Fragment: Rain.

The fitful alternations of the rain,
When the chill wind, languid as with pain
Of its own heavy moisture, here and there
Drives through the gray and beamless atmosphere.

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

Fragment: 'Unrisen Splendour Of The Brightest Sun'.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Simple Poetry

To Ianthe.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Simple Poetry

The Drowned Lover.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Simple Poetry

Fragment: 'When Soft Winds And Sunny Skies'.

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: Rain.

The gentleness of rain was in the wind.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Fragment: 'When Soft Winds And Sunny Skies'.

When soft winds and sunny skies
With the green earth harmonize,
And the young and dewy dawn,
Bold as an unhunted fawn,
Up the windless heaven is gone, -
Laugh - for ambushed in the day, -
Clouds and whirlwinds watch their prey.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Fragment: 'I Faint, I Perish With My Love!'.

I faint, I perish with my love! I grow
Frail as a cloud whose [splendours] pale
Under the evening's ever-changing glow:
I die like mist upon the gale,
And like a wave under the calm I fail.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Fragment: 'My Head Is Wild With Weeping'.

My head is wild with weeping for a grief
Which is the shadow of a gentle mind.
I walk into the air (but no relief
To seek, - or haply, if I sought, to find;
It came unsought); - to wonder that a chief
Among men's spirits should be cold and blind.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Fragment: Love'S Tender Atmosphere.

There is a warm and gentle atmosphere
About the form of one we love, and thus
As in a tender mist our spirits are
Wrapped in the ... of that which is to us
The health of life's own life -

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Fragment: To Byron.

O mighty mind, in whose deep stream this age
Shakes like a reed in the unheeding storm,
Why dost thou curb not thine own sacred rage?

Percy Bysshe Shelley