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    Queen Mab: "Fear not for the future, weep not for the past."
    Queen Mab: "Fear not for the future, weep not for the past."
    Queen Mab: "Fear not for the future, weep not for the past."
    Ebook85 pages2 hours

    Queen Mab: "Fear not for the future, weep not for the past."

    By Percy Bysshe Shelley

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    Shelley is one of the most revered figures in the English poetical landscape. Born on the 4th August 1792 he has, over the years, become rightly regarded as a major Romantic poet. Yet during his own lifetime little of his work was published. Publishers feared his radical views and possible charges against themselves for blasphemy and sedition. On 8th July 1822 a month before his 30th birthday, during a sudden storm, his tragic early death by drowning robbed our culture of many fine expected masterpieces. But in his short spell on earth he weaved much magic. Queen Mab was Shelley’s first major poem and he pressed only 250 copies intended for friends and not a wider distribution. It is a fairy tale that offers a vision for a utopian society that might have a history of oppression and at present be riddled with misery but can have a future where humanity’s nobler characteristics can be in harmony with the world and work with nature to create a better society for all. Mary Shelley expressed his intentions as such:  He saw, in a fervent call on his fellow-creatures to share alike the blessings of the creation, to love and serve each other, the noblest work that life and time permitted him. In this spirit he composed Queen Mab.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopyright Group
    Release dateJan 3, 2014
    ISBN9781783949137
    Queen Mab: "Fear not for the future, weep not for the past."

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      Book preview

      Queen Mab - Percy Bysshe Shelley

      Queen Mab by Percy Bysshe Shelley

      Percy Bysshe Shelley is one of the most revered figures in the English poetical landscape.   Born on the 4th August 1792 he has, over the years, become rightly regarded as a major Romantic poet.  Yet during his own lifetime little of his work was published. Publishers feared his radical views and possible charges against themselves for blasphemy and sedition.  On 8th July 1822 a month before his 30th birthday, during a sudden storm, his tragic early death by drowning robbed our culture of many fine expected masterpieces. But in his short spell on earth he weaved much magic.  Among his many great works is Queen Mab.  Shelley’s words are alive with intent, meaning and emotion. A true poet for all our ages.

      Index Of Contents

      To Harriet

      I

      II

      III

      IV

      V

      VI

      VII

      VIII

      IX

      To Harriet

      Whose is the love that, gleaming through the world,

      Wards off the poisonous arrow of its scorn?

      Whose is the warm and partial praise,

      Virtue’s most sweet reward?

      Beneath whose looks did my reviving soul

      Riper in truth and virtuous daring grow?

      Whose eyes have I gazed fondly on,

      And loved mankind the more?

      Harriet! on thine: – thou wert my purer mind;

      Thou wert the inspiration of my song;

      Thine are these early wilding flowers,

      Though garlanded by me.

      Then press into thy breast this pledge of love;

      And know, though time may change and years may roll,

      Each floweret gathered in my heart

      It consecrates to thine.

      I

      How wonderful is Death,

      Death, and his brother Sleep!

      One, pale as yonder waning moon

      With lips of lurid blue;

      The other, rosy as the morn

      When throned on ocean’s wave

      It blushes o'er the world;

      Yet both so passing wonderful!

      Hath then the gloomy Power

      Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres

      Seized on her sinless soul?

      Must then that peerless form

      Which love and admiration cannot view

      Without a beating heart, those azure veins

      Which steal like streams along a field of snow,

      That lovely outline which is fair

      As breathing marble, perish?

      Must putrefaction’s breath

      Leave nothing of this heavenly sight

      But loathsomeness and ruin?

      Spare nothing but a gloomy theme,

      On which the lightest heart might moralize?

      Or is it only a sweet slumber

      Stealing o'er sensation,

      Which the breath of roseate morning

      Chaseth into darkness?

      Will Ianthe wake again,

      And give that faithful bosom joy

      Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch

      Light, life and rapture, from her smile?

      Yes! she will wake again,

      Although her glowing limbs are motionless,

      And silent those sweet lips,

      Once breathing eloquence

      That might have soothed a tiger’s rage

      Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror.

      Her dewy eyes are closed,

      And on their lids, whose texture fine

      Scarce hides the dark blue orbs beneath,

      The baby Sleep is pillowed;

      Her golden tresses shade

      The bosom’s stainless pride,

      Curling like tendrils of the parasite

      Around a marble column.

      Hark! whence that rushing sound?

      ’t is like the wondrous strain

      That round a lonely ruin swells,

      Which, wandering on the echoing shore,

      The enthusiast hears at evening;

      ’t is softer than the west wind’s sigh;

      ’t is wilder than the unmeasured notes

      Of that strange lyre whose strings

      The genii of the breezes sweep;

      Those lines of rainbow light

      Are like the moonbeams when they fall

      Through some cathedral window, but the tints

      Are such as may not find

      Comparison on earth.

      Behold the chariot of the Fairy Queen!

      Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air;

      Their filmy pennons at her word they furl,

      And stop obedient to the reins of light;

      These the Queen of Spells drew in;

      She spread a charm around the spot,

      And, leaning graceful from the ethereal car,

      Long did she gaze, and silently,

      Upon the slumbering maid.

      Oh! not the visioned poet in his dreams,

      When silvery clouds float through the wildered brain,

      When every sight of lovely, wild and grand

      Astonishes, enraptures, elevates,

      When fancy at a glance combines

      The wondrous and the beautiful,

      So bright, so fair, so wild a shape

      Hath ever yet beheld,

      As that which reined the coursers of the air

      And poured the magic of her gaze

      Upon the maiden’s sleep.

      The broad and yellow moon

      Shone dimly through her form

      That form of faultless symmetry;

      The pearly and pellucid car

      Moved not the moonlight’s line.

      ’t was not an earthly pageant.

      Those, who had looked upon the sight

      Passing all human glory,

      Saw not the yellow moon,

      Saw not the mortal scene,

      Heard not the night-wind’s rush,

      Heard not an earthly sound,

      Saw but the fairy pageant,

      Heard but the heavenly strains

      That filled the lonely dwelling.

      The Fairy’s

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