Page:Queen Mab (Shelley).djvu/35

III. Sunk reason's simple eloquence that rolled But to appal the guilty. Yes! the grave Hath quenched that eye, and death's relentless frost Withered that arm: but the unfading fame Which virtue hangs upon its votary's tomb; The deathless memory of that man, whom kings Call to their mind and tremble; the remembrance With which the happy spirit contemplates Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth, Shall never pass away.

Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; The subject not the citizen: for kings And subjects, mutual foes, for ever play A losing game into each other's hands, Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, A mechanized automaton.


 * When Nero,

High over flaming Rome, with savage joy Lowered like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear The shrieks of agonizing death, beheld The frightful desolation spread, and felt A new created sense within his soul Thrill to the sight, and vibrate to the sound; Thinkest thou his grandeur had not overcome