III.

"The many ships spotting the dark blue deep
With snowy sails, fled fast as our's came nigh,
In fear and wonder; and on every steep
Thousands did gaze, they heard the startling cry,
Like earth's own voice lifted unconquerably
To all her children, the unbounded mirth,
The glorious joy of thy name-Liberty!

They heard!-As o'er the mountains of the earth From peak to peak leap on the beams of morning's birth:

IV.

"So from that cry over the boundless hills,
Sudden was caught one universal sound,
Like a volcano's voice, whose thunder fills
Remotest skies, such glorious madness found

A path thro' human hearts with stream which drowned
Its struggling fears and cares, dark Custom's1 brood,
They knew not whence it came, but felt around
A wide contagion poured-they called aloud
On Liberty-that name lived on the sunny flood.

V.

"We reached the port-alas! from many spirits
The wisdom which had waked that cry, was fled,
Like the brief glory which dark Heaven inherits
From the false dawn, which fades ere2 it is spread,
Upon the night's devouring darkness shed:

Yet soon bright day will burst-even like a chasm
Of fire, to burn the shrouds outworn and dead,
Which wrap the world; a wide enthusiasm,

To cleanse the fevered world as with an earthquake's spasm!

1 In Shelley's edition custom, though obviously used personally, is given again with a small c.

2 In Shelley's edition we read e'er for ere.

VI.

"I walked thro' the great City then, but free From shame or fear; those toil-worn Mariners And happy Maidens did encompass me; And like a subterranean wind that stirs Some forest among caves, the hopes and fears From every human soul, a murmur strange Made as I past; and many wept, with tears Of joy and awe, and wingèd thoughts did range, And half-extinguished words, which prophesied of change.

VII.

"For, with strong speech I tore the veil that hid
Nature, and Truth, and Liberty, and Love,-
As one who from some mountain's pyramid,
Points to the unrisen sun!-the shades approve
His truth, and flee from every stream and grove.
Thus, gentle thoughts did many a bosom fill,-
Wisdom, the mail of tried affections wove
For many a heart, and tameless scorn of ill,
Thrice steeped in molten steel the unconquerable will.

VIII.

--

Some said I was a maniac wild and lost;
Some, that I scarce had risen from the grave
The Prophet's virgin bride, a heavenly ghost :-
Some said, I was a fiend from my weird cave,
Who had stolen human shape, and o'er the wave,
The forest, and the mountain came;-some said
I was the child of God, sent down to save
Women from bonds and death, and on my head
The burthen of their sins would frightfully be laid.

IX.

"But soon my human words found sympathy In human hearts: the purest and the best,

As friend with friend made common cause with me, And they were few, but resolute;-the rest,

Ere yet success the enterprise had blest,

Leagued with me in their hearts; their meals, their slumber, Their hourly occupations were possest

By hopes which I had armed1 to overnumber2

Those hosts of meaner cares, which life's strong wings encumber.

X.

"But chiefly women, whom my voice did waken

From their cold, careless, willing slavery,

Sought me one truth their dreary prison has3 shaken,

They looked around, and lo! they became free!
Their many tyrants sitting desolately

In slave-deserted halls, could none restrain;
For wrath's red fire had withered in the eye,

Whose lightning once was death,-nor fear, nor gain
Could tempt one captive now to lock another's chain.

XI.

"Those who were sent to bind me, wept, and felt
Their minds outsoar the bonds which clasped them round,
Even as a waxen shape may waste and melt
In the white furnace; and a visioned swound,
A pause of hope and awe the City bound,
Which, like the silence of a tempest's birth,
When in its awful shadow it has wound

The sun, the wind, the ocean, and the earth,
Hung terrible, ere yet the lightnings have leapt forth.

1 In Shelley's edition, arm'd.

2 There is a comma at overnumber in Shelley's edition.

3 So in all editions known to me; but I suspect has is a misprint for had.

XII.

"Like clouds inwoven in the silent sky,
By winds from distant regions meeting there,
In the high name of truth and liberty,
Around the City millions gathered were,

By hopes which sprang from many a hidden lair
Words, which the lore of truth in hues of flame1
Arrayed, thine own wild songs which in the air
Like homeless odours floated, and the name

Of thee, and many a tongue which thou hadst dipped in flame.

XIII.

"The Tyrant knew his power was gone, but Fear,
The nurse of Vengeance, bade him wait the event-
That perfidy and custom, gold and prayer,
And whatsoe'er, when force is impotent,
To fraud the scepter of the world has lent,
Might, as he judged, confirm his failing sway.
Therefore throughout the streets, the Priests he sent

To curse the rebels. To their God did they

For Earthquake, Plague, and Want, kneel in the public way.

XIV.

"And grave and hoary men were bribed to tell
From seats where law is made the slave of wrong,
How glorious Athens in her splendour fell,
Because her sons were free,-and that among

1 In all preceding editions known to me this expression is hues of grace; but, as the sense and the metre are both defective under that reading, I am convinced that grace is a misprint for flame. Shelley would hardly refer to colours as graceful, and these songs of Laon, inciting to revolution, would have more to do with fire than with grace. The fact that flame has

to do double duty as a rhyme in this stanza does not materially affect the question, as there are other like instances as in stanza XXXIV of this Canto (p. 256), and stanza III of Canto VI (p. 198). See note on metric irregularities at p. 93.

2 God is replaced by gods in The Revolt of Islam.

Mankind, the many to the few belong,

By God, and Nature, and Necessity.

They said, that age was truth, and that the young
Marred with wild hopes the peace of slavery,

With which old times and men had quelled the vain and free.

XV.2

"And with the falsehood of their poisonous lips

They breathed on the enduring memory

Of sages and of bards a brief eclipse;

There was one teacher, who, necessity

Had armed, with strength and wrong against mankind,

His slave and his avenger aye to be;

That we were weak and sinful, frail and blind,

And that the will of one was peace, and we

Should seek for nought on earth but toil and misery.

XVI.

'For thus we might avoid the hell hereafter.'
So spake the hypocrites, who cursed and lied;
Alas, their sway was past, and tears and laughter
Clung to their hoary hair, withering the pride
Which in their hollow hearts dared still abide;

1 In The Revolt of Islam we read Hearen instead of God.

2 I leave this stanza as printed in The Revolt of Islam. In Laon and Cythna the stanza has ten lines, and lines 4 to 7 of it read thus :

There was one teacher, and must ever be,
They said, even God, who, the necessity
Of rule and wrong had armed against man-
kind,

His slave and his avenger there to be;

and there can be little doubt that Shelley's attention was called to the passage to get rid of the obnoxious God. The appearance of the page in my copy shews that he was considerably exercised in this particular revision, there being words written in

and smeared out again before he could satisfy himself. It seems incredible that he should have run two lines into one has he did without considering how the process affected the regularity of the metre; and, if he had not already discovered that it was wrong, he would then do so. He would therefore have artistic reasons for the change made; and no other reasons could exist for the alteration of there to aye in line 6 of the stanza as given in the text. It is not surprising that in the annoyance of the whole business he did not discover that the remodelled stanza was still not Spenserian, inasmuch as lines 4 and 5 do not rhyme.