In the preface to The Revolt of Islam Shelley writes that he “sought to enlist the harmony of metrical language ... and the rapid and subtle transitions of human passion in the cause of a liberal and comprehensive morality.” For this purpose he chose “a story of human passion in its most universal character, diversified with moving and romantic adventures and appeal, in contempt of all artificial opinions or institutions to the common sympathies of every human breast. What is the Missionary but “a story of human passion appealing in contempt of all artificial opinions or institutions to the common sympathies of every human heart?” When The Revolt of Islam first appeared, Laon and Cythna were brother and sister. Their love like that of the missionary and priestess is considered illicit. Not only are the motifs of both very similar, but many of the incidents are identical. The influence of the Missionary on the Revolt will perhaps appear more clearly if we put these incidents in parallel columns. In the second canto—

Laon and Cythna must part that they may
spread their doctrines among men.
Cythna says:
“We part! O Laon, I must dare, nor tremble
To meet those looks no more!
Oh heavy stroke
Sweet brother of my soul! can I dissemble
The agony of this thought?”
 When the missionary tells Luxima that they
must separate, in order that he may
continue the work of his ministry, Luxima
says she will not long endure the agony of
separation. “Thinkest thou,” she exclaims,
“that I shall long survive his loss for whom
I have sacrificed all?”
—— ——
Laon and Cythna are seized by the officers of
the State, and during the struggle Laon
overcomes three of the tyrant’s soldiers in
defense of Cythna.		 The missionary and Luxima are seized by
the officers of the Inquisition, and the
missionary overcomes three soldiers in
defense of Luxima.
“—a feeble shriek
It was a feeble shriek, faint, far, and low
Arrested me—my mien grew calm and meek—
’Twas Cythna’s cry.”		 “But the feeble plaints of Luxima, who was
borne away in the arms of one of the
assailants recalled to his bewildered mind
a consciousness of their mutualsufferings
and situations.”
After the overthrow of the tyrant Othman the
people demand that he be put to death.		 Their fellow travelers boldly advanced to
rescue the missionary and Luxima, and
awaiting his orders, asked: “Shall we throw
those men under the camels’ feet or shall
we bind them to those rocks and leave them
to their fate?”
Laon answers:
“‘What do ye seek? What fear ye,’ then I cried,
Suddenly starting forth, ‘that ye should shed
The blood of Othman? If your hearts are tried
In the true love of freedom cease to dread
This one poor lonely man.’”		 “The missionary cast on them a glance of
pity and contempt and looking round him
with an air at once dignified and grateful, he
said: ‘My friends, my heart is deeply
touched by your generous sympathy; good
and grave men ever unite, of whatever
religion or whatever faith they may be; but I
belong to a religion whose spirit is to save,
not to destroy; suffer these men to live; they
are but the agents of a higher power whose
scrutiny they challenge me to meet.’”
From his prison Laon sees a ship sailing by in
which he thinks Cythna is imprisoned.
“I knew that ship bore Cythna o’er the plain
Of waters, to her blighting slavery sold
And watched it with such thoughts as must
remain untold.”		 On the way to Goa the missionary notices
a covered conveyance going by in which he
feels sure Luxima is imprisoned. “He
shuddered and for a moment the heroism of
virtue deserted him. He doubted not that she
would be conveyed in the same vessel with
him to Goa.”
Cythna is imprisoned in a cavern, and her mind
is deranged for a time.
“The fiend of madness which had made its prey
Of my poor heart was lulled to sleep awhile.”		 Luxima is imprisoned in a convent at Lahore.
The exciting incidents of their arrest and
separation had deranged her mind for a time.
The part taken by Laon and Cythna in the
insurrection of the people has already been
explained.
Laon and Cythna are condemned to death
through the instigation of the priests.
The morning of Laon’s execution has arrived.
“And see beneath a sun-bright canopy,
Upon a platform level with the pile,
The anxious Tyrant sit enthroned on high
Girt by the chieftans of the host.
· · · ·
There was silence through the host as when
An earthquake trampling on some populous town,
Has crusht ten thousand with one tread, and men
Expect the second.
· · · ·
Tumult was in the soul of all beside,
Ill joy, or doubt, or fear; but those who saw
Their tranquil victim pass felt wonder glide,
Into their brain, and became calm with awe.”		 The natives are on the point of rebelling, and
Spanish authority in India is on the brink of
extinction. The missionary is condemned to
death, by the Inquisition. The morning of the
missionary’s execution has arrived.
“The secular judges had already taken their
seats on the platform, the Grand Inquisitor
and the Viceroy had placed themselves
beneath their respective canopies.” The
Christian missionary is led to the pile, “the
silence which belongs to death reigned
on every side; thousands of persons were
present;... Nature was touched on the
master spring of emotion, and betrayed in
the looks of the multitude feelings of horror,
of pity, and of admiration, which the bigoted
vigilance of an inhuman zeal would in vain
have sought to suppress.
As burning torches are about to be applied to the
pyre on which Laon is to die, a steed bursts through
the rank of the people on which a woman sits.
“Fairer, it seems than aught that earth can breed,
Calm, radiant, like a phantom of the dawn.
A spirit from the caves of daylight wandering gone.
All thought it was God’s Angel come to sweep
The lingering guilty to their fiery grave.		 On the day of the execution Luxima noticed
a procession moving beneath her window
and her eyes rested on the form of the
missionary. “She beheld the friend of her
soul; love and reason returned together.”
She escapes the vigilance of her guardian,
and seeks the place where her beloved is to
die. While officers were binding the missionary
to the stake “a form scarcely human darting
with the velocity of lightning through the
multitude reached the foot of thepile and
stood before it in a grand and aspiring
attitude ... thus bright and aerial as it stood,
it looked like a spirit sent from heaven in
the awful moment of dissolution to cheer and
to convey to the regions of the blessed, the
soul which would soon arise pure from the
ordeal of earthly sufferings. The sudden
appearance of the singular phantom struck the
imagination of the credulous and awed
multitude with superstitious wonder....
The Christians fixed their eyes upon the cross,
which glittered on a bosom whose beauty
scarcely seemed of mortal mould, and deemed
themselves the witnesses of a miracle wrought
for the salvation of a persecuted martyr, whose
innocence was asserted by the firmness and
fortitude with which he met a dreadful death.”
Cythna has come not to save Laon but to die with
him.
At the sight of Cythna
“They pause, they blush, they gaze—a gathering
shout
Bursts like one sound from the ten thousand
streams
Of a tempestuous sea.”
(All through the poem Cythna exerts a wonderful
influence over the people.)
“The tyrants send their armed slaves to quell
Her power; they, even like a thunder-gust
Caught by some forest, bend beneath the spell
Of that young maiden’s speech, and to their
chiefs rebel.”		 Luxima springs upon the pyre to die with the
missionary.
At the sight of Luxima the people rise in
rebellion.
“The timid spirits of the Hindus rallied to an
event which touched their hearts, and roused
them from the lethargy of despair—the
sufferings, the oppression, they had so long
endured, seemed now epitomized before their
eyes in the person of their celebrated and
distinguished prophetess ... they fell with fury
on the Christians, they rushed upon the
cowardly guards of the Inquisition who let fall
their arms and fled in dismay.”
It did not suit Shelley’s purpose to have the people
use force against the tyrants, so he makes Cythna
persuade the people
“—though unwilling her to bind
Near me among the snakes.”
A priest commands the multitude to seize Cythna,
“Slaves to the stake
Bind her, and on my head the burden lay
Of her just torments ...
They trembled, but replied not nor obeyed
Pausing in breathless silence.		 The officers of the Inquisition called on by their
superiors sprang forward to seize the
missionary; “for a moment the timid multitude
were still as the pause of a brooding storm.”
Laon escaped from his first prison in a boat
which belonged to an oldman who represents
Shelley’s tutor at Eton, Dr. Lind.		 During the confusion caused by the insurrection
the missionary and Luxima escape in a boat
which was provided by his old tutor, the Pundit.

The missionary and Luxima reach a cavern which bears a slight resemblance to the caverns of The Revolt. He discovers that the priestess is dying from a wound received during the melée at Lahore. “Answering the eloquence of her languid and tender looks, he exclaims, ‘Yes, dearest, and most unfortunate, our destinies are now inseparably united! Together we have loved, together we have resisted, together we have erred, and together we have suffered; lost alike to the glory and the fame which our virtues and the conquest of our passions obtained for us; alike condemned by our religions and our countries, there now remains nothing on earth for us but each other.’” This recalls to mind the dedication of The Revolt of Islam—

There is no danger to a man that knows
What life and death is; there’s not any law
Exceeds his knowledge: neither is it lawful
That he should stoop to any other law.

As the end of Luxima approaches she bids her beloved live and preach peace and mercy, and love to Brahmin and Christian. “But should thy eloquence and thy example fail, tell them my story! tell them how I have suffered, and how even thou has failed—thou, for whom I forfeited my caste, my country and my life; for ’tis too true, that still more loving than enlightened, my ancient habits of belief clung to my mind, thou to my heart; still I lived thy seeming proselyte, that I might still live thine; and now I die as Brahmin women die; a Hindoo in my feelings and my faith—dying for him I loved and believing as my fathers believed.”[59]

This bears some resemblance to that part of Cythna’s speech in the cavern, Canto IX, where she glories in the triumph of their love over the opposition of the world.

I fear nor prize
Aught that can now betide unshared by thee.

Cythna thinks that she will soon die and believes like Luxima that the story of their love will be a source of inspiration to mankind

Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love,
Our happiness, and all that we have been
Immortally must live and burn and move
When we shall be no more.

There are, of course, some differences between the two stories, especially in the conclusions (Cythna and Laon are burned, while Luxima alone dies and the Missionary is never heard of again); but many of the incidents of both are so alike as to justify us in believing that those in The Revolt were derived from The Missionary. This is confirmed by the fact that Shelley makes more attacks in this poem on priests and the celibacy of the clergy than in any other. In the preface to the poem, Shelley says that “although the mere composition occupied no more than six months, the thoughts thus arranged were slowly gathered in as many years.” It is suggestive that the idea of composing the poem came to him in 1811, the year in which he first read the Missionary. In this same year he wrote a little poem entitled an Essay on Love, no copy of which is now extant.[60] Should one ever come to light, it may show remarkable similarity to the love poem The Revolt of Islam, where “love is celebrated everywhere as the sole law which should govern the moral world.”[61]