The Complete Poetical Works, vol 2 | Page 6

Percy Bysshe Shelley
made his breath _5 Fail, like the trances of the summer
air,
When, with the Lady of his love, who then
First knew the
unreserve of mingled being,
He walked along the pathway of a field

Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er, _10 But to the west
was open to the sky.
There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold

Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points
Of the far level grass and
nodding flowers
And the old dandelion's hoary beard, _15 And,
mingled with the shades of twilight, lay
On the brown massy
woods--and in the east
The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose

Between the black trunks of the crowded trees,
While the faint
stars were gathering overhead.-- _20 'Is it not strange, Isabel,' said the
youth,
'I never saw the sun? We will walk here
To-morrow; thou
shalt look on it with me.'
That night the youth and lady mingled lay
In love and sleep--but
when the morning came _25 The lady found her lover dead and cold.

Let none believe that God in mercy gave
That stroke. The lady died
not, nor grew wild,
But year by year lived on--in truth I think
Her
gentleness and patience and sad smiles, _30 And that she did not die,
but lived to tend
Her aged father, were a kind of madness,
If
madness 'tis to be unlike the world.
For but to see her were to read the
tale
Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts _35 Dissolve
away in wisdom-working grief;--
Her eyes were black and lustreless
and wan:
Her eyelashes were worn away with tears,
Her lips and
cheeks were like things dead--so pale;
Her hands were thin, and
through their wandering veins _40 And weak articulations might be

seen
Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self
Which one vexed
ghost inhabits, night and day,
Is all, lost child, that now remains of
thee!
'Inheritor of more than earth can give, _45 Passionless calm and silence
unreproved,
Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,
And are
the uncomplaining things they seem,
Or live, or drop in the deep sea
of Love;
Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were--Peace!' _50 This was
the only moan she ever made.
NOTES:
_4 death 1839; youth 1824.
_22 sun? We will walk 1824;
sunrise? We will wake cj. Forman. _37 Her eyes...wan Hunt, 1823;
omitted 1824, 1839.
_38 worn 1824; torn 1839.
***
HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY.
[Composed, probably, in Switzerland, in the summer of 1816.
Published in Hunt's "Examiner", January 19, 1817, and with "Rosalind
and Helen", 1819.]
1.
The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen
among us,--visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As
summer winds that creep from flower to flower,--
Like moonbeams
that behind some piny mountain shower, _5 It visits with inconstant
glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and
harmonies of evening,--
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,--

Like memory of music fled,-- _10 Like aught that for its grace may be

Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
2.
Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all
thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form,--where art thou
gone? _15 Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim
vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not for
ever
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river,
Why aught should

fail and fade that once is shown, _20 Why fear and dream and death
and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom,--why man
has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?
3.
No voice from some sublimer world hath ever _25 To sage or poet
these responses given--
Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and
Heaven.
Remain the records of their vain endeavour,
Frail
spells--whose uttered charm might not avail to sever, From all we hear
and all we see, _30 Doubt, chance, and mutability.
Thy light
alone--like mist o'er mountains driven,
Or music by the night-wind
sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a
midnight stream, _35 Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.
4.
Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart
And come, for
some uncertain moments lent.
Man were immortal, and omnipotent,

Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, _40 Keep with thy
glorious train firm state within his heart.
Thou messenger of
sympathies,
That wax and wane in lovers' eyes--
Thou--that to
human thought art nourishment,
Like darkness to a dying flame! _45
Depart not as thy shadow came
Depart not--lest the grave should be,

Like life and fear, a dark reality.
5.
While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a
listening chamber, cave and ruin, _50 And starlight wood, with fearful
steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I called
on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;
I was not heard--I
saw them not--
When musing deeply on the lot _55 Of life, at that
sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring

News of birds and blossoming,--
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;

I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy! _60
6.
I vowed
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