To stir his secret pain without avail; For all who knew and loved him then perceived That there was drawn an adamantine veil Between his heart and mind,-both unrelieved Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife. Some said that he was mad, others believed That memories of an antenatal life Made this, where now he dwelt, a penal hell: From God's displeasure, like a darkness, fell By mortal fear or supernatural awe : "But through the soul's abyss, like some dark stream Through shattered mines and caverns underground, Rolls, shaking its foundations; and no beam Of joy may rise, but it is quenched and drowned In the dim whirlpools of this dream obscure. Soon its exhausted waters will have found "A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure, Athanase!-in one so good and great, Evil or tumult cannot long endure." So spake they, idly of another's state. Men held with one another; nor did he, Another, not himself, he to and fro Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit; And none but those who loved him best could know That which he knew not, how it galled and bit His weary mind, this converse vain and cold; For like an eyeless nightmare grief did sit Upon his being; a snake which fold by fold Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend Which clenched him if he stirred with deadlier hold; And so his grief remained-let it remain untold.* * The Author was pursuing a fuller development of the ideal character of Athanase, when it struck him that in an attempt at extreme refinement and analysis, his conceptions might be betrayed into the assuming a morbid character. The reader will judge whether he is a loser or gainer by this difference.-Author's Note. FRAGMENTS OF PRINCE ATHANASE.❤ PART II. FRAGMENT I. PRINCE ATHANASE had one beloved friend, * The idea Shelley had formed of Prince Athanase was a good deal modelled on Alastor. In the first sketch of the poem he named it Pandemos and Urania. Athanase seeks through the world the one whom he may love. He meets in the ship in which he is embarked, a lady, who appears to him to embody his ideal of love and beauty. But she proves to be Pandemos, or the earthly and unworthy Venus, who, after disappointing his cherished dreams and hopes, deserts him. Athanase, crushed by sorrow, pines and dies. "On his death-bed, the lady, who can really reply to his soul, comes and kisses his lips."-The Death-bed of Athanase. The poet describes her Her hair was brown, her spherèd eyes were brown, Yet when the spirit flashed beneath, there came This slender note is all we have to aid our imagination in shaping out the form of the poem, such as its author imaged. M. 8. With his wise words; and eyes whose arrowy light Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds. He was the last whom superstition's blight Had spared in Greece-the blight that cramps and blinds, And in his olive bower at Enoe Had sat from earliest youth. Like one who finds A fertile island in the barren sea, One mariner who has survived his mates With soul-sustaining songs, and sweet debates Of ancient lore, there fed his lonely being: "The mind becomes that which it contemplates," And thus Zonoras, by for ever seeing A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then, Was grass-grown-and the unremembered tears And as the lady looked with faithful grief And blighting hope, who with the news of death Struck body and soul as with a mortal blight, She saw beneath the chestnuts, far beneath, An old man toiling up, a weary wight; She saw his white hairs glittering in the light Of the wood fire, and round his shoulders fall, And Athanase, her child, who must have been Then three years old, sat opposite and gazed In patient silence. FRAGMENT II. SUCH was Zonoras; and as daylight finds Thus through his age, dark, cold, and tempest-tost |