7.
Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells; _25
In halls ye deck another dwells.
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.
8.
With plough and spade, and hoe and loom,
Trace your grave, and build your tomb, _30
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
England be your sepulchre.
***
SIMILES FOR TWO POLITICAL CHARACTERS OF 1819.
[Published by Medwin, “The Athenaeum”, August 25, 1832; reprinted by
Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839. Our title is that of 1839, 2nd
edition. The poem is found amongst the Harvard manuscripts, headed “To
S—th and O—gh”.]
1.
As from an ancestral oak
Two empty ravens sound their clarion,
Yell by yell, and croak by croak,
When they scent the noonday smoke
Of fresh human carrion:— _5
2.
As two gibbering night-birds flit
From their bowers of deadly yew
Through the night to frighten it,
When the moon is in a fit,
And the stars are none, or few:— _10
3.
As a shark and dog-fish wait
Under an Atlantic isle,
For the negro-ship, whose freight
Is the theme of their debate,
Wrinkling their red gills the while— _15
4.
Are ye, two vultures sick for battle,
Two scorpions under one wet stone,
Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle,
Two crows perched on the murrained cattle,
Two vipers tangled into one. _20
NOTE: _7 yew 1832; hue 1839.