Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

that all we loved of him should be,

      But for our grief, as if it had not been,

      And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!

      Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene

      The actors or spectators? Great and mean

      Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.

      As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,

      Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,

      Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

      XXII

      He will awake no more, oh, never more!

      ‘Wake thou,’ cried Misery, ‘childless Mother, rise

      Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart’s core,

      A wound more fierce than his, with tears and sighs.’

      And all the Dreams that watched Urania’s eyes,

      And all the Echoes whom their sister’s song

      Had held in holy silence, cried: ‘Arise!’

      Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung,

      From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung.

      XXIII

      She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs

      Out of the East, and follows wild and drear

      The golden Day, which, on eternal wings,

      Even as a ghost abandoning a bier,

      Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear

      So struck, so roused, so rapped Urania;

      So saddened round her like an atmosphere

      Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way

      Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.

      XXIV

      Out of her secret Paradise she sped,

      Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel,

      And human hearts, which to her aery tread

      Yielding not, wounded the invisible

      Palms of her tender feet where’er they fell:

      And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they,

      Rent the soft Form they never could repel,

      Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May,

      Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.

      XXV

      In the death-chamber for a moment Death,

      Shamed by the presence of that living Might,

      Blushed to annihilation, and the breath

      Revisited those lips, and Life’s pale light

      Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight.

      ‘Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless,

      As silent lightning leaves the starless night!

      Leave me not!’ cried Urania: her distress

      Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress.

      XXVI

      ‘Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again;

      Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live;

      And in my heartless breast and burning brain

      That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,

      With food of saddest memory kept alive,

      Now thou art dead, as if it were a part

      Of thee, my Adonais! I would give

      All that I am to be as thou now art!

      But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!

      XXVII

      ‘O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,

      Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men

      Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart

      Dare the unpastured dragon in his den?

      Defenceless as thou wert, oh, where was then

      Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear?

      Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when

      Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere,

      The monsters of life’s waste had fled from thee like deer.

      XXVIII

      ‘The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;

      The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead;

      The vultures to the conqueror’s banner true

      Who feed where Desolation first has fed,

      And whose wings rain contagion;—how they fled,

      When, like Apollo, from his golden bow

      The Pythian of the age one arrow sped

      And smiled!—The spoilers tempt no second blow,

      They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.

      XXIX

      ‘The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;

      He sets, and each ephemeral insect then

      Is gathered into death without a dawn,

      And the immortal stars awake again;

      So is it in the world of living men:

      A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight

      Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when

      It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light

      Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit’s awful night.’

      XXX

      Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came,

      Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent;

      The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame

      Over his living head like Heaven is bent,

      An early but enduring monument,

      Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song

      In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent

      The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,

      And Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue.

      XXXI

      Midst others of less note, came one frail Form,

      A phantom among men; companionless

      As the last cloud of an expiring storm

      Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,

      Had gazed on Nature’s naked loveliness,

      Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray

      With feeble steps o’er the world’s wilderness,

      And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,

      Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.

      XXXII

      A pardlike