Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

      X

      And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,

      And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries;

      ‘Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead;

      See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes,

      Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies

      A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain.’

      Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!

      She knew not ’twas her own; as with no stain

      She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.

      XI

      One from a lucid urn of starry dew

      Washed his light limbs as if embalming them;

      Another clipped her profuse locks, and threw

      The wreath upon him, like an anadem,

      Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem;

      Another in her wilful grief would break

      Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem

      A greater loss with one which was more weak;

      And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek.

      XII

      Another Splendour on his mouth alit,

      That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath

      Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,

      And pass into the panting heart beneath

      With lightning and with music: the damp death

      Quenched its caress upon his icy lips;

      And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath

      Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,

      It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse.

      XIII

      And others came...Desires and Adorations,

      Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies,

      Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations

      Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;

      And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,

      And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam

      Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,

      Came in slow pomp;—the moving pomp might seem

      Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.

      XIV

      All he had loved, and moulded into thought,

      From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,

      Lamented Adonais. Morning sought

      Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,

      Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,

      Dimmed the aereal eyes that kindle day;

      Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,

      Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,

      And the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.

      XV

      Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,

      And feeds her grief with his remembered lay,

      And will no more reply to winds or fountains,

      Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray,

      Or herdsman’s horn, or bell at closing day;

      Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear

      Than those for whose disdain she pined away

      Into a shadow of all sounds:—a drear

      Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear.

      XVI

      Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down

      Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,

      Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown,

      For whom should she have waked the sullen year?

      To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear

      Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both

      Thou, Adonais: wan they stand and sere

      Amid the faint companions of their youth,

      With dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing ruth.

      XVII

      Thy spirit’s sister, the lorn nightingale

      Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain;

      Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale

      Heaven, and could nourish in the sun’s domain

      Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain,

      Soaring and screaming round her empty nest,

      As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain

      Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast,

      And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest!

      XVIII

      Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone,

      But grief returns with the revolving year;

      The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;

      The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear;

      Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons’ bier;

      The amorous birds now pair in every brake,

      And build their mossy homes in field and brere;

      And the green lizard, and the golden snake,

      Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.

      XIX

      Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean

      A quickening life from the Earth’s heart has burst

      As it has ever done, with change and motion,

      From the great morning of the world when first

      God dawned on Chaos; in its stream immersed,

      The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light;

      All baser things pant with life’s sacred thirst;

      Diffuse themselves; and spend in love’s delight,

      The beauty and the joy of their renewed might.

      XX

      The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender,

      Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;

      Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour

      Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death

      And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath;

      Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows

      Be as a sword consumed before the sheath

      By sightless lightning?—the intense atom glows

      A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.

      XXI