Prophecies
of wars, and rumours of
wars, etc.
wars, etc.
Shelley
It appears that circumstances make men what
they are, and that we all contain the germ of a degree of degradation
or of greatness whose connection with our character is determined by
events.
(5) THE GREEKS EXPECT A SAVIOUR FROM THE WEST [L. 598].
It is reported that this Messiah had arrived at a seaport near
Lacedaemon in an American brig. The association of names and ideas is
irresistibly ludicrous, but the prevalence of such a rumour strongly
marks the state of popular enthusiasm in Greece.
(6) THE SOUND AS OF THE ASSAULT OF AN IMPERIAL CITY [LL. 814-15].
For the vision of Mahmud of the taking of Constantinople in 1453, see
Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", volume 12 page 223.
The manner of the invocation of the spirit of Mahomet the Second will
be censured as over subtle. I could easily have made the Jew a regular
conjuror, and the Phantom an ordinary ghost. I have preferred to
represent the Jew as disclaiming all pretension, or even belief, in
supernatural agency, and as tempting Mahmud to that state of mind in
which ideas may be supposed to assume the force of sensations through
the confusion of thought with the objects of thought, and the excess
of passion animating the creations of imagination.
It is a sort of natural magic, susceptible of being exercised in a
degree by any one who should have made himself master of the secret
associations of another's thoughts.
(7) THE CHORUS [L. 1060].
The final chorus is indistinct and obscure, as the event of the living
drama whose arrival it foretells.
Prophecies of wars, and rumours of
wars, etc. , may safely be made by poet or prophet in any age, but to
anticipate however darkly a period of regeneration and happiness is a
more hazardous exercise of the faculty which bards possess or feign.
It will remind the reader 'magno NEC proximus intervallo' of Isaiah
and Virgil, whose ardent spirits overleaping the actual reign of evil
which we endure and bewail, already saw the possible and perhaps
approaching state of society in which the 'lion shall lie down with
the lamb,' and 'omnis feret omnia tellus. ' Let these great names be my
authority and my excuse.
(8) SATURN AND LOVE THEIR LONG REPOSE SHALL BURST [L. 1090].
Saturn and Love were among the deities of a real or imaginary state of
innocence and happiness. ALL those WHO FELL, or the Gods of Greece,
Asia, and Egypt; the ONE WHO ROSE, or Jesus Christ, at whose
appearance the idols of the Pagan World wore amerced of their worship;
and the MANY UNSUBDUED, or the monstrous objects of the idolatry of
China, India, the Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of America,
certainly have reigned over the understandings of men in conjunction
or in succession, during periods in which all we know of evil has been
in a state of portentous, and, until the revival of learning and the
arts, perpetually increasing, activity. The Grecian gods seem indeed
to have been personally more innocent, although it cannot be said,
that as far as temperance and chastity are concerned, they gave so
edifying an example as their successor. The sublime human character of
Jesus Christ was deformed by an imputed identification with a Power,
who tempted, betrayed, and punished the innocent beings who were
called into existence by His sole will; and for the period of a
thousand years, the spirit of this most just, wise, and benevolent of
men has been propitiated with myriads of hecatombs of those who
approached the nearest to His innocence and wisdom, sacrificed under
every aggravation of atrocity and variety of torture. The horrors of
the Mexican, the Peruvian, and the Indian superstitions are well
known.
NOTE ON HELLAS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
The South of Europe was in a state of great political excitement at
the beginning of the year 1821. The Spanish Revolution had been a
signal to Italy; secrete societies were formed; and, when Naples rose
to declare the Constitution, the call was responded to from Brundusium
to the foot of the Alps. To crush these attempts to obtain liberty,
early in 1821 the Austrians poured their armies into the Peninsula: at
first their coming rather seemed to add energy and resolution to a
people long enslaved.
they are, and that we all contain the germ of a degree of degradation
or of greatness whose connection with our character is determined by
events.
(5) THE GREEKS EXPECT A SAVIOUR FROM THE WEST [L. 598].
It is reported that this Messiah had arrived at a seaport near
Lacedaemon in an American brig. The association of names and ideas is
irresistibly ludicrous, but the prevalence of such a rumour strongly
marks the state of popular enthusiasm in Greece.
(6) THE SOUND AS OF THE ASSAULT OF AN IMPERIAL CITY [LL. 814-15].
For the vision of Mahmud of the taking of Constantinople in 1453, see
Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", volume 12 page 223.
The manner of the invocation of the spirit of Mahomet the Second will
be censured as over subtle. I could easily have made the Jew a regular
conjuror, and the Phantom an ordinary ghost. I have preferred to
represent the Jew as disclaiming all pretension, or even belief, in
supernatural agency, and as tempting Mahmud to that state of mind in
which ideas may be supposed to assume the force of sensations through
the confusion of thought with the objects of thought, and the excess
of passion animating the creations of imagination.
It is a sort of natural magic, susceptible of being exercised in a
degree by any one who should have made himself master of the secret
associations of another's thoughts.
(7) THE CHORUS [L. 1060].
The final chorus is indistinct and obscure, as the event of the living
drama whose arrival it foretells.
Prophecies of wars, and rumours of
wars, etc. , may safely be made by poet or prophet in any age, but to
anticipate however darkly a period of regeneration and happiness is a
more hazardous exercise of the faculty which bards possess or feign.
It will remind the reader 'magno NEC proximus intervallo' of Isaiah
and Virgil, whose ardent spirits overleaping the actual reign of evil
which we endure and bewail, already saw the possible and perhaps
approaching state of society in which the 'lion shall lie down with
the lamb,' and 'omnis feret omnia tellus. ' Let these great names be my
authority and my excuse.
(8) SATURN AND LOVE THEIR LONG REPOSE SHALL BURST [L. 1090].
Saturn and Love were among the deities of a real or imaginary state of
innocence and happiness. ALL those WHO FELL, or the Gods of Greece,
Asia, and Egypt; the ONE WHO ROSE, or Jesus Christ, at whose
appearance the idols of the Pagan World wore amerced of their worship;
and the MANY UNSUBDUED, or the monstrous objects of the idolatry of
China, India, the Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of America,
certainly have reigned over the understandings of men in conjunction
or in succession, during periods in which all we know of evil has been
in a state of portentous, and, until the revival of learning and the
arts, perpetually increasing, activity. The Grecian gods seem indeed
to have been personally more innocent, although it cannot be said,
that as far as temperance and chastity are concerned, they gave so
edifying an example as their successor. The sublime human character of
Jesus Christ was deformed by an imputed identification with a Power,
who tempted, betrayed, and punished the innocent beings who were
called into existence by His sole will; and for the period of a
thousand years, the spirit of this most just, wise, and benevolent of
men has been propitiated with myriads of hecatombs of those who
approached the nearest to His innocence and wisdom, sacrificed under
every aggravation of atrocity and variety of torture. The horrors of
the Mexican, the Peruvian, and the Indian superstitions are well
known.
NOTE ON HELLAS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
The South of Europe was in a state of great political excitement at
the beginning of the year 1821. The Spanish Revolution had been a
signal to Italy; secrete societies were formed; and, when Naples rose
to declare the Constitution, the call was responded to from Brundusium
to the foot of the Alps. To crush these attempts to obtain liberty,
early in 1821 the Austrians poured their armies into the Peninsula: at
first their coming rather seemed to add energy and resolution to a
people long enslaved.
