Queen Mab by Percy Bysshe Shelley — Read

‘How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh, / Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear, / Were discord to the speaking quietude / That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault, / Studded with stars unutterably bright, / Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, / Seems like a canopy which love had spread / To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills, / Robed in a garment of untrodden snow; / Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend, / So stainless, that their white and glittering spires / Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon castled steep, / Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower / So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it / A metaphor of peace; -all form a scene / Where musing Solitude might love to lift / Her soul above this sphere of earthliness; / Where Silence undisturbed might watch alone, / So cold, so bright, so still. / The orb of day, / In southern climes, o'er ocean's waveless field / Sinks sweetly smiling: not the faintest breath / Steals o'er the unruffled deep; the clouds of eve / Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day; / And vesper's image on the western main / Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes: / Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass, / Roll o'er the blackened waters; the deep roar / Of distant thunder mutters awfully; / Tempest unfolds its pinion o'er the gloom / That shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend, / With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey; / The torn deep yawns,-the vessel finds a grave / Beneath its jagged gulf. / Ah! whence yon glare / That fires the arch of Heaven! -that dark red smoke / Blotting the silver moon? The stars are quenched / In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow / Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round! / Hark to that roar, whose swift and deaf'ning peals / In countless echoes through the mountains ring, / Startling pale Midnight on her starry throne! / Now swells the intermingling din; the jar / Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb; / The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout, / The ceaseless clangour, and the rush of men / Inebriate with rage: -loud, and more loud / The discord grows; till pale Death shuts the scene, / And o'er the conqueror and the conquered draws / His cold and bloody shroud. -Of all the men / Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there, / In proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts / That beat with anxious life at sunset there; / How few survive, how few are beating now! / All is deep silence, like the fearful calm / That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause; / Save when the frantic wail of widowed love / Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan / With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay / Wrapped round its struggling powers. / The gray morn / Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke / Before the icy wind slow rolls away, / And the bright beams of frosty morning dance / Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood / Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms, / And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments / Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path / Of the outsallying victors: far behind, / Black ashes note where their proud city stood. / Within yon forest is a gloomy glen- / Each tree which guards its darkness from the day, / Waves o'er a warrior's tomb. / I see thee shrink, / Surpassing Spirit! -wert thou human else? / I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet / Across thy stainless features: yet fear not; / This is no unconnected misery, / Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable. / Man's evil nature, that apology / Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up / For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood / Which desolates the discord-wasted land. / From kings, and priests, and statesmen, war arose, / Whose safety is man's deep unbettered woe, / Whose grandeur his debasement. Let the axe / Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall; / And where its venomed exhalations spread / Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay / Quenching the serpent's famine, and their bones / Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast, / A garden shall arise, in loveliness / Surpassing fabled Eden. / Hath Nature's soul, / That formed this world so beautiful, that spread / Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord / Strung to unchanging unison, that gave / The happy birds their dwelling in the grove, / That yielded to the wanderers of the deep / The lovely silence of the unfathomed main, / And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust / With spirit, thought, and love; on Man alone, / Partial in causeless malice, wantonly / Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery; his soul / Blasted with withering curses; placed afar / The meteor-happiness, that shuns his grasp, / But serving on the frightful gulf to glare, / Rent wide beneath his footsteps? / Nature! -no! / Kings, priests, and statesmen, blast the human flower / Even in its tender bud; their influence darts / Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins / Of desolate society. The child, / Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name, / Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts / His baby-sword even in a hero's mood. / This infant-arm becomes the bloodiest scourge / Of devastated earth; whilst specious names, / Learned in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour, / Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims / Bright Reason's ray, and sanctifies the sword / Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood. / Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man / Inherits vice and misery, when Force / And Falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe / Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good. / ‘Ah! to the stranger-soul, when first it peeps / From its new tenement, and looks abroad / For happiness and sympathy, how stern / And desolate a tract is this wide world! / How withered all the buds of natural good! / No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms / Of pitiless power! On its wretched frame, / Poisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe / Heaped on the wretched parent whence it sprung / By morals, law, and custom, the pure winds / Of Heaven, that renovate the insect tribes, / May breathe not. The untainting light of day / May visit not its longings. It is bound / Ere it has life: yea, all the chains are forged / Long ere its being: all liberty and love / And peace is torn from its defencelessness; / Cursed from its birth, even from its cradle doomed / To abjectness and bondage!