Gentle, and brave, and generous,?no lorn? bard abandoned
Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh:
60 He lived, he died, he sung, in solitude.
Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes,
And virgins, as unknown he past, have pined
And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.
The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn,
65 And Silence, too enamoured of that voice,
Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.
By solemn vision, and bright silver dream,
His infancy was nurtured. Every sight
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air,
70 Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.
The fountains of divine philosophy
Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great
Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past
9. Temple. The narrator calls on the Mother, his 'A presence . . . / Whose dwelling is . . . the round natural muse, to make him her wind harp. Cf. the ocean and the living air, / And the blue sky, and in opening passage of Wordsworth's Prelude, Cole-the mind of man: / A motion and a spirit.'
ridge's 'Dejection: An Ode,' and the conclusions 2. The cypress represented mourning. 'Votive':
of Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind' and Adonais. offered to fulfill a vow to the gods.
1. Cf. Wordsworth, 'Tintern Abbey,' lines 94ff.:
.
ALASTOR / 75 1
In truth or fable consecrates, he felt 75 And knew. When early youth had past, he left His cold fireside and alienated home so8590To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps He like her shadow has pursued, where'er The red volcano overcanopies Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes' On black bare pointed islets ever beat With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves Rugged and dark, winding among the springs Of fire and poison, inaccessible To avarice or pride, their starry domes Of diamond and of gold expand above Numberless and immeasurable halls, 95Frequent0 with crystal column, and clear shrinesOf pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.4 Nor had that scene of ampler majesty crowded IOOThan gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven And the green earth lost in his heart its claims To love and wonder; he would linger long In lonesome vales, making the wild his home, Until the doves and squirrels would partake From his innocuous hand his bloodless food,5 105Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks, And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er The dry leaf rustles in the brake,0 suspend Her timid steps to gaze upon a form More graceful than her own. thicket I ioHis wandering step Obedient to high thoughts, has visited The awful0 ruins of the days of old: Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec,6 and the waste Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers awe-inspiring 115Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, Memphis and Thebes,7 and whatsoe'er of strange Sculptured on alabaster obelisk, Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphynx, Dark Ethiopia in her desert hills Conceals. Among the ruined temples there, Stupendous columns, and wild images Of more than man, where marble daemons watch The Zodiac's8 brazen mystery, and dead men
3. Lakes of pitch, flowing from a volcano. is the ruined capital of Lower Egypt. 4. An olive-green semiprecious stone. 8. In the temple of Isis at Denderah, Egypt, the 5. Shelley was himself a vegetarian. Zodiac is represented on the ceiling. Journeying 6. An ancient city in what is now Lebanon. Tyre among the great civilizations of the past has taken was once an important commercial city on the the Poet backward in time to older and older cul-
Phoenician coast. tures?from the Greeks to the Phoenicians, the
7. The ancient capital of Upper Egypt. Memphis Jews, the Babylonians, and the Egyptians. Finally
.
75 0 / PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
120 Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,9
He lingered, poring on memorials
Of the world's youth, through the long burning day
Gazed on those speechless shapes, nor, when the moon
Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades
125 Suspended he that task, but ever gazed
And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind
Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw
The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.
Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food,
