by Homer
Glimmering at my feet; the line
Of the olive-sandall’d Apennine
In the south dimly islanded;
And the Alps, whose snows are spread 165
High between the clouds and sun;
And of living things each one;
And my spirit, which so long
Darken’d this swift stream of song, —
Interpenetrated lie 170
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 feels this verse, 175
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 180
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 winge´d winds had borne 185
To that silent isle, which lies
‘Mid remember’d agonies,
The frail bark of this lone being),
Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,
And its ancient pilot, Pain, 190
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: ev’n now, perhaps, 195
On some rock the wild wave wraps,
With folding wings they waiting sit
For my bark, to pilot it
To some calm and blooming cove,
Where for me, and those I love, 200
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 205
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 210
Envying us, may even entice
To our healing paradise
The polluting multitude;
But their rage would be subdued
By that clime divine and calm, 215
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 220
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 225
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! 230
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Hymn to the Spirit of Nature
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
LIFE of Life! Thy lips enkindle
With their love the breath between them;
And thy smiles before they dwindle
Make the cold air fire; then screen them
In those locks, where whoso gazes 5
Faints, entangled in their mazes.
Child of Light! Thy limbs are burning
Through the veil which seems to hide them,
As the radiant lines of morning
Through thin clouds, ere they divide them; 10
And this atmosphere divinest
Shrouds thee whereso’er thou shinest.
Fair are others: none beholds Thee;
But thy voice sounds low and tender
Like the fairest, for it folds thee 15
From the sight, that liquid splendour;
And all feel, yet see thee never, —
As I feel now, lost for ever!
Lamp of Earth! where’er thou movest
Its dim shapes are clad with brightness, 20
And the souls of whom thou lovest
Walk upon the winds with lightness
Till they fail, as I am failing,
Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
A Lament
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
O WORLD! O Life! O Time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I had stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more — O never more! 5
Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight:
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more — O never more! 10
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
A Dream of the Unknown
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
I DREAM’D that as I wander’d by the way
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mix’d with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay 5
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kiss’d it and then fled, as Thou mightest in dream.
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearl’d Arcturi of the earth, 10
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender blue-bells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
Its mother’s face with heaven-collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears. 15
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-colour’d May,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew yet drain’d not by the day;
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine 20
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
And flowers azure, black, and streak’d with gold,
Fairer than any waken’d eyes behold.
And nearer to the river’s trembling edge
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prank’t with white, 25
And starry river-buds among the sedge,
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green 30
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.
Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural bowers
Were mingled or opposed, the like array 35
Kept these imprison’d children of the Hours
Within my hand, — and then, elate and gay,
I hasten’d to the spot whence I had come
That I might there present it — O! to whom?
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
The Invitation
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
BEST and Brightest, come away,
Fairer far than this fair day,
Which, like thee, to those in sorrow
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough year just awake 5
In its cradle on the brake.
The brightest hour of unborn Spring
Through the winter wandering,
Found, it seems, the halcyon morn
To hoar February born; 10
Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,
It kiss’d the forehead of the earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams be free,
And waked to music all their fountains, 15
And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
And like a prophetess of May
Strew’d flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, Dear. 20
Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs —
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music, lest it should not find 25
An echo in another’s mind,
While the touch of Nature’s art
Harmonizes heart to heart.
I leave this notice on my door
For each accustomed visitor: — 30
“I am gone into the fields
To take what this sweet hour yields; —
Reflection, you may come to-morrow,
Sit by the fireside with Sorrow. —
You with the unpaid bill, Despair, — 35
You tiresome verse-reciter, Care, —
I will pay you in the grave, —
Death will listen to your stave.
Expectation too, be off!
To-day is for itself enough; 40
Hope, in pity mock not Woe
With smiles, nor follow where I go;
Long having lived on thy sweet food,
At length I find one moment’s good
After long pain — with all your love, 45
This you never told me of.”
Radiant Sister of the Day
Awake! arise! and come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
To the pools where winter rains 50
Image all their roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garland weaves
Of sapless green, and ivy dun,
Round stems that never kiss the sun,
Where the lawns and pastures be, 55
And the sandhills of the sea,
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets,
And wind-flowers and violets
Which yet join not scent to hue 60
Crown the pale year weak and new;
When the night is left behind
In the deep east, dim and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous 65
Billows murmur at our feet,
Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one
In the universal Sun.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
The Recollection
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
NOW the last day of many days
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead:
Rise, Memory, and write its praise!
Up, do thy wonted work! come, trace 5
The epitaph of glory fled,
For now the earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven’s brow.
We wander’d to the Pine Forest
That skirts the Ocean’s foam; 10
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.
The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep 15
The smile of Heaven lay;
It seem’d as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies
Which scatter’d from above the sun
A light of Paradise! 20
We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shape as rude
As serpents interlaced, —
And soothed by every azure breath 25
That under heaven is blown
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own:
Now all the tree-tops lay asleep,
Like green waves on the sea, 30
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean-woods may be.
How calm it was! — the silence there
But such a chain was bound,
That even the busy woodpecker 35
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;
The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew. 40
There seem’d, from the remotest seat
Of the wide mountain waste
To the soft flower beneath our feet
A magic circle traced,
A spirit interfused around, 45
A thrilling silent life;
To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature’s strife; —
And still I felt the centre of
The magic circle there 50
Was one fair Form that fill’d with love
The lifeless atmosphere.
We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough;
Each seem’d as ‘twere a little sky 55
Gulf’d in a world below;
A firmament of purple light
Which in the dark earth lay,
More boundless than the depth of night
And purer than the day — 60
In which the lovely forests grew
As in the upper air,
More perfect both in shape and hue
Than any spreading there.
There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn, 65
And through the dark-green wood
The white sun twinkling like the dawn
Out of a speckled cloud.
Sweet views which in our world above
Can never well be seen 70
Were imaged by the water’s love
Of that fair forest green:
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow,
An atmosphere without a breath, 75
A softer day below.
Like one beloved, the scene had lent
To the dark water’s breast
Its every leaf and lineament
With more than truth exprest; 80
Until an envious wind crept by,
Like an unwelcome thought
Which from the mind’s too faithful eye
Blots one dear image out.
— Though Thou art ever fair and kind, 85
The forests ever green,
Less oft is peace in Shelley’s mind
Than calm in waters seen!
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
To the Moon
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
ART thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth, —
And ever-changing, like a joyless eye 5
That finds no object worth its constancy?
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
A Widow Bird
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
A WIDOW bird sate mourning for her Love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above
The freezing stream below.
There was no leaf upon the forest bare, 5
No flower upon the ground,
> And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel’s sound.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
To a Lady, with a Guitar
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
ARIEL to Miranda: — Take
This slave of music, for the sake
Of him, who is the slave of thee;
And teach it all the harmony
In which thou canst, and only thou, 5
Make the delighted spirit glow,
Till joy denies itself again
And, too intense, is turn’d to pain.
For by permission and command
Of thine own Prince Ferdinand, 10
Poor Ariel sends this silent token
Of more than ever can be spoken;
Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who
From life to life must still pursue
Your happiness, for thus alone 15
Can Ariel ever find his own;
From Prospero’s enchanted cell,
As the mighty verses tell,
To the throne of Naples he
Lit you o’er the trackless sea, 20
Flitting on, your prow before,
Like a living meteor.
When you die, the silent Moon
In her interlunar swoon
Is not sadder in her cell 25
Than deserted Ariel;
When you live again on earth,
Like an unseen Star of birth
Ariel guides you o’er the sea
Of life from your nativity: 30
Many changes have been run
Since Ferdinand and you begun
Your course of love, and Ariel still
Has track’d your steps and served your will.
Now in humbler, happier lot, 35
This is all remember’d not;
And now, alas! the poor sprite is
Imprison’d for some fault of his
In a body like a grave —
From you he only dares to crave 40
For his service and his sorrow
A smile today, a song tomorrow.
The artist who this idol wrought