approaching storm. Thou Dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night 25 Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours,0 from whose solid atmosphere clouds Black rain and fire and hail will burst: O hear!
3
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams 30 The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his chrystalline streams,8
a day when that tempestuous wind, whose tem-Shelley's sonnet-length stanza, developed from perature is at once mild and animating, was col-the interlaced three-line units of the Italian terza lecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rima (aba bcb cdc, etc.), consists of a set of four rains [Shelley's note]. As in other major Romantic such tercets, closed by a couplet rhyming with the poems?for example, the opening of Wordsworth's middle line of the preceding tercet: aba bcb cdc ded Prelude, Coleridge's ''Dejection: An Ode,' and the ee. conclusion to Shelley's Adonais?the rising wind, 2. Referring to the kind of fever that occurs in linked with the cycle of the seasons, is presented tuberculosis. as the correspondent in the external world to an 3. The west wind that will blow in the spring. inner change, a burst of creative power that is par-4. A high, shrill trumpet. alleled to the inspiration of prophets. In many lan-5. Refers to the Hindu gods Siva the Destroyer guages the words for wind, breath, sold, and and Vishnu the Preserver. inspiration are identical or related. Thus Shelley's 6. In the old sense of messengers. west wind is a 'spirit' (the Latin spiritus: wind, 7. A female worshipper who danced frenziedly in breath, soul, and the root word for inspiration), the the worship of Dionysus (Bacchus), the Greek god 'breath of Autumn's being,' which on earth, sky, of wine and vegetation. As vegetation god he was and sea destroys in autumn to revive in the spring. fabled to die in the fall and to be resurrected in the In some philosophical histories of the period, the spring. spirit of liberty was said to have deserted Europe 8. The currents that flow in the Mediterranean for the Americas. In blowing from the west, the Sea, sometimes with a visible difference in color.
wind may carry liberty back again.
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77 4 / PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Beside a pumice isle in Baise's bay,9 And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
35 All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear 40 The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves:1 O hear!
4
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; 45 A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O Uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, 50 As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
55 A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
5
Make me thy lyre,2 even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
60 Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!3 65 And, by the incantation of this verse,
9. West of Naples, the locale of imposing villas seasons, and is consequently influenced by the built in the glory days of imperial Rome. Their winds which announce it [Shelley's note]. ruins are reflected in the waters of the bay, a sight 2. The Eolian lyre, which responds to the wind Mary Shelley also describes in the Introduction to with rising and falling musical chords. The Last Man (see p. 957). 3. This line may play on the secondary sense of 1. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea . . . 'leaves' as pages in a book. sympathizes with that of the land in the change of
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PROMETHEUS UNBOUND / 77 5
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened Earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, 70 If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
1819 1820
Prometheus Unbound Shelley composed this work in Italy between the autumn of 1818 and the close of 1819 and published it the following summer. Upon its completion he wrote in a letter, 'It is a drama, with characters and mechanism of a kind yet unattempted; and I think the execution is better than any of my former attempts.' It is based on the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus, which dramatizes the sufferings of Prometheus, unrepentant champion of humanity, who, because he had stolen fire from heaven, was condemned by Zeus to be chained to Mount Caucasus and to be tortured by a vulture feeding on his liver; in a lost sequel Aeschylus reconciled Prometheus with his oppressor. Shelley continued Aeschylus's story but transformed it into a symbolic drama about
