Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

would have followed, though the grave between

      Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen:

      When a voice said:—‘O thou of hearts the weakest,

      The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest.’

      Then I—‘Where?’—the world’s echo answered ‘where?’

      And in that silence, and in my despair,

      I questioned every tongueless wind that flew

      Over my tower of mourning, if it knew

      Whither ’twas fled, this soul out of my soul;

      And murmured names and spells which have control

      Over the sightless tyrants of our fate;

      But neither prayer nor verse could dissipate

      The night which closed on her; nor uncreate

      That world within this Chaos, mine and me,

      Of which she was the veiled Divinity,

      The world I say of thoughts that worshipped her:

      And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear

      And every gentle passion sick to death,

      Feeding my course with expectation’s breath,

      Into the wintry forest of our life;

      And struggling through its error with vain strife,

      And stumbling in my weakness and my haste,

      And half bewildered by new forms, I passed,

      Seeking among those untaught foresters

      If I could find one form resembling hers,

      In which she might have masked herself from me.

      There,—One, whose voice was venomed melody

      Sate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers:

      The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers,

      Her touch was as electric poison,—flame

      Out of her looks into my vitals came,

      And from her living cheeks and bosom flew

      A killing air, which pierced like honey-dew

      Into the core of my green heart, and lay

      Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown gray

      O’er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime

      With ruins of unseasonable time.

      In many mortal forms I rashly sought

      The shadow of that idol of my thought.

      And some were fair—but beauty dies away:

      Others were wise—but honeyed words betray:

      And One was true—oh! why not true to me?

      Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee,

      I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay,

      Wounded and weak and panting; the cold day

      Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain.

      When, like a noonday dawn, there shone again

      Deliverance. One stood on my path who seemed

      As like the glorious shape which I had d reamed

      As is the Moon, whose changes ever run

      Into themselves, to the eternal Sun;

      The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven’s bright isles,

      Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles,

      That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame

      Which ever is transformed, yet still the same,

      And warms not but illumines. Young and fair

      As the descended Spirit of that sphere,

      She hid me, as the Moon may hide the night

      From its own darkness, until all was bright

      Between the Heaven and Earth of my calm mind,

      And, as a cloud charioted by the wind,

      She led me to a cave in that wild place,

      And sate beside me, with her downward face

      Illumining my slumbers, like the Moon

      Waxing and waning o’er Endymion.

      And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb,

      And all my being became bright or dim

      As the Moon’s image in a summer sea,

      According as she smiled or frowned on me;

      And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed:

      Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead:—

      For at her silver voice came Death and Life,

      Unmindful each of their accustomed strife,

      Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother,

      The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother,

      And through the cavern without wings they flew,

      And cried ‘Away, he is not of our crew.’

      I wept, and though it be a dream, I weep.

      What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep,

      Blotting that Moon, whose pale and waning lips

      Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse;—

      And how my soul was as a lampless sea,

      And who was then its Tempest; and when She,

      The Planet of that hour, was quenched, what frost

      Crept o’er those waters, till from coast to coast

      The moving billows of my being fell

      Into a death of ice, immovable;—

      And then—what earthquakes made it gape and split,

      The white Moon smiling all the while on it,

      These words conceal:—If not, each word would be

      The key of staunchless tears. Weep not for me!

      At length, into the obscure Forest came

      The Vision I had sought through grief and shame.

      Athwart that wintry wilderness of thorns

      Flashed from her motion splendour like the Morn’s,

      And from her presence life was radiated

      Through the gray earth and branches bare and dead;

      So that her way was paved, and roofed above

      With flowers as soft as thoughts of budding love;

      And music from her respiration spread

      Like light,—all other sounds were penetrated

      By the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound,

      So that the savage winds hung mute around;

      And odours warm and fresh fell from her hair

      Dissolving the dull cold in the frore air:

      Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun,

      When light is changed to love, this glorious One

      Floated into the cavern where I lay,

      And called my Spirit, and the dreaming clay