E-Text

Percy Shelley: Poems

Hellas: Fragments


[Published in part (lines 1-69, 100-120) by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous]

Poems", 1824; and again, with the notes, in "Poetical Works", 1839.

Lines 127-238 were printed by Dr. Garnett under the title of "The

Magic Plant" in his "Relics of Shelley", 1862. The whole was edited in

its present form from the Boscombe manuscript by Mr. W.M. Rossetti in

1870 ("Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.", Moxon, 2 volumes.).

'Written at Pisa during the late winter or early spring of 1822'

(Garnett).


The following fragments are part of a Drama undertaken for the

amusement of the individuals who composed our intimate society, but

left unfinished. I have preserved a sketch of the story as far as it

had been shadowed in the poet's mind.


An Enchantress, living in one of the islands of the Indian

Archipelago, saves the life of a Pirate, a man of savage but noble

nature. She becomes enamoured of him; and he, inconstant to his mortal

love, for a while returns her passion; but at length, recalling the

memory of her whom he left, and who laments his loss, he escapes from

the Enchanted Island, and returns to his lady. His mode of life makes

him again go to sea, and the Enchantress seizes the opportunity to

bring him, by a spirit-brewed tempest, back to her Island. --[MRS.

SHELLEY'S NOTE, 1839.]


SCENE.--BEFORE THE CAVERN OF THE INDIAN ENCHANTRESS.


THE ENCHANTRESS COMES FORTH.


ENCHANTRESS:

He came like a dream in the dawn of life,

He fled like a shadow before its noon;

He is gone, and my peace is turned to strife,

And I wander and wane like the weary moon.

O, sweet Echo, wake, _5

And for my sake

Make answer the while my heart shall break!


But my heart has a music which Echo's lips,

Though tender and true, yet can answer not,

And the shadow that moves in the soul's eclipse _10

Can return not the kiss by his now forgot;

Sweet lips! he who hath

On my desolate path

Cast the darkness of absence, worse than death!


NOTE:

_8 my omitted 1824.


[THE ENCHANTRESS MAKES HER SPELL: SHE IS ANSWERED BY A SPIRIT.]


SPIRIT:

Within the silent centre of the earth _15

My mansion is; where I have lived insphered

From the beginning, and around my sleep

Have woven all the wondrous imagery

Of this dim spot, which mortals call the world;

Infinite depths of unknown elements _20

Massed into one impenetrable mask;

Sheets of immeasurable fire, and veins

Of gold and stone, and adamantine iron.

And as a veil in which I walk through Heaven

I have wrought mountains, seas, and waves, and clouds, _25

And lastly light, whose interfusion dawns

In the dark space of interstellar air.


NOTES:

_15-_27 Within...air. 1839; omitted 1824.

See these lines in "Posthumous Poems", 1824, page 209: "Song of a Spirit".

_16 have 1839; omitted 1824, page 209.

_25 seas, and waves 1824, page 209; seas, waves 1839.


[A good Spirit, who watches over the Pirate's fate, leads, in a]

mysterious manner, the lady of his love to the Enchanted Isle. She is

accompanied by a Youth, who loves the lady, but whose passion she

returns only with a sisterly affection. The ensuing scene takes place

between them on their arrival at the Isle. [MRS. SHELLEY'S NOTE,

1839.]


ANOTHER SCENE.


INDIAN YOUTH AND LADY.


INDIAN:

And, if my grief should still be dearer to me

Than all the pleasures in the world beside,

Why would you lighten it?--


NOTE:

_29 pleasures]pleasure 1824.


LADY:

I offer only _30

That which I seek, some human sympathy

In this mysterious island.


INDIAN:

Oh! my friend,

My sister, my beloved!--What do I say?

My brain is dizzy, and I scarce know whether

I speak to thee or her.


LADY:

Peace, perturbed heart! _35

I am to thee only as thou to mine,

The passing wind which heals the brow at noon,

And may strike cold into the breast at night,

Yet cannot linger where it soothes the most,

Or long soothe could it linger.


INDIAN:

But you said _40

You also loved?


NOTE:

_32-_41 Assigned to INDIAN, 1824.


LADY:

Loved! Oh, I love. Methinks

This word of love is fit for all the world,

And that for gentle hearts another name

Would speak of gentler thoughts than the world owns.

I have loved.


INDIAN:

And thou lovest not? if so, _45

Young as thou art thou canst afford to weep.


LADY:

Oh! would that I could claim exemption

From all the bitterness of that sweet name.

I loved, I love, and when I love no more

Let joys and grief perish, and leave despair _50

To ring the knell of youth. He stood beside me,

The embodied vision of the brightest dream,

Which like a dawn heralds the day of life;

The shadow of his presence made my world

A Paradise. All familiar things he touched, _55

All common words he spoke, became to me

Like forms and sounds of a diviner world.

He was as is the sun in his fierce youth,

As terrible and lovely as a tempest;

He came, and went, and left me what I am. _60

Alas! Why must I think how oft we two

Have sate together near the river springs,

Under the green pavilion which the willow

Spreads on the floor of the unbroken fountain,

Strewn, by the nurslings that linger there, _65

Over that islet paved with flowers and moss,

While the musk-rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,

Showered on us, and the dove mourned in the pine,

Sad prophetess of sorrows not her own?

The crane returned to her unfrozen haunt, _70

And the false cuckoo bade the spray good morn;

And on a wintry bough the widowed bird,

Hid in the deepest night of ivy-leaves,

Renewed the vigils of a sleepless sorrow.

I, left like her, and leaving one like her, _75

Alike abandoned and abandoning

(Oh! unlike her in this!) the gentlest youth,

Whose love had made my sorrows dear to him,

Even as my sorrow made his love to me!


NOTE:

_71 spray Rossetti 1870, Woodberry; Spring Forman, Dowden.


INDIAN:

One curse of Nature stamps in the same mould _80

The features of the wretched; and they are

As like as violet to violet,

When memory, the ghost, their odours keeps

Mid the cold relics of abandoned joy.--

Proceed.


LADY:

He was a simple innocent boy. _85

I loved him well, but not as he desired;

Yet even thus he was content to be:--

A short content, for I was--


INDIAN [ASIDE]:

God of Heaven!

From such an islet, such a river-spring--!

I dare not ask her if there stood upon it _90

A pleasure-dome surmounted by a crescent,

With steps to the blue water.

[ALOUD.]

It may be

That Nature masks in life several copies

Of the same lot, so that the sufferers

May feel another's sorrow as their own, _95

And find in friendship what they lost in love.

That cannot be: yet it is strange that we,

From the same scene, by the same path to this

Realm of abandonment-- But speak! your breath--

Your breath is like soft music, your words are _100

The echoes of a voice which on my heart

Sleeps like a melody of early days.

But as you said--


LADY:

He was so awful, yet

So beautiful in mystery and terror,

Calming me as the loveliness of heaven _105

Soothes the unquiet sea:--and yet not so,

For he seemed stormy, and would often seem

A quenchless sun masked in portentous clouds;

For such his thoughts, and even his actions were;

But he was not of them, nor they of him, _110

But as they hid his splendour from the earth.

Some said he was a man of blood and peril,

And steeped in bitter infamy to the lips.

More need was there I should be innocent,

More need that I should be most true and kind, _115

And much more need that there should be found one

To share remorse and scorn and solitude,

And all the ills that wait on those who do

The tasks of ruin in the world of life.

He fled, and I have followed him.


INDIAN:

Such a one _120

Is he who was the winter of my peace.

But, fairest stranger, when didst thou depart

From the far hills where rise the springs of India?

How didst thou pass the intervening sea?


LADY:

If I be sure I am not dreaming now, _125

I should not doubt to say it was a dream.

Methought a star came down from heaven,

And rested mid the plants of India,

Which I had given a shelter from the frost

Within my chamber. There the meteor lay, _130

Panting forth light among the leaves and flowers,

As if it lived, and was outworn with speed;

Or that it loved, and passion made the pulse

Of its bright life throb like an anxious heart,

Till it diffused itself; and all the chamber _135

And walls seemed melted into emerald fire

That burned not; in the midst of which appeared

A spirit like a child, and laughed aloud

A thrilling peal of such sweet merriment

As made the blood tingle in my warm feet: _140

Then bent over a vase, and murmuring

Low, unintelligible melodies,

Placed something in the mould like melon-seeds,

And slowly faded, and in place of it

A soft hand issued from the veil of fire, _145

Holding a cup like a magnolia flower,

And poured upon the earth within the vase

The element with which it overflowed,

Brighter than morning light, and purer than

The water of the springs of Himalah. _150


NOTE:

_120-_126 Such...dream 1839; omitted 1824.


INDIAN:

You waked not?


LADY:

Not until my dream became

Like a child's legend on the tideless sand.

Which the first foam erases half, and half

Leaves legible. At length I rose, and went,

Visiting my flowers from pot to pot, and thought _155

To set new cuttings in the empty urns,

And when I came to that beside the lattice,

I saw two little dark-green leaves

Lifting the light mould at their birth, and then

I half-remembered my forgotten dream. _160

And day by day, green as a gourd in June,

The plant grew fresh and thick, yet no one knew

What plant it was; its stem and tendrils seemed

Like emerald snakes, mottled and diamonded

With azure mail and streaks of woven silver; _165

And all the sheaths that folded the dark buds

Rose like the crest of cobra-di-capel,

Until the golden eye of the bright flower,

Through the dark lashes of those veined lids,

...disencumbered of their silent sleep, _170

Gazed like a star into the morning light.

Its leaves were delicate, you almost saw

The pulses

With which the purple velvet flower was fed

To overflow, and like a poet's heart _175

Changing bright fancy to sweet sentiment,

Changed half the light to fragrance. It soon fell,

And to a green and dewy embryo-fruit

Left all its treasured beauty. Day by day

I nursed the plant, and on the double flute _180

Played to it on the sunny winter days

Soft melodies, as sweet as April rain

On silent leaves, and sang those words in which

Passion makes Echo taunt the sleeping strings;

And I would send tales of forgotten love _185

Late into the lone night, and sing wild songs

Of maids deserted in the olden time,

And weep like a soft cloud in April's bosom

Upon the sleeping eyelids of the plant,

So that perhaps it dreamed that Spring was come, _190

And crept abroad into the moonlight air,

And loosened all its limbs, as, noon by noon,

The sun averted less his oblique beam.


INDIAN:

And the plant died not in the frost?


LADY:

It grew;

And went out of the lattice which I left _195

Half open for it, trailing its quaint spires

Along the garden and across the lawn,

And down the slope of moss and through the tufts

Of wild-flower roots, and stumps of trees o'ergrown

With simple lichens, and old hoary stones, _200

On to the margin of the glassy pool,

Even to a nook of unblown violets

And lilies-of-the-valley yet unborn,

Under a pine with ivy overgrown.

And theme its fruit lay like a sleeping lizard _205

Under the shadows; but when Spring indeed

Came to unswathe her infants, and the lilies

Peeped from their bright green masks to wonder at

This shape of autumn couched in their recess,

Then it dilated, and it grew until _210

One half lay floating on the fountain wave,

Whose pulse, elapsed in unlike sympathies,

Kept time

Among the snowy water-lily buds.

Its shape was such as summer melody _215

Of the south wind in spicy vales might give

To some light cloud bound from the golden dawn

To fairy isles of evening, and it seemed

In hue and form that it had been a mirror

Of all the hues and forms around it and _220

Upon it pictured by the sunny beams

Which, from the bright vibrations of the pool,

Were thrown upon the rafters and the roof

Of boughs and leaves, and on the pillared stems

Of the dark sylvan temple, and reflections _225

Of every infant flower and star of moss

And veined leaf in the azure odorous air.

And thus it lay in the Elysian calm

Of its own beauty, floating on the line

Which, like a film in purest space, divided _230

The heaven beneath the water from the heaven

Above the clouds; and every day I went

Watching its growth and wondering;

And as the day grew hot, methought I saw

A glassy vapour dancing on the pool, _235

And on it little quaint and filmy shapes.

With dizzy motion, wheel and rise and fall,

Like clouds of gnats with perfect lineaments.


...


O friend, sleep was a veil uplift from Heaven--

As if Heaven dawned upon the world of dream-- _240

When darkness rose on the extinguished day

Out of the eastern wilderness.


INDIAN:

I too

Have found a moment's paradise in sleep

Half compensate a hell of waking sorrow.