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FROM DON JUAN

THE SHIPWRECK. FROM CANTO II*

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But now there came a flash of hope once more; Day broke, and the wind lulled: the masts were gone,

All this, the most were patient, and some bold,

Until the chains and leathers were worn through

Of all our pumps :-a wreck complete she rolled,

At mercy of the waves, whose mercies are The leak increased; shoals round her, but no Like human beings' during civil war. shore,

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The vessel swam, yet still she held her own. They tried the pumps again, and though before Then came the carpenter, at last, with tears Their desperate efforts seemed all useless In his rough eyes, and told the captain he A glimpse of sunshine set some hands to bale-Could do no more: he was a man in years, And long had voyaged through many a The stronger pumped, the weaker thrummed1 a sail.

grown,

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stormy sea,

And if he wept at length, they were not fears
That made his eyelids as a woman's be,
But he, poor fellow, had a wife and children,—
Two things for dying people quite bewildering.

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'T was twilight, and the sunless day went down Over the waste of waters; like a veil,

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Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell— Then shrieked the timid, and stood still the brave

Then some leaped overboard with dreadful yell,
As eager to anticipate their grave;
And the sea yawned around her like a hell,
And down she sucked with her the whirling

wave,

Like one who grapples with his enemy,

And strives to strangle him before he die.

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And first one universal shriek there rushed,
Louder than the loud ocean, like a crash
Of echoing thunder; and then all was hushed,
Save the wild wind and the remorseless dash
Of billows; but at intervals there gushed,
Accompanied with a convulsive splash,

A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry
Of some strong swimmer in his agony.

THE ISLES OF GREECE. FROM CANTO III*

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Which, if withdrawn, would but disclose the And now they were diverted by their suite,

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Dwarfs, dancing girls, black eunuchs, and a

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And not the fixed-he knew the way to To sounds which echo further west

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Than your sires' "'Islands of the Blest.''10 12

The mountains look on Marathon-
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,

I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
For standing on the Persians' grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.

A king sate on the rocky brow
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,

And men in nations;-all were his!
And when the sun set, where were they?
He counted them at break of day-

And where are they? and where art thou,
My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now-

The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?
'Tis something, in the dearth of fame,
Though linked among a fettered race,
To feel at least a patriot's shame,

Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush-for Greece a tear.

Must we but weep o'er days more blest?
Must we but blush-Our fathers bled.
Earth! render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopylæ!

What, silent still? and silent all?

Ah! no;-the voices of the dead Sound like a distant torrent's fall,

And answer, "Let one living head, But one arise,-we come, we come!"' 'Tis but the living who are dumb.

In vain-in vain: strike other chords; Fill high the cup with Samian wine! Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,

And shed the blood of Scio's vine! Hark! rising to the ignoble callHow answers each bold Bacchanal!

You have the Pyrrhic dance11 as yet; Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx12 gone? Of two such lessons, why forget

The nobler and the manlier one?

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You have the letters Cadmus13 gaveThink ye he meant them for a slave?

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
We will not think of themes like these!
It made Anacreon's song divine;

He served but served Polycrates14-
A tyrant; but our masters then
Were still, at least, our countrymen.

The tyrant of the Chersonese15

Was freedom's best and bravest friend; That tyrant was Miltiades!

Oh! that the present hour would lend Another despot of the kind!

Such chains as his were sure to bind.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore, 16 Exists the remnant of a line

Such as the Doric mothers bore; And there, perhaps, some seed is sown, The Heracleidan17 blood might own. Trust not for freedom to the FranksThey have a king who buys and sells; In native swords and native ranks,

The only hope of courage dwells: But Turkish force, and Latin fraud, Would break your shield, however broad. Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

Our virgins dance beneath the shadeI see their glorious black eyes shine; But gazing on each glowing maid, My own the burning tear-drop laves, To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

Place me on Sunium '818 marbled steep, Where nothing, save the waves and I, May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;

There, swan-like, let me sing and die: A land of slaves shall ne'er be mineDash down yon cup of Samian wine!

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Thus sung, or would, or could, or should have sung,

The modern Greek, in tolerable verse;

If not like Orpheus quite, when Greece was young,

Yet in these times he might have done much

worse:

13 Cadmus was said to have introduced the Greek alphabet from Phoenicia.

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Ave Maria! blessed be the hour!

The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft Have felt that moment in its fullest power Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft, While swung the deep bell in the distant tower, Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft, And not a breath crept through the rosy air, And yet the forest leaves seemed stirred with prayer.

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Ave Maria! 't is the hour of prayer!
Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of love!

Ave Maria! may our spirits dare

Look up to thine and to thy Son's above! Ave Maria! oh that face so fair!

Those downcast eyes beneath the Almighty dove

What though 't is but a pictured image?— strike

That painting is no idol,-'t is too like.

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14 Tyrant (ruler) of Samos, who gave refuge to Some kinder casuists are pleased to say,

Anacreon.

15 A Thracian peninsula.

16 In western Greece.

17 i. e., ancient Greek

18 The southernmost promontory of Attica.

In nameless print-that I have no devotion; But set those persons down with me to pray,

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And you shall see who has the properest notion

Of getting into heaven the shortest way;

My altars are the mountains and the ocean, Earth, air, stars,-all that springs from the great Whole,

Who hath produced, and will receive the soul.

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Sweet hour of twilight!-in the solitude
Of the pine forest, and the silent shore
Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood,
Rooted where once the Adrian20 wave flowed
o'er,

To where the last Cæsarean fortress stood,
Evergreen forest! which Boccaccio's lore

And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me,21

How have I loved the twilight hour and thee! 106

The shrill cicalas, people of the pine,
Making their summer lives one ceaseless song,
Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and
mine,

And vesper bell's that rose the boughs along; The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line,

His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng

Which learned from this example not to fly From a true lover,-shadowed my mind's eye.

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Oh, Hesperus! thou bringest all good things
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer,
To the young bird the parent's brooding wings,
The welcome stall to the o'erlaboured steer;
Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings,
Whate'er our household gods protect of dear,
Are gathered round us by thy look of rest;
Thou bring 'st the child, too, to the mother's
breast.

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Soft hour! which wakes the wish and melts the heart

Of those who sail the seas, on the first day When they from their sweet friends are torn apart;

Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way As the far bell of vesper makes him start,

Seeming to weep the dying day's decay; Is this a fancy which our reason scorns? Ah! surely, nothing dies but something mourns!

20 The Adriatic.

21 Dryden's Theodore and Tonoria is a translation from Boccaccio of the tale of a spectre huntsman who haunted this region. Byron lived for some time at Ravenna and frequently rode in the adjoining forest,

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
(1792-1822)

ALASTOR, OR THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE*

Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quærebam quid amarem, amans amare.t-Confes. St. August.

PREFACE

The poem entitled Alastor may be considered as allegorical of one of the most interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, and affords to their modifications a variety not to be exhausted. So long as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous, and tranquil, and self-possessed. But the period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He images to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant with speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in which he embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or wise, or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover, could depicture. tions of sense, have their respective requisitions on intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functhe sympathy of corresponding powers in other human beings. The Poet is represented as uniting these requisitions, and attaching them to a single image. He seeks in vain for a prototype of his conception. Blasted by his disappointment, he descends to an untimely grave.

The

The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The Poet's self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Power which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influ

The word Alastor means "the spirit of solitude." which is treated here as a spirit of evil, or a spirit leading to disaster; it must not be mistaken for the name of the hero of the poem. In the introduction (lines 1-49) Shelley speaks in his own person; but the Poet whose history he then proceeds to relate bears very markedly his own traits, and the whole must be considered as largely a spiritual autobiography. It is difficult to resist calling attention to some of the features of this impressive poem; to its quiet mastery of theme and sustained poetic power; to its blank-verse harmonies subtler than rhymes; to the graphic descriptions, as in lines 239369, whence Bryant, Poe, and Tennyson have manifestly all drawn inspiration to occasional lines of an impelling swiftness (612, 613), or occasional phrases of startling strength (676, 681); to the fervent exaltation of self-sacrifice in the prayer that one life might answer for all. and the pangs of death be henceforth banished from the world. (609-624); or to the unapproachable beauty of the description of slow-coming death itself -a euthanasia in which life passes away like a strain of music or like an "exhalation." There can be no higher definition of poetry than is implicit in these things.

"Not yet did I love, yet I yearned to love; I sought what I might love, yearning to love." In this vain pursuit of ideal loveliness, said Mrs. Shelley, is the deeper meaning of Alastor to be found,

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