Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (217 page)
Read Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) Online
Authors: Homer,William Shakespeare
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
AWAY! the moor is dark beneath the moon,
Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam of even:
Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon,
And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven.
Pause not! The time is past! Every voice cries, ‘Away!’
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Tempt not with one last tear thy friend’s ungentle mood:
Thy lover’s eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay:
Duty and dereliction guide thee beck to solitude.
Away, away! to thy sad and silent home;
Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth;
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Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come,
And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth.
The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head:
The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy feet:
But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead,
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Ere midnight’s frown and morning’s smile, ere thou and peace may meet.
The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own repose,
For the weary winds are silent, or the moon is in the deep:
Some respite to its turbulence unresting ocean knows;
Whatever moves, or toils, or grieves, hath its appointed sleep.
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Thou in the grave shalt rest — yet, till the phantoms flee,
Which that house and heath and garden made dear to thee erewhile,
Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings are not free
From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
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,
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Are heap’d for the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when Thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
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 ae¨rial kisses
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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 —
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But from these create he can
Forms more real than living Man,
Nurslings of Immortality!
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
TELL me, thou Star, whose wings of light
Speed thee in thy fiery flight,
In what cavern of the night
Will thy pinions close now?
Tell me, Moon, thou pale and gray
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Pilgrim of heaven’s homeless way,
In what depth of night or day
Seekest thou repose now?
Weary Mind, who wanderest
Like the world’s rejected guest,
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Hast thou still some secret nest
On the tree or billow?
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
An Elegy on the Death of John Keats
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
I WEEP for Adonais — he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
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And teach them thine own sorrow! Say: ‘With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!’
Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,
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When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies
In darkness? where was lorn Urania
When Adonais died? With veilèd eyes,
‘Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise
She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath,
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Rekindled all the fading melodies
With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,
He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death.
Oh weep for Adonais — he is dead!
Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!
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Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep,
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;
For he is gone, where all things wise and fair
Descend; — oh, dream not that the amorous Deep
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Will yet restore him to the vital air;
Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.
Most musical of mourners, weep again!
Lament anew, Urania! — He died,
Who was the Sire of an immortal strain,
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Blind, old, and lonely, when his country’s pride,
The priest, the slave, and the liberticide,
Trampled and mocked with many a loathèd rite
Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,
Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite
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Yet reigns o’er earth; the third among the sons of light.
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Not all to that bright station dared to climb;
And happier they their happiness who knew,
Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time
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In which suns perished; others more sublime,
Struck by the envious wrath of man or god,
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;
And some yet live, treading the thorny road,
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame’s serene abode.
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But now, thy youngest, dearest one has perished,
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,
And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew;
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
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Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and last,
The bloom, whose petals nipt before they blew
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;
The broken lily lies — the storm is overpast.
To that high Capital, where kingly Death
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Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,
He came; and bought, with price of purest breath,
A grave among the eternal — Come away!
Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day
Is yet his fitting charnel-roof! while still
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He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay;
Awake him not! surely he takes his fill
Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.
He will awake no more, oh, never more! —
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace,
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The shadow of white Death, and at the door
Invisible Corruption waits to trace
His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;
The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface
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So fair a prey, till darkness, and the law
Of change shall o’er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.
Oh weep for Adonais! — The quick Dreams,
The passion-wingèd Ministers of thought,
Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams
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Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught
The love which was its music, wander not, —
Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,
But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot
Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,
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They ne’er will gather strength, or find a home again.
And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,
And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries;
‘Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead;
See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes,
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Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies
A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain.’
Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!
She knew not ’twas her own; as with no stain
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.
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One from a lucid urn of starry dew
Washed his light limbs as if embalming them;
Another clipt her profuse locks, and threw
The wreath upon him, like an anadem,
Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem;
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Another in her wilful grief would break
Her bow and wingèd reeds, as if to stem
A greater loss with one which was more week;
And dull the barbèd fire against his frozen cheek.
Another Splendour on his mouth alit,
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That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,
And pass into the panting heart beneath
With lightning and with music: the damp death
Quenched its caress upon his icy lips;
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And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath
Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,
It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse.
And others came … Desires and Adorations,
Wingèd Persuasions and veiled Destinies,
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Splendours and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations
Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,
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Came in slow pomp; — the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.
All he had loved, and moulded into thought,
From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought
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Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
Dimmed the ae¨rial eyes that kindle day;
Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,
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And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.
Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
And feeds her grief with his remembered lay,
And will no more reply to winds or fountains,
Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray,
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Or herdsman’s horn, or bell at closing day;
Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear
Than those for whose disdain she pined away
Into a shadow of all sounds: — a drear
Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear.
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Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down
Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,
Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown
For whom should she have waked the sullen year?
To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear
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Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both
Thou, Adonais: wan they stand and sere
Amid the faint companions of their youth,
With dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing ruth.
Thy spirit’s sister, the lorn nightingale,
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Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain;
Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale
Heaven, and could nourish in the sun’s domain
Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain,
Soaring and screaming round her empty nest,
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As Albion wails for thee; the curse of Cain
Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast,
And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest!
Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year;
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The airs and streams renew their joyous tone:
The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear;
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons’ bier;
The amorous birds now pair in every brake,
And build their mossy homes in field and brere;
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And the green lizard, and the golden snake,
Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.
Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean
A quickening life from the Earth’s heart has burst
As it has ever done, with change and motion,
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From the great morning of the world when first
God dawned on Chaos; in its stream immersed
The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light;
All baser things pant with life’s sacred thirst;
Diffuse themselves; and spend in love’s delight,
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The beauty and the joy of their renewèd might.
The leprous corpse touched by this spirit tender
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour
Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death
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And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath;
Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath
By sightless lightning? — the intense atom glows
A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.
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Alas! that all we loved of him should be
But for our grief, as if it had not been,
And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!
Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene
The actors or spectators? Great and mean
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Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.
As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.
