Part 7 — PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 1792–1822

The world’s great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn: Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains From waves serener far; A new Peneus rolls his fountains Against the morning star. Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

A loftier Argo cleaves the main, Fraught with a later prize; Another Orpheus sings again, And loves, and weeps, and dies. A new Ulysses leaves once more Calypso for his native shore.

O write no more the tale of Troy, If earth Death’s scroll must be! Nor mix with Laian rage the joy Which dawns upon the free: Although a subtler Sphinx renew Riddles of death Thebes never knew.

Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, The splendour of its prime; And leave, if nought so bright may live, All earth can take or Heaven can give.

O cease! must hate and death return? Cease! must men kill and die? Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn Of bitter prophecy. The world is weary of the past, O might it die or rest at last!

My head is wild with weeping for a grief Which is the shadow of a gentle mind. I walk into the air (but no relief To seek,—or haply, if I sought, to find; It came unsought); to wonder that a chief Among men’s spirits should be cold and blind.

Swiftly walk over the western wave, Spirit of Night! Out of the misty eastern cave Where, all the long and lone daylight, Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear Which make thee terrible and dear,— Swift be thy flight!

Wrap thy form in a mantle grey Star-inwrought; Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day, Kiss her until she be wearied out: Then wander o’er city and sea and land, Touching all with thine opiate wand— Come, long-sought!

When I arose and saw the dawn, I sighed for thee; When light rode high, and the dew was gone, And noon lay heavy on flower and tree, And the weary Day turned to his rest Lingering like an unloved guest, I sighed for thee.

Thy brother Death came, and cried Wouldst thou me? Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, Murmured like a noon-tide bee, Shall I nestle near thy side? Wouldst thou me?—And I replied No, not thee!

Death will come when thou art dead, Soon, too soon— Sleep will come when thou art fled; Of neither would I ask the boon I ask of thee, beloved Night— Swift be thine approaching flight, Come soon, soon!

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert! That from heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest, Like a cloud of fire, The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun O’er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even Melts around thy flight: Like a star of heaven In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight;

Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is over-flowed.

What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see As from thy presence showers a rain of melody;—

Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not;

Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aërial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal Or triumphal chaunt Matched with thine, would be all But an empty vaunt— A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be: Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest; but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety.

Waking or asleep Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as I am listening now!

Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth,— And ever-changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy?

I dreamed that as I wandered by the way Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring, And gentle odours led my steps astray, Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kissed it and then fled, as Thou mightest in dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets, Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets; Faint oxlips; tender blue-bells, at whose birth The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets Its mother’s face with heaven-collected tears, When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, Green cow-bind and the moonlight-coloured May, And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray; And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold, Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.

And nearer to the river’s trembling edge There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white, And starry river-buds among the sedge, And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge With moonlight beams of their own watery light; And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

Methought that of these visionary flowers I made a nosegay, bound in such a way That the same hues, which in their natural bowers Were mingled or opposed, the like array Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours Within my hand,—and then, elate and gay, I hastened to the spot whence I had come That I might there present it—O! to Whom?

And like a dying lady, lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil, Out of her chamber, led by the insane And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, The moon arose up in the murky east, A white and shapeless mass.

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and Preserver: Hear, oh hear!

Thou on whose stream, ’mid the steep sky’s commotion, Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean, Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith’s height— The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear!

Thou who didst waken from his summer-dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave’s intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than Thou, O uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seemed a vision,—I would ne’er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth; And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Rarely, rarely comest thou, Spirit of Delight! Wherefore hast thou left me now Many a day and night? Many a weary night and day ’Tis since thou art fled away.

How shall ever one like me Win thee back again? With the joyous and the free Thou wilt scoff at pain. Spirit false! thou hast forgot All but those who need thee not.

As a lizard with the shade Of a trembling leaf, Thou with sorrow art dismayed; Even the sighs of grief Reproach thee, that thou art not near, And reproach thou wilt not hear.

Let me set my mournful ditty To a merry measure, Thou wilt never come for pity, Thou wilt come for pleasure. Pity then will cut away Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.

I love all that thou lovest, Spirit of Delight! The fresh Earth in new leaves drest, And the starry night, Autumn evening, and the morn When the golden mists are born.

I love snow, and all the forms Of the radiant frost; I love waves, and winds, and storms— Everything almost Which is Nature’s, and may be Untainted by man’s misery.

I love tranquil solitude, And such society As is quiet, wise and good; Between thee and me What difference? but thou dost possess The things I seek, not love them less.

I love Love—though he has wings, And like light can flee, But above all other things, Spirit, I love thee— Thou art love and life! O come, Make once more my heart thy home!

Best and brightest, come away! Fairer far than this fair Day, Which, like thee to those in sorrow, Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow To the rough Year just awake In its cradle on the brake. The brightest hour of unborn Spring, Through the winter wandering, Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn To hoar February born; Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth, It kissed the forehead of the Earth, And smiled upon the silent sea, And bade the frozen streams be free, And waked to music all their fountains, And breathed upon the frozen mountains, And like a prophetess of May Strewed flowers upon the barren way, Making the wintry world appear Like one on whom thou smilest, dear. Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs— To the silent wilderness Where the soul need not repress Its music, lest it should not find An echo in another’s mind, While the touch of Nature’s art Harmonizes heart to heart. I leave this notice on my door For each accustomed visitor:— ‘I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields;— Reflection, you may come to-morrow, Sit by the fireside with sorrow.— You with the unpaid bill, Despair,— You tiresome verse-reciter, Care,— I will pay you in the grave,— Death will listen to your stave. Expectation, too, be off! To-day is for itself enough; Hope in pity mock not Woe With smiles, nor follow where I go; Long having lived on thy sweet food, At length I find one moment’s good After long pain—with all your love, This you never told me of.’

Radiant sister of the Day, Awake! arise! and come away! To the wild woods and the plains, And the pools where winter rains Image all their roof of leaves, Where the pine its garland weaves Of sapless green and ivy dun Round stems that never kiss the sun; Where the lawns and pastures be, And the sand-hills of the sea;— Where the melting hoar-frost wets The daisy-star that never sets, The wind-flowers, and violets, Which yet join not scent to hue, Crown the pale year weak and new; When the night is left behind In the deep east, dun and blind, And the blue noon is over us, And the multitudinous Billows murmur at our feet, Where the earth and ocean meet, And all things seem only one In the universal sun.

Now the last day of many days All beautiful and bright as thou, The loveliest and the last, is dead: Rise, Memory, and write its praise! Up—to thy wonted work! come, trace The epitaph of glory fled, For now the earth has changed its face, A frown is on the heaven’s brow.

We wandered to the Pine Forest That skirts the Ocean’s foam; The lightest wind was in its nest, The tempest in its home. The whispering waves were half asleep, The clouds were gone to play, And on the bosom of the deep The smile of heaven lay; It seemed as if the hour were one Sent from beyond the skies Which scattered from above the sun A light of Paradise!

We paused amid the pines that stood The giants of the waste, Tortured by storms to shapes as rude As serpents interlaced,— And soothed by every azure breath That under heaven is blown, To harmonies and hues beneath, As tender as its own: Now all the tree-tops lay asleep Like green waves on the sea, As still as in the silent deep The ocean-woods may be.

How calm it was!—The silence there By such a chain was bound, That even the busy woodpecker Made stiller with her sound The inviolable quietness; The breath of peace we drew With its soft motion made not less The calm that round us grew. There seemed, from the remotest seat Of the white mountain waste To the soft flower beneath our feet, A magic circle traced,— A spirit interfused around, A thrilling silent life; To momentary peace it bound Our mortal nature’s strife;— And still I felt the centre of The magic circle there Was one fair form that filled with love The lifeless atmosphere.

We paused beside the pools that lie Under the forest bough; Each seemed as ’twere a little sky Gulfed in a world below; A firmament of purple light Which in the dark earth lay, More boundless than the depth of night And purer than the day— In which the lovely forests grew As in the upper air, More perfect both in shape and hue Than any spreading there. There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn, And through the dark green wood The white sun twinkling like the dawn Out of a speckled cloud. Sweet views, which in our world above Can never well be seen, Were imaged in the water’s love Of that fair forest green: And all was interfused beneath With an Elysian glow, An atmosphere without a breath, A softer day below. Like one beloved, the scene had lent To the dark water’s breast Its every leaf and lineament With more than truth exprest; Until an envious wind crept by, Like an unwelcome thought Which from the mind’s too faithful eye Blots one dear image out. —Though thou art ever fair and kind, The forests ever green, Less oft is peace in Shelley’s mind Than calm in waters seen!

Palace roof of cloudless nights! Paradise of golden lights! Deep, immeasurable, vast, Which art now and which wert then Of the present and the past, Of the eternal where and when, Presence-chamber, temple, home, Ever canopying dome Of acts and ages yet to come!

Glorious shapes have life in thee, Earth, and all earth’s company; Living globes which ever throng Thy deep chasms and wildernesses; And green worlds that glide along; And swift stars with flashing tresses; And icy moons most cold and bright, And mighty suns beyond the night, Atoms of intensest light.

Even thy name is as a God, Heaven! for thou art the abode Of that power which is the glass Wherein man his nature sees. Generations as they pass Worship thee with bended knees. Their unremaining gods and they Like a river roll away: Thou remainest such alway.

Thou art but the mind’s first chamber, Round which its young fancies clamber, Like weak insects in a cave, Lighted up by stalactites; By the portal of the grave, Where a world of new delights Will make thy best glories seem But a dim and noonday gleam From the shadow of a dream!

Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn At your presumption, atom-born! What is heaven, and what are ye Who its brief expanse inherit? What are suns and spheres which flee With the instinct of that spirit Of which ye are but a part? Drops which Nature’s mighty heart Drives through thinnest veins. Depart!

What is heaven? a globe of dew, Filling in the morning new Some eyed flower whose young leaves waken On an unimagined world: Constellated suns unshaken, Orbits measureless are furled In that frail and fading sphere, With ten millions gathered there, To tremble, gleam, and disappear.

Life of Life! thy lips enkindle With their love the breath between them; And thy smiles before they dwindle Make the cold air fire; then screen them In those looks, where whoso gazes Faints, entangled in their mazes.

Child of Light! thy limbs are burning Thro’ the vest which seeks to hide them; As the radiant lines of morning Thro’ the clouds ere they divide them; And this atmosphere divinest Shrouds thee wheresoe’er thou shinest.

Fair are others; none beholds thee, But thy voice sounds low and tender Like the fairest, for it folds thee From the sight, that liquid splendour, And all feel, yet see thee never, As I feel now, lost for ever!

Lamp of Earth! where’er thou movest Its dim shapes are clad with brightness, And the souls of whom thou lovest Walk upon the winds with lightness, Till they fail, as I am failing, Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!

The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying, And the year On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying. Come, months, come away, From November to May, In your saddest array; Follow the bier Of the dead cold year, And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.

The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling For the year; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone To his dwelling; Come, months, come away; Put on white, black, and grey; Let your light sisters play— Ye, follow the bier Of the dead cold year, And make her grave green with tear on tear.

The sun is warm, the sky is clear, The waves are dancing fast and bright, Blue isles and snowy mountains wear The purple noon’s transparent might: The breath of the moist earth is light Around its unexpanded buds; Like many a voice of one delight— The winds’, the birds’, the ocean-floods’— The city’s voice itself is soft like Solitude’s.

I see the deep’s untrampled floor With green and purple sea-weeds strown; I see the waves upon the shore Like light dissolved in star-showers thrown: I sit upon the sands alone; The lightning of the noon-tide ocean Is flashing round me, and a tone Arises from its measured motion— How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.

Alas! I have nor hope nor health, Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content, surpassing wealth, The sage in meditation found, And walked with inward glory crowned— Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure; Others I see whom these surround— Smiling they live, and call life pleasure; To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

Yet now despair itself is mild Even as the winds and waters are; I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear,— Till death like sleep might steal on me, And I might feel in the warm air My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony.

Orphan hours, the year is dead, Come and sigh, come and weep! Merry hours, smile instead, For the year is but asleep. See, it smiles as it is sleeping, Mocking your untimely weeping.

As an earthquake rocks a corse In its coffin in the clay, So White Winter, that rough nurse, Rocks the death-cold year to-day; Solemn hours! wail aloud For your mother in her shroud.

As the wild air stirs and sways The tree-swung cradle of a child, So the breath of these rude days Rocks the year:—be calm and mild; Trembling hours, she will arise With new love within her eyes.

January grey is here, Like a sexton by her grave; February bears the bier, March with grief doth howl and rave. And April weeps—but O, ye hours, Follow with May’s fairest flowers.

A widow bird sat mourning for her love Upon a wintry bough; The frozen wind crept on above, The freezing stream below.

There was no leaf upon the forest bare, No flower upon the ground, And little motion in the air Except the mill-wheel’s sound.

O thou, who plumed with strong desire Wouldst float above the earth, beware! A shadow tracks the flight of fire— Night is coming! Bright are the regions of the air, And among the winds and beams It were delight to wander there— Night is coming!

The deathless stars are bright above; If I would cross the shade of night, Within my heart is the lamp of love, And that is day! And the moon will smile with gentle light On my golden plumes where’er they move; The meteors will linger round my flight, And make night day.

But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain; See, the bounds of the air are shaken— Night is coming! The red swift clouds of the hurricane Yon declining sun have overtaken; The clash of the hail sweeps over the plain— Night is coming!

I see the light, and I hear the sound; I’ll sail on the flood of the tempests dark, With the calm within and the light around Which makes night day: And then, when the gloom is deep and stark, Look from thy dull earth, slumber-bound; My moon-like flight thou then may’st mark On high, far away.

Some say there is a precipice Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin O’er piles of snow and chasms of ice ’Mid Alpine mountains; And that the languid storm pursuing That winged shape, for ever flies Round those hoar branches, aye renewing Its aëry fountains.

Some say, when nights are dry and clear, And the death-dews sleep on the morass, Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller, Which make night day; And a silver shape, like his early love, doth pass Up-borne by her wild and glittering hair, And when he awakes on the fragrant grass, He finds night day.