Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

      In thine halls the lamp of learning,

      Padua, now no more is burning;

      Like a meteor, whose wild way

      Is lost over the grave of day,

      It gleams betray’d and to betray:

      Once remotest nations came

      To adore that sacred flame,

      When it lit not many a hearth

      On this cold and gloomy earth:

      Now new fires from antique light

      Spring beneath the wide world’s might;

      But their spark lies dead in thee,

      Trampled out by Tyranny.

      As the Norway woodman quells,

      In the depth of piny dells,

      One light flame among the brakes,

      While the boundless forest shakes,

      And its mighty trunks are torn

      By the fire thus lowly born:

      The spark beneath his feet is dead,

      He starts to see the flames it fed

      Howling through the darkened sky

      With myriad tongues victoriously,

      And sinks down in fear: so thou,

      O Tyranny, beholdest now

      Light around thee, and thou hearest

      The loud flames ascend, and fearest:

      Grovel on the earth; ay, hide

      In the dust thy purple pride!

      Noon descends around me now:

      ’Tis the noon of autumn’s glow,

      When a soft and purple mist

      Like a vaporous amethyst,

      Or an air-dissolved star

      Mingling light and fragrance, far

      From the curved horizon’s bound

      To the point of Heaven’s profound,

      Fills the overflowing sky;

      And the plains that silent lie

      Underneath, the leaves unsodden

      Where the infant Frost has trodden

      With his morning-winged feet,

      Whose bright print is gleaming yet;

      And the red and golden vines,

      Piercing with their trellis’d lines

      The rough, dark-skirted wilderness;

      The dun and bladed grass no less,

      Pointing from his hoary tower

      In the windless air; the flower

      Glimmering at my feet; the line

      Of the olive-sandalled Apennine

      In the south dimly islanded;

      And the Alps, whose snows are spread

      High between the clouds and sun;

      And of living things each one;

      And my spirit which so long

      Darkened this swift stream of song,

      Interpenetrated lie

      By the glory of the sky:

      Be it love, light, harmony,

      Odour, or the soul of all

      Which from Heaven like dew doth fall,

      Or the mind which feeds this verse

      Peopling the lone universe.

      Noon descends, and after noon

      Autumn’s evening meets me soon,

      Leading the infantine moon,

      And that one star, which to her

      Almost seems to minister

      Half the crimson light she brings

      From the sunset’s radiant springs:

      And the soft dreams of the morn

      (Which like winged winds had borne

      To that silent isle, which lies

      Mid remembered agonies,

      The frail bark of this lone being)

      Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,

      And its ancient pilot, Pain,

      Sits beside the helm again.

      Other flowering isles must be

      In the sea of Life and Agony:

      Other spirits float and flee

      O’er that gulf: even now, perhaps,

      On some rock the wild wave wraps,

      With folded wings they waiting sit

      For my bark, to pilot it

      To some calm and blooming cove,

      Where for me, and those I love,

      May a windless bower be built,

      Far from passion, pain and guilt,

      In a dell mid lawny hills,

      Which the wild sea-murmur fills,

      And soft sunshine, and the sound

      Of old forests echoing round,

      And the light and smell divine

      Of all flowers that breathe and shine:

      We may live so happy there,

      That the Spirits of the Air,

      Envying us, may even entice

      To our healing paradise

      The polluting multitude;

      But their rage would be subdued

      By that clime divine and calm,

      And the winds whose wings rain balm

      On the uplifted soul, and leaves

      Under which the bright sea heaves;

      While each breathless interval

      In their whisperings musical

      The inspired soul supplies

      With its own deep melodies,

      And the love which heals all strife

      Circling, like the breath of life,

      All things in that sweet abode

      With its own mild brotherhood:

      They, not it, would change; and soon

      Every sprite beneath the moon

      Would repent its envy vain,

      And the earth grow young again.

      LINES WRITTEN DURING THE CASTLEREAGH ADMINISTRATION

      I.

      Corpses are cold in the tomb;

      Stones on the pavement are dumb;

      Abortions are dead in the womb,

      And their mothers look pale—like the death-white shore

      Of Albion, free no more.

      II.