Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

sculpture, speak in feeble imagery

      Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,

      And all the shows o’ the world, are frail and vain

      To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.

      It is a woe “too deep for tears,” when all

      Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,

      Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves

      Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,

      The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;

      But pale despair and cold tranquillity,

      Nature’s vast frame, the web of human things,

      Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.

      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

      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?

      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:

      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

      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.

      Children of a sunnier star,

      Spirits from beyond the moon,

      Oh, refuse the boon!

      DIRGE FOR THE YEAR

      I.

      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.

      II.

      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.

      III.

      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.

      IV.

      January gray 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.

      EPIPSYCHIDION

      VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE LADY,

      EMILIA V—,

      NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF ——.

      ———

      “L’anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nell’ infinito un Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro.”—HER OWN WORDS.

      ———

      ADVERTISEMENT

      The Writer of the following lines died at Florence, as he was preparing for a voyage to one of the wildest of the Sporades, which he had bought, and where he had fitted up the ruins of an old building, and where it was his hope to have realised a scheme of life, suited perhaps to that happier and better world of which he is now an inhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. His life was singular; less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it, than the ideal tinge which it received from his own character and feelings. The present Poem, like the “Vita Nuova” of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter-of-fact history of the circumstances to which it relates and to a certain other class it must ever remain incomprehensible, from a defect of a common organ of perception for the ideas of which it treats. Not but that gran vergogna sarebbe a colui, che rimasse cosa sotto veste di figura, o di colore rettorico: e domandato non sapesse denudare le sue parole da cotal veste, in guisa che avessero verace intendimento.

      The present poem appears to have been intended by the Writer as the dedication to some longer one. The stanza on the opposite page is almost a literal translation from Dante’s famous Canzone

      Voi, ch’ intendendo, il terzo ciel movete, etc.

      The presumptuous application of the concluding lines to his own composition will raise a smile at the expense of my unfortunate friend: be it a smile not of contempt, but pity. S.

      ———

      My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few

      Who fitly shalt conceive thy reasoning,

      Of such hard matter dost thou entertain;

      Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring

      Thee to base company (as chance may do),

      Quite unaware of what thou dost contain,

      I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again,

      My last delight! tell them that they are dull,

      And bid them own that thou art beautiful.

      ———

      Sweet Spirit! Sister of that orphan one,

      Whose empire is the name thou weepest on,

      In my heart’s temple I suspend to thee

      These votive wreaths of withered memory.

      Poor captive bird! who, from thy narrow cage,

      Pourest such music, that it might assuage

      The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee,

      Were they not deaf to all sweet melody;

      This song