Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Love in desolation masked;—a Power

      Girt round with weakness;—it can scarce uplift

      The weight of the superincumbent hour;

      It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,

      A breaking billow;—even whilst we speak

      Is it not broken? On the withering flower

      The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek

      The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.

      XXXIII

      His head was bound with pansies overblown,

      And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue;

      And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,

      Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew

      Yet dripping with the forest’s noonday dew,

      Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart

      Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew

      He came the last, neglected and apart;

      A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter’s dart.

      XXXIV

      All stood aloof, and at his partial moan

      Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band

      Who in another’s fate now wept his own,

      As in the accents of an unknown land

      He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scanned

      The Stranger’s mien, and murmured: ‘Who art thou?’

      He answered not, but with a sudden hand

      Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow,

      Which was like Cain’s or Christ’s—oh! that it should be so!

      XXXV

      What softer voice is hushed over the dead?

      Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?

      What form leans sadly o’er the white death-bed,

      In mockery of monumental stone,

      The heavy heart heaving without a moan?

      If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise,

      Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one,

      Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs,

      The silence of that heart’s accepted sacrifice.

      XXXVI

      Our Adonais has drunk poison—oh!

      What deaf and viperous murderer could crown

      Life’s early cup with such a draught of woe?

      The nameless worm would now itself disown:

      It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone

      Whose prelude held all envy, hate and wrong,

      But what was howling in one breast alone,

      Silent with expectation of the song,

      Whose master’s hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.

      XXXVII

      Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!

      Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,

      Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!

      But be thyself, and know thyself to be!

      And ever at thy season be thou free

      To spill the venom when thy fangs o’erflow;

      Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee;

      Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow,

      And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt—as now.

      XXXVIII

      Nor let us weep that our delight is fled

      Far from these carrion kites that scream below;

      He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;

      Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now—

      Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow

      Back to the burning fountain whence it came,

      A portion of the Eternal, which must glow

      Through time and change, unquenchably the same,

      Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.

      XXXIX

      Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep—

      He hath awakened from the dream of life—

      ’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep

      With phantoms an unprofitable strife,

      And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife

      Invulnerable nothings.—We decay

      Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief

      Convulse us and consume us day by day,

      And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

      XL

      He has outsoared the shadow of our night;

      Envy and calumny and hate and pain,

      And that unrest which men miscall delight,

      Can touch him not and torture not again;

      From the contagion of the world’s slow stain

      He is secure, and now can never mourn

      A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;

      Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn,

      With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

      XLI

      He lives, he wakes—’tis Death is dead, not he;

      Mourn not for Adonais.—Thou young Dawn,

      Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee

      The spirit thou lamentest is not gone;

      Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!

      Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air,

      Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown

      O’er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare

      Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!

      XLII

      He is made one with Nature: there is heard

      His voice in all her music, from the moan

      Of thunder, to the song of night’s sweet bird;

      He is a presence to be felt and known

      In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,

      Spreading itself where’er that Power may move

      Which has withdrawn his being to its own;

      Which wields the world with never-wearied love,

      Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.

      XLIII

      He is a portion of the loveliness

      Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear

      His