Selected Poems and Prose

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  80Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,

  They ne’er will gather strength, or find a home again.

  X

  And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,

  And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries;

  ‘Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead;

  85See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes,

  Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies

  A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain.’

  Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!

  She knew not ’twas her own; as with no stain

  90She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.

  XI

  One from a lucid urn of starry dew

  Washed his light limbs as if embalming them;

  Another clipt her profuse locks, and threw

  The wreath upon him, like an anadem,

  95Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem;

  Another in her wilful grief would break

  Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem

  A greater loss with one which was more weak;

  And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek.

  XII

  100Another Splendour on his mouth alit,

  That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath

  Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,

  And pass into the panting heart beneath

  With lightning and with music: the damp death

  105Quenched its caress upon his icy lips;

  And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath

  Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,

  It flushed through his pale limbs, and past to its eclipse.

  XIII

  And others came … Desires and Adorations,

  110Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies,

  Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations

  Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;

  And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,

  And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam

  115Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,

  Came in slow pomp;—the moving pomp might seem

  Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.

  XIV

  All he had loved, and moulded into thought,

  From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,

  120Lamented Adonais. Morning sought

  Her eastern watchtower, and her hair unbound,

  Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,

  Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day;

  Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,

  125Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,

  And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.

  XV

  Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,

  And feeds her grief with his remembered lay,

  And will no more reply to winds or fountains,

  130Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray,

  Or herdsman’s horn, or bell at closing day;

  Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear

  Than those for whose disdain she pined away

  Into a shadow of all sounds:—a drear

  135Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear.

  XVI

  Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down

  Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,

  Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown,

  For whom should she have waked the sullen year?

  140To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear

  Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both

  Thou Adonais: wan they stand and sere

  Amid the faint companions of their youth,

  With dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing ruth.

  XVII

  145Thy spirit’s sister, the lorn nightingale

  Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain;

  Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale

  Heaven, and could nourish in the sun’s domain

  Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain,

  150Soaring and screaming round her empty nest,

  As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain

  Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast,

  And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest!

  XVIII

  Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone,

  155But grief returns with the revolving year;

  The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;

  The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear;

  Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons’ bier;

  The amorous birds now pair in every brake,

  160And build their mossy homes in field and brere;

  And the green lizard, and the golden snake,

  Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.

  XIX

  Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean

  A quickening life from the Earth’s heart has burst

  165As it has ever done, with change and motion,

  From the great morning of the world when first

  God dawned on Chaos; in its steam immersed

  The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light;

  All baser things pant with life’s sacred thirst;

  170Diffuse themselves; and spend in love’s delight,

  The beauty and the joy of their renewed might.

  XX

  The leprous corpse touched by this spirit tender

  Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;

  Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour

  175Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death

  And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath;

  Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows

  Be as a sword consumed before the sheath

  By sightless lightning?—th’ intense atom glows

  180A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.

  XXI

  Alas! that all we loved of him should be,

  But for our grief, as if it had not been,

  And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!

  Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene

  185The actors or spectators? Great and mean

  Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.

  As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,

  Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,

  Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

  XXII

  190He will awake no more, oh, never more!

  ‘Wake thou,’ cried Misery, ‘childless Mother, rise

  Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart’s core,

  A wound more fierce than his with tears and sighs.’

  And all the Dreams that watched Urania’s eyes,

  195And all the Echoes whom their sister’s song

  Had held in holy silence, cried: ‘Arise!’

  Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung,

  From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung.

  XXIII

  She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs

  200Out of the East, and follows wild and drear

  The golden Day, which, on eternal wings,

  Even as a ghost abandoning a bier,

  Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear

  So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania;

  205So saddened round her like an atmosphere

  Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way

  Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.

  XXIV

  Out of her secret Paradise she sped,

  Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel,

  210And human hearts, which to her aery tread

  Yielding not, wounded the invisible

  Palms of her tender
feet where’er they fell:

  And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they

  Rent the soft Form they never could repel,

  215Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May,

  Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.

  XXV

  In the death chamber for a moment Death,

  Shamed by the presence of that living Might,

  Blushed to annihilation, and the breath

  220Revisited those lips, and life’s pale light

  Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight.

  ‘Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless,

  As silent lightning leaves the starless night!

  Leave me not!’ cried Urania: her distress

  225Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress.

  XXVI

  ‘Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again;

  Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live;

  And in my heartless breast and burning brain

  That word, that kiss shall all thoughts else survive,

  230With food of saddest memory kept alive,

  Now thou art dead, as if it were a part

  Of thee, my Adonais! I would give

  All that I am to be as thou now art!

  But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!

  XXVII

  235‘Oh gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,

  Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men

  Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart

  Dare the unpastured dragon in his den?

  Defenceless as thou wert, oh where was then

  240Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear?

  Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when

  Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere,

  The monsters of life’s waste had fled from thee like deer.

  XXVIII

  ‘The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;

  245The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead;

  The vultures to the conqueror’s banner true

  Who feed where Desolation first has fed,

  And whose wings rain contagion;—how they fled,

  When like Apollo, from his golden bow,

  250The Pythian of the age one arrow sped

  And smiled!—The spoilers tempt no second blow,

  They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.

  XXIX

  ‘The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;

  He sets, and each ephemeral insect then

  255Is gathered into death without a dawn,

  And the immortal stars awake again;

  So is it in the world of living men:

  A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight

  Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when

  260It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light

  Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit’s awful night.’

  XXX

  Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came,

  Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent;

  The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame

  265Over his living head like Heaven is bent,

  An early but enduring monument,

  Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song

  In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent

  The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,

  270And love taught grief to fall like music from his tongue.

  XXXI

  Midst others of less note, came one frail Form,

  A phantom among men; companionless

  As the last cloud of an expiring storm

  Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,

  275Had gazed on Nature’s naked loveliness,

  Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray

  With feeble steps o’er the world’s wilderness,

  And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,

  Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.

  XXXII

  280A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift—

  A Love in desolation masked;—a Power

  Girt round with weakness;—it can scarce uplift

  The weight of the superincumbent hour;

  It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,

  285A breaking billow;—even whilst we speak

  Is it not broken? On the withering flower

  The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek

  The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.

  XXXIII

  His head was bound with pansies overblown,

  290And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue;

  And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,

  Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses grew

  Yet dripping with the forest’s noonday dew,

  Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart

  295Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew

  He came the last, neglected and apart;

  A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter’s dart.

  XXXIV

  All stood aloof, and at his partial moan

  Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band

  300Who in another’s fate now wept his own,

  As in the accents of an unknown land

  He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scanned

  The Stranger’s mien, and murmured: ‘who art thou?’

  He answered not, but with a sudden hand

  305Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow,

  Which was like Cain’s or Christ’s—Oh! that it should be so!

  XXXV

  What softer voice is hushed over the dead?

  Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?

  What form leans sadly o’er the white death-bed,

  310In mockery of monumental stone,

  The heavy heart heaving without a moan?

  If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise,

  Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one;

  Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs

  315The silence of that heart’s accepted sacrifice.

  XXXVI

  Our Adonais has drunk poison—oh!

  What deaf and viperous murderer could crown

  Life’s early cup with such a draught of woe?

  The nameless worm would now itself disown:

  320It felt, yet could escape the magic tone

  Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong,

  But what was howling in one breast alone,

  Silent with expectation of the song,

  Whose master’s hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.

  XXXVII

  325Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!

  Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,

  Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!

  But be thyself, and know thyself to be!

  And ever at thy season be thou free

  330To spill the venom when thy fangs o’erflow:

  Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee;

  Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow,

  And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt—as now.

  XXXVIII

  Nor let us weep that our delight is fled

  335Far from these carrion kites that scream below;

  He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;

  Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now.—

  Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow

  Back to the burning fountain whence it came,

  340A portion of the Eternal, which must glow

  Through time and change, unquenchably the same,

  Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.

  XXXIX

  Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep—

  He hath awakened from the dream of life—

  345’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep


  With phantoms an unprofitable strife,

  And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife

  Invulnerable nothings.—We decay

  Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief

  350Convulse us and consume us day by day,

  And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

  XL

  He has outsoared the shadow of our night;

  Envy and calumny and hate and pain,

  And that unrest which men miscall delight,

  355Can touch him not and torture not again;

  From the contagion of the world’s slow stain

  He is secure, and now can never mourn

  A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain;

  Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn,

  360With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

  XLI

  He lives, he wakes—’tis Death is dead, not he;

  Mourn not for Adonais.—Thou young Dawn

  Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee

  The spirit thou lamentest is not gone;

  365Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!

  Cease ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air

  Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown

  O’er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare

  Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!

  XLII

  370He is made one with Nature: there is heard

  His voice in all her music, from the moan

  Of thunder, to the song of night’s sweet bird;

  He is a presence to be felt and known

  In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,

  375Spreading itself where’er that Power may move