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ReadingWillow structured literacy program for Australian students

The Daemon of the World

Percy Bysshe Shelley·1792–1822
Lines:632Movement:Romanticism
A FRAGMENT. PART 1. Nec tantum prodere vati,Quantum scire licet. Venit aetas omnis in unamCongeriem, miserumque premunt tot saecula pectus.LUCAN, Phars. v. 176. How wonderful is Death,Death and his brother Sleep!One pale as yonder wan and horned moon,With lips of lurid blue,The other glowing like the vital morn,When throned on ocean's waveIt breathes over the world:Yet both so passing strange and wonderful! Hath then the iron-sceptred Skeleton,Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres,To the hell dogs that couch beneath his throneCast that fair prey? Must that divinest form,Which love and admiration cannot viewWithout a beating heart, whose azure veinsSteal like dark streams along a field of snow,Whose outline is as fair as marble clothedIn light of some sublimest mind, decay?Nor putrefaction's breathLeave aught of this pure spectacleBut loathsomeness and ruin?--Spare aught but a dark theme,On which the lightest heart might moralize?Or is it but that downy-winged slumbersHave charmed their nurse coy Silence near her lidsTo watch their own repose?Will they, when morning's beamFlows through those wells of light,Seek far from noise and day some western cave,Where woods and streams with soft and pausing windsA lulling murmur weave?--Ianthe doth not sleepThe dreamless sleep of death:Nor in her moonlight chamber silentlyDoth Henry hear her regular pulses throb,Or mark her delicate cheekWith interchange of hues mock the broad moon,Outwatching weary night,Without assured reward.Her dewy eyes are closed;On their translucent lids, whose texture fineScarce hides the dark blue orbs that burn belowWith unapparent fire,The baby Sleep is pillowed:Her golden tresses shadeThe bosom's stainless pride,Twining like tendrils of the parasiteAround a marble column. Hark! whence that rushing sound?'Tis like a wondrous strain that sweepsAround a lonely ruinWhen west winds sigh and evening waves respondIn whispers from the shore:'Tis wilder than the unmeasured notesWhich from the unseen lyres of dells and grovesThe genii of the breezes sweep.Floating on waves of music and of light,The chariot of the Daemon of the WorldDescends in silent power:Its shape reposed within: slight as some cloudThat catches but the palest tinge of dayWhen evening yields to night,Bright as that fibrous woof when stars indueIts transitory robe.Four shapeless shadows bright and beautifulDraw that strange car of glory, reins of lightCheck their unearthly speed; they stop and foldTheir wings of braided air:The Daemon leaning from the ethereal carGazed on the slumbering maid.Human eye hath ne'er beheldA shape so wild, so bright, so beautiful,As that which o'er the maiden's charmed sleepWaving a starry wand,Hung like a mist of light.Such sounds as breathed around like odorous windsOf wakening spring arose,Filling the chamber and the moonlight sky.Maiden, the world's supremest spiritBeneath the shadow of her wingsFolds all thy memory doth inheritFrom ruin of divinest things,Feelings that lure thee to betray,And light of thoughts that pass away.For thou hast earned a mighty boon,The truths which wisest poets seeDimly, thy mind may make its own,Rewarding its own majesty,Entranced in some diviner moodOf self-oblivious solitude. Custom, and Faith, and Power thou spurnest;From hate and awe thy heart is free;Ardent and pure as day thou burnest,For dark and cold mortalityA living light, to cheer it long,The watch-fires of the world among. Therefore from nature's inner shrine,Where gods and fiends in worship bend,Majestic spirit, be it thineThe flame to seize, the veil to rend,Where the vast snake EternityIn charmed sleep doth ever lie. All that inspires thy voice of love,Or speaks in thy unclosing eyes,Or through thy frame doth burn or move,Or think or feel, awake, arise!Spirit, leave for mine and meEarth's unsubstantial mimicry! It ceased, and from the mute and moveless frameA radiant spirit arose,All beautiful in naked purity.Robed in its human hues it did ascend,Disparting as it went the silver clouds,It moved towards the car, and took its seatBeside the Daemon shape. Obedient to the sweep of aery song,The mighty ministersUnfurled their prismy wings.The magic car moved on;The night was fair, innumerable starsStudded heaven's dark blue vault;The eastern wave grew paleWith the first smile of morn.The magic car moved on.From the swift sweep of wingsThe atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew;And where the burning wheelsEddied above the mountain's loftiest peakWas traced a line of lightning.Now far above a rock the utmost vergeOf the wide earth it flew,The rival of the Andes, whose dark browFrowned o'er the silver sea.Far, far below the chariot's stormy path,Calm as a slumbering babe,Tremendous ocean lay.Its broad and silent mirror gave to viewThe pale and waning stars,The chariot's fiery track,And the grey light of mornTingeing those fleecy cloudsThat cradled in their folds the infant dawn.The chariot seemed to flyThrough the abyss of an immense concave,Radiant with million constellations, tingedWith shades of infinite colour,And semicircled with a beltFlashing incessant meteors. As they approached their goal,The winged shadows seemed to gather speed.The sea no longer was distinguished; earthAppeared a vast and shadowy sphere, suspendedIn the black concave of heavenWith the sun's cloudless orb,Whose rays of rapid lightParted around the chariot's swifter course,And fell like ocean's feathery sprayDashed from the boiling surgeBefore a vessel's prow. The magic car moved on.Earth's distant orb appearedThe smallest light that twinkles in the heavens,Whilst round the chariot's wayInnumerable systems widely rolled,And countless spheres diffusedAn ever varying glory.It was a sight of wonder! Some were horned,And like the moon's argentine crescent hungIn the dark dome of heaven; some did shedA clear mild beam like Hesperus, while the seaYet glows with fading sunlight; others dashedAthwart the night with trains of bickering fire,Like sphered worlds to death and ruin driven;Some shone like stars, and as the chariot passedBedimmed all other light. Spirit of Nature! hereIn this interminable wildernessOf worlds, at whose involved immensityEven soaring fancy staggers,Here is thy fitting temple.Yet not the lightest leafThat quivers to the passing breezeIs less instinct with thee,--Yet not the meanest worm.That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead,Less shares thy eternal breath.Spirit of Nature! thouImperishable as this glorious scene,Here is thy fitting temple. If solitude hath ever led thy stepsTo the shore of the immeasurable sea,And thou hast lingered thereUntil the sun's broad orbSeemed resting on the fiery line of ocean,Thou must have marked the braided webs of goldThat without motion hangOver the sinking sphere:Thou must have marked the billowy mountain clouds,Edged with intolerable radiancy,Towering like rocks of jetAbove the burning deep:And yet there is a momentWhen the sun's highest pointPeers like a star o'er ocean's western edge,When those far clouds of feathery purple gleamLike fairy lands girt by some heavenly sea:Then has thy rapt imagination soaredWhere in the midst of all existing thingsThe temple of the mightiest Daemon stands. Yet not the golden islandsThat gleam amid yon flood of purple light,Nor the feathery curtainsThat canopy the sun's resplendent couch,Nor the burnished ocean wavesPaving that gorgeous dome,So fair, so wonderful a sightAs the eternal temple could afford.The elements of all that human thoughtCan frame of lovely or sublime, did joinTo rear the fabric of the fane, nor aughtOf earth may image forth its majesty.Yet likest evening's vault that faery hall,As heaven low resting on the wave it spreadIts floors of flashing light,Its vast and azure dome;And on the verge of that obscure abyssWhere crystal battlements o'erhang the gulfOf the dark world, ten thousand spheres diffuseTheir lustre through its adamantine gates. The magic car no longer moved;The Daemon and the SpiritEntered the eternal gates.Those clouds of aery goldThat slept in glittering billowsBeneath the azure canopy,With the ethereal footsteps trembled not;While slight and odorous mistsFloated to strains of thrilling melodyThrough the vast columns and the pearly shrines. The Daemon and the SpiritApproached the overhanging battlement,Below lay stretched the boundless universe!There, far as the remotest lineThat limits swift imagination's flight.Unending orbs mingled in mazy motion,Immutably fulfillingEternal Nature's law.Above, below, around,The circling systems formedA wilderness of harmony.Each with undeviating aimIn eloquent silence through the depths of spacePursued its wondrous way.-- Awhile the Spirit paused in ecstasy.Yet soon she saw, as the vast spheres swept by,Strange things within their belted orbs appear.Like animated frenzies, dimly movedShadows, and skeletons, and fiendly shapes,Thronging round human graves, and o'er the deadSculpturing records for each memoryIn verse, such as malignant gods pronounce,Blasting the hopes of men, when heaven and hellConfounded burst in ruin o'er the world:And they did build vast trophies, instrumentsOf murder, human bones, barbaric gold,Skins torn from living men, and towers of skullsWith sightless holes gazing on blinder heaven,Mitres, and crowns, and brazen chariots stainedWith blood, and scrolls of mystic wickedness,The sanguine codes of venerable crime.The likeness of a throned king came by.When these had passed, bearing upon his browA threefold crown; his countenance was calm.His eye severe and cold; but his right handWas charged with bloody coin, and he did gnawBy fits, with secret smiles, a human heartConcealed beneath his robe; and motley shapes,A multitudinous throng, around him knelt.With bosoms bare, and bowed heads, and false looksOf true submission, as the sphere rolled by.Brooking no eye to witness their foul shame,Which human hearts must feel, while human tonguesTremble to speak, they did rage horribly,Breathing in self-contempt fierce blasphemiesAgainst the Daemon of the World, and highHurling their armed hands where the pure Spirit,Serene and inaccessibly secure,Stood on an isolated pinnacle.The flood of ages combating below,The depth of the unbounded universeAbove, and all aroundNecessity's unchanging harmony. PART 2. O happy Earth! reality of Heaven!To which those restless powers that ceaselesslyThrong through the human universe aspire;Thou consummation of all mortal hope!Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will!Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time,Verge to one point and blend for ever there:Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place!Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime,Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come:O happy Earth, reality of Heaven! Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams,And dim forebodings of thy loveliness,Haunting the human heart, have there entwinedThose rooted hopes, that the proud Power of EvilShall not for ever on this fairest worldShake pestilence and war, or that his slavesWith blasphemy for prayer, and human bloodFor sacrifice, before his shrine for everIn adoration bend, or ErebusWith all its banded fiends shall not upriseTo overwhelm in envy and revengeThe dauntless and the good, who dare to hurlDefiance at his throne, girt tho' it beWith Death's omnipotence. Thou hast beheldHis empire, o'er the present and the past;It was a desolate sight--now gaze on mine,Futurity. Thou hoary giant Time,Render thou up thy half-devoured babes,--And from the cradles of eternity,Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleepBy the deep murmuring stream of passing things,Tear thou that gloomy shroud.--Spirit, beholdThy glorious destiny! The Spirit sawThe vast frame of the renovated worldSmile in the lap of Chaos, and the senseOf hope thro' her fine texture did suffuseSuch varying glow, as summer evening castsOn undulating clouds and deepening lakes.Like the vague sighings of a wind at even,That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering seaAnd dies on the creation of its breath,And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits,Was the sweet stream of thought that with wild motionFlowed o'er the Spirit's human sympathies.The mighty tide of thought had paused awhile,Which from the Daemon now like Ocean's streamAgain began to pour.-- To me is givenThe wonders of the human world to keep-Space, matter, time and mind--let the sightRenew and strengthen all thy failing hope.All things are recreated, and the flameOf consentaneous love inspires all life:The fertile bosom of the earth gives suckTo myriads, who still grow beneath her care,Rewarding her with their pure perfectness:The balmy breathings of the wind inhaleHer virtues, and diffuse them all abroad:Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere,Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream;No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven,Nor scatter in the freshness of its prideThe foliage of the undecaying trees;But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair,And Autumn proudly bears her matron grace,Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of Spring,Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruitReflects its tint and blushes into love. The habitable earth is full of bliss;Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurledBy everlasting snow-storms round the poles,Where matter dared not vegetate nor live,But ceaseless frost round the vast solitudeBound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed;And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy islesRuffle the placid ocean-deep, that rollsIts broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweetTo murmur through the heaven-breathing grovesAnd melodise with man's blest nature there. The vast tract of the parched and sandy wasteNow teems with countless rills and shady woods,Corn-fields and pastures and white cottages;And where the startled wilderness did hearA savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,Hymmng his victory, or the milder snakeCrushing the bones of some frail antelopeWithin his brazen folds--the dewy lawn,Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smilesTo see a babe before his mother's door,Share with the green and golden basiliskThat comes to lick his feet, his morning's meal. Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sailHas seen, above the illimitable plain,Morning on night and night on morning rise,Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spreadIts shadowy mountains on the sunbright sea,Where the loud roarings of the tempest-wavesSo long have mingled with the gusty windIn melancholy loneliness, and sweptThe desert of those ocean solitudes,But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek,The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm,Now to the sweet and many-mingling soundsOf kindliest human impulses respond:Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem,With lightsome clouds and shining seas between,And fertile valleys resonant with bliss,Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave,Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore,To meet the kisses of the flowerets there. Man chief perceives the change, his being notesThe gradual renovation, and definesEach movement of its progress on his mind.Man, where the gloom of the long polar nightLowered o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil,Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frostBasked in the moonlight's ineffectual glow,Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night;Nor where the tropics bound the realms of dayWith a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame,Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphereScattered the seeds of pestilence, and fedUnnatural vegetation, where the landTeemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease,Was man a nobler being; slaveryHad crushed him to his country's blood-stained dust. Even where the milder zone afforded manA seeming shelter, yet contagion there,Blighting his being with unnumbered ills,Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth availedTill late to arrest its progress, or createThat peace which first in bloodless victory wavedHer snowy standard o'er this favoured clime:There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,The mimic of surrounding misery,The jackal of ambition's lion-rage,The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal. Here now the human being stands adorningThis loveliest earth with taintless body and mind;Blest from his birth with all bland impulses,Which gently in his noble bosom wakeAll kindly passions and all pure desires.Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing,Which from the exhaustless lore of human wealDawns on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that riseIn time-destroying infiniteness giftWith self-enshrined eternity, that mocksThe unprevailing hoariness of age,And man, once fleeting o'er the transient sceneSwift as an unremembered vision, standsImmortal upon earth: no longer nowHe slays the beast that sports around his dwellingAnd horribly devours its mangled flesh,Or drinks its vital blood, which like a streamOf poison thro' his fevered veins did flowFeeding a plague that secretly consumedHis feeble frame, and kindling in his mindHatred, despair, and fear and vain belief,The germs of misery, death, disease and crime.No longer now the winged habitants,That in the woods their sweet lives sing away,Flee from the form of man; but gather round,And prune their sunny feathers on the handsWhich little children stretch in friendly sportTowards these dreadless partners of their play.All things are void of terror: man has lostHis desolating privilege, and standsAn equal amidst equals: happinessAnd science dawn though late upon the earth;Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here,Reason and passion cease to combat there;Whilst mind unfettered o'er the earth extendsIts all-subduing energies, and wieldsThe sceptre of a vast dominion there. Mild is the slow necessity of death:The tranquil spirit fails beneath its grasp,Without a groan, almost without a fear,Resigned in peace to the necessity,Calm as a voyager to some distant land,And full of wonder, full of hope as he.The deadly germs of languor and diseaseWaste in the human frame, and Nature giftsWith choicest boons her human worshippers.How vigorous now the athletic form of age!How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, or care,Had stamped the seal of grey deformityOn all the mingling lineaments of time.How lovely the intrepid front of youth!How sweet the smiles of taintless infancy. Within the massy prison's mouldering courts,Fearless and free the ruddy children play,Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent browsWith the green ivy and the red wall-flower,That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom;The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron,There rust amid the accumulated ruinsNow mingling slowly with their native earth:There the broad beam of day, which feebly onceLighted the cheek of lean captivityWith a pale and sickly glare, now freely shinesOn the pure smiles of infant playfulness:No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despairPeals through the echoing vaults, but soothing notesOf ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birdsAnd merriment are resonant around. The fanes of Fear and Falsehood hear no moreThe voice that once waked multitudes to warThundering thro' all their aisles: but now respondTo the death dirge of the melancholy wind:It were a sight of awfulness to seeThe works of faith and slavery, so vast,So sumptuous, yet withal so perishing!Even as the corpse that rests beneath their wall.A thousand mourners deck the pomp of deathTo-day, the breathing marble glows aboveTo decorate its memory, and tonguesAre busy of its life: to-morrow, wormsIn silence and in darkness seize their prey.These ruins soon leave not a wreck behind:Their elements, wide-scattered o'er the globe,To happier shapes are moulded, and becomeMinistrant to all blissful impulses:Thus human things are perfected, and earth,Even as a child beneath its mother's love,Is strengthened in all excellence, and growsFairer and nobler with each passing year. Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the sceneCloses in steadfast darkness, and the pastFades from our charmed sight. My task is done:Thy lore is learned. Earth's wonders are thine own,With all the fear and all the hope they bring.My spells are past: the present now recurs.Ah me! a pathless wilderness remainsYet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand. Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course,Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursueThe gradual paths of an aspiring change:For birth and life and death, and that strange stateBefore the naked powers that thro' the worldWander like winds have found a human home,All tend to perfect happiness, and urgeThe restless wheels of being on their way,Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal:For birth but wakes the universal mindWhose mighty streams might else in silence flowThro' the vast world, to individual senseOf outward shows, whose unexperienced shapeNew modes of passion to its frame may lend;Life is its state of action, and the storeOf all events is aggregated thereThat variegate the eternal universe;Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom,That leads to azure isles and beaming skiesAnd happy regions of eternal hope.Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on:Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk,Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom,Yet spring's awakening breath will woo the earth,To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower,That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens,Lighting the green wood with its sunny smile. Fear not then, Spirit, death's disrobing hand,So welcome when the tyrant is awake,So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch flares;'Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour,The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep.For what thou art shall perish utterly,But what is thine may never cease to be;Death is no foe to virtue: earth has seenLove's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom,Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels there,And presaging the truth of visioned bliss.Are there not hopes within thee, which this sceneOf linked and gradual being has confirmed?Hopes that not vainly thou, and living firesOf mind as radiant and as pure as thou,Have shone upon the paths of men--return,Surpassing Spirit, to that world, where thouArt destined an eternal war to wageWith tyranny and falsehood, and uprootThe germs of misery from the human heart.Thine is the hand whose piety would sootheThe thorny pillow of unhappy crime,Whose impotence an easy pardon gains,Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease:Thine is the brow whose mildness would defyIts fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will,When fenced by power and master of the world.Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind,Free from heart-withering custom's cold control,Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued.Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish thee,And therefore art thou worthy of the boonWhich thou hast now received: virtue shall keepThy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod,And many days of beaming hope shall blessThy spotless life of sweet and sacred love.Go, happy one, and give that bosom joyWhose sleepless spirit waits to catchLight, life and rapture from thy smile. The Daemon called its winged ministers.Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car,That rolled beside the crystal battlement,Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness.The burning wheels inflameThe steep descent of Heaven's untrodden way.Fast and far the chariot flew:The mighty globes that rolledAround the gate of the Eternal FaneLessened by slow degrees, and soon appearedSuch tiny twinklers as the planet orbsThat ministering on the solar powerWith borrowed light pursued their narrower way.Earth floated then below:The chariot paused a moment;The Spirit then descended:And from the earth departingThe shadows with swift wingsSpeeded like thought upon the light of Heaven. The Body and the Soul united then,A gentle start convulsed Ianthe's frame:Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained:She looked around in wonder and beheldHenry, who kneeled in silence by her couch,Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love,And the bright beaming starsThat through the casement shone.