Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/791

§II

Wakes the unholy song of war, Arose a stately city, Metropolis of the western continent : There, now, the mossy column- stone, 189 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, 195 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 200 Strangers, and ships, and merchan- dise : Once peace and freedom blessed The cultivated plain : But wealth, that curse of man, Blighted the bud of its prosperity : 205 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. 210 ' 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 : 2 1 5 And from the burning plains Where Libyan monsters yell, From the most gloomy glens Of Greenland's sunless clime, To where the golden fields 220 Of fertile England spread Their harvest to the day, Thou canst not find one spot Whereon no city stood. 224 ' 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 ; 230 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 236 Ruling their moral state ; And the minutest throb That through their frame diffuses The slightest, faintest motion, 240 Is fixed and indispensable As the majestic laws That rule yon rolling orbs.' The Fairy paused. The Spirit, In ecstasy of admiration, felt 24s All knowledge of the past revived ; the events Of old and wondrous times, Which dim tradition interruptedly Teaches the credulous vulgar, were un- folded In just perspective to the view ; 250 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 256 Nature's unchanging harmony.

 ' 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 5 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 : 1 o For, when the power of imparting joy Is equal to the will, the human soul Requires no other Heaven.' Mob. Much yet remains unscanned. 1 5
 * Turn thee, surpassing Spirit !

