1. 'Intellectual' means nonmaterial, that which is lend splendor, grace, and truth both to the natural beyond access to the human senses. In this poem world and to people's moral consciousness, intellectual beauty is something postulated to 2. Used as a verb, account for occasional states of awareness that
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HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY / 76 7
3
25 No voice from some sublimer world hath ever To sage or poet these responses given? Therefore the name of God and ghosts and Heaven,
Remain the records of their vain endeavour,3 Frail spells?whose uttered charm might not avail to sever, 30
From all we hear and all we see, Doubt, chance, and mutability.
Thy light alone?like mist o'er mountains driven, Or music by the night wind sent Through strings of some still instrument,0 wind harp
35 Or moonlight on a midnight stream, Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.
4
Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart And come, for some uncertain moments lent. Man were immortal, and omnipotent,
40 Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.4 Thou messenger of sympathies, That wax and wane in lovers' eyes?
Thou?that to human thought art nourishment,
45 Like darkness to a dying flame!5 Depart not as thy shadow came, Depart not?lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.
5
While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped 50 Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;6
I was not heard?I saw them not? 55 When musing deeply on the lot
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing All vital things that wake to bring News of buds and blossoming,? Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
60 I shrieked, and clasped my hands in extacy!
6 I vowed that I would dedicate my powers To thee and thine?have I not kept the vow? With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now I call the phantoms of a thousand hours 65 Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers
3. The names (line 27) represent nothing better than the feeble guesses that philosophers and poets have made in attempting to answer the questions posed in stanza 2, but these guesses also delude us as though they were magic spells. 4. I.e., 'man would be immortal .. . if thou didst keep.' 5. Darkness may be said to nourish the dying flame by providing the contrast that offsets its light. 6. Lines 49?52 refer to Shelley's youthful experiments with magic. The 'poisonous names' may be the religious terms ('God and ghosts and Heaven') of line 27.
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76 8 / PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Of studious zeal or love's delight Outwatched with me the envious night7?
They know that never joy illumed my brow Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery, That thou?O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.
7
The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past?there is a harmony
75 In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, Which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth Of nature on my passive youth
so Descended, to my onward life supply Its calm?to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee, Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear8 himself, and love all human kind.
1816 1817
Ozymandias1
I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said?'Two vast and trunkless0 legs of stone without a torso Stand in the desart. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
5 And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive,0 stamped on these lifeless things, outlive The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;2 And on the
