The Witch of Atlas

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The Witch of Atlas
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
TO MARY?(ON HER OBJECTING TO THE FOLLOWING POEM, UPON THE?SCORE OF ITS CONTAINING NO HUMAN INTEREST).
1.?How, my dear Mary,--are you critic-bitten?(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,?That you condemn these verses I have written,?Because they tell no story, false or true??What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,?May it not leap and play as grown cats do,?Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,?Content thee with a visionary rhyme.
2.?What hand would crush the silken-winged fly,?The youngest of inconstant April's minions,?Because it cannot climb the purest sky,?Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions??Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die,?When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions?The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile,?Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.
3.?To thy fair feet a winged Vision came,?Whose date should have been longer than a day,?And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame,?And in thy sight its fading plumes display;?The watery bow burned in the evening flame.?But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way--?And that is dead.--O, let me not believe?That anything of mine is fit to live!
4.?Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years?Considering and retouching Peter Bell;?Watering his laurels with the killing tears?Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to Hell?Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres?Of Heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers; this well?May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil?The over-busy gardener's blundering toil.
5.?My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature?As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise?Clothes for our grandsons--but she matches Peter,?Though he took nineteen years, and she three days?In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre?She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays,?Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress?Like King Lear's 'looped and windowed raggedness.'
6.?If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow?Scorched by Hell's hyperequatorial climate?Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow:?A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at;?In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello.?If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate?Can shrive you of that sin,--if sin there be?In love, when it becomes idolatry.
THE WITCH OF ATLAS.
1.?Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth?Incestuous Change bore to her father Time,?Error and Truth, had hunted from the Earth?All those bright natures which adorned its prime,?And left us nothing to believe in, worth?The pains of putting into learned rhyme,?A lady-witch there lived on Atlas' mountain?Within a cavern, by a secret fountain.
2.?Her mother was one of the Atlantides:?The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden?In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas?So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden?In the warm shadow of her loveliness;--?He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden?The chamber of gray rock in which she lay--?She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.
3.?'Tis said, she first was changed into a vapour,?And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit,?Like splendour-winged moths about a taper,?Round the red west when the sun dies in it:?And then into a meteor, such as caper?On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit:?Then, into one of those mysterious stars?Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars.
4.?Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent?Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden?With that bright sign the billows to indent?The sea-deserted sand--like children chidden,?At her command they ever came and went--?Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden?Took shape and motion: with the living form?Of this embodied Power, the cave grew warm.
5.?A lovely lady garmented in light?From her own beauty--deep her eyes, as are?Two openings of unfathomable night?Seen through a Temple's cloven roof--her hair?Dark--the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight.?Picturing her form; her soft smiles shone afar,?And her low voice was heard like love, and drew?All living things towards this wonder new.
6.?And first the spotted cameleopard came,?And then the wise and fearless elephant;?Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame?Of his own volumes intervolved;--all gaunt?And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame.?They drank before her at her sacred fount;?And every beast of beating heart grew bold,?Such gentleness and power even to behold.
7.?The brinded lioness led forth her young,?That she might teach them how they should forego?Their inborn thirst of death; the pard unstrung?His sinews at her feet, and sought to know?With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue?How he might be as gentle as the doe.?The magic circle of her voice and eyes?All savage natures did imparadise.
8.?And old Silenus, shaking a green stick?Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew?Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick?Cicadae are, drunk with the noonday dew:?And Dryope and Faunus followed quick,?Teasing the God to sing them something new;?Till in this cave they found the lady lone,?Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone.
9.?And universal Pan, 'tis said, was there,?And though none saw