I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Chorus Hymeneal, Or triumphal chant, Matched with thine, would be all But an empty vaunt, A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields or waves or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be ; Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee; Thou lovest but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. Waking or asleep Thou of death must deem Than we mortals dream Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter 72 happy drunken, Harvard MS. cancelled. With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Yet if we could scorn Hate and pride and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, The world should listen then as I am listening The lightning of the Nations; Liberty, From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain, 104 would, Shelley, 1820 || should, Harvard MS. Ode to Liberty. Published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. Scattering contagious fire into the sky, Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay, And in the rapid plumes of song Clothed itself, sublime and strong; As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among, Hovering in verse o'er its accustomed prey; Till from its station in the Heaven of fame The Spirit's whirlwind rapt it, and the ray Of the remotest sphere of living flame Which paves the void was from behind it flung, As foam from a ship's swiftness, when there came A voice out of the deep: I will record the same. II The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth; Was yet a chaos and a curse, For thou wert not; but power from worst producing worse, The spirit of the beasts was kindled there, And of the birds, and of the watery forms, And there was war among them, and despair Within them, raging without truce or terms. The bosom of their violated nurse Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms on worms, And men on men; each heart was as a hell of storms. i. 4 unto, Harvard MS. III Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied Temple and prison, to many a swarming million Were as to mountain wolves their ragged caves. This human living multitude Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude, For thou wert not; but o'er the populous solitude, Into the shadow of her pinions wide Anarchs and priests who feed on gold and blood Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed, Drove the astonished herds of men from every side. IV The nodding promontories, and blue isles, And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles Of favoring heaven; from their enchanted caves Prophetic echoes flung dim melody. On the unapprehensive wild The vine, the corn, the olive mild, Grew savage yet, to human use unreconciled; And, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea, Like the man's thought dark in the infant's brain, Like aught that is which wraps what is to be, Art's deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein Of Parian stone; and, yet a speechless child, V Athens arose; a city such as vision Builds from the purple crags and silver towers Of battlemented cloud, as in derision Of kingliest masonry: the ocean floors Pave it; the evening sky pavilions it; Its portals are inhabited By thunder-zoned winds, each head Within its cloudy wings with sun-fire garlanded,A divine work! Athens, diviner yet, Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set; For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill Peopled, with forms that mock the eternal dead In marble immortality, that hill Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle. VI Within the surface of Time's fleeting river It trembles, but it cannot pass away! Through the caverns of the past; Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast. A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder, Which soars where Expectation never flew, |