C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
From ‘Prometheus Unbound’
By Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
F
Where the night has its grave and the morning its birth,
Come, come, come!
O ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth,
When cities sink howling in ruin; and ye
Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea,
And close upon Shipwreck and Famine’s track,
Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck;
Come, come, come!
Leave the bed, low, cold, and red,
Strewed beneath a nation dead;
Leave the hatred, as in ashes
Fire is left for future burning:
It will burst in bloodier flashes
When ye stir it, soon returning:
Leave the self-contempt implanted
In young spirits, sense-enchanted,
Misery’s yet unkindled fuel:
Leave Hell’s secrets half unchanted
To the maniac dreamer; cruel
More than ye can be with hate
Is he with fear.
Come, come, come!
We are steaming up from Hell’s wide gate,
And we burthen the blast of the atmosphere,
But vainly we toil till ye come here.
L
With their love the breath between them;
And thy smiles before they dwindle
Make the cold air fire: then screen them
In those looks, where whoso gazes
Faints, entangled in their mazes.
Through the vest which seems to hide them;
As the radiant lines of morning
Through the clouds ere they divide them;
And this atmosphere divinest
Shrouds thee wheresoe’er thou shinest.
But thy voice sounds low and tender
Like the fairest, for it folds thee
From the sight, that liquid splendor;
And all feel, yet see thee never,
As I feel now, lost for ever!
Its dim shapes are clad with brightness,
And the souls of whom thou lovest
Walk upon the winds with lightness.
Till they fail, as I am failing,
Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!
My soul is an enchanted boat,
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
And thine doth like an angel sit
Beside a helm conducting it;
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
It seems to float ever, for ever,
Upon that many-winding river,
Between mountains, woods, abysses,
A paradise of wildernesses!
Till, like one in slumber bound,
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound:
In music’s most serene dominions;
Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.
And we sail on, away, afar,
Without a course, without a star,
But by the instinct of sweet music driven;
Till through Elysian garden islets
By thee, most beautiful of pilots,
Where never mortal pinnace glided,
The boat of my desire is guided:
Realms where the air we breathe is love,
Which in the winds and on the waves doth move,
Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.