The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 695 pages of information about The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 1.

The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 695 pages of information about The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 1.

...

The Aurora of the nations.  By this brow
Whose pores wept tears of blood, by these wide wounds,
By this imperial crown of agony,
By infamy and solitude and death, 90
For this I underwent, and by the pain
Of pity for those who would ... for me
The unremembered joy of a revenge,
For this I felt—­by Plato’s sacred light,
Of which my spirit was a burning morrow—­
95
By Greece and all she cannot cease to be. 
Her quenchless words, sparks of immortal truth,
Stars of all night—­her harmonies and forms,
Echoes and shadows of what Love adores
In thee, I do compel thee, send forth Fate, 100
Thy irrevocable child:  let her descend,
A seraph-winged Victory [arrayed]
In tempest of the omnipotence of God
Which sweeps through all things.

From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms 105
Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies
To stamp, as on a winged serpent’s seed,
Upon the name of Freedom; from the storm
Of faction, which like earthquake shakes and sickens
The solid heart of enterprise; from all
110
By which the holiest dreams of highest spirits
Are stars beneath the dawn... 
She shall arise
Victorious as the world arose from Chaos! 
And as the Heavens and the Earth arrayed
Their presence in the beauty and the light 115
Of Thy first smile, O Father,—­as they gather
The spirit of Thy love which paves for them
Their path o’er the abyss, till every sphere
Shall be one living Spirit,—­so shall Greece—­

SATAN: 
Be as all things beneath the empyrean, 120
Mine!  Art thou eyeless like old Destiny,
Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns? 
Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed
Which pierces thee! whose throne a chair of scorn;
For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor
125
The innumerable worlds of golden light
Which are my empire, and the least of them
which thou wouldst redeem from me? 
Know’st thou not them my portion? 
Or wouldst rekindle the ... strife 130
Which our great Father then did arbitrate
Which he assigned to his competing sons
Each his apportioned realm? 
Thou Destiny,
Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence
Of Him who tends thee forth, whate’er thy task,
135
Speed, spare not to accomplish, and be mine
Thy trophies, whether Greece again become
The fountain in the desert whence the earth
Shall drink of freedom, which shall give it strength
To suffer, or a gulf of hollow death 140
To swallow all delight, all life, all hope. 
Go, thou Vicegerent of my will, no less

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.