Ozymandias

I MET a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which still survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Love's Philosophy

THE fountains mingle with the river,

And the rivers with the ocean;

The winds of heaven mix for ever

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;

All things, by a law divine,

In one another's being mingle--

Why not I with thine?

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Mutability

WE are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;

How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,

Streaking the darkness rediantly! -- yet soon

Night closes round, and they are lost forever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings

Give various response to each varying blast,

To whose frail frame no second motion brings

One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest. -- A dream has power to poison sleep;

We rise. -- One wandering thought pollutes the day;

We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;

Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same! -- For, be it joy or sorrow,

The path of its departure still is free:

Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;

Nought may endure but Mutability.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

When the Lamp is Shatter'd

WHEN the lamp is shatter'd,

The light in the dust lies dead.

When the cloud is scatter'd,

The rainbow's glory is shed.

When the lute is broken,

Sweet tones are remember'd not;

When the lips have spoken,

Loved accents are soon forgot.

As music and splendour

Survive not the lamp and the lute,

The heart's echoes render

No song when the spirit is mute.

No song but sad dirges

Like the wind through a ruin'd cell,

Or the mournful surges

That ring the dead seaman's knell.

When hearts have once mingled

Love first leaves the well-built nest;

The weak one is singled

To endure what it once possess'd.

O Love! who bewailest

The frailty of all things here,

Why choose you the frailest

For your cradle, your home, and your bier?

Its passions will rock thee

As the storms rock the ravens on high.

Bright Reason will mock thee

Like the sun from a wintry sky.

From thy nest every rafter

Will rot, and thine eagle home

Leave thee naked to laughter

When leaves fall and cold winds come.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

To......

MUSIC, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory-

Odors, when sweet violets sicken,

Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

Are heaped for the beloved's bed;

And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,

Love itself shall slumber on.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

To Night

   1

SWIFTLY walk o'er the western wave, Spirit of Night!

Out of the misty eastern cave,

Where, all the long and lone daylight,

Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,

Which make thee terrible and dear-

Swift be thy flight!

   2

Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,

Star-inwrought!

Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;

Kiss her until she be wearied out,

Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land,

Touching all with thy opiate wand--

Come, long-sought!

   3

When I rose and saw trhe dawn,

I sighed for thee;

When light rode high, and the dew was gone,

And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,

And the weary Day turned to his rest,

Lingering like an unloved guest,

I sighed for thee.

   4

Thy brother Death came, and cried,

"Wouldst thou me?"

Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,

Murmured like a noontide bee,

"Shall I nestle near thy side?

Wouldst thou me?" -And I replied,

"No, not thee!"

   5

Death will come when thou art dead,

Soon, too soon-

Sleep will come when thou art fled;

Of neither would I ask the boon

I asked of thee, beloved Night-

Swift be thy approaching flight,

Come soon, soon!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

To Jane: The Keen Stars Were Twinkling

   1

THE keen stars were twinkling,

And the fair moon was rising above them,

   Dear Jane!

The guitar was tinkling,

But the notes were not sweet till you sung them

   Again.

   2

As the moon's soft splendor

O'er the faint cold starlight of heaven

   Is thrown,

So your voice most tender

To the strings without soul has then given

   Its own.

   3

The stars will awaken,

Though the moon sleep a full hour later,

   Tonight;

No leaf will be shaken

Whilst the dews of your melody scatter

   Delight.

   4

Though the sound overpowers,

Sing again, with your dear voice revealing

   A tone

Of some world far from ours,

Where music and moonlight and feeling

   Are one.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

To a Skylark

HAIL to thee, blithe Spirit!

     Bird thou never wert,

That from Heaven, or near it,

     Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher

     From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire;

     The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning

     Of the sunken sun

O'er which clouds are bright'ning,

     Thou dost float and run,

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even

     Melts around thy flight;

Like a star of Heaven

     In the broad daylight

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight:

Keen as are the arrows

     Of that silver sphere,

Whose intense lamp narrows

     In the white dawn clear

Until we hardly see -- we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air

     With thy voice is loud.

As, when night is bare,

     From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;

     What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not

     Drops so bright to see

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden

     In the light of thought,

Singing hymns unbidden,

     Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden

     In a palace tower,

Soothing her love-laden

     Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden

     In a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden

     Its aerial hue

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered

     In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered,

     Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers

     On the twinkling grass,

Rain-awakened flowers,

     All that ever was

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

     What sweet thoughts are thine:

I have never heard

     Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal

     Or triumphal chaunt

Matched with thine, would be all

     But an empty vaunt --

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains

     Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

     What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance

     Languor cannot be:

Shadow of annoyance

     Never came near thee:

Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

     Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

     Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,

     And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

     With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

     Hate, and pride, and fear;

If we were things born

     Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

     Of delightful sound,

Better than all treasures

     That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

     That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

     From my lips would flow

The world should listen then, as I am listening now!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Song

RARELY, rarely comest thou,

Spirit of Delight!

Wherefore hast thou left me now

Many a day and night?

Many a weary night and day

'Tis since thou art fled away.

How shall ever one like me

Win thee back again?

With the joyous and the free

Thou wilt scoff at pain.

Spirit false! thou hast forgot

All but those who need thee not.

As a lizard with the shade

Of a trembling leaf,

Thou with sorrow art dismayed;

Even the sighs of grief

Reproach thee, that thou art not near,

And reproach thou wilt not her.

Let me set my mournful ditty

To a merry measure; --

Thou wilt never come for pity,

Thou wilt come for pleasure;

Pity then will cut away

Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.

I love all that thou lovest,

Spirit of Delight!

The fresh Earth in new leaves dressed,

And the starry night;

Autumn evening, and the morn

When the golden mists are born.

I love snow and all the forms

Of the radiant frost;

I love waves, and winds, and storms,

Everything almost

Which is Nature's, and may be

Untainted by man's misery.

I love tranquil solitude,

And such society

As is quiet, wise, and good;

Between thee and me

What difference? but thou dost possess

The things I seek, not love them less.

I love Love -- though he has wings,

And like light can flee,

But above all other things,

Spirit, I love thee --

Thou art love and life! O come!

Make once more my heart thy home!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ode to the West Wind

        I

O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingéd seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odors plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

        II

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,

Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thine aery surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith's height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!

        III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

        IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

        V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Stanzas Written in Dejection Near Naples

THE sun is warm, the sky is clear,

The waves are dancing fast and bright,

Blue isles and snowy mountains wear

The purple noon's transparent might,

The breath of the moist earth is light,

Around its unexpanded buds;

Like many a voice of one delight

The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,

The city's voice itself, is soft like Solitude's.

I see the deep's untrampled floor

With green and purple seaweeds strown;

I see the waves upon the shore,

Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:

I sit upon the sands alone, -

The lightning of the noontide ocean

Is flashing round me, and a tone

Arises from its measured motion,

How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.

Alas! I have nor hope nor health,

Nor peace within nor calm around,

Nor that content surpassing wealth

The sage in meditation found,

And walked with inward glory crowned -

Nor fame nor power, nor love, nor leisure,

Others I see whom these surround -

Smiling they live, and call life pleasure; -

To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

Yet now despair itself is mild,

Even as the winds and waters are;

I could lie down like a tired child,

And weep away the life of care

Which I have born and yet must bear,

Till death like sleep might steal on me,

And I might feel in the warm air

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea

Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

Some might lament that I were cold,

As I, when this sweet day is gone,

Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,

Insults with this untimely moan;

They might lament - for I am one

Whom men love not, - and yet regret,

Unlike this day, which, when the sun

Shall on its stainless glory set,

Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Index to poems in the collection by Percy Bysshe Shelley