Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/794

764 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, 135 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 1 40 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 145 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, 150 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 tremb- ling judge, 155 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 160 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 165 Call to their mind and tremble ; the remembrance With which the happy spirit contem- plates 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, forever play A losing game into eaqh other's hands, Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. 175 Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches ; and obe- dience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, A mechanized automaton. When Nero, 180 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; 186 Think'st thou his grandeur had not overcome The force of human kindness ? and, when Rome,