The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 132

AUTUMN: A DIRGE.

[Published by Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824.]

1.

The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying, And the Year On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying. _5 Come, Months, come away, From November to May, In your saddest array; Follow the bier Of the dead cold Year, _10 And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.

2.

The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling For the Year; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone _15 To his dwelling; Come, Months, come away; Put on white, black, and gray; Let your light sisters play-- Ye, follow the bier _20 Of the dead cold Year, And make her grave green with tear on tear.

THE WANING MOON.

[Published by Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824.]

And like a dying lady, lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil, Out of her chamber, led by the insane And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, The moon arose up in the murky East, _5 A white and shapeless ma.s.s--

TO THE MOON.

[Published (1) by Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824, (2) by W.M.

Rossetti, "Complete Poetical Works", 1870.]

1.

Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth,-- And ever changing, like a joyless eye _5 That finds no object worth its constancy?

2.

Thou chosen sister of the Spirit, That grazes on thee till in thee it pities...

DEATH.

[Published by Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824.]

1.

Death is here and death is there, Death is busy everywhere, All around, within, beneath, Above is death--and we are death.

2.

Death has set his mark and seal _5 On all we are and all we feel, On all we know and all we fear,

3.

First our pleasures die--and then Our hopes, and then our fears--and when These are dead, the debt is due, _10 Dust claims dust--and we die too.

4.

All things that we love and cherish, Like ourselves must fade and perish; Such is our rude mortal lot-- Love itself would, did they not. _15

LIBERTY.

[Published by Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824.]

1.

The fiery mountains answer each other; Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone; The tempestuous oceans awake one another, And the ice-rocks are shaken round Winter's throne, When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown. _5

2.

From a single cloud the lightening flashes, Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around, Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes, An hundred are shuddering and tottering; the sound Is bellowing underground. _10

3.

But keener thy gaze than the lightening's glare, And swifter thy step than the earthquake's tramp; Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun's bright lamp To thine is a fen-fire damp. _15

4.

From billow and mountain and exhalation The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast; From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation, From city to hamlet thy dawning is cast,-- And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night _20 In the van of the morning light.

NOTE: _4 zone editions 1824, 1839; throne later editions.

SUMMER AND WINTER.

[Published by Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley in "The Keepsake", 1829. Mr. C.W.

Frederickson of Brooklyn possesses a transcript in Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley's handwriting.]

It was a bright and cheerful afternoon, Towards the end of the sunny month of June, When the north wind congregates in crowds The floating mountains of the silver clouds From the horizon--and the stainless sky _5 Opens beyond them like eternity.

All things rejoiced beneath the sun; the weeds, The river, and the corn-fields, and the reeds; The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze, And the firm foliage of the larger trees. _10

It was a winter such as when birds die In the deep forests; and the fishes lie Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes A wrinkled clod as hard as brick; and when, _15 Among their children, comfortable men Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold: Alas, then, for the homeless beggar old!

NOTE: _11 birds die 1839; birds do die 1829.

THE TOWER OF FAMINE.

[Published by Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley in "The Keepsake", 1829. Mr. C.W.

Frederickson of Brooklyn possesses a transcript in Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley's handwriting.]

Amid the desolation of a city, Which was the cradle, and is now the grave Of an extinguished people,--so that Pity