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Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave, Sees its own treacherous likeness there. heard

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Of his frail exultation shall be spent,
He He must descend. With rapid steps he went
Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow
Of the wild babbling rivulet; and now
The forest's solemn canopies were changed
For the uniform and lightsome evening sky.
Gray rocks did peep from the spare moss, and
stemmed

The motion of the leaves, the grass that sprung
Startled and glanced and trembled even to feel
An unaccustomed presence, and the sound
Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs
Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed
To stand beside him-clothed in no bright robes
Of shadowy silver or enshrining light,
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Borrowed from aught the visible world affords
Of grace, or majesty, or mystery;-
But undulating woods, and silent well,
And leaping rivulet, and evening gloom
Now deepening the dark shades, for
assuming,

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The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here, speech Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away, The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin

Held commune with him, as if he and it
Were all that was; only-when his regard
Was raised by intense pensiveness-two eyes, 489
Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought,
And seemed with their serene and azure smiles
To beckon him.

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And white, and where irradiate dewy eyes
Had shone, gleam stony orbs:-so from his steps
| Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade
Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds
And musical motions. Calm, he still pursued
The stream, that with a larger volume now
Rolled through the labyrinthine dell, and there
Fretted a path through its descending curves
With its wintry speed. On every side now rose
Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms,
Lifted their black and barren pinnacles
In the light of evening, and, its precipice
Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above,
Mid toppling stones, black gulfs and yawning
caves,

Whose windings gave ten thousand various
tongues
To the loud stream.
Lo! where the pass

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Tell where these living thoughts reside, when Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge
stretched
Of the remote horizon. The near scene,

Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste In naked and severe simplicity,
I' the passing wind!''

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Made contrast with the universe. A pine, Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast Yielding one only response, at each pause In most familiar cadence, with the howl, The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river, Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged path, | Fell into that immeasurable void Scattering its waters to the passing winds. 1 withered grass-stalks

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Yet the gray precipice and solemn pine And torrent were not all;;-one silent nook

Was there. Even on the edge of that vast
mountain,

Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks,
It overlooked in its serenity

The dark earth, and the bending vault of stars.
It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile
Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped

The fissured stones with its entwining arms,
And did embower with leaves for ever green,
And berries dark, the smooth and even space
Of its inviolated floor, and here

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The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore,
In wanton sport, those bright leaves, whose
decay,

Red, yellow, or ethereally pale,

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His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk
Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone
Reclined his languid head, his limbs did rest,
Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink
Of that obscurest chasm;—and thus he lay,
Surrendering to their final impulses

The hovering powers of life. Hope and despair,
590 The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear 640
Marred his repose, the influxes of sense,
And his own being unalloyed by pain,
Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed
The stream of thought, till he lay breathing
there

Rivals the pride of summer. 'Tis the haunt
Of every gentle wind, whose breath can teach
The wilds to love tranquillity. One step,
One human step alone, has ever broken
The stillness of its solitude:-one voice
Alone inspired its echoes;-even that voice
Which hither came, floating among the winds,
And led the loveliest among human forms
To make their wild haunts the depository
Of all the grace and beauty that endued
Its motions, render up its majesty,
Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm,
And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould,
Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss,
Commit the colours of that varying cheek, 600
That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.
The dim and hornèd moon hung low, and
poured

A sea of lustre on the horizon's verge
That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist
Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank
Wan moonlight even to fulness: not a star
Shone, not a sound was heard; the
very winds,
Danger's grim playmates, on that precipice
Slept, clasped in his embrace.-O, storm of

Death!

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Of his faint respiration scarce did stir
The stagnate night:-till the minutest ray
Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his
heart.

It paused-it fluttered. But when heaven re-
mained.

Utterly black, the murky shades involved
An image, silent, cold, and motionless,

Even as a vapour fed with golden beams
That ministered on sunlight, ere the west
Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame-
No sense, no motion, no divinity-

Art king of this frail world! from the red field As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.
Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital,
The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed
Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne.
A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls
His brother Death. A rare and regal prey
He hath prepared, prowling around the world;
Glutted with which thou mayst repose,
and

men

621 Go to their graves like flowers or creeping

worms,

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A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings
The breath of heaven did wander-a bright

stream

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For life and power, even when his feeble hand
Shakes in its last decay, were the true law
Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled
Like some frail exhalation; which the dawn
Robes in its golden beams,-ah! thou hast fled!
The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,
The child of grace and genius. Heartless things
Are done and said i' the world, and many worms
And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth
From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,
In vesper low or joyous orison,

Lifts still its solemn voice:-but thou art fled;
Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes
Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee
Been purest ministers, who are, alas!
Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips
So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes 700
That image sleep in death, upon that form
Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear
Be shed-not even in thought. Nor, when those
hues

Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,
Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone
In the frail pauses of this simple strain,
Let not high verse, mourning the memory
Of that which is no more, or painting's woe
Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery
Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence, 710
And all the shows o' the world are frail and
vain

To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.
It is a woe too "deep for tears,'' when all
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,

1 magic decoction (For example of Medea's witchcraft, see the story of Jason)

2 Ahasuerus, the legendary Wandering Jew, said to have been condemned by Christ, for his insolence, to wander till Christ's second coming.

31. e.. immortal youth, the clirir ritae

4 Wordsworth's Ode on Immortality, last line.

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'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

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The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow

5 That is, they survived both him who imaged
them and him who nursed them.
Note by Shelley: "This poem was conceived
and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the
Arno, near Florence.
The phenomenon
alluded to at the conclusion of the third
stanza is well known to naturalists. The
vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers.
and of lakes, sympathizes with that of the
land in the change of seasons, and is conse-
quently influenced by the winds which an-
nounce it."

The poem has something of the impetuosity of the wind-a breathless swiftness which seems almost to scorn rhyme, and which is characteristic of many of Shelley's longer poems. Characteristically, too, it breathes his intense "passion for reforming the world." the combination of which with lyric delicacy, as here, is exceedingly rare.

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Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,

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Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
Ocean,
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

proud.

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: 20 What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

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THE INDIAN SERENADE

I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright;
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me--who knows how?
To thy chamber window, sweet!

The wandering airs, they faint
On the dark, the silent stream;
The champak1 odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart,

As I must die on thine,

Oh, beloved as thou art!

Oh, lift me from the grass!

I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain

1 An Indian tree of the Magnolia family.

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On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast,
Oh! press it close to thine again,
Where it will break at last.

FROM PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

SONG*

Life of Life, thy lips enkindle

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.

Child of Light! thy limbs are burning

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.

Fair are others; none beholds thee,

But thy voice sounds low and tender Like the fairest, for it folds thee

From the sight, that liquid splendour, And all feel, yet see thee never, As I feel now, lost forever.

Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest

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!

ASIA'S RESPONSE

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, forever,
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.

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20

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 on the waves doth move,
Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.

We have passed Age's icy caves,

And Manhood's dark and tossing waves,

And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray;
Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee

Of shadow-peopled Infancy,

Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day;*

A paradise of vaulted bowers

Lit by downward-gazing flowers,

And watery paths that wind between
Wildernesses calm and green,

12 Peopled by shapes too bright to see,

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30

And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee; Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously!

THE CLOUD

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.

241 wield the flail of the lashing hail,

10

Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions In music's most serene dominions; Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.

*This is the song of an unseen spirit to Asia. who is the dramatic embodiment of the spirit of love working through all nature.

And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,

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In imagination reversing the course of nature. she passes back through the portals of earthly being to the spirit's condition of primordial immortality.

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