While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstacy! I vowed that I would dedicate my powers To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow? With beating heart and streaming eyes, even I call the phantoms of a thousand hours [now Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned Of studious zeal or love's delight [bowers Outwatched with me the envious night : They know that never joy illumed my brow, Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery, That thou, O awful LOVELINESS, Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express. The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past: there is a harmony Thus let thy power, which like the truth MONT BLANC. LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI. I. THE everlasting universe of things II. Thus thou, Ravine of Arve-dark, deep Ravine- 71 12 The chainless winds still come and ever came Some say that gleams of a remoter world In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep Its circles? For the very spirit fails, Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, Mount Blane appears,- still, snowy, and serene Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between 113 IV. The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, The torpor of the year when feeble dreams And this, the naked countenance of earth, Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling V. Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:-the power is there, And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, SWITZERLAND, June 23, 1816. NOTE ON POEMS OF 1816. BY THE EDITOR. SHELLEY wrote little during this year. The Poem entitled the "Sunset" was written in the spring of the year, while still residing at Bishopsgate. He spent the summer on the shores of the Lake of Geneva. "The Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" was conceived during his voyage round the lake with Lord Byron. He occupied himself during this voyage, by reading the Nouvelle Héloïse for the first time. The reading it on the very spot where the scenes are laid, added to the interest; and he was at once surprised and charmed by the passionate eloquence and earnest enthralling interest that pervades this work. There was something in the character of Saint-Preux, in his abnegation of self, and in the worship he paid to Love, that coincided with Shelley's own disposition; and, though differing in many of the views, and shocked by others, yet the effect of the whole was fascinating and delightful. "Mont Blanc" was inspired by a view of that mountain and its surrounding peaks and valleys, as he lingered on the Bridge of Arve on his way through the Valley of Chamouni. Shelley makes the following mention of this poem in his publication of the History of Six Weeks' Tour, and Letters from Switzerland : "The poem entitled Mont Blanc,' is written by the author of the two letters from Chamouni and Vevai. It was composed under the immediate impression of the deep and powerful feelings excited by the objects which it attempts to describe; and as an undisciplined overflowing of the soul, rests its claim to approbation on an attempt to imitate the untameable wildness and inaccessible solemnity from which those feelings sprang." This was an eventful year, and less time was given to study than usual. In the list of his reading I find, in Greek: Theocritus, the Prometheus of Eschylus, several of Plutarch's Lives and the works of Lucian. In Latin: Lucretius, Pliny's Letters, the Annals and Germany of Tacitus. In French: the History of the French Revolution, by Lacretelle. He read for the first time, this year, Montaigne's Essays, and regarded them ever after as one of the most delightful and instructive books in the world. The list is scanty in English works-Locke's Essay, Political Justice, and Coleridge's Lay Sermon, form nearly the whole. It was his frequent habit to read aloud to me in the evening; in this way we read, this year, the New Testament, Paradise Lost, Spenser's Fairy Queen, and Don Quixote. POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXVII. PRINCE ATHANASE. A FRAGMENT. PART I. THERE was a youth, who, as with toil and travel, Had grown quite weak and grey before his time; Nor any could the restless griefs unravel Which burned within him, withering up his prime And goading him, like fiends, from land to land. For nought of ill his heart could understand, Had left within his soul the dark unrest: For none than he a purer heart could have, What sorrow, strange, and shadowy,'and unknown, Sent him, a hopeless wanderer, through mankind?— If with a human sadness he did groan, He had a gentle yet aspiring mind; In others' joy, when all their own is dead: He loved, and laboured for his kind in grief, And yet, unlike all others, it is said That from such toil he never found relief. Although a child of fortune and of power, Of an ancestral name the orphan chief, His soul had wedded wisdom, and her dower Pitying the tumult of their dark estate.--- Those false opinions which the harsh rich use To blind the world they famish for their pride; Nor did he hold from any man his dues, But, like a steward in honest dealings tried, Fearless he was, and scorning all disguise, Liberal he was of soul, and frank of heart, If words he found those inmost thoughts to tell ; To those, or them, or any, whom life's sphere He knew not. Though his life day after day, Through which his soul, like Vesper's serene beam Like reeds which quiver in impetuous floods; Were driven within him by some secret power, O'er castled mountains borne, when tempest's war Though such were in his spirit, as the fiends A mirror found,-he knew not-none could know; But on whoe'er might question him he turned The light of his frank eyes, as if to show He knew not of the grief within that burned, The cause of his disquietude; or shook To stir his secret pain without avail ;- Between his heart and mind,-both unrelieved Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife. Some said that he was mad, others believed That memories of an antenatal life From God's displeasure, like a darkness, fell On souls like his, which owned no higher law Than love; love calm, steadfast, invincible By mortal fear or supernatural awe; "But through the soul's abyss, like some dark stream Through shattered mines and caverns underground Rolls, shaking its foundations; and no beam "Of joy may rise, but it is quenched and drowned In the dim whirlpools of this dream obscure. Soon its exhausted waters will have found "A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure, O Athanase!-in one so good and great, Evil or tumult cannot long endure." So spake they idly of another's state Babbling vain words and fond philosophy : This was their consolation; such debate Men held with one another; nor did he, Like one who labours with a human woe, Decline this talk; as if its theme might be Another, not himself, he to and fro That which he knew not, how it galled and bit Upon his being; a snake which fold by fold And so his grief remained—let it remain-untold*. *The Author was pursuing a fuller development of the ideal character of Athanase, when it struck him that in an attempt at extreme refinement and analysis, his conceptions might be betrayed into the assuming a morbid character. The reader will judge whether he is a loser or gainer by this difference.-Author's Note. FRAGMENTS OF PRINCE ATHANASE. PART II. FRAGMENT I. PRINCE Athanase had one beloved friend, Had spared in Greece - the blight that cramps and A fertile island in the barren sea, With soul-sustaining songs, and sweet debates And thus Zonoras, by for ever seeing A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then, Was grass-grown-and the unremembered tears And as the lady looked with faithful grief And blighting hope, who with the news of death An old man toiling up, a weary wight; * The idea Shelley had formed of Prince Athanase was a good deal modelled on Alastor. In the first sketch of the Poem he named it Pandemos and Urania. Athanase seeks through the world the One whom he may love. He meets, in the ship in which he is embarked, a lady, who appears to him to embody his ideal of love and beauty. But she proves to be Pandemos, or the earthly and unworthy Venus, who, after disappointing his cherished dreams and hopes, deserts him. Athanase, crushed by sorrow, pines and dies. "On his death-bed the lady, who can really reply to his soul, comes and kisses his lips."-The Death-bed of Athanase. The poet describes her Her hair was brown, her sphered eyes were brown, Yet when the spirit flashed beneath, there came This slender note is all we have to aid our imagination in shaping out the form of the poem, such as its author imaged. -M. S. Of the wood fire, and round his shoulders fall, And his wan visage and his withered mien, Yet calm and gentle and majestical. And Athanase, her child, who must have been Then three years old, sate opposite and gazed In patient silence. FRAGMENT II. SUCH was Zonoras; and as daylight finds Thus through his age, dark, cold, and tempest-tost, The spirit of Prince Athanase, a child, And sweet and subtle talk now evermore, The youth, as shadows on a grassy hill Strange truths and new to that experienced man. So in the caverns of the forest green, By summer woodmen and when winter's roar Sounded o'er earth and sea its blast of war, The Balearic fisher, driven from shore, Hanging upon the peaked wave afar, Which pours beyond the sea one steadfast beam, seem For, lo! the wintry clouds are all gone by, Belted Orion hangs-warm light is flowing From the young moon into the sunset's chasm.— "O summer eve! with power divine, bestowing "On thine own bird the sweet enthusiasm Which overflows in notes of liquid gladness, Filling the sky like light! How many a spasm "Of fevered brains, oppressed with grief and madWere lulled by thee, delightful nightingale! [ness, And these soft waves, murmuring a gentle sadness, "And the far sighings of yon piny dale Made vocal by some wind, we feel not here.I bear alone what nothing may avail "To lighten a strange load!"-No human ear Heard this lament; but o'er the visage wan Of Athanase, a ruffling atmosphere Of dark emotion, a swift shadow ran, Beheld his mystic friend's whole being shake, Even where its inmost depths were gloomiest And with a calm and measured voice he spake, And, with a soft and equal pressure, prest "Paused, in yon waves her mighty horns to wet, How in those beams we walked,half resting on the sea? 'Tis just one year-sure thou dost not forget "Then Plato's words of light in thee and me "Is faithful now-the story of the feast ; FRAGMENT III. "Twas at the season when the Earth upsprings From slumber, as a sphered angel's child, Shadowing its eyes with green and golden wings, Stands up before its mother bright and mild, To see it rise thus joyous from its dreams, The grass in the warm sun did start and move, And sea-buds burst beneath the waves serene:How many a one, though none be near to love, Loves then the shade of his own soul, half seen In any mirror-or the spring's young minions, The winged leaves amid the copses green ;— How many a spirit then puts on the pinions Sweeps in his dream-drawn chariot, far and fast, More fleet than storms-the wide world shrinks When winter and despondency are past. [below, "Twas at this season that Prince Athanase Pass'd the white Alps-those eagle-baffling moun tains Slept in their shrouds of snow;-beside the ways |