Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

of rainbow flowers and branching moss,

      Commit the colors of that varying cheek,

      That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.

      The dim and horned moon hung low, and poured

      A sea of lustre on the horizon’s verge

      That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist

      Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank

      Wan moonlight even to fulness; not a star

      Shone, not a sound was heard; the very winds,

      Danger’s grim playmates, on that precipice

      Slept, clasped in his embrace.—O storm of death,

      Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night!

      And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still

      Guiding its irresistible career

      In thy devastating omnipotence,

      Art king of this frail world! from the red field

      Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital,

      The patriot’s sacred couch, the snowy bed

      Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne,

      A mighty voice invokes thee! Ruin calls

      His brother Death! A rare and regal prey

      He hath prepared, prowling around the world;

      Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men

      Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,

      Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine

      The unheeded tribute of a broken heart.

      When on the threshold of the green recess

      The wanderer’s footsteps fell, he knew that death

      Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,

      Did he resign his high and holy soul

      To images of the majestic past,

      That paused within his passive being now,

      Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe

      Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place

      His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk

      Of the old pine; upon an ivied stone

      Reclined his languid head; his limbs did rest,

      Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink

      Of that obscurest chasm;—and thus he lay,

      Surrendering to their final impulses

      The hovering powers of life. Hope and Despair,

      The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear

      Marred his repose; the influxes of sense

      And his own being, unalloyed by pain,

      Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed

      The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there

      At peace, and faintly smiling. His last sight

      Was the great moon, which o’er the western line

      Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended,

      With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed

      To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills

      It rests; and still as the divided frame

      Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet’s blood,

      That ever beat in mystic sympathy

      With Nature’s ebb and flow, grew feebler still;

      And when two lessening points of light alone

      Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp

      Of his faint respiration scarce did stir

      The stagnate night:—till the minutest ray

      Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.

      It paused—it fluttered. But when heaven remained

      Utterly black, the murky shades involved

      An image silent, cold, and motionless,

      As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.

      Even as a vapor fed with golden beams

      That ministered on sunlight, ere the west

      Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame—

      No sense, no motion, no divinity—

      A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings

      The breath of heaven did wander—a bright stream

      Once fed with many-voiced waves—a dream

      Of youth, which night and time have quenched forever—

      Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.

      Oh, for Medea’s wondrous alchemy,

      Which wheresoe’er it fell made the earth gleam

      With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale

      From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! Oh, that God,

      Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice

      Which but one living man has drained, who now,

      Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels

      No proud exemption in the blighting curse

      He bears, over the world wanders forever,

      Lone as incarnate death! Oh, that the dream

      Of dark magician in his visioned cave,

      Raking the cinders of a crucible

      For life and power, even when his feeble hand

      Shakes in its last decay, were the true law

      Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled,

      Like some frail exhalation, which the dawn

      Robes in its golden beams,—ah! thou hast fled!

      The brave, the gentle and the beautiful,

      The child of grace and genius. Heartless things

      Are done and said i’ the world, and many worms

      And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth

      From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,

      In vesper low or joyous orison,

      Lifts still its solemn voice:—but thou art fled—

      Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes

      Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee

      Been purest ministers, who are, alas!

      Now thou art not! Upon those pallid lips

      So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes

      That image sleep in death, upon that form

      Yet safe from the worm’s outrage, let no tear

      Be shed—not even in thought. Nor, when those hues

      Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,

      Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone

      In the frail pauses of this simple strain,

      Let not high verse, mourning the memory

      Of