No More Learning

And wilt thou rudely tear them from thy breast, _185
Listening supinely to a bigot's creed,
Or tamely crouching to the tyrant's rod,
Whose iron thongs are red with human gore?
Never: but bravely bearing on, thy will
Is destined an eternal war to wage _190
With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot
The germs of misery from the human heart.
Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe
The thorny pillow of unhappy crime,
Whose impotence an easy pardon gains, _195
Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease:
Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy
Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will,
When fenced by power and master of the world.
Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind, _200
Free from heart-withering custom's cold control,
Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued.
Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish thee,
And therefore art thou worthy of the boon
Which thou hast now received: Virtue shall keep _205
Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod,
And many days of beaming hope shall bless
Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love.
Go, happy one, and give that bosom joy
Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch _210
Light, life and rapture from thy smile. '

The Fairy waves her wand of charm.
Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car,
That rolled beside the battlement,
Bending her beamy eyes in thankful ness. _215
Again the enchanted steeds were yoked,
Again the burning wheels inflame
The steep descent of Heaven's untrodden way.
Fast and far the chariot flew:
The vast and fiery globes that rolled _220
Around the Fairy's palace-gate
Lessened by slow degrees and soon appeared
Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs
That there attendant on the solar power
With borrowed light pursued their narrower way. _225

Earth floated then below:
The chariot paused a moment there;
The Spirit then descended:
The restless coursers pawed the ungenial soil,
Snuffed the gross air, and then, their errand done, _230
Unfurled their pinions to the winds of Heaven.

The Body and the Soul united then,
A gentle start convulsed Ianthe's frame:
Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;
Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained: _235
She looked around in wonder and beheld
Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch,
Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love,
And the bright beaming stars
That through the casement shone. _240

***


NOTES ON QUEEN MAB.


SHELLEY'S NOTES.

1.
242, 243:--

The sun's unclouded orb
Rolled through the black concave.

Beyond our atmosphere the sun would appear a rayless orb of fire in the
midst of a black concave. The equal diffusion of its light on earth is
owing to the refraction of the rays by the atmosphere, and their
reflection from other bodies. Light consists either of vibrations
propagated through a subtle medium, or of numerous minute particles
repelled in all directions from the luminous body. Its velocity greatly
exceeds that of any substance with which we are acquainted: observations
on the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites have demonstrated that light
takes up no more than 8 minutes 7 seconds in passing from the sun to the
earth, a distance of 95,000,000 miles. --Some idea may be gained of the
immense distance of the fixed stars when it is computed that many years
would elapse before light could reach this earth from the nearest of
them; yet in one year light travels 5,422,400,000,000 miles, which is a
distance 5,707,600 times greater than that of the sun from the earth.

1. 252, 253:--

Whilst round the chariot's way
Innumerable systems rolled.

The plurality of worlds,--the indefinite immensity of the universe, is a
most awful subject of contemplation. He who rightly feels its mystery
and grandeur is in no danger of seduction from the falsehoods of
religious systems, or of deifying the principle of the universe. It is
impossible to believe that the Spirit that pervades this infinite
machine begat a son upon the body of a Jewish woman; or is angered at
the consequences of that necessity, which is a synonym of itself. All
that miserable tale of the Devil, and Eve, and an Intercessor, with the
childish mummeries of the God of the Jews, is irreconcilable with the
knowledge of the stars. The works of His fingers have borne witness
against Him.

The nearest of the fixed stars is inconceivably distant from the earth,
and they are probably proportionably distant from each other. By a
calculation of the velocity of light, Sirius is supposed to be at least
54,224,000,000,000 miles from the earth. (See Nicholson's
"Encyclopedia", article Light.