No More Learning

No poem contains more of Shelley's peculiar views with regard to the
errors into which many of the wisest have fallen, and the pernicious
effects of certain opinions on society. Much of it is beautifully
written: and, though, like the burlesque drama of "Swellfoot", it must
be looked on as a plaything, it has so much merit and poetry--so much
of HIMSELF in it--that it cannot fail to interest greatly, and by
right belongs to the world for whose instruction and benefit it was
written.

***


LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE.

[Composed during Shelley's occupation of the Gisbornes' house at
Leghorn, July, 1820; published in "Posthumous Poems", 1824. Sources of
the text are (1) a draft in Shelley's hand, 'partly illegible'
(Forman), amongst the Boscombe manuscripts; (2) a transcript by Mrs.
Shelley; (3) the editio princeps, 1824; the text in "Poetical Works",
1839, let and 2nd editions. Our text is that of Mrs. Shelley's
transcript, modified by the Boscombe manuscript. Here, as elsewhere in
this edition, the readings of the editio princeps are preserved in the
footnotes. ]

LEGHORN, July 1, 1820. ]

The spider spreads her webs, whether she be
In poet's tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;
The silk-worm in the dark green mulberry leaves
His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;
So I, a thing whom moralists call worm, _5
Sit spinning still round this decaying form,
From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought--
No net of words in garish colours wrought
To catch the idle buzzers of the day--
But a soft cell, where when that fades away, _10
Memory may clothe in wings my living name
And feed it with the asphodels of fame,
Which in those hearts which must remember me
Grow, making love an immortality.

Whoever should behold me now, I wist, _15
Would think I were a mighty mechanist,
Bent with sublime Archimedean art
To breathe a soul into the iron heart
Of some machine portentous, or strange gin,
Which by the force of figured spells might win _20
Its way over the sea, and sport therein;
For round the walls are hung dread engines, such
As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch
Ixion or the Titan:--or the quick
Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic, _25
To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic,
Or those in philanthropic council met,
Who thought to pay some interest for the debt
They owed to Jesus Christ for their salvation,
By giving a faint foretaste of damnation _30
To Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, and the rest
Who made our land an island of the blest,
When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire
On Freedom's hearth, grew dim with Empire:--
With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag, _35
Which fishers found under the utmost crag
Of Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles,
Where to the sky the rude sea rarely smiles
Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn
When the exulting elements in scorn, _40
Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay
Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey,
As panthers sleep;--and other strange and dread
Magical forms the brick floor overspread,--
Proteus transformed to metal did not make _45
More figures, or more strange; nor did he take
Such shapes of unintelligible brass,
Or heap himself in such a horrid mass
Of tin and iron not to be understood;
And forms of unimaginable wood, _50
To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood:
Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and grooved blocks,
The elements of what will stand the shocks
Of wave and wind and time. --Upon the table
More knacks and quips there be than I am able _55
To catalogize in this verse of mine:--
A pretty bowl of wood--not full of wine,
But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink
When at their subterranean toil they swink,
Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who _60
Reply to them in lava--cry halloo!
And call out to the cities o'er their head,--
Roofs, towers, and shrines, the dying and the dead,
Crash through the chinks of earth--and then all quaff
Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh.
_65
This quicksilver no gnome has drunk--within
The walnut bowl it lies, veined and thin,
In colour like the wake of light that stains
The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains
The inmost shower of its white fire--the breeze _70
Is still--blue Heaven smiles over the pale seas.
And in this bowl of quicksilver--for I
Yield to the impulse of an infancy
Outlasting manhood--I have made to float
A rude idealism of a paper boat:-- _75
A hollow screw with cogs--Henry will know
The thing I mean and laugh at me,--if so
He fears not I should do more mischief. --Next
Lie bills and calculations much perplexed,
With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint _80
Traced over them in blue and yellow paint.
Then comes a range of mathematical
Instruments, for plans nautical and statical,
A heap of rosin, a queer broken glass
With ink in it;--a china cup that was _85
What it will never be again, I think,--
A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink
The liquor doctors rail at--and which I
Will quaff in spite of them--and when we die
We'll toss up who died first of drinking tea, _90
And cry out,--'Heads or tails? ' where'er we be.
Near that a dusty paint-box, some odd hooks,
A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books,
Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms,
To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims, _95
Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray
Of figures,--disentangle them who may.
Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie,
And some odd volumes of old chemistry.
Near those a most inexplicable thing, _100
With lead in the middle--I'm conjecturing
How to make Henry understand; but no--
I'll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo,
This secret in the pregnant womb of time,
Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme. _105

And here like some weird Archimage sit I,
Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery,
The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind
Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind
The gentle spirit of our meek reviews _110
Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,
Ruffling the ocean of their self-content;--
I sit--and smile or sigh as is my bent,
But not for them--Libeccio rushes round
With an inconstant and an idle sound, _115
I heed him more than them--the thunder-smoke
Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak
Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;
The ripe corn under the undulating air
Undulates like an ocean;--and the vines _120
Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines--
The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill
The empty pauses of the blast;--the hill
Looks hoary through the white electric rain,
And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain, _125
The interrupted thunder howls; above
One chasm of Heaven smiles, like the eye of Love
On the unquiet world;--while such things are,
How could one worth your friendship heed the war
Of worms? the shriek of the world's carrion jays, _130
Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise?

You are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees,
In vacant chairs, your absent images,
And points where once you sat, and now should be
But are not. --I demand if ever we _135
Shall meet as then we met;--and she replies.
Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;
'I know the past alone--but summon home
My sister Hope,--she speaks of all to come. '
But I, an old diviner, who knew well _140
Every false verse of that sweet oracle,
Turned to the sad enchantress once again,
And sought a respite from my gentle pain,
In citing every passage o'er and o'er
Of our communion--how on the sea-shore _145
We watched the ocean and the sky together,
Under the roof of blue Italian weather;
How I ran home through last year's thunder-storm,
And felt the transverse lightning linger warm
Upon my cheek--and how we often made _150
Feasts for each other, where good will outweighed
The frugal luxury of our country cheer,
As well it might, were it less firm and clear
Than ours must ever be;--and how we spun
A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun _155
Of this familiar life, which seems to be
But is not:--or is but quaint mockery
Of all we would believe, and sadly blame
The jarring and inexplicable frame
Of this wrong world:--and then anatomize _160
The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes
Were closed in distant years;--or widely guess
The issue of the earth's great business,
When we shall be as we no longer are--
Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war _165
Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not;--or how
You listened to some interrupted flow
Of visionary rhyme,--in joy and pain
Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,
With little skill perhaps;--or how we sought _170
Those deepest wells of passion or of thought
Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
Staining their sacred waters with our tears;
Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed!
Or how I, wisest lady!