Poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Beauty's Halo

Thy beauty hangs around thee like

Splendour around the moon--

Thy voice, as silver bells that strike

Upon...

Percy Bysshe Shelley

A Dialogue

DEATH:

For my dagger is bathed in the blood of the brave,

I come, care-worn tenant of life, from the grave,

Where Innocence sleeps 'neath the peace-giving sod,

And the good cease to tremble at Tyranny's nod;

I offer a calm habitation to thee,--

Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me?

My mansion is damp, cold silence is there,

Percy Bysshe Shelley

To Coleridge

Oh! there are spirits of the air,

And genii of the evening breeze,

And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair

As star-beams among twilight trees:

Such lovely ministers to meet

Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.

With mountain winds, and babbling springs,

And moonlight seas, that are the voice

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Time

Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,

Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe

Are brackish with the salt of human tears!

Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow

Claspest the limits of mortality,

And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,

Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;

Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,

Percy Bysshe Shelley

One sung of thee who left the tale untold

One sung of thee who left the tale untold,

Like the false dawns which perish in the bursting;

Like empty cups of wrought and daedal gold,

Which mock the lips with air, when they are thirsting.

These are among the many short fragments from Shelley's MSS. published by Mary Shelley, his wife, in her editions of 1824 and 1839. There she entitles this poem A Tale Untold.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

A Vision Of The Sea

'Tis the terror of tempest. The rags of the sail

Are flickering in ribbons within the fierce gale:

From the stark night of vapours the dim rain is driven,

And when lightning is loosed, like a deluge from Heaven,

She sees the black trunks of the waterspouts spin

And bend, as if Heaven was ruining in,

Which they seemed to sustain with their terrible mass

As if ocean had sunk from beneath them: they pass

Percy Bysshe Shelley

On Death

There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. ~ Ecclesiastes.

The pale, the cold, and the moony smile

Which the meteor beam of a starless night

Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,

Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light,

Is the flame of life so fickle and wan

That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.

O man! hold thee on in courage of soul

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Epipsychidion

VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE LADY, EMILIA V---,

NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF ---

L'anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nell' infinito un Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro.

~Her own words.

My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few

Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning,

Of such hard matter dost thou entertain;

Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Alas! This Is Not What I Thought Life Was

Alas! this is not what I thought life was.

I knew that there were crimes and evil men,

Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass

Untouched by suffering, through the rugged glen.

In mine own heart I saw as in a glass

The hearts of others ... And when

I went among my kind, with triple brass

Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed,

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Oedipus Tyrannus or Swellfoot The Tyrant

A TRAGEDY IN TWO ACTS

Translated from the Original Doric

'Choose Reform or Civil War,

When through thy streets, instead of hare with dogs,

A Consort-Queen shall hunt a King with hogs,

Riding on the IONIAN MINOTAUR.'

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Tyrant Swellfoot, King of Thebes.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

From the Arabic, an Imitation

MY faint spirit was sitting in the light

Of thy looks, my love;

It panted for thee like the hind at noon

For the brooks, my love.

Thy barb, whose hoofs outspeed the tempest's flight,

Bore thee far from me;

My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon,

Did companion thee.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

To-- I Fear Thy Kisses, Gentle Maiden

I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden,

Thou needest not fear mine;

My spirit is too deeply laden

Ever to burthen thine.

II.

I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion,

Thou needest not fear mine;

Percy Bysshe Shelley