Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (215 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)
LIFE of Life! Thy lips enkindle
With their love the breath between them;
And thy smiles before they dwindle
Make the cold air fire; then screen them
In those locks, where whoso gazes
5
Faints, entangled in their mazes.
Child of Light! Thy limbs are burning
Through the veil which seems to hide them,
As the radiant lines of morning
Through thin clouds, ere they divide them;
10
And this atmosphere divinest
Shrouds thee whereso’er thou shinest.
Fair are others: none beholds Thee;
But thy voice sounds low and tender
Like the fairest, for it folds thee
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From the sight, that liquid splendour;
And all feel, yet see thee never, —
As I feel now, lost for ever!
Lamp of Earth! where’er thou movest
Its dim shapes are clad with brightness,
20
And the souls of whom thou lovest
Walk upon the winds with lightness
Till they fail, as I am failing,
Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
O WORLD! O Life! O Time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I had stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more — O never more!
5
Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight:
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more — O never more!
10
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
I DREAM’D that as I wander’d by the way
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mix’d with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
5
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kiss’d it and then fled, as Thou mightest in dream.
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearl’d Arcturi of the earth,
10
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender blue-bells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
Its mother’s face with heaven-collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.
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And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-colour’d May,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew yet drain’d not by the day;
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine
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With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
And flowers azure, black, and streak’d with gold,
Fairer than any waken’d eyes behold.
And nearer to the river’s trembling edge
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prank’t with white,
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And starry river-buds among the sedge,
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
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As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.
Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural bowers
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
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Kept these imprison’d children of the Hours
Within my hand, — and then, elate and gay,
I hasten’d to the spot whence I had come
That I might there present it — O! to whom?
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
BEST and Brightest, come away,
Fairer far than this fair day,
Which, like thee, to those in sorrow
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough year just awake
5
In its cradle on the brake.
The brightest hour of unborn Spring
Through the winter wandering,
Found, it seems, the halcyon morn
To hoar February born;
10
Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,
It kiss’d the forehead of the earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams be free,
And waked to music all their fountains,
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And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
And like a prophetess of May
Strew’d flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, Dear.
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Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs —
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music, lest it should not find
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An echo in another’s mind,
While the touch of Nature’s art
Harmonizes heart to heart.
I leave this notice on my door
For each accustomed visitor: —
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“I am gone into the fields
To take what this sweet hour yields; —
Reflection, you may come to-morrow,
Sit by the fireside with Sorrow. —
You with the unpaid bill, Despair, —
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You tiresome verse-reciter, Care, —
I will pay you in the grave, —
Death will listen to your stave.
Expectation too, be off!
To-day is for itself enough;
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Hope, in pity mock not Woe
With smiles, nor follow where I go;
Long having lived on thy sweet food,
At length I find one moment’s good
After long pain — with all your love,
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This you never told me of.”
Radiant Sister of the Day
Awake! arise! and come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
To the pools where winter rains
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Image all their roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garland weaves
Of sapless green, and ivy dun,
Round stems that never kiss the sun,
Where the lawns and pastures be,
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And the sandhills of the sea,
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets,
And wind-flowers and violets
Which yet join not scent to hue
60
Crown the pale year weak and new;
When the night is left behind
In the deep east, dim and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous
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Billows murmur at our feet,
Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one
In the universal Sun.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
NOW the last day of many days
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead:
Rise, Memory, and write its praise!
Up, do thy wonted work! come, trace
5
The epitaph of glory fled,
For now the earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven’s brow.
We wander’d to the Pine Forest
That skirts the Ocean’s foam;
10
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.
The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep
15
The smile of Heaven lay;
It seem’d as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies
Which scatter’d from above the sun
A light of Paradise!
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We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shape as rude
As serpents interlaced, —
And soothed by every azure breath
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That under heaven is blown
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own:
Now all the tree-tops lay asleep,
Like green waves on the sea,
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As still as in the silent deep
The ocean-woods may be.
How calm it was! — the silence there
But such a chain was bound,
That even the busy woodpecker
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Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;
The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.
40
There seem’d, from the remotest seat
Of the wide mountain waste
To the soft flower beneath our feet
A magic circle traced,
A spirit interfused around,
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A thrilling silent life;
To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature’s strife; —
And still I felt the centre of
The magic circle there
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Was one fair Form that fill’d with love
The lifeless atmosphere.
We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough;
Each seem’d as ‘twere a little sky
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Gulf’d in a world below;
A firmament of purple light
Which in the dark earth lay,
More boundless than the depth of night
And purer than the day —
60
In which the lovely forests grew
As in the upper air,
More perfect both in shape and hue
Than any spreading there.
There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn,
65
And through the dark-green wood
The white sun twinkling like the dawn
Out of a speckled cloud.
Sweet views which in our world above
Can never well be seen
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Were imaged by the water’s love
Of that fair forest green:
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow,
An atmosphere without a breath,
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A softer day below.
Like one beloved, the scene had lent
To the dark water’s breast
Its every leaf and lineament
With more than truth exprest;
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Until an envious wind crept by,
Like an unwelcome thought
Which from the mind’s too faithful eye
Blots one dear image out.
— Though Thou art ever fair and kind,
85
The forests ever green,
Less oft is peace in Shelley’s mind
Than calm in waters seen!
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order