Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

      Whom Britons own to be

      Immortal Queen.

      II

      See, she comes throned on high,

      On swift Eternity!

      God save the Queen!

      Millions on millions wait,

      Firm, rapid, and elate,

      On her majestic state!

      God save the Queen!

      III

      She is Thine own pure soul

      Moulding the mighty whole,—

      God save the Queen!

      She is Thine own deep love

      Rained down from Heaven above,—

      Wherever she rest or move,

      God save our Queen!

      IV

      Wilder her enemies

      In their own dark disguise,—

      God save our Queen!

      All earthly things that dare

      Her sacred name to bear,

      Strip them, as kings are, bare;

      God save the Queen!

      V

      Be her eternal throne

      Built in our hearts alone—

      God save the Queen!

      Let the oppressor hold

      Canopied seats of gold;

      She sits enthroned of old

      O’er our hearts Queen.

      VI

      Lips touched by seraphim

      Breathe out the choral hymn

      God save the Queen!

      Sweet as if angels sang,

      Loud as that trumpet’s clang

      Wakening the world’s dead gang,—

      God save the Queen!

      A SUMMER EVENING CHURCHYARD, LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE

      The wind has swept from the wide atmosphere

      Each vapour that obscured the sunset’s ray,

      And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair

      In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day:

      Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men,

      Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.

      They breathe their spells towards the departing day,

      Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea;

      Light, sound, and motion, own the potent sway,

      Responding to the charm with its own mystery.

      The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass

      Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.

      Thou too, aerial pile, whose pinnacles

      Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,

      Obey’st I in silence their sweet solemn spells,

      Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire,

      Around whose lessening and invisible height

      Gather among the stars the clouds of night.

      The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres:

      And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound,

      Half sense half thought, among the darkness stirs,

      Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around,

      And, mingling with the still night and mute sky,

      Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.

      Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild

      And terrorless as this serenest night.

      Here could I hope, like some enquiring child

      Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight

      Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep

      That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.

      ADONAIS

      AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS

      ᾽Αστὴρ πρὶν μὲν ἔ λαμπες ἐνὶ ξωο͡ισιν ῾Ε͡ῳος

      ν͡υν δὲ θανὼν λάμπεις ῎Εσπερος ἐν φθιμένοις.

      PLATO.

      PREFACE

      Φάρμακον ͡ἠλθε, Βίων, ποτὶ σὸν στόμα, φάρμακον εἰδες.

      π͡ως τευ το͡ις χείλεσσι ποτέδραμε, κοὐκ ἐγλυκάνθη;

      τίς δὲ βροτὸς τοσσο͡υτον ἀνάμερος, ἤ κεράσαι τοι,

      ἤ δο͡υναι λαλέοντι το φάρμακον; ἔκφυγεν ὠδάν.

      MOSCHUS, EPITAPH. BION.

      It is my intention to subjoin to the London edition of this poem a criticism upon the claims of its lamented object to be classed among the writers of the highest genius who have adorned our age. My known repugnance to the narrow principles of taste on which several of his earlier compositions were modelled prove at least that I am an impartial judge. I consider the fragment of Hyperion as second to nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years.

      John Keats died at Rome of a consumption, in his twenty-fourth year, on the —— of —— 1821; and was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.

      The genius of the lamented person to whose memory I have dedicated these unworthy verses was not less delicate and fragile than it was beautiful; and where cankerworms abound, what wonder if its young flower was blighted in the bud? The savage criticism on his Endymion, which appeared in the “Quarterly Review”, produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind; the agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgements from more candid critics of the true greatness of his powers were ineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted.

      It may be well said that these wretched men know not what they do. They scatter their insults and their slanders without heed as to whether the poisoned shaft lights on a heart made callous by many blows or one like Keats’s composed of more penetrable stuff. One of their associates is, to my knowledge, a most base and unprincipled calumniator. As to Endymion, was it a poem, whatever might be its defects, to be treated contemptuously by those who had celebrated, with various degrees of complacency and panegyric, Paris, and Woman, and a Syrian Tale,