So spake they: idly of another's state
Babbling vain words and fond philosophy; _110
This was their consolation; such debate
Men held with one another; nor did he,
Like one who labours with a human woe,
Decline this talk: as if its theme might be
Another, not himself, he to and fro _115
Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit;
And none but those who loved him best could know
That which he knew not, how it galled and bit
His weary mind, this converse vain and cold;
For like an eyeless nightmare grief did sit _120
Upon his being; a snake which fold by fold
Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend
Which clenched him if he stirred with deadlier hold;--
And so his grief remained--let it remain--untold.
Babbling vain words and fond philosophy; _110
This was their consolation; such debate
Men held with one another; nor did he,
Like one who labours with a human woe,
Decline this talk: as if its theme might be
Another, not himself, he to and fro _115
Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit;
And none but those who loved him best could know
That which he knew not, how it galled and bit
His weary mind, this converse vain and cold;
For like an eyeless nightmare grief did sit _120
Upon his being; a snake which fold by fold
Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend
Which clenched him if he stirred with deadlier hold;--
And so his grief remained--let it remain--untold.
Shelley
Locock's
"Examination of Shelley Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library", Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1903. ]
PART 1.
There was a youth, who, as with toil and travel,
Had grown quite weak and gray before his time;
Nor any could the restless griefs unravel
Which burned within him, withering up his prime
And goading him, like fiends, from land to land. _5
Not his the load of any secret crime,
For nought of ill his heart could understand,
But pity and wild sorrow for the same;--
Not his the thirst for glory or command,
Baffled with blast of hope-consuming shame; _10
Nor evil joys which fire the vulgar breast,
And quench in speedy smoke its feeble flame,
Had left within his soul their dark unrest:
Nor what religion fables of the grave
Feared he,--Philosophy's accepted guest. _15
For none than he a purer heart could have,
Or that loved good more for itself alone;
Of nought in heaven or earth was he the slave.
What sorrow, strange, and shadowy, and unknown,
Sent him, a hopeless wanderer, through mankind? -- _20
If with a human sadness he did groan,
He had a gentle yet aspiring mind;
Just, innocent, with varied learning fed;
And such a glorious consolation find
In others' joy, when all their own is dead: _25
He loved, and laboured for his kind in grief,
And yet, unlike all others, it is said
That from such toil he never found relief.
Although a child of fortune and of power,
Of an ancestral name the orphan chief, _30
His soul had wedded Wisdom, and her dower
Is love and justice, clothed in which he sate
Apart from men, as in a lonely tower,
Pitying the tumult of their dark estate. --
Yet even in youth did he not e'er abuse _35
The strength of wealth or thought, to consecrate
Those false opinions which the harsh rich use
To blind the world they famish for their pride;
Nor did he hold from any man his dues,
But, like a steward in honest dealings tried, _40
With those who toiled and wept, the poor and wise,
His riches and his cares he did divide.
Fearless he was, and scorning all disguise,
What he dared do or think, though men might start,
He spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes; _45
Liberal he was of soul, and frank of heart,
And to his many friends--all loved him well--
Whate'er he knew or felt he would impart,
If words he found those inmost thoughts to tell;
If not, he smiled or wept; and his weak foes _50
He neither spurned nor hated--though with fell
And mortal hate their thousand voices rose,
They passed like aimless arrows from his ear--
Nor did his heart or mind its portal close
To those, or them, or any, whom life's sphere _55
May comprehend within its wide array.
What sadness made that vernal spirit sere? --
He knew not. Though his life, day after day,
Was failing like an unreplenished stream,
Though in his eyes a cloud and burthen lay, _60
Through which his soul, like Vesper's serene beam
Piercing the chasms of ever rising clouds,
Shone, softly burning; though his lips did seem
Like reeds which quiver in impetuous floods;
And through his sleep, and o'er each waking hour, _65
Thoughts after thoughts, unresting multitudes,
Were driven within him by some secret power,
Which bade them blaze, and live, and roll afar,
Like lights and sounds, from haunted tower to tower
O'er castled mountains borne, when tempest's war _70
Is levied by the night-contending winds,
And the pale dalesmen watch with eager ear;--
Though such were in his spirit, as the fiends
Which wake and feed an everliving woe,--
What was this grief, which ne'er in other minds _75
A mirror found,--he knew not--none could know;
But on whoe'er might question him he turned
The light of his frank eyes, as if to show
He knew not of the grief within that burned,
But asked forbearance with a mournful look; _80
Or spoke in words from which none ever learned
The cause of his disquietude; or shook
With spasms of silent passion; or turned pale:
So that his friends soon rarely undertook
To stir his secret pain without avail;-- _85
For all who knew and loved him then perceived
That there was drawn an adamantine veil
Between his heart and mind,--both unrelieved
Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife.
Some said that he was mad, others believed _90
That memories of an antenatal life
Made this, where now he dwelt, a penal hell;
And others said that such mysterious grief
From God's displeasure, like a darkness, fell
On souls like his, which owned no higher law _95
Than love; love calm, steadfast, invincible
By mortal fear or supernatural awe;
And others,--''Tis the shadow of a dream
Which the veiled eye of Memory never saw,
'But through the soul's abyss, like some dark stream _100
Through shattered mines and caverns underground,
Rolls, shaking its foundations; and no beam
'Of joy may rise, but it is quenched and drowned
In the dim whirlpools of this dream obscure;
Soon its exhausted waters will have found _105
'A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure,
O Athanase! --in one so good and great,
Evil or tumult cannot long endure.
So spake they: idly of another's state
Babbling vain words and fond philosophy; _110
This was their consolation; such debate
Men held with one another; nor did he,
Like one who labours with a human woe,
Decline this talk: as if its theme might be
Another, not himself, he to and fro _115
Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit;
And none but those who loved him best could know
That which he knew not, how it galled and bit
His weary mind, this converse vain and cold;
For like an eyeless nightmare grief did sit _120
Upon his being; a snake which fold by fold
Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend
Which clenched him if he stirred with deadlier hold;--
And so his grief remained--let it remain--untold. [1]
PART 2.
FRAGMENT 1.
Prince Athanase had one beloved friend, _125
An old, old man, with hair of silver white,
And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend
With his wise words; and eyes whose arrowy light
Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds.
He was the last whom superstition's blight _130
Had spared in Greece--the blight that cramps and blinds,--
And in his olive bower at Oenoe
Had sate from earliest youth. Like one who finds
A fertile island in the barren sea,
One mariner who has survived his mates _135
Many a drear month in a great ship--so he
With soul-sustaining songs, and sweet debates
Of ancient lore, there fed his lonely being:--
'The mind becomes that which it contemplates,'--
And thus Zonoras, by for ever seeing _140
Their bright creations, grew like wisest men;
And when he heard the crash of nations fleeing
A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then,
O sacred Hellas! many weary years
He wandered, till the path of Laian's glen _145
Was grass-grown--and the unremembered tears
Were dry in Laian for their honoured chief,
Who fell in Byzant, pierced by Moslem spears:--
And as the lady looked with faithful grief
From her high lattice o'er the rugged path, _150
Where she once saw that horseman toil, with brief
And blighting hope, who with the news of death
Struck body and soul as with a mortal blight,
She saw between the chestnuts, far beneath,
An old man toiling up, a weary wight; _155
And soon within her hospitable hall
She saw his white hairs glittering in the light
Of the wood fire, and round his shoulders fall;
And his wan visage and his withered mien,
Yet calm and gentle and majestical. _160
And Athanase, her child, who must have been
Then three years old, sate opposite and gazed
In patient silence.
FRAGMENT 2.
Such was Zonoras; and as daylight finds
One amaranth glittering on the path of frost, _165
When autumn nights have nipped all weaker kinds,
Thus through his age, dark, cold, and tempest-tossed,
Shone truth upon Zonoras; and he filled
From fountains pure, nigh overgrown and lost,
The spirit of Prince Athanase, a child, _170
With soul-sustaining songs of ancient lore
And philosophic wisdom, clear and mild.
And sweet and subtle talk they evermore,
The pupil and the master, shared; until,
Sharing that undiminishable store, _175
The youth, as shadows on a grassy hill
Outrun the winds that chase them, soon outran
His teacher, and did teach with native skill
Strange truths and new to that experienced man;
Still they were friends, as few have ever been _180
Who mark the extremes of life's discordant span.
So in the caverns of the forest green,
Or on the rocks of echoing ocean hoar,
Zonoras and Prince Athanase were seen
By summer woodmen; and when winter's roar _185
Sounded o'er earth and sea its blast of war,
The Balearic fisher, driven from shore,
Hanging upon the peaked wave afar,
Then saw their lamp from Laian's turret gleam,
Piercing the stormy darkness, like a star _190
Which pours beyond the sea one steadfast beam,
Whilst all the constellations of the sky
Seemed reeling through the storm. . . They did but seem--
For, lo! the wintry clouds are all gone by,
And bright Arcturus through yon pines is glowing, _195
And far o'er southern waves, immovably
Belted Orion hangs--warm light is flowing
From the young moon into the sunset's chasm.
"Examination of Shelley Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library", Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1903. ]
PART 1.
There was a youth, who, as with toil and travel,
Had grown quite weak and gray before his time;
Nor any could the restless griefs unravel
Which burned within him, withering up his prime
And goading him, like fiends, from land to land. _5
Not his the load of any secret crime,
For nought of ill his heart could understand,
But pity and wild sorrow for the same;--
Not his the thirst for glory or command,
Baffled with blast of hope-consuming shame; _10
Nor evil joys which fire the vulgar breast,
And quench in speedy smoke its feeble flame,
Had left within his soul their dark unrest:
Nor what religion fables of the grave
Feared he,--Philosophy's accepted guest. _15
For none than he a purer heart could have,
Or that loved good more for itself alone;
Of nought in heaven or earth was he the slave.
What sorrow, strange, and shadowy, and unknown,
Sent him, a hopeless wanderer, through mankind? -- _20
If with a human sadness he did groan,
He had a gentle yet aspiring mind;
Just, innocent, with varied learning fed;
And such a glorious consolation find
In others' joy, when all their own is dead: _25
He loved, and laboured for his kind in grief,
And yet, unlike all others, it is said
That from such toil he never found relief.
Although a child of fortune and of power,
Of an ancestral name the orphan chief, _30
His soul had wedded Wisdom, and her dower
Is love and justice, clothed in which he sate
Apart from men, as in a lonely tower,
Pitying the tumult of their dark estate. --
Yet even in youth did he not e'er abuse _35
The strength of wealth or thought, to consecrate
Those false opinions which the harsh rich use
To blind the world they famish for their pride;
Nor did he hold from any man his dues,
But, like a steward in honest dealings tried, _40
With those who toiled and wept, the poor and wise,
His riches and his cares he did divide.
Fearless he was, and scorning all disguise,
What he dared do or think, though men might start,
He spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes; _45
Liberal he was of soul, and frank of heart,
And to his many friends--all loved him well--
Whate'er he knew or felt he would impart,
If words he found those inmost thoughts to tell;
If not, he smiled or wept; and his weak foes _50
He neither spurned nor hated--though with fell
And mortal hate their thousand voices rose,
They passed like aimless arrows from his ear--
Nor did his heart or mind its portal close
To those, or them, or any, whom life's sphere _55
May comprehend within its wide array.
What sadness made that vernal spirit sere? --
He knew not. Though his life, day after day,
Was failing like an unreplenished stream,
Though in his eyes a cloud and burthen lay, _60
Through which his soul, like Vesper's serene beam
Piercing the chasms of ever rising clouds,
Shone, softly burning; though his lips did seem
Like reeds which quiver in impetuous floods;
And through his sleep, and o'er each waking hour, _65
Thoughts after thoughts, unresting multitudes,
Were driven within him by some secret power,
Which bade them blaze, and live, and roll afar,
Like lights and sounds, from haunted tower to tower
O'er castled mountains borne, when tempest's war _70
Is levied by the night-contending winds,
And the pale dalesmen watch with eager ear;--
Though such were in his spirit, as the fiends
Which wake and feed an everliving woe,--
What was this grief, which ne'er in other minds _75
A mirror found,--he knew not--none could know;
But on whoe'er might question him he turned
The light of his frank eyes, as if to show
He knew not of the grief within that burned,
But asked forbearance with a mournful look; _80
Or spoke in words from which none ever learned
The cause of his disquietude; or shook
With spasms of silent passion; or turned pale:
So that his friends soon rarely undertook
To stir his secret pain without avail;-- _85
For all who knew and loved him then perceived
That there was drawn an adamantine veil
Between his heart and mind,--both unrelieved
Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife.
Some said that he was mad, others believed _90
That memories of an antenatal life
Made this, where now he dwelt, a penal hell;
And others said that such mysterious grief
From God's displeasure, like a darkness, fell
On souls like his, which owned no higher law _95
Than love; love calm, steadfast, invincible
By mortal fear or supernatural awe;
And others,--''Tis the shadow of a dream
Which the veiled eye of Memory never saw,
'But through the soul's abyss, like some dark stream _100
Through shattered mines and caverns underground,
Rolls, shaking its foundations; and no beam
'Of joy may rise, but it is quenched and drowned
In the dim whirlpools of this dream obscure;
Soon its exhausted waters will have found _105
'A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure,
O Athanase! --in one so good and great,
Evil or tumult cannot long endure.
So spake they: idly of another's state
Babbling vain words and fond philosophy; _110
This was their consolation; such debate
Men held with one another; nor did he,
Like one who labours with a human woe,
Decline this talk: as if its theme might be
Another, not himself, he to and fro _115
Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit;
And none but those who loved him best could know
That which he knew not, how it galled and bit
His weary mind, this converse vain and cold;
For like an eyeless nightmare grief did sit _120
Upon his being; a snake which fold by fold
Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend
Which clenched him if he stirred with deadlier hold;--
And so his grief remained--let it remain--untold. [1]
PART 2.
FRAGMENT 1.
Prince Athanase had one beloved friend, _125
An old, old man, with hair of silver white,
And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend
With his wise words; and eyes whose arrowy light
Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds.
He was the last whom superstition's blight _130
Had spared in Greece--the blight that cramps and blinds,--
And in his olive bower at Oenoe
Had sate from earliest youth. Like one who finds
A fertile island in the barren sea,
One mariner who has survived his mates _135
Many a drear month in a great ship--so he
With soul-sustaining songs, and sweet debates
Of ancient lore, there fed his lonely being:--
'The mind becomes that which it contemplates,'--
And thus Zonoras, by for ever seeing _140
Their bright creations, grew like wisest men;
And when he heard the crash of nations fleeing
A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then,
O sacred Hellas! many weary years
He wandered, till the path of Laian's glen _145
Was grass-grown--and the unremembered tears
Were dry in Laian for their honoured chief,
Who fell in Byzant, pierced by Moslem spears:--
And as the lady looked with faithful grief
From her high lattice o'er the rugged path, _150
Where she once saw that horseman toil, with brief
And blighting hope, who with the news of death
Struck body and soul as with a mortal blight,
She saw between the chestnuts, far beneath,
An old man toiling up, a weary wight; _155
And soon within her hospitable hall
She saw his white hairs glittering in the light
Of the wood fire, and round his shoulders fall;
And his wan visage and his withered mien,
Yet calm and gentle and majestical. _160
And Athanase, her child, who must have been
Then three years old, sate opposite and gazed
In patient silence.
FRAGMENT 2.
Such was Zonoras; and as daylight finds
One amaranth glittering on the path of frost, _165
When autumn nights have nipped all weaker kinds,
Thus through his age, dark, cold, and tempest-tossed,
Shone truth upon Zonoras; and he filled
From fountains pure, nigh overgrown and lost,
The spirit of Prince Athanase, a child, _170
With soul-sustaining songs of ancient lore
And philosophic wisdom, clear and mild.
And sweet and subtle talk they evermore,
The pupil and the master, shared; until,
Sharing that undiminishable store, _175
The youth, as shadows on a grassy hill
Outrun the winds that chase them, soon outran
His teacher, and did teach with native skill
Strange truths and new to that experienced man;
Still they were friends, as few have ever been _180
Who mark the extremes of life's discordant span.
So in the caverns of the forest green,
Or on the rocks of echoing ocean hoar,
Zonoras and Prince Athanase were seen
By summer woodmen; and when winter's roar _185
Sounded o'er earth and sea its blast of war,
The Balearic fisher, driven from shore,
Hanging upon the peaked wave afar,
Then saw their lamp from Laian's turret gleam,
Piercing the stormy darkness, like a star _190
Which pours beyond the sea one steadfast beam,
Whilst all the constellations of the sky
Seemed reeling through the storm. . . They did but seem--
For, lo! the wintry clouds are all gone by,
And bright Arcturus through yon pines is glowing, _195
And far o'er southern waves, immovably
Belted Orion hangs--warm light is flowing
From the young moon into the sunset's chasm.
