Watch for the springing flame expectant and aghast. With smiles of tender joy as beam'd from Cythna

A woman? Heaven has sent its other victim here." | A melody, like waves on wrinkled sands that leap.

XXX.
"For me the world is grown too void and cold,
Since hope pursues immortal destiny
With steps thus slow-therefore shall ye behold
How those who love, yet fear not, dare to die;
Tell to your children this!' then suddenly
He sheathed a dagger in his heart, and fell;
My brain grew dark in death, and yet to me
There came a murmur from the crowd, to tell
Of deep and mighty change which suddenly befell.

XXXI.

"Then suddenly I stood a winged Thought
Before the immortal Senate, and the seat
Of that star-shining spirit, whence is wrought
The strength of its dominion, good and great,
The better Genius of this world's estate.
His realm around one mighty Fane is spread,
Elysian islands bright and fortunate,

Calm dwellings of the free and happy dead,
Where I am sent to lead!" these winged words she said,

XXXII.

And with the silence of her eloquent smile,
Bade us embark in her divine canoe ;
Then at the helm we took our seat, the while
Above her head those plumes of dazzling hue
Into the winds' invisible stream she threw,
Sitting beside the prow: like gossamer,
On the swift breath of morn, the vessel flew
O'er the bright whirlpools of that fountain fair,
Whose shores receded fast, whilst we seem'd linger-
ing there;

XXXIII.

Till down that mighty stream dark, calm, and fleet,
Between a chasm of cedar mountains riven,
Chased by the thronging winds whose viewless feet
As swift as twinkling beams, had, under Heaven,
From woods and waves wild sounds and odors driven,
The boat fled visibly-three nights and days,
Borne like a cloud through morn, and noon, and even,
We sail'd along the winding watery ways
Of the vast stream, a long and labyrinthine maze.

XXXIV.

A scene of joy and wonder to behold

That river's shapes and shadows changing ever,
Where the broad sunrise, fill'd with deepening gold,
Its whirlpools, where all hues did spread and quiver,
And where melodious falls did burst and shiver
Among rocks clad with flowers, the foam and spray
Sparkled like stars upon the sunny river,
Or when the moonlight pour'd a holier day,

XL.

The torrent of that wide and raging river
Is past, and our aerial speed suspended.
We look behind; a golden mist did quiver
When its wild surges with the lake were blended:
Our bark hung there, as one line suspended
Between two Heavens, that windless waveless lake;
Which four great cataracts from four vales, attended
By mists, aye feed; from rocks and clouds they break,

One vast and glittering lake around green islands lay. And of that azure sea a silent refuge make.

XXXV.

Morn, noon, and even, that boat of pearl outran
The streams which bore it, like the arrowy cloud
Of tempest, or the speedier thought of man,
Which flieth forth and cannot make abode.
Sometimes through forests, deep like night, we glode,
Between the walls of mighty mountains crown'd
With Cyclopean piles, whose turrets proud,
The homes of the departed, dimly frown'd

XLI.

Motionless resting on the lake awhile,

I saw its marge of snow-bright mountains rear
Their peaks aloft, I saw each radiant isle,
And in the midst, afar, even like a sphere
Hung in one hollow sky, did there appear
The Temple of the Spirit; on the sound
Which issued thence, drawn nearer and more near,
Like the swift moon this glorious earth around,

O'er the bright waves which girt their dark founda- The charmed boat approach'd, and there its haven

The Cenci.

A TRAGEDY, IN FIVE ACTS.

DEDICATION.

TO LEIGH HUNT, ESQ.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

considered a perpetual contamination both of body and mind, at length plotted with her mother-in-law and brother to murder their common tyrant. The young maiden, who was urged to this tremendous deed by an impulse which overpowered its horror, was evidently a most gentle and amiable being; a creature formed to adorn and be admired, and thus violently thwarted from her nature by the necessity of circumstance and opinion. The deed was quickly

I INSCRIBE with your name, from a distant country, and after an absence whose months have seemed years, this the latest of my literary efforts. Those writings which I have hitherto published, discovered; and in spite of the most earnest prayers have been little else than visions which impersonate made to the Pope by the highest persons in Rome, my own apprehensions of the beautiful and the just. the criminals were put to death. The old man had I can also perceive in them the literary defects inci- during his life repeatedly bought his pardon from the dental to youth and impatience; they are dreams of Pope for capital crimes of the most enormous and what ought to be, or may be. The drama which I unspeakable kind, at the price of a hundred thousand now present to you is a sad reality. I lay aside the crowns; the death therefore of his victims can presumptuous attitude of an instructor, and am con- scarcely be accounted for by the love of justice. The tent to paint, with such colors as my own heart fur- Pope, among other motives for severity, probably felt nishes, that which has been. that whoever killed the Count Cenci deprived his Had I known a person more highly endowed than treasury of a certain and copious source of revenue. yourself with all that it becomes a man to possess, IThe Papal Government formerly took the most exhad solicited for this work the ornament of his name. traordinary precautions against the publicity of facts One more gentle, honorable, innocent and brave; one which offer so tragical a demonstration of its own of more exalted toleration for all who do and think wickedness and weakness; so that the communication evil, and yet himself more free from evil; one who of the MS. had become, until very lately, a matter knows better how to receive, and how to confer a of some difficulty. Such a story, if told so as to prebenefit, though he must ever confer far more than he sent to the reader all the feelings of those who once can receive; one of simpler, and, in the highest sense acted it, their hopes and fears, their confidences and of the word, of purer life and manners, I never misgivings, their various interests, passions and opinknew: and I had already been fortunate in friend- ions, acting upon and with each other, yet all conships when your name was added to the list. spiring to one tremendous end, would be as a light to make apparent some of the most dark and secret caverns of the human heart.

In that patient and irreconcilable enmity with domestic and political tyranny and imposture which the tenor of your life has illustrated, and which, had I health and talents, should illustrate mine, let us, comforting each other in our task, live and die.

All happiness attend you!

Your affectionate friend,
PERCY B. SHELLEY.

Rome, May 29, 1819.

PREFACE.

On my arrival at Rome, I found that the story of the Cenci was a subject not to be mentioned in Italian society without awakening a deep and breathless interest; and that the feelings of the company never failed to incline to a romantic pity for the wrongs, and a passionate exculpation of the horrible deed to which they urged her, who has been mingled two centuries with the common dust. All ranks of people knew the outlines of this history, and participated in the overwhelming interest which it seems to have the magic of exciting in the human heart. I had a copy of Guido's picture of Beatrice which is preserved in the Colonna Palace, and my servant instantly recognized it as the portrait of La Cenci.

This national and universal interest which the A MANUSCRIPT was communicated to me during my story produces and has produced for two centuries, travels in Italy which was copied from the archives and among all ranks of people, in a great City, where of the Cenci Palace at Rome, and contains a detailed the imagination is kept for ever active and awake account of the horrors which ended in the extinction first suggested to me the conception of its fitness for of one of the noblest and richest families of that a dramatic purpose. In fact it is a tragedy which has city, during the Pontificate of Clement VIII., in the already received, from its capacity of awakening and year 1599. The story is, that an old man having sustaining the sympathy of men, approbation and spent his life in debauchery and wickedness, conceived success. Nothing remained, as I imagined, but to at length an implacable hatred towards his children; which showed itself towards one daughter under the form of an incestuous passion, aggravated by every circumstance of cruelty and violence. This daughter, after long and vain attempts to escape from what she

clothe it to the apprehensions of my countrymen in such language and action as would bring it home to their hearts. The deepest and the sublimest tragic compositions, King Lear and the two plays in which the tale of Edipus is told, were stories which already

existed in tradition, as matters of popular belief and sary connexion with any one virtue. The most interest, before Shakspeare and Sophocles made them atrocious villain may be rigidly devout, and, without familiar to the sympathy of all succeeding genera- any shock to established faith, confess himself to be tions of mankind, so. Religion pervades intensely the whole frame

This story of the Cenci is indeed eminently fearful of society, and is, according to the temper of the and monstrous: any thing like a dry exhibition of it mind which it inhabits, a passion, a persuasion, an on the stage would be insupportable. The person excuse; a refuge: never a check. Cenci himself who would treat such a subject, must increase the built a chapel in the court of his Palace, and dediideal, and diminish the actual horror of the events, cated it to St. Thomas the Apostle, and established so that the pleasure which arises from the poetry masses for the peace of his soul. Thus in the first which exists in these tempestuous sufferings and scene of the fourth act, Lucretia's design in exposing crimes, may mitigate the pain of the contemplation herself to the consequences of an expostulation with of the moral deformity from which they spring. Cenci after having administered the opiate, was to There must also be nothing attempted to make the induce him by a feigned tale to confess himself beexhibition subservient to what is vulgarly termed a fore death; this being esteemed by Catholics as esmoral purpose. The highest moral purpose aimed at sential to salvation; and she only relinquishes her in the highest species of the drama, is the teaching purpose when she perceives that her perseverance the human heart, through its sympathies and an- would expose Beatrice to new outrages. tipathies, the knowledge of itself; in proportion to I have avoided with great care in writing this the possession of which knowledge, every human play the introduction of what is commonly called being is wise, just, sincere, tolerant, and kind. If mere poetry, and I imagine there will scarcely be dogmas can do more, it is well: but a drama is no fit found a detached simile or a single isolated description, place for the enforcement of them. Undoubtedly, unless Beatrice's description of the chasm appointed no person can be truly dishonored by the act of an- for her father's murder should be judged to be of other; and the fit return to make to the most enor- that nature.* mous injuries is kindness and forbearance, and a In a dramatic composition, the imagery and the resolution to convert the injurer from his dark pas- passion should interpenetrate one another, the former sions by peace and love. Revenge, retaliation, being reserved simply for the full development and atonement, are pernicious mistakes. If Beatrice had illustration of the latter. Imagination is as the imthought in this manner, she would have been wiser mortal God which should assume flesh for the reand better; but she would never have been a tragic demption of mortal passion. It is thus that the most character: the few whom such an exhibition would remote and the most familiar imagery may alike be have interested, could never have been sufficiently fit for dramatic purposes when employed in the ilinterested for a dramatic purpose, from the want of lustration of strong feeling, which raises what is finding sympathy in their interest among the mass low, and levels to the apprehension that which is who surround them. It is in the restless and anato- lofty, casting over all the shadow of its own greatmizing casuistry with which men seek the justification ness. In other respects I have written more careof Beatrice, yet feel that she has done what needs lessly; that is, without an over-fastidious and learned justification; it is in the superstitious horror with which they contemplate alike her wrongs and their revenge, that the dramatic character of what she did and suffered consists.

choice of words. In this respect I entirely agree with those modern critics who assert, that in order to move men to true sympathy we must use the familiar language of men; and that our great ancesI have endeavored as nearly as possible to repre- tors the ancient English poets are the writers, a sent the characters as they probably were, and have study of whom might incite us to do that for our own sought to avoid the error of making them actuated age which they have done for theirs. But it must by my own conceptions of right or wrong, false or be the real language of men in general, and not that true: thus under a thin veil converting names and of any particular class to whose society the writer actions of the sixteenth century into cold imperson- happens to belong. So much for what I have atations of my own mind. They are represented as tempted: I need not be assured that success is a Catholics, and as Catholics deeply tinged with re- very different matter; particularly for one whose ligion. To a Protestant apprehension there will attention has but newly been awakened to the study appear something unnatural in the earnest and per- of dramatic literature.

petual sentiment of the relations between God and I endeavored whilst at Rome to observe such man which pervade the tragedy of the Cenci. It monuments of this story as might be accessible to a will especially be startled at the combination of an stranger. The portrait of Beatrice at the Colonna undoubting persuasion of the truth of the popular Palace is most admirable as a work of art: it was religion, with a cool and determined perseverance in taken by Guido, during her confinement in prison. enormous guilt. But religion in Italy is not, as in But it is most interesting as a just representation of Protestant countries, a cloak to be worn on particular one of the loveliest specimens of the workmanship days; or a passport which those who do not wish to of Nature. There is a fixed and pale composure be railed at carry with them to exhibit; or a gloomy upon the features: she seems sad and stricken down passion for penetrating the impenetrable mysteries in spirit, yet the despair thus expressed is lightened of our being, which terrifies its possessor at the by the patience of gentleness. Her head is bound darkness of the abyss to the brink of which it has with folds of white drapery, from which the yellow conducted him. Religion coexists, as it were, in strings of her golden hair escape, and fall about her the mind of an Italian Catholic with a faith in that

of which all men have the most certain knowledge.

* An idea in this speech was suggested by a most It is interwoven with the whole fabric of life. It is sublime passage in El Purgatorio de San Patricio" of adoration, faith, submission, penitence, blind admira-Calderon: the only plagiarism which I have intentionally tion; not a rule for moral conduct. It has no neces-committed in the whole picce.