(This fragment refers to an event told in Sismondi's
"Histoire des Republiques Italiennes", which occurred during the war
when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a
province.
"Histoire des Republiques Italiennes", which occurred during the war
when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a
province.
Shelley
]
A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune
(I think such hearts yet never came to good)
Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,
One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody;-- _5
And as a vale is watered by a flood,
Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness--as a tuberose
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie
Like clouds above the flower from which they rose, _10
The singing of that happy nightingale
In this sweet forest, from the golden close
Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale _15
Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness
Of the circumfluous waters,--every sphere
And every flower and beam and cloud and wave, _20
And every wind of the mute atmosphere,
And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,
And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,
And every silver moth fresh from the grave
Which is its cradle--ever from below _25
Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,
To be consumed within the purest glow
Of one serene and unapproached star,
As if it were a lamp of earthly light,
Unconscious, as some human lovers are, _30
Itself how low, how high beyond all height
The heaven where it would perish! --and every form
That worshipped in the temple of the night
Was awed into delight, and by the charm
Girt as with an interminable zone, _35
Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm
Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion
Out of their dreams; harmony became love
In every soul but one.
. . .
And so this man returned with axe and saw _40
At evening close from killing the tall treen,
The soul of whom by Nature's gentle law
Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green
The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,
Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene _45
With jagged leaves,--and from the forest tops
Singing the winds to sleep--or weeping oft
Fast showers of aereal water-drops
Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft,
Nature's pure tears which have no bitterness;-- _50
Around the cradles of the birds aloft
They spread themselves into the loveliness
Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers
Hang like moist clouds:--or, where high branches kiss,
Make a green space among the silent bowers, _55
Like a vast fane in a metropolis,
Surrounded by the columns and the towers
All overwrought with branch-like traceries
In which there is religion--and the mute
Persuasion of unkindled melodies, _60
Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute
Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast
Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,
Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed
To such brief unison as on the brain _65
One tone, which never can recur, has cast,
One accent never to return again.
. . .
The world is full of Woodmen who expel
Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,
And vex the nightingales in every dell. _70
NOTE:
_8 --or as a tuberose cj. A. C. Bradley.
***
MARENGHI.
(This fragment refers to an event told in Sismondi's
"Histoire des Republiques Italiennes", which occurred during the war
when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a
province. --[MRS. SHELLEY'S NOTE, 1824. ])
[Published in part (stanzas 7-15. ) by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems",
1824; stanzas 1-28 by W. M. Rossetti, "Complete Poetical Works of P. B.
S. ", 1870. The Boscombe manuscript--evidently a first draft--from which
(through Dr. Garnett) Rossetti derived the text of 1870 is now at the
Bodleian, and has recently been collated by Mr. C. D. Locock, to whom
the enlarged and amended text here printed is owing.
A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune
(I think such hearts yet never came to good)
Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,
One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody;-- _5
And as a vale is watered by a flood,
Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness--as a tuberose
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie
Like clouds above the flower from which they rose, _10
The singing of that happy nightingale
In this sweet forest, from the golden close
Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale _15
Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness
Of the circumfluous waters,--every sphere
And every flower and beam and cloud and wave, _20
And every wind of the mute atmosphere,
And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,
And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,
And every silver moth fresh from the grave
Which is its cradle--ever from below _25
Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,
To be consumed within the purest glow
Of one serene and unapproached star,
As if it were a lamp of earthly light,
Unconscious, as some human lovers are, _30
Itself how low, how high beyond all height
The heaven where it would perish! --and every form
That worshipped in the temple of the night
Was awed into delight, and by the charm
Girt as with an interminable zone, _35
Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm
Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion
Out of their dreams; harmony became love
In every soul but one.
. . .
And so this man returned with axe and saw _40
At evening close from killing the tall treen,
The soul of whom by Nature's gentle law
Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green
The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,
Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene _45
With jagged leaves,--and from the forest tops
Singing the winds to sleep--or weeping oft
Fast showers of aereal water-drops
Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft,
Nature's pure tears which have no bitterness;-- _50
Around the cradles of the birds aloft
They spread themselves into the loveliness
Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers
Hang like moist clouds:--or, where high branches kiss,
Make a green space among the silent bowers, _55
Like a vast fane in a metropolis,
Surrounded by the columns and the towers
All overwrought with branch-like traceries
In which there is religion--and the mute
Persuasion of unkindled melodies, _60
Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute
Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast
Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,
Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed
To such brief unison as on the brain _65
One tone, which never can recur, has cast,
One accent never to return again.
. . .
The world is full of Woodmen who expel
Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,
And vex the nightingales in every dell. _70
NOTE:
_8 --or as a tuberose cj. A. C. Bradley.
***
MARENGHI.
(This fragment refers to an event told in Sismondi's
"Histoire des Republiques Italiennes", which occurred during the war
when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a
province. --[MRS. SHELLEY'S NOTE, 1824. ])
[Published in part (stanzas 7-15. ) by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems",
1824; stanzas 1-28 by W. M. Rossetti, "Complete Poetical Works of P. B.
S. ", 1870. The Boscombe manuscript--evidently a first draft--from which
(through Dr. Garnett) Rossetti derived the text of 1870 is now at the
Bodleian, and has recently been collated by Mr. C. D. Locock, to whom
the enlarged and amended text here printed is owing.
