thegratitude of mankind. Yet it is easy to calculate the degree of moral andintellectual improvement which the world would have exhibited had theynever lived. A little more nonsense would have been talked for a century ortwo; and perhaps a few more men, women, and children burnt as heretics.We might not at this moment have been congratulating each other on theabolition of the Inquisition in Spain. But it exceeds all imagination toconceive what would have been the moral condition of the world if neitherDante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Calderon, Lord Bacon,nor Milton had ever existed; if Raphael and Michael Angelo had never beenborn; if the Hebrew poetry had never been translated; if a revival of thestudy of Greek literature had never taken place; if no monuments ofancient sculpture had been handed down to us; and if the poetry of thereligion of the ancient world had been extinguished together with its belief.The human mind could never, except by the intervention of theseexcitements, have been awakened to the invention of the grosser sciencesand that application of analytical reasoning to the aberrations of societywhich it is now attempted to exalt over the direct expression of theinventive and creative faculty itself.

We have more moral, political, and historical wisdom than we know howto reduce into practice; we have more scientific and economic knowledgethan can be accommodated to the just distribution of the produce which it

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multiplies. The poetry in these systems of thought is concealed by theaccumulation of facts and calculating processes. There is no want ofknowledge respecting what is wisest and best in morals, government, andpolitical economy, or at least, what is wiser and better than what men nowpractise and endure. But we let ‘I dare not wait upon I would, like thepoor cat i’ the adage.’ We want the creative faculty to imagine that whichwe know; we want the generous impulse to act that which we imagine; wewant the poetry of life; our calculations have outrun our conception; wehave eaten more than we can digest. The cultivation of those scienceswhich have enlarged the limits of the empire of man over the externalworld has, for want of the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribedthose of the internal world; and man, having enslaved the elements,remains himself a slave. To what but a cultivation of the mechanical arts ina degree disproportioned to the presence of the creative faculty, which isthe basis of all knowledge, is to be attributed the abuse of all invention forabridging and combining labour to the exasperation of the inequality ofmankind? From what other cause has it arisen that the discoveries whichshould have lightened, have added a weight to the curse imposed onAdam? Poetry and the principle of self, of which money is the visibleincarnation, are the God and Mammon of the world.

The functions of the poetical faculty are twofold: by one it creates newmaterials of knowledge, and power, and the pleasure; by the other itengenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them accordingto a certain rhythm and order, which may be called the beautiful and thegood. The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than at periodswhen, from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, theaccumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity of thepower of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature. The bodyhas then become too unwieldy for that which animates it.

Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre andcircumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, andthat to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time the rootand blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from which all springand that which adorns all; and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit andthe seed, and withholds from the barren world the nourishment and thesuccession of the scions of the tree of life. It is the perfect and consummatesurface and bloom of things; it is as the odour and the colour of the rose tothe texture of the elements which compose it, as the form and thesplendour of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and corruption.What were virtue, love, patriotism, friendship; what were the scenery ofthis beautiful universe which we inhabit; what were our consolations onthis side of the grave and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry didnot ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar? Poetry is not like

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reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of thewill. A man cannot say, ‘I will compose poetry.’ The greatest poet evencannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal which someinvisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitorybrightness; this power arises from within like the colour of a flower whichfades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of ournatures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could thisinfluence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible topredict the greatness of the results; but when composition begins,inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that hasever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of theoriginal conceptions of the poet. I appeal to the great poets of the presentday, whether it be not an error to assert that the finest passages of poetryare produced by labour and study. The toil and the delay recommended bycritics can be justly interpreted to mean no more than a careful observationof the inspired moments and an artificial connection of the spaces betweentheir suggestions by the intertexture of conventional expressions – anecessity only imposed by the limitedness of the poetical faculty itself. ForMilton conceived the Paradise Lost as a whole before he executed it inportions. We have his own authority also for the muse having ‘dictated’ tohim the ‘unpremeditated song’. And let this be an answer to those whowould allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the OrlandoFurioso. Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is topainting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty is still moreobservable in the plastic and pictorial arts: a great statue or picture growsunder the power of the artist as a child in the mother’s womb; and the verymind which directs the hands in formation is incapable of accounting toitself for the origin, the gradations, or the media of the process.

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest andbest minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling,sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding our ownmind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, butelevating and delightful beyond all expression; so that even in the desireand the regret they leave, there cannot but be pleasure, participating as itdoes in the nature of its object. It is as it were the interpenetration of adiviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a windover the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain onlyas on the wrinkled sand which paves it. These and correspondingconditions of being are experienced principally by those of the mostdelicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagination; and the state ofmind produced by them is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasmof virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship is essentially linked with suchemotions; and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to auniverse. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of themost refined organization, but they can colour all that they combine with

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the evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in therepresentation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord andreanimate in those who have ever experienced these emotions thesleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makesimmortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests thevanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life and, veilingthem, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearingsweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide – abide,because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spiritwhich they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decaythe visitations of the divinity in man.

Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which ismost beautiful and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed; it marriesexultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change; it subdues tounion, under its light yoke, all irreconcilable things. It transmutes all that ittouches, and every form moving within the radiance of its presence ischanged by wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which itbreathes; its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waterswhich flow from death through life; it strips the veil of familiarity from theworld and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of itsforms.

All things exist as they are perceived – at least in relation to the percipient.‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hellof Heaven.’ But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected tothe accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its ownfigured curtain, or withdraws life’s dark veil from before the scene ofthings, it equally creates for us a being within our being. It makes us theinhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos. It reproducesthe common Universe of which we are portions and percipients, and itpurges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from usthe wonder of our being. It compels us to feel that which we perceive, andto imagine that which we know. It creates anew the universe, after it hasbeen annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted byreiteration. It justifies the bold and true word of Tasso: Non merita nome dicreatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta.

A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue,and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the wisest,and the most illustrious of men. As to his glory, let time be challenged todeclare whether the fame of any other institutor of human life becomparable to that of a poet. That he is the wisest, the happiest, and thebest, inasmuch as he is a poet, is equally incontrovertible; the greatest poetshave been men of the most spotless virtue, of the most consummateprudence, and, if we could look into the interior of their lives, the mostfortunate of men; and the exceptions, as they regard those who possessed

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the imaginative faculty in a high yet inferior degree, will be found onconsideration to confirm rather than destroy the rule. Let us for a momentstoop to the arbitration of popular breath, and usurping and uniting in ourown persons the incompatible characters of accuser, witness, judge, andexecutioner, let us without trial, testimony, or form, decide that certainmotives of those who are ‘there sitting where we dare not soar’, arereprehensible. Let us assume that Homer was a drunkard, that Virgil was aflatterer, that Horace was a coward, that Tasso was a madman, that LordBacon was a peculator, that Raphael was a libertine, that Spenser was apoet laureate. It is inconsistent with this division of our subject to cite livingpoets, but posterity has done ample justice to the great names now referredto. Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in thebalance; if their sins were as scarlet, they are now white as snow: they havebeen washed in the blood of the mediator and the redeemer, Time.Observe in what a ludicrous chaos the imputations of real or fictitiouscrime have been confused in the contemporary calumnies against poetryand poets; consider how little is, as it appears – or appears, as it is; look toyour own motives, and judge not, lest ye be judged.

Poetry, as has been said, in this respect differs from logic, that it is notsubject to the control of the active powers of the mind, and that its birthand recurrence have no necessary connection with consciousness or will. Itis presumptuous to determine that these are the necessary conditions of allmental causation, when mental effects are experienced insusceptible ofbeing referred to them. The frequent recurrence of the poetical power, it isobvious to suppose, may produce in the mind a habit of order andharmony correlative with its own nature and with its effects upon otherminds. But in the intervals of inspiration, and they may be frequent withoutbeing durable, a poet becomes a man and is abandoned to the suddenreflux of the influences under which others habitually live. But as he ismore delicately organized than other men and sensible to pain andpleasure, both his own and that of others, in a degree unknown to them, hewill avoid the one and pursue the other with an ardour proportioned to thisdifference. And he renders himself obnoxious to calumny when he neglectsto observe the circumstances under which these objects of universal pursuitand flight have disguised themselves in one another’s garments.

But there is nothing necessarily evil in this error, and thus cruelty, envy,revenge, avarice, and the passions purely evil, have never formed anyportion of the popular imputations on the lives of poets.

I have thought it most favourable to the cause of truth to set down theseremarks according to the order in which they were suggested to my mind,by a consideration of the subject itself, instead of following that of thetreatise that excited me to make them public. Thus although devoid of theformality of a polemical reply, if the view which they contain be just, theywill be found to involve a refutation of the doctrines of The Four Ages of

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Poetry, so far at least as regards the first division of the subject, I canreadily conjecture what should have moved the gall of the learned andintelligent author of that paper; I confess myself like him unwilling to bestunned by the Theseids of the hoarse Codri of the day. Bavius and Maeviusundoubtedly are, as they ever were, insufferable persons. But it belongs toa philosophical critic to distinguish rather than confound.

The first part of these remarks has related to poetry in its elements andprinciples; and it has been shown, as well as the narrow limits assignedthem would permit, that what is called poetry, in a restricted sense, has acommon source with all other forms of order and of beauty, according towhich the materials of human life are susceptible of being arranged, andwhich is poetry in an universal sense.

The second part will have for its object an application of these principles tothe present state of the cultivation of poetry and a defence of the attemptto idealize the modern forms of manners and opinions, and compel theminto a subordination to the imaginative and creative faculty. For theliterature of England, an energetic development of which has everpreceded or accompanied a great and free development of the nationalwill, has arisen as it were from a new birth. In spite of the low-thoughtedenvy which would undervalue contemporary merit, our own will be amemorable age in intellectual achievements, and we live among suchphilosophers and poets as surpass beyond comparison any who haveappeared since the last national struggle for civil and religious liberty. Themost unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the awakening of a greatpeople to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is poetry. Atsuch periods there is an accumulation of the power of communicating andreceiving intense and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature.The persons in whom this power resides may often, as far as regards manyportions of their nature, have little apparent correspondence with that spiritof good of which they are the ministers. But even while they deny andabjure, they are yet compelled to serve, the power which is seated uponthe throne of their own soul. It is impossible to read the compositions ofthe most celebrated writers of the present day without being startled withthe electric life which burns within their words. They measure thecircumference and sound the depths of human nature with acomprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves perhapsthe most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; for it is less their spiritthan the spirit of the age. Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehendedinspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts uponthe present; the words which express what they understand not; thetrumpets which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire; the influencewhich is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislatorsof the world.

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Felicia Hemans(1793–1835)

Indian Woman’s Death Song

An Indian woman, driven to despair by her husband’s desertion of her foranother wife, entered a canoe with her children, and rowed it down theMississippi towards a cataract. Her voice was heard from the shore singinga mournful death-song, until overpowered by the sound of the waters inwhich she perished. The tale is related in Long’s Expedition to the Sourceof St Peter’s River.

Non, je ne puis vivre avec un coeur brisé. II faut que je retrouve la joie, et queje m’unisse aux esprits libres de l’air.1

(Bride of Messina, trans. by Madame de Staël)

Let not my child be a girl, for very sad is the life of a woman.

(The Prairie)

Down a broad river of the western wilds,Piercing thick forest glooms, a light canoeSwept with the current: fearful was the speedOf the frail bark, as by a tempest’s wingBorne leaf-like on to where the mist of sprayRose with the cataract’s thunder. Yet within,Proudly, and dauntlessly, and all alone,Save that a babe lay sleeping at her breast,A woman stood. Upon her Indian browSat a strange gladness, and her dark hair wavedAs if triumphantly. She pressed her child,In its bright slumber, to her beating heart,And lifted her sweet voice that rose awhileAbove the sound of waters, high and clear,Wafting a wild proud strain, her song of death.

Roll swiftly to the spirit’s land, thou mighty stream and free!Father of ancient waters, roll, and bear our lives with thee!The weary bird that storms have tossed would seek the sunshine’s calm,And the deer that hath the arrow’s hurt flies to the woods of balm.

Roll on! My warrior’s eye hath looked upon another’s face,And mine hath faded from his soul, as fades a moonbeam’s trace;My shadow comes not o’er his path, my whisper to his dream,He flings away the broken reed – roll swifter yet, thou stream!

The voice that spoke of other days is hushed within his breast,But mine its lonely music haunts, and will not let me rest;It sings a low and mournful song of gladness that is gone;I cannot live without that light – Father of waves, roll on!

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INDIAN WOMAN’S DEATH SONG 131

Will he not miss the bounding step that met him from the chase?The heart of love that made his home an ever-sunny place?The hand that spread the hunter’s board, and decked his couch of yore?He will not! – roll, dark foaming stream, on to the better shore!

Some blessed fount amidst the woods of that bright land must flow,Whose waters from my soul may lave the memory of this woe;Some gentle wind must whisper there, whose breath may waft awayThe burden of the heavy night, the sadness of the day.

And thou, my babe! though born, like me, for woman’s weary lot,Smile! – to that wasting of the heart, my own! I leave thee not;Too bright a thing art thou to pine in aching love away,Thy mother bears thee far, young fawn, from sorrow and decay.

She bears thee to the glorious bowers where none are heard to weep,And where th’ unkind one hath no power again to trouble sleep;And where the soul shall find its youth, as wakening from a dream –

One moment, and that realm is ours: on, on, dark rolling stream!

The Grave of a Poetess

Ne me plaignez pas – si vous saviezCombien de peines ce tombeau m’a epargnées!

I stood beside thy lowly grave,Spring odours breathed around,

And music in the river-wavePassed with a lulling sound.

All happy things that love the sun3

In the bright air glanced by,And a glad murmur seemed to run

Through the soft azure sky.

Fresh leaves were on the ivy-boughThat fringed the ruins near;

Young voices were abroad, but thouTheir sweetness couldst not hear.

And mournful grew my heart for thee,Thou in whose woman’s mind

The ray that brightens earth and sea,The light of song was shrined;

Mournful that thou wert slumbering lowWith a dread curtain drawn

Between thee and the golden glowOf this world’s vernal dawn.

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132 FELICIA HEMANS

Parted from all the song and bloomThou wouldst have loved so well,

To thee the sunshine round thy tombWas but a broken spell.

The bird, the insect on the wing,In their bright reckless play,

Might feel the flush and life of spring,And thou wert passed away!

But then, ev’n then, a nobler thoughtO’er my vain sadness came;

Th’ immortal spirit woke, and wroughtWithin my thrilling frame.

Surely on lovelier things, I said,Thou must have looked ere now,

Than all that round our pathway shedOdours and hues below,

The shadows of the tomb are here,Yet beautiful is earth!

What seest thou then where no dim fear,No haunting dream hath birth?

Here a vain love to passing flowersThou gav’st, but where thou art

The sway is not with changeful hours –

There love and death must part.

Thou hast left sorrow in thy song,A voice not loud, but deep!

The glorious bowers of earth among,How often didst thou weep!

Where couldst thou fix on mortal groundThy tender thoughts and high?

Now peace the woman’s heart hath found,And joy the poet’s eye.

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THE GRAVE OF A POETESS 133

John Clare(1793–1864)

Sudden Shower

Black grows the southern clouds betokening rainAnd humming hive bees homeward hurry byeThey feel the change – so let us shun the grainAnd take the broad road while our feet are dryAye there some dropples moistened in my faceAnd pattered on my hat – tis coming nighLets look about and find a sheltering placeThe little things around like you and IAre hurrying thro the grass to shun the showerHere stoops an Ash tree – hark the wind gets highBut never mind its Ivy for an hourRain as it may will keep us dryly hereThat little Wren knows well his sheltering bowerNor leaves his dry house tho we come so near

Winter Evening

The crib stock fothered – horses suppered upAnd cows in sheds all littered down in strawThe threshers gone the owls are left to whoopThe ducks go waddling with distended crawThrough little hole made in the henroost doorAnd geese with idle gabble never oerBate careless hog untill he tumbles downInsult provoking spite to noise the moreWhile fowl high perched blink with contemptous frownOn all the noise and bother heard belowOver the stable ridge in crowds the crowWith jackdaws intermixed known by their noiseTo the warm woods behind the village goAnd whistling home for bed go weary boys

Hedge Sparrow

The tame hedge sparrow in its russet dressIs half a robin for its gentle waysAnd the bird loving dame can do no lessThen throw it out a crumble on cold daysIn early march it into gardens straysAnd in the snug clipt box tree green and roundIt makes a nest of moss and hair and laysWhen een the snow is lurking on the groundIts eggs in number five of greenish blueBright beautiful and glossy shining shells

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134 JOHN CLARE

Much like the firetails but of brighter hueYet in her garden home much danger dwellsWhere skulking cat with mischief in its breastCatches their young before they leave the nest

[Autumn Evening]

I love to hear the evening crows go byeAnd see the starnels darken down the skyThe bleaching stack the bustling sparrow leavesAnd plops with merry note beneath the eavesThe odd and lated pigeon bounces byeAs if a wary watching hawk was nighWhile far and fearing nothing high and slowThe stranger birds to distant places goWhile short of flight the evening robin comesTo watch the maiden sweeping out the crumbsNor fears the idle shout of passing boyBut pecks about the door and sings for joyThen in the hovel where the cows are fedFinds till the morning comes a pleasant bed

Hares at Play

The birds are gone to bed the cows are stillAnd sheep lie panting on each old mole hillAnd underneath the willows grey-green boughLike toil a resting – lies the fallow ploughThe timid hares throw daylights fears awayOn the lanes road to dust and dance and playThen dabble in the grain by nought deterredTo lick the dewfall from the barleys beardThen out they sturt again and round the hillLike happy thoughts – dance – squat – and loiter stillTill milking maidens in the early mornGingle their yokes and sturt them in the cornThrough well known beaten paths each nimbling hareSturts quick as fear – and seeks its hidden lair

Spring

Pale sun beams gleamThat nurtur a few flowersPile wort and daisey and a sprig o’ greenOn white thorn bushesIn the leaf strewn hedge

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[AUTUMN EVENING] 135

These harbingersTell spring is coming fastAnd these the schoolboy marksAnd wastes an hour from schoolAgen the old pasture hedge

Cropping the daiseyAnd the pile wort flowersPleased with the Spring and all he looks uponHe opes his spelling bookAnd hides her blossoms there

Shadows fall darkLike black in the pale SunAnd lye the bleak day longLike black stock under hedgesAnd bare wind rocked trees

’Tis chill but pleasantIn the hedge bottom linedWith brown seer leaves the lastYear littered there and leftMopes the hedge Sparrow

With trembling wings and cheepsIts welcome to pale sunbeamsCreeping through and further onMade of green mossThe nest and green blue eggs are seen

All token spring and every dayGreen and more green hedges and closeAnd every where appearsStill tis but MarchBut still that March is Spring

A Vision

1

I lost the love, of heaven above;I spurn’d the lust, of earth below;I felt the sweets of fancied love, –And hell itself my only foe.

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I lost earths joys, but felt the glow,Of heaven’s flame abound in me:’Till loveliness, and I did grow,The bard of immortality.

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3

I loved, but woman fell away;I hid me, from her faded fame:I snatch’d the sun’s eternal ray, –And wrote ’till earth was but a name.

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In every language upon earth,On every shore, o’er every sea;I gave my name immortal birth,And kep’t my spirit with the free.

‘I Am’

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I am – yet what I am, none cares or knows;My friends forsake me like a memory lost: –

I am the self-consumer of my woes; –They rise and vanish in oblivion’s host,

Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes: –And yet I am, and live – like vapours tost

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Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, –Into the living sea of waking dreams,

Where there is neither sense of life or joys,But the vast shipwreck of my lifes esteems;

Even the dearest, that I love the bestAre strange – nay, rather stranger than the rest.

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I long for scenes, where man hath never trodA place where woman never smiled or wept

There to abide with my Creator, God;And sleep as I in childhood, sweetly slept,

Untroubling, and untroubled where I lie,The grass below – above the vaulted sky.

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‘I AM ’ 137

John Gibson Lockhart(1794–1854)

from The Cockney School of Poetry

Of all the manias of this mad age, the most incurable, as well as the mostcommon, seems to be no other than the Metromanie. The just celebrity ofRobert Burns and Miss Baillie has had the melancholy effect of turning theheads of we know not how many farm-servants and unmarried ladies; ourvery footmen compose tragedies, and there is scarcely a superannuatedgoverness in the island that does not leave a roll of lyrics behind her in herband-box. To witness the disease of any human understanding, howeverfeeble, is distressing; but the spectacle of an able mind reduced to a state ofinsanity is of course ten times more afflicting. It is with such sorrow as thisthat we have contemplated the case of Mr John Keats. This young manappears to have received from nature talents of an excellent, perhaps evenof a superior order – talents which, devoted to the purposes of any usefulprofession, must have rendered him a respectable, if not an eminent citizen.His friends, we understand, destined him to the career of medicine, and hewas bound apprentice some years ago to a worthy apothecary in town. Butall has been undone by a sudden attack of the malady to which we havealluded. Whether Mr John had been sent home with a diuretic orcomposing draught to some patient far gone in the poetical mania, we havenot heard. This much is certain, that he has caught the infection, and thatthoroughly. For some time we were in hopes, that he might get off with aviolent fit or two; but of late the symptoms are terrible. The phrenzy of the‘Poems’ was bad enough in its way; but it did not alarm us half so seriouslyas the calm, settled, imperturbable drivelling idiocy of ‘Endymion.’ Wehope, however, that in so young a person, and with a constitution originallyso good, even now the disease is not utterly incurable. Time, firmtreatment, and rational restraint, do much for many apparently hopelessinvalids; and if Mr Keats should happen, at some interval of reason, to casthis eye upon our pages, he may perhaps be convinced of the existence ofhis malady, which, in such cases, is often all that is necessary to put thepatient in a fair way of being cured.

The readers of the Examiner newspaper were informed, some time ago, bya solemn paragraph, in Mr Hunt’s best style, of the appearance of two newstars of glorious magnitude and splendour in the poetical horizon of theland of Cockaigne. One of these turned out, by and by, to be no other thanMr John Keats. This precocious adulation confirmed the waveringapprentice in his desire to quit the gallipots, and at the same time excitedin his too susceptible mind a fatal admiration for the character and talentsof the most worthless and affected of all the versifiers of our time. One ofhis first productions was the following sonnet, ‘written on the day whenMr Leigh Hunt left prison.’ It will be recollected, that the cause of Hunt’s

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confinement was a series of libels against his sovereign, and that its fruitwas the odious and incestuous ‘Story of Rimini.’

[...]

The absurdity of the thought in this sonnet is, however, if possible,surpassed in another, ‘addressed to Haydon’ the painter, that clever, butmost affected artist, who as little resembles Raphael in genius as he does inperson, notwithstanding the foppery of having his hair curled over hisshoulders in the old Italian fashion. In this exquisite piece it will beobserved, that Mr Keats classes together WORDSWORTH, HUNT, and HAYDON,as the three greatest spirits of the age, and that he alludes to himself, andsome others of the rising brood of Cockneys, as likely to attain hereafter anequally honourable elevation. Wordsworth and Hunt! what a juxta-position!The purest, the loftiest, and, we do not fear to say it, the most classical ofliving English poets, joined together in the same compliment with themeanest, the filthiest, and the most vulgar of Cockney poetasters.

[...]

So much for the opening bud; now for the expanded flower. It is time topass from the juvenile ‘Poems,’ to the mature and elaborate ‘Endymion, aPoetic Romance.’ The old story of the moon falling in love with a shepherd,so prettily told by a Roman Classic, and so exquisitely enlarged andadorned by one of the most elegant of German poets, has been seizedupon by Mr John Keats, to be done with as might seem good unto thesickly fancy of one who never read a single line either of Ovid or ofWieland. If the quantity, not the quality, of the verses dedicated to the storyis to be taken into account, there can be no doubt that Mr John Keats maynow claim Endymion entirely to himself. To say the truth, we do notsuppose either the Latin or the German poet would be very anxious todispute about the property of the hero of the ‘Poetic Romance.’ Mr Keatshas thoroughly appropriated the character, if not the name. His Endymionis not a Greek shepherd, loved by a Grecian goddess; he is merely a youngCockney rhymester, dreaming a phantastic dream at the full of the moon.Costume, were it worth while to notice such a trifle, is violated in everypage of this goodly octavo. From his prototype Hunt, John Keats hasacquired a sort of vague idea, that the Greeks were a most tasteful people,and that no mythology can be so finely adapted for the purposes of poetryas theirs. It is amusing to see what a hand the two Cockneys make of thismythology; the one confesses that he never read the Greek Tragedians, andthe other knows Homer only from Chapman; and both of them write aboutApollo, Pan, Nymphs, Muses, and Mysteries, as might be expected frompersons of their education. We shall not, however, enlarge at present uponthis subject, as we mean to dedicate an entire paper to the classicalattainments and attempts of the Cockney poets. As for Mr Keats’‘Endymion,’ it has just as much to do with Greece as it has with ‘old Tartary

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the fierce;’ no man, whose mind has ever been imbued with the smallestknowledge or feeling of classical poetry or classical history, could havestooped to profane and vulgarise every association in the manner whichhas been adopted by this ‘son of promise.’ Before giving any extracts wemust inform our readers, that this romance is meant to be written in Englishheroic rhyme. To those who have read any of Hunt’s poems, this hint mightindeed be needless. Mr Keats has adopted the loose, nerveless versification,and Cockney rhymes of the poet of Rimini; but in fairness to thatgentleman, we must add, that the defects of the system are tenfold moreconspicuous in his disciple’s work than in his own. Mr Hunt is a small poet,but he is a clever man. Mr Keats is a still smaller poet, and he is only a boyof pretty abilities, which he has done every thing in his power to spoil.

[...]

We had almost forgot to mention, that Keats belongs to the Cockney Schoolof Politics, as well as the Cockney School of Poetry.

It is fit that he who holds Rimini to be the first poem, should believe theExaminer to be the first politician of the day. We admire consistency, evenin folly. Hear how their bantling has already learned to lisp sedition.

[Lines 1–22 of Endymion Book III are quoted.]

And now, good-morrow to ‘the Muses’ son of Promise;’ as for ‘the feats heyet may do,’ as we do not pretend to say, like himself, ‘Muse of my nativeland am I inspired,’ we shall adhere to the safe old rule of pauca-verba. Weventure to make one small prophecy, that his bookseller will not a secondtime venture £50 upon any thing he can write. It is a better and a wiserthing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the shopMr John, back to ‘plasters, pills, and ointment boxes,’ &c. But, for Heaven’ssake, young Sangrado, be a little more sparing of extenuatives andsoporifics in your practice than you have been in your poetry.

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John Keats(1795–1821)

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star’d at the Pacific – and all his menLook’d at each other with a wild surmise –

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again

O golden-tongued Romance, with serene lute!Fair plumed syren, queen of far-away!Leave melodizing on this wintry day,

Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute.Adieu! for, once again, the fierce dispute

Betwixt damnation and impassion’d clayMust I burn through; once more humbly assay

The bitter-sweet of this Shaksperean fruit.Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,

Begetters of our deep eternal theme!When through the old oak forest I am gone,

Let me not wander in a barren dream:But, when I am consumed in the fire,Give me new phoenix wings to fly at my desire.

When I have fears that I may cease to be

When I have fears that I may cease to beBefore my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,

Before high piled books, in charactry,Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain;

When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to traceTheir shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,That I shall never look upon thee more,

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Never have relish in the fairy powerOf unreflecting love; – then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and thinkTill love and fame to nothingness do sink.

The Eve of St Agnes

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St. Agnes’ Eve – Ah, bitter chill it was!The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,And silent was the flock in woolly fold:Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he toldHis rosary, and while his frosted breath,Like pious incense from a censer old,Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death,

Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.

2

His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man;Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees,And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan,Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees;The sculptur’d dead, on each side, seem to freeze,Emprison’d in black, purgatorial rails:Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat’ries,He passeth by; and his weak spirit fails

To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails.

3

Northward he turneth through a little door,And scarce three steps, ere Music’s golden tongueFlatter’d to tears this aged man and poor;But no – already had his deathbell rung;The joys of all his life were said and sung:His was harsh penance on St. Agnes’ Eve:Another way he went, and soon amongRough ashes sat he for his soul’s reprieve,

And all night kept awake, for sinners’ sake to grieve.

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That ancient Beadsman heard the prelude soft;And so it chanc’d, for many a door was wide,From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft,The silver, snarling trumpets ’gan to chide:The level chambers, ready with their pride,

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Were glowing to receive a thousand guests:The carved angels, ever eager-eyed,Star’d, where upon their heads the cornice rests,

With hair blown back, and wings put cross-wise on their breasts.

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At length burst in the argent revelry,With plume, tiara, and all rich array,Numerous as shadows haunting fairilyThe brain, new stuff’d, in youth, with triumphs gayOf old romance. These let us wish away,And turn, sole-thoughted, to one Lady there,Whose heart had brooded, all that wintry day,On love, and wing’d St. Agnes’ saintly care,

As she had heard old dames full many times declare.

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They told her how, upon St. Agnes’ Eve,Young virgins might have visions of delight,And soft adorings from their loves receiveUpon the honey’d middle of the night,If ceremonies due they did aright;As, supperless to bed they must retire,And couch supine their beauties, lily white;Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require

Of heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire.

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Full of this whim was thoughtful Madeline:The music, yearning like a god in pain,She scarcely heard: her maiden eyes divine,Fix’d on the floor, saw many a sweeping trainPass by – she heeded not at all: in vainCame many a tiptoe, amorous cavalier,And back retir’d, not cool’d by high disdain;But she saw not: her heart was otherwhere:

She sigh’d for Agnes’ dreams, the sweetest of the year.

8

She danc’d along with vague, regardless eyes,Anxious her lips, her breathing quick and short:The hallow’d hour was near at hand: she sighsAmid the timbrels, and the throng’d resortOf whisperers in anger, or in sport;’Mid looks of love, defiance, hate, and scorn,Hoodwink’d with faery fancy; all amort.Save to St. Agnes and her lambs unshorn,

And all the bliss to be before to-morrow morn.

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THE EVE OF ST AGNES 143

9

So, purposing each moment to retire,She linger’d still. Meantime, across the moors,Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fireFor Madeline. Beside the portal doors,Buttress’d from moonlight, stands he, and imploresAll saints to give him sight of Madeline,But for one moment in the tedious hours,That he might gaze and worship all unseen;

Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss – in sooth such things have been.

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He ventures in: let no buzz’d whisper tell:All eyes be muffled, or a hundred swordsWill storm his heart, Love’s fev’rous citadel:For him, those chambers held barbarian hordes,Hyena foemen, and hot-blooded lords,Whose very dogs would execrations howlAgainst his lineage: not one breast affordsHim any mercy, in that mansion foul,

Save one old beldame, weak in body and in soul.

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Ah, happy chance! the aged creature came,Shuffling along with ivory-headed wand,To where he stood, hid from the torch’s flame,Behind a broad hall-pillar, far beyondThe sound of merriment and chorus bland:He startled her; but soon she knew his face,And grasp’d his fingers in her palsied hand,Saying, “Mercy, Porphyro! hie thee from this place;

They are all here to-night, the whole blood-thirsty race!

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“Get hence! get hence! there’s dwarfish Hildebrand;He had a fever late, and in the fitHe cursed thee and thine, both house and land:Then there’s that old Lord Maurice, not a whitMore tame for his gray hairs – Alas me! flit!Flit like a ghost away.” – “Ah, Gossip dear.We’re safe enough; here in this arm-chair sit,And tell me how” – “Good Saints! not here, not here;

Follow me, child, or else these stones will be thy bier.”

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He follow’d through a lowly arched way,Brushing the cobwebs with his lofty plume,And as she mutter’d “Well-a – well-a-day!”He found him in a little moonlight room,

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Pale, lattic’d, chill, and silent as a tomb.“Now tell me where is Madeline,” said he,“O tell me, Angela, by the holy loomWhich none but secret sisterhood may see,

When they St. Agnes’ wool are weaving piously.”

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“St. Agnes! Ah! it is St. Agnes’ Eve –

Yet men will murder upon holy days:Thou must hold water in a witch’s sieve,And be liege-lord of all the Elves and Fays,To venture so: it fills me with amazeTo see thee, Porphyro! – St. Agnes’ Eve!God’s help! my lady fair the conjuror playsThis very night: good angels her deceive!

But let me laugh awhile, I’ve mickle time to grieve.

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Feebly she laugheth in the languid moon,While Porphyro upon her face doth look,Like puzzled urchin on an aged croneWho keepeth clos’d a wond’rous riddle-book,As spectacled she sits in chimney nook.But soon his eyes grew brilliant, when she toldHis lady’s purpose; and he scarce could brookTears, at the thought of those enchantments cold,

And Madeline asleep in lap of legends old.

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Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,Flushing his brow, and in his pained heartMade purple riot: then doth he proposeA stratagem, that makes the beldame start:“A cruel man and impious thou art:Sweet lady, let her pray, and sleep, and dreamAlone with her good angels, far apartFrom wicked men like thee. Go, go! – I deem

Thou canst not surely be the same that thou didst seem.”

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“I will not harm her, by all saints I swear,”Quoth Porphyro: “O may I ne’er find graceWhen my weak voice shall whisper its last prayer,If one of her soft ringlets I displace,Or look with ruffian passion in her face:Good Angela, believe me by these tears;Or I will, even in a moment’s space,Awake, with horrid shout, my foemen’s ears,

And beard them, though they be more fang’d than wolves and bears.”

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“Ah! why wilt thou affright a feeble soul?A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing,Whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll;Whose prayers for thee, each morn and evening,Were never miss’d.” – Thus plaining, doth she bringA gentler speech from burning Porphyro;So woful, and of such deep sorrowing,That Angela gives promise she will do

Whatever he shall wish, betide her weal or woe.

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Which was, to lead him, in close secrecy,Even to Madeline’s chamber, and there hideHim in a closet, of such privacyThat he might see her beauty unespied,And win perhaps that night a peerless bride,While legion’d fairies pac’d the coverlet,And pale enchantment held her sleepy-eyed.Never on such a night have lovers met,

Since Merlin paid his Demon all the monstrous debt.

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“It shall be as thou wishest,” said the Dame:“All cates and dainties shall be stored thereQuickly on this feast-night: by the tambour frameHer own lute thou wilt see; no time to spare,For I am slow and feeble, and scarce dareOn such a catering trust my dizzy head.Wait here, my child, with patience; kneel in prayerThe while: Ah! thou must needs the lady wed,

Or may I never leave my grave among the dead.”

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So saying, she hobbled off with busy fear.The lover’s endless minutes slowly pass’d;The dame return’d, and whisper’d in his earTo follow her; with aged eyes aghastFrom fright of dim espial. Safe at last,Through many a dusky gallery, they gainThe maiden’s chamber, silken, hush’d, and chaste;Where Porphyro took covert, pleas’d amain.

His poor guide hurried back with agues in her brain.

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Her falt’ring hand upon the balustrade,Old Angela was feeling for the stair,When Madeline, St. Agnes’ charmed maid,Rose, like a mission’d spirit, unaware:

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With silver taper’s light, and pious care,She turn’d, and down the aged gossip ledTo a safe level matting. Now prepare,Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed;

She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove fray’d and fled.

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Out went the taper as she hurried in;Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died:She clos’d the door, she panted, all akinTo spirits of the air, and visions wide:No uttered syllable, or, woe betide!But to her heart, her heart was voluble,Paining with eloquence her balmy side;As though a tongueless nightingale should swell

Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.

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A casement high and triple-arch’d there was,All garlanded with carven imag’riesOf fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,And diamonded with panes of quaint device,Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damask’d wings;And in the midst, ’mong thousand heraldries,And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,

A shielded scutcheon blush’d with blood of queens and kings.

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Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,And threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,As down she knelt for heaven’s grace and boon;Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,And on her silver cross soft amethyst,And on her hair a glory, like a saint:She seem’d a splendid angel, newly drest,Save wings, for heaven: – Porphyro grew faint:

She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.

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Anon his heart revives: her vespers done,Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degreesHer rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,

But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.

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Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest,In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex’d she lay,Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress’dHer soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away;Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day;Blissfully haven’d both from joy and pain;Clasp’d like a missal where swart Paynims pray;Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,

As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.

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Stol’n to this paradise, and so entranced,Porphyro gazed upon her empty dress,And listen’d to her breathing, if it chancedTo wake into a slumberous tenderness;Which when he heard, that minute did he bless,And breath’d himself: then from the closet crept,Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness,And over the hush’d carpet, silent, slept,

And ’tween the curtains peep’d, where, lo! – how fast she slept.

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Then by the bed-side, where the faded moonMade a dim, silver twilight, soft he setA table, and, half anguish’d, threw thereonA cloth of woven crimson, gold, and jet: –O for some drowsy Morphean amulet!The boisterous, midnight, festive clarion,The kettle-drum, and far-heard clarionet,Affray his ears, though but in dying tone: –

The hall door shuts again, and all the noise is gone.

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And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,In blanched linen, smooth, and lavender’d,While he from forth the closet brought a heapOf candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;With jellies soother than the creamy curd,And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;Manna and dates, in argosy transferr’dFrom Fez; and spiced dainties, every one,

From silken Samarcand to cedar’d Lebanon,

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These delicates he heap’d with glowing handOn golden dishes and in baskets brightOf wreathed silver: sumptuous they standIn the retired quiet of the night,

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Filling the chilly room with perfume light. –“And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake!Thou art my heaven, and I thine eremite:Open thine eyes, for meek St. Agnes’ sake,

Or I shall drowse beside thee, so my soul doth ache.”

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Thus whispering, his warm, unnerved armSank in her pillow. Shaded was her dreamBy the dusk curtains: – ’twas a midnight charmImpossible to melt as iced stream:The lustrous salvers in the moonlight gleam;Broad golden fringe upon the carpet lies:It seem’d he never, never could redeemFrom such a stedfast spell his lady’s eyes;

So mus’d awhile, entoil’d in woofed phantasies.

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Awakening up, he took her hollow lute, –Tumultuous, – and, in chords that tenderest be,He play’d an ancient ditty, long since mute,In Provence call’d, “La belle dame sans mercy”:Close to her ear touching the melody; –Wherewith disturb’d, she utter’d a soft moan:He ceased – she panted quick – and suddenlyHer blue affrayed eyes wide open shone:

Upon his knees he sank, pale as smooth-sculptured stone.

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Her eyes were open, but she still beheld,Now wide awake, the vision of her sleep:There was a painful change, that nigh expell’dThe blisses of her dream so pure and deep:At which fair Madeline began to weep,And moan forth witless words with many a sigh;While still her gaze on Porphyro would keep;Who knelt, with joined hands and piteous eye,

Fearing to move or speak, she look’d so dreamingly.

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“Ah, Porphyro!” said she, “but even nowThy voice was at sweet tremble in mine ear,Made tuneable with every sweetest vow;And those sad eyes were spiritual and clear:How chang’d thou art! how pallid, chill, and drear!Give me that voice again, my Porphyro,Those looks immortal, those complainings dear!Oh leave me not in this eternal woe,

For if thou diest, my love, I know not where to go.”

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Beyond a mortal man impassion’d farAt these voluptuous accents, he arose,Ethereal, flush’d, and like a throbbing starSeen mid the sapphire heaven’s deep repose;Into her dream he melted, as the roseBlendeth its odour with the violet, –Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blowsLike Love’s alarum pattering the sharp sleet

Against the window-panes; St. Agnes’ moon hath set.

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’Tis dark: quick pattereth the flaw-blown sleet:“This is no dream, my bride, my Madeline!”’Tis dark: the iced gusts still rave and beat:“No dream, alas! alas! and woe is mine!Porphyro will leave me here to fade and pine. –Cruel! what traitor could thee hither bring?I curse not, for my heart is lost in thine,Though thou forsakest a deceived thing; –

A dove forlorn and lost with sick unpruned wing.”

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“My Madeline! sweet dreamer! lovely bride!Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest?Thy beauty’s shield, heart-shap’d and vermeil dyed?Ah, silver shrine, here will I take my restAfter so many hours of toil and quest,A famish’d pilgrim, – saved by miracle.Though I have found, I will not rob thy nestSaving of thy sweet self; if thou think’st well

To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel.

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“Hark! ’tis an elfin-storm from faery land,Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed:Arise – arise! the morning is at hand; –The bloated wassaillers will never heed: –Let us away, my love, with happy speed;There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see, –Drown’d all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead:Awake! arise! my love, and fearless be,

For o’er the southern moors I have a home for thee.”

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She hurried at his words, beset with fears,For there were sleeping dragons all around,At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears –

Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found. –

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In all the house was heard no human sound.A chain-droop’d lamp was flickering by each door;The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound,Flutter’d in the besieging wind’s uproar;

And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.

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They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall;Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide;Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl,With a huge empty flaggon by his side:The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide,But his sagacious eye an inmate owns:By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide: –The chains lie silent on the footworn stones; –

The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans.

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And they are gone: ay, ages long agoThese lovers fled away into the storm.That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe,And all his warrior-guests, with shade and formOf witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm,Were long be-nightmar’d. Angela the oldDied palsy-twitch’d, with meagre face deform;The Beadsman, after thousand aves told,

For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art –Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night,

And watching, with eternal lids apart,Like nature’s patient, sleepless eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike taskOf pure ablution round earth’s human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen maskOf snow upon the mountains and the moors;

No – yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,And so live ever – or else swoon to death.

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La Belle Dame sans Merci:A Ballad

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O what can ail thee, knight at arms,Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has wither’d from the lake,And no birds sing.

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O what can ail thee, knight at arms,So haggard and so woe-begone?

The squirrel’s granary is full,And the harvest’s done.

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I see a lily on thy browWith anguish moist and fever dew,

And on thy cheeks a fading roseFast withereth too.

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I met a lady in the meads,Full beautiful, a fairy’s child;

Her hair was long, her foot was light,And her eyes were wild.

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I made a garland for her head,And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She look’d at me as she did love,And made sweet moan.

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I set her on my pacing steed,And nothing else saw all day long,

For sidelong would she bend, and singA fairy’s song.

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She found me roots of relish sweet,And honey wild, and manna dew,

And sure in language strange she said –

I love thee true.

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She took me to her elfin grot,And there she wept, and sigh’d full sore,

And there I shut her wild wild eyesWith kisses four.

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And there she lulled me asleep,And there I dream’d – Ah! woe betide!

The latest dream I ever dream’dOn the cold hill’s side.

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I saw pale kings, and princes too,Pale warriors, death pale were they all;

They cried – “La belle dame sans merciHath thee in thrall!”

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I saw their starv’d lips in the gloamWith horrid warning gaped wide,

And I awoke and found me hereOn the cold hill’s side.

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And this is why I sojourn here,Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,And no birds sing.

Ode on a Grecian Urn

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Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus expressA flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shapeOf deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

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Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheardAre sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leaveThy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,Though winning near the goal – yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

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Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shedYour leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,

For ever panting, and for ever young;All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

4

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?And, little town, thy streets for evermore

Will silent be; and not a soul to tellWhy thou art desolate, can e’er return.

5

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with bredeOf marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shall remain, in midst of other woeThan ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is allYe know on earth, and all ye need to know.

To Autumn

1

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and blessWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

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154 JOHN KEATS

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,And still more, later flowers for the bees,Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, –

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mournAmong the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble softThe red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

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TO AUTUMN 155

Laetitia Elizabeth Landon(1802–38)

When Should Lovers Breathe Their Vows?

When should lovers breathe their vows?When should ladies hear them?

When the dew is on the boughs,When none else are near them;

When the moon shines cold and pale,When the birds are sleeping,

When no voice is on the gale,When the rose is weeping;

When the stars are bright on high,Like hopes in young love’s dreaming,

And glancing round the light clouds fly,Like soft fears to shade their beaming.

The fairest smiles are those that liveOn the brow by starlight wreathing;

And the lips their richest incense giveWhen the sigh is at midnight breathing.

Oh softest is the cheek’s love-rayWhen seen by moonlight hours,

Other roses seek the day,But blushes are night-flowers.

Oh when the moon and stars are bright,When the dew-drops glisten,

Then their vows should lovers plight,Then should ladies listen!

Stanzas on the Death of Mrs Hemans

The rose – the glorious rose is gone.

(Felicia Hemans, Lays of Many Lands)

Bring flowers to crown the cup and lute,Bring flowers, the bride is near;

Bring flowers to soothe the captive’s cell,Bring flowers to strew the bier!

Bring flowers! – thus said the lovely song;And shall they not be brought

To her who linked the offeringWith feeling and with thought?

Bring flowers, the perfumed and the pure,Those with the morning dew,

A sigh in every fragrant leaf,A tear on every hue.

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156 LAETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON

So pure, so sweet thy life has been,So filling earth and air

With odours and with lovelinessTill common scenes grew fair.

Thy song around our daily pathFlung beauty born of dreams,

That shadows on the actual worldThe spirits sunny gleams.

Mysterious influence, that to earthBrings down the heaven above,

And fills the universal heartWith universal love.

Such gifts were thine – as from the block,The unformed and the cold,

The sculptor calls to breathing lifeSome shape of perfect mould;

So thou from common thoughts and thingsDidst call a charmed song,

Which on a sweet and swelling tideBore the full soul along.

And thou from far and foreign landsDidst bring back many a tone,

And giving such new music still,A music of thine own.

A lofty strain of generous thoughts,And yet subdued and sweet –

An angel’s song, who sings of earth,Whose cares are at his feet.

And yet thy song is sorrowful,Its beauty is not bloom;

The hopes of which it breathes are hopesThat look beyond the tomb.

Thy song is sorrowful as windsThat wander o’er the plain,

And ask for summer’s vanished flowers,And ask for them in vain.

Ah, dearly purchased is the gift,The gift of song like thine;

A fated doom is hers who standsThe priestess of the shrine.

The crowd – they only see the crown,They only hear the hymn –

They mark not that the cheek is pale,And that the eye is dim.

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STANZAS ON THE DEATH OF MRS HEMANS 157

Wound to a pitch too exquisite,The soul’s fine chords are wrung;

With misery and melodyThey are too highly strung.

The heart is made too sensitiveLife’s daily pain to bear;

It beats in music, but it beatsBeneath a deep despair.

It never meets the love it paints,The love for which it pines;

Too much of heaven is in the faithThat such a heart enshrines.

The meteor wreath the poet wearsMust make a lonely lot;

It dazzles only to divideFrom those who wear it not.

Didst thou not tremble at thy fameAnd loathe its bitter prize,

While what to others triumph seemed,To thee was sacrifice?

Oh flower brought from paradiseTo this cold world of ours,

Shadows of beauty such as thineRecall thy native bowers.

Let others thank thee – ’twas for themThy soft leaves thou didst wreathe;

The red rose wastes itself in sighsWhose sweetness others breathe!

And they have thanked thee – many a lipHas asked of thine for words,

When thoughts, life’s finer thoughts, have touchedThe spirit’s inmost chords.

How many loved and honoured theeWho only knew thy name;

Which o’er the weary working worldLike starry music came!

With what still hours of calm delightThy songs and image blend;

I cannot choose but think thou wertAn old familiar friend.

The charm that dwelt in songs of thineMy inmost spirit moved;

And yet I feel as thou hadst beenNot half enough beloved.

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158 LAETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON

They say that thou wert faint and wornWith suffering and with care;

What music must have filled the soulThat had so much to spare!

Oh weary one! since thou art laidWithin thy mother’s breast –

The green, the quiet mother earth –

Thrice blessed be thy rest!Thy heart is left within our hearts

Although life’s pang is o’er;But the quick tears are in my eyes,

And I can write no more.

A Poet’s Love

Faint and more faint amid the world of dreams,That which was once my all, thy image, seemsPale as a star that in the morning gleams.

Long time that sweet face was my guiding star,Bringing me visions of the fair and far,Remote from this world’s toil and this world’s jar.

Around it was an atmosphere of light,Deep with the tranquil loveliness of night,Subdued and shadowy, yet serenely bright.

Like to a spirit did it dwell apart,Hushed in the sweetest silence of my heart,Lifting me to the heaven from whence thou art.

Too soon the day broke on that haunted hour,Loosing its spell, and weakening its power,All that had been imagination’s dower.

The noontide quenched that once enchanted ray;Care, labour, sorrow, gathered on the day –

Toil was upon my steps, dust on my way.

They melted down to earth my upward wings;I half forgot the higher, better things,The hope which yet again thy image brings.

Would I were worthier of thee? I am fain,Amid my life of bitterness and pain,To dream once more my early dreams again.

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A POET’S LOVE 159

Elizabeth Barrett(1806–61)

Stanzas Addressed to Miss Landon, and suggested by her ‘Stanzas onthe Death of Mrs Hemans’ (signed ‘B.’)

Thou bay-crowned living one, who o’erThe bay-crowned dead art bowing,

And o’er the shadeless, moveless browThy human shadow throwing;

And o’er the sighless, songless lipsThe wail and music wedding,

Dropping o’er the tranquil eyesTears not of their shedding –

Go take thy music from the dead,Whose silentness is sweeter;

Reserve thy tears for living brows,For whom such tears are meeter;

And leave the violets in the grassTo brighten where thou treadest –

No flowers for her – oh, bring no flowers,Albeit ‘Bring flowers’, thou saidest.

But bring not near her solemn corseA type of human seeming;

Lay only dust’s stern verityUpon her dust undreaming.

And while the calm perpetual starsShall look upon it solely,

Her sphered soul shall look on themWith eyes more bright and holy.

Nor mourn, oh living one, becauseHer part in life was mourning:

Would she have lost the poet’s flameFor anguish of the burning?

The minstrel harp, for the strained string?The tripod, for th’ afflated

Woe? Or the vision, for those tearsThrough which it shone dilated?

Perhaps she shuddered while the world’sCold hand her brow was wreathing,

But wronged she ne’er that mystic breathWhich breathed in all her breathing;

Which drew from rocky earth and manAbstractions high and moving –

Beauty, if not the beautiful,And love, if not the loving.

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160 ELIZABETH BARRETT

Such visionings have paled in sightThe Saviour she descrieth,

And little recks who wreathed the browThat on His bosom lieth.

The whiteness of His innocenceO’er all her garments flowing –

There learneth she that sweet ‘new song’

She will not mourn in knowing.

Be blessed, crowned and living one,And when thy dust decayeth,

May thine own England say for theeWhat now for her it sayeth –

‘Albeit softly in our earsHer silver song was ringing,

The footsteps of her parting soulWere softer than her singing.’

L.E.L.’s Last Question

‘Do you think of me as I think of you,My friends, my friends?’ She said it from the sea,The English minstrel in her minstrelsy,While under brighter skies than erst she knewHer heart grew dark, and groped as the blind,To touch, across the waves, friends left behind –

‘Do you think of me as I think of you?’

It seemed not much to ask – ‘as I of you?’We all do ask the same – no eyelids coverWithin the meekest eyes that question over;And little in this world the loving doBut sit (among the rocks?) and listen forThe echo of their own love evermore;Do you think of me as I think of you?

Love-learned, she had sung of only love,And as a child asleep (with weary headDropped on the fairy book he lately read),Whatever household noises round him move,Hears in his dream some elfin turbulence –

Even so, suggestive to her inward sense,All sounds of life assumed one tune of love.

And when the glory of her dream withdrew,When knightly gestes and courtly pageantriesWere broken in her visionary eyesBy tears, the solemn seas attested true –

Forgetting that sweet lute beside her hand,She asked not, ‘Do you praise me, oh my land?’But ‘Think ye of me, friends, as I of you?’

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L.E.L.’S LAST QUESTION 161

True heart to love, that poured many a yearLove’s oracles for England, smooth and well –Would God thou hadst an inward oracleIn that lone moment, to confirm thee dear!For when thy questioned friends in agonyMade passionate response, ‘We think of thee’,Thy place was in the dust – too deep to hear!

Could she not wait to catch the answering breath?Was she content with that drear ocean’s sound,Dashing his mocking infinite aroundThe craver of a little love, beneathThose stars, content – where last her song had gone?They, mute and cold in radiant life, as soonTheir singer was to be, in darksome death!

Bring your vain answers, cry, ‘We think of thee!’How think ye of her? In the long agoDelights, or crowned by new bays? Not so;None smile, and none are crowned where lyeth she,With all her visions unfulfilled – save one,Her childhood’s, of the palm-trees in the sun:And lo, their shadow on her sepulchre!

Do you think of me as I think of you?Oh friends, oh kindred, oh dear brotherhoodOf the whole world, what are we that we shouldFor covenants of long affection sue?Why press so near each other, when the touchIs barred by graves? Not much, and yet too much,This ‘Think upon me as I think of you.’

But while on mortal lips I shape anewA sigh to mortal issues, verilyAbove th’ unshaken stars that see us die,A vocal pathos rolls – and He who drewAll life from dust, and for all tasted death,By death, and life, and love appealing, saith,‘Do you think of me as I think of you?’

Sonnet on Mr Haydon’s Portrait of Mr Wordsworth

Wordsworth upon Helvellyn! Let the cloudEbb audibly along the mountain wind,Then break against the rock, and show behindThe lowland valleys floating up to crowdThe sense with beauty. He with forehead bowedAnd humble-lidded eyes, as one inclinedBefore the sovran thoughts of his own mind,And very meek with inspirations proud,Takes here his rightful place as poet-priest,

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By the high altar, singing prayer and prayerTo the yet higher heav’ns. A vision freeAnd noble, Haydon, hath thine art released –

No portrait this, with academic air!This is the poet and his poetry.

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SONNET ON MR HAYDON’S PORTRAIT OF MR WORDSWORTH 163

NotesSamuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born at Ottery St Mary, Devon, where his father was vicarand master of the grammar school. Aged nine, following his father’s death, he was sentas a boarder to Christ’s Hospital School in London. In 1791 he entered Jesus College,Cambridge, but abandoned his studies in 1793 and never took a degree. Like manyyoung men at the time, he was inspired by hopes of radical political change in the wakeof the French Revolution and, in 1794, together with the poet Robert Southey, heplanned to emigrate and set up an ideal community in North America.

This visionary scheme came to nothing, but Coleridge went to lodge with Southey inBristol, where he gave lectures on politics, education and religion. In October 1795 hemarried Sara Flicker and settled in the village of Clevedon. His first book, Poems onVarious Subjects, was published the following year, and his first son was born. It wasabout this time that Coleridge began to suffer from bouts of ill-health, sleeplessness anddepression, and to gain relief he resorted more and more frequently to opium, acommon remedy at the time. In the early part of 1796 he edited a radical weekly papercalled The Watchman, but it ceased publication after less than a dozen issues.

In December 1796 the Coleridges moved to a cottage at Nether Stowey, in the QuantockHills. Dorothy and William Wordsworth were living nearby at Alfoxden, and in thesummer of 1797 there began the friendship between Coleridge and William Wordsworththat was to lead to their collaboration in the publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798.Coleridge’s most important contribution to the volume was The Rime of theAncyentMarinere, but during this time he also wrote ‘Kubla Khan’, ‘Frost at Midnight’ and otherpoems.

In September 1798 Coleridge went to Germany with Dorothy and William Wordsworth,and there studied the works of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, the dramatist Johannvon Schiller and other Romantic thinkers and writers. While he was abroad, his secondson died, and by July 1799 he was back at Nether Stowey. For a time he tried to makemoney by political journalism, but when the Wordsworths moved to Grasmere in theLake District, Coleridge moved his family up to Keswick in order to be near his friends.It was an unhappy time. His marriage had begun to fail; he had fallen hopelessly in lovewith a young woman called Sara Hutchinson, whose sister Mary was to marry WilliamWordsworth; and he was now addicted to opium and unable to undertake systematicwork.

In 1804 he went abroad, and spent over two years in Malta working as a civil servant,and visiting Sicily and Italy. On returning to England he finally separated from his wife,after much wrangling. For a time he lived with the Wordsworths, but then moved toLondon, where he gave lectures on various literary subjects. In 1808 he returned to livewith the Wordsworths, and tried to break his opium addiction. He ran a review calledThe Friend for nearly a year before it failed for lack of funds.

His long friendship with William Wordsworth was coming under strain, however, and thefinal break came in 1810 when Coleridge thought that William had betrayed him to afriend. For the next few years he lodged in London, taking opium again and in such ill-health and low spirits that his friends feared he might commit suicide. At length, in 1816,he took up residence in Highgate with a physician friend who managed to restore him tohealth. He remained there until his death, supporting himself by lecturing and publishingon a great variety of subjects. The immense activity and originality of his mind is to beseen in his remarkable ‘Notebooks’, which he kept throughout his life. His major critical

164 NOTES

work, Biographia Literaria, appeared in 1817, and in the same year he published hiscollected poems under the title Sibylline Leaves.

Sources: John Beer (ed.), Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poems (London: Dent, 1995), pp.64–5,96–7, 188–90, 203–7, 214–55, 349–57, 381–2; J. Shawcross (ed.), Biographia Literaria(London: Oxford University Press, 1954), Vol. I, p.202; Vol. II, pp.5–8, 10–12.

p.1 The Eolian Harp

This was first published in Poems on Various Subjects (1796).

Title: the aeolian harp gets its name from Aeolus, the god of the wind in Greekmythology. It is a musical instrument consisting of a number of catgut strings stretchedover a wooden resonance box. When hung up outdoors, or in a window or doorway,the wind passing over the strings makes a soft wailing sound, similar to that heard fromtelegraph wires. The instrument was very popular during this period, and Romantic poetsfrequently used it as a symbol for poetic inspiration.

l.1 Sara: Sara Fricker, whom Coleridge married on 4 October 1795. They lived for a timein a cottage (‘cot’) in Clevedon.

l.18 sequacious: following in regular order

ll.26–33: these lines, in square brackets, were added later, and were first published inSibylline Leaves (1817).

l.47 Plastic: formative

l.54 disprais’d: blamed, censured

l.63 Wilder’d and dark: perplexed and ignorant

p.2 Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement

This was composed in late 1795 or early 1796. It was first published in Poems (1797),under the title ‘Reflections on Entering into Active Life. A Poem which Affects not to bePoetry’.

Epigraph: a quotation from the Roman poet Horace (65 BCE–8 CE), Satires, I, iv, 42, whichmay be translated as ‘more suited to conversation or prose’.

l.1 our pretty Cot: the cottage in Clevedon where Coleridge lived before moving toBristol.

l.12 Bristowa: Bristol

l.49 Howard: John Howard (1726–90) was a famous prison reformer. His name iscommemorated in the ‘Howard League for Penal Reform’.

ll.60–3: during the first half of 1796 Coleridge edited a radical literary and politicalweekly, The Watchman, in which he argued that concern for the wrongs of the worldneeds to be accompanied by practical political action.

p.4 Frost at Midnight

This was written in February 1798 while Coleridge was living in a cottage at NetherStowey in Somerset. It was first published in a volume entitled Tears in Solitude (1798).

l.7 My cradled infant: Coleridge’s first son, Hartley, was born in 1796.

l.15 film: tremulous membrane of soot, such as is sometimes seen over a fire that hasalmost gone out. In a note Coleridge said: ‘In all parts of the kingdom these films arecalled strangers and are supposed to portend the arrival of some absent friend.’

l.43 we both were clothed alike: at this time (and until well into the nineteenth century)little boys as well as girls were dressed in frocks. Some time between the age of threeand seven, boys were put into breeches.

NOTES 165

ll.51–2 reared ... ’mid cloisters dim: Coleridge’s father died when he was nine, and hewas sent away from Devonshire to Christ’s Hospital School in London, where heremained until 1791.

l.74: when the poem was first published it contained a further six lines:

Quietly shining to the quiet moon,Like those, my babe! which ere tomorrow’s warmthHave capp’d their sharp keen points with pendulous drops,Will catch thine eye, and with their noveltySuspend thy little soul; then make thee shout,And stretch and flutter from thy mother’s armsAs thou wouldst fly for very eagerness.

These were removed by Coleridge in 1808–9, on the grounds that they destroyed ‘therondo and return upon itself of the poem’.

p.5 Kubla Khan

This was probably composed in the summer or early autumn of 1797, but remainedunpublished until 1816 when the prefatory note was attached to it, explaining that it wasappearing in print at the request of ‘a poet of great and deserved celebrity’, who was, infact, Lord Byron. According to Coleridge’s own account, it was composed while he wasexperiencing the effects of opium, a narcotic drug frequently prescribed during thisperiod for the relief of pain, sleeplessness and dysentery.

Title: Kubla Khan (1216–94), the grandson of the famous Genghis Khan, was the founderof the Mongol dynasty of China.

ll.11–14: the book Coleridge was reading was Purchas his Pilgrimage, an account ofvoyages to Africa and the Far East, compiled by Samuel Purchas and first published in1613. The passage Coleridge refers to runs as follows:

In Xaindu did Cublai Can build a stately palace, encompassing sixteen miles ofplain ground with a wall, wherein are fertile meadows, pleasant springs,delightful streams, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the midstthereof a sumptuous house of pleasure, which may be removed from place toplace.

ll.33–42: the poetry quoted is from Coleridge’s poem ‘The Picture’; or, ‘The Lover’sResolution’ (1802).

l.45: the Greek text is adapted from the words of the poet Theocritus (c.310–250 BCE), andtranslates as: ‘Tomorrow I shall sing more sweetly.’

ll.47–8: ‘the fragment of a very different character’ was Coleridge’s poem ‘The Pains ofSleep’.

[Poem]

l.3 Alph: the name is perhaps derived from ‘Alpha’, the first letter of the Greek alphabet.

p.8 The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere

The composition of this poem dates from November 1797, when Coleridge was livingnear Dorothy and William Wordsworth in Somerset. According to Wordsworth’s accountof the matter, the two poets decided to write a poem together, to be sent to NewMonthly Magazine in the hope that it might earn them some money. The poem wascompleted by March 1798, and it was published as the first poem in Coleridge’s andWordsworth’s joint volume, Lyrical Ballads (1798).

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Title: Wordsworth said that he and Coleridge had planned the poem while walking overthe Quantock Hills to Watchet:

Much the greatest part of the story was Mr. Coleridge’s invention, but certainparts I myself suggested; for example, some crime was to be committed whichshould bring upon the Old Navigator (as Coleridge afterwards delighted to callhim) the spectral persecution, as a consequence of that crime and his ownwanderings.

I had been reading in Shelwocke’s Voyages [George Shelwocke, Voyage Roundthe World, by the Way of the Great South Sea (1726)] a day or two before, thatwhile doubling Cape Horn they frequently saw albatrosses – in that latitude thelargest sort of seafowl, some extending their wings 12 or 13 feet. ‘Suppose’, Isaid, ‘you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering theSouth Sea, and that the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them toavenge the crime?’ The incident was thought fit for the purpose, and adoptedaccordingly. I also suggested the navigation of the ship by the dead men, butdo not recollect that I had anything more to do with the scheme of the poem.[...] We began the composition together on that (to me) memorable evening. [...]As we endeavoured to proceed conjointly (I speak of the same evening), ourrespective manners proved so widely different that it would have been quitepresumptuous in us to do anything but separate from an undertaking uponwhich I could only have been a clog.

Late in his life Coleridge described The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere as ‘a poem of thepure imagination’, but it was also a poem that he revised constantly. In order to showclearly the effect of the changes he made, in this Anthology two versions of the poemhave been printed side by side, on facing pages. The text on the left-hand pages is thatof the first version, published in 1798. The text on the right-hand pages is that of aversion published in 1817, as reprinted, with minor alterations, in Coleridge’s PoeticalWorks of 1828. The notes below refer to the 1798 version, except where indicated by‘(1828)’ after the line number.

Argument

l.1 Line: the equator

l.1 (1828): the passage from Thomas Burnet’s Archaeologia Philosophicae (1692) istranslated by John Beer as follows:

I can easily believe, that there are more invisible than visible beings in theuniverse ... But who will explain to us this great family – their ranks, theirrelationships, their differences and their respective functions? What do they do,and where do they live? Human cleverness has always sought knowledge ofthese things, never attained it. At the same time I do not deny the pleasure ofsometimes contemplating, as in a picture, the image of a greater and betterworld; lest the mind, inured to the details of everyday life, should contract andsink down into paling thoughts. But meanwhile we must be vigilant for truthand observe proportion, so that we can distinguish the certain from theuncertain, day from night.

[Poem]

l.15 loon: clown, lout

l.12 (1828) Eftsoons: forthwith

l.53 cliffs: clefts

NOTES 167

l.60 swound: swoon

l.65 biscuit-worms: dry biscuits, which were part of a ship’s provisions, became infestedwith maggots on a long voyage.

l.74 vespers: evenings

l.83 weft: woven fabric or tapestry

l.156 Gramercy: ‘God have mercy on us’

l.160 Hither to work us weal: coming towards us to bring us help

l.180 Pheere: compassion

l.234 eldritch: hideous

l.289 silly: useless

l.304 sere: worn

l.306 fire-flags sheen: meteoric flames shine. This is perhaps a reference to St Elmo’s Fire,a luminous glow seen at the top of ship’s masts during thundery weather and regardedby sailors as a good omen.

l.311 sedge: rushes (which ‘sigh’ when blown by the wind)

l.375 n’old: wouldn’t

l.516 rood: cross

l.527 Eftsones: again

l.545 shrieve: absolve

l.568 Ivy-tod: ivy bush

p.46 Dejection: An Ode

Title: this poem is a shortened and revised version of the text of a lengthy verse-letterwritten by Coleridge to Sara Hutchinson, dated 4 April 1802. Sara was the sister of MaryHutchinson, who was to become Wordsworth’s wife. Coleridge met her in October 1799,and over the next few years fell deeply in love with her. He had come to feel that he andhis wife (also called Sara) were incompatible, and in the verse-letter to Sara Hutchinsonhe poured out his sufferings. For obvious reasons this highly personal version of thepoem could not be published, but over the next few months Coleridge extracted fromthe original poem of 340 lines some 139 lines which he reshaped to form the Ode. Thisversion was first published in the Morning Post on 4 October 1802, the day ofWordsworth’s wedding. It was subsequently included, with small revisions, in Coleridge’sSibylline Leaves (1817), and this is the version reprinted here.

l.7 Óolian lute: see the note above on Coleridge’s ‘The Eolian Harp’.

O Lady: in the first version of the poem, the addressee was ‘Sara’.

l.26 throstle: song-thrush

l.39: compare Samson, in John Milton’s Samson Agonistes (1671), l.594: ‘my genial spiritsdroop’

l.66 effluence: flowing out, emanation.

l.73 or ear or sight: either ear or sight

l.99 That lute: the aeolian harp mentioned in l.7

l.100 mountain-tairn: Coleridge appended the following note: ‘Tairn [now usually spelttarn] is a small lake, generally if not always applied to the lakes up in the mountains andwhich are the feeders of those in the valleys. This address to the wind will not appearextravagant to those who have heard it at night and in a mountainous country.’

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l.120 Otway: Thomas Otway (1652–85) was a playwright remembered chiefly for histragedies and for his early, miserable, death. Coleridge is referring here to his tragedyThe Orphan.

p.49 The Pains of Sleep

Title: the first draft of this poem was in a letter from Coleridge to the poet RobertSouthey in September 1803. A revised text was published in 1816. Immediately after thepoem, Coleridge wrote to Southey:

I do not know how I came to scribble down these verses to you – my heart wasaching, my head all confused – but they are, doggrels as they may be, a trueportrait of my nights. – What to do, I am at a loss: – for it is hard thus to bewithered, having the faculties and attainments, which I have.

In a letter to his friend Thomas Poole a few days later, Coleridge described his torment:

God forbid that my worst enemy should ever have the nights and the sleepsthat I have had, night after night – surprised by sleep, while I struggled toremain awake, starting up to bless my own loud screams that had awakenedme.

He was unaware at this time that the cause of his nightmares was the opium that he wastaking in ever-increasing quantities.

p.50 from Biographia Literaria

Biographia Literaria, Coleridge’s account of his ‘literary life and opinions’, is his mostcelebrated work of criticism, and a key document in English Romantic aesthetic theory. Itis famous partly because it is the only critical work of Coleridge’s ever to achieveanything like systematic form: most of his critical remarks are to be found in hisvoluminous letters and notebooks, and in annotations on his reading. The work was firstpublished in 1817, in two volumes. The extracts here are from Chapter XIII, whereColeridge sets out his famous definition of the creative imagination, and Chapter XIV,where he gives an account of the composition and publication of Lyrical Ballads.

Chapter XIII

l.5 the infinite AM: God. In the Bible (Exodus 3:14), God says to Moses ‘I AM THAT IAM.’

Chapter XIV

l.1 first year: July 1797 to July 1798, while Coleridge was at Nether Stowey andWordsworth at Alfoxden.

ll.39–40: Coleridge is alluding to Isaiah 6:9–10 in the Bible.

ll.52–3 experiment: in the brief ‘Advertisement’, which prefaced the first edition ofLyrical Ballads, Wordsworth had written that ‘The majority of the following poems are tobe considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain howfar the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted tothe purposes of poetic pleasure.’

l.64 the language of real life: this is not exactly what Wordsworth wrote; he spoke of ‘aselection of language really used by men’ (see above Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802),l.66).

l.71 controversy: the harsh criticism levelled at Lyrical Ballads by its earliest reviewers.

l.100 recent collection: Wordsworth’s Poems, printed in two volumes in 1815

l.131 distiches: groups of two lines of verse

NOTES 169

ll.145–6: the Latin translates as ‘The free spirit must be impelled forward’, a quotationfrom the Satyricon, a novel by the first century CE Roman satirical writer Petronius.

ll.152–3: Plato (c.428–c.348 BCE) was a Greek philosopher whose famous book TheRepublic describes his political Utopia; Jeremy Taylor (1613–67) was the author of widelyread religious works entitled Holy Living (1650) and Holy Dying (1651); Thomas Burnet(1635–1715) was a scientist, whose most celebrated work was The Sacred Theory of theEarth (1684–9).

ll.188–9: the Latin phrase may be translated as ‘Driven with a slack rein’.

Charlotte Bury (1775–1861)Charlotte Bury was born in London, the daughter of the fifth Duke of Argyll and his wifeElizabeth Gunning. In 1796 she married her poverty-stricken cousin, Colonel JohnCampbell, who died in 1809. They had nine children, of whom only two survived. Afterserving for five years as Lady-in-Waiting to the Princess of Wales, in 1818 she married theReverend Edward Bury, tutor to her son, and they had two children. He died in 1832.

She published (anonymously) Poems on Several Occasions in 1797, but she was mainly anovelist, producing seventeen novels in all. Her most famous work, however, was an(anonymous) Diary Illustrative of the Times of George IV, which appeared in 1838. Itincluded a detailed and candid account of various scandals at court and three editionswere published within a year.

Source: Duncan Wu (ed.), Romanticism: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994),pp.631–2.

p.55 False and Faithless as Thou Art

This was first published in Poems on Several Occasions (1797).

l.12 But: even

[Mary] Matilda Betham (1776–1852)Matilda Betham was born in Suffolk, the eldest daughter of the Reverend WilliamBetham, headmaster of a school at Stoneham Aspel, and his wife Mary Damont. She wasalmost entirely self-educated, having the run of her father’s extensive library, and was atone point sent to a sewing school ‘to prevent my too strict application to books’. In 1794she moved to London, where she attempted to support herself independently. Her firstpublication, Elegies and Other Small Poems, appeared in 1797.

Over the next two or three years she worked on a novel and on various translations,while gathering materials for a Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women ofevery Age and Country, which was published in 1804. She also painted miniatureportraits, and had work exhibited at the Royal Academy.

Her poetry was admired by other writers including Coleridge, Charles and Mary Lamb,Anna Laetitia Barbauld and Robert Southey, and they encouraged her literary ambitions.She published a second volume of Poems in 1808, and her most successful work, TheLays of Marie: A Poem, in 1816. In 1818 another volume of poems, Vignettes in Verse,appeared, but about this time she had a nervous breakdown, and her family sent her toan asylum. However, she recovered and returned to live in London in the 1830s, whereshe remained until her death.

Source: Roger Lonsdale (ed.), Eighteenth-Century Woman Poets: An Oxford Anthology(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp.500, 502–3.

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p.56 In a Letter to A.R.C. on her Wishing to be Called Anna

This was first published in Elegies and Other Small Poems (1797).

l.11 Flora: the Roman name for the mythological goddess of flowers and spring

p.56 [The Power of Women]

This was composed about 1798 and sent in a letter to Betham’s friend, Lady Boughton.Betham explained that she had written it as a ‘little continuation’ of some verses she hadread, which began:

Since ’tis superior skill in arts refin’dThat ranks the male above the female kind;Ye fair, each meaner vanity control,And study how to ornament the soul.

It remained unpublished until 1905.

l.1 mechanic arts: work involving manual labour

l.1 scan: criticize

Charlotte Dacre (1782–1841)Charlotte Dacre was born in London, the daughter of Jonathan King, a Jewishmoneylender, blackmailer and radical writer of some notoriety, and his first wifeDeborah Lara. When their father went bankrupt and was arrested in 1798, Charlotte andher sister Sophia published a volume of poems, Trifles from Helicon, which theydedicated to him to demonstrate that ‘the education you have afforded us is not entirelylost’.

She was best known as the author of a series of sensational ‘Gothic’ novels, of which themost famous was Zofloya, or The Moor (1806), which was read by Shelley. A secondcollection of poems, entitled Hours of Solitude, was published in 1805. Little is known ofher later life.

It is not clear whether the name ‘Dacre’ is simply a pseudonym, but in 1815 she marriedNicholas Byrne, editor of the London Morning Post, by whom she had already had threechildren.


p.58 Il Trionfo del Amor

This was published in Hours of Solitude (1805).

Title: the translation is ‘The Triumph of Love’.

philtres: love-potions

enchantedarts: presumably a misprint for ‘enchanted arts’

Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859)Thomas De Quincey was born in Manchester, the second son of a linen merchant namedQuincey. He was educated at schools in Bath and Winkfield, as well as ManchesterGrammar School, from which he ran away to wander in Wales and London. He enteredWorcester College, Oxford, in 1803, but never took a degree. In 1807 he became friendlywith Wordsworth, Coleridge and the poet Robert Southey, and in 1809 settled at

NOTES 171

Grasmere in the cottage formerly occupied by Dorothy and William Wordsworth. He hadbegun to take opium while at Oxford and by 1812 was an addict. He married MargaretSimpson, the daughter of a local farmer, in 1816, and they had eight children.

For the next forty years or so, he lived by journalism and reviewing. His best-knownwork, and the one that established his reputation as a writer, was Confessions of anEnglish Opium-Eater, first serialized in the London Magazine in 1821, and published as abook in 1822. The revelations in it greatly shocked contemporary readers; evenColeridge, himself an opium addict, described it as ‘a wicked book, a monstrousexaggeration’. Among other works, De Quincey published Autobiographic Sketches(1834–53), including articles on Wordsworth, Coleridge, Charles Lamb and others, and adream vision, Suspiria de Profundis (1845). From 1853 until his death he was occupiedwith the preparation of a collected edition of his works.


p.60 from Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

l.1 my door: Dove Cottage, Grasmere

l.24 sallow: sickly, brownish-yellow colour

l.25 bilious: full of bile

l.33 Anastasius: popular novel by Thomas Hope (1770–1831) published in 1819.

l.34 Adelung’s Mithridates: Mithridates oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde was a dictionaryby Johann Christoph Adelung (1732–1806).

l.35 Iliad: epic poem by the ancient Greek poet Homer

ll.76–7: Oedipus and Priam were kings from ancient Greek mythology; the Phoenicianseaport of Tyre flourished from about 1400 BCE; the Egyptian city of Memphis flourishedfrom about 3000 BCE.

l.85 Midas: in Greek mythology, Midas, king of Phrygia, when granted a wish by one ofthe gods, asked that everything he touched should turn to gold.

l.137 Indostan: India

l.140 antedeluvian: before the great Flood described in the Bible (Genesis 7 and 8)

l.141 castes: social classes

l.143 Ganges, Euphrates: rivers in India and south-west Asia, respectively

l.146 officina gentium: manufactory of people

ll.162–3: Brama, Vishnu and Seeva (Shiva) are Hindu gods; Isis and Osiris were ancientEgyptian gods.

l.164 ibis: large black and white bird, venerated in ancient Egypt

l.167 Nilotic: belonging to the River Nile (in Egypt)

George Gordon, Lord Byron(1788–1824)

George Gordon Byron was born on 22 January 1788, son of Captain John (‘Mad Jack’)Byron, who had dissipated most of his wife Catherine Gordon of Gight’s fortune beforedying in 179l. Byron, brought up in relative poverty by his emotionally unstable butadored mother, had a generally happy childhood.

In 1798 he succeeded to the title sixth Baron Byron of Rochdale and inherited ‘themelancholy mansion’ Newstead Abbey and all its associated debts. He was subjected to a

172 NOTES

series of painful but useless treatments for the club foot with which he had been born. In1801 he was sent to Harrow, where he remained until 1805, when he entered TrinityCollege, Cambridge. His first collection of poems, Hours of Idleness, was published in1807. He left Cambridge in 1808 with a Master of Arts degree and heavily in debt.

In 1809 he came of age and took his seat in the House of Lords. He published thesatirical English Bards and Scotch Reviewers and then left on a tour of theMediterranean, which he later used as the background to the first two cantos of ChildeHarold’s Pilgrimage. He returned to England in 1811 to find that his mother had died,and that his already heavy debts had increased. In 1812 he made two impressivespeeches in the House of Lords, one sympathetic to the machine-breakers protestingagainst the effects of the industrial revolution, who had been operating in an area nearNewstead, and one on Catholic emancipation.

In 1812 the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage were published. The editionsold out in three days, and Byron remarked ‘I awoke one morning and found myselffamous.’ A series of verse-tales followed, all with Eastern subjects, including The Giaour(1813), of which eight editions were published within a year, The Bride of Abydos (1813),which Byron claimed had been written in four days, and The Corsair (1814), which soldten thousand copies on the day of publication.

Byron’s private life now approximated to the kind of moral chaos associated with theheroes of his verse narratives. As if seeking stability, on 2 January 1815 he entered aworldly ‘marriage of reason’ with Annabella Milbanke, who had previously rejected him.The marriage was disastrous, with Byron openly preferring Augusta to his wife. Shortlyafter the birth of a daughter, Augusta Ada, Lady Byron left him, provoking a publicscandal.

Byron was by far the most popular and commercially successful of the poets of theRomantic period, and became the dominant literary figure in Europe. Yet even before hisdeath his popularity had waned and he was reviled by the reviewers and readers whohad earlier celebrated him. He was largely ignored when the other Romantic poets werebeing canonized in the nineteenth century, his work being published only in carefullyselected anthologies. His poetry falls broadly into two phases, the works for which hebecame famous, and those for which he was excoriated.

The former are represented here by excerpts from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, whichfocus on the alienated hero, and include one of the grand historical set pieces whichwere so much admired. The largely high society readership of his popular, andexpensively produced, poems saw him as the poet of romance, the social and psychicalienation of his tormented hero being read as a tragic failure of love.

Source: J.J. McGann (ed.), Byron: The Complete Poetical Works (Oxford: ClarendonPress), Vol. I (1980), pp.236–7, 256; Vol. II (1980), pp.52–3, 80–2, 171–2, 184–6; Vol. III(1981), pp.288–9; Vol. V (1986), pp.3–8O.

p.66 from English Bards and Scotch Reviewers

Title: This was written in response to a contemptuous review of Byron’s poem Hours ofIdleness (1807) and was published in 1809. It was modelled on the couplet satires ofByron’s poetic idol, Alexander Pope (1688–1744). The poem attacks Byron’s critics, andthe degradation of the public taste for poetry, which was a constant theme in his lettersfor the next fifteen years. For Byron this was represented by the work of, among others,Wordsworth, Coleridge and Robert Southey, and this poem’s attacks on them are the firstof many. Praise is reserved for contemporary poets who wrote in the couplet style of theeighteenth century.

l.225 Southey: Robert Southey (1774–1843) was a poet and friend of Wordsworth andColeridge during the 1790s. Byron seems to regard him as the leader of the ‘Lakers’ (acontemptuous term used for the three poets, who all lived in the Lake District at thistime).

NOTES 173

l.228 A fourth: Robert Southey’s The Curse of Kehema had appeared in 1810.

l.230 Thou still wilt verseward plod thy weary way: a play on Thomas Gray’s ElegyWritten in a Country Churchyard (1751), l.3: ‘The ploughman homeward plods hisweary way.’

l.231 Berkeley-Ballads: a reference to Robert Southey’s The Old Woman of Berkeley, aBallad, which Byron thought ridiculous.

l.240 And quit his books, for fear of growing double: see Wordsworth’s ‘The TablesTurned’, l.3: ‘Up! up! my friend, and quit your books/ Or surely you’ll grow double.’

l.256 tumid: swollen, here meaning inflated

l.260 a Pixy for a muse: Coleridge’s Poems (third edn, 1808) included Songs of thePixies.

l.264 the Laureat of the long-ear’d kind: a reference to Coleridge’s Lines to a Young Ass.

p.67 from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: A Romaunt

Byron began writing this poem in October 1809, and completed Canto II in March 1810.He seems to have been reluctant to publish it, giving the manuscript to his friend R.C.Dallas to do what he liked with, and adding that it was ‘not worth troubling you with’.Dallas ensured that the poem was published, and it caused a sensation. The hero, analienated, misanthropic and gloomy figure, was originally to have been called ‘ChildeBurun’, the archaic form of the Byron name, suggesting an autobiographical content.Although Byron was identified with his cynical hero, his own experience is representedin the poem largely by material drawn from his travels in Europe, most of it descriptiverather than personal.

p.67 Canto II (1812)

ll.217–25: this stanza is adapted from Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1624), I,224.

l.235 Eremite: religious recluse or hermit

lonely Athos: Byron had written a fragment, The Monk of Athos, in 1811, parts of whichhe later adapted for the opening of Childe Harold.

l.237 Eve: evening.

l.252 jocund morn: compare Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, III, v, 9–10: ‘jocund day/Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.’

p.68 Canto III (1816)

These stanzas, written in Switzerland, stress the isolation and alienation of Harold, andsuggest that he found compensation in Nature. Byron himself found no such consolation,as he wrote in his journal on 29 September 1816:

neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the avalanche, nor thetorrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for onemoment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled me to lose my ownwretched identity in the majesty, and the power, and the glory, around, aboveand beneath me.

l.89 in strange land: this has echoes of the biblical ‘sojourner in a strange land’ (Exodus2:22).

l.118 the Chaldean: the Chaldees were Babylonian seers, who were also famous asastronomers.

l.131 Then came his fit again: compare Shakespeare’s Macbeth III, iv, 21: ‘Then comesmy fit again.’

174 NOTES

p.69 Canto IV (1818)

l.1252 I see before me the gladiator lie: Byron was describing a famous statue, now inthe Vatican in Rome, which was known as the ‘Dying Gladiator’. He made severalattempts at identifying the figure from ancient sources. It is now considered to representa dying Gaul.

l.1264 Danube: European river which rises in the Black Forest in Germany and runs tothe Black Sea.

l.1266 Dacian: from Dacia, the Roman province which included Translyvania.

l.1620 lay: this should read ‘lie’, but Byron has ‘lies’ in l.1618. The solecism may suggesthaste on Byron’s part, or his diminished interest in the Childe Harold narrative.

l.1629 Armada ... Trafalgar: the Spanish Armada was a fleet sent by King Philip II ofSpain in 1588 to invade England; the Battle of Trafalgar was a sea battle fought betweenthe British and the French in 1805.

from Hebrew Melodies (1815)p.73 She Walks in Beauty

Title: a manuscript copy of this poem is headed ‘Lines written by Lord Byron after seeingMrs Wilmot at Lansdowne House’. The poem was almost certainly written the day afterthis encounter. ‘Mrs Wilmot’ was Anne Wilmot (1784–1871), who had married Byron’sfirst cousin, Robert John Wilmot (1784–1841). Byron’s journal notes that she ‘appeared inmourning, with dark spangles on her dress’.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on 4 August 1792, the eldest son of Timothy Shelley, arespectable Sussex squire and Member of Parliament. He was sent to Eton in 1804, wherehe felt lonely and oppressed and earned the nickname ‘Mad Shelley’. In adolescence hetried to introduce his admiring younger sisters to the ‘peculiar tenets and opinions’ heharboured regarding atheism and free love, thus upsetting his father, who began to seema tyrant in the eyes of his son. In 1810 he went up to Oxford. His only Oxford friend wasThomas Jefferson Hogg. In March 1811 both he and Hogg were sent down for circulatingand then refusing to disavow a pamphlet that Shelley had written, The Necessity ofAtheism.

When Hogg fell in love with his older sister, Elizabeth, Shelley tried to persuade her toenter a free union with him, which she, outraged, refused, whereupon his father tried toseparate him from the company of Hogg. In spite of their differences, his fatherreluctantly granted him a small allowance, and in 1811, at the age of nineteen, hemarried sixteen-year-old Harriet Westbrook.

Shelley and his wife wandered around the country preaching liberty and related causes;in 1812 they went to Dublin and distributed pamphlets urging Catholic Emancipation andthe repeal of the Union of the English and Irish parliaments. During this period Shelleywrote Queen Mab, his first attempt at a major poem, which was privately published in1813.

In 1814 Shelley met and fell in love with Mary Godwin, daughter of the radical WilliamGodwin and the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. They eloped to France, abandoningShelley’s first wife, Harriet.

Shelley had written his first important long poem, Alastor, in August 1815, and it waspublished in February 1816. That summer he went to Switzerland, with Mary and ClaireClairmont, where he met and became friendly with Byron. During the visit Shelley wrote‘Mont Blanc’, while Mary was inspired to write Frankenstein. They returned to England

NOTES 175

and at the end of 1816 they were married, and Shelley made unsuccessful efforts toregain control of his two children by Harriet. He continued to write radical pamphletsand in March 1818 he left England for the last time, considering that his countrymenregarded him as ‘a rare prodigy of crime and pollution, whose look even might infect’.

The last four years of Shelley’s life, which he spent in Italy, were his most creativeperiod. In 1819 he wrote The Mask of Anarchy, and Peter Bell the Third, a satire onWordsworth. The Cenci, a verse tragedy, and Prometheus Unbound, a lyrical dramaembodying his visionary ideas on the perfectibility of mankind, followed in 1820; duringthis same period he composed his best lyrics, including the ‘Ode to the West Wind’. In1821 he published A Defence of Poetry and Adonais, a lament for Keats, who hebelieved had been hounded to death by brutal reviewers.

The early deaths of their children, Clara and William, had left Mary deeply depressed,which Shelley seems to have registered as a failure to give him the affection heexpected. He transferred his love to Jane Williams, the wife of his friend EdwardWilliams, who had joined them in Pisa in 182l. On 8 July 1822 he and Edward Williamsset sail in Shelley’s boat, the Don Juan, across the Gulf of Spezia, but they were caughtby a sudden storm and perished, their bodies being washed ashore two weeks later.

Despite his often astonishing insensitivity in personal relations, Shelley was adored byhis closest friends and was, for the nineteenth century, the archetypal Romantic poet.

The poems in this Anthology form a brief selection that indicates the range of Shelley’sverse. This included Romantic allegory, overtly political poems, a subversive revision ofWordsworthian nature feeling, and the complex lyric.

Source: T. Hutchinson (ed.), Shelley: Poetical Works, rev. G.M. Matthews (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1970), pp. 14–30, 526, 532–5, 550, 574–5, 338–44, 577–9; A.D.F. Macrae(ed.), Percy Bysshe Shelley: Selected Poetry and Prose (London and New York: Routledge& Kegan Paul, 1991), pp.204–33.

p.74 Alastor

Shelley foreshadowed the theme of this poem in a letter to his friend Thomas JeffersonHogg in August 1815: ‘Yet who is there that will not pursue phantoms, spend his choicesthours in hunting after dreams, and wake only to perceive his error and regret that deathis so near?’ The poem’s preoccupation with death and failure may relate to Shelley’sillness in the spring of 1815: he had been mistakenly informed by a doctor that he wasrapidly dying of consumption.

Preface

l.17 requisitions: claims

l.20 prototype: original or model that forms the ideal embodiment

l.20 Blasted: blighted

l.27 abjure: renounce

l.39 All else: quite different.

The quotation (‘The good ... the socket’) is from Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814), 1,500–2.

The translation of the Latin from the Confessions of St Augustine is: ‘I was not yet inlove, and I loved to be in love, I sought what I might love, loving to be in love.’

l.1 Earth, ocean, air: the three legendary divisions of the world

l.2 our great Mother: Cybele, the Phrygian name for one of the earth goddesses inmythology.

l.3 natural piety: a phrase from Wordsworth’s poem ‘My heart leaps up’

l.8 sere wood: wood with withered leaves on the trees

176 NOTES

l.14 consciously: being fully morally aware of the implications of the act

l.17 wonted: usual

l.21 shadow: image. Nature here is apprehended not directly but only through herphysical effects.

ll.23–9: as a boy Shelley had been obsessed by the occult and ghostly appearances. Hespent nights in churchyards hoping and fearing to see a manifestation.

l.26 obstinate questionings: compare Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortalityfrom Recollections of Early Childhood (1807), III, 42–3: ‘those obstinate questionings/ Ofsense and outward things.’

l.44 fane: temple

l.58 lorn: lonely

ll.67–8: this is a reference to Wordsworthian ideas

l.69 ambient: surrounding

l.93 Frequent with: abundant with

l.101 bloodless food: Shelley had become a vegetarian in March 1812

l.104 suspend: would suspend

l.109 Tyre: town, now Sür, on the Mediterranean in southern Lebanon.

l.109 Balbec: there is no indication of where this was

l.110 where stood Jerusalem: in 70 CE Jerusalem had been destroyed by the EmperorTitus.

l.111 Babylon: a city near present-day Baghdad, the ancient capital of Babylonia

l.112 Memphis and Thebes: Memphis, a city fifteen miles south of present-day Cairo, wasthe capital of ancient Egypt in the second millenium BCE. Thebes was an Egyptian cityalong the banks of the Nile in the second to first millenium BCE.

l.119 The Zodiac’s brazen mystery: the temple at Dendera in Egypt contained ceilingpaintings featuring zodiacs and planetary systems. ‘Brazen’ may be a reference to theancient Greek epic poet Homer’s ‘brazen firmament’.

ll.119–20 dead men ... mute walls around: a French explorer had described suchinscriptions on the walls of an ancient Egyptian monastery.

ll.126–7 meaning ... inspiration, a reference to Wordsworth’s ‘I wandered lonely as acloud’ (1804–7), l.14: ‘They flash upon that inward eye.’

ll.140–1: in modern terms, he passed by the Red Sea, crossed Saudi Arabia and went oninto the Kernan desert of Iran.

l.143 Indus and Oxus: ancient rivers renowned for their great length. The Indus, 1700miles long, is still known by the same name; it rises in the glaciers of Tibet and flowsnorth-west through Kashmir and Pakistan to the Arabian sea. The Oxus, 1500 miles long,now known as the Amu Darya, flows from Tajikstan north-west into the Large Aral Sea.

ll.145–9 Till in the vale ... his languid limbs: the descriptions of the vale of Cashmire(Kashmir) derive from one of Shelley’s favourite novels, The Missionary: An Indian Tale(1811), by Sydney Owenson (later Lady Sydney Morgan).

l.154 long: for a long time

l.157 woof: threads in a woven fabric

l.160 poesy: old form of ‘poetry’, frequently used by Shelley and Keats

l.163 numbers: normally verse but here a song with lute (or similar) accompaniment

ll.176–7 sinuous veil/ Of woven wind: the literary source was the first century Romansatirical writer Petronius: ‘Your bride might as well clothe herself in the woven wind, as

NOTES 177

stand forth publicly naked under her mist of muslin.’ This was also a commoncontemporary image relating to the fashions in women’s clothes for thin, draped muslindresses which adhered sculpturally to the body. During this period The Society for theSuppression of Vice complained that ‘our most public streets swarm with nudes’.

l.200 wan: dark and gloomy

l.207 the bounds: in trying to follow the dream image he crosses the boundary betweenillusion and reality.

l.214 pendent: overhanging

l.216 loathliest vapours: repulsive fumes

l.219 Conducts: the verb is treated as the third item in a series of questions, which askwhether physical reality is merely a beautiful surface concealing nothingness, whiledeath’s hideous surface conceals the beauty we perceive in dreams.

ll.221–2: if the ‘dark gate of death’ does lead to ‘thy mysterious paradise’ (ll.211–12), thenthe poet’s ambivalent hope could be satisfied only by death.

l.225 distempered: disordered

l.233 shadow: mental image or memory

l.240: Aornos was the Rock of Soghdaine in Bukharar (now Uzbekhistan); there was noplace called Petra in the area.

l.242 Balk: now Balkh, in Afghanistan

l.243 Parthian: Parthia was a kingdom to the west of modern Tehran in Iran.

l.249 Sered: withered

l.272 lone Chorasmion shore: the eastern shore of the Caspian sea.

ll.275–9: the swan was sacred to Apollo, the god of poetry in Greek mythology, and sangbefore death, thus it may symbolize a dying poet.

l.297 fair fiend: death with its ‘strange charms’ (l.295).

l.299 shallop: small dinghy

l.322 chafèd: aroused or angered

l.327 ruining: falling down on top of each other

l.334 hung their rainbow hues: made rainbows in the water vapour

l.341 multitudinous streams: see Shakespeare’s Macbeth II, ii, 62: ‘multitudinous seas’.

l.352 ethereal: reaching into the upper air

ll.358–407: Shelley invokes some complex hydrodynamics to lift the boat up a cliff: thewind-driven seas pour inland through a cavern, and emerge into a whirlpool that spinsso fast that at the extreme edge the centrifugal force lifts the boat clear of the rockfunnel on to a high plateau, from where a tributary flows downhill normally.

l.364 slant: sloping

ll.395–6 Shall the reverting ... embosom it: will the whirlpool revert to its normalcharacter of drawing things down into it?

l.406 yellow flowers: narcissi. In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a beautiful youth whofell in love with his own image reflected in water, thinking it was a nymph. His failure toapproach the object of his love drove him to despair and he killed himself. His bloodwas transformed into the flower that bears his name.

l.422 brown: dark (from the Italian, bruna)

l.424 aëry: very high

l.425 Mocking its moans: echoing the forest’s response to the wind

178 NOTES

l.439 parasites: the word means ‘feeding together’ and often suggests fruitful intimacy,without the sense of exploitation implied in modem usage.

l.446 net-work: arrangement like a net

l.447 mutable: liable to change

l.448 lawns: grassy clearings rather than mown areas

l.451 glen: mountain valley, usually narrow and containing the course of a stream

ll.466–8: the meaning is ‘a butterfly, unaware that outside the forest it is noon’.

l.474 Sees its own treacherous likeness there: falsely imagines its survival after death

l.479 Spirit: embodiment of nature, communicating directly through the landscape

ll.519–20 yet, not like him ... grave: yet not resembling the fever sufferer who temporarilyforgets death

l.528 windlestrae: Scottish spelling of windlestraw, a dry grass stalk

l.530 roots: possibly a misprint of ‘knots’, deriving from an obscurity in Shelley’shandwriting

l.542 Fretted: carved, as in fret-work

ll.546–8: the steep side of the ravine obscured the ravine itself below, but at a higherlevel revealed, amid falling stones, black gulfs.

l.552 accumulated: piled up

l.557 fiery hills: Mount Elbruz, the highest peak in the Caucasus, has a double volcaniccone but was and is dormant

l.562 athwart: across

l.583 children: playful gusts of wind

ll.588–92: the ‘one step’ is the poet’s; the ‘one voice’ is that of his vision.

l.615 reeking: used of warm blood, so referring to the newly dead and mangled bodies inthe hospital.

l.618 Ruin calls ... prepared: Ruin will call Death’s attention to the rulers (‘rare andregal’), and away from his usual attentions to their victims.

l.651 meteor: used at the time to describe any atmospheric phenomenon, including themoon.

l.654 two lessening points of light: the tips of the setting moon’s crescent protrudingabove the horizon

l.657 stagnate: early form of stagnant

ll.663–5: the meaning is ‘like a sunlit cloud in attendance on the sun until the sun sets’.

l.672 Medea’s wondrous alchemy: in Greek mythology, Medea was a sorceress whorestored youth to the aged father of her lover Jason, by replacing his blood with atransfusion of drugs.

l.676 Profuse of poisons: generous with his venomous acts.

l.677 one living man: a reference to Ahasuerus, on whom, legend has it, God inflictedimmortality as a punishment.

l.678 Vessel of deathless wrath: see ‘vessels of wrath fitted to destruction’ (Romans 9:22):created beings deserving to be destroyed in anger.

ll.681–2: this refers to the alchemist’s dream of discovering an elixir of life, which wouldoverturn ‘the law’ of irreversible decay.

l.694 vesper low or joyous orison: evening prayer of supplication or prayer of thanks

ll.696–7 the shapes/ Of this phantasmal scene: the ‘objects’ of this world of appearances

l.705 senseless: incapable of sensation.

NOTES 179

p.90 To Wordsworth

Title: this may reflect Shelley’s growing admiration for Wordsworth’s poetry, along withhis disillusion with his political views.

p.90 Mont Blanc

This was written during a tour of Switzerland and published in A History of a Six Weeks’Tour in 1817. The poem was dated 23 July 1816 by Shelley, which was the day of anexpedition to the Vale of Chamounix rather than the date of the poem’s composition.The poem’s original subtitle was ‘Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni’. (Chamounix(Chamouni) is in south-east France. The River Arve runs through it into Lake Geneva andthe River Rhone (see l.123) has its source in the lake.) During the tour of SwitzerlandShelley persistently asserted his atheism by describing himself in hotel registers as‘democrat, lover of mankind, and atheist’. This poem was probably a defiantly atheisticresponse to Coleridge’s Hymn: Before Sun-rise, in the Vale of Chamouny (l802) (whichShelley may have read in The Friend in 1811), which exclaims ‘Who would be, whocould be an Atheist in this vale of wonders!’ The poem is concerned with the processesby which we perceive and can make sense of the world, and reflects Shelley’s belief thatman must learn from nature and not subject himself to false and crippling notions ofdivinity.

There are obvious similarities between this poem and the accounts of mountain sceneryin Frankenstein, which Mary Shelley was writing during the same visit to Switzerland.

ll.1–11: the opening does not describe a natural scene, but uses the River Arve flowingthrough its ravine as a metaphor for the relations between the perceiving mind and theexternal world. The landscape is not described in its own right until l.ll. At the end of thepoem the actual landscape is shown to function metaphorically.

l.5 tribute: contribution, as in tributary to a river

l.6 half its own: because it ‘renders and receives’, see ll.38–40

l.15 awful: awe-inspiring

l.22 chainless: free, not restrained

l.26 aethereal: pertaining to the highest regions of the atmosphere, so here meaning veryhigh.

l.27 unsculptured image: the shape of the rock is suggestive of a recognizable form but itis not man made.

l.27 strange sleep: the eerie silence and stillness of the landscape when its sounds aremomentarily inaudible.

l.28 desert: any wild, uninhabited region

l.36 my own separate fantasy: the image in my individual imagination

l.43 that or thou: that, the legion of wild thoughts, representing a human consciousness;thou, the ravine, representing the external world.

l.44 the witch Poesy: ‘poesy’ was an old form of ‘poetry’, frequently used by Shelley andKeats.

ll.47–8: the sense is ambiguous: either the ‘ghosts of all things’ derive from outside thepoet, perhaps from a Universal Mind, in which case the existence of the ravine inShelley’s mind depends on the permissive grace of a mysterious force, or the images aremaintained in existence in Shelley’s mind by the mind itself.

l.49 remoter world: another dimension, as in the superior realm of pure forms suggestedby the Greek philosopher Plato (c.428–c.348 BCE).

l.53 unfurled: spread out, thus obscuring Shelley’s vision

180 NOTES

l.72 Earthquake-daemon: destructive spirit of nature who, when the earth was beingcreated, shaped the wild and rugged features of its surface, and whose powers are stillevident in earthquakes.

ll.76–83: the ‘awful doubt’ (which Shelley appears to favour) emphasizes theinsignificance of human achievement; the ‘faith so mild’ allows human beings asubmissive place in the overall scheme of creation.

l.79 But for such faith: in some manuscripts and editions ‘in such faith’ is found and ispreferred because it seems truer to the context.

l.82 the wise, and great, and good: Shelley may mean the philosophers, artists and saintswho, respectively, interpret, or cause others to feel, or feel deeply themselves.

l.86 daedal: wonderfully made, from the Greek meaning ‘cunningly wrought’

ll.96–106: the natural scene can teach the attentive observer that no divinity is present inthis creation; if it does exist, it dwells apart, as unconcerned (‘in scorn of mortal power’)as the mountain peak. Shelley follows the ideas of the Roman philosopher and poetLucretius (c.99–55 BCE) here.

l.97 inaccessible: Mont Blanc had been climbed only three times when Shelley saw it.

l.100 adverting: attentive

l.105 distinct: decorated or adorned

ll.116–17: with no food, the insects, beasts and birds die, leaving the world so much thepoorer.

ll.142–4: if the human imagination did not create something out of ‘silence and solitude’,the power apparent in Mont Blanc and in all external nature and its forces would bemeaningless to man. Shelley’s experience of the mountain in its landscape produces aconviction that institutionalized forms of political and social oppression and their humaneffects might be challenged by those who realize that these have no sanction in a‘divinity’ that may be inferred from nature.

p.93 Ozymandias

This was written in late 1817 and published in The Examiner on 11 January 1818 underthe name ‘Glirastes’ (dormouse). Ozymandias was the Greek name of Rameses II(1304–1237 BCE), who, according to biblical scholars of Shelley’s time, was the pharaoh ofEgypt who oppressed the captive Hebrews and opposed Moses’ wishes to free them.

l.1 a traveller: this may be a real person, but is more likely a reference to RobertPococke’s A Description of the East (1743), which describes several ancient statues ofRameses and other kings in various stages of disintegration.

l.1 antique: ancient

l.8: the hand is that of the sculptor, which has depicted Ozymandias’ passion for power(and possibly also the sculptor’s scorn for it); the heart is that of Ozymandias, whichencouraged his passion for power.

p.93 Sonnet: England in 1819

This sonnet was written late in 1819 but not published until 1839. For a fuller descriptionof the situation in England at this time, see the notes on The Mask of Anarchy. Shelleythought of publishing a book of political poems but, although he wrote a number ofsuch poems, the book was not produced, perhaps because he was aware that thecensorship then operating in England would have prevented any sales. In her note to thepoems of 1819, Mary Shelley wrote: ‘He believed that a clash between the two classes ofsociety was inevitable, and he eagerly ranged himself on the people’s side.’

Title: this was given by Mary Shelley.

NOTES 181

l.1 king: George III was over eighty years old and had been insane since 18ll. He died in1820.

l.2 Princes: George III had nine sons who were notorious for their extravagance,corruption and debauchery. The Prince Regent, who became George IV in 1820, wasparticularly dissolute.

l.6 without a blow: the people of England are so weakened by the demands of theirrulers that they are incapable of resisting them.

l.7 field: St Peter’s Fields in Manchester (see the notes on The Mask of Anarchy)

l.8 liberticide and prey: the army destroys freedom and thrives by looting anddestruction

l.9 two-edged sword: doubly effective, but perhaps with a suggestion that it can be turnedagainst those who wield it.

l.10 Golden ... slay: legal system based on wealth (‘golden’) and violence (‘sanguine’

means ‘bloody’). The word ‘tempt’ refers to government-sponsored agitators, whoprovoked disorder so that it might be repressed, thus deterring others. Some rioters inDerbyshire, who had been led on by such agents, had been executed.

l.12 Senate: an unreformed parliament which is the opposite of what it should be (likereligion in the previous line).

ll.13–14: Shelley’s hope is that corruption will breed its own destruction.

p.94 The Mask of Anarchy

This was written in September 1819 and published posthumously in 1832. On 16 August1819 around 80,000 people gathered in St Peter’s Fields in Manchester to hear speechescalling for parliamentary reform. Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt was speaking when an attempt toarrest him failed and a detachment of cavalry was ordered to charge the crowd. Elevenpeople were killed and hundreds were seriously wounded, many of them women. Theincident was immediately nicknamed ‘the Peterloo Massacre’ in ironic comparison withthe Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Shelley was living in Italy, but he kept up with events inBritain and on 9 September he wrote to his friend, the novelist and poet, Thomas LovePeacock:

Many thanks for your attention in sending the papers which contain the terribleand important news of Manchester. These are, as it were, the distant thunders ofthe terrible storm which is approaching. The tyrants here, as in the FrenchRevolution, have shed first blood. May their execrable lessons not be learnt withequal facility.

His poem was sent to Leigh Hunt (no relation to ‘Orator’ Hunt), editor of The Examiner,for inclusion in that journal, but Hunt, who had previously been prosecuted andimprisoned for seditious writings, withheld the poem until the Reform Bill was passed in1832. In a letter sent with the poem, Shelley wrote:

I fear that in England things will be carried violently by the rulers, and that theywill not have learned to yield in time to the spirit of the age. The great thing todo is to hold the balance between popular impatience and tyrannical obstinacy;to inculcate with fervour both the right of resistance and the duty offorbearance.

Shelley tried to make his poem widely accessible, and adopted an irregular ballad verseform commonly found in broadsheets. The poem does not describe the events inManchester, but presents a vision of them, and offers a tentative solution to the politicalsituation. Against Anarchy, who is supported by the political establishment in England,Hope seems weak and helpless, but Hope is saved by the intervention of a Shape, whichclearly bears some relation to the ‘glorious Phantom’ in the sonnet England in 1819. The

182 NOTES

Shape, which is paradoxically described in images of power and gentleness, has beenvariously interpreted as enlightenment, nature, the people, England and liberty. Is theShape (or Shelley) advocating passive resistance to tyranny (ll.340–3) or armedinsurrection (‘Rise like Lions after slumber’, ll.151 and 368)? And how exactly does Hopecome to be walking ‘ankle-deep in blood’ (l.127) or was Shelley being deliberatelyvague?

Title: the title contains a pun on ‘masque’ (the real people mentioned in the early part ofthe poem are presented allegorically as characters in a pageant or masque) and ‘mask’ asa disguise adopted by the personified Anarchy. ‘Anarchy’ here is the total abuse ofpower, the arbitrary and immoral use of it which ignores law.

ll.1–4: Shelley was following the conventions of visionary poetry (‘Poesy’) in which thepoet is urgently summoned by an external power.

l.6 Castlereagh: Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1769–1822), the English ForeignSecretary from 1812 to 1822, was associated by radicals with war and oppression.

l.8 Seven blood-hounds: seven European countries, including Britain, agreed at theCongress of Vienna in 1815 not to abolish the slave trade.

l.10 plight: condition

l.12 human hearts: these could be slaves

l.15 Eldon: John Scott, first Earl of Eldon (1751–1838), became Lord Chancellor in 180l. Hewas notorious for his harsh sentences and for sometimes bursting into tears in court. Itwas Eldon who ruled that Shelley could not have charge of his children on the death ofhis first wife Harriet.

l.24 Sidmouth: Henry Addington, first Viscount Sidmouth (1757–1844), was HomeSecretary from 1812 to 1821 and authorized repressive measures against rioters.

l.25 crocodile: according to legend, the crocodile appears to weep while devouring itsprey.

ll.30–4: in the Bible (Revelation 6:8) the fourth of the Riders of the Apocalypse isdescribed: ‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him wasDeath, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth partof the earth, to kill with the sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beastsof the earth.’ The cartoon Presages of the Millennium (1795) by the caricaturist JamesGillray had showed the then Prime Minister, William Pitt (1759–1806), as Death on thewhite horse of the Apocalypse savaging the radical politicians of the time.

l.83 Bank and Tower: the Bank of England and the Tower of London, where the CrownJewels are kept

l.85 pensioned: bought

l.86 maniac: distraught

l.90 My father Time: perhaps a reference to previous generations

l.110 arrayed in mail: dressed in armour

l.112 grain: colour

l.115 planet ... Morning’s: Venus, the morning star

l.129 mien: facial expression

l.145 accent unwithstood: speech that could not be resisted

l.148 unwritten story: unrecorded history

l.169 pine and peak: waste away

l.175 Surfeiting: overeating

l.176 Ghost of Gold: paper money

NOTES 183

ll.197–204: an echo of the words of Jesus: ‘The foxes have holes, and the birds of the airhave nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head’ (Matthew 8:20).

l.216 Fame: rumour

l.234–5 Freemen never ... damn for ever: in a free and enlightened country nobodywould believe in the myth of eternal damnation.

l.241 Leagued ... Gaul: the countries around France, including Britain, united against theRevolution in 1793

l.247 like him following Christ: this refers to Zacchaeus, a rather short tax collector whoclimbed a fig tree in order to see Jesus. Jesus saw him and entered his house (Luke19:1–10).

ll.250–4: the enlightened rich fight against the very evils by which they have becomewealthy.

l.256 cot: cottage

l.275 workhouse: government institution where poor and unemployed people couldreceive food and shelter in return for work. The system was well intentioned but wasmostly harsh and exploitative.

l.282 tares: weeds

l.301 targes: shields

l.306 emblazonry: colourful display

l.316 sphereless stars: meteorites, which appear as short-lived phenomena

l.326 phalanx: defensive military formation

ll.327–39: Shelley believed that the old common law embodied notions of fairness anddecency, unlike the corrupt and unjust statutes of formalized law. The ‘sacred heralds’(l.337) are the announcers of such a common law.

ll.356–9 true warriors ... base company, regular soldiers as distinct from local militia whowere raised by employers to quell disturbances and to intimidate their workers.

p.105 Ode to the West Wind

This was published with Prometheus Unbound in 1820. The poem consists of fivestanzas, each of them a sonnet with a concluding couplet. The overall structure has beencompared to a hymn or prayer, with each stanza ending with an invocation. The poem isa dense mixture of striking but often elusive imagery, complex syntax and an intricateinterplay of alliteration, assonance and rhyme. The imagery is drawn from nature, but thepoem is not just about the cycle of the seasons. Two themes are apparent: Shelley’s fearthat his poetic gift is diminishing and a sense of spiritual inadequacy, of defeat. But athird and perhaps most important theme, a desire for political change and socialregeneration, emerges as the poem develops. The extravagance of the language in theopening stanzas points to something beyond the straightforwardly autumnal, and thewind in its destructive aspect is accepted as if violence and death may be necessarystages on the way to transformation. In the third stanza the wind from the Atlantic (thenewly created United States of America) disturbs the complacent beauty of theMediterranean, and by the final stanza the revolutionary hope is global (‘over theuniverse’, ‘among mankind’, ‘earth’). Shelley plays the role of the poetic prophet lookingforward to a regenerated society. In the fourth stanza he confesses his weakness in therole, and in the final stanza he begs for a renewal of power.

Title: Shelley appended a note to the poem:

This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno,near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperatureis at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down theautumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of

184 NOTES

hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to theCisapline regions. The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the thirdstanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, ofrivers and of lakes, sympathizes with that of the land in the change of seasons,and is consequently influenced by the winds that announce this change.

l.4 Yellow ... red: tt has been suggested that the colours represent the various races ofhuman beings

l.4 hectic: fevered

l.9 azure sister: the gentle west wind of spring, which blows through a clear blue (azure)sky

l.10 Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth: see 1 Corinthians 15:52 in the Bible: ‘for thetrumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall bechanged’.

l.16 loose clouds: fractocumulus or scud, clouds that run beside thunderstorms

l.18 Angels: heralds, because they precede thunderstorms

l.21 Maenad: female follower of Dionysus, god of wine, revelry and vegetation in Greekmythology. When possessed by the god’s power at their festivals, the followers acted in amad frenzy.

l.23 locks: the dense plumes of cloud ahead of the main storm

l.32 pumice: stone consisting of light volcanic lava which has been made porous by theescape of steam or gas during cooling.

l.32 Baiae’s bay: near Naples and the volcanic area including Vesuvius

l.33 old palaces and towers: Roman emperors built palaces in the bay, and Baiae wasnotorious for ostentatious luxury and immorality before it was submerged by a change inthe level of the sea. Shelley had himself seen its buildings still standing beneath the sea.He saw palaces as symbols of corrupt power.

l.39 oozy woods: seaweeds

l.42 despoil: strip (of their leaves)

l.57 lyre: see the note on A Defence of Poetry, l.23 (below).

l.63 dead thoughts: a reference to Shelley’s unsuccessful poems, which by not reaching awide readership had failed in their social function.

l.64 quicken: give life to or speed up

l.70: Shelley hoped that the new birth would not involve violence. He wrote in anotebook ‘the spring rebels not against winter but it succeeds it – the dawn rebels notagainst night but disperses it’.

p.107 A Defence of Poetry

In 1820 the novelist and poet Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866) published an essay,‘The Four Ages of Poetry’, in which he argued that as civilization advances poetryretreats. He classified poetry in four main periods, and four types, which he labelled theiron, the golden, the silver and the brass. These types, he said, recurred in a cycle and,after the silver of the eighteenth-century poets, the current period was a patheticimitation of heroic, savage qualities. He mocked Wordsworth, Byron and Walter Scottand dismissed other contemporary poets as irrelevant or foolish triflers. Despite itssatirical exaggeration, the essay made enough serious points to provoke Shelley intomaking an immediate reply, hence the ‘Defence’ of his title. The intended second part,which was to contain an assessment of the contemporary poets of whom Peacock hadbeen so critical, was never written.

NOTES 185

l.8: the Greek phrase translates as ‘making’

l.10: the Greek phrase translates as ‘reasoning’. (Note that Shelley reverses the order ofthe two mental actions from the first sentence to the second.)

l.20 connate: born at the same time

l.23 Aeolian lyre: stringed instrument placed so that it is ‘played’ by the passing wind;named after Aeolus, the god of the wind in Greek mythology.

l42 plastic: shaping, as in sculpture

l.58 kind: kindred spirits

l.67 observing: complying with

l.72 mimetic: imitative

l.79 sensible: noticeable

l.90 integral: whole

l.94 Bacon: Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was Lord Chancellor of England, a philosopherand essayist. The quotation is from his Of the Advancement of Learning (1605).

l.102 chaos: unorganized pieces

l.102 cyclic: vast, epic

l.103 copiousness of lexicography, inclusiveness of dictionaries

l.111 propinquity: close relationship. Shelley includes all creative insights as equal to oranalogous with poetry.

l.114 Janus: in Greek mythology, Janus was a mortal who became the god of gates anddoorways, through whom prayers to the gods had to be directed.

l.116 prophets: from the Latin, vates, meaning ‘prophet’ and ‘poet’

l.120 germs: seeds

l.131 Aeschylus: Greek tragedian (c.525–c.456 BCE).

l.131 Dante’s Paradiso: Paradiso (Paradise) is one of three canticles in the epic poemThe Divine Comedy by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321).

l.154 hieroglyphic: medium

l.161 conciliates: procures

l.182 curse of Babel: see the note on Wordsworth’s Prelude, Book VII, l.157.

l.194 Plato: Greek philosopher (c.428–c.348 BCE).

l.201 Cicero: Roman statesman and writer (first century BCE), famous for his speeches tothe senate

l.201 periods: sentences

l.216 Milton: John Milton (1608–74) was an English poet

l.233 epitomes: abbreviations, bare summaries. Shelley is referring to the writing of thephilosopher and statesman Francis Bacon (1561–1626): ‘As for the corruption and mothsof history, which are epitomes, the use of them deserveth to be banished.’

l.241 Herodotus: Greek historian (c.485–25 BCE)

l.242 Plutarch: Greek historian, biographer and philosopher (c.46–c.120)

l.242 Livy: historian of Rome (59 BCE–17 CE)

l.264 Homer: eighth century BCE Greek poet, famous for his epic poems The Odyssey andThe Iliad

l.269 Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses: heroic figures in the ancient Greek epic poet Homer’sIliad, who respectively manifested the qualities next listed.

186 NOTES

l.295 planetary music: according to tradition, the heavenly music of the spheres,generated by the planets spinning through space, could not be heard by mortals.

l.299 Ethical science: moral philosophy

l.308 Elysian: glorious. In Greek mythology, Elysium was where the souls of the virtuouswere placed after death, and where they enjoyed complete happiness.

l.310 content (pronounced with the stress on the second syllable: con | t[stress]ent):satisfaction.

l.334 Euripides, Lucan, Tasso, Spenser: Greek dramatist (480 or 484–406 BCE); Romanpoet (39–65); Italian poet (1544–95); English poet (c.1552–99).

l.344 imperfections: Shelley admired ancient Athenian society, but considered slaveryand the subjugation of women as major defects.

l.350 Socrates: Greek philosopher (469–399 BCE)

ll.390–1 Oedipus Tyrannus: play by the Greek tragedian Sophocles (c.496–405 BCE)

l.391 Agamemnon: play by the Greek tragedian Aeschylus (c.525–c.456 BCE).

l.398 Calderon ... Autos: Calderon de la Barca (1600–81) was the leading Spanish writerof autos sacramentales, religious or allegorical dramas.

l.409 Philoctetes or Agamemnon or Othello: the main characters in plays by, respectively,Sophocles, Aeschylus and Shakespeare

l.410 sophisms: tricks of thought

ll.410–12 mirror... Paladins: the image is of chivalric knights meeting in combat withtheir glittering shields

l.412 necromancers: bogus magicians

l.414 manners: conduct

l.417 corruption ... imputed: Shelley is probably referring particularly to the denunciationof the theatres by the Puritans in the seventeenth century, but he was always aware ofthe attack on writers made by the Greek philosopher Plato (c.428–c.348 BCE) in TheRepublic.

l.455 Addison’s Cato: play by Joseph Addison (1672–1719), produced in 1713, written inimitation of classical style

l.463 drama ... Charles II: now known as Restoration drama

l.485 Machiavelli: Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) was a statesman, political theorist anddramatist in Renaissance Florence during the period of power of the Medici family. Hisbook The Prince (1513) was influential throughout Europe as a cynical analysis of powerin the state.

l.495 bucolic writers: writers of pastoral poetry

l.509 Sophocles: Greek tragedian (c.496–405 BCE)

l.529 Astraea: in Greek mythology, the goddess of justice and innocence, who dwelledon the earth in the Golden Age, but was driven away by the wickedness of mankind andbecame the constellation Virgo.

l.534 Theocritus: Greek poet (c.310–250 BCE)

l.559 Ennius, Varro, Pacuvius, and Accius: Roman writers, of whose work little ornothing survives

l.560 Lucretius: Roman philosophical poet (c.99–55 BCE) admired by Shelley. His longpoem, De rerum natura (On Nature), presents a materialist view of life and alsoproposes an early atomic theory of matter.

l.560 Virgil: famous Roman poet (70–19 BCE) admired for his epic poem, The Aeneid, forthe quality of his verse and for his love of the countryside.

NOTES 187

l.563 Livy: historian of Rome (59 BCE–17 CE), whose writings were known for their vivid,dramatic power

l.563 instinct: alive

l.564 Horace: Roman poet (65 BCE–8 CE), whose satires provided a model for manyEnglish poets of the eighteenth century. He wrote in verse a famous defence of poetry,Art of Poetry.

l.564 Catullus: Roman lyric poet (c.84–c.54 BCE), who wrote mainly on social subjects, butwho was also known for his idiosyncratic love poems

l.564 Ovid: popular Roman poet (43 BCE–17 CE), whose erotic poems and perhaps hisconduct led to his banishment from Rome. His versions of Greek myths and Romanlegends in his Metamorphoses have been hugely influential throughout English poetry.

l.573 Camillus: Roman statesman (447–365 BCE), who was rejected by the people but whocame to the defence of Rome. He was magnanimous to his enemies.

l.573 Regulus: Roman leader (died c.250 BCE), who, when captured by the Carthaginians,was offered his freedom, but refused and accepted torture and death rather thanencourage his fellow Romans to make peace.

l.573 senators: when the Gauls captured Rome, the defeated senators sat in dignifiedsilence.

ll.574–5 refusal... Cannae: when defeated by the Carthaginians led by Hannibal (247–182BCE) at the battle of Cannae, the Romans refused to concede and eventually conqueredCarthage.

l.582 quia ... sacro: a quotation from the Roman poet Horace (65 BCE–8 CE): ‘because theylack a poet’

ll.597–8 Moses ... Isaiah: despite his hostility to Christianity, Shelley read the Biblerepeatedly and with much pleasure.

ll.607–9 The crow ... rouse: from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, III, ii, 50–3

l.617 Celtic: Shelley uses the term to mean the people to the north of the Mediterraneanpeoples.

l.644 Timaeus and Pythagoras: Greek philosophers of the third to second and sixthcenturies BCE, respectively.

ll.648–9 exoteric ... doctrines: the popularly accessible expression of previously secretideas

l.663 Apollo: in Greek mythology, the sun-god; also god of music and poetry

l.663 Muses: in Greek mythology, the nine goddesses of arts and sciences, believed to beresponsible for poetic inspiration

l.669 ‘Galeotto ... scrisse’: a quotation from Canto V of Inferno (Hell, one of threecanticles in the epic poem The Divine Comedy) by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri(1265–1321), which translates as ‘Galeot [Galahad] was the book, and he who wrote it.’Shelley takes the line out of context to mean that the poet is the work and the work isthe poet.

ll.669–70 Provençal Trouveurs: troubadours of southern France wrote about love andheroism between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries

l.670 Petrarch: Italian humanist and love poet (1304–74), who spent much of his life inProvence

l.678 Vita Nuova: an early work by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321),exploring his love for Beatrice, who is later to serve as his guide in his Paradiso(Paradise, one of three canticles of the epic poem The Divine Comedy).

188 NOTES

l.710 Riphaeus: in the epic poem The Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BCE),

Riphaeus is described as the most just man among the Trojans and the Italian poet DanteAlighieri (1265–1321) places him in the Circle of the Just in Paradiso (Paradise, one ofthree canticles in the epic poem The Divine Comedy).

l.716 Satan: compare this view of John Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost (1667) with thatexpressed by Shelley in the Preface to Prometheus Unbound (1820).

l.734 Divina Commedia: the epic poem The Divine Comedy by the Italian poet DanteAlighieri (1265–1321)

l.751 Lucretius: Roman philosophical poet (c.99–55 BCE)

l.751 limed the wings: birds were caught by spreading bird-lime or other stickysubstances on twigs, so that their wings became useless for flight.

l.752 sensible: that which can be perceived by the senses

ll.755–6 Apollonius ... Claudian: Greek and Roman poets, who each attempted to writean epic

ll.759–60: Orlando ... Queen: Orlando Furioso(1532) by Ludovico Ariosto (Italian);Gerusalemme Liberate (1580–1) by Torquato Tasso (Italian); The Lusiads (1572) by Luisde Camões Camoens (Portuguese); The Faerie Queene (1590–6) by Edmund Spenser(English); all are long poems with some epic qualities.

l.765 Reformation: religious revolution that took place in the western church in thesixteenth century

l.766 Luther: Martin Luther (1483–1546) was a German religious reformer and a leader ofthe Reformation.

l.768–9 he created a language: the poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) wrote The DivineComedy in Italian and is praised as the father of standard literary Italian.

l.771 Lucifer: the morning star (literally ‘light-bearer’)

l.786 Boccaccio: Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75) was an Italian writer.

l.787 Chaucer: Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1345–1400) was an English poet.

l.797 mechanists: materialists who saw the universe and nature as a mechanism that wasexplicable by mathematics and science

l.800 utility: a term central to the writings of the English philosopher and social reformerJeremy Bentham (1748–1834) and the Scottish philosopher and economist James Mill(1773–1836) in the development of utilitarianism, according to which the aim of moralityis the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Shelley uses it here to mean immediate,practical advantage.

l.826 exasperate: intensify

ll.827–9 ‘To him ... away’: see Matthew 25:29 in the Bible

l.831 Scylla and Charybdis: equal dangers. The phrase is based on hazards at sea inGreek mythology, where the two were variously described as rocks, whirlpools ormonsters.

ll.844–5 ‘It is better ... mirth’: see Ecclesiastes 7:2 in the Bible

l.853 Locke ... Rousseau: seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers andhistorians

l.860 the abolition of the Inquisition: the official system for the persecution of religiousunorthodoxy in Spain was removed in 1820, then restored, and finally abolished only in1834.

l.864 Raphael and Michael Angelo: Raphael and Michelangelo were Italian artists of thelate fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries.

l.865 Hebrew poetry: the Old Testament of the Bible

NOTES 189

ll.882–3 ‘I dare not ... adage’: see Shakespeare’s Macbeth, I, vii, 44–5; ‘adage’ means‘proverb’.

l.883 want: lack

ll.893–4 abridging and combining labour: new inventions and processes should improveconditions of work, but have been used to increase the exploitation of working people(to live by the sweat of his brow was God’s curse on the fallen Adam).

ll.897–8 Poetry ... world: poetry is the true God, selfishness and material greed are thefalse gods of materialism.

ll.948–9 Orlando Furioso: the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto wrote a work with this title;he was famous for elaborate revisions in writing his poetry.

ll.979–80 interlunations: blank or dark periods between the old and the new moon

ll.990–4 transmutes ... life: the image is of alchemical change, the transmutation of basemetals into gold; poetry can likewise transform the base and poisonous into somethingprecious and beneficial.

ll.998–9 The mind ... Heaven: Satan’s speech in John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), I,254–5.

l.1001 figured: decorated

l.1011 Non merita ... Poeta: ‘No one deserves the name of creator except God and thePoet.’

ll.1027–8 ‘there sitting... soar’: see John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), IV, 829.

l.1030 peculator: embezzler

ll.1034–6 sins ... redeemer: the imagery is derived from the Bible, and the language at theend of the following sentence is also biblical.

l.1056 obnoxious to calumny: exposed to slander

l.1071 gall: annoyance

l.1073 Theseids ... Maevius: epic poems about Theseus, a legendary hero in ancientGreece, were attempted by mediocre Roman poets such as Codrus, Bavius and Maevius.

l.1082 The second pan: Shelley did not write this proposed continuation.

l.1093 last national struggle: the time of the English Civil War and John Milton (1608–74)

l.1101 abjure: renounce

l.1109 hierophants: interpreters of sacred mysteries.

Felicia Hemans (1793–1835)Felicia Hemans was born in Liverpool, the daughter of George Browne, a merchant, andhis wife Felicity Wagner. From 1800 she was brought up in North Wales, and educatedby her mother. She was a precocious child and her first two volumes of poems werepublished in 1808, followed by a third, The Domestic Affections, and Other Poems, in1812, the year in which she married an Irish ex-soldier, Captain Alfred Hemans. Shecontinued to write, and published two volumes during her marriage. Five sons wereborn of the marriage, but in 1818 her husband left her and went to live in Italy. Leftalone with children to support, her literary output became prolific, averaging a volume ayear. Among the most notable of these are The Forest Sanctuary (1825), Records ofWoman (1828) and Songs of the Affections (1830). In 1828 she moved to Liverpool andthen to Dublin in 1831, where she published National Lyrics and Songs for Music andScenes and Hymns of Life, both in 1834.

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She was greatly admired in America, and continued to be an extraordinarily popular poetright through the nineteenth century. It was perhaps unfortunate for her reputation inthe twentieth century that she came to be remembered for two poems that have beenmercilessly parodied: ‘The Homes of England’ (beginning ‘The stately Homes ofEngland/ How beautiful they stand’) and ‘Casabianca’ (beginning ‘The boy stood on theburning deck’). She was strongly influenced by Wordsworth, with whom she becamefriendly.

Source: Duncan Wu (ed.), Romanticism: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994),pp.988–9l.

p.131 Indian Woman’s Death Song

This was published in Records of Woman (1828).

The quotation from the German dramatist Johann von Schiller’s play The Bride ofMessina (1803) may be translated: ‘No, I cannot live with a broken heart. I mustrediscover happiness and join the free spirits of the air.’

The Prairie (1827) is a novel by the American author James Fenimore Cooper.

l.33 lave: wash.

p.132 The Grave of a Poetess

This was published in Records of Woman (1828).

Title: the ‘poetess’ referred to is Mary Tighe (1772–1810), famous for her eroticallysensuous poem Psyche, or the Legend of Love (1805). By the time she wrote this, Tighewas already ill with consumption. She was buried in the churchyard at Woodstock, nearKilkenny, in Ireland. In a note to her own poem Hemans says: The river runs smoothlyby. The ruins of an ancient abbey that have been partially converted into a churchreverently throw their mantle of tender shadow over it [Tighe’s grave].’

epigraph: the French may be translated: ‘Do not pity me – if you only knew how muchtrouble this grave has spared me!’

John Clare (1793–1864)John Clare was born in the village of Helpston in Northamptonshire, the son of anagricultural labourer. He began writing poetry early, and much of his work is concernedwith the changes that he witnessed in the rural life around him: the enclosure ofcommon land, the cutting down of ancient woods, the savage punishment of minoroffences committed by the poor. He did not find it easy to settle to anything, and workedmostly as an agricultural labourer.

In 1820 his first book, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, was published. Thesame year he married Martha (‘Patty’) Turner, although he never quite got over thefailure of an earlier relationship with a woman called Mary Joyce. This first volume ofpoems attracted a good deal of favourable notice, and four editions were published inquick succession. In 1821 a second volume, The Village Minstrel and Other Poems, waspublished, and over the next few years Clare made the acquaintance of prominentliterary figures in London, among them Coleridge, Thomas De Quincy and Keats.However, he also began to suffer from attacks of anxiety and severe depression. TheShepherd’s Calendar (1827), a long poem in which Clare voiced criticism of enclosinglandlords and ‘tyrant justice’ in the countryside, was mangled by the London publisher,who cut it by half and introduced many ‘corrections’ of Clare’s grammar andpunctuation. It was not a commercial success.

In 1832 Clare moved from Helpston to the village of Northborough. Although it was onlya distance of three or four miles, the landscape was very different, and the move was a

NOTES 191

traumatic one. He was unable to find a publisher for a new volume of poems, TheMidsummer Cushion, although in 1835 he published The Rural Muse, which was wellreceived. The following year he suffered repeated memory lapses and delusions, and in1837 entered an asylum at High Beach, Epping, as a voluntary patient. He remainedthere until 1841, when after escaping and walking home to Northborough, where he wasconvinced he would be reunited with Mary Joyce to whom he believed himself married,he was taken to the county asylum at Northampton. He remained there, underconditions of reasonable freedom and continuing to write poetry, for the rest of his life.

The selection of Clare’s poems in this Anthology represents work from various periods inhis career, although many of his poems cannot be dated precisely. The editors havefollowed closely Clare’s spelling, and have not tried to supply punctuation when therewas none in the original manuscript.

Source: Eric Robinson and David Powell (eds), John Clare (Oxford and New York:Oxford University Press, 1984), pp.102, 199, 233, 241, 244, 334–5, 343, 36l.

p.134 Sudden Shower

This is in an undated manuscript, but was composed between 1812 and 183l.

l.5 dropples: drops.

p.134 Winter Evening

This is one of a manuscript collection of 360 poems entitled The Midsummer Cushion.Clare tried to find a publisher for it in 1832, but was unsuccessful.

l.1 stock fathered: livestock fed

l.7 Bate: harass, tease.

p.134 Hedge Sparrow

This is one of a series of closely observed bird poems, probably written during the 1820s.Clare intended to publish a volume entitled ‘Birds Nesting’.

l.4 Then: than.

l.4 crumble: crumb

l.11 firetails: redstarts.

p.135 [Autumn Evening)

See the note on the previous poem.

l.2 starnels: starlings

l.5 lated: belated, overtaken by darkness.

p.135 Hares at Play

This is one of a series of animal poems written between 1835 and 1837.

l.9 sturt: start, move suddenly

l.12 Gingle: jingle

l.14 nimbling: darting.

p.135 Spring

This undated poem was probably composed in the early 1840s.

l.3 Pile wort: the lesser celandine

l.10 Agen: against, beside

l.23 seer: sere, dry or withered.

192 NOTES

p.136 A Vision

This poem is dated 2 August 1844, and was written while Clare was an inmate of theNorthampton General Lunatic Asylum. Like most of Clare’s writing from this period, it isknown only from a transcript made by W.F. Wright, the house-steward at the asylum.

p.137 ‘I Am’

See the note on the previous poem. This undated poem is perhaps the most widelyknown of all Clare’s works.

John Gibson Lockhart (1794–1854)John Gibson Lockhart was born at Cambusnethan, Lanarkshire and educated at Glasgowand Balliol College, Oxford. He was called to the Scottish bar in 1816. He was a regularcontributor to Blackwood’s Magazine from its beginning in 1817 and earned thenickname ‘The Scorpion’ from the ferocity of his reviews. From 1825 until 1853 he editedthe Quarterly Review, the Tory rival to the Edinburgh Review.

In 1820 he married Walter Scott’s eldest daughter, Sophia, and his reputation now restsmainly on his seven-volume Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott (1837–8). He alsowrote several novels, a quantity of poetry and a life of the poet Robert Burns. An earlyadmirer of Wordsworth and Coleridge, he poured scorn on the poetry of Keats andShelley.

Source: John O. Hayden (ed.), Romantic Bards and British Reviewers (London:Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), pp.317–23.

p.138 from The Cockney School of Poetry

This review appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine, August 1818, and was the fourthnumber of a series in which Lockhart attacked what he called the ‘Cockney School’ ofcontemporary poets, among whom he included Leigh Hunt and Keats.

l.2 Metromanie: mania for writing verse

1.3 Robert Burns and Miss Baillie: Robert Burns (1759–96) was a Scottish poet andJoanna Baillie (1762–1851) was a Scottish dramatist and poet.

l.7 band-box: cardboard box for hats and caps

l.23 ‘Poems’: Keats’s first volume of poetry, Poems, was published in March 1817.

l.25 ‘Endymion’: lengthy poem by Keats, published in the spring of 1818. It is based uponthe story from Greek myth of Endymion, a beautiful shepherd who is made to sleepforever by the goddess of hunting and the moon, Diana, so that she could enjoy hisbeauty. In Keats’s version, Endymion is lured away by the goddess to eternal life withher, and interwoven into the story are other legends from Greek myth. He himselfdescribed the poem as ‘a feverish attempt rather than a deed accomplished’.Wordsworth, to whom Keats read some passages in December 1817, told him that it was‘a pretty piece of paganism’.

l.33 the Examiner newspaper: The Examiner was a radical weekly magazine edited andpublished by Leigh Hunt (1748–1859) and his brother John. They founded it in 1808, andit survived until 188l.

l.36 Cockaigne: mythical country of luxury and idleness

l.38 gallipots: small glazed pots

ll.42–5: Leigh Hunt (1784–1859) had been imprisoned for two years in 1813 because of anarticle he published in The Examiner criticizing the Prince Regent (later George IV). His

NOTES 193

poem ‘The Story of Rimini’ is based on the story of a pair of medieval lovers put to deathfor incest. It was published in 1816.

l.47 Haydon: Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786–1846) was a controversial painter whovirulently attacked the Royal Academy in articles published in Leigh Hunt’s Examiner.

l.48 Raphael: Italian painter (1483–1520)

l.58 poetasters: petty, would-be poets

l.66 Ovid ... Wieland: Ovid (43 BCE–17 CE), was a Roman poet; Cristoph Martin Wieland(1733–1813) was a German poet, author of romances and translator from English and theclassics.

l.82 Chapman: George Chapman (?1559–?l634) was a poet, dramatist and translator of theancient Greek epic poet Homer. It was frequently alleged (incorrectly) that Keats knewno Greek, and read Homer only in Chapman’s translation.

l.109 pauca-verha: few words

l.113 Sangrado: quack physician in Alain Le Sage’s novel, Gil Bias (1715–35).

John Keats (1795–1821)John Keats was born on 31 October 1795 in London. His mother, Frances Jennings, wasthe daughter of a well-to-do innholder; his father, Thomas Keats, keeper of a liverystable, was killed in a riding accident in April 1804, leaving four small children, of whomJohn was the eldest. His mother married again in two months, but within two years sheseparated from her second husband and vanished, leaving her children with theirgrandmother.

Keats and his brothers, George and Tom, boarded at Clarke’s School at Enfield, where heformed a lasting friendship with the headmaster’s son, Charles Cowden Clarke. At schoolhe did little work but was known for his love of fighting, and became ‘the favourite ofall, like a pet prize-fighter, for his terrier courage’. His mother reappeared, but in poorhealth, and Keats appointed himself her nurse and protector. Her death of tuberculosisearly in 1810 caused him ‘impassioned and prolonged grief’.

That summer he left school and was apprenticed to a surgeon. He still spent much of hisspare time at Enfield with Charles Cowden Clarke, who, when Keats was about eighteen,introduced him to poetry with a reading of Edmund Spenser. Keats was hugely enthusedby the experience, and produced his first poem, In Imitation of Spenser, shortlyafterwards. He told his brothers that if he could not be a poet he would kill himself, buthe completed his medical apprenticeship and entered Guy’s Hospital, where he becamea ward-dresser.

In May 1816 Keats met the poet and editor Leigh Hunt, who published the sonnet OSolitude in his radical weekly, The Examiner. Through Hunt, Keats met other poets,writers and artists, including Wordsworth. Supported by Hunt and his friends, and by theenthusiasm of his brothers, with whom he now lodged in Cheapside, Keats brought outhis Poems in March 1817, which was well reviewed. However, when his first long poem,Endymion, was published in April 1818, it was savagely attacked by reviewers inBlackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and The Quarterly Review, who associated it withHunt’s radical views and his supposed ‘Cockney School’ of poetry. Keats was not undulydisturbed by these reviews. ‘I think,’ he wrote, ‘I shall be among the English Poets at mydeath.’

His younger brother Tom had inherited the family tendency to tuberculosis, and Keats,who had himself fallen ill on a walking tour of Scotland in the summer of 1818, returnedto Hampstead in August to find him dying. He began his epic Hyperion, and continued itwhile nursing Tom, who died on 1 December 1818. In the New Year he wrote The Eve ofSt Agnes, a poem perhaps coloured by his feelings for Fanny Brawne, a Hampstead

194 NOTES

neighbour whom he had met in the autumn. Hyperion was discontinued, and Keatswent through a period of depression, during which he wrote La Belle Dame sans Merciin April 1819.

Keats then set out to make money by writing a popular narrative poem, and by writingplays. The result was a poem, Lamia, a play, Otho the Great, and a fragment, KingStephen. He also revised his poems for a new volume, and started an entirely newapproach to his epic in The Fall of Hyperion. During February 1820 he diagnosed inhimself the symptoms of tuberculosis. The combination of illness and love – he was bynow engaged to Fanny – brought back his ‘morbidity of temperament’, and by the timeLamia was published in July, to favourable reviews, he was too ill to take much interest.It was decided to send him to winter in Italy, accompanied by a young painter friend,Joseph Severn. He died in Severn’s arms on 23 February 1821, with an unopened letterfrom Fanny beside him. He was buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, where theepitaph he had requested – ‘Here lies one whose name was writ in water’ – wasengraved on his tombstone.

Keats’s career as a poet was extraordinarily short, lasting only three years, yet in thatbrief period he produced a range of poetry that included long narratives and twoattempts at epics on a classical theme, along with ballads, sonnets, romantic narrativesand the odes that became the basis of his reputation as it developed during thenineteenth century. The brief selection in this Anthology includes romantic narratives,sonnets and three of the great odes.

Source: J. Stillinger (ed.), John Keats: Complete Poems (Cambridge, Mass., and London:The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), pp.34, 165–6, 229–39, 247, 270–1,279–81, 282–3, 360–l.

p.141 On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

This was written in October 1816 and first published in The Examiner on 1 December ofthe same year.

Title: with his friend Charles Cowden Clarke, Keats had spent an evening readingtranslations of the ancient Greek epic poet Homer by the poet and dramatist GeorgeChapman (1559–1634). Keats, who had previously known Homer only in translations bythe English poet Alexander Pope (1688–1744), was hugely excited, even to the point ofshouting aloud. Clarke received Keats’s sonnet in a letter the following morning, andpointed out that Keats had left him ‘at day-spring, yet he contrived that I should receivethe poem from a distance of, may be, two miles by ten o’clock’.

l.1 realms of gold: Keats had been reading from the great (golden) age of classicalliterature.

l.3 western islands: a more specific reference to Greek classical literature

l.4 in fealty: in faithful service

l.4 Apollo: in Greek mythology, the god of poetry

l.6 Homer: eighth century BCE Greek poet, famous for his epic poems The Odyssey andThe Iliad

l.6 demesne: state or territory; originally land held by right

l.7 pure serene: pure and unclouded expanse of sky

l.10 a new planet: the planet Uranus had been discovered by William Herschel on 13March 1781, and Keats had read of this in John Bonnycastle’s Introduction to Astronomy,given to him as a school prize in 18ll.

l.10 ken: sight

l.11 stout Cortez: Hernando Cortez (1485–1547) was a Spanish explorer and conqueror ofMexico. In fact, the Pacific was discovered by Vasco Nuňez de Balboa in 1513.

l.14 Darien: mountainous isthmus on the Pacific coast of Central America.

NOTES 195

p.141 On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again

This was written on 22 January 1818, but not published in Keats’s lifetime.

Title: Keats was constantly preoccupied with the tension between the poet as dreamerand the poet as socially committed visionary. In Sleep and Poetry (1816) he hadpromised to move away from the escapist pleasures of ‘poesy’ and into ‘a nobler life,/Where I may find the agonies, the strife/ Of human hearts.’ It was as preparation for theepic Hyperion that Keats submitted himself to the ‘ordeal’ of re-reading Shakespeare’sKing Lear. On the day he wrote the poem Keats copied it and sent it to his brothers,with an explanation: ‘I sat down yesterday to read King Lear once again the thingappeared to demand the prologue of a Sonnet, I wrote it and began to read.’ Thus thepoem does not describe the experience of reading Shakespeare’s play, but of preparingto re-read it.

l.1 golden-tongued Romance: the kind of self-indulgent, escapist writing that temptedKeats

l.2 plumed syren: Romance is pictured as wearing a plumed helmet, and as having theirresistible attraction of the Sirens, the three women in the ancient Greek epic poetHomer’s Odyssey who lured sailors to their death by the sweetness of their songs.

l.7 assay: try out or test

l.9 Albion: the old name for Britain

ll.8–11 the old oak forest: the image is of the arduous journey undergone by Shakespearewhile writing the play King Lear. Keats anticipates similar pains while writing Hyperion.

l.14 Phoenix: legendary bird, which supposedly rose from the ashes of its funeral pyre.

p.141 When I have fears that I may cease to be

This was written in January 1818, but not published in Keats’s lifetime. Writing poetry isenvisaged as a natural process. Keats had written that ‘if Poetry comes not as naturally asthe Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all’. The imagery associates the enormousfertility of nature, which produces an abundance to be harvested, with the fertility of thepoet’s ‘teeming brain’, which has to be harvested by the poet’s pen and stored on theprinted page.

Title: the poem associates Keats’s need to write poetry with his consciousness of his ownmortality.

l.2 glean’d my teeming brain: searched my brain; gleaning was picking up every grain ofcorn dropped by harvesters.

l.3 charactry: letters, either printed or handwritten

l.4 garners: granaries, store-houses for corn

l.9 fair creature of an hour: beautiful woman whom Keats has known for only a shorttime, possibly alluding to an encounter in Vauxhall Gardens in London some yearsbefore.

l.11 relish in the fairy power: delight in the emotional and imaginative force.

p.142 The Eve of St Agnes

This was written late in January and early in February 1818, and first published in 1820. Itwas written shortly after the Christmas Day Keats had spent with Fanny Brawne, the dayshe later recalled as the happiest of her life, which might suggest that the poemcelebrates mutual love.

Title: the Eve of St Agnes falls on 20 January; St Agnes was a fourth-century Christianmartyr, a thirteen-year-old girl condemned to be a public prostitute before her execution.Her virginity was preserved by divine intervention, and at her tomb her parents saw avision of her among the angels, standing with a pure white lamb. Keats said that the

196 NOTES

poem was based on ‘a popular superstition’ surrounding St Agnes: according to legend, agirl who went supperless to bed on St Agnes’ Eve, and performed certain rituals,including prayer, fasting, remaining silent, looking only straight ahead, and lyingperfectly still on her back when in bed, would have visions of her future husband.

l.5 Beadsman: servant retained to say prayers for a family. The religion in the medievalperiod was Roman Catholic, and the ‘beads’ were those of a rosary.

l.12 meagre: lean, emaciated

l.14 the sculptured dead: memorial images sculpted on tombs in the church

l.15 black, purgatorial rails: the railings round the tombs. The Beadsman’s prayers areintended to hasten the release from Purgatory of the souls of those buried in the tombs.

l.16 orat’ries: places of prayer

l.18 icy hoods and mails: the hooded garments of the ladies and the chain-mail armourof the knights

l.21 Flatter’d to tears: the music, redolent of dancing and love, merely reminds theBeadsman that he is too old for such pleasures.

l.22 already had his deathhell rung: he was doomed to die that night, which he spent inpraying for others.

ll.25–6: the Beadsman lives a penetential life, deprived of human pleasures. He spendsthe night amid the ashes of a dead fire.

l.37 argent revelry: glittering scene (argent means ‘silver’)

l.42 sole-thoughted: with no thought for anything else

l.58 train: skirts sweeping along the floor

l.67 timbrels: tambourines

l.70 amort: deadened. This was a coinage by Keats, based on his reading of the Englishpoets Thomas Chatterton (1752–70) and Edmund Spenser (c.1552–99).

l.71 St Agnes and her lambs unshorn: on St Agnes’ Day, two lambs were blessed andshorn, and the wool woven by nuns into an archbishop’s pall. See ll.105–7.

l.77 Buttress’d from moonlight: hidden from the moonlight by the buttresses of thebuilding.

l.90 beldame: old woman. She also recalls the nurse in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

l.115 Angela: the name has religious overtones, and echoes ‘good angels’ (ll.125 and 142)and the fact that her prayers for Porphyro ‘were never miss’d’ (l.158).

l.120 hold water in a witch’s sieve: perform magic

l.121 Fays: fairy attendants

l.126 mickle: plenty of

l.133 brook: this normally means ‘put up with’, but here ‘hold back’ seems intended.

l.153 beard: oppose them strongly

l.158 plaining: complaining

l.162 betide her weal or woe: whatever good or evil happens to her

l.171 Merlin paid his Demon: Merlin was the magician in the legend of King Arthur.Keats seems to have been thinking of his betrayal and perpetual imprisonment by hismistress.

l.173 cates and dainties: delicious foods. Gates were delicacies that had been boughtrather than made in the kitchens.

l.174 tambour frame: drum-shaped embroidery frame

NOTES 197

l.177 catering: in large medieval houses the cater bought provisions, hence the modernword.

l.181 busy fear: agitated by fear

l.188 took covert: found a place to hide

l.88 amain: greatly

l.189 agues: chronic fevers

l.198 fray’d and fled: frightened and flown away

l.212 stains: patches of colour, rather than discolorations or blots

l.215 emblazoning: insignia painted on a shield to identify its owner

l.216 scutcheon: coat of arms

l.218 gules: heraldic name for red

l.222 a glory, like a saint: she appeared to have a halo round her head

l.226 vespers: evening prayers

l.241 swart Paynims: swarthy Muslims

l.257 Morphean amulet: charm to keep her asleep. In Greek mythology, Morpheus wasthe god of sleep.

l.266 soother: more soothing; this is a coinage by Keats.

l.267 lucent: bright; probably meaning translucent here

l.277 eremite: religious recluse or hermit

l.280 unnerved: weakened

l.288 entoil’d in woofed phantasies caught up in dreams woven by him

l.290 Tumultuous: his feelings were intense

l.292 “La belle dame sans mercy”: lyric poem by Alain Chattier (1386–1458)

l.296 affrayed: alarmed

1.325 flaw-blown sleet: sleet blown by a sudden gust of wind

l.339 saved by miracle: indicating that Porphyro has been transformed

l.344 haggard: wild, and thus fierce

l.349 Rhenish and the sleepy mead: Rhenish was a German drink from the Rhine valley;mead was a drink fermented from honey.

l.353 dragons: alternative spelling of ‘dragoons’, the soldiers guarding the castle; themedieval spirit of the poem makes it difficult to avoid suggestions of mythical monsters.

l.355 darkling: in the dark

l.366 an inmate owns: the dog recognizes Madeline and does not bark. ‘Inmate’ meantan occupier of a dwelling.

l.377 thousand aves: repetitions of the prayer Ave Maria.

p.151 Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art

The poem was completed by the middle of April 1819, but was not published in Keats’slifetime. It was wrongly thought to be the last sonnet that Keats wrote, and it appeared as‘Keats’s Last Sonnet’ in many collections. The ‘fair love’ is almost certainly Fanny Brawne.The cold, ascetic imagery of the opening is displaced by the warmth of the last five lines.

l.1 stedfast: unchanging, but with connotations of faithfulness

l.4 eremite: religious recluse or hermit

l.5 priestlike: the waters are purifying the earth as a priest purifies the soul

198 NOTES

l.6 ablution: in Catholic ritual, the wine or water used to clean the chalice (communion-cup). The context suggests a ritual purification.

p.152 La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad

This was written in April 1818; one version was published in The Indicator in May 1820(for the text of The Indicator version, see Book Two, Romantic Writings, pp.l57–8.). Theversion printed here is the Brown version published in 1848 after Keats’s death.

Title: the translation is ‘The beautiful lady without pity’.

l.3 sedge: rushes at the fringes of the lake

ll.9–11 lily... rose: the lily was associated with purity and chastity, the rose with love andpassion.

l.13: at this point the knight begins his reply to the narrator’s questions.

l.13 meads: meadows

l.18 fragrant zone: scented girdle (made of flowers)

l.25 relish sweet: sweet tasting

l.26 manna: in the Bible, a sweet-tasting food miraculously supplied to the Israelites inthe desert (Exodus 16).

l.29 elfin grot: fairy grotto; a picturesque cave

l.39 “La belle dame sans merci: the title of a lyric poem by Alain Chartier (1386–1458), atranslation of which Keats read in the 1598 edition of the works of the English poetGeoffrey Chaucer (c.1345–1400).

l.40 in thrall: enslaved

l.41 starv’d: shrivelled by the cold

l.41 gloam: twilight.

p.153 Ode on a Grecian Urn

This was written in May 1819 and published in the Annals of the Fine Arts in January1820 and in Poems in 1820. The poem contrasts the pains of mortal human existencewith the timeless world of art, typified in the unchanging figures on a Greek vase. Thetheme is similar to that of Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale, but the treatment is much lesspersonal – the word ‘I’ does not appear at all.

l.1 still: both ‘motionless’ and ‘as yet’

l.3 Sylvan historian: teller of pastoral tales

l.5 leaf-fring’d legend: the images on the vase have decorated borders with a leaf motif.

l.7 Tempe: valley in Thessaly in ancient Greece

l.7 Arcady: Arcadia, a district of Greece described by the Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BCE)as an earthly paradise, the home of shepherds and their mythological god Pan.

ll.8–10: the poet is looking at one image on the vase which depicts a Bacchanalian ritual.

l.8 loth: reluctant

ll.29–30: this is almost certainly another reference to the death of Keats’s brother Tomfrom consumption.

l.28 breathing: living

l.31: this is in response to the image on the other side of the urn, which depicts areligious procession in which a priest leads a garlanded cow towards a sacrificialceremony.

l.41 Attic: classically simple; Attica was the state of which Athens was the capital.

NOTES 199

l.41 brede: embroidery, here the decorative border

l.42 overwrought: worked all over by the artist, but also suggests over-excited.

l.45 Cold Pastoral: cold, because carved in marble; an idealized scene of the country lifeof Arcadian shepherds.

ll.49–50 Beauty is truth ... need to know: these lines have generated a huge amount ofcritical discussion. It seems that the urn is celebrated as a timeless work of art, but onethat offers no real alternative to mortal life. Keats had long been preoccupied with therelationship between the idealization possible through art and the inescapable facts ofhuman existence. He wrote to his brother George: ‘I can never feel certain of any truthbut from a clear perception of its Beauty.’

p.154 To Autumn

This was written in September 1819 and first published in 1820.

Title: Keats described in a letter a walk in the fields near Winchester that gave rise to thepoem:

How beautiful the season is now – How fine the air. A temperate sharpnessabout it. Really, without joking, chaste weather – Dian skies – I never lik’dstubble fields so much as now – Aye better than the chilly green of the spring.Somehow a stubble plain looks warm – in the same way that some pictureslook warm – this struck me so much in my Sunday’s walk that I composedupon it.

l.11 clammy: moist and sticky because filled with honey

ll.12–22: autumn is personified going about the various tasks of the season.

l.15 winnowing: separating the chaff from the grain

l.18 the next swath: the next stand of corn to be cut. A swath was the amount of corn areaper could cut with one stroke of a scythe.

l.25 barred clouds: bar-shaped clouds. Compare Coleridge’s Dejection: An Ode: ‘Andthose thin clouds above, in flakes and bars’ and Wordsworth’s Composed by the side ofGrasmere Lake, l.1: ‘Eve’s lingering clouds extend in solid bars’.

l.28 sallows: willows

l.30 hilly bourn: hills bounding the horizon.

Laetitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–38)Laetitia Elizabeth Landon was born in London, the daughter of John Landon, a travellerand army agent, and was educated at a school in Chelsea. She began writing poetry as achild, and her first poem, ‘Rome’, was published in the Literary Gazette in 1820. Shesubsequently became a reviewer for the Gazette, and began to publish poetry, novelsand prose. Her volumes of poetry included The Fate of Adelaide (1821), TheImprovisatrice (1824), The Troubadour (1825), The Golden Violet (1827) and TheVenetian Bracelet (1828). Novels included Romance and Reality (1831), FrancescaCarrera (1834) and (most successful) Ethel Churchill (1837). From the early 1830s shewas a regular contributor to various journals, especially the New Monthly Magazine.Most of her writings appeared under the initials ‘L.E.L.’.

Although she was immensely popular and prolific, Landon’s personal life was the subjectof much gossip and scandal. There were rumours that she had had an abortion, and anengagement to John Forster (a great friend of Charles Dickens) was broken off. Much ofher income went to support her impoverished family. In 1838 she married George

200 NOTES

Maclean, the governor of Cape Coast Castle in West Africa, who was considerably olderthan her. She accompanied him to Africa, but a few months after her arrival she wasfound dead from prussic acid poisoning. Whether she was deliberately poisoned, tookher own life or accidentally overdosed on the drug (which she took to relieve spasms)has never been established.

Source: Duncan Wu (ed.), Romanticism: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), pp.1092–5, 1098.

p.156 When Should Lovers Breathe Their Vows?

This was published in The Improvisatrice and Other Poems (1824).

p.156 Stanzas on the Death of Mrs Hemans

This was first published in the New Monthly Magazine (1835).

l.5 the lovely song: one of the poems in Felicia Heman’s Lays of Many Lands (1825) wasentitled ‘Bring Flowers’.

p.159 A Poet’s Love

This was published after Landon’s death, in S. Laman Blanchard’s Life and LiteraryRemains of L.E.L (1841).

l.15 dower: endowment.

Elizabeth Barrett (1806–61)Elizabeth Barrett was born at Coxhoe Hall in Northumberland, the eldest of the twelvechildren of Edward Moulton-Barrett and his wife Mary Graham-Clarke. When she wasstill a child, her father, whose wealth came from Jamaican sugar plantations, built amagnificent house at Hope End, near Ledbury in Herefordshire, and the family movedthere in 1809. Barrett was educated by a governess, and shared her brother’s lessons inLatin and Greek. At the age of fifteen she suffered a serious illness, and had to spend ayear recovering at the Gloucester Spa. For the rest of her life she was a semi-invalid.

From 1820 her verse began to be published in literary magazines. Her father paid for thepublication of a lengthy epic poem, The Battle of Marathon, and a second volume, AnEssay on Mind, appeared in 1826. In 1832 serious financial problems forced her father tosell Hope End, and the family moved first to Sidmouth, and then, in 1838, to WimpoleStreet in London. There Barrett was introduced to leading literary figures includingWordsworth, and published a collection of poetry under the title The Seraphim andOther Poems (1838).

Because of her poor health, she moved to Torquay, where she spent three miserableyears. Her beloved brother was accidentally drowned, and she was prostrated with grief.She returned to London in 1841 and devoted herself to poetry. In 1844 she published acollection in two volumes, entitled Poems. This won enormous critical acclaim, and afterreading it the poet Robert Browning wrote to Barrett. After corresponding for fivemonths, they met, fell in love, and within sixteen months, on 12 September 1846, weresecretly married. A week later they left England to live in Italy. Here they settled inFlorence, and Barrett produced her finest work: a volume of Poems (1850) whichincluded the ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ sequence, Casa Guidi Windows (1851) andthe verse-novel Aurora Leigh (1856).

By 1856, however, she was once more very ill. A son had been born in 1849, but amiscarriage the following year (one of four such) almost killed her. Her father refused toforgive her for marrying without his consent, and his death in 1857, still unreconciled toher, caused her great distress. During the winter of 1860 in Rome she hardly left her bed,and she died in Florence the following summer.

NOTES 201


p.160 Stanzas Addressed to Miss Landon

This was first published in the New Monthly Magazine (1835).

Title: writing in December 1835 to a friend, Barrett described Laetitia Elizabeth Landonas: ‘deficient in energy and condensation, as well as in variety ... There is a vividness anda naturalness, both in the ideas and the expression of them ... And a pathos too! She islike a bird of few notes. They are few – but nature gave them!’

l.8 Tears: see Landon’s ‘Stanzas on the Death of Mrs Hemans’, l.111.

l.12 meeter: more proper

l.15: see Landon’s ‘Stanzas on the Death of Mrs Hemans’, ll.1–5.

l.30 tripod: oracle (from the fact that the priestess at the shrine of the mythological Greekgod Apollo at Delphi sat on a three-legged vessel to deliver oracles).

l.30 afflated: inspired

l.42 descrieth: sees at a distance.

p.161 L.E.L’s Last Question

This was first published in The Athenaeum (1839).

Title: according to Barrett’s sister, Arabella, the ‘question’ to which this poem refers cameat the end of the last letter Landon had written to some friends in England a few daysbefore her death in Africa.

l.23 gestes: exploits.

p.162 Sonnet on Mr Haydon’s Portrait of Mr Wordsworth

This was published in The Athenaeum (1842).

Title: Benjamin Robert Haydon’s portrait, ‘Wordsworth on Helvellyn’, was finished in1842. It now hangs in the National Gallery, London. Haydon, who was a friend ofBarrett’s, sent a copy of the poem to Wordsworth before it was published, and he wroteher an appreciative letter.

l.1 Helvellyn: one of the highest mountains in the Lake District

l.7 sovran: sovereign.

202 NOTES

Index of AuthorsBarrett, Elizabeth (1806–61) 160Betham, [Mary] Mathilda

(1776–1852) 56Bury, Charlotte (1775–1861) 55Byron, George Gordon

(1788–1824) 66Clare, John (1793–1864) 134

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor(1772–1834) 1

Dacre, Charlotte (1782–1841) 58De Quincey, Thomas

(1785–1859) 60Hemans, Felicia (1793–1835) 131Keats, John (1795–1821) 141

Landon, Laetitia Elizabeth(1802–38) 156

Lockhart, John Gibson(1794–1854) 138

Shelley, Percy Bysshe(1792–1822) 74

Index of Titles and First LinesAA Defence of Poetry 107A Poet’s Love 159A Vision 136Alastor or the Spirit of Solitude 74‘An old, mad, blind, despised, and

dying king’ 93‘As I lay asleep in Italy’ 94[Autumn Evening] 135

Bfrom Biographia Literaria 50‘Black grows the southern clouds

betokening rain’ 134‘Bright star, would I were stedfast as

thou art –’ 151Bright star, would I were stedfastas thou art 151

‘Bring flowers to crown the cupand lute’ 156

Cfrom Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, ARomaunt 67

from Confessions of an EnglishOpium-Eater 60

DDejection: An Ode 46‘Down a broad river of the western

wilds’ 131‘“Do you think of me as I think of

you’ 161

E‘Earth, ocean, air, belovèd

brotherhood!’ 74from English Bards and ScotchReviewers. A Satire 66

‘Ere on my bed my limbs I lay’ 49

F‘Faint and more faint amid the

world of dreams’ 159False and Faithless as Thou Art 55‘False and faithless as thou art’ 55‘Forgive me, if I wound your ear’ 56Frost at Midnight 4

HHares at Play 135from Hebrew Melodies 73Hedge Sparrow 134

I‘I Am’ 137‘I am – yet what I am, none cares or

knows’ 137‘I lost the love, of heaven above’

136‘I love to hear the evening crows

go bye’ 135‘I met a traveller from an antique

land’ 93‘I stood beside thy lowly grave’ 132Il Trionfo del Amor 58In a Letter to A.R.C. on her Wishingto be Called Anna 56

‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan’ 5Indian Woman’s Death Song 131‘It is an ancyent Marinere’ 8

KKubla Khan Or, A Vision in aDream 5

LL.E.L.’s Last Question 161La Belle Dame sans Merci: ABallad 152

‘Low was our pretty Cot: our tallestRose’ 2

MMont Blanc 90‘Much have I travell’d in the realms

of gold’ 141‘My pensive Sara! thy soft cheek

reclin’d’ 1

O‘O golden-tongued Romance, with

serene lute!’ 141‘O what can ail thee, knight at

arms’ 152‘O wild West Wind, thou breath of

Autumn’s being’ 105Ode on a Grecian Urn 153Ode to the West Wind 105‘Oh! Southey, Southey! cease thy

varied song!’ 66On First Looking into Chapman’sHomer 141

On Sitting Down to Read King LearOnce Again 141

Ozymandias 93

P‘Pale sun beams gleam’ 135‘Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to

know’ 90

RReflections on Having Left a Placeof Retirement 2

S‘Season of mists and mellow

fruitfulness’ 154She Walks in Beauty 73

INDEX 203

‘She walks in beauty, like thenight’c 73

‘So full my thoughts are of thee,that I swear’ 58

Sonnet on Mr Haydon’s Portrait ofMr Wordsworth 162

Sonnet: England in 1819 93Spring 135‘St Agnes’ Eve – Ah, bitter chill it

was!’ 142Stanzas Addressed to MissLandon 160

Stanzas on the Death of MrsHemans 156

Sudden Shower 134

T‘The birds are gone to bed the

cows are still’ 135from The Cockney School ofPoetry 138

‘The crib stock fothered – horsessuppered up’ 134

The Eolian Harp 1The Eve of St Agnes 142‘The everlasting universe of

things’ 90‘The Frost performs its secret

ministry’ 4The Grave of a Poetess 132The Mask of Anarchy 94The Pains of Sleep 49[The Power of Women] 56The Rime of the AncyentMarinere 8

‘The tame hedge sparrow in itsrusset dress’ 134

‘Thou bay-crowned living one, whoo’er’ 160

‘Thou still unravish’d bride ofquietness’ 153

To Autumn 154To Him who Says he Loves 58To Wordsworth 90

W‘We wish not the mechanic arts to

scan’ 56‘Well! If the Bard was weather-wise,

who made’ 46When I have fears that I may ceaseto be 141

‘When I have fears that I may ceaseto be’ 141

When Should Lovers Breathe TheirVows 156

‘When should lovers breathe theirvows?’ 156

Winter Evening 134‘Wordsworth upon Helvellyn! Let

the cloud’ 162

Y‘You tell me that you truly love’ 58

204 INDEX

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