The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley

THE DAEMON OF THE WORLD
A FRAGMENT
PART I
 
                                        Nec tantum prodere vati,
               Quantum scire licet. Venit aetas omnis in unam
               Congeriem, miserumque premunt tot saecula pectus.
                                                 LUCAN, Phars. v. 176.
 
     How wonderful is Death,
     Death and his brother Sleep!
One pale as yonder wan and hornèd moon,
     With lips of lurid blue,
 
The other glowing like the vital morn,
     When throned on ocean’s wave
     It breathes over the world:
Yet both so passing strange and wonderful!
 
Hath then the iron-sceptred Skeleton,
Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres,
To the hell dogs that couch beneath his throne
Cast that fair prey? Must that divinest form,
Which love and admiration cannot view
Without a beating heart, whose azure veins
Steal like dark streams along a field of snow,
Whose outline is as fair as marble clothed
In light of some sublimest mind, decay?
     Nor putrefaction’s breath
Leave aught of this pure spectacle
     But loathsomeness and ruin?—
     Spare aught but a dark theme,
On which the lightest heart might moralize?
Or is it but that downy-wingèd slumbers
Have charmed their nurse coy Silence near her lids
     To watch their own repose?
     Will they, when morning’s beam
     Flows through those wells of light,
Seek far from noise and day some western cave,
Where woods and streams with soft and pausing winds
     A lulling murmur weave?—
     Ianthe doth not sleep
  The dreamless sleep of death:
Nor in her moonlight chamber silently
Doth Henry hear her regular pulses throb,
     Or mark her delicate cheek
With interchange of hues mock the broad moon,
     Outwatching weary night,
     Without assured reward.
     Her dewy eyes are closed;
On their translucent lids, whose texture fine
Scarce hides the dark blue orbs that burn below
     With unapparent fire,
     The baby Sleep is pillowed:
     Her golden tresses shade
     The bosom’s stainless pride,
Twining like tendrils of the parasite
     Around a marble column.
     Hark! whence that rushing sound?
     ’Tis like a wondrous strain that sweeps
     Around a lonely ruin
When west winds sigh and evening waves respond
     In whispers from the shore:
’Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes
Which from the unseen lyres of dells and groves
     The genii of the breezes sweep.
Floating on waves of music and of light,
The chariot of the Daemon of the World
     Descends in silent power:
Its shape reposed within: slight as some cloud
That catches but the palest tinge of day
     When evening yields to night,
Bright as that fibrous woof when stars indue
     Its transitory robe.
Four shapeless shadows bright and beautiful
Draw that strange car of glory, reins of light
Check their unearthly speed; they stop and fold
Their wings of braided air:
The Daemon leaning from the ethereal car
     Gazed on the slumbering maid.
Human eye hath ne’er beheld
A shape so wild, so bright, so beautiful,
As that which o’er the maiden’s charmèd sleep
     Waving a starry wand,
     Hung like a mist of light.
Such sounds as breathed around like odorous winds
     Of wakening spring arose,
Filling the chamber and the moonlight sky.
Maiden, the world’s supremest spirit
     Beneath the shadow of her wings
Folds all thy memory doth inherit
     From ruin of divinest things,
        Feelings that lure thee to betray,
        And light of thoughts that pass away.
For thou hast earned a mighty boon,
     The truths which wisest poets see
Dimly, thy mind may make its own,
     Rewarding its own majesty,
        Entranced in some diviner mood
        Of self-oblivious solitude.
 
Custom, and Faith, and Power thou spurnest;
     From hate and awe thy heart is free;
Ardent and pure as day thou burnest,
     For dark and cold mortality
        A living light, to cheer it long,
        The watch-fires of the world among.
 
Therefore from nature’s inner shrine,
Where gods and fiends in worship bend,
Majestic spirit, be it thine
     The flame to seize, the veil to rend,
        Where the vast snake Eternity
        In charmèd sleep doth ever lie.
 
All that inspires thy voice of love,
     Or speaks in thy unclosing eyes,
Of through thy frame doth burn or move,
     Or think, or feel, awake, arise!
        Spirit, leave for mine and me
        Earth’s unsubstantial mimicry!
 
It ceased, and from the mute and moveless frame
     A radiant spirit arose,
All beautiful in naked purity.
Robed in its human hues it did ascend,
Disparting as it went the silver clouds,
It moved towards the car, and took its seat
     Beside the Daemon shape.
 
Obedient to the sweep of aëry song,
     The mighty ministers
Unfurled their prismy wings.
     The magic car moved on;
The night was fair, innumerable stars
     Studded heaven’s dark blue vault;
     The eastern wave grew pale
     With the first smile of morn.
     The magic car moved on.
     From the swift sweep of wings
The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew;
     And where the burning wheels
Eddied above the mountain’s loftiest peak
     Was traced a line of lightning.
Now far above a rock the utmost verge
     Of the wide earth it flew,
The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow
     Frowned o’er the silver sea.
 
Far, far below the chariot’s stormy path,
     Calm as a slumbering babe,
     Tremendous ocean lay.
Its broad and silent mirror gave to view
     The pale and waning stars,
     The chariot’s fiery track,
     And the grey light of morn
Tingeing those fleecy clouds
That cradled in their folds the infant dawn,
     The chariot seemed to fly
Through the abyss of an immense concave,
Radiant with million constellations, tinged
     With shades of infinite colour,
     And semicircled with a belt
     Flashing incessant meteors.
 
As they approached their goal,
The wingèd shadows seemed to gather speed.
The sea no longer was distinguished; earth
Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere, suspended
     In the black concave of heaven
     With the sun’s cloudless orb,
     Whose rays of rapid light
Parted around the chariot’s swifter course,
And fell like ocean’s feathery spray
     Dashed from the boiling surge
     Before a vessel’s prow.
 
The magic car moved on.
     Earth’s distant orb appeared
The smallest light that twinkles in the heavens,
     Whilst round the chariot’s way
Innumerable systems widely rolled,
     And countless spheres diffused
        An ever varying glory.
It was a sight of wonder! Some were horned,
And like the moon’s argentine crescent hung
In the dark dome of heaven; some did shed
A clear mild beam like Hesperus, while the sea
Yet glows with fading sunlight; others dashed
Athwart the night with trains of bickering fire,
Like spherèd worlds to death and ruin driven;
Some shone like stars, and as the chariot passed
     Bedimmed all other light.
 
Spirit of Nature! here
In this interminable wilderness
Of worlds, at whose involved immensity
     Even soaring fancy staggers,
     Here is thy fitting temple.
Yet not the lightest leaf
That quivers to the passing breeze
     Is less instinct with thee,—
     Yet not the meanest worm,
That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead,
     Less shares thy eternal breath.
     Spirit of Nature! thou
Imperishable as this glorious scene,
     Here is thy fitting temple.
 
If solitude hath ever led thy steps
To the shore of the immeasurable sea,
     And thou hast lingered there
     Until the sun’s broad orb
Seemed resting on the fiery line of ocean,
Thou must have marked the braided webs of gold
     That without motion hang
     Over the sinking sphere:
Thou must have marked the billowy mountain clouds,
Edged with intolerable radiancy,
     Towering like rocks of jet
     Above the burning deep:
     And yet there is a moment
     When the sun’s highest point
Peers like a star o’er ocean’s western edge,
When those far clouds of feathery purple gleam
Like fairy lands girt by some heavenly sea:
Then has thy rapt imagination soared
Where in the midst of all existing things
The temple of the mightiest Daemon stands.
 
Yet not the golden islands
That gleam amid yon flood of purple light,
     Nor the feathery curtains
That canopy the sun’s resplendent couch,
     Nor the burnished ocean waves
     Paving that gorgeous dome,
     So fair, so wonderful a sight
As the eternal temple could afford.
The elements of all that human thought
Can frame of lovely or sublime, did join
To rear the fabric of the fane, nor aught
Of earth may image forth its majesty.
Yet likest evening’s vault that faëry hall,
As heaven low resting on the wave it spread
Its floors of flashing light,
     Its vast and azure dome;
And on the verge of that obscure abyss
Where crystal battlements o’erhang the gulf
Of the dark world, ten thousand spheres diffuse
Their lustre through its adamantine gates.
 
 The magic car no longer moved;
     The Daemon and the Spirit
     Entered the eternal gates.
     Those clouds of aëry gold
     That slept in glittering billows
     Beneath the azure canopy,
With the ethereal footsteps trembled not;
     While slight and odorous mists
Floated to strains of thrilling melody
Through the vast columns and the pearly shrines.
 
The Daemon and the Spirit
Approached the overhanging battlement,
Below lay stretched the boundless universe!
     There, far as the remotest line
That limits swift imagination’s flight,
Unending orbs mingled in mazy motion,
     Immutably fulfilling
     Eternal Nature’s law.
     Above, below, around,
     The circling systems formed
     A wilderness of harmony,
     Each with undeviating aim
In eloquent silence through the depths of space
     Pursued its wondrous way.—
 
Awhile the Spirit paused in ecstasy.
Yet soon she saw, as the vast spheres swept by,
Strange things within their belted orbs appear.
Like animated frenzies, dimly moved
Shadows, and skeletons, and fiendly shapes,
Thronging round human graves, and o’er the dead
Sculpturing records for each memory
In verse, such as malignant gods pronounce,
Blasting the hopes of men, when heaven and
hell
Confounded burst in ruin o’er the world:
And they did build vast trophies, instruments
Of murder, human bones, barbaric gold,
Skins torn from living men, and towers of skulls
With sightless holes gazing on blinder heaven,
Mitres, and crowns, and brazen chariots stained
With blood, and scrolls of mystic wickedness,
The sanguine codes of venerable crime.
The likeness of a throned king came by,
When these had passed, bearing upon his brow
A threefold crown; his countenance was calm,
His eye severe and cold; but his right hand
Was charged with bloody coin, and he did gnaw
By fits, with secret smiles, a human heart
Concealed beneath his robe; and motley shapes,
A multitudinous throng, around him knelt,
With bosoms bare, and bowed heads, and false looks
Of true submission, as the sphere rolled by.
Brooking no eye to witness their foul shame,
Which human hearts must feel, while human tongues
Tremble to speak, they did rage horribly,
Breathing in self-contempt fierce blasphemies
Against the Daemon of the World, and high
Hurling their armèd hands where the pure Spirit,
Serene and inaccessibly secure,
Stood on an isolated pinnacle,
The flood of ages combating below,
The depth of the unbounded universe
     Above, and all around
Necessity’s unchanging harmony.