Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

Extracts from Prometheus Unbound: Semichorus II

THERE the voluptuous nightingales

Are awake through all the broad noonday.

When one with bliss or sadness fails,

And through the windless ivy-boughs,

Sick with sweet love, droops dying away

On its mate’s music-panting bosom;

Another, from the swinging blossom

Watching to catch the languid close

Of the last strain, then lifts on high

The wings of the weak melody,—

Till some new strain of feeling bear

The song, and all the woods are mute;

When there is heard through the dim air

The rush of wings, and, rising there

Like many a lake-surrounded flute,

Sounds overflow the listener’s brain

So sweet that joy is almost pain.