Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/78

XXXIII.

Such is this conflict—when mankind doth strive
With its oppressors in a strife of blood,
Or when free thoughts, like lightnings, are alive;
And in each bosom of the multitude
Justice and truth with custom’s hydra brood
Wage silent war;—when priests and kings dissemble
In smiles or frowns their fierce disquietude,
When round pure hearts a host of hopes assemble,
The Snake and Eagle meet—the world’s foundations tremble!
XXXIV.

Thou hast beheld that fight—when to thy home
Thou dost return, steep not its hearth in tears;
Though thou mayst hear that earth is now become
The tyrant’s garbage, which to his compeers,
The vile reward of their dishonor’d years,
He will dividing give.—The victor Fiend,
Omnipotent of yore, now quails, and fears
His triumph dearly won, which soon will lend
An impulse swift and sure to his approaching end.
XXXV.

List, stranger, list! mine is a human form,
Like that thou wearest—touch me—shrink not now!
My hand thou feel’st is not a ghost’s, but warm
With human blood.—’Twas many years ago,
Since first my thirsting soul aspired to know
The secrets of this wondrous world, when deep
My heart was pierced with sympathy, for woe
Which could not be mine own—and thought did keep
In dream, unnatural watch beside an infant’s sleep.
XXXVI.

Woe could not be mine own, since far from men
I dwelt, a free and happy orphan child,
By the sea-shore, in a deep mountain glen;
And near the waves, and through the forests wild,
I roam’d, to storm and darkness reconciled:
For I was calm while tempest shook the sky:
But when the breathless heavens in beauty smiled,
I wept, sweet tears, yet too tumultuously
For peace, and clasp’d my hands aloft in ecstasy.
XXXVII.

These were forebodings of my fate—before
A woman’s heart beat in my virgin breast
It had been nurtured in divinest lore:
A dying poet gave me books, and blest
With wild but holy talk the sweet unrest