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.

Ode to the West Wind

 

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

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 winged 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!

 

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 sepulcher,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

 

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere

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

 

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!

 

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to paint 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.

 

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?

 

BIO: Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) attended Oxford but was expelled for circulating his pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism.  He married Harriet Westbrook in Scotland, where he was heavily influenced by William Godwin. He became intimate with Godwin's daughter, Mary, and married her after Harriet committed suicide. They moved to Italy, where he met Lord Byron and wrote the bulk of his works.  In 1822, he drowned in the Bay of Spezia near Livorno.