Queen Mab

A Philosophical Poem (in 9 parts) 

1813

Percy Bysshe Shelley  (1792-1822)

III

'Fairy!' the Spirit said,

 And on the Queen of Spells

 Fixed her ethereal eyes,

 'I thank thee. Thou hast given

 A boon which I will not resign, and taught

 A lesson not to be unlearned. I know

 The past, and thence I will essay to glean

 A warning for the future, so that man

 May profit by his errors and derive

 Experience from his folly;   10

 For, when the power of imparting joy

 Is equal to the will, the human soul

 Requires no other heaven.'

MAB

 'Turn thee, surpassing Spirit!

 Much yet remains unscanned.

 Thou knowest how great is man,

 Thou knowest his imbecility;

 Yet learn thou what he is;

 Yet learn the lofty destiny

 Which restless Time prepares   20

 For every living soul.

1. 'Behold a gorgeous palace that amid

2. Yon populous city rears its thousand towers

3. And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops

4. Of sentinels in stern and silent ranks

5. Encompass it around; the dweller there

6. Cannot be free and happy; hearest thou not

7. The curses of the fatherless, the groans

8. Of those who have no friend? He passes on--

9. The King, the wearer of a gilded chain  30

10. That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool

11. Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave

12. Even to the basest appetites--that man

13. Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles

14. At the deep curses which the destitute

15. Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy

16. Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan

17. But for those morsels which his wantonness

18. Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save

19. All that they love from famine; when he hears  40

20. The tale of horror, to some ready-made face

 Of hypocritical assent he turns,

 Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him,

 Flushes his bloated cheek.

  Now to the meal

 Of silence, grandeur and excess he drags

 His palled unwilling appetite. If gold,

 Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled

 From every clime could force the loathing sense

 To overcome satiety,--if wealth

 The spring it draws from poisons not,--or vice,  50

 Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not

 Its food to deadliest venom; then that king

 Is happy; and the peasant who fulfils

 His unforced task, when he returns at even

 And by the blazing fagot meets again

 Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped,

 Tastes not a sweeter meal.

  Behold him now

 Stretched on the gorgeous couch; his fevered brain

 Reels dizzily awhile; but ah! too soon

 The slumber of intemperance subsides,  60

 And conscience, that undying serpent, calls

 Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task.

 Listen! he speaks! oh! mark that frenzied eye--

 Oh! mark that deadly visage!'

KING

   'No cessation!

 Oh! must this last forever! Awful death,

 I wish, yet fear to clasp thee!--Not one moment

 Of dreamless sleep! O dear and blessèd Peace,

 Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity

 In penury and dungeons? Wherefore lurkest

 With danger, death, and solitude; yet shun'st  70

 The palace I have built thee? Sacred Peace!

 Oh, visit me but once,--but pitying shed

 One drop of balm upon my withered soul!'

THE FAIRY

 'Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart,

 And Peace defileth not her snowy robes

 In such a shed as thine. Hark! yet he mutters;

 His slumbers are but varied agonies;

 They prey like scorpions on the springs of life.

 There needeth not the hell that bigots frame

 To punish those who err; earth in itself  80

 Contains at once the evil and the cure;

 And all-sufficing Nature can chastise

 Those who transgress her law; she only knows

 How justly to proportion to the fault

 The punishment it merits.

  Is it strange

 That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe?

 Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug

 The scorpion that consumes him? Is it strange

 That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns,

 Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured  90

 Within a splendid prison whose stern bounds

 Shut him from all that's good or dear on earth,

 His soul asserts not its humanity?

 That man's mild nature rises not in war

 Against a king's employ? No--'tis not strange.

 He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts, and lives

 Just as his father did; the unconquered powers

 Of precedent and custom interpose

 Between a king and virtue. Stranger yet,

 To those who know not Nature nor deduce  100

 The future from the present, it may seem,

 That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes

 Of this unnatural being, not one wretch,

 Whose children famish and whose nuptial bed

 Is earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm

 To dash him from his throne!

   Those gilded flies

 That, basking in the sunshine of a court,

 Fatten on its corruption! what are they?--

 The drones of the community; they feed

 On the mechanic's labor; the starved hind  110

 For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield

 Its unshared harvests; and yon squalid form,

 Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes

 A sunless life in the unwholesome mine,

 Drags out in labor a protracted death

 To glut their grandeur; many faint with toil

 That few may know the cares and woe of sloth.

 Whence, thinkest thou, kings and parasites arose?

 Whence that unnatural line of drones who heap

 Toil and unvanquishable penury   120

 On those who build their palaces and bring

 Their daily bread?--From vice, black loathsome vice;

 From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong;

 From all that genders misery, and makes

 Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust,

 Revenge, and murder.--And when reason's voice,

 Loud as the voice of Nature, shall have waked

 The nations; and mankind perceive that vice

 Is discord, war and misery; that virtue

 Is peace and happiness and harmony;  130

 When man's maturer nature shall disdain

 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,

 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 vain-glorious mighty of the earth

 Seek to eternize? Oh! the faintest sound  140

 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

 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 trembling judge

 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 appall 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

 Call to their minds and tremble, the remembrance

 With which the happy spirit contemplates

 Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth,

 Shall never pass away.

 'Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;  170

 The subject, not the citizen; for kings

 And subjects, mutual foes, forever play

 A losing game into each other's hands,

 Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man

 Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.

 Power, like a desolating pestilence,

 Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,

 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,--

 Thinkest thou his grandeur had not overcome

 The force of human kindness? And when Rome

 With one stern blow hurled not the tyrant down,

 Crushed not the arm red with her dearest blood,  190

 Had not submissive abjectness destroyed

 Nature's suggestions?

  Look on yonder earth:

 The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun

 Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees,

 Arise in due succession; all things speak

 Peace, harmony and love. The universe,

 In Nature's silent eloquence, declares

 That all fulfil the works of love and joy,--

 All but the outcast, Man. He fabricates

 The sword which stabs his peace; he cherisheth  200

 The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up

 The tyrant whose delight is in his woe,

 Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun,

 Lights it the great alone? Yon silver beams,

 Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch

 Than on the dome of kings? Is mother earth

 A step-dame to her numerous sons who earn

 Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil;

 A mother only to those puling babes

 Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men  210

 The playthings of their babyhood and mar

 In self-important childishness that peace

 Which men alone appreciate?

 'Spirit of Nature, no!

 The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs

 Alike in every human heart.

 Thou aye erectest there

 Thy throne of power unappealable;

 Thou art the judge beneath whose nod

 Man's brief and frail authority   220

 Is powerless as the wind

 That passeth idly by;

 Thine the tribunal which surpasseth

 The show of human justice

 As God surpasses man!

 'Spirit of Nature! thou

 Life of interminable multitudes;

 Soul of those mighty spheres

 Whose changeless paths through Heaven's deep silence lie;

 Soul of that smallest being,   230

 The dwelling of whose life

 Is one faint April sun-gleam;--

 Man, like these passive things,

 Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth;

 Like theirs, his age of endless peace,

 Which time is fast maturing,

 Will swiftly, surely, come;

 And the unbounded frame which thou pervadest,

 Will be without a flaw

 Marring its perfect symmetry!   240