Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

      But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds

      Built o’er his mouldering bones a pyramid

      Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness:

      A lovely youth,—no mourning maiden decked

      With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath,

      The lone couch of his everlasting sleep:

      Gentle, and brave, and generous,—no lorn bard

      Breathed o’er his dark fate one melodious sigh:

      He lived, he died, he sung in solitude.

      Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes,

      And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined

      And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.

      The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn,

      And Silence, too enamoured of that voice,

      Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.

      By solemn vision and bright silver dream

      His infancy was nurtured. Every sight

      And sound from the vast earth and ambient air

      Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.

      The fountains of divine philosophy

      Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great,

      Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past

      In truth or fable consecrates, he felt

      And knew. When early youth had passed, he left

      His cold fireside and alienated home

      To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.

      Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness

      Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought

      With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,

      His rest and food. Nature’s most secret steps

      He like her shadow has pursued, where’er

      The red volcano overcanopies

      Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice

      With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes

      On black bare pointed islets ever beat

      With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves,

      Rugged and dark, winding among the springs

      Of fire and poison, inaccessible

      To avarice or pride, their starry domes

      Of diamond and of gold expand above

      Numberless and immeasurable halls,

      Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines

      Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.

      Nor had that scene of ampler majesty

      Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven

      And the green earth, lost in his heart its claims

      To love and wonder; he would linger long

      In lonesome vales, making the wild his home,

      Until the doves and squirrels would partake

      From his innocuous band his bloodless food,

      Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks,

      And the wild antelope, that starts whene’er

      The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend

      Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form

      More graceful than her own.

      His wandering step,

      Obedient to high thoughts, has visited

      The awful ruins of the days of old:

      Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste

      Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers

      Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids,

      Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe’er of strange,

      Sculptured on alabaster obelisk

      Or jasper tomb or mutilated sphinx,

      Dark Æthiopia in her desert hills

      Conceals. Among the ruined temples there,

      Stupendous columns, and wild images

      Of more than man, where marble daemons watch

      The Zodiac’s brazen mystery, and dead men

      Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,

      He lingered, poring on memorials

      Of the world’s youth: through the long burning day

      Gazed on those speechless shapes; nor, when the moon

      Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades

      Suspended he that task, but ever gazed

      And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind

      Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw

      The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.

      Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food,

      Her daily portion, from her father’s tent,

      And spread her matting for his couch, and stole

      From duties and repose to tend his steps,

      Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe

      To speak her love, and watched his nightly sleep,

      Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips

      Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath

      Of innocent dreams arose; then, when red morn

      Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home

      Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned.

      The Poet, wandering on, through Arabie,

      And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,

      And o’er the aërial mountains which pour down

      Indus and Oxus from their icy caves,

      In joy and exultation held his way;

      Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within

      Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine

      Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower,

      Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched

      His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep

      There came, a dream of hopes that never yet

      Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid

      Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones.

      Her voice was like the voice of his own soul

      Heard in the calm of thought; its music long,

      Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held

      His inmost sense suspended in its web

      Of many-colored woof and shifting hues.

      Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,

      And lofty hopes of divine liberty,

      Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,

      Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood

      Of