Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

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eagle-winged victory sits

      At her right hand? what shadow flits

      Before? what splendour rolls behind?

      Ruin and renovation cry

      ‘Who but We?’

      SEMICHORUS I.

      I hear! I hear!

      The hiss as of a rushing wind,

      The roar as of an ocean foaming,

      The thunder as of earthquake coming.

      I hear! I hear!

      The crash as of an empire falling,

      The shrieks as of a people calling

      ‘Mercy! mercy!’—How they thrill!

      Then a shout of ‘kill! kill! kill!’

      And then a small still voice, thus—

      SEMICHORUS II.

      For

      Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind,

      The foul cubs like their parents are,

      Their den is in the guilty mind,

      And Conscience feeds them with despair.

      SEMICHORUS I.

      In sacred Athens, near the fane

      Of Wisdom, Pity’s altar stood.

      Serve not the unknown God in vain.

      But pay that broken shrine again,

      Love for hate and tears for blood.

      [Enter MAHMUD and AHASUERUS.]

      MAHMUD. Thou art a man, thou sayest, even as we.

      AHASUERUS. No more!

      MAHMUD. But raised above thy fellow-men

      By thought, as I by power.

      AHASUERUS. Thou sayest so.

      MAHMUD. Thou art an adept in the difficult lore

      Of Greek and Frank philosophy; thou numberest

      The flowers, and thou measurest the stars;

      Thou severest element from element;

      Thy spirit is present in the Past, and sees

      The birth of this old world through all its cycles

      Of desolation and of loveliness,

      And when man was not, and how man became

      The monarch and the slave of this low sphere,

      And all its narrow circles—it is much—

      I honour thee, and would be what thou art

      Were I not what I am; but the unborn hour,

      Cradled in fear and hope, conflicting storms,

      Who shall unveil? Nor thou, nor I, nor any

      Mighty or wise. I apprehended not

      What thou hast taught me, but I now perceive

      That thou art no interpreter of dreams;

      Thou dost not own that art, device, or God,

      Can make the Future present—let it come!

      Moreover thou disdainest us and ours;

      Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest.

      AHASUERUS. Disdain thee?—not the worm beneath thy feet!

      The Fathomless has care for meaner things

      Than thou canst dream, and has made pride for those

      Who would be what they may not, or would seem

      That which they are not. Sultan! talk no more

      Of thee and me, the Future and the Past;

      But look on that which cannot change—the One,

      The unborn and the undying. Earth and ocean,

      Space, and the isles of life or light that gem

      The sapphire floods of interstellar air,

      This firmament pavilioned upon chaos,

      With all its cressets of immortal fire,

      Whose outwall, bastioned impregnably

      Against the escape of boldest thoughts, repels them

      As Calpe the Atlantic clouds—this Whole

      Of suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and flowers,

      With all the silent or tempestuous workings

      By which they have been, are, or cease to be,

      Is but a vision;—all that it inherits

      Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams;

      Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor less

      The Future and the Past are idle shadows

      Of thought’s eternal flight—they have no being.

      Nought is but that which feels itself to be.

      MAHMUD. What meanest thou? Thy words stream like a tempest

      Of dazzling mist within my brain—they shake

      The earth on which I stand, and hang like night

      On Heaven above me. What can they avail?

      They cast on all things surest, brightest, best,

      Doubt, insecurity, astonishment.

      AHASUERUS. Mistake me not! All is contained in each.

      Dodona’s forest to an acorn’s cup

      Is that which has been, or will be, to that

      Which is—the absent to the present. Thought

      Alone, and its quick elements, Will, Passion,

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