Fragment: 'Follow To The Deep Wood's Weeds'.

Follow to the deep wood's weeds,
Follow to the wild-briar dingle,
Where we seek to intermingle,
And the violet tells her tale
To the odour-scented gale,
For they two have enough to do
Of such work as I and you.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets, widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric and philosophical poets in the English language. Born on August 4, 1792, Shelley was a key member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love Peacock, and his own wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. His poetic themes mainly explored radical social reform, personal liberation, and the power of human creativity and imagination. Tragically, he died young at the age of 29 in a boating accident in 1822. Though he faced criticism during his lifetime, his work garnered acclaim posthumously.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Matilda Gathering Flowers.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Simple Poetry

Fragment: To One Singing.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Simple Poetry

From The Original Draft Of The Poem 'To William Shelley'.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Simple Poetry

Evening. To Harriet.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Fragment: The Lake's Margin.

The fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses
Track not the steps of him who drinks of it;
For the light breezes, which for ever fleet
Around its margin, heap the sand thereon.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Fragment: A Roman's Chamber.

1.
In the cave which wild weeds cover
Wait for thine aethereal lover;
For the pallid moon is waning,
O'er the spiral cypress hanging
And the moon no cloud is staining.

2.
It was once a Roman's chamber,
Where he kept his darkest revels,
And the wild weeds twine and clamber;
It was then a chasm for devils.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Matilda Gathering Flowers.

From The Purgatorio Of Dante, Canto 28, Lines 1-51.


And earnest to explore within - around -
The divine wood, whose thick green living woof
Tempered the young day to the sight - I wound

Up the green slope, beneath the forest's roof,
With slow, soft steps leaving the mountain's steep,
And sought those inmost labyrinths, motion-proof

Against the air, that in that stillness deep
And solemn, struck upon my forehead bare,
The slow, soft stroke of a continuous...

In which the ... leaves tremblingly were
All bent towards that part where earliest
The sacred hill obscures the morning air.

Yet were they not so shaken from the rest,
But that the birds, perched on the utmost spray,
Incessantly renewing their blithe quest,

With per...

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Question.

1.
I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

2.
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxslips; 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's collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.

3.
And in th...

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Fragment: The Vine-Shroud.

Flourishing vine, whose kindling clusters glow
Beneath the autumnal sun, none taste of thee;
For thou dost shroud a ruin, and below
The rotting bones of dead antiquity.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Fragment: The False Laurel And The True.

'What art thou, Presumptuous, who profanest
The wreath to mighty poets only due,
Even whilst like a forgotten moon thou wanest?
Touch not those leaves which for the eternal few
Who wander o'er the Paradise of fame,
In sacred dedication ever grew:
One of the crowd thou art without a name.'
'Ah, friend, 'tis the false laurel that I wear;
Bright though it seem, it is not the same
As that which bound Milton's immortal hair;
Its dew is poison; and the hopes that quicken
Under its chilling shade, though seeming fair,
Are flowers which die almost before they sicken.'

Percy Bysshe Shelley