Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 17921822607. Hellas
THE world’s great age begins anew, | |
The golden years return, | |
The earth doth like a snake renew | |
Her winter weeds outworn; | |
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam | 5 |
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. | |
A brighter Hellas rears its mountains | |
From waves serener far; | |
A new Peneus rolls his fountains | |
Against the morning star; | 10 |
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep | |
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep. | |
A loftier Argo cleaves the main, | |
Fraught with a later prize; | |
Another Orpheus sings again, | 15 |
And loves, and weeps, and dies; | |
A new Ulysses leaves once more | |
Calypso for his native shore. | |
O write no more the tale of Troy, | |
If earth Death’s scroll must be— | 20 |
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy | |
Which dawns upon the free, | |
Although a subtler Sphinx renew | |
Riddles of death Thebes never knew. | |
Another Athens shall arise, | 25 |
And to remoter time | |
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, | |
The splendour of its prime; | |
And leave, if naught so bright may live, | |
All earth can take or Heaven can give. | 30 |
Saturn and Love their long repose | |
Shall burst, more bright and good | |
Than all who fell, than One who rose, | |
Than many unsubdued: | |
Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers, | 35 |
But votive tears and symbol flowers. | |
O cease! must hate and death return? | |
Cease! must men kill and die? | |
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn | |
Of bitter prophecy! | 40 |
The world is weary of the past— | |
O might it die or rest at last! |