SHELLEY'S CENTENARY

Within a narrow span of time,

Three princes of the realm of rhyme,

At height of youth or manhood's prime,

From earth took wing,

To join the fellowship sublime

Who, dead, yet sing.

He, first, his earliest wreath who wove

Of laurel grown in Latmian grove,

Conquered by pain and hapless love

Found calmer home,

Roofed by the heaven that glows above

Eternal Rome.

A fierier soul, its own fierce prey,

And cumbered with more mortal clay,

At Missolonghi flamed away,

And left the air

Reverberating to this day

Its loud despair.

Alike remote from Byron's scorn,

And Keats's magic as of morn

Bursting for ever newly-born

On forests old,

Waking a hoary world forlorn

With touch of gold,

Shelley, the cloud-begot, who grew

Nourished on air and sun and dew,

Into that Essence whence he drew

His life and lyre

Was fittingly resolved anew

Through wave and fire.

‘ Twas like his rapid soul!‘ Twas meet

That he, who brooked not Time's slow feet,

With passage thus abrupt and fleet

Should hurry hence,

Eager the Great Perhaps to greet

With Why? and Whence?

Impatient of the world's fixed way,

He ne'er could suffer God's delay,

But all the future in a day

Would build divine,

And the whole past in ruins lay,

An emptied shrine.

Vain vision! but the glow, the fire,

The passion of benign desire,

The glorious yearning, lift him higher

Than many a soul

That mounts a million paces nigher

Its meaner goal.

And power is his, if naught besides,

In that thin ether where he rides,

Above the roar of human tides

To ascend afar,

Lost in a storm of light that hides

His dizzy car.

Below, the unhastening world toils on,

And here and there are victories won,

Some dragon slain, some justice done,

While, through the skies,

A meteor rushing on the sun,

He flares and dies.

But, as he cleaves yon ether clear

Notes from the unattempted Sphere

He scatters to the enchanted ear

Of earth's dim throng,

Whose dissonance doth more endear

The showering song.

In other shapes than he forecast

The world is moulded: his fierce blast,—

His wild assault upon the Past,—

These things are vain;

Revolt is transient: what must last

Is that pure strain,

Which seems the wandering voices blent

Of every virgin element,—

A sound from ocean caverns sent,—

An airy call

From the pavilioned firmament

O'erdoming all.

And in this world of worldlings, where

Souls rust in apathy, and ne'er

A great emotion shakes the air,

And life flags tame,

And rare is noble impulse, rare

The impassioned aim,

‘ Tis no mean fortune to have heard

A singer who, if errors blurred

His sight, had yet a spirit stirred

By vast desire,

And ardour fledging the swift word

With plumes of fire.

A creature of impetuous breath,

Our torpor deadlier than death

He knew not; whatsoe'er he saith

Flashes with life:

He spurreth men, he quickeneth

To splendid strife.

And in his gusts of song he brings

Wild odours shaken from strange wings,

And unfamiliar whisperings

From far lips blown,

While all the rapturous heart of things

Throbs through his own,—

His own that from the burning pyre

One who had loved his wind-swept lyre

Out of the sharp teeth of the fire

Unmolten drew,

Beside the sea that in her ire

Smote him and slew.