Queen Mab

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Queen Mab

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Percy Bysshe Shelley

Queen Mab

A Philosophical Poem, With Notes

Ecrasez L'infame! –

Correspondance de Voltaire.

Avia Pieridum peragro loca, nullius ante

Trita solo; juvat integros accedere fonteis;

Atque haurire: juvatque novos decerpere flores.

. . . . . . .

Unde prius nulli velarint tempora musae.

Primum quod magnis doceo de rebus; et arctis

Religionum animos nodis exsolvere pergo. –

Lucret. lib. iv.

Dos poy sto, kai kosmon kinhso. –

Archimedes.

To Harriet * * * * *

Whose is the love that gleaming through the world,

Wards off the poisonous arrow of its scorn?

Whose is the warm and partial praise,

Virtue's most sweet reward?

Beneath whose looks did my reviving soul

Riper in truth and virtuous daring grow?

Whose eyes have I gazed fondly on,

And loved mankind the more?

Harriet! on thine: – thou wert my purer mind;

Thou wert the inspiration of my song;

Thine are these early wilding flowers,

Though garlanded by me.

Then press into thy breast this pledge of love;

And know, though time may change and years may roll,

Each floweret gathered in my heart

It consecrates to thine.

Queen Mab

I

How wonderful is Death,

Death and his brother Sleep!

One, pale as yonder waning moon

With lips of lurid blue;

The other, rosy as the morn

When throned on ocean's wave

It blushes o'er the world:

Yet both so passing wonderful!

Hath then the gloomy Power

Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres

Seized on her sinless soul?

Must then that peerless form

Which love and admiration cannot view

Without a beating heart, those azure veins

Which steal like streams along a field of snow,

That lovely outline, which is fair

As breathing marble, perish?

Must putrefaction's breath

Leave nothing of this heavenly sight

But loathsomeness and ruin?

Spare nothing but a gloomy theme,

On which the lightest heart might moralize?

Or is it only a sweet slumber

Stealing o'er sensation,

Which the breath of roseate morning

Chaseth into darkness?

Will Ianthe wake again,

And give that faithful bosom joy

Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch

Light, life and rapture from her smile?

Yes! she will wake again,

Although her glowing limbs are motionless,

And silent those sweet lips,

Once breathing eloquence,

That might have soothed a tiger's rage,

Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror.

Her dewy eyes are closed,

And on their lids, whose texture fine

Scarce hides the dark blue orbs beneath,

The baby Sleep is pillowed:

Her golden tresses shade

The bosom's stainless pride,

Curling like tendrils of the parasite

Around a marble column.

Hark! whence that rushing sound?

'Tis like the wondrous strain

That round a lonely ruin swells,

Which, wandering on the echoing shore,

The enthusiast hears at evening:

'Tis softer than the west wind's sigh;

'Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes

Of that strange lyre whose strings

The genii of the breezes sweep:

Those lines of rainbow light

Are like the moonbeams when they fall

Through some cathedral window, but the tints

Are such as may not find

Comparison on earth.

Behold the chariot of the Fairy Queen!

Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air;

Their filmy pennons at her word they furl,

And stop obedient to the reins of light:

These the Queen of Spells drew in,

She spread a charm around the spot,

And leaning graceful from the aethereal car,

Long did she gaze, and silently,

Upon the slumbering maid.

Oh! not the visioned poet in his dreams,

When silvery clouds float through the 'wildered brain,

When every sight of lovely, wild and grand

Astonishes, enraptures, elevates,

When fancy at a glance combines

The wondrous and the beautiful, –

So bright, so fair, so wild a shape

Hath ever yet beheld,

As that which reined the coursers of the air,

And poured the magic of her gaze

Upon the maiden's sleep.

The broad and yellow moon

Shone dimly through her form –

That form of faultless symmetry;

The pearly and pellucid car

Moved not the moonlight's line:

'Twas not an earthly pageant:

Those who had looked upon the sight,

Passing all human glory,

Saw not the yellow moon,

Saw not the mortal scene,

Heard not the night-wind's rush,

Heard not an earthly sound,

Saw but the fairy pageant,

Heard but the heavenly strains

That filled the lonely dwelling.

The Fairy's frame was slight, yon fibrous cloud,

That catches but the palest tinge of even,

And which the straining eye can hardly seize

When melting into eastern twilight's shadow,

Were scarce so thin, so slight; but the fair star

That gems the glittering coronet of morn,

Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful,

As that which, bursting from the Fairy's form,

Spread a purpureal halo round the scene,

Yet with an undulating motion,

Swayed to her outline gracefully.

From her celestial car

The Fairy Queen descended,

And thrice she waved her wand

Circled with wreaths of amaranth:

Her thin and misty form

Moved with the moving air,

And the clear silver tones,

As thus she spoke, were such

As are unheard by all but gifted ear.

Fairy.

»Stars! your balmiest influence shed!

Elements! your wrath suspend!

Sleep, Ocean, in the rocky bounds

That circle thy domain!

Let not a breath be seen to stir

Around yon grass-grown ruin's height,

Let even the restless gossamer

Sleep on the moveless air!

Soul of Ianthe! thou,

Judged alone worthy of the envied boon,

That waits the good and the sincere; that waits

Those who have struggled, and with resolute will

Vanquished earth's pride and meanness, burst the chains,

The icy chains of custom, and have shone

The day-stars of their age; – Soul of Ianthe!

Awake! arise!«

Sudden arose

Ianthe's Soul; it stood

All beautiful in naked purity,

The perfect semblance of its bodily frame.

Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace,

Each stain of earthliness

Had passed away, it reassumed

Its native dignity, and stood

Immortal amid ruin.

Upon the couch the body lay

Wrapped in the depth of slumber:

Its features were fixed and meaningless,

Yet animal life was there,

And every organ yet performed

Its natural functions: 'twas a sight

Of wonder to behold the body and soul.

The self-same lineaments, the same

Marks of identity were there:

Yet, oh, how different! One aspires to Heaven,

Pants for its sempiternal heritage,

And ever-changing, ever-rising still,

Wantons in endless being.

The other, for a time the unwilling sport

Of circumstance and passion, struggles on;

Fleets through its sad duration rapidly:

Then, like an useless and worn-out machine,

Rots, perishes, and passes.

Fairy.

»Spirit! who hast dived so deep;

Spirit! who hast soared so high;

Thou the fearless, thou the mild,

Accept the boon thy worth hath earned,

Ascend the car with me.«

Spirit.

»Do I dream? Is this new feeling

But a visioned ghost of slumber?

If indeed I am a soul,

A free, a disembodied soul,

Speak again to me.«

Fairy.

»I am the Fairy Mab: to me 'tis given

The wonders of the human world to keep:

The secrets of the immeasurable past,

In the unfailing consciences of men,

Those stern, unflattering chroniclers,

I find:

The future, from the causes which arise

In each event, I gather: not the sting

Which retributive memory implants

In the hard bosom of the selfish man;

Nor that ecstatic and exulting throb

Which virtue's votary feels when he sums up

The thoughts and actions of a well-spent day,

Are unforeseen, unregistered by me:

And it is yet permitted me, to rend

The veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit,

Clothed in its changeless purity, may know

How soonest to accomplish the great end

For which it hath its being, and may taste

That peace, which in the end all life will share.

This is the meed of virtue; happy Soul,

Ascend the car with me!«

The chains of earth's immurement

Fell from Ianthe's spirit;

They shrank and brake like bandages of straw

Beneath a wakened giant's strength.

She knew her glorious change,

And felt in apprehension uncontrolled

New raptures opening round:

Each day-dream of her mortal life,

Each frenzied vision of the slumbers

That closed each well-spent day,

Seemed now to meet reality.

The Fairy and the Soul proceeded;

The silver clouds disparted;

And as the car of magic they ascended,

Again the speechless music swelled,

Again the coursers of the air

Unfurled their azure pennons, and the Queen

Shaking the beamy reins

Bade them pursue their way.

The magic car moved on.

The night was fair, and countless stars

Studded Heaven's dark blue vault, –

Just o'er the eastern wave

Peeped the first faint smile of morn: –

The magic car moved on –

From the celestial hoofs

Theatmosphere in flaming sparkles flew,

And where the burning wheels

Eddied above the mountain's loftiest peak,

Was traced a line of lightning.

Now it flew far above a rock,

The utmost verge of earth,

The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow

Lowered o'er the silver sea.

Far, far below the chariot's path,

Calm as a slumbering babe,

Tremendous Ocean lay.

The mirror of its stillness showed

The pale and waning stars,

The chariot's fiery track,

And the gray light of morn

Tinging those fleecy clouds

That canopied the dawn.

Seemed it, that the chariot's way

Lay through the midst of an immense concave,

Radiant with million constellations, tinged

With shades of infinite colour,

And semicircled with a belt

Flashing incessant meteors.

The magic car moved on.

As they approached their goal

The coursers seemed to gather speed;

The sea no longer was distinguished; earth

Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere;

The sun's unclouded orbA1

Rolled through the black concave;

Its rays of rapid light

Parted around the chariot's swifter course,

And fell, like ocean's feathery spray

Dashed from the boiling surge

Before a vessel's prow.

The magic car moved on.

Earth's distant orb appeared

The smallest light that twinkles in the heaven;

Whilst round the chariot's wayA2

Innumerable systems rolled,

And countless spheres diffused

An ever-varying glory.

It was a sight of wonder: some

Were horned like the crescent moon;

Some shed a mild and silver beam

Like Hesperus o'er the western sea;

Some dashed athwart with trains of flame,

Like worlds to death and ruin driven;

Some shone like suns, and, as the chariot passed,

Eclipsed all other light.

Spirit of Nature! here!

In this interminable wilderness

Of worlds, at whose immensity

Even soaring fancy staggers,

Here is thy fitting temple.

Yet not the lightest leaf

That quivers to the passing breeze

Is 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! thou!

Imperishable as this scene,

Here is thy fitting temple.

II

If solitude hath ever led thy steps

To the wild Ocean's echoing shore,

And thou hast lingered there,

Until the sun's broad orb

Seemed resting on the burnished wave,

Thou must have marked the lines

Of purple gold, that motionless

Hung o'er the sinking sphere:

Thou must have marked the billowy clouds

Edged with intolerable radiancy

Towering like rocks of jet

Crowned with a diamond wreath.

And yet there is a moment,

When the sun's highest point

Peeps like a star o'er Ocean's western edge,

When those far clouds of feathery gold,

Shaded with deepest purple, gleam

Like islands on a dark blue sea;

Then has thy fancy soared above the earth,

And furled its wearied wing

Within the Fairy's fane.

Yet not the golden islands

Gleaming in yon flood of light,

Nor the feathery curtains

Stretching o'er the sun's bright couch,

Nor the burnished Ocean waves

Paving that gorgeous dome,

So fair, so wonderful a sight

As Mab's aethereal palace could afford.

Yet likest evening's vault, that faery Hall!

As Heaven, low resting on the wave, it spread

Its floors of flashing light,

Its vast and azure dome,

Its fertile golden islands

Floating on a silver sea;

Whilst suns their mingling beamings darted

Through clouds of circumambient darkness,

And pearly battlements around

Looked o'er the immense of Heaven.

The magic car no longer moved.

The Fairy and the Spirit

Entered the Hall of Spells:

Those golden clouds

That rolled in glittering billows

Beneath the azure canopy

With the aethereal footsteps trembled not:

The light and crimson mists,

Floating to strains of thrilling melody

Through that unearthly dwelling,

Yielded to every movement of the will.

Upon their passive swell the Spirit leaned,

And, for the varied bliss that pressed around,

Used not the glorious privilege

Of virtue and of wisdom.

»Spirit!« the Fairy said,

And pointed to the gorgeous dome,

»This is a wondrous sight

And mocks all human grandeur;

But, were it virtue's only meed, to dwell

In a celestial palace, all resigned

To pleasurable impulses, immured

Within the prison of itself, the will

Of changeless Nature would be unfulfilled.

Learn to make others happy. Spirit, come!

This is thine high reward: – the past shall rise;

Thou shalt behold the present; I will teach

The secrets of the future.«

The Fairy and the Spirit

Approached the overhanging battlement. –

Below lay stretched the universe!

There, far as the remotest line

That bounds imagination's flight,

Countless and unending orbs

In mazy motion intermingled,

Yet still fulfilled immutably

Eternal Nature's law.

Above, below, around,

The circling systems formed

A wilderness of harmony;

Each with undeviating aim,

In eloquent silence, through the depths of space

Pursued its wondrous way.

There was a little light

That twinkled in the misty distance:

None but a spirit's eye

Might ken that rolling orb;

None but a spirit's eye,

And in no other place

But that celestial dwelling, might behold

Each action of this earth's inhabitants.

But matter, space and time

In those aëreal mansions cease to act;

And all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps

The harvest of its excellence, o'er bounds

Those obstacles, of which an earthly soul

Fears to attempt the conquest.

The Fairy pointed to the earth.

The Spirit's intellectual eye

Its kindred beings recognized.

The thronging thousands, to a passing view,

Seemed like an ant-hill's citizens.

How wonderful! that even

The passions, prejudices, interests,

That sway the meanest being, the weak touch

That moves the finest nerve,

And in one human brain

Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link

In the great chain of Nature.

»Behold,« the Fairy cried,

»Palmyra's ruined palaces! –

Behold! where grandeur frowned;

Behold! where pleasure smiled;

What now remains? – the memory

Of senselessness and shame –

What is immortal there?

Nothing – it stands to tell

A melancholy tale, to give

An awful warning: soon

Oblivion will steal silently

The remnant of its fame.

Monarchs and conquerors there

Proud o'er prostrate millions trod –

The earthquakes of the human race;

Like them, forgotten when the ruin

That marks their shock is past.

Beside the eternal Nile,

The Pyramids have risen.

Nile shall pursue his changeless way:

Those Pyramids shall fall;

Yea! not a stone shall stand to tell

The spot whereon they stood!

Their very site shall be forgotten,

As is their builder's name!

Behold yon sterile spot;

Where now the wandering Arab's tent

Flaps in the desert-blast.

There once old Salem's haughty fane

Reared high to Heaven its thousand golden domes,

And in the blushing face of day

Exposed its shameful glory.

Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed

The building of that fane; and many a father,

Worn out with toil and slavery, implored

The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth,

And spare his children the detested task

Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning

The choicest days of life,

To soothe a dotard's vanity.

There an inhuman and uncultured race

Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God;

They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb

The unborn child, – old age and infancy

Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms

Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends:

But what was he who taught them that the God

Of nature and benevolence hath given

A special sanction to the trade of blood?

His name and theirs are fading, and the tales

Of this barbarian nation, which imposture

Recites till terror credits, are pursuing

Itself into forgetfulness.

Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood,

There is a moral desert now:

The mean and miserable huts,

The yet more wretched palaces,

Contrasted with those ancient fanes,

Now crumbling to oblivion;

The long and lonely colonnades,

Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks,

Seem like a well-known tune,

Which in some dear scene we have loved to hear,

Remembered now in sadness.

But, oh! how much more changed,

How gloomier is the contrast

Of human nature there!

Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave,

A coward and a fool, spreads death around –

Then, shuddering, meets his own.

Where Cicero and Antoninus lived,

A cowled and hypocritical monk

Prays, curses and deceives.

Spirit, ten thousand years

Have scarcely passed away,

Since, in the waste where now the savage drinks

His enemy's blood, and aping Europe's sons,

Wakes the unholy song of war,

Arose a stately city,

Metropolis of the western continent:

There, now, the mossy column-stone,

Indented by Time's unrelaxing grasp,

Which once appeared to brave

All, save its country's ruin;

There the wide forest scene,

Rude in the uncultivated loveliness

Of gardens long run wild,

Seems, to the unwilling sojourner, whose steps

Chance in that desert has delayed,

Thus to have stood since earth was what it is.

Yet once it was the busiest haunt,

Whither, as to a common centre, flocked

Strangers, and ships, and merchandise:

Once peace and freedom blessed

The cultivated plain:

But wealth, that curse of man,

Blighted the bud of its prosperity:

Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty,

Fled, to return not, until man shall know

That they alone can give the bliss

Worthy a soul that claims

Its kindred with eternity.

There's not one atom of yon earth

But once was living man;

Nor the minutest drop of rain,

That hangeth in its thinnest cloud,

But flowed in human veins:

And from the burning plains

Where Libyan monsters yell,

From the most gloomy glens

Of Greenland's sunless clime,

To where the golden fields

Of fertile England spread

Their harvest to the day,

Thou canst not find one spot

Whereon no city stood.

How strange is human pride!

I tell thee that those living things,

To whom the fragile blade of grass,

That springeth in the morn

And perisheth ere noon,

Is an unbounded world;

I tell thee that those viewless beings,

Whose mansion is the smallest particle

Of the impassive atmosphere,

Think, feel and live like man;

That their affections and antipathies,

Like his, produce the laws

Ruling their moral state;

And the minutest throb

That through their frame diffuses

The slightest, faintest motion,

Is fixed and indispensable

As the majestic laws

That rule yon rolling orbs.«

The Fairy paused. The Spirit,

In ecstasy of admiration, felt

All knowledge of the past revived; the events

Of old and wondrous times,

Which dim tradition interruptedly

Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded

In just perspective to the view;

Yet dim from their infinitude.

The Spirit seemed to stand

High on an isolated pinnacle;

The flood of ages combating below,

The depth of the unbounded universe

Above, and all around

Nature's unchanging harmony.

III

»Fairy!« the Spirit said,

And on the Queen of Spells

Fixed her aethereal eyes,

»I thank thee. Thou hast given

A boon which I will not resign, and taught

A lesson not to be unlearned. I know

The past, and thence I will essay to glean

A warning for the future, so that man

May profit by his errors, and derive

Experience from his folly:

For, when the power of imparting joy

Is equal to the will, the human soul

Requires no other Heaven.«

Mab.

»Turn thee, surpassing Spirit!

Much yet remains unscanned.

Thou knowest how great is man,

Thou knowest his imbecility:

Yet learn thou what he is:

Yet learn the lofty destiny

Which restless time prepares

For every living soul.

Behold a gorgeous palace, that, amid

Yon populous city rears its thousand towers

And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops

Of sentinels, in stern and silent ranks,

Encompass it around: the dweller there

Cannot be free and happy; hearest thou not

The curses of the fatherless, the groans

Of those who have no friend? He passes on:

The King, the wearer of a gilded chain

That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool

Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave

Even to the basest appetites – that man

Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles

At the deep curses which the destitute

Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy

Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan

But for those morsels which his wantonness

Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save

All that they love from famine: when he hears

The tale of horror, to some ready-made face

Of hypocritical assent he turns,

Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him,

Flushes his bloated cheek.

Now to the meal

Of silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags

His palled unwilling appetite. If gold,

Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled

From every clime, could force the loathing sense

To overcome satiety, – if wealth

The spring it draws from poisons not, – or vice,

Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not

Its food to deadliest venom; then that king

Is happy; and the peasant who fulfils

His unforced task, when he returns at even,

And by the blazing faggot meets again

Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped,

Tastes not a sweeter meal.

Behold him now

Stretched on the gorgeous couch; his fevered brain

Reels dizzily awhile: but ah! too soon

The slumber of intemperance subsides,

And conscience, that undying serpent, calls

Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task.

Listen! he speaks! oh! mark that frenzied eye –

Oh! mark that deadly visage.«

King.

»No cessation!

Oh! must this last for ever? Awful Death,

I wish, yet fear to clasp thee! – Not one moment

Of dreamless sleep! O dear and blessed peace!

Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity

In penury and dungeons? wherefore lurkest

With danger, death, and solitude; yet shunn'st

The palace I have built thee? Sacred peace!

Oh visit me but once, but pitying shed

One drop of balm upon my withered soul,«

The Fairy.

»Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart,

And Peace defileth not her snowy robes

In such a shed as thine. Hark! yet he mutters;

His slumbers are but varied agonies,

They prey like scorpions on the springs of life.

There needeth not the hell that bigots frame

To punish those who err: earth in itself

Contains at once the evil and the cure;

And all-sufficing Nature can chastise

Those who transgress her law, – she only knows

How justly to proportion to the fault

The punishment it merits.

Is it strange

That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe?

Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug

The scorpion that consumes him? Is it strange

That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns,

Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured

Within a splendid prison, whose stern bounds

Shut him from all that's good or dear on earth,

His soul asserts not its humanity?

That man's mild nature rises not in war

Against a king's employ? No – 'tis not strange.

He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts and lives

Just as his father did; the unconquered powers

Of precedent and custom interpose

Between a king and virtue. Stranger yet,

To those who know not Nature, nor deduce

The future from the present, it may seem,

That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes

Of this unnatural being; not one wretch,

Whose children famish, and whose nuptial bed

Is earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm

To dash him from his throne!

Those gilded flies

That, basking in the sunshine of a court,

Fatten on its corruption! – what are they?

– The drones of the community; they feed

On the mechanic's labour: the starved hind

For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield

Its unshared harvests; and yon squalid form,

Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes

A sunless life in the unwholesome mine,

Drags out in labour a protracted death,

To glut their grandeur; many faint with toil,

That few may know the cares and woe of sloth.

Whence, think'st thou, kings and parasites arose?

Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap

Toil and unvanquishable penury

On those who build their palaces, and bring

Their daily bread? – From vice, black loathsome vice;

From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong;

From all that 'genders misery, and makes

Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust,

Revenge, and murder . ... And when Reason's voice,

Loud as the voice of Nature, shall have waked

The nations; and mankind perceive that vice

Is discord, war, and misery; that virtue

Is peace, and happiness and harmony;

When man's maturer nature shall disdain

The playthings of its childhood; – kingly glare

Will lose its power to dazzle; its authority

Will silently pass by; the gorgeous throne

Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall,

Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood's trade

Shall be as hateful and unprofitable

As that of truth is now.

Where is the fame

Which the vainglorious mighty of the earth

Seek to eternize? Oh! the faintest sound

From Time's light footfall, the minutest wave

That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing

The unsubstantial bubble. Ay! to-day

Stern is the tyrant's mandate, red the gaze

That flashes desolation, strong the arm

That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes!

That mandate is a thunder-peal that died

In ages past; that gaze, a transient flash

On which the midnight closed, and on that arm

The worm has made his meal.

The virtuous man,

Who, great in his humility, as kings

Are little in their grandeur; he who leads

Invincibly a life of resolute good,

And stands amid the silent dungeon-depths

More free and fearless than the trembling judge,

Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove

To bind the impassive spirit; – when he falls,

His mild eye beams benevolence no more:

Withered the hand outstretched but to relieve;

Sunk Reason's simple eloquence, that rolled

But to appal the guilty.