Mary Shelley Poetry

Stanzas

by Mary Shelley

Oh, come to me in dreams, my love!
I will not ask a dearer bliss;
Come with the starry beams, my love,
And press mine eyelids with thy kiss.

’Twas thus, as ancient fables tell,
Love visited a Grecian maid,
Till she disturbed the sacred spell,
And woke to find her hopes betrayed.

But gentle sleep shall veil my sight,
And Psyche’s lamp shall darkling be,
When, in the visions of the night,
Thou dost renew thy vows to me.

Then come to me in dreams, my love,
I will not ask a dearer bliss;
Come with the starry beams, my love,
And press mine eyelids with thy kiss.

by George J. Stodart, after a monument by Henry Weekes. Stipple engraving, (1853). NPG D5956 © National Portrait Gallery, London
Used under a Creative Commons License.

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Ode to Ignorance

Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens,
cui lumen ademptum

[a monster horrendous, hideous, and vast, deprived of sight (Virgil, of the blinded Cyclops, Polyphemus)]

Hail, Ignorance! majestic queen!
Mysterious, mighty, dark, profound in mien!
Sprung from no upstart brood of Light,
But of the ancient house of Night!
Daughter of that stupendous line,
Which ere the base-born Sun did shine,
Or one plebeian star appear’d,
Their awful throne in chaos rear’d-
The old nobility of Hell,
Who through the realms of darkness wide,
With lordly morgue and feudal pride
Did reign, and when imperial Satan fell,
By rebel cherubim cast down
And robb’d of his ancestral crown,
Received him like a Bourbon there.
With fond aristocratic care.

Hail! bounteous mother of each royal race;
Corruption, Bigotry, and Fraud,
Reflect thy dim patrician face;
They many a kingdom fair and broad,
Great Ignorance, receive from thee–
Thou who didst take the World in fee!
Ay! thou dost call the total earth thy own;
And every tyrant for his throne
Doth homage at thy knee!
Thou dost for kings, in dungeons bind
The anarch Truth, the rebel Mind,
Who never slip their iron bolts
But some fair realm revolts,
All hail! Legitimacy’s star!
Protectress of the despot Czar!
Thee Czars invoke, and, gorged with Polish blood,
Hallow thy name, and style thee great and good!
Night of the Mind, how long, how long,
Thy praise hath blazoned been in song!
Hail! mighty, mighty queen!
August ! Serene!
Peers are thy children-noble peers!
Thou sucklest them upon thy breasts;
Thine is their youth, and thine their years.
Transfus’d on them, thy ample spirit rests:
Night of the Mind! all hail!
Gloomy and grand,
Through every land,
Great queen! dost thou prevail!

And conquerors too are of thy brood!
By thee, they cheat the gibbet of their bones,
By thee, they run their race of blood,
And mount by steps of villainy to thrones.
Lo! how they raven, ramp and roar;
The world’s fixed barriers scarcely bind them;
An Eden, is the land before-
A wilderness, the land before-
Who stamps their locust-deeds with glory?
Who binds their brows with laurels gory?
Who magnifies their names in story?
Night of the Mind! again, again in thee
We give the praise, for thou art she!

But wither now?
Wither, dismounting from the thundering car,
Fliest thou the crimson fields of war?
What dust is that upon thy brow?
That’s not the dust of the battle-field:
Dost thou too haunt the schools; dost thou
The pen as well as faulchion wield?
Dost thou with pale and plodding looks,
Bow down thy stubborn head to books?
Dost thou too mope with owlish eves
In garrets, and through libraries?
Ay! thou art there,
As every where:
Where more than in the Schools hast thou thy reign;
Where oft’ner than in Colleges a fane?
Thou too, in Cabinets, where meet
Grave councillors, the pilots of the realm,
Hast ever thy conspicuous, lofty seat;
And commonly the helm.
Faction, thy fav’rite son, then sound his horn;
Corruption too, thy eldest born;
Holds universal sway:
Then is the day,
Or rather, night,
Of lords and churchmen, all who trust in thee,
And hate with heart and soul, and strength, the light,
Then Politicians sing with joy;
Then hath their gold of office no alloy
Of vile plebeian industry;
Tax’d to the earth, the people moil and mourn-
It is their vulgar lot, and must be borne.
Thou too art found,
And dost abound,
Where bauble sceptred fashion sweeps the ground
With tinsel spangled train;
And Vice and Folly, sisters twain,
Together in meet discord reign.
Of aristocracy the best
Thou stand’st contest,
Wherever flutters fop, or flirts a belle,
The park, the ball, the club, the turf, the hell.

But, hah! what hideous change is this?
What damn’d magician interrupts thy bliss?
The eye-ball aches,
And flashes on the sight a horrid gleam
Alas, His Day that breaks!
‘Tis orient knowledge darts that baleful beam-
Knowledge, thy dauntless foe!
Where wilt thou fly, how shun the blow?
What work, what palisade behind?
Night of the mind!
Thy sons are stricken with dismay;
They cannot bear
The hateful glare,
But curse the name of Day.
Prelates wake who long have slumber’d,
Peers believe their days are number’d,
Priests before their altars tremble,
Courtiers shudder, kings dissemble,
Pensioners and place-men quake,
All the sons of rapine shake;
Guillotines are lordly themes,
Barricades haunt royal dreams,
Bigots frighted to their souls,
Shrink into their narrow holes,
To den of filth corruption steals,
Reform fierce-barking at his heels,
All expect disastrous doom,
All the things that love the gloom,
All that crouch, and skulk, and prowl,
Wolf and tiger, bat and owl;
Yet still to thee, their bounteous patroness,
They lift adoring eyes;
And none apostatize,
Nor aught the less
Thy name they bless,
Because thy kingdom hath been rudely torn,
And of a mist or two thy stupid skull been shorn.
Oh! for thy loyal sons
Hast thou no guerdon fair, no just reward?
No new resource,
No untried force,
To save them from their foe abhorr’d?
Come with a host of Huns!
Unlock once more thy garners of the North:
Unleash the Goth and send the Vandal forth;
Exert thy waning might;
Rally the powers of Night;
Renew the desp’rate fight!
That tyrants may rebuild thy mouldering fanes:
So may’st hope,
Loading thy foes with slavery’s ponderous chains,
With holy, heavenly light, triumphantly to cope!

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January, 1834

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Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley (1797 – 1851) is best known as the author of Frankenstein. She is the wife of Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.