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 hear. Let me set my mournful ditty To a merry measure, Thou wilt never come for pity, Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay. I love all that thou lovest, Spirit of Delight! The fresh Earth in new leaves drest, I love snow, and all the forms I love waves, and winds, and storms, Which is Nature's, and may be I love tranquil solitude, As is quiet, wise, and good; What difference? but thou dost possess I love Love-though he has wings, Thou art love and life! Oh come, 1820.1 TO THE MOON ART thou pale for weariness 1824. Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth, And ever changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy? 18 20. 1821. 1 Though included by Mrs. Shelley, and by later editors, among the poems of 1821, there is a copy of this poem in the Harvard College Manuscripts, dated in Shelley's handwriting, Pisa, May, 1820.” See note in Edward Dowden's Edition of Shelley. THE WORLD'S WANDERERS TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light Will thy pinions close now? Tell me, moon, thou pale and gray Weary wind, who wanderest 1820. 1824. TIME LONG PAST LIKE the ghost of a dear friend dead A tone which is now forever fled, There were sweet dreams in the night And, was it sadness or delight, There is regret, almost remorse, For Time long past. "Tis like a child's beloved corse From Time long past. How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me! I am not thine: I am a part of thee. Sweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burnt its wings; Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings, Young Love should teach Time, in his own gray style, All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile, A lovely soul formed to be blest and bless? A well of sealed and secret happiness, Whose waters like blithe light and music are, Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? A Star Which moves not in the moving Heavens, alone? A smile amid dark frowns? a gentle tone Amid rude voices? a beloved light? A Lute which those whom Love has taught to play Make music on, to soothe the roughest Scarce visible from extreme loveliness. Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress And her loose hair; and where some heavy tress The air of her own speed has disentwined, The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind; And in the soul a wild odor is felt, Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt Into the bosom of a frozen bud. See where she stands! a mortal shape indued With love and life and light and deity, And motion which may change but cannot die; An image of some bright Eternity; Leaving the third sphere pilotless; a tender Reflection of the eternal Moon of Love Under whose motions life's dull billows move; A Metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning; A Vision like incarnate April, warning, With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy Into his summer grave. Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked. I never was attached to that great sect, Whose doctrine is, that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion, though it is in the code Of modern morals, and the beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad highway of the world, and Mind from its object differs most in this: Evil from good; misery from happiness; The baser from the nobler; the impure And frail, from what is clear and must endure. If you divide suffering and dross, you may Diminish till it is consumed away; If you divide pleasure and love and thought, Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not How much, while any yet remains unshared, Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared: This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law By which those live, to whom this world of life Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife There was a Being whom my spirit oft Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft, In the clear golden prime of my youth's And in that best philosophy, whose taste Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom As glorious as a fiery martyrdom ; Then, from the caverns of my dreamy youth I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire, And towards the loadstar of my one desire, I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre, Passed, like a God throned on a winged planet, Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it, Into the dreary cone of our life's shade; And as a man with mighty loss dismayed, I would have followed, though the grave between Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are That world within this Chaos, mine and me, Of which she was the veiled Divinity, The world I say of thoughts that worshipped her : And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear And every gentle passion sick to death, Feeding my course with expectation's breath, Into the wintry forest of our life; And struggling through its error with vain strife, And stumbling in my weakness and my haste. And half bewildered by new forms, I past Seeking among those untaught foresters If I could find one form resembling hers, In which she might have masked herself from me. There,-One, whose voice was venomed melody Sate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers; The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers, Her touch was as electric poison,-flame Out of her looks into my vitals came, And from her living cheeks and bosom flew A killing air, which pierced like honey dew Into the core of my green heart, and lay Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown gray O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime With ruins of unseasonable time. In many mortal forms I rashly sought The shadow of that idol of my thought. And some were fair--but beauty dies away: Others were wise-but honeyed words betray: And One was true-oh! why not true to me? Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee, I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay, Wounded and weak and panting; the cold day Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain. When, like a noonday dawn, there shone again Deliverance. One stood on my path who seemed As like the glorious shape which I had dreamed, |
