By which the holiest dreams of highest spirits She shall arise Victorious as the world arose from Chaos! 115 SATAN. Be as all things beneath the empyrean, Mine Art thou eyeless like old Destiny, Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns? Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed. Which pierces thee! whose throne a chair of scorn; For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor Which are my empire, and the least of them which thou would'st redeem from me? Know'st thou not them my portion? Or wouldst rekindle the strife Which our great Father then did arbitrate When he assigned to his competing sons Each his apportioned realm? Thou Destiny, Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence Of Him who sends thee forth, whate'er thy task, 120 125 130 135 To suffer, or a gulph of hollow death To swallow all delight, all life, all hope. Go, thou Vicegerent of my will, no less. Than of the Father's; but lest thou shouldst faint, The earth behind thy steps, and War shall hover Sceptres and crowns, mitres and swords and snares, The first is Anarchy; when Power and Pleasure, Glory and science and security, On Freedom hang like fruit on the green tree, Then pour it forth, and men shall gather ashes. 140 145 150 155 Thou seest but the Past in the To-come. Pride is thy error and thy punishment. 165 With beams as keen as those which pierced the shadow Of Christian night rolled back upon the West 175 Of God, and from the throne of Destiny Be thou a curse on them whose creed Divides and multiplies the most high God. FRAGMENTS CONNECTED WITH THE PROLOGUE TO HELLAS.1 I. FAIREST of the Destinies, Disarray thy dazzling eyes: Keener far their lightnings are Than the winged [bolts] thou bearest, And the smile thou wearest Wraps thee as a star Is wrapt in light. Under the general heading Prologue to Hellas, in the Relics of Shelley, Mr. Garnett gives these three frag 180 185 ments, with the remark that they appear to have been originally written for Hellas." II. . Could Arethuse to her forsaken urn From Alpheus and the bitter Doris run, Or could the morning shafts of purest light Again into the quivers of the Sun 190 Be gathered-could one thought from its wild flight Return into the temple of the brain Without a change, without a stain,— Be what it once has ceased to be, 195 III. A star has fallen upon the earth 'Mid the benighted nations, A quenchless atom of immortal light, A cresset shaken from the constellations. Swifter than the thunder fell To the heart of Earth, the well Where its pulses flow and beat, And unextinct in that cold source Guides the sphere which is its prison, Like an angelic spirit pent In a form of mortal birth, Till, as a spirit half arisen Shatters its charnel, it has rent, In the rapture of its mirth, The thin and painted garment of the Earth, Ruining its chaos-a fierce breath Consuming all its forms of living death. 200 205 210 215 FRAGMENT: "I WOULD NOT BE A KING."1 I WOULD not be a king-enough Of woe it is to love; The path to power is steep and rough, And tempests reign above. I would not climb the imperial throne; FRAGMENT: PEACE FIRST AND LAST. THE babe is at peace within the womb, The corpse is at rest within the tomb, FRAGMENT: WANDERING.2 HE wanders, like a day-appearing dream, 1 This and the next fragment were first given by Mrs. Shelley in the second edition of 1839. * First given by Mrs. Shelley in the first edition of 1839. I have not changed the punctuation; but I suspect we should read the sense thus : He wanders (like a day-appearing dream Through the dim wildernesses of the mind) Through desert woods &c. |