Editor’s Introduction

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was one of the leading English romantic poets of the early 19th century. His circle included other poets such as Lord Byron, his father in law the radical political theorist William Godwin, and his wife Mary Shelley the author of the novel Frankenstein, the Modern Prometheus (1818). He was a radical liberal in his political and social views and a sceptic concerning religion. Many of his works were not published in his lifetime because of their radical content. A theme in his work was the nature of liberty and the behavior of tyrants who thwarted the individual's natural desire to be free. This comes out in many of his poems like "Ozymandias" (1818) and essays such as "A Philosophical View of Reform" (1820).

This collection of Shelley’s writings contains his “Declaration of Rights” (1812), numerous poems on the topics of liberty and oppression, and extracts from some of his dramas which were written between 1810 (when he was 18) and his death in 1822 just before he turned 30. Several are direct responses to events going on around him such as the Napoleonic wars, the struggle for independence of the Spanish colonies in North America and the Greeks against Turkish rule, and the Peterloo massacre of protesters in England. Other works are more philosophical and historical where he ponders the rise of liberty over a couple of thousand years as in his “Ode to Liberty” (1820) or the fleeting nature of tyranny as in the ruins of the statue of the ruler “Ozymandias” (1818) which lie broken in sands of an unnamed desert.

Shelley pays special attention to the revolutionary movements of his own day, namely the American and French Revolutions, the ideological and political forces of which he depicts in terms of fire, lightning, tempests, and floods, which he believed would eventually sweep away the empires of the kings and tyrants of his own day. The sole empire which would remain, he thought, would be that of the free individual: “Man who man would be, Must rule the empire of himself; in it Must be supreme .. being himself alone.” (“Political Greatness”)

“'Ye can tell That which slavery is, too well— For its very name has grown To an echo of your own. ''Tis to work and have such pay As just keeps life from day to day In your limbs, as in a cell For the tyrants' use to dwell, 'So that ye for them are made Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade, With or without your own will bent To their defence and nourishment.

What art thou Freedom? O! could slaves Answer from their living graves This demand—tyrants would flee Like a dream's dim imagery: Thou art not, as impostors say, A shadow soon to pass away, A superstition, and a name Echoing from the cave of Fame. For the labourer thou art bread, And a comely table spread From his daily labour come In a neat and happy home... Thou art Justice—ne'er for gold May thy righteous laws be sold As laws are in England—thou Shield'st alike the high and low.”

Shelley on Liberty (1810-22)¹

War (1810) [CPW]

“Monarchs of earth! thine is the baleful deed, Thine are the crimes for which thy subjects bleed. Ah! when will come the sacred fated time, When man unsullied by his leaders' crime, Despising wealth, ambition, pomp, and pride, Will stretch him fearless by his foe-men's side? Ah! when will come the time, when o'er the plain No more shall death and desolation reign?”

Ambition, power, and avarice, now have hurled

Death, fate, and ruin, on a bleeding world.

See! on yon heath what countless victims lie,

Hark! what loud shrieks ascend through yonder sky;

Tell then the cause, 'tis sure the avenger's rage [5]

Has swept these myriads from life's crowded stage:

Hark to that groan, an anguished hero dies,

He shudders in death's latest agonies;

Yet does a fleeting hectic flush his cheek,

Yet does his parting breath essay to speak— [10]

'Oh God! my wife, my children—Monarch thou

For whose support this fainting frame lies low;

For whose support in distant lands I bleed,

Let his friends' welfare be the warrior's meed.

He hears me not—ah! no—kings cannot hear, [15]

For passion's voice has dulled their listless ear.

To thee, then, mighty God, I lift my moan,

Thou wilt not scorn a suppliant's anguished groan.

Oh! now I die—but still is death's fierce pain—

God hears my prayer—we meet, we meet again.' [20]

He spake, reclined him on death's bloody bed,

And with a parting groan his spirit fled.

Oppressors of mankind to YOU we owe

The baleful streams from whence these miseries flow;

For you how many a mother weeps her son, [25]

Snatched from life's course ere half his race was run!

For you how many a widow drops a tear,

In silent anguish, on her husband's bier!

'Is it then Thine, Almighty Power,' she cries,

'Whence tears of endless sorrow dim these eyes? [30]

Is this the system which Thy powerful sway,

Which else in shapeless chaos sleeping lay,

Formed and approved?—it cannot be—but oh!

Forgive me, Heaven, my brain is warped by woe.'

'Tis not—He never bade the war-note swell, [35]

He never triumphed in the work of hell—

Monarchs of earth! thine is the baleful deed,

Thine are the crimes for which thy subjects bleed.

Ah! when will come the sacred fated time,

When man unsullied by his leaders' crime, [40]

Despising wealth, ambition, pomp, and pride,

Will stretch him fearless by his foe-men's side?

Ah! when will come the time, when o'er the plain

No more shall death and desolation reign?

When will the sun smile on the bloodless field, [45]

And the stern warrior's arm the sickle wield?

Not whilst some King, in cold ambition's dreams,

Plans for the field of death his plodding schemes;

Not whilst for private pique the public fall,

And one frail mortal's mandate governs all. [50]

Swelled with command and mad with dizzying sway;

Who sees unmoved his myriads fade away.

Careless who lives or dies—so that he gains

Some trivial point for which he took the pains.

What then are Kings?—I see the trembling crowd, [55]

I hear their fulsome clamours echoed loud;

Their stern oppressor pleased appears awhile,

But April's sunshine is a Monarch's smile—

Kings are but dust—the last eventful day

Will level all and make them lose their sway; [60]

Will dash the sceptre from the Monarch's hand,

And from the warrior's grasp wrest the ensanguined brand.

Oh! Peace, soft Peace, art thou for ever gone,

Is thy fair form indeed for ever flown?

And love and concord hast thou swept away, [65]

As if incongruous with thy parted sway?

Alas, I fear thou hast, for none appear.

Now o'er the palsied earth stalks giant Fear,

With War, and Woe, and Terror, in his train;—

List'ning he pauses on the embattled plain, [70]

Then speeding swiftly o'er the ensanguined heath,

Has left the frightful work to Hell and Death.

See! gory Ruin yokes his blood-stained car,

He scents the battle's carnage from afar;

Hell and Destruction mark his mad career, [75]

He tracks the rapid step of hurrying Fear;

Whilst ruined towns and smoking cities tell,

That thy work, Monarch, is the work of Hell.

'It is thy work!' I hear a voice repeat,

Shakes the broad basis of thy bloodstained seat; [80]

And at the orphan's sigh, the widow's moan,

Totters the fabric of thy guilt-stained throne—

'It is thy work, O Monarch;' now the sound

Fainter and fainter, yet is borne around,

Yet to enthusiast ears the murmurs tell [85]

That Heaven, indignant at the work of Hell,

Will soon the cause, the hated cause remove,

Which tears from earth peace, innocence, and love.

To Death (1810) [CPW]

Death! where is thy victory?

To triumph whilst I die,

To triumph whilst thine ebon wing

Enfolds my shuddering soul?

O Death! where is thy sting? [5]

Not when the tides of murder roll,

When nations groan, that kings may bask in bliss,

Death! canst thou boast a victory such as this—

When in his hour of pomp and power

His blow the mightiest murderer gave, [10]

Mid Nature's cries the sacrifice

Of millions to glut the grave;

When sunk the Tyrant Desolation's slave;

Or Freedom's life-blood streamed upon thy shrine;

Stern Tyrant, couldst thou boast a victory such as mine? [15]

To know in dissolution's void

That mortals' baubles sunk decay;

That everything, but Love, destroyed

Must perish with its kindred clay,—

Perish Ambition's crown, [20]

Perish her sceptred sway:

From Death's pale front fades Pride's fastidious frown.

In Death's damp vault the lurid fires decay,

That Envy lights at heaven-born Virtue's beam—

That all the cares subside, [25]

Which lurk beneath the tide

Of life's unquiet stream;—

Yes! this is victory!

And on yon rock, whose dark form glooms the sky,

To stretch these pale limbs, when the soul is fled; [30]

To baffle the lean passions of their prey,

To sleep within the palace of the dead!

Oh! not the King, around whose dazzling throne

His countless courtiers mock the words they say,

Triumphs amid the bud of glory blown, [35]

As I in this cold bed, and faint expiring groan!

Tremble, ye proud, whose grandeur mocks the woe

Which props the column of unnatural state!

You the plainings, faint and low,

From Misery's tortured soul that flow, [40]

Shall usher to your fate.

Tremble, ye conquerors, at whose fell command

The war-fiend riots o'er a peaceful land!

You Desolation's gory throng

Shall bear from Victory along [45]

To that mysterious strand.

Declaration of Rights (1812-13) [WVP]²

“GOVERNMENT has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, only so far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to their well-being.”

GOVERNMENT has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, only so far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to their well-being.

2. IF these individuals think that the form of government which they, or their forefathers constituted is ill adapted to produce their happiness, they have a right to change it.

3. Government is devised for the security of rights. The rights of man are liberty, and all equal participation of the commonage of nature.

4. As the benefit of the governed, is, or ought to be the origin of government, no men can have any authority that does not expressly emanate from their will.

5. Though all governments are not so bad as that of Turkey, yet none are so good as they might be; the majority of every country have a right to perfect their government, the minority should not disturb them, they ought to secede, and form their own system in their own way.

6. All have a right to an equal share in the benefits, and burdens of Government. Any disabilities for opinion, imply by their existence, barefaced tyranny on the side of government, ignorant slavishness on the side of the governed.

7. The rights of man in the present state of society, are only to be secured by some degree of coercion to be exercised on their violator. The sufferer has a right that the degree of coercion employed be as slight as possible.

8. It may be considered as a plain proof of the hollowness of any proposition, if power be used to enforce instead of reason to persuade its admission. Government is never supported by fraud until it cannot be supported by reason.

9. No man has a right to disturb the public peace, by personally resisting the execution of a law however bad. He ought to acquiesce, using at the same time the utmost powers of his reason, to promote its repeal.

10. A man must have a right to act in a certain manner before it can be his duty. He may, before he ought.

11. A man has a right to think as his reason directs, it is a duty he owes to himself to think with freedom, that he may act from conviction.

12. A man has a right to unrestricted liberty of discussion, falsehood is a scorpion that will sting itself to death.

13. A man has not only a right to express his thoughts, but it is his duty to do so.

14. No law has a right to discourage the practice of truth. A man ought to speak the truth on every occasion, a duty can never be criminal, what is not criminal cannot be injurious.

15. Law cannot make what is in its nature virtuous or innocent, to be criminal, any more than it can make what is criminal to be innocent. Government cannot make a law, it can only pronounce that which was the law before its organisation, viz. the moral result of the imperishable relations of things.

16. The present generation cannot bind their posterity. The few cannot promise for the many.

17. No man has a right to do an evil thing that good may come.

18. Expediency is inadmissible in morals. Politics are only sound when conducted on principles of morality. They are, in fact, the morals of nations.

19. Man has no right to kill his brother, it is no excuse that he does so in uniform. He only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.

20. Man, whatever be his country, has the same rights in one place as another, the rights of universal citizenship.

“15. Law cannot make what is in its nature virtuous or innocent, to be criminal, any more than it can make what is criminal to be innocent. Government cannot make a law, it can only pronounce that which was the law before its organisation, viz. the moral result of the imperishable relations of things.”

21. The government of a country ought to be perfectly indifferent to every opinion. Religious differences, the bloodiest and most rancorous of all, spring from partiality.

22. A delegation of individuals, for the purpose of securing their rights, can have no undelegated power of restraining the expression of their opinion.

23. Belief is involuntary; nothing involuntary is meritorious or reprehensible. A man ought not to be considered worse or better for his belief.

24. A Christian, a Deist, a Turk, and a Jew, have equal rights: they are men and brethren.

25. If a person's religious ideas correspond not with your own, love him nevertheless. How different would yours have been, had the chance of birth placed you in Tartary or India!

26. Those who believe that Heaven is, what earth has been, a monopoly in the hands of a favored few, would do well to reconsider their opinion: if they find that it came from their priest or their grandmother, they could not do better than reject it.

27. No man has a right to be respected for any other possessions, but those of virtue and talents. Titles are tinsel, power a corruptor, glory a bubble, and excessive wealth, a libel on its possessor.

28. No man has a right to monopolize more than he can enjoy; what the rich give to the poor, whilst millions are starving, is not a perfect favour, but an imperfect right.

29. Every man has a right to a certain degree of leisure and liberty, because it is his duty to attain a certain degree of knowledge. He may before he ought.

30. Sobriety of body and mind is necessary to those who would be free, because, without sobriety a high sense of philanthropy cannot actuate the heart, nor cool and determined courage, execute its dictates.

31. The only use of government is to repress the vices of man. If man were to day sinless, to-morrow he would have a right to demand that government and all its evils should cease.

Man! thou whose rights are here declared, be no longer forgetful of the loftiness of thy destination. Think of thy rights; of those possessions which will give thee virtue and wisdom, by which thou mayest arrive at happiness and freedom. They are decimated to thee by one who knows thy dignity, for every hour does his heart swell with honorable pride in the contemplation of what thou mayest attain, by one who is not forgetful of thy degeneracy, for every moment brings home to him the bitter conviction of what thou art.

Awake!-arise!-or be for ever fallen.

To the Republicans of North America (1812) [CPW]

1.

Brothers! between you and me

Whirlwinds sweep and billows roar:

Yet in spirit oft I see

On thy wild and winding shore

Freedom's bloodless banners wave,— [5]

Feel the pulses of the brave

Unextinguished in the grave,—

See them drenched in sacred gore,—

Catch the warrior's gasping breath

Murmuring 'Liberty or death!' [10]

2.

Shout aloud! Let every slave,

Crouching at Corruption's throne,

Start into a man, and brave

Racks and chains without a groan:

And the castle's heartless glow, [15]

And the hovel's vice and woe,

Fade like gaudy flowers that blow—

Weeds that peep, and then are gone

Whilst, from misery's ashes risen,

Love shall burst the captive's prison. [20]

3.

Cotopaxi! bid the sound

Through thy sister mountains ring,

Till each valley smile around

At the blissful welcoming!

And, O thou stern Ocean deep, [25]

Thou whose foamy billows sweep

Shores where thousands wake to weep

Whilst they curse a villain king,

On the winds that fan thy breast

Bear thou news of Freedom's rest! [30]

4.

Can the daystar dawn of love,

Where the flag of war unfurled

Floats with crimson stain above

The fabric of a ruined world?

Never but to vengeance driven [35]

When the patriot's spirit shriven

Seeks in death its native Heaven!

There, to desolation hurled,

Widowed love may watch thy bier,

Balm thee with its dying tear. [40]

Sonnet: On launching some Bottles filled with Knowledge into the Bristol Channel (August, 1812) [CPW]

Vessels of heavenly medicine! may the breeze

Auspicious waft your dark green forms to shore;

Safe may ye stem the wide surrounding roar

Of the wild whirlwinds and the raging seas;

And oh! if Liberty e'er deigned to stoop [5]

From yonder lowly throne her crownless brow,

Sure she will breathe around your emerald group

The fairest breezes of her West that blow.

Yes! she will waft ye to some freeborn soul

Whose eye-beam, kindling as it meets your freight, [10]

Her heaven-born flame in suffering Earth will light,

Until its radiance gleams from pole to pole,

And tyrant-hearts with powerless envy burst

To see their night of ignorance dispersed.

Feelings of a Republican on the Fall on Bonaparte (1816) [CPW]

I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan

To think that a most unambitious slave,

Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave

Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne

Where it had stood even now: thou didst prefer [5]

A frail and bloody pomp which Time has swept

In fragments towards Oblivion. Massacre,

For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept,

Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust,

And stifled thee, their minister. I know [10]

Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,

That Virtue owns a more eternal foe

Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime,

And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time.

Queen Mab. A Philosophical Poem, with Notes (1813) [CPW]

“War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade, And, to those royal murderers, whose mean thrones Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore, The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean.”

4.

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight,

The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade,

And, to those royal murderers, whose mean thrones [170]

Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore,

The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean.

Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround

Their palaces, participate the crimes

That force defends, and from a nation's rage [175]

Secure the crown, which all the curses reach

That famine, frenzy, woe and penury breathe.

These are the hired bravos who defend

The tyrant's throne—the bullies of his fear:

These are the sinks and channels of worst vice, [180]

The refuse of society, the dregs

Of all that is most vile: their cold hearts blend

Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride,

All that is mean and villanous, with rage

Which hopelessness of good, and self-contempt, [185]

Alone might kindle; they are decked in wealth,

Honour and power, then are sent abroad

To do their work. The pestilence that stalks

In gloomy triumph through some eastern land

Is less destroying. They cajole with gold, [190]

And promises of fame, the thoughtless youth

Already crushed with servitude: he knows

His wretchedness too late, and cherishes

Repentance for his ruin, when his doom

Is sealed in gold and blood! [195]

Those too the tyrant serve, who, skilled to snare

The feet of Justice in the toils of law,

Stand, ready to oppress the weaker still;

And right or wrong will vindicate for gold,

Sneering at public virtue, which beneath [200]

Their pitiless tread lies torn and trampled, where

Honour sits smiling at the sale of truth.

'Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites,

Without a hope, a passion, or a love,

Who, through a life of luxury and lies, [205]

Have crept by flattery to the seats of power,

Support the system whence their honours flow…

They have three words:—well tyrants know their use,

Well pay them for the loan, with usury

Torn from a bleeding world!—God, Hell, and Heaven. [210]

A vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend,

Whose mercy is a nickname for the rage

Of tameless tigers hungering for blood.

Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire,

Where poisonous and undying worms prolong [215]

Eternal misery to those hapless slaves

Whose life has been a penance for its crimes.

And Heaven, a meed for those who dare belie

Their human nature, quake, believe, and cringe

Before the mockeries of earthly power. [220]

'These tools the tyrant tempers to his work,

Wields in his wrath, and as he wills destroys,

Omnipotent in wickedness: the while

Youth springs, age moulders, manhood tamely does

His bidding, bribed by short-lived joys to lend [225]

Force to the weakness of his trembling arm.

'They rise, they fall; one generation comes

Yielding its harvest to destruction's scythe.

It fades, another blossoms: yet behold!

Red glows the tyrant's stamp-mark on its bloom, [230]

Withering and cankering deep its passive prime.

He has invented lying words and modes,

Empty and vain as his own coreless heart;

Evasive meanings, nothings of much sound,

To lure the heedless victim to the toils [235]

Spread round the valley of its paradise.

'Look to thyself, priest, conqueror, or prince!

Whether thy trade is falsehood, and thy lusts

Deep wallow in the earnings of the poor,

With whom thy Master was:—or thou delight'st [240]

In numbering o'er the myriads of thy slain,

All misery weighing nothing in the scale

Against thy short-lived fame: or thou dost load

With cowardice and crime the groaning land,

A pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched self! [245]

Ay, art thou not the veriest slave that e'er

Crawled on the loathing earth? Are not thy days

Days of unsatisfying listlessness?

Dost thou not cry, ere night's long rack is o'er,

"When will the morning come?" Is not thy youth [250]

A vain and feverish dream of sensualism?

Thy manhood blighted with unripe disease?

Are not thy views of unregretted death

Drear, comfortless, and horrible? Thy mind,

Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame, [255]

Incapable of judgement, hope, or love?

And dost thou wish the errors to survive

That bar thee from all sympathies of good,

After the miserable interest

Thou hold'st in their protraction? When the grave [260]

Has swallowed up thy memory and thyself,

Dost thou desire the bane that poisons earth

To twine its roots around thy coffined clay,

Spring from thy bones, and blossom on thy tomb,

That of its fruit thy babes may eat and die? [265]

The Revolt of Islam. A Poem in Twelve Cantos (1817) [CPW]

Canto 4

5.

Thus madness came again,—a milder madness, [1450]

Which darkened nought but time's unquiet flow

With supernatural shades of clinging sadness;

That gentle Hermit, in my helpless woe,

By my sick couch was busy to and fro,

Like a strong spirit ministrant of good: [1455]

When I was healed, he led me forth to show

The wonders of his sylvan solitude,

And we together sate by that isle-fretted flood.

6.

He knew his soothing words to weave with skill

From all my madness told; like mine own heart, [1460]

Of Cythna would he question me, until

That thrilling name had ceased to make me start,

From his familiar lips—it was not art,

Of wisdom and of justice when he spoke—

When mid soft looks of pity, there would dart [1465]

A glance as keen as is the lightning's stroke

When it doth rive the knots of some ancestral oak.

7.

Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled,

My thoughts their due array did re-assume

Through the enchantments of that Hermit old; [1470]

Then I bethought me of the glorious doom

Of those who sternly struggle to relume

The lamp of Hope o'er man's bewildered lot,

And, sitting by the waters, in the gloom

Of eve, to that friend's heart I told my thought— [1475]

That heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not.

8.

That hoary man had spent his livelong age

In converse with the dead, who leave the stamp

Of ever-burning thoughts on many a page,

When they are gone into the senseless damp [1480]

Of graves;—his spirit thus became a lamp

Of splendour, like to those on which it fed;

Through peopled haunts, the City and the Camp,

Deep thirst for knowledge had his footsteps led,

And all the ways of men among mankind he read. [1485]

9.

But custom maketh blind and obdurate

The loftiest hearts;—he had beheld the woe

In which mankind was bound, but deemed that fate

Which made them abject, would preserve them so;

And in such faith, some steadfast joy to know, [1490]

He sought this cell: but when fame went abroad

That one in Argolis did undergo

Torture for liberty, and that the crowd

High truths from gifted lips had heard and understood;

10.

And that the multitude was gathering wide,— [1495]

His spirit leaped within his aged frame;

In lonely peace he could no more abide,

But to the land on which the victor's flame

Had fed, my native land, the Hermit came:

Each heart was there a shield, and every tongue [1500]

Was as a sword of truth—young Laon's name

Rallied their secret hopes, though tyrants sung

Hymns of triumphant joy our scattered tribes among.

11.

He came to the lone column on the rock,

And with his sweet and mighty eloquence [1505]

The hearts of those who watched it did unlock,

And made them melt in tears of penitence.

They gave him entrance free to bear me thence.

'Since this,' the old man said, 'seven years are spent,

While slowly truth on thy benighted sense [1510]

Has crept; the hope which wildered it has lent

Meanwhile, to me the power of a sublime intent.

12.

'Yes, from the records of my youthful state,

And from the lore of bards and sages old,

From whatsoe'er my wakened thoughts create [1515]

Out of the hopes of thine aspirings bold,

Have I collected language to unfold

Truth to my countrymen; from shore to shore

Doctrines of human power my words have told,

They have been heard, and men aspire to more [1520]

Than they have ever gained or ever lost of yore.

13.

'In secret chambers parents read, and weep,

My writings to their babes, no longer blind;

And young men gather when their tyrants sleep,

And vows of faith each to the other bind; [1525]

And marriageable maidens, who have pined

With love, till life seemed melting through their look,

A warmer zeal, a nobler hope, now find;

And every bosom thus is rapt and shook,

Like autumn's myriad leaves in one swoln mountain-brook. [1530]

14.

'The tyrants of the Golden City tremble

At voices which are heard about the streets;

The ministers of fraud can scarce dissemble

The lies of their own heart, but when one meets

Another at the shrine, he inly weets, [1535]

Though he says nothing, that the truth is known;

Murderers are pale upon the judgement-seats,

And gold grows vile even to the wealthy crone,

And laughter fills the Fane, and curses shake the Throne.

15.

'Kind thoughts, and mighty hopes, and gentle deeds [1540]

Abound, for fearless love, and the pure law

Of mild equality and peace, succeeds

To faiths which long have held the world in awe,

Bloody and false, and cold:—as whirlpools draw

All wrecks of Ocean to their chasm, the sway [1545]

Of thy strong genius, Laon, which foresaw

This hope, compels all spirits to obey,

Which round thy secret strength now throng in wide array.

16.

'For I have been thy passive instrument'—

(As thus the old man spake, his countenance [1550]

Gleamed on me like a spirit's)—'thou hast lent

To me, to all, the power to advance

Towards this unforeseen deliverance

From our ancestral chains—ay, thou didst rear

That lamp of hope on high, which time nor chance [1555]

Nor change may not extinguish, and my share

Of good, was o'er the world its gathered beams to bear.

17.

'But I, alas! am both unknown and old,

And though the woof of wisdom I know well

To dye in hues of language, I am cold [1560]

In seeming, and the hopes which inly dwell,

My manners note that I did long repel;

But Laon's name to the tumultuous throng

Were like the star whose beams the waves compel

And tempests, and his soul-subduing tongue [1565]

Were as a lance to quell the mailed crest of wrong.

“18. 'Perchance blood need not flow, if thou at length Wouldst rise, perchance the very slaves would spare Their brethren and themselves; great is the strength Of words—for lately did a maiden fair, Who from her childhood has been taught to bear The Tyrant's heaviest yoke, arise, and make Her sex the law of truth and freedom hear, And with these quiet words—"for thine own sake I prithee spare me;"—did with ruth so take.”

18.

'Perchance blood need not flow, if thou at length

Wouldst rise, perchance the very slaves would spare

Their brethren and themselves; great is the strength

Of words—for lately did a maiden fair, [1570]

Who from her childhood has been taught to bear

The Tyrant's heaviest yoke, arise, and make

Her sex the law of truth and freedom hear,

And with these quiet words—"for thine own sake

I prithee spare me;"—did with ruth so take [1575]

19.

'All hearts, that even the torturer who had bound

Her meek calm frame, ere it was yet impaled,

Loosened her, weeping then; nor could be found

One human hand to harm her—unassailed

Therefore she walks through the great City, veiled [1580]

In virtue's adamantine eloquence,

'Gainst scorn, and death and pain thus trebly mailed,

And blending, in the smiles of that defence,

The Serpent and the Dove, Wisdom and Innocence.

20.

'The wild-eyed women throng around her path: [1585]

From their luxurious dungeons, from the dust

Of meaner thralls, from the oppressor's wrath,

Or the caresses of his sated lust

They congregate:—in her they put their trust;

The tyrants send their armed slaves to quell [1590]

Her power;—they, even like a thunder-gust

Caught by some forest, bend beneath the spell

Of that young maiden's speech, and to their chiefs rebel.

21.

'Thus she doth equal laws and justice teach

To woman, outraged and polluted long; [1595]

Gathering the sweetest fruit in human reach

For those fair hands now free, while armed wrong

Trembles before her look, though it be strong;

Thousands thus dwell beside her, virgins bright,

And matrons with their babes, a stately throng! [1600]

Lovers renew the vows which they did plight

In early faith, and hearts long parted now unite,

22.

'And homeless orphans find a home near her,

And those poor victims of the proud, no less,

Fair wrecks, on whom the smiling world with stir, [1605]

Thrusts the redemption of its wickedness:—

In squalid huts, and in its palaces

Sits Lust alone, while o'er the land is borne

Her voice, whose awful sweetness doth repress

All evil, and her foes relenting turn, [1610]

And cast the vote of love in hope's abandoned urn.

23.

'So in the populous City, a young maiden

Has baffled Havoc of the prey which he

Marks as his own, whene'er with chains o'erladen

Men make them arms to hurl down tyranny,— [1615]

False arbiter between the bound and free;

And o'er the land, in hamlets and in towns

The multitudes collect tumultuously,

And throng in arms; but tyranny disowns

Their claim, and gathers strength around its trembling thrones. [1620]

24.

'Blood soon, although unwillingly, to shed

The free cannot forbear—the Queen of Slaves,

The hoodwinked Angel of the blind and dead,

Custom, with iron mace points to the graves

Where her own standard desolately waves [1625]

Over the dust of Prophets and of Kings.

Many yet stand in her array—"she paves

Her path with human hearts," and o'er it flings

The wildering gloom of her immeasurable wings.

Canto 9

“Like Earth's own voice lifted unconquerably To all her children, the unbounded mirth, The glorious joy of thy name—Liberty! They heard!”

3.

'The many ships spotting the dark blue deep

With snowy sails, fled fast as ours came nigh,

In fear and wonder; and on every steep

Thousands did gaze, they heard the startling cry, [3490]

Like Earth's own voice lifted unconquerably

To all her children, the unbounded mirth,

The glorious joy of thy name—Liberty!

They heard!—As o'er the mountains of the earth

From peak to peak leap on the beams of Morning's birth: [3495]

4.

'So from that cry over the boundless hills

Sudden was caught one universal sound,

Like a volcano's voice, whose thunder fills

Remotest skies,—such glorious madness found

A path through human hearts with stream which drowned [3500]

Its struggling fears and cares, dark Custom's brood;

They knew not whence it came, but felt around

A wide contagion poured—they called aloud

On Liberty—that name lived on the sunny flood.

Ozymandias (1818) [CPW]

“'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, [5]

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: [10]

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Prometheus Unbound. A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts (1818) [CPW]

“Whilst my beloved race is trampled down By his thought-executing ministers. Such is the tyrant's recompense: 'tis just: He who is evil can receive no good”

ACT 1

PROMETHEUS:

Evil minds [380]

Change good to their own nature. I gave all

He has; and in return he chains me here

Years, ages, night and day: whether the Sun

Split my parched skin, or in the moony night

The crystal-winged snow cling round my hair: [385]

Whilst my beloved race is trampled down

By his thought-executing ministers.

Such is the tyrant's recompense: 'tis just:

He who is evil can receive no good;

And for a world bestowed, or a friend lost, [390]

He can feel hate, fear, shame; not gratitude:

He but requites me for his own misdeed.

Kindness to such is keen reproach, which breaks

With bitter stings the light sleep of Revenge.

Submission, thou dost know I cannot try: [395]

For what submission but that fatal word,

The death-seal of mankind's captivity,

Like the Sicilian's hair-suspended sword,

Which trembles o'er his crown, would he accept,

Or could I yield? Which yet I will not yield. [400]

Let others flatter Crime, where it sits throned

In brief Omnipotence: secure are they:

For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down

Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs,

Too much avenged by those who err. I wait, [405]

Enduring thus, the retributive hour

Which since we spake is even nearer now.

But hark, the hell-hounds clamour: fear delay:

Behold! Heaven lowers under thy Father's frown.

MERCURY:

Oh, that we might be spared; I to inflict [410]

And thou to suffer! Once more answer me:

Thou knowest not the period of Jove's power?

PROMETHEUS:

I know but this, that it must come.

MERCURY:

Alas!

Thou canst not count thy years to come of pain?

PROMETHEUS:

They last while Jove must reign: nor more, nor less [415]

Do I desire or fear.

---

PROMETHEUS:

Ah woe!

Ah woe! Alas! pain, pain ever, for ever! [635]

I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear

Thy works within my woe-illumed mind,

Thou subtle tyrant! Peace is in the grave.

The grave hides all things beautiful and good:

I am a God and cannot find it there, [640]

Nor would I seek it: for, though dread revenge,

This is defeat, fierce king, not victory.

The sights with which thou torturest gird my soul

With new endurance, till the hour arrives

When they shall be no types of things which are. [645]

PANTHEA:

Alas! what sawest thou more?

PROMETHEUS:

There are two woes:

To speak, and to behold; thou spare me one.

Names are there, Nature's sacred watchwords, they

Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry;

The nations thronged around, and cried aloud, [650]

As with one voice, Truth, liberty, and love!

Suddenly fierce confusion fell from heaven

Among them: there was strife, deceit, and fear:

Tyrants rushed in, and did divide the spoil.

This was the shadow of the truth I saw. [655]

SCENE 3.4

PROMETHEUS:

We feel what thou hast heard and seen: yet speak. [97]

SPIRIT OF THE HOUR:

Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled

The abysses of the sky and the wide earth,

There was a change: the impalpable thin air [100]

And the all-circling sunlight were transformed,

As if the sense of love dissolved in them

Had folded itself round the sphered world.

My vision then grew clear, and I could see

Into the mysteries of the universe: [105]

...

“And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked One with the other even as spirits do, None fawned, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear, Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell, 'All hope abandon ye who enter here;' None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear Gazed on another's eye of cold command, Until the subject of a tyrant's will Became, worse fate, the abject of his own, Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death.”

I wandering went

Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind,

And first was disappointed not to see

Such mighty change as I had felt within

Expressed in outward things; but soon I looked, [130]

And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked

One with the other even as spirits do,

None fawned, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear,

Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows

No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell, [135]

'All hope abandon ye who enter here;'

None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear

Gazed on another's eye of cold command,

Until the subject of a tyrant's will

Became, worse fate, the abject of his own, [140]

Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death.

None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines

Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak;

None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart

The sparks of love and hope till there remained [145]

Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed,

And the wretch crept a vampire among men,

Infecting all with his own hideous ill;

None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk

Which makes the heart deny the "yes" it breathes, [150]

Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy

With such a self-mistrust as has no name.

And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind

As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew

On the wide earth, past; gentle radiant forms, [155]

From custom's evil taint exempt and pure;

Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,

Looking emotions once they feared to feel,

And changed to all which once they dared not be,

Yet being now, made earth like heaven; nor pride, [160]

Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame,

The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall,

Spoiled the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love.

“Thrones, altars, judgement-seats, and prisons; wherein, And beside which, by wretched men were borne Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance, Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes, The ghosts of a no-more-remembered fame, Which, from their unworn obelisks, look forth In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs Of those who were their conquerors”

Thrones, altars, judgement-seats, and prisons; wherein,

And beside which, by wretched men were borne [165]

Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes

Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance,

Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes,

The ghosts of a no-more-remembered fame,

Which, from their unworn obelisks, look forth [170]

In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs

Of those who were their conquerors: mouldering round,

These imaged to the pride of kings and priests

A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide

As is the world it wasted, and are now [175]

But an astonishment; even so the tools

And emblems of its last captivity,

Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth,

Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded now.

And those foul shapes, abhorred by god and man,— [180]

Which, under many a name and many a form

Strange, savage, ghastly, dark and execrable,

Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world;

And which the nations, panic-stricken, served

With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love [185]

Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandless,

And slain among men's unreclaiming tears,

Flattering the thing they feared, which fear was hate,—

Frown, mouldering fast, o'er their abandoned shrines:

The painted veil, by those who were, called life, [190]

Which mimicked, as with colours idly spread,

All men believed and hoped, is torn aside;

The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains

Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man

Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless, [195]

Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king

Over himself; just, gentle, wise; but man

Passionless?—no, yet free from guilt or pain,

Which were, for his will made or suffered them,

Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves, [200]

From chance, and death, and mutability,

The clogs of that which else might oversoar

The loftiest star of unascended heaven,

Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.

An Ode written October, 1819, before the Spaniards had recovered their Liberty (1819) [CPW]

Arise, arise, arise!

There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread;

Be your wounds like eyes

To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead.

What other grief were it just to pay? [5]

Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they;

Who said they were slain on the battle day?

Awaken, awaken, awaken!

The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes;

Be the cold chains shaken [10]

To the dust where your kindred repose, repose:

Their bones in the grave will start and move,

When they hear the voices of those they love,

Most loud in the holy combat above.

Wave, wave high the banner! [15]

When Freedom is riding to conquest by:

Though the slaves that fan her

Be Famine and Toil, giving sigh for sigh.

And ye who attend her imperial car,

Lift not your hands in the banded war, [20]

But in her defence whose children ye are.

Glory, glory, glory,

To those who have greatly suffered and done!

Never name in story

Was greater than that which ye shall have won. [25]

Conquerors have conquered their foes alone,

Whose revenge, pride, and power they have overthrown

Ride ye, more victorious, over your own.

Bind, bind every brow

With crownals of violet, ivy, and pine: [30]

Hide the blood-stains now

With hues which sweet Nature has made divine:

Green strength, azure hope, and eternity:

But let not the pansy among them be;

Ye were injured, and that means memory. [35]

The Mask of Anarchy. Written on the Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester (1819) [CPW]

“39. 'What is Freedom?—ye can tell That which slavery is, too well— For its very name has grown To an echo of your own. 40. ''Tis to work and have such pay As just keeps life from day to day In your limbs, as in a cell For the tyrants' use to dwell, 41. 'So that ye for them are made Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade, With or without your own will bent To their defence and nourishment.”

37.

'Men of England, heirs of Glory,

Heroes of unwritten story,

Nurslings of one mighty Mother,

Hopes of her, and one another; [150]

38.

'Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number,

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you—

Ye are many—they are few. [155]

39.

'What is Freedom?—ye can tell

That which slavery is, too well—

For its very name has grown

To an echo of your own.

40.

''Tis to work and have such pay [160]

As just keeps life from day to day

In your limbs, as in a cell

For the tyrants' use to dwell,

41.

'So that ye for them are made

Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade, [165]

With or without your own will bent

To their defence and nourishment.

42.

''Tis to see your children weak

With their mothers pine and peak,

When the winter winds are bleak,— [170]

They are dying whilst I speak.

43.

''Tis to hunger for such diet

As the rich man in his riot

Casts to the fat dogs that lie

Surfeiting beneath his eye; [175]

44.

''Tis to let the Ghost of Gold

Take from Toil a thousandfold

More than e'er its substance could

In the tyrannies of old.

“45. 'Paper coin—that forgery Of the title-deeds, which ye Hold to something of the worth Of the inheritance of Earth.”

45.

'Paper coin—that forgery [180]

Of the title-deeds, which ye

Hold to something of the worth

Of the inheritance of Earth.

46.

''Tis to be a slave in soul

And to hold no strong control [185]

Over your own wills, but be

All that others make of ye.

47.

'And at length when ye complain

With a murmur weak and vain

'Tis to see the Tyrant's crew [190]

Ride over your wives and you

Blood is on the grass like dew.

48.

'Then it is to feel revenge

Fiercely thirsting to exchange

Blood for blood—and wrong for wrong— [195]

Do not thus when ye are strong.

49.

'Birds find rest, in narrow nest

When weary of their winged quest;

Beasts find fare, in woody lair

When storm and snow are in the air. [200]

50.

'Asses, swine, have litter spread

And with fitting food are fed;

All things have a home but one—

Thou, Oh, Englishman, hast none!

51.

'This is Slavery—savage men, [205]

Or wild beasts within a den

Would endure not as ye do—

But such ills they never knew.

52.

'What art thou Freedom? O! could slaves

Answer from their living graves [210]

This demand—tyrants would flee

Like a dream's dim imagery:

53.

'Thou art not, as impostors say,

A shadow soon to pass away,

A superstition, and a name [215]

Echoing from the cave of Fame.

54.

'For the labourer thou art bread,

And a comely table spread

From his daily labour come

In a neat and happy home. [220]

55.

Thou art clothes, and fire, and food

For the trampled multitude—

No—in countries that are free

Such starvation cannot be

As in England now we see. [225]

56.

'To the rich thou art a check,

When his foot is on the neck

Of his victim, thou dost make

That he treads upon a snake.

57.

Thou art Justice—ne'er for gold [230]

May thy righteous laws be sold

As laws are in England—thou

Shield'st alike the high and low.

“52. 'What art thou Freedom? O! could slaves Answer from their living graves This demand—tyrants would flee Like a dream's dim imagery: 53. 'Thou art not, as impostors say, A shadow soon to pass away, A superstition, and a name Echoing from the cave of Fame. 54. For the labourer thou art bread, And a comely table spread From his daily labour come In a neat and happy home... 57. Thou art Justice—ne'er for gold May thy righteous laws be sold As laws are in England—thou Shield'st alike the high and low.”

58.

'Thou art Wisdom—Freemen never

Dream that God will damn for ever [235]

All who think those things untrue

Of which Priests make such ado.

59.

'Thou art Peace—never by thee

Would blood and treasure wasted be

As tyrants wasted them, when all [240]

Leagued to quench thy flame in Gaul.

60.

'What if English toil and blood

Was poured forth, even as a flood?

It availed, Oh, Liberty,

To dim, but not extinguish thee. [245]

61.

'Thou art Love—the rich have kissed

Thy feet, and like him following Christ,

Give their substance to the free

And through the rough world follow thee,

62.

'Or turn their wealth to arms, and make [250]

War for thy beloved sake

On wealth, and war, and fraud—whence they

Drew the power which is their prey.

63.

'Science, Poetry, and Thought

Are thy lamps; they make the lot [255]

Of the dwellers in a cot

So serene, they curse it not.

64.

'Spirit, Patience, Gentleness,

All that can adorn and bless

Art thou—let deeds, not words, express [260]

Thine exceeding loveliness.

65.

'Let a great Assembly be

Of the fearless and the free

On some spot of English ground

Where the plains stretch wide around. [265]

66.

'Let the blue sky overhead,

The green earth on which ye tread,

All that must eternal be

Witness the solemnity.

67.

'From the corners uttermost [270]

Of the bounds of English coast;

From every hut, village, and town

Where those who live and suffer moan

For others' misery or their own,

68.

'From the workhouse and the prison [275]

Where pale as corpses newly risen,

Women, children, young and old

Groan for pain, and weep for cold—

69.

'From the haunts of daily life

Where is waged the daily strife [280]

With common wants and common cares

Which sows the human heart with tares—

70.

'Lastly from the palaces

Where the murmur of distress

Echoes, like the distant sound [285]

Of a wind alive around

71.

'Those prison halls of wealth and fashion,

Where some few feel such compassion

For those who groan, and toil, and wail

As must make their brethren pale— [290]

72.

'Ye who suffer woes untold,

Or to feel, or to behold

Your lost country bought and sold

With a price of blood and gold—

73.

'Let a vast assembly be, [295]

And with great solemnity

Declare with measured words that ye

Are, as God has made ye, free—

74.

'Be your strong and simple words

Keen to wound as sharpened swords, [300]

And wide as targes let them be,

With their shade to cover ye.

75.

'Let the tyrants pour around

With a quick and startling sound,

Like the loosening of a sea, [305]

Troops of armed emblazonry.

76.

'Let the charged artillery drive

Till the dead air seems alive

With the clash of clanging wheels,

And the tramp of horses' heels. [310]

77.

'Let the fixed bayonet

Gleam with sharp desire to wet

Its bright point in English blood

Looking keen as one for food.

78.

Let the horsemen's scimitars [315]

Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars

Thirsting to eclipse their burning

In a sea of death and mourning.

79.

'Stand ye calm and resolute,

Like a forest close and mute, [320]

With folded arms and looks which are

Weapons of unvanquished war,

80.

'And let Panic, who outspeeds

The career of armed steeds

Pass, a disregarded shade [325]

Through your phalanx undismayed.

“81. 'Let the laws of your own land, Good or ill, between ye stand Hand to hand, and foot to foot, Arbiters of the dispute, 82. 'The old laws of England—they Whose reverend heads with age are gray, Children of a wiser day; And whose solemn voice must be Thine own echo—Liberty!... 91. 'Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number— Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you— Ye are many—they are few.'”

81.

'Let the laws of your own land,

Good or ill, between ye stand

Hand to hand, and foot to foot,

Arbiters of the dispute, [330]

82.

'The old laws of England—they

Whose reverend heads with age are gray,

Children of a wiser day;

And whose solemn voice must be

Thine own echo—Liberty! [335]

83.

'On those who first should violate

Such sacred heralds in their state

Rest the blood that must ensue,

And it will not rest on you.

84.

'And if then the tyrants dare [340]

Let them ride among you there,

Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew,—

What they like, that let them do.

85.

'With folded arms and steady eyes,

And little fear, and less surprise, [345]

Look upon them as they slay

Till their rage has died away.

86.

Then they will return with shame

To the place from which they came,

And the blood thus shed will speak [350]

In hot blushes on their cheek.

87.

'Every woman in the land

Will point at them as they stand—

They will hardly dare to greet

Their acquaintance in the street. [355]

88.

'And the bold, true warriors

Who have hugged Danger in wars

Will turn to those who would be free,

Ashamed of such base company.

89.

'And that slaughter to the Nation [360]

Shall steam up like inspiration,

Eloquent, oracular;

A volcano heard afar.

90.

'And these words shall then become

Like Oppression's thundered doom [365]

Ringing through each heart and brain,

Heard again—again—again—

91.

'Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number—

Shake your chains to earth like dew [370]

Which in sleep had fallen on you—

Ye are many—they are few.'

Lines Written during the Castlereagh Administration (1819) [CPW

1.

Corpses are cold in the tomb;

Stones on the pavement are dumb;

Abortions are dead in the womb,

And their mothers look pale—like the death-white shore

Of Albion, free no more. [5]

2.

Her sons are as stones in the way—

They are masses of senseless clay—

They are trodden, and move not away,—

The abortion with which SHE travaileth

Is Liberty, smitten to death. [10]

3.

Then trample and dance, thou Oppressor!

For thy victim is no redresser;

Thou art sole lord and possessor

Of her corpses, and clods, and abortions—they pave

Thy path to the grave. [15]

4.

Hearest thou the festival din

Of Death, and Destruction, and Sin,

And Wealth crying "Havoc!" within?

'Tis the bacchanal triumph that makes Truth dumb,

Thine Epithalamium. [20]

5.

Ay, marry thy ghastly wife!

Let Fear and Disquiet and Strife

Spread thy couch in the chamber of Life!

Marry Ruin, thou Tyrant! and Hell be thy guide

To the bed of the bride! [25]

Ode to Liberty (1820) [CPW]

Yet, Freedom, yet, thy banner, torn but flying,

Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind.—BYRON.

1.

A glorious people vibrated again

The lightning of the nations: Liberty

From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain,

Scattering contagious fire into the sky,

Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay, [5]

And in the rapid plumes of song

Clothed itself, sublime and strong;

As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among,

Hovering inverse o'er its accustomed prey;

Till from its station in the Heaven of fame [10]

The Spirit's whirlwind rapped it, and the ray

Of the remotest sphere of living flame

Which paves the void was from behind it flung,

As foam from a ship's swiftness, when there came

A voice out of the deep: I will record the same. [15]

2.

The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth:

The burning stars of the abyss were hurled

Into the depths of Heaven. The daedal earth,

That island in the ocean of the world,

Hung in its cloud of all-sustaining air: [20]

But this divinest universe

Was yet a chaos and a curse,

For thou wert not: but, power from worst producing worse,

The spirit of the beasts was kindled there,

And of the birds, and of the watery forms, [25]

And there was war among them, and despair

Within them, raging without truce or terms:

The bosom of their violated nurse

Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms on worms,

And men on men; each heart was as a hell of storms. [30]

3.

Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied

His generations under the pavilion

Of the Sun's throne: palace and pyramid,

Temple and prison, to many a swarming million

Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves. [35]

This human living multitude

Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude,

For thou wert not; but o'er the populous solitude,

Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves,

Hung Tyranny; beneath, sate deified [40]

The sister-pest, congregator of slaves;

Into the shadow of her pinions wide

Anarchs and priests, who feed on gold and blood

Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed,

Drove the astonished herds of men from every side. [45]

“For thou (Liberty) wert not; but o'er the populous solitude, Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves, Hung Tyranny; beneath, sate deified The sister-pest, congregator of slaves;”

4.

The nodding promontories, and blue isles,

And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves

Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles

Of favouring Heaven: from their enchanted caves

Prophetic echoes flung dim melody. [50]

On the unapprehensive wild

The vine, the corn, the olive mild,

Grew savage yet, to human use unreconciled;

And, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea,

Like the man's thought dark in the infant's brain, [55]

Like aught that is which wraps what is to be,

Art's deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein

Of Parian stone; and, yet a speechless child,

Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain

Her lidless eyes for thee; when o'er the Aegean main [60]

5.

Athens arose: a city such as vision

Builds from the purple crags and silver towers

Of battlemented cloud, as in derision

Of kingliest masonry: the ocean-floors

Pave it; the evening sky pavilions it; [65]

Its portals are inhabited

By thunder-zoned winds, each head

Within its cloudy wings with sun-fire garlanded,—

A divine work! Athens, diviner yet,

Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will [70]

Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set;

For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill

Peopled, with forms that mock the eternal dead

In marble immortality, that hill

Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle. [75]

6.

Within the surface of Time's fleeting river

Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay

Immovably unquiet, and for ever

It trembles, but it cannot pass away!

The voices of thy bards and sages thunder [80]

With an earth-awakening blast

Through the caverns of the past:

(Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast:)

A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder,

Which soars where Expectation never flew, [85]

Rending the veil of space and time asunder!

One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew;

One Sun illumines Heaven; one Spirit vast

With life and love makes chaos ever new,

As Athens doth the world with thy delight renew. [90]

7.

Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest,

Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmaean Maenad,

She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest

From that Elysian food was yet unweaned;

And many a deed of terrible uprightness [95]

By thy sweet love was sanctified;

And in thy smile, and by thy side,

Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died.

But when tears stained thy robe of vestal-whiteness,

And gold profaned thy Capitolian throne, [100]

Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness,

The senate of the tyrants: they sunk prone

Slaves of one tyrant: Palatinus sighed

Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone

Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown [105]

8.

From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill,

Or piny promontory of the Arctic main,

Or utmost islet inaccessible,

Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign,

Teaching the woods and waves, and desert rocks, [100]

And every Naiad's ice-cold urn,

To talk in echoes sad and stern

Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn?

For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks

Of the Scald's dreams, nor haunt the Druid's sleep. [105]

What if the tears rained through thy shattered locks

Were quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not weep,

When from its sea of death, to kill and burn,

The Galilean serpent forth did creep,

And made thy world an undistinguishable heap. [120]

“A thousand years the Earth cried, 'Where art thou?' And then the shadow of thy coming fell On Saxon Alfred's olive-cinctured brow: And many a warrior-peopled citadel.”

9.

A thousand years the Earth cried, 'Where art thou?'

And then the shadow of thy coming fell

On Saxon Alfred's olive-cinctured brow:

And many a warrior-peopled citadel.

Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep, [125]

Arose in sacred Italy,

Frowning o'er the tempestuous sea

Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty;

That multitudinous anarchy did sweep

And burst around their walls, like idle foam, [130]

Whilst from the human spirit's deepest deep

Strange melody with love and awe struck dumb

Dissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die,

With divine wand traced on our earthly home

Fit imagery to pave Heaven's everlasting dome. [135]

10.

Thou huntress swifter than the Moon! thou terror

Of the world's wolves! thou bearer of the quiver,

Whose sunlike shafts pierce tempest-winged Error,

As light may pierce the clouds when they dissever

In the calm regions of the orient day! [140]

Luther caught thy wakening glance;

Like lightning, from his leaden lance

Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance

In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay;

And England's prophets hailed thee as their queen, [145]

In songs whose music cannot pass away,

Though it must flow forever: not unseen

Before the spirit-sighted countenance

Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene

Beyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien. [150]

11.

The eager hours and unreluctant years

As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood.

Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears,

Darkening each other with their multitude,

And cried aloud, 'Liberty!' Indignation [155]

Answered Pity from her cave;

Death grew pale within the grave,

And Desolation howled to the destroyer, Save!

When like Heaven's Sun girt by the exhalation

Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise. [160]

Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation

Like shadows: as if day had cloven the skies

At dreaming midnight o'er the western wave,

Men started, staggering with a glad surprise,

Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes. [165]

12.

Thou Heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee then

In ominous eclipse? a thousand years

Bred from the slime of deep Oppression's den.

Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears.

Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away; [170]

How like Bacchanals of blood

Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood

Destruction's sceptred slaves, and Folly's mitred brood!

When one, like them, but mightier far than they,

The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers, [175]

Rose: armies mingled in obscure array,

Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowers

Of serene Heaven. He, by the past pursued,

Rests with those dead, but unforgotten hours,

Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers. [180]

13.

England yet sleeps: was she not called of old?

Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder

Vesuvius wakens Aetna, and the cold

Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder:

O'er the lit waves every Aeolian isle [185]

From Pithecusa to Pelorus

Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus:

They cry, 'Be dim; ye lamps of Heaven suspended o'er us!'

Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile

And they dissolve; but Spain's were links of steel, [190]

Till bit to dust by virtue's keenest file.

Twins of a single destiny! appeal

To the eternal years enthroned before us

In the dim West; impress us from a seal,

All ye have thought and done! Time cannot dare conceal. [195]

14.

Tomb of Arminius! render up thy dead

Till, like a standard from a watch-tower's staff,

His soul may stream over the tyrant's head;

Thy victory shall be his epitaph,

Wild Bacchanal of truth's mysterious wine, [200]

King-deluded Germany,

His dead spirit lives in thee.

Why do we fear or hope? thou art already free!

And thou, lost Paradise of this divine

And glorious world! thou flowery wilderness! [205]

Thou island of eternity! thou shrine

Where Desolation, clothed with loveliness,

Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy,

Gather thy blood into thy heart; repress

The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces. [210]

“Oh, that the free would stamp the impious name Of KING into the dust! or write it there, So that this blot upon the page of fame Were as a serpent's path, which the light air Erases, and the flat sands close behind!”

15.

Oh, that the free would stamp the impious name

Of KING into the dust! or write it there,

So that this blot upon the page of fame

Were as a serpent's path, which the light air

Erases, and the flat sands close behind! [215]

Ye the oracle have heard:

Lift the victory-flashing sword.

And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word,

Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind

Into a mass, irrefragably firm, [220]

The axes and the rods which awe mankind;

The sound has poison in it, 'tis the sperm

Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred;

Disdain not thou, at thine appointed term,

To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm. [225]

16.

Oh, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle

Such lamps within the dome of this dim world,

That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle

Into the hell from which it first was hurled,

A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure; [230]

Till human thoughts might kneel alone,

Each before the judgement-throne

Of its own aweless soul, or of the Power unknown!

Oh, that the words which make the thoughts obscure

From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew [235]

From a white lake blot Heaven's blue portraiture,

Were stripped of their thin masks and various hue

And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own,

Till in the nakedness of false and true

They stand before their Lord, each to receive its due! [240]

“If on his own high will, a willing slave, He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor What if earth can clothe and feed Amplest millions at their need, And power in thought be as the tree within the seed?”

17.

He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever

Can be between the cradle and the grave

Crowned him the King of Life. Oh, vain endeavour!

If on his own high will, a willing slave,

He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor [245]

What if earth can clothe and feed

Amplest millions at their need,

And power in thought be as the tree within the seed?

Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor,

Driving on fiery wings to Nature's throne, [250]

Checks the great mother stooping to caress her,

And cries: 'Give me, thy child, dominion

Over all height and depth'? if Life can breed

New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan,

Rend of thy gifts and hers a thousandfold for one! [255]

18.

Come thou, but lead out of the inmost cave

Of man's deep spirit, as the morning-star

Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,

Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car

Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame; [260]

Comes she not, and come ye not,

Rulers of eternal thought,

To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill-apportioned lot?

Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame

Of what has been, the Hope of what will be? [265]

O Liberty! if such could be thy name

Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee:

If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought

By blood or tears, have not the wise and free

Wept tears, and blood like tears?—The solemn harmony [270]

19.

Paused, and the Spirit of that mighty singing

To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn;

Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging

Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn,

Sinks headlong through the aereal golden light [275]

On the heavy-sounding plain,

When the bolt has pierced its brain;

As summer clouds dissolve, unburthened of their rain;

As a far taper fades with fading night,

As a brief insect dies with dying day,— [280]

My song, its pinions disarrayed of might,

Drooped; o'er it closed the echoes far away

Of the great voice which did its flight sustain,

As waves which lately paved his watery way

Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play. [285]

Hellas. A Lyrical Drama (1821) [CPW]

“In the great morning of the world, The Spirit of God with might unfurled The flag of Freedom over Chaos, And all its banded anarchs fled, Like vultures frighted from Imaus, Before an earthquake's tread.”

CHORUS:

Breathe low, low

The spell of the mighty mistress now!

When Conscience lulls her sated snake,

And Tyrants sleep, let Freedom wake. [30]

Breathe low—low

The words which, like secret fire, shall flow

Through the veins of the frozen earth—low, low!

SEMICHORUS 1:

Life may change, but it may fly not;

Hope may vanish, but can die not; [35]

Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;

Love repulsed,—but it returneth!

SEMICHORUS 2:

Yet were life a charnel where

Hope lay coffined with Despair;

Yet were truth a sacred lie, [40]

Love were lust—

SEMICHORUS 1:

If Liberty

Lent not life its soul of light,

Hope its iris of delight,

Truth its prophet's robe to wear,

Love its power to give and bear. [45]

CHORUS:

In the great morning of the world,

The Spirit of God with might unfurled

The flag of Freedom over Chaos,

And all its banded anarchs fled,

Like vultures frighted from Imaus, [50]

Before an earthquake's tread.—

So from Time's tempestuous dawn

Freedom's splendour burst and shone:—

Thermopylae and Marathon

Caught like mountains beacon-lighted, [55]

The springing Fire.—The winged glory

On Philippi half-alighted,

Like an eagle on a promontory.

Its unwearied wings could fan

The quenchless ashes of Milan. [60]

From age to age, from man to man,

It lived; and lit from land to land

Florence, Albion, Switzerland.

Then night fell; and, as from night,

Reassuming fiery flight, [65]

From the West swift Freedom came,

Against the course of Heaven and doom.

A second sun arrayed in flame,

To burn, to kindle, to illume.

From far Atlantis its young beams [70]

Chased the shadows and the dreams.

France, with all her sanguine steams,

Hid, but quenched it not; again

Through clouds its shafts of glory rain

From utmost Germany to Spain. [75]

As an eagle fed with morning

Scorns the embattled tempest's warning,

When she seeks her aerie hanging

In the mountain-cedar's hair,

And her brood expect the clanging [80]

Of her wings through the wild air,

Sick with famine:—Freedom, so

To what of Greece remaineth now

Returns; her hoary ruins glow

Like Orient mountains lost in day; [85]

Beneath the safety of her wings

Her renovated nurslings prey,

And in the naked lightenings

Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes.

Let Freedom leave—where'er she flies, [90]

A Desert, or a Paradise:

Let the beautiful and the brave

Share her glory, or a grave.

Sonnet II. Political Greatness (1824) [PP & CPW]

“What are numbers knit By force or custom? Man who man would be, Must rule the empire of himself; in it Must be supreme, establishing his throne On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.”

Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,

Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts,

Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame;

Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts,

History is but the shadow of their shame,

Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts

As to oblivion their blind millions fleet,

Staining that Heaven with obscene imagery

Of their own likeness. What are numbers knit

By force or custom? Man who man would be,

Must rule the empire of himself; in it

Must be supreme, establishing his throne

On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy

Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.

Liberty (1824) [PP & CPW]

“4. From billow and mountain and exhalation The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast; From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation, From city to hamlet thy dawning is cast,— And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night In the van of the morning light.”

1.

The fiery mountains answer each other;

Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone;

The tempestuous oceans awake one another,

And the ice-rocks are shaken round Winter's throne,

When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown. [5]

2.

From a single cloud the lightening flashes,

Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around,

Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes,

An hundred are shuddering and tottering; the sound

Is bellowing underground. [10]

3.

But keener thy gaze than the lightening's glare,

And swifter thy step than the earthquake's tramp;

Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare

Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun's bright lamp

To thine is a fen-fire damp. [15]

4.

From billow and mountain and exhalation

The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast;

From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation,

From city to hamlet thy dawning is cast,—

And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night [20]

In the van of the morning light.

Song to the Men of England (1839) [CPW]

“5. The seed ye sow, another reaps; The wealth ye find, another keeps; The robes ye weave, another wears; The arms ye forge; another bears.

6. Sow seed,—but let no tyrant reap; Find wealth,—let no impostor heap; Weave robes,—let not the idle wear; Forge arms,—in your defence to bear.

1.

Men of England, wherefore plough

For the lords who lay ye low?

Wherefore weave with toil and care

The rich robes your tyrants wear?

2.

Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save, [5]

From the cradle to the grave,

Those ungrateful drones who would

Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood?

3.

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge

Many a weapon, chain, and scourge, [10]

That these stingless drones may spoil

The forced produce of your toil?

4.

Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,

Shelter, food, love's gentle balm?

Or what is it ye buy so dear [15]

With your pain and with your fear?

5.

The seed ye sow, another reaps;

The wealth ye find, another keeps;

The robes ye weave, another wears;

The arms ye forge; another bears. [20]

6.

Sow seed,—but let no tyrant reap;

Find wealth,—let no impostor heap;

Weave robes,—let not the idle wear;

Forge arms,—in your defence to bear.

7.

Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells; [25]

In halls ye deck another dwells.

Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see

The steel ye tempered glance on ye.

8.

With plough and spade, and hoe and loom,

Trace your grave, and build your tomb, [30]

And weave your winding-sheet, till fair

England be your sepulchre.

Sonnet: England in 1819 (1839) [CPW]

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,—

Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow

Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring,—

Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,

But leech-like to their fainting country cling, [5]

Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,—

A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,—

An army, which liberticide and prey

Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,—

Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay; [10]

Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;

A Senate,—Time's worst statute, unrepealed,—

Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may

Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

Fragment: "What Men gain Fairly" (1839) [CPW]

What men gain fairly—that they should possess,

And children may inherit idleness,

From him who earns it—This is understood;

Private injustice may be general good.

But he who gains by base and armed wrong, [5]

Or guilty fraud, or base compliances,

May be despoiled; even as a stolen dress

Is stripped from a convicted thief; and he

Left in the nakedness of infamy.

A New National Anthem (1839) [CPW]

1.

God prosper, speed,and save,

God raise from England's grave

Her murdered Queen!

Pave with swift victory

The steps of Liberty, [5]

Whom Britons own to be

Immortal Queen.

2.

See, she comes throned on high,

On swift Eternity!

God save the Queen! [10]

Millions on millions wait,

Firm, rapid, and elate,

On her majestic state!

God save the Queen!

3.

She is Thine own pure soul [15]

Moulding the mighty whole,—

God save the Queen!

She is Thine own deep love

Rained down from Heaven above,—

Wherever she rest or move, [20]

God save our Queen!

4.

'Wilder her enemies

In their own dark disguise,—

God save our Queen!

All earthly things that dare [25]

Her sacred name to bear,

Strip them, as kings are, bare;

God save the Queen!

5.

Be her eternal throne

Built in our hearts alone— [30]

God save the Queen!

Let the oppressor hold

Canopied seats of gold;

She sits enthroned of old

O'er our hearts Queen. [35]

6.

Lips touched by seraphim

Breathe out the choral hymn

'God save the Queen!'

Sweet as if angels sang,

Loud as that trumpet's clang [40]

Wakening the world's dead gang,—

God save the Queen!

Further Information

Source

The editions used for this extract: PP = Percy Bysshe Shelley, Posthumous Poems (London: John and Henry L. Hunt, 1824). [Edited by Shelley's wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.] Online at the OLL <http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/268>.

CPW = The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems. Edited with textual notes by Thomas Hutchinson (Oxford University Press, 1914). PDF from Internet Archive <http://www.archive.org/details/completepoeticalshel>; HTML from Project Gutenberg <http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4800>.

WVP = The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Verse and Prose. Now First Brought Together with Many Pieces Not Before Published. Edited with Prefaces Notes and Appendices by Harry Buxton Forman. In Eight Volumes. (London: Reeves and Turner, 1880). PDF from Google Books.

Copyright: The texts are in the public domain.

Further Reading

Other works by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) <http://oll.libertyfund.org/person/161>.

Subject Area: Literature <http://oll.libertyfund.org/collection/51>.

“The distinctive principle of Western social philosophy is individualism. It aims at the creation of a sphere in which the individual is free to think, to choose, and to act without being restrained by the interference of the social apparatus of coercion and oppression, the State.”
[Ludwig von Mises, “Liberty and Property” (1958)]

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¹We have taken Shelley's texts from a variety of sources and used the following abbreviations to indicate where they can be located: PP = Posthumous Poems (1824), edited by Shelley's wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley; CPW = The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Thomas Hutchinson (1914); WVP = The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Verse and Prose, edited by Harry Buxton Forman (1880). Line numbers are indicated in square brackets.

² The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Verse and Prose, Vol. 5 The Prose Works in Four Volumes, vol. 1 "Declaration of Rights", pp. 392-99.