Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (216 page)
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Authors: Homer,William Shakespeare
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
ART thou pale for weariness
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
5
That finds no object worth its constancy?
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
A WIDOW bird sate mourning for her Love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above
The freezing stream below.
There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
5
No flower upon the ground,
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel’s sound.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
ARIEL to Miranda: — Take
This slave of music, for the sake
Of him, who is the slave of thee;
And teach it all the harmony
In which thou canst, and only thou,
5
Make the delighted spirit glow,
Till joy denies itself again
And, too intense, is turn’d to pain.
For by permission and command
Of thine own Prince Ferdinand,
10
Poor Ariel sends this silent token
Of more than ever can be spoken;
Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who
From life to life must still pursue
Your happiness, for thus alone
15
Can Ariel ever find his own;
From Prospero’s enchanted cell,
As the mighty verses tell,
To the throne of Naples he
Lit you o’er the trackless sea,
20
Flitting on, your prow before,
Like a living meteor.
When you die, the silent Moon
In her interlunar swoon
Is not sadder in her cell
25
Than deserted Ariel;
When you live again on earth,
Like an unseen Star of birth
Ariel guides you o’er the sea
Of life from your nativity:
30
Many changes have been run
Since Ferdinand and you begun
Your course of love, and Ariel still
Has track’d your steps and served your will.
Now in humbler, happier lot,
35
This is all remember’d not;
And now, alas! the poor sprite is
Imprison’d for some fault of his
In a body like a grave —
From you he only dares to crave
40
For his service and his sorrow
A smile today, a song tomorrow.
The artist who this idol wrought
To echo all harmonious thought,
Fell’d a tree, while on the steep
45
The woods were in their winter sleep,
Rock’d in that repose divine
On the wind-swept Apennine;
And dreaming, some of autumn past,
And some of spring approaching fast,
50
And some of April buds and showers,
And some of songs in July bowers,
And all of love: And so this tree, —
Oh that such our death may be! —
Died in sleep, and felt no pain,
55
To live in happier form again:
From which, beneath Heaven’s fairest star,
The artist wrought this loved Guitar;
And taught it justly to reply
To all who question skilfully
60
In language gentle as thine own;
Whispering in enamour’d tone
Sweet oracles of woods and dells,
And summer winds in sylvan cells;
— For it had learnt all harmonies
65
Of the plains and of the skies,
Of the forests and the mountains,
And the many-voice´d fountains;
The clearest echoes of the hills,
The softest notes of falling rills,
70
The melodies of birds and bees,
The murmuring of summer seas,
And pattering rain, and breathing dew
And airs of evening; and it knew
That seldom-heard mysterious sound
75
Which, driven on its diurnal round,
As it floats through boundless day,
Our world enkindles on its way:
— All this it knows, but will not tell
To those who cannot question well
80
The spirit that inhabits it;
It talks according to the wit
Of its companions; and no more
Is heard than has been felt before
By those who tempt it to betray
85
These secrets of an elder day.
But, sweetly as its answers will
Flatter hands of perfect skill,
It keeps its highest holiest tone
For our beloved Friend alone.
90
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
One Word is Too Often Profaned
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
ONE word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdain’d
For thee to disdain it.
One hope is too like despair
5
For prudence to smother,
And Pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
I can give not what men call love;
But wilt thou accept not
10
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not:
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
15
From the sphere of our sorrow?
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
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 shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
5
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
10
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.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
WHEN the lamp is shatter’d
The light in the dust lies dead —
When the cloud is scatter’d,
The rainbow’s glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
5
Sweet tones are remember’d not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.
As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
10
The heart’s echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute —
No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruin’d cell,
Or the mournful surges
15
That ring the dead seaman’s knell.
When hearts have once mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possesst.
20
O Love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home, and your bier?
Its passions will rock thee
25
As the storms rock the ravens on high;
Bright reason will mock thee
Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
30
Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
5
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
10
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night ’tis my pillow white,
15
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits,
In a cavern under is fretted the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;
20
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
25
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in heaven’s blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.
30
The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead,
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
35
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when sunset may breathe from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardours of rest and of love,
40
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbèd maiden with white fire laden,
45
Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
50
May have broken the woof of my tent’s thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
55
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
I bind the sun’s throne with a burning zone,
And the moon’s with a girdle of pearl;
60
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
65
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-coloured bow;
70
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,
While the moist earth was laughing below.
I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
75
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain,
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams,
Build up the blue dome of air,
80
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order