"MOST WRETCHED MEN ARE CRADLED INTO POETRY BY WRONG:-(SHELLEY) ALAS, THAT LOVE SHOULD BE A BLIGHT AND SNARE (SHELLEY) PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. "THEY LEARN IN SUFFERING WHAT THEY TEACH IN SONG."-PERCY B. SHELLEY. With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower. Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, TO THOSE WHO SEEK ALL SYMPATHIES IN ONE!"-P. B. SHELLEY. THOUGHTS OF GREAT DEEDS WERE MINE, DEAR FRIEND, WHEN FIRST Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view. Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves. "TO LOVE, AND BEAR; TO HOPE TILL HOPE CREATES FROM ITS OWN WRECK THE THING IT CONTEMPLATES."-shelley. "WAR IS THE STATESMAN'S GAME, THE PRIEST'S DELIGHT, THE LAWYER'S JEST, THE HIRED ASSASSIN'S TRADE."-SHELLEY. Sound of vernal showers On the trickling grass, Rain-awakened flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. Teach me, 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. Chorus hymeneal, Or triumphal chant, Matched with thine would be all But an empty vaunt-- A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 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? THE CLOUDS WHICH WRAP THIS WORLD FROM YOUTH DID PASS."-SHELLEY. "SAD STORM WHOSE TEARS ARE VAIN, BARE WOODS WHOSE BRANCHES STAIN, 394 WHEN HEARTS HAVE ONCE mingled-(PERCY B. SHELLEY) PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. With thy clear keen joyance, Languor cannot be : Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovèst; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy note flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after; And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.* 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. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! *"Sad things, in this life of breath, Are truest, saddest, sweetest." ROBERT BUCHANAN. LOVE FIRST LEAVES THE WELL-BUILT NEST."-SHELLEY. DEEP CAVES AND DREARY MAIN, WAIT FOR THE WORLD'S WRONG!"-SHELLEY. 66 WONDERFUL IS DEATH-DEATH AND HIS BROTHER SLEEP! The world should listen then, as I am listening now. [In the spring of 1820, says Mrs. Shelley, we (that is, herself and the poet) spent a week or two near Leghorn, borrowing the house of some friends, who were absent on a journey to England. "It was on a beautiful summer evening, while wandering among the lanes where myrtle hedges were the bowers of the fire-flies, that we heard the carolling of the Skylark, which inspired one of the most beautiful of his poems." Of this exquisitely melodious and sensuous lyric, Leigh Hunt justly says, that in sweetness it is inferior only to Coleridge-in rapturous passion, to no man. "It is like the bird it sings-enthusiastic, enchanting, profuse, continuous, and alonesmall, but filling the heavens. Notwithstanding Shakespeare's lark singing 'at heaven's gate,' the larger effusion of Shelley will be identified with thoughts of the bird hereafter, in the minds of all who are susceptible of its beauty."-LEIGH HUNT, Imagination and Fancy, p. 295.] "HOW SWEET IT IS TO SIT AND READ THE TALES OF MIGHTY POETS, AND TO HEAR THE WHILE SWEET MUSIC WHICH, WHEN THE ATTENTION FAILS, FILLS THE DIM PAUSE."-PERCY B. SHELLEY. S BEAUTY INEXPRESSIBLE. WEET lamp! my moth-like muse has burnt its Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings, A lute which those whom Love has taught to play AND DOVE-EYED PITY'S MURMURED PAIN."-PERCY B. SHELLEY. "FIRST OUR PLEASURES DIE, AND THEN OUR HOPES, AND THEN OUR FEARS, AND WHEN 396 "VICE IS DISCORD, WAR, AND MISERY; BUT VIRTUE PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. And lull fond grief asleep?—a buried treasure? A shadow of some golden dream; a Splendour With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy Into his summer grave. [From the "Epipsychidion "—a poem to be read by every student who would arrive at a just conception of the character and exaltation of Shelley's genius.] THESE ARE DEAD THE DEBT IS DUE; DUST CLAIMS DUST, AND WE DIE TOO."-SHELLEY. LOVE'S MEMORIES, USIC, when soft voices die, Odours, when sweet violets sicken, And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, [This song, says Leigh Hunt, is a great favourite with musicians; and no wonder. Beaumont and Fletcher never wrote anything of the kind more lovely.] IS PEACE, AND HAPPINESS, AND HARMONY."-Shelley. |