Spirit'I was an infant when my mother wentTo see an atheist burned. She took me there.The dark-robed priests were met around the pile;The multitude was gazing silently;And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien,Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye,Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth;The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs;His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon;His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept.'Weep not, child!' cried my mother, 'for that manHas said, There is no God.''
FAIRY'There is no God!Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed.Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race,His ceaseless generations, tell their tale;Let every part depending on the chainThat links it to the whole, point to the handThat grasps its term! Let every seed that fallsIn silent eloquence unfold its store Of argument; infinity within,Infinity without, belie creation;The exterminable spirit it containsIs Nature's only God; but human prideIs skilful to invent most serious namesTo hide its ignorance.'The name of GodHas fenced about all crime with holiness,Himself the creature of his worshippers,Whose names and attributes and passions change,Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord, Even with the human dupes who build his shrines,Still serving o'er the war-polluted worldFor desolation's watchword; whether hostsStain his death-blushing chariot-wheels, as onTriumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raiseA sacred hymn to mingle with the groans;Or countless partners of his power divideHis tyranny to weakness; or the smokeOf burning towns, the cries of female helplessness,Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy,Horribly massacred, ascend to heavenIn honor of his name; or, last and worst,Earth groans beneath religion's iron age,And priests dare babble of a God of peace,Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood,Murdering the while, uprooting every germOf truth, exterminating, spoiling all,Making the earth a slaughter-house!
'O Spirit! through the senseBy which thy inner nature was apprisedOf outward shows, vague dreams have rolled,And varied reminiscences have wakedTablets that never fade;All things have been imprinted there,The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky,Even the unshapeliest lineamentsOf wild and fleeting visionsHave left a record thereTo testify of earth.
'These are my empire, for to me is given The wonders of the human world to keep,And fancy's thin creations to endowWith manner, being and reality;Therefore a wondrous phantom from the dreamsOf human error's dense and purblind faithI will evoke, to meet thy questioning.Ahasuerus, rise!'
A strange and woe-worn wightArose beside the battlement,And stood unmoving there.His inessential figure cast no shadeUpon the golden floor;His port and mien bore mark of many years,And chronicles of untold ancientnessWere legible within his beamless eye;Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth;Freshness and vigor knit his manly frame;The wisdom of old age was mingled thereWith youth's primeval dauntlessness;And inexpressible woe,Chastened by fearless resignation, gaveAn awful grace to his all-speaking brow.
SPIRIT'Is there a God?'
AHASUERUS'Is there a God!-ay, an almighty God,And vengeful as almighty! Once his voiceWas heard on earth; earth shuddered at the sound;The fiery-visaged firmament expressedAbhorrence, and the grave of Nature yawnedTo swallow all the dauntless and the goodThat dared to hurl defiance at his throne, Girt as it was with power. None but slavesSurvived,-cold-blooded slaves, who did the workOf tyrannous omnipotence; whose soulsNo honest indignation ever urgedTo elevated daring, to one deedWhich gross and sensual self did not pollute.These slaves built temples for the omnipotent fiend,Gorgeous and vast; the costly altars smokedWith human blood, and hideous pæans rungThrough all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heardHis voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and artsHad raised him to his eminence in power,Accomplice of omnipotence in crimeAnd confidant of the all-knowing one.These were Jehovah's words.
''From an eternity of idlenessI, God, awoke; in seven days' toil made earthFrom nothing; rested, and created man;I placed him in a paradise, and therePlanted the tree of evil, so that he Might eat and perish, and my soul procureWherewith to sate its malice and to turn,Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth,All misery to my fame. The race of men,Chosen to my honor, with impunityMay sate the lusts I planted in their heart.Here I command thee hence to lead them on,Until with hardened feet their conquering troopsWade on the promised soil through woman's blood,And make my name be dreaded through the land.Yet ever-burning flame and ceaseless woeShall be the doom of their eternal souls,With every soul on this ungrateful earth,Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong,-even allShall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge(Which you, to men, call justice) of their God.'
'The murderer's browQuivered with horror.
''God omnipotent,Is there no mercy? must our punishmentBe endless? will long ages roll away, And see no term? Oh! wherefore hast thou madeIn mockery and wrath this evil earth?Mercy becomes the powerful-be but just!O God! repent and save!'
''One way remains:I will beget a son and he shall bearThe sins of all the world; he shall ariseIn an unnoticed corner of the earth,And there shall die upon a cross, and purgeThe universal crime; so that the fewOn whom my grace descends, those who are marked As vessels to the honor of their God,May credit this strange sacrifice and saveTheir souls alive. Millions shall live and die,Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name,But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave,Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale,Such as the nurses frighten babes withal;These in a gulf of anguish and of flameShall curse their reprobation endlessly,Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow, Even on their beds of torment where they howl,My honor and the justice of their doom.What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughtsOf purity, with radiant genius brightOr lit with human reason's earthly ray?Many are called, but few will I elect.Do thou my bidding, Moses!'
'Even the murderer's cheekWas blanched with horror, and his quivering lipsScarce faintly uttered-'O almighty one,I tremble and obey!'
'O Spirit! centuries have set their sealOn this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain,Since the Incarnate came; humbly he came,Veiling his horrible Godhead in the shapeOf man, scorned by the world, his name unheardSave by the rabble of his native town,Even as a parish demagogue. He ledThe crowd; he taught them justice, truth and peace,In semblance; but he lit within their soulsThe quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword He brought on earth to satiate with the bloodOf truth and freedom his malignant soulAt length his mortal frame was led to death.I stood beside him; on the torturing crossNo pain assailed his unterrestrial sense;And yet he groaned. Indignantly I summedThe massacres and miseries which his nameHad sanctioned in my country, and I cried,'Go! go!' in mockery.A smile of godlike malice reilluminedHis fading lineaments. 'I go,' he cried,'But thou shalt wander o'er the unquiet earthEternally.' The dampness of the graveBathed my imperishable front. I fell,And long lay tranced upon the charmèd soil.When I awoke hell burned within my brainWhich staggered on its seat; for all aroundThe mouldering relics of my kindred lay,Even as the Almighty's ire arrested them,And in their various attitudes of death My murdered children's mute and eyeless skullsGlared ghastily upon me.
But my soul,From sight and sense of the polluting woeOf tyranny, had long learned to preferHell's freedom to the servitude of heaven.Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly beganMy lonely and unending pilgrimage,Resolved to wage unweariable warWith my almighty tyrant and to hurlDefiance at his impotence to harm Beyond the curse I bore. The very hand,That barred my passage to the peaceful grave,Has crushed the earth to misery, and givenIts empire to the chosen of his slaves.These I have seen, even from the earliest dawnOf weak, unstable and precarious power,Then preaching peace, as now they practise war;So, when they turned but from the massacreOf unoffending infidels to quenchTheir thirst for ruin in the very blood That flowed in their own veins, and pitiless zealFroze every human feeling as the wifeSheathed in her husband's heart the sacred steel,Even whilst its hopes were dreaming of her love;And friends to friends, brothers to brothers stoodOpposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war,Scarce satiable by fate's last death-draught, waged,Drunk from the wine-press of the Almighty's wrath;Whilst the red cross, in mockery of peace,Pointed to victory! When the fray was done, No remnant of the exterminated faithSurvived to tell its ruin, but the flesh,With putrid smoke poisoning the atmosphere,That rotted on the half-extinguished pile.
'Yes! I have seen God's worshippers unsheatheThe sword of his revenge, when grace descended,Confirming all unnatural impulses,To sanctify their desolating deeds;And frantic priests waved the ill-omened crossO'er the unhappy earth; then shone the sunOn showers of gore from the upflashing steelOf safe assassination, and all crimeMade stingless by the spirits of the Lord,And blood-red rainbows canopied the land.
'Spirit! no year of my eventful beingHas passed unstained by crime and misery,Which flows from God's own faith. I 've marked his slavesWith tongues, whose lies are venomous, beguileThe insensate mob, and, whilst one hand was redWith murder, feign to stretch the other out For brotherhood and peace; and that they nowBabble of love and mercy, whilst their deedsAre marked with all the narrowness and crimeThat freedom's young arm dare not yet chastise,Reason may claim our gratitude, who now,Establishing the imperishable throneOf truth and stubborn virtue, maketh vainThe unprevailing malice of my foe,Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave,Adds impotent eternities to pain, Whilst keenest disappointment racks his breastTo see the smiles of peace around them play,To frustrate or to sanctify their doom.
'Thus have I stood,-through a wild waste of yearsStruggling with whirlwinds of mad agony,Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined,Mocking my powerless tyrant's horrible curseWith stubborn and unalterable will,Even as a giant oak, which heaven's fierce flameHad scathèd in the wilderness, to stand A monument of fadeless ruin there;Yet peacefully and movelessly it bravesThe midnight conflict of the wintry storm,As in the sunlight's calm it spreadsIts worn and withered arms on highTo meet the quiet of a summer's noon.'
The Fairy waved her wand;Ahasuerus fledFast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist,That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove, Flee from the morning beam;-The matter of which dreams are madeNot more endowed with actual lifeThan this phantasmal portraitureOf wandering human thought.
FAIRY'There is no God!Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed.Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race,His ceaseless generations, tell their tale;Let every part depending on the chainThat links it to the whole, point to the handThat grasps its term! Let every seed that fallsIn silent eloquence unfold its store Of argument; infinity within,Infinity without, belie creation;The exterminable spirit it containsIs Nature's only God; but human prideIs skilful to invent most serious namesTo hide its ignorance.'The name of GodHas fenced about all crime with holiness,Himself the creature of his worshippers,Whose names and attributes and passions change,Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord, Even with the human dupes who build his shrines,Still serving o'er the war-polluted worldFor desolation's watchword; whether hostsStain his death-blushing chariot-wheels, as onTriumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raiseA sacred hymn to mingle with the groans;Or countless partners of his power divideHis tyranny to weakness; or the smokeOf burning towns, the cries of female helplessness,Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy,Horribly massacred, ascend to heavenIn honor of his name; or, last and worst,Earth groans beneath religion's iron age,And priests dare babble of a God of peace,Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood,Murdering the while, uprooting every germOf truth, exterminating, spoiling all,Making the earth a slaughter-house!
'O Spirit! through the senseBy which thy inner nature was apprisedOf outward shows, vague dreams have rolled,And varied reminiscences have wakedTablets that never fade;All things have been imprinted there,The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky,Even the unshapeliest lineamentsOf wild and fleeting visionsHave left a record thereTo testify of earth.
'These are my empire, for to me is given The wonders of the human world to keep,And fancy's thin creations to endowWith manner, being and reality;Therefore a wondrous phantom from the dreamsOf human error's dense and purblind faithI will evoke, to meet thy questioning.Ahasuerus, rise!'
A strange and woe-worn wightArose beside the battlement,And stood unmoving there.His inessential figure cast no shadeUpon the golden floor;His port and mien bore mark of many years,And chronicles of untold ancientnessWere legible within his beamless eye;Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth;Freshness and vigor knit his manly frame;The wisdom of old age was mingled thereWith youth's primeval dauntlessness;And inexpressible woe,Chastened by fearless resignation, gaveAn awful grace to his all-speaking brow.
SPIRIT'Is there a God?'
AHASUERUS'Is there a God!-ay, an almighty God,And vengeful as almighty! Once his voiceWas heard on earth; earth shuddered at the sound;The fiery-visaged firmament expressedAbhorrence, and the grave of Nature yawnedTo swallow all the dauntless and the goodThat dared to hurl defiance at his throne, Girt as it was with power. None but slavesSurvived,-cold-blooded slaves, who did the workOf tyrannous omnipotence; whose soulsNo honest indignation ever urgedTo elevated daring, to one deedWhich gross and sensual self did not pollute.These slaves built temples for the omnipotent fiend,Gorgeous and vast; the costly altars smokedWith human blood, and hideous pæans rungThrough all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heardHis voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and artsHad raised him to his eminence in power,Accomplice of omnipotence in crimeAnd confidant of the all-knowing one.These were Jehovah's words.
''From an eternity of idlenessI, God, awoke; in seven days' toil made earthFrom nothing; rested, and created man;I placed him in a paradise, and therePlanted the tree of evil, so that he Might eat and perish, and my soul procureWherewith to sate its malice and to turn,Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth,All misery to my fame. The race of men,Chosen to my honor, with impunityMay sate the lusts I planted in their heart.Here I command thee hence to lead them on,Until with hardened feet their conquering troopsWade on the promised soil through woman's blood,And make my name be dreaded through the land.Yet ever-burning flame and ceaseless woeShall be the doom of their eternal souls,With every soul on this ungrateful earth,Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong,-even allShall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge(Which you, to men, call justice) of their God.'
'The murderer's browQuivered with horror.
''God omnipotent,Is there no mercy? must our punishmentBe endless? will long ages roll away, And see no term? Oh! wherefore hast thou madeIn mockery and wrath this evil earth?Mercy becomes the powerful-be but just!O God! repent and save!'
''One way remains:I will beget a son and he shall bearThe sins of all the world; he shall ariseIn an unnoticed corner of the earth,And there shall die upon a cross, and purgeThe universal crime; so that the fewOn whom my grace descends, those who are marked As vessels to the honor of their God,May credit this strange sacrifice and saveTheir souls alive. Millions shall live and die,Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name,But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave,Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale,Such as the nurses frighten babes withal;These in a gulf of anguish and of flameShall curse their reprobation endlessly,Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow, Even on their beds of torment where they howl,My honor and the justice of their doom.What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughtsOf purity, with radiant genius brightOr lit with human reason's earthly ray?Many are called, but few will I elect.Do thou my bidding, Moses!'
'Even the murderer's cheekWas blanched with horror, and his quivering lipsScarce faintly uttered-'O almighty one,I tremble and obey!'
'O Spirit! centuries have set their sealOn this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain,Since the Incarnate came; humbly he came,Veiling his horrible Godhead in the shapeOf man, scorned by the world, his name unheardSave by the rabble of his native town,Even as a parish demagogue. He ledThe crowd; he taught them justice, truth and peace,In semblance; but he lit within their soulsThe quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword He brought on earth to satiate with the bloodOf truth and freedom his malignant soulAt length his mortal frame was led to death.I stood beside him; on the torturing crossNo pain assailed his unterrestrial sense;And yet he groaned. Indignantly I summedThe massacres and miseries which his nameHad sanctioned in my country, and I cried,'Go! go!' in mockery.A smile of godlike malice reilluminedHis fading lineaments. 'I go,' he cried,'But thou shalt wander o'er the unquiet earthEternally.' The dampness of the graveBathed my imperishable front. I fell,And long lay tranced upon the charmèd soil.When I awoke hell burned within my brainWhich staggered on its seat; for all aroundThe mouldering relics of my kindred lay,Even as the Almighty's ire arrested them,And in their various attitudes of death My murdered children's mute and eyeless skullsGlared ghastily upon me.
But my soul,From sight and sense of the polluting woeOf tyranny, had long learned to preferHell's freedom to the servitude of heaven.Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly beganMy lonely and unending pilgrimage,Resolved to wage unweariable warWith my almighty tyrant and to hurlDefiance at his impotence to harm Beyond the curse I bore. The very hand,That barred my passage to the peaceful grave,Has crushed the earth to misery, and givenIts empire to the chosen of his slaves.These I have seen, even from the earliest dawnOf weak, unstable and precarious power,Then preaching peace, as now they practise war;So, when they turned but from the massacreOf unoffending infidels to quenchTheir thirst for ruin in the very blood That flowed in their own veins, and pitiless zealFroze every human feeling as the wifeSheathed in her husband's heart the sacred steel,Even whilst its hopes were dreaming of her love;And friends to friends, brothers to brothers stoodOpposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war,Scarce satiable by fate's last death-draught, waged,Drunk from the wine-press of the Almighty's wrath;Whilst the red cross, in mockery of peace,Pointed to victory! When the fray was done, No remnant of the exterminated faithSurvived to tell its ruin, but the flesh,With putrid smoke poisoning the atmosphere,That rotted on the half-extinguished pile.
'Yes! I have seen God's worshippers unsheatheThe sword of his revenge, when grace descended,Confirming all unnatural impulses,To sanctify their desolating deeds;And frantic priests waved the ill-omened crossO'er the unhappy earth; then shone the sunOn showers of gore from the upflashing steelOf safe assassination, and all crimeMade stingless by the spirits of the Lord,And blood-red rainbows canopied the land.
'Spirit! no year of my eventful beingHas passed unstained by crime and misery,Which flows from God's own faith. I 've marked his slavesWith tongues, whose lies are venomous, beguileThe insensate mob, and, whilst one hand was redWith murder, feign to stretch the other out For brotherhood and peace; and that they nowBabble of love and mercy, whilst their deedsAre marked with all the narrowness and crimeThat freedom's young arm dare not yet chastise,Reason may claim our gratitude, who now,Establishing the imperishable throneOf truth and stubborn virtue, maketh vainThe unprevailing malice of my foe,Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave,Adds impotent eternities to pain, Whilst keenest disappointment racks his breastTo see the smiles of peace around them play,To frustrate or to sanctify their doom.
'Thus have I stood,-through a wild waste of yearsStruggling with whirlwinds of mad agony,Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined,Mocking my powerless tyrant's horrible curseWith stubborn and unalterable will,Even as a giant oak, which heaven's fierce flameHad scathèd in the wilderness, to stand A monument of fadeless ruin there;Yet peacefully and movelessly it bravesThe midnight conflict of the wintry storm,As in the sunlight's calm it spreadsIts worn and withered arms on highTo meet the quiet of a summer's noon.'
The Fairy waved her wand;Ahasuerus fledFast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist,That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove, Flee from the morning beam;-The matter of which dreams are madeNot more endowed with actual lifeThan this phantasmal portraitureOf wandering human thought.
About the author
Percy Bysshe Shelley
324 works
About the poet
Shelley, born the heir to rich estates and the son of an Member of Parliament, went to University College, Oxford in 1810, but in March of the following year he and a friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, were both expelled for the suspected authorship of a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism.
In 1811 he met and eloped to Edinburgh with Harriet Westbrook and, one year later, went with her and her older sister first to Dublin, then to Devon and North Wales, where they stayed for six months into 1813. However, by 1814, and with the birth of two children, their marriage had collapsed and Shelley eloped once again, this time with Mary Godwin.
Along with Mary's step-sister, the couple travelled to France, Switzerland and Germany before returning to London where he took a house with Mary on the edge of Great Windsor Park and wrote Alastor (1816), the poem that first brought him fame.
In 1816 Shelley spent the summer on Lake Geneva with Byron and Mary who had begun work on her Frankenstein. In the autumn of that year Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine in Hyde Park and Shelley then married Mary and settled with her, in 1817, at Great Marlow, on the Thames. They later travelled to Italy, where Shelley wrote the sonnet Ozymandias (written 1818) and translated Plato's Symposium from the Greek. Shelley himself drowned in a sailing accident in 1822.
g, were both expelled for the suspected authorship of a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism.<
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