Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 17921822616. The Question
I DREAM’D that, as I wander’d by the way, | |
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring; | |
And gentle odours led my steps astray, | |
Mix’d with a sound of waters murmuring | |
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay | 5 |
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling | |
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, | |
But kiss’d it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream. | |
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets; | |
Daisies, those pearl’d Arcturi of the earth, | 10 |
The constellated flower that never sets; | |
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth | |
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets— | |
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth— | |
Its mother’s face with heaven-collected tears | 15 |
When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears. | |
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, | |
Green cowbind and the moonlight-colour’d May, | |
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups whose wine | |
Was the bright dew yet drain’d not by the day; | 20 |
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine, | |
With its dark buds and leaves wandering astray; | |
And flowers, azure, black, and streak’d with gold, | |
Fairer than any waken’d eyes behold. | |
And nearer to the river’s trembling edge | 25 |
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prank’d with white, | |
And starry river-buds among the sedge, | |
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, | |
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge | |
With moonlight beams of their own watery light; | 30 |
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green | |
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen. | |
Methought that of these visionary flowers | |
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way | |
That the same hues which in their natural bowers | 35 |
Were mingled or opposed, the like array | |
Kept these imprison’d children of the Hours | |
Within my hand;—and then, elate and gay, | |
I hasten’d to the spot whence I had come, | |
That I might there present it—O! to whom? | 40 |