A Dirge (by Percy Bysshe Shelley)

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822

A Dirge

Rough wind, that moanest loud
     Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
     Knells all the night long;
Sad storm whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main,—
     Wail, for the world’s wrong!


[written 1821, published posthumously in 1824 by Mrs. Shelley]


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The Grave of Shelley (by Oscar Wilde)

The Grave of Shelley
by
Oscar Wilde (1881)

Like burnt-out torches by a sick man’s bed
      Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone;
      Here doth the little night-owl make her throne,
And the slight lizard show his jewelled head.
And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red,
      In the still chamber of yon pyramid
      Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid,
Grim warder of this pleasaunce of the dead.

Ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb
      Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep,
But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb
      In the blue cavern of an echoing deep,
Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom
      Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep.

Rome

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To Wordsworth (by Percy Bysshe Shelley)

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822

To Wordsworth

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,–
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

[written c. 1814-15, published 1816]


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Mutability (by Percy Bysshe Shelley)

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822


Mutability

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
    How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soon
    Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
    Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
    One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest.—A dream has power to poison sleep;
    We rise.—One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
    Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!—For, be it joy or sorrow,
    The path of its departure still is free:
Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
    Nought may endure but Mutablilty.

[written c. 1814-15, published 1816]



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Stanzas Written in Dejection (by Percy Bysshe Shelley)

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822


Stanzas Written in Dejection — December 1818, near Naples


    The Sun is warm, the sky is clear,       
    The waves are dancing fast and bright,       
    Blue isles and snowy mountains wear       
    The purple noon’s transparent might:       
    The breath of the moist earth is light    
    Around its unexpanded buds;       
    Like many a voice of one delight    
    The winds, the birds, the Ocean-floods;
The City’s voice itself is soft like Solitude’s.          

    I see the Deep’s untrampled floor
    With green and purple seaweeds strown;       
    I see the waves upon the shore       
    Like light dissolved in star-showers thrown.       
    I sit upon the sands alone;       
    The lightning of the noontide Ocean 
    Is flashing round me, and a tone       
    Arises from its measured motion,  
How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.          

    Alas, I have nor hope nor health       
    Nor peace within nor calm around,  
    Nor that content, surpassing wealth       
    The sage in meditation found,       
    And walk’d with inward glory crown’d;       
    Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure–
    Others I see whom these surround,
    Smiling they live, and call life pleasure:   
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.          
    
    Yet now despair itself is mild,       
    Even as the winds and waters are;       
    I could lie down like a tired child   
    And weep away the life of care       
    Which I have borne, and yet must bear       
    Till Death like Sleep might steal on me,       
    And I might feel in the warm air       
    My cheek grow cold, and hear the Sea
Breathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony.

    Some might lament that I were cold,
    As I, when this sweet day is gone,
    Which lost my heart, too soon grown old,
    Insults with this untimely moan– 
    They might lament,– for I am one
    Whom men love not, and yet regret;
    Unlike this day, which, when the Sun
    Shall on its stainless glory set,
Will linger though enjoyed, like joy in Memory yet.


[written 1818, published 1824]



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Ozymandias (by Percy Bysshe Shelley)

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said– “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”


[written 1817, published 1818]



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