Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude
Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare.--
Confess. St. August.
1 Earth, ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood!
2If our great Mother has imbued my soul
3With aught of natural piety to feel
4Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
5If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,
6With sunset and its gorgeous ministers,
7And solemn midnight's tingling silentness;
8If autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood,
9And winter robing with pure snow and crowns
10Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs;
11If spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes
12Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me;
13If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast
14I consciously have injured, but still loved
15And cherished these my kindred; then forgive
16This boast, belovèd brethren, and withdraw
17No portion of your wonted favour now!
18 Mother of this unfathomable world!
19Favour my solemn song, for I have loved
20Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched
21Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,
22And my heart ever gazes on the depth
23Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed
24In charnels and on coffins, where black death
25Keeps record of the trophies won from thee,
26Hoping to still these obstinate questionings
27Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost
28Thy messenger, to render up the tale
29Of what we are. In lone and silent hours,
30When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,
31Like an inspired and desperate alchymist
32Staking his very life on some dark hope,
33Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks
34With my most innocent love, until strange tears
35Uniting with those breathless kisses, made
36Such magic as compels the charmèd night
37To render up thy charge:...and, though ne'er yet
38Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,
39Enough from incommunicable dream,
40And twilight phantasms, and deep noon-day thought,
41Has shone within me, that serenely now
42And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre
43Suspended in the solitary dome
44Of some mysterious and deserted fane,
45I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain
46May modulate with murmurs of the air,
47And motions of the forests and the sea,
48And voice of living beings, and woven hymns
49Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.
50 There was a Poet whose untimely tomb
51No human hands with pious reverence reared,
52But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds
53Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid
54Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness:--
55A lovely youth,--no mourning maiden decked
56With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath,
57The lone couch of his everlasting sleep:--
58Gentle, and brave, and generous,--no lorn bard
59Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh:
60He lived, he died, he sung, in solitude.
61Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes,
62And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined
63And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.
64The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn,
65And Silence, too enamoured of that voice,
66Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.
67 By solemn vision, and bright silver dream,
68His infancy was nurtured. Every sight
69And sound from the vast earth and ambient air,
70Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.
71The fountains of divine philosophy
72Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great,
73Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past
74In truth or fable consecrates, he felt
75And knew. When early youth had past, he left
76His cold fireside and alienated home
77To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.
78Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness
79Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought
80With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,
81His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps
82He like her shadow has pursued, where'er
83The red volcano overcanopies
84Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice
85With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes
86On black bare pointed islets ever beat
87With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves
88Rugged and dark, winding among the springs
89Of fire and poison, inaccessible
90To avarice or pride, their starry domes
91Of diamond and of gold expand above
92Numberless and immeasurable halls,
93Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines
94Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.
95Nor had that scene of ampler majesty
96Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven
97And the green earth lost in his heart its claims
98To love and wonder; he would linger long
99In lonesome vales, making the wild his home,
100Until the doves and squirrels would partake
101From his innocuous hand his bloodless food,
102Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks,
103And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er
104The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend
105Her timid steps to gaze upon a form
106More graceful than her own.
106 His wandering step
107Obedient to high thoughts, has visited
108The awful ruins of the days of old:
109Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste
110Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers
111Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids,
112Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange
113Sculptured on alabaster obelisk,
114Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphynx,
115Dark Æthiopia in her desert hills
116Conceals. Among the ruined temples there,
117Stupendous columns, and wild images
118Of more than man, where marble daemons watch
119The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men
120Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,
121He lingered, poring on memorials
122Of the world's youth, through the long burning day
123Gazed on those speechless shapes, nor, when the moon
124Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades
125Suspended he that task, but ever gazed
126And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind
127Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw
128The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.
129 Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food,
130Her daily portion, from her father's tent,
131And spread her matting for his couch, and stole
132From duties and repose to tend his steps:--
133Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe
134To speak her love:--and watched his nightly sleep,
135Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips
136Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath
137Of innocent dreams arose: then, when red morn
138Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home
139Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned.
140 The Poet wandering on, through Arabie
141And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,
142And o'er the aërial mountains which pour down
143Indus and Oxus from their icy caves,
144In joy and exultation held his way;
145Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within
146Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine
147Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower,
148Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched
149His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep
150There came, a dream of hopes that never yet
151Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veilèd maid
152Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones.
153Her voice was like the voice of his own soul
154Heard in the calm of thought; its music long,
155Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held
156His inmost sense suspended in its web
157Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues.
158Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,
159And lofty hopes of divine liberty,
160Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,
161Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood
162Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame
163A permeating fire: wild numbers then
164She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs
165Subdued by its own pathos: her fair hands
166Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp
167Strange symphony, and in their branching veins
168The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.
169The beating of her heart was heard to fill
170The pauses of her music, and her breath
171Tumultuously accorded with those fits
172Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose,
173As if her heart impatiently endured
174Its bursting burthen: at the sound he turned,
175And saw by the warm light of their own life
176Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil
177Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,
178Her dark locks floating in the breath of night,
179Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips
180Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly.
181His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess
182Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled
183His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet
184Her panting bosom:...she drew back a while,
185Then, yielding to the irresistible joy,
186With frantic gesture and short breathless cry
187Folded his frame in her dissolving arms.
188Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night
189Involved and swallowed up the vision; sleep,
190Like a dark flood suspended in its course
191Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.
192 Roused by the shock he started from his trance--
193The cold white light of morning, the blue moon
194Low in the west, the clear and garish hills,
195The distinct valley and the vacant woods,
196Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled
197The hues of heaven that canopied his bower
198Of yesternight? The sounds that soothed his sleep,
199The mystery and the majesty of Earth,
200The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes
201Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly
202As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven.
203The spirit of sweet human love has sent
204A vision to the sleep of him who spurned
205Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues
206Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade;
207He overleaps the bounds. Alas! Alas!
208Were limbs and breath and being intertwined
209Thus treacherously? Lost, lost, for ever lost,
210In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep,
211That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death
212Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,
213O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds,
214And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake,
215Lead only to a black and watery depth,
216While death's blue vault, with loathliest vapours hung,
217Where every shade which the foul grave exhales
218Hides its dead eye from the detested day,
219Conduct, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms?
220This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart,
221The insatiate hope which it awakened stung
222His brain even like despair.
222 While daylight held
223The sky, the Poet kept mute conference
224With his still soul. At night the passion came,
225Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream,
226And shook him from his rest, and led him forth
227Into the darkness.--As an eagle grasped
228In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast
229Burn with the poison, and precipitates
230Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud,
231Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight
232O'er the wide aëry wilderness: thus driven
233By the bright shadow of that lovely dream,
234Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night,
235Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells,
236Startling with careless step the moonlight snake,
237He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight,
238Shedding the mockery of its vital hues
239Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on
240Till vast Aornos, seen from Petra's steep,
241Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud;
242Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs
243Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind
244Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on,
245Day after day a weary waste of hours,
246Bearing within his life the brooding care
247That ever fed on its decaying flame.
248And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair
249Sered by the autumn of strange suffering
250Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand
251Hung like dead bone within its withered skin;
252Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone
253As in a furnace burning secretly
254From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers,
255Who ministered with human charity
256His human wants, beheld with wondering awe
257Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer,
258Encountering on some dizzy precipice
259That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind
260With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet
261Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused
262In its career: the infant would conceal
263His troubled visage in his mother's robe
264In terror at the glare of those wild eyes,
265To remember their strange light in many a dream
266Of after-times; but youthful maidens, taught
267By nature, would interpret half the woe
268That wasted him, would call him with false names
269Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand
270At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path
271Of his departure from their father's door.
272 At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore
273He paused, a wide and melancholy waste
274Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged
275His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there,
276Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds.
277It rose as he approached, and with strong wings
278Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course
279High over the immeasurable main.
280His eyes pursued its flight.--"Thou hast a home,
281Beautiful bird; thou voyagest to thine home,
282Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck
283With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes
284Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy.
285And what am I that I should linger here,
286With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes,
287Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned
288To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers
289In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven
290That echoes not my thoughts?" A gloomy smile
291Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips.
292For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly
293Its precious charge, and silent death exposed,
294Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure,
295With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.
296 Startled by his own thoughts he looked around.
297There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight
298Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind.
299A little shallop floating near the shore
300Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze.
301It had been long abandoned, for its sides
302Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints
303Swayed with the undulations of the tide.
304A restless impulse urged him to embark
305And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste;
306For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves
307The slimy caverns of the populous deep.
308 The day was fair and sunny: sea and sky
309Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind
310Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves.
311Following his eager soul, the wanderer
312Leaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloft
313On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat,
314And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil sea
315Like a torn cloud before the hurricane.
316 As one that in a silver vision floats
317Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds
318Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly
319Along the dark and ruffled waters fled
320The straining boat.--A whirlwind swept it on,
321With fierce gusts and precipitating force,
322Through the white ridges of the chafèd sea.
323The waves arose. Higher and higher still
324Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest's scourge
325Like serpents struggling in a vulture's grasp.
326Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war
327Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast
328Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven
329With dark obliterating course, he sate:
330As if their genii were the ministers
331Appointed to conduct him to the light
332Of those belovèd eyes, the Poet sate
333Holding the steady helm. Evening came on,
334The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues
335High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray
336That canopied his path o'er the waste deep;
337Twilight, ascending slowly from the east,
338Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks
339O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of day;
340Night followed, clad with stars. On every side
341More horribly the multitudinous streams
342Of ocean's mountainous waste to mutual war
343Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock
344The calm and spangled sky. The little boat
345Still fled before the storm; still fled, like foam
346Down the steep cataract of a wintry river;
347Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave;
348Now leaving far behind the bursting mass
349That fell, convulsing ocean. Safely fled--
350As if that frail and wasted human form,
351Had been an elemental god.
351 At midnight
352The moon arose: and lo! the ethereal cliffs
353Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone
354Among the stars like sunlight, and around
355Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves
356Bursting and eddying irresistibly
357Rage and resound for ever.--Who shall save?--
358The boat fled on,--the boiling torrent drove,--
359The crags closed round with black and jaggèd arms,
360The shattered mountain overhung the sea,
361And faster still, beyond all human speed,
362Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave,
363The little boat was driven. A cavern there
364Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths
365Ingulfed the rushing sea. The boat fled on
366With unrelaxing speed.--"Vision and Love!"
367The Poet cried aloud, "I have beheld
368The path of thy departure. Sleep and death
369Shall not divide us long!"
369 The boat pursued
370The windings of the cavern. Daylight shone
371At length upon that gloomy river's flow;
372Now, where the fiercest war among the waves
373Is calm, on the unfathomable stream
374The boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, riven,
375Exposed those black depths to the azure sky,
376Ere yet the flood's enormous volume fell
377Even to the base of Caucasus, with sound
378That shook the everlasting rocks, the mass
379Filled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm;
380Stair above stair the eddying waters rose,
381Circling immeasurably fast, and laved
382With alternating dash the gnarlèd roots
383Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms
384In darkness over it. I' the midst was left,
385Reflecting, yet distorting every cloud,
386A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm.
387Seized by the sway of the ascending stream,
388With dizzy swiftness, round, and round, and round,
389Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose,
390Till on the verge of the extremest curve,
391Where, through an opening of the rocky bank,
392The waters overflow, and a smooth spot
393Of glassy quiet mid those battling tides
394Is left, the boat paused shuddering.--Shall it sink
395Down the abyss? Shall the reverting stress
396Of that resistless gulf embosom it?
397Now shall it fall?--A wandering stream of wind,
398Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail,
399And, lo! with gentle motion, between banks
400Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream,
401Beneath a woven grove it sails, and, hark!
402The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar,
403With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods.
404Where the embowering trees recede, and leave
405A little space of green expanse, the cove
406Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers
407For ever gaze on their own drooping eyes,
408Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave
409Of the boat's motion marred their pensive task,
410Which nought but vagrant bird, or wanton wind,
411Or falling spear-grass, or their own decay
412Had e'er disturbed before. The Poet longed
413To deck with their bright hues his withered hair,
414But on his heart its solitude returned,
415And he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid
416In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frame
417Had yet performed its ministry: it hung
418Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud
419Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods
420Of night close over it.
420 The noonday sun
421Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass
422Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence
423A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves
424Scooped in the dark base of their aëry rocks
425Mocking its moans, respond and roar for ever.
426The meeting boughs and implicated leaves
427Wove twilight o'er the Poet's path, as led
428By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death,
429He sought in Nature's dearest haunt, some bank
430Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark
431And dark the shades accumulate. The oak,
432Expanding its immense and knotty arms,
433Embraces the light beech. The pyramids
434Of the tall cedar overarching, frame
435Most solemn domes within, and far below,
436Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,
437The ash and the acacia floating hang
438Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed
439In rainbow and in fire, the parasites,
440Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around
441The grey trunks, and, as gamesome infants' eyes,
442With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles,
443Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love,
444These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs
445Uniting their close union; the woven leaves
446Make net-work of the dark blue light of day,
447And the night's noontide clearness, mutable
448As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns
449Beneath these canopies extend their swells,
450Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms
451Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen
452Sends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with jasmine,
453A soul-dissolving odour, to invite
454To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell,
455Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep
456Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades,
457Like vaporous shapes half seen; beyond, a well,
458Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave,
459Images all the woven boughs above,
460And each depending leaf, and every speck
461Of azure sky, darting between their chasms;
462Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves
463Its portraiture, but some inconstant star
464Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair,
465Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon,
466Or gorgeous insect floating motionless,
467Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings
468Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon.
469 Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld
470Their own wan light through the reflected lines
471Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth
472Of that still fountain; as the human heart,
473Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave,
474Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard
475The motion of the leaves, the grass that sprung
476Startled and glanced and trembled even to feel
477An unaccustomed presence, and the sound
478Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs
479Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed
480To stand beside him--clothed in no bright robes
481Of shadowy silver or enshrining light,
482Borrowed from aught the visible world affords
483Of grace, or majesty, or mystery;--
484But, undulating woods, and silent well,
485And leaping rivulet, and evening gloom
486Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming,
487Held commune with him, as if he and it
488Were all that was,--only... when his regard
489Was raised by intense pensiveness,... two eyes,
490Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought,
491And seemed with their serene and azure smiles
492To beckon him.
492 Obedient to the light
493That shone within his soul, he went, pursuing
494The windings of the dell.--The rivulet
495Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine
496Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell
497Among the moss, with hollow harmony
498Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones
499It danced; like childhood laughing as it went:
500Then, through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept,
501Reflecting every herb and drooping bud
502That overhung its quietness.--"O stream!
503Whose source is inaccessibly profound,
504Whither do thy mysterious waters tend?
505Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness,
506Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulfs,
507Thy searchless fountain, and invisible course
508Have each their type in me: and the wide sky,
509And measureless ocean may declare as soon
510What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud
511Contains thy waters, as the universe
512Tell where these living thoughts reside, when stretched
513Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste
514I' the passing wind!"
514 Beside the grassy shore
515Of the small stream he went; he did impress
516On the green moss his tremulous step, that caught
517Strong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one
518Roused by some joyous madness from the couch
519Of fever, he did move; yet, not like him,
520Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame
521Of his frail exultation shall be spent,
522He must descend. With rapid steps he went
523Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow
524Of the wild babbling rivulet; and now
525The forest's solemn canopies were changed
526For the uniform and lightsome evening sky.
527Grey rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed
528The struggling brook: tall spires of windlestrae
529Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope,
530And nought but gnarlèd roots of ancient pines
531Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots
532The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here,
533Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away,
534The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin
535And white, and where irradiate dewy eyes
536Had shone, gleam stony orbs:--so from his steps
537Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade
538Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds
539And musical motions. Calm, he still pursued
540The stream, that with a larger volume now
541Rolled through the labyrinthine dell; and there
542Fretted a path through its descending curves
543With its wintry speed. On every side now rose
544Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms,
545Lifted their black and barren pinnacles
546In the light of evening, and its precipice
547Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above,
548Mid toppling stones, black gulfs and yawning caves,
549Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues
550To the loud stream. Lo! where the pass expands
551Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks,
552And seems, with its accumulated crags,
553To overhang the world: for wide expand
554Beneath the wan stars and descending moon
555Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams,
556Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom
557Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills
558Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge
559Of the remote horizon. The near scene,
560In naked and severe simplicity,
561Made contrast with the universe. A pine,
562Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy
563Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast
564Yielding one only response, at each pause,
565In most familiar cadence, with the howl
566The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams
567Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river,
568Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged path,
569Fell into that immeasurable void,
570Scattering its waters to the passing winds.
571 Yet the grey precipice and solemn pine
572And torrent, were not all;--one silent nook
573Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain,
574Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks,
575It overlooked in its serenity
576The dark earth, and the bending vault of stars.
577It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile
578Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped
579The fissured stones with its entwining arms,
580And did embower with leaves for ever green,
581And berries dark, the smooth and even space
582Of its inviolated floor, and here
583The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore,
584In wanton sport, those bright leaves, whose decay,
585Red, yellow, or ethereally pale,
586Rivals the pride of summer. 'Tis the haunt
587Of every gentle wind, whose breath can teach
588The wilds to love tranquillity. One step,
589One human step alone, has ever broken
590The stillness of its solitude:--one voice
591Alone inspired its echoes;--even that voice
592Which hither came, floating among the winds,
593And led the loveliest among human forms
594To make their wild haunts the depository
595Of all the grace and beauty that endued
596Its motions, render up its majesty,
597Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm,
598And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould,
599Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss,
600Commit the colours of that varying cheek,
601That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.
602 The dim and hornèd moon hung low, and poured
603A sea of lustre on the horizon's verge
604That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist
605Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank
606Wan moonlight even to fulness: not a star
607Shone, not a sound was heard; the very winds,
608Danger's grim playmates, on that precipice
609Slept, clasped in his embrace.--O, storm of death!
610Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night:
611And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still
612Guiding its irresistible career
613In thy devastating omnipotence,
614Art king of this frail world, from the red field
615Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital,
616The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed
617Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne,
618A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls
619His brother Death. A rare and regal prey
620He hath prepared, prowling around the world;
621Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men
622Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,
623Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine
624The unheeded tribute of a broken heart.
625 When on the threshold of the green recess
626The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death
627Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,
628Did he resign his high and holy soul
629To images of the majestic past,
630That paused within his passive being now,
631Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe
632Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place
633His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk
634Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone
635Reclined his languid head, his limbs did rest,
636Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink
637Of that obscurest chasm;--and thus he lay,
638Surrendering to their final impulses
639The hovering powers of life. Hope and despair,
640The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear
641Marred his repose, the influxes of sense,
642And his own being unalloyed by pain,
643Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed
644The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there
645At peace, and faintly smiling:--his last sight
646Was the great moon, which o'er the western line
647Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended,
648With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed
649To mingle. Now upon the jaggèd hills
650It rests, and still as the divided frame
651Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood,
652That ever beat in mystic sympathy
653With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still:
654And when two lessening points of light alone
655Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp
656Of his faint respiration scarce did stir
657The stagnate night:--till the minutest ray
658Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.
659It paused--it fluttered. But when heaven remained
660Utterly black, the murky shades involved
661An image, silent, cold, and motionless,
662As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.
663Even as a vapour fed with golden beams
664That ministered on sunlight, ere the west
665Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame--
666No sense, no motion, no divinity--
667A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings
668The breath of heaven did wander--a bright stream
669Once fed with many-voicèd waves--a dream
670Of youth, which night and time have quenched for ever,
671Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.
672 O, for Medea's wondrous alchemy,
673Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam
674With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale
675From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! O, that God,
676Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice
677Which but one living man has drained, who now,
678Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels
679No proud exemption in the blighting curse
680He bears, over the world wanders for ever,
681Lone as incarnate death! O, that the dream
682Of dark magician in his visioned cave,
683Raking the cinders of a crucible
684For life and power, even when his feeble hand
685Shakes in its last decay, were the true law
686Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled
687Like some frail exhalation; which the dawn
688Robes in its golden beams,--ah! thou hast fled!
689The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,
690The child of grace and genius. Heartless things
691Are done and said i' the world, and many worms
692And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth
693From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,
694In vesper low or joyous orison,
695Lifts still its solemn voice:--but thou art fled--
696Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes
697Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee
698Been purest ministers, who are, alas!
699Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips
700So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes
701That image sleep in death, upon that form
702Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear
703Be shed--not even in thought. Nor, when those hues
704Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,
705Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone
706In the frail pauses of this simple strain,
707Let not high verse, mourning the memory
708Of that which is no more, or painting's woe
709Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery
710Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,
711And all the shows o' the world are frail and vain
712To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.
713It is a woe too "deep for tears," when all
714Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
715Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
716Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,
717The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;
718But pale despair and cold tranquillity,
719Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,
720Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alastor (1816). Reprinted New York: AMS Press, 1975. PR 5407 .A2 D6 SMC.
First publication date:
1816
RPO poem editor: J. D. Robins
RP edition: 2RP 2.224.
Recent editing: 4:2002/4/24
Composition date:
1815
Form: Blank Verse
Other poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley
