Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

The Poet's Dream

On a Poet's lips I slept

Dreaming like a love-adept

In the sound his breathing kept;

Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,

But feeds on the aerial kisses

Of shapes that haunt Thought's wildernesses.

He will watch from dawn to gloom

The lake-reflected sun illume

The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,

     Nor heed nor see what things they be --

But from these create he can

Forms more real than living Man,

     Nurslings of Immortality!

Music When Soft Voices Die

Music when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory --

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,

Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

Are heap'd for the beloved's bed;

And so thy thoughts, when Thou art gone,

Love itself shall slumber on.

Hymn to the Spirit of Nature

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

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;

And this atmosphere divinest

Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest.

Fair are others: none beholds Thee;

But thy voice sounds low and tender

Like the fairest, for it folds thee

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,

And the souls of whom thou lovest

Walk upon the winds with lightness

Till they fail, as I am failing,

Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!

BIO: Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was only 30 years old when he died, but he left a lasting legacy of poetical works that aspiring poets and lovers of poetry still admire today. He was expelled from Oxford in 1811 for his irreligious pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism. His first wife, Harriet Westbrook, committed suicide in 1816. Shelley was already involved with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, with whom he eloped in 1814. The couple married in 1816 and moved to Italy in 1818. There, they met Lord Byron. Under his influence, Mary wrote her ground-breaking novel, Frankenstein, and Percy composed his drama-in-verse, Prometheus Unbound. Percy Shelley drowned in the Bay of Spezia near Livorno, Italy in 1822. His body was cremated on the beach. Allegedly, his heart was rescued from the flames and kept as a memento.