All things confess his strength. Through the cold mass Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear; Language is a perpetual orphic song, Which rules with Dædal harmony a throng Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were. The lightning is his slave; heaven's utmost deep Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on! The tempest is his steed, he strides the air; And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare, Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none. THE MOON. The shadow of white death has past Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep THE EARTH. As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold A half infrozen dew-globe, green, and gold, And crystalline, till it becomes a winged mist, And wanders up the vault of the blue day, Outlives the noon, and on the sun's last ray Hangs o'er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst. THE MOON. Thou art folded, thou art lying In the light which is undying Of thine own joy, and heaven's smile divine; On thee a light, a life, a power Which doth array thy sphere; thou pourest thine THE EARTH. I spin beneath my pyramid of night, Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep. THE MOON. As in the soft and sweet eclipse, When soul meets soul on lovers' lips, High hearts are calm, aud brightest eyes are dull; Then am I mute and still, by thee Thou art speeding round the sun In the weird Cadmean forest. Through the heavens wide and hollow, As a lover or a cameleon Grows like what it looks upon, As a violet's gentle eye Gazes on the azure sky Until its hue grows like what it beholds, As a grey and watery mist Glows like solid amethyst Athwart the western mountain it enfolds, When the sunset sleeps Upon its snow. THE EARTH. And the weak day weeps That it should be so. Oh, gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight Oh, gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce Pan. I rise as from a bath of sparkling water, Out of the stream of sound. Ione. Ah me! sweet sister, The stream of sound has ebbed away from us, Because your words fall like the clear, soft dew Shaken from a bathing wood-nymph's limbs and hair. Pan. Peace! peace! A mighty Power, which is as darkness, Is showered like night, and from within the air DEMOGORGON. Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul, THE EARTH. I hear: I am as a drop of dew that dies. DEMOGORGON. Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth THE MOON. I hear: I am a leaf shaken by thee! DEMOGORGON. Ye kings of suns and stars, Demons and Gods, Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness: A VOICE (from above). Our great Republic hears, we are blest, and bless. DEMOGORGON. Ye happy dead, whom beams of brightest verse Whether your nature is that universe A VOICE (from beneath). Or as they Whom we have left, we change and pass away, DEMOGORGON. Ye elemental Genii, who have homes From man's high mind even to the central stone Of sullen lead; from Heaven's star-fretted domes To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on: A CONFUSED VOICE. We hear thy words waken Oblivion. DEMOGORGON. Spirits, whose homes are flesh: ye beasts and birds, A VOICE. Thy voice to us is wind among still woods. DEMOGORGON. Man, who wert once a despot and a slave; A traveller from the cradle to the grave ALL. Speak: thy strong words may never pass away. DEMOGORGON. This is the day, which down the void abysm At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism, Of dead endurance, from the slippery, steep, Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance, Mother of many acts and hours, should free To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; 257 1819. THE CENCI. A TRAGEDY, IN FIVE ACTS. Dedication. TO LEIGH HUNT, ESQ. MY DEAR FRIEND,-I inscribe with your name, from a distant country, and after an absence whose months have seemed years, this the latest of my literary efforts. Those writings which I have hitherto published, have been little else than visions which impersonate my own apprehensions of the beautiful and the just. I can also perceive in them the literary defects incidental to youth and impatience; they are dreams of what ought to be, or may be. The drama which I now present to you is a sad reality. I lay aside the presumptuous attitude of an instructor, and am content to paint, with such colours as my own heart furnishes, that which has been. Had I known a person more highly endowed than yourself with all that it becomes a man to possess, I had solicited for this work the ornament of his name. One more gentle, honourable, innocent, and brave; one of more exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet himself more free from evil; one who knows better how to receive, and how to confer a benefit, though he must ever confer far more than he can receive; one of simpler, and, in the highest sense of the word, of purer life and manners, I never knew; and I had already been fortunate in friendships when your name was added to the list. In that patient and irreconcilable enmity with domestic and political tyranny and imposture, which the tenor of your life has illustrated, and which, had health and talents, should illustrate mine, let us, comforting each other in our task, live and die. Rome, May 29, 1819. All happiness attend you! Your affectionate friend, PERCY B. SHELLEY. PREFACE. A MANUSCRIPT was communicatad to me during my travels in Italy, which was copied from the archives of the Cenci Palace at Rome, and contains a detailed account of the horrors which ended in the extinction of one of the noblest and richest families of that city, during the Pontificate of Clement VIII. in the year 1599. The story is, that an old man having spent his life in |