354
PETER BELL THE THIRD
xxii
To Peter's view. all seemed one hue;
He was no Whig, he was no Tory;
No Deist and no Christian he;— 566
He got so subtle, that to be
Nothing, was all his glory.
To Peter's view. all seemed one hue;
He was no Whig, he was no Tory;
No Deist and no Christian he;— 566
He got so subtle, that to be
Nothing, was all his glory.
xxiii
One single point in his belief
From his organization sprung, 570
The heart-enrooted faith, the chief
Ear in his doctrines' blighted sheaf,
That 'Happiness is wrong';
One single point in his belief
From his organization sprung, 570
The heart-enrooted faith, the chief
Ear in his doctrines' blighted sheaf,
That 'Happiness is wrong';
xxiv
So thought Calvin and Dominic;
So think their fierce successors, who
Even now would neither stint nor stick 576
Our flesh from off our bones to pick.
If they might 'do their do.'
So thought Calvin and Dominic;
So think their fierce successors, who
Even now would neither stint nor stick 576
Our flesh from off our bones to pick.
If they might 'do their do.'
xxv
His morals thus were undermined:—
The old Peter—the hard, old Potter— 580
Was born anew within his mind;
He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined,
As when he tramped beside the Otter[1].
His morals thus were undermined:—
The old Peter—the hard, old Potter— 580
Was born anew within his mind;
He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined,
As when he tramped beside the Otter[1].
xxvi
In the death hues of agony 584
Lambently flashing from a fish,
Now Peter felt amused to see
Shades like a rainbow's rise and flee,
Mixed with a certain hungry wish[2].
In the death hues of agony 584
Lambently flashing from a fish,
Now Peter felt amused to see
Shades like a rainbow's rise and flee,
Mixed with a certain hungry wish[2].
xxvii
So in his Country's dying face
He looked—and, lovely as she lay,
Seeking in vain his last embrace, 591
Wailing her own abandoned ease,
With hardened sneer he turned away:
So in his Country's dying face
He looked—and, lovely as she lay,
Seeking in vain his last embrace, 591
Wailing her own abandoned ease,
With hardened sneer he turned away:
xxviii
And coolly to his own soul said;—
'Do you not think that we might make 595
A poem on her when she's dead:—
Or, no—a thought is in my head—
Her shroud for a new sheet I'll take:
And coolly to his own soul said;—
'Do you not think that we might make 595
A poem on her when she's dead:—
Or, no—a thought is in my head—
Her shroud for a new sheet I'll take:
xxix
'My wife wants one.— Let who will bury
This mangled corpse! And I and you, 600
My dearest Soul, will then make merry,
As the Prince Regent did with Sherry,—'
'Ay—and at last desert me too.'[3]
'My wife wants one.— Let who will bury
This mangled corpse! And I and you, 600
My dearest Soul, will then make merry,
As the Prince Regent did with Sherry,—'
'Ay—and at last desert me too.'[3]
xxx
And so his Soul would not be gay,
But moaned within him; like a fawn 605
Moaning within a cave, it lay
Wounded and wasting, day by day,
Till all its life of life was gone.
And so his Soul would not be gay,
But moaned within him; like a fawn 605
Moaning within a cave, it lay
Wounded and wasting, day by day,
Till all its life of life was gone.
- ↑ A famous river in the new Atlantis of the Dynastophylic Pantisocratists.—[Shelley's Note.]
- ↑ See the description of the beautiful colours produced during the agonizing death of a number of trout, in the fourth part of a long poem in blank verse, published within a few years. [The Excursion, VIII. ll. 568-71.—Ed]. That poem contains curious evidence of the gradual hardening of a strong but circumscribed sensibility, of the perversion of a penetrating but panic-stricken understanding. The author might have derived a lesson which he had probably forgotten from these sweet and sublime verses:—
'This lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,
Taught both by what she* shows and what conceals,
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.'—[Shelley's Note.]
* Nature.
- ↑ See Editor's Note.
