The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley

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!

  65

  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,

  70

  If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

  AN EXHORTATION

  CHAMELEONS feed on light and air:

  Poets’ food is love and fame:

  If in this wide world of care

  Poets could but find the same

  5

  With as little toil as they,

  Would they ever change their hue

  As the light chameleons do,

  Suiting it to every ray

  Twenty times a day?

  10

  Poets are on this cold earth,

  As chameleons might be,

  Hidden from their early birth

  In a cave beneath the sea;

  Where light is, chameleons change:

  15

  Where love is not, poets do:

  Fame is love disguised: if few

  Find either, never think it strange

  That poets range.

  Yet dare not stain with wealth or power

  20

  A poet’s free and heavenly mind:

  If bright chameleons should devour

  Any food but beams and wind,

  They would grow as earthly soon

  As their brother lizards are.

  25

  Children of a sunnier star,

  Spirits from beyond the moon,

  Oh, refuse the boon!

  THE INDIAN SERENADE

  I

  I ARISE from dreams of thee

  In the first sweet sleep of night,

  When the winds are breathing low,

  And the stars are shining bright:

  5

  I arise from dreams of thee,

  And a spirit in my feet

  Hath led me—who knows how?

  To thy chamber window, Sweet!

  II

  The wandering airs they faint

  10

  On the dark, the silent stream—

  The Champak odours fail

  Like sweet thoughts in a dream;

  The nightingale’s complaint,

  It dies upon her heart;—

  15

  As I must on thine,

  Oh, belovèd as thou art!

  III

  Oh lift me from the grass!

  I die! I faint! I fail!

  Let thy love in kisses rain

  20

  On my lips and eyelids pale.

  My cheek is cold and white, alas!

  My heart beats loud and fast;—

  Oh! press it to thine own again,

  Where it will break at last.

  CANCELLED PASSAGE

  O PILLOW cold and wet with tears!

  Thou breathest sleep no more!

  TO SOPHIA [MISS STACEY]

  I

  THOU art fair, and few are fairer

  Of the Nymphs of earth or ocean;

  They are robes that fit the wearer—

  Those soft limbs of thine, whose motion

  5

  Ever falls and shifts and glances

  As the life within them dances.

  II

  Thy deep eyes, a double Planet,

  Gaze the wisest into madness

  With soft clear fire,—the winds that fan it

  10

  Are those thoughts of tender gladness

  Which, like zephyrs on the billow,

  Make thy gentle soul their pillow.

  III

  If, whatever face thou paintest

  In those eyes, grows pale with pleasure,

  15

  If the fainting soul is faintest

  When it hears thy harp’s wild measure,

  Wonder not that when thou speakest

  Of the weak my heart is weakest.

  IV

  As dew beneath the wind of morning,

  20

  As the sea which whirlwinds waken,

  As the birds at thunder’s warning,

  As aught mute yet deeply shaken,

  As one who feels an unseen spirit

  Is my heart when thine is near it.

  TO WILLIAM SHELLEY

  (With what truth may I say—

  Roma! Roma! Roma!

  Non è più come era prima!)

  I

  MY lost William, thou in whom

  Some bright spirit lived, and did

  That decaying robe consume

  Which its lustre faintly hid,—

  5

  Here its ashes find a tomb,

  But beneath this pyramid

  Thou art not—if a thing divine

  Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine

  Is thy mother’s grief and mine.

  II

  10

  Where art thou, my gentle child?

  Let me think thy spirit feeds,

  With its life intense and mild,

  The love of living leaves and weeds

  Among these tombs and ruins wild;—

  15

  Let me think that through low seeds

  Of sweet flowers and sunny grass

  Into their hues and scents may pass

  A portion—–

  TO WILLIAM SHELLEY

  THY little footsteps on the sands

  Of a remote and lonely shore;

  The twinkling of thine infant hands,

  Where now the worm will feed no more;

  5

  Thy mingled look of love and glee

  When we returned to gaze on thee—

  TO MARY SHELLEY

  MY dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone,

  And left me in this dreary world alone?

  Thy form is here indeed,—a lovely one—

  But thou art fled, gone down the dreary road,

  5

  That leads to Sorrow’s most obscure abode;

  Thou sittest on the hearth of pale despair,

  Where

  For thine own sake I cannot follow thee.

  TO MARY SHELLEY

  THE world is dreary,

  And I’m weary

  Of wandering on without thee, Mary;

  A joy was erewhile

  5

  In thy voice and thy smile,

  And ’tis gone, when I should be gone too, Mary.

  ON THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO DA VINCI IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY

  I

  IT lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,

  Upon the cloudy mountain-peak supine;

  Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;

  Its horror and its beauty are divine.

  5

  Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie

  Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine,

  Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,

  The agonies of anguish and of death.

  II

  Yet it is less the horror than the grace

  10

  Which turns the gazer’s spirit into stone,

  Whereon the lineaments of that dead face

  Are graven, till the characters be grown

  Into itself, and thought no more can trace;

  ’Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown

  15

  Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain,

  Which humanize and harmonize the strain.

  III

  And from its head as from one body grow,

  As grass out of a watery rock,

  Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow

  20

  And their long tangles in each other lock,

  And with unending inv
olutions show

  Their mailèd radiance, as it were to mock

  The torture and the death within, and saw

  The solid air with many a ragged jaw.

  IV

  25

  And, from a stone beside, a poisonous eft

  Peeps idly into those Gorgonian eyes;

  Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft

  Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise

  Out of the cave this hideous light had cleft,

  30

  And he comes hastening like a moth that hies

  After a taper; and the midnight sky

  Flares, a light more dread than obscurity.

  V

  ’Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror;

  For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare

  35

  Kindled by that inextricable error,

  Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air

  Become a and ever-shifting mirror

  Of all the beauty and the terror there—

  A woman’s countenance, with serpent-locks,

  40

  Gazing in death on Heaven from those wet rocks.

  LOVE’S PHILOSOPHY

  I

  THE fountains mingle with the river

  And the rivers with the Ocean,

  The winds of Heaven mix for ever

  With a sweet emotion;

  5

  Nothing in the world is single;

  All things by a law divine

  In one spirit meet and mingle.

  Why not I with thine?—

  II

  See the mountains kiss high Heaven

  And the waves clasp one another;

  No sister-flower would be for given

  If it disdained its brother;

  And the sunlight clasps the earth

  And the moonbeams kiss the sea:

  What is all this sweet work worth

  If thou kiss not me?

  FRAGMENT: ‘

  FOLLOW TO THE DEEP WOOD’S WEEDS’

  FOLLOW to the deep wood’s weeds,

  Follow to the wild-briar dingle,

  Where we seek to intermingle,

  And the violet tells her tale

  5

  To the odour-scented gale,

  For they two have enough to do

  Of such work as I and you.

  THE BIRTH OF PLEASURE

  AT the creation of the Earth

  Pleasure, that divinest birth,

  From the soil of Heaven did rise,

  Wrapped in sweet wild melodies—

  5

  Like an exhalation wreathing

  To the sound of air low-breathing

  Through Aeolian pines, which make

  A shade and shelter to the lake

  Whence it rises soft and slow;

  10

  Her life-breathing [limbs] did flow

  In the harmony divine

  Of an ever-lengthening line

  Which enwrapped her perfect form

  With a beauty clear and warm.

  FRAGMENT: LOVE THE UNIVERSE TO-DAY

  AND who feels discord now or sorrow?

  Love is the universe to-day—

  These are the slaves of dim to-morrow,

  Darkening Life’s labyrinthine way.

  FRAGMENT: ‘A GENTLE STORY OF TWO LOVERS YOUNG’

  A GENTLE story of two lovers young,

  Who met in innocence and died in sorrow,

  And of one selfish heart, whose rancour clung

  Like curses on them; are ye slow to borrow

  5

  The lore of truth from such a tale?

  Or in this world’s deserted vale,

  Do ye not see a star of gladness

  Pierce the shadows of its sadness,—

  When ye are cold, that love is a light sent

  10

  From Heaven, which none shall quench, to cheer the innocent?

  FRAGMENT: LOVE’S TENDER ATMOSPHERE

  THERE is a warm and gentle atmosphere

  About the form of one we love, and thus

  As in a tender mist our spirits are

  Wrapped in the of that which is to us

  5

  The health of life’s own life—

  FRAGMENT: WEDDED SOULS

  I AM as a spirit who has dwelt

  Within his heart of hearts, and I have felt

  His feelings, and have thought his thoughts, and known

  The inmost converse of his soul, the tone

  5

  Unheard but in the silence of his blood,

  When all the pulses in their multitude

  Image the trembling calm of summer seas.

  I have unlocked the golden melodies

  Of his deep soul, as with a master-key,

  10

  And loosened them and bathed myself therein—

  Even as an eagle in a thunder-mist

  Clothing his wings with lightning.

  FRAGMENT: ‘IS IT THAT IN SOME BRIGHTER SPHERE’

  Is it that in some brighter sphere

  We part from friends we meet with here?

  Or do we see the Future pass

  Over the Present’s dusky glass?

  5

  Or what is that that makes us seem

  To patch up fragments of a dream,

  Part of which comes true, and part

  Beats and trembles in the heart?

  FRAGMENT: SUFFICIENT UNTO THE DAY

  Is not to-day enough? Why do I peer

  Into the darkness of the day to come?

  Is not to-morrow even as yesterday?

  And will the day that follows change thy doom?

  5

  Few flowers grow upon thy wintry way;

  And who waits for thee in that cheerless home

  Whence thou hast fled, whither thou must return

  Charged with the load that makes thee faint and mourn?

  FRAGMENT: ‘YE GENTLE VISITATIONS OF CALM THOUGHT’

  YE gentle visitations of calm thought—

  Moods like the memories of happier earth,

  Which come arrayed in thoughts of little worth,

  Like stars in clouds by the weak winds enwrought,—

  5

  But that the clouds depart and stars remain,

  While they remain, and ye, alas, depart!

  FRAGMENT: MUSIC AND SWEET POETRY

  How sweet it is to sit and read the tales

  Of mighty poets and to hear the while

  Sweet music, which when the attention fails

  Fills the dim pause—–

  FRAGMENT: THE SEPULCHRE OF MEMORY

  AND where is truth? On tombs? for such to thee

  Has been my heart—and thy dead memory

  Has lain from childhood, many a changeful year,

  Unchangingly preserved and buried there.

  FRAGMENT: ‘WHEN A LOVER CLASPS HIS FAIREST’

  I

  WHEN a lover clasps his fairest,

  Then be our dread sport the rarest.

  Their caresses were like the chaff

  In the tempest, and be our laugh

  5

  His despair—her epitaph!

  II

  When a mother clasps her child,

  Watch till dusty Death has piled

  His cold ashes on the clay;

  She has loved it many a day—

  10

  She remains,—it fades away.

  FRAGMENT: ‘WAKE THE SERPENT NOT’

  WAKE the serpent not—lest he

  Should not know the way to go,—

  Let him crawl which yet lies sleeping

  Through the deep grass of the meadow!

  5

  Not a bee shall hear him creeping,

  Not a may-fly shall awaken

  From its cradling blue-bell shaken,

  Not the starlight as he’s sliding

  Through the grass with silent gliding.

  FRAGMENT: RAIN
r />   THE fitful alternations of the rain,

  When the chill wind, languid as with pain

  Of its own heavy moisture, here and there

  Drives through the gray and beamless atmosphere.

  FRAGMENT: A TALE UNTOLD

  ONE sung of thee who left the tale untold,

  Like the false dawns which perish in the bursting;

  Like empty cups of wrought and daedal gold,

  Which mock the lips with air, when they are thirsting.

  FRAGMENT: TO ITALY

  AS the sunrise to the night,

  As the north wind to the clouds,

  As the earthquake’s fiery flight,

  Ruining mountain solitudes,

  5

  Everlasting Italy,

  Be those hopes and fears on thee.

  FRAGMENT: WINE OF THE FAIRIES

  I AM drunk with the honey wine

  Of the moon-unfolded eglantine,

  Which fairies catch in hyacinth bowls.

  The bats, the dormice, and the moles

  5

  Sleep in the walls or under the sward

  Of the desolate castle yard;

  And when ’tis split on the summer earth

  Or its fumes arise among the dew,

  Their jocund dreams are full of mirth,