All things confess his strength. Through the cold mass
Of marble and of colour his dreams pass;

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
From my path in heaven at last,
A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep;
And through my newly-woven bowers,
Wander happy paramours,

Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep
Thy vales more deep.

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;
All suns and constellations shower

On thee a light, a life, a power

Which doth array thy sphere; thou pourest thine
On mine, on mine!

THE EARTH.

I spin beneath my pyramid of night,
Which points into the heavens dreaming delight,
Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep;
As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,
Under the shadow of his beauty lying,

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;
So when thy shadow falls on me,

Then am I mute and still, by thee
Covered; of thy love, orb most beautiful,
Full, oh, too full !

Thou art speeding round the sun
Brightest world of many a one;
Green and azure sphere which shinest
With a light which is divinest
Among all the lamps of Heaven
To whom life and light is given;
I, thy crystal paramour,
Borne beside thee by a power
Like the polar Paradise,
Magnet-like of lovers' eyes;
I, a most enamoured maiden
Whose weak brain is overladen
With the pleasure of her love,
Maniac-like around thee move
Gazing, an insatiate bride,
On thy form from every side
Like a Mænad, round the cup
Which Agave lifted up

In the weird Cadmean forest.
Brother, wheresoe'er thou soarest
I must hurry, whirl and follow

Through the heavens wide and hollow,
Sheltered by the warm embrace
Of thy soul from hungry space,
Drinking from thy sense and sight
Beauty, majesty, and might,

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
Falls on me like thy clear and tender light
Soothing the seaman, borne the summer night,
Through isles for ever calm:

Oh, gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce
The caverns of my pride's deep universe,
Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce
Made wounds which need thy balm.

Pan. I rise as from a bath of sparkling water,
A bath of azure light, among dark rocks,

Out of the stream of sound.

Ione.

Ah me! sweet sister,

The stream of sound has ebbed away from us,
And you pretend to rise out of its wave,

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 rising out of Earth, and from the sky

Is showered like night, and from within the air
Bursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up
Into the pores of sunlight: the bright visions,
Wherein the singing spirits rode and shone,
Gleam like pale meteors through a watery night.
Ione. There is a sense of words upon mine ear.
Pan. An universal sound like words: Oh, list!

DEMOGORGON.

Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul,
Sphere of divinest shapes and harmonies,
Beautiful orb! gathering as thou dost roll
The love which paves thy path along the skies:

THE EARTH.

I hear: I am as a drop of dew that dies.

DEMOGORGON.

Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth
With wonder, as it gazes upon thee:

Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth
Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony:

THE MOON.

I hear: I am a leaf shaken by thee!

DEMOGORGON.

Ye kings of suns and stars, Demons and Gods,
Ethereal Dominations, who possess
Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes

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
Are clouds to hide, not colours to portray,

Whether your nature is that universe
Which once ye saw and suffered---

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,
Ye worms, and fish; ye living leaves and buds;
Lightning, and wind; and ye untameable herds,
Meteors and mists, which throng air's solitudes :

A VOICE.

Thy voice to us is wind among still woods.

DEMOGORGON.

Man, who wert once a despot and a slave;
A dupe and a deceiver; a decay;

A traveller from the cradle to the grave
Through the dim night of this immortal day:

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,
And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep:
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour

Of dead endurance, from the slippery, steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
And folds over the world its healing wings.

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,

Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length;
These are the spells by which to re-assume
An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
'To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor flatter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
'This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

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