# The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (ed. Hutchinson, 1914)/Ode to Naples

ODE TO NAPLES
epode i α
And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls Of spirits passing through the streets; and heard
The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals Thrill through those roofless halls; 5 The oracular thunder penetrating shook The listening soul in my suspended blood; I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke— I felt, but heard not:—through white columns glowed The isle-sustaining ocean-flood,10 A plane of light between two heavens of azure! Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure Were to spare Death, had never made erasure; But every living lineament was clear 15 As in the sculptor's thought; and there The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy, and pine, Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow, Seemed only not to move and grow Because the crystal silence of the air 20 Weighed on their life; even as the Power divine Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine.
epode ii α
With many a mingled close Of wild Aeolian sound, and mountain-odours keen; 25 And where the Baian ocean Welters with airlike motion, Within, above, around its bowers of starry green, Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves, Even as the ever stormless atmosphere 30 Floats o'er the Elysian realm, It bore me, like an Angel, o'er the waves Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air No storm can overwhelm. I sailed, where ever flows 35 Under the calm Serene A spirit of deep emotion From the unknown graves Of the dead Kings of Melody Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm 40 The horizontal aether; Heaven stripped bare Its depth over Elysium, where the prow Made the invisible water white as snow; From that Typhaean mount, Inarime, There streamed a sunbright vapour, like the standard 45 Of some aethereal host; Whilst from all the coast, Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered Over the oracular woods and divine sea
Prophesyings which grew articulate—50 They seize me—I must speak them!—be they fate!
strophe i
Naked, beneath the lidless eye of Heaven! Elvsian City, which to calm enchantest The mutinous air and sea! they round thee, even 55 As sleep round Love, are driven! Metropolis of a ruined Paradise Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained! Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice, Which armèd Victory offers up unstained 60 To Love, the flower-enchained! Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be, Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free. If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail,— Hail, hail, all hail! 65
strophe ii
Which from the groaning earth Leap'st, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale! Last of the Intercessors! Who 'gainst the Crowned Transgressors 70 Pleadest before God's love! Arrayed in Wisdom's mail, Wave thy lightning lance in mirth Nor let thy nigh heart fail, Though from their hundred gates the leagued Oppressors With hurried legions move! 75 Hail, hail, all hail!
antistrophe i α
Freedom and thee? thy shield is as a mirror To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce gleam To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer; 80 A new Actaeon's error Shall theirs have been—devoured by their own hounds! Be thou like the imperial Basilisk Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds! Gaze on Oppression, till at that dread risk 85 Aghast she pass from the Earth's disk: Fear not, but gaze—for freemen mightier grow, And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe:— If Hope, and Truth, and Justice may avail, Thou shalt be great— All hail! 90
antistrophe ii α
From Nature's inmost shrine, Strip every impious gawd, rend Error veil by veil;
O'er Ruin desolate, O'er Falsehood's fallen state.95 Sit thou sublime, unawed; be the Destroyer pale! And equal laws be thine, And winged words let sail, Freighted with truth even from the throne of God: That wealth, surviving fate,100 Be thine.— All hail!
antistrophe i β
From land to land re-echoed solemnly, Till silence became music? From the Aeaean To the cold Alps, eternal Italy 105 Starts to hear thine! The Sea Which paves the desert streets of Venice laughs In light and music; widowed Genoa wan By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs, Murmuring, 'Where is Doria?' fair Milan, 110 Within whose veins long ran The viper's palsying venom, lifts her heel To bruise his head. The signal and the seal (If Hope and Truth and Justice can avail) Art thou of all these hopes.—O hail! 115
antistrophe ii β
Of cities fairest one, Blushes within her bower for Freedom's expectation: From eyes of quenchless hope Rome tears the priestly cope, 120 As ruling once by power, so now by admiration,— An athlete stripped to run From a remoter station For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore:— As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did avail, 125 So now may Fraud and Wrong! O hail!
epode i β
Arrayed against the ever-living Gods? The crash and darkness of a thousand storms Bursting their inaccessible abodes 130 Of crags and thunder-clouds? See ye the banners blazoned to the day, Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride? Dissonant threats kill Silence far away, The serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide 135 With iron light is dyed;
The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions Like Chaos o'er creation, uncreating; An hundred tribes nourished on strange religions And lawless slaveries,—down the aëreal regions140 Of the white Alps, desolating, Famished wolves that bide no waiting, Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory, Trampling our columned cities into dust, Their dull and savage lust 145 On Beauty's corse to sickness satiating— They come! The fields they tread look black and hoary With fire—from their red feet the streams run gory!
epode ii β
Which rulest and dost move 150 All things which live and are, within the Italian shore; Who spreadest Heaven around it, Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it; Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor; Spirit of beauty! at whose soft command 155 The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison From the Earth's bosom chill; Oh, bid those beams be each a blinding brand Of lightning! bid those showers be dews of poison! Bid the Earth's plenty kill! 160 Bid thy bright Heaven above, Whilst light and darkness bound it, Be their tomb who planned To make it ours and thine! Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill 165 And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire— Be man's high hope and unextinct desire The instrument to work thy will divine! Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards, 170 And frowns and fears from thee, Would not more swiftly flee Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds.— Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine Thou yieldest or withholdest, oh, let be 175 This city of thy worship ever free!
* ↑ The Author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii and Baiae with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples. This has given a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes which depicture these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene of this animating event.—[Shelley's Note.]
* ↑ Pompeii.—[Shelley's Note.]
* ↑ odours B.; odour 1824.
* ↑ Homer and Virgil.—[Shelley's Note.]
* ↑ depth B.; depths 1824.
* ↑ sunbright B.; sunlit 1824.
* ↑ wealth-surviving cj. A. C. Bradley.
* ↑ Aeaea, the island of Circe.—[Shelley's Note.]
* ↑ The viper was the armorial device of the Visconti, tyrants of Milan.—[Shelley's Note.]
* ↑ old 1824; lost B.
* ↑ black 1824; blue B.