Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (213 page)
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Authors: Homer,William Shakespeare
Stanzas Written in Dejection Near Naples
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
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 light:
The breath of the moist earth is light
5
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
10
With green and purple sea-weeds 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 noon-tide ocean
15
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,
20
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 —
25
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,
30
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
35
Breathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
I FEAR thy kisses, gentle maiden;
Thou needest not fear mine;
My spirit is too deeply laden
Ever to burthen thine.
I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion;
5
Thou needest not fear mine;
Innocent is the heart’s devotion
With which I worship thine.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
I ARISE from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low
And the stars are shining bright:
I arise from dreams of thee,
5
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me — who knows how?
To thy chamber-window, Sweet!
The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream —
10
The champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale’s complaint
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thine
15
O belove´d as thou art!
O lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
20
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;
O! press it close to thine again
Where it will break at last.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
HAIL to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art
5
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
10
In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun
O’er which clouds are brightening,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
15
The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight:
20
Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.
25
All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow’d.
30
What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
35
Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:
40
Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:
45
Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:
50
Like a rose embower’d
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflower’d,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.
55
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awaken’d flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.
60
Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
65
Chorus hymeneal
Or triumphal chaunt
Match’d with thine, would be all
But an empty vaunt —
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
70
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
75
With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest; but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety.
80
Waking or asleep
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
85
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
90
Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
95
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
100
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then, as I am listening now!
105
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
THE FOUNTAINS mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
5
All things by a law divine
In one another’s being mingle —
Why not I with thine?
See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
10
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdain’d its brother:
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea —
What are all these kissings worth,
15
If thou kiss not me?
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
SWIFTLY walk over the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave
Where, all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear
5
Which make thee terrible and dear, —
Swift be thy flight!
Wrap thy form in a mantle gray
Star-inwrought!
Blind with thine hair the eyes of day,
10
Kiss her until she be wearied out:
Then wander o’er city and sea and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand —
Come, long-sought!
When I arose and saw the dawn,
15
I sigh’d for thee;
When light rode high, and the dew was gone,
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary Day turn’d to his rest
Lingering like an unloved guest,
20
I sigh’d for thee.
Thy brother Death came, and cried
Wouldst thou me?
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmur’d like a noon-tide bee
25
Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me? — And I replied
No, not thee!
Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon —
30
Sleep will come when thou art fled;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, belove´d Night —
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!
35
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order