The sun is lord and god, sublime, serene,
And sovereign on the mountains: earth and air
Lie prone in passion, blind with bliss unseen
By force of sight and might of rapture, fair
As dreams that die and know not what they were.
The lawns, the gorges, and the peaks, are one
Glad glory, thrilled with sense of unison
In strong compulsive silence of the sun.
Flowers dense and keen as midnight stars aflame
And living things of light like flames in flower
That glance and flash as though no hand might tame
Lightnings whose life outshone their stormlit hour
And played and laughed on earth, with all their power
Gone, and with all their joy of life made long
And harmless as the lightning life of song,
Shine sweet like stars when darkness feels them strong.
The deep mild ...

I

This is the Month, and this the happy morn
Wherin the Son of Heav'ns eternal King,
Of wedded Maid, and Virgin Mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
That he our deadly forfeit should release,
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.

II

That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty,
Wherwith he wont at Heav'ns high Councel-Table,
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside; and here with us to be,
Forsook the Courts of everlasting Day,
And chose with us a darksom House of mortal Clay.

III

Say Heav'nly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no vers, no hymn, or solemn strein,

Spirto ben nato.


Choice soul, in whom, as in a glass, we see,
        Mirrored in thy pure form and delicate,
        What beauties heaven and nature can create,
        The paragon of all their works to be!
Fair soul, in whom love, pity, piety,
        Have found a home, as from thy outward state
        We clearly read, and are so rare and great
        That they adorn none other like to thee!
Love takes me captive; beauty binds my soul;
        Pity and mercy with their gentle eyes
        Wake in my heart a hope that cannot cheat.
What law, what destiny, what fell control,
        What cruelty, or late or soon, denies
        That death should spare perfection so complete?

An intimation of some previous life,
Or dark dream, in the present dim-divined,
Of some uncertain sleep - or lived or dreamed
In some dead life - between a dusk and dawn;

From heathen battles to Toledo's gates,
Far off defined, his corselet and camail,
Damascened armet, shattered; in an eve's
Anger of brass a galloping glitter, one
Rode arrow-wounded. And the city caught
A cry before him and a wail behind,
Of walls beleaguered; battles; conquered kings;
Triumphant Taric; broken Spain and slaves.

And I, a Moslem slave, a miser Jew's,
Housed near the Tagus - squalid and alone
Save for his slave, held dear - to beat and starve -
Leaner than my lank shadow when the moon,
A burning beacon, westerns; and my bones
A visible hunger; famished with the ...

When music sounds, gone is the earth I know,
And all her lovely things even lovelier grow;
Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees
Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies.

When music sounds, out of the water rise
Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes,
Rapt in strange dreams burns each enchanted face,
With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place.

When music sounds, all that I was I am
Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came;
While from Time's woods break into distant song
The swift-winged hours, as I haste along.

Whether I loved you who shall say?
Whether I drifted down your way
In the endless River of Chance and Change,
And you woke the strange
Unknown longings that have no names,
But burn us all in their hidden flames,
    Who shall say?

Life is a strange and a wayward thing:
We heard the bells of the Temples ring,
The married children, in passing, sing.
The month of marriage, the month of spring,
Was full of the breath of sunburnt flowers
That bloom in a fiercer light than ours,
And, under a sky more fiercely blue,
    I came to you!

You told me tales of your vivid life
Where death was cruel and danger rife -
Of deep dark forests, of poisoned trees,
Of pains and passions that scorch and freeze,
Of southern noontides and eastern nights,

When I watch you go by, in all your indolence,
To sound of instruments within the echoing hall
Suspending your appeal of lingering harmony,
And showing in your glance the ennui of your soul;

And when I contemplate, in colouring flames of gas,
Your pallid brow enhanced with a morbidity,
Where torches of the evening light a promised dawn,
Abd your alluring eyes, a master's artistry,

I think, how lovely! and how oddly innocent!
Massive remembrance, that great tower raised above,
Crowns her, and oh, her heart, bruised like a softened peach,
Is mellow, like her body, ripe for skilful love.

Are you the fruit of fall, when flavour is supreme?
Funeral vase, that waits for tears in darkened rooms,
Perfume that brings the far oases to our dreams,
Caressing ...

Ever before my face there went
Betwixt earth's buds and me
A beauty beyond earth's content,
A hope - half memory:
Till in the woods one evening -
Ah! eyes as dark as they,
Fastened on mine unwontedly,
Grey, and dear heart, how grey!

i(Epilogue to "A Vision')

Midnight has come, and the great Christ Church Bell
And may a lesser bell sound through the room;
And it is All Souls' Night,
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost's right,
His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine-breath
While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.
I need some mind that, if the cannon sound
From every quarter of the world, can stay
Wound in mind's pondering
As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound;
Because I have a marvellous thing to say,
A certain marvellous thing
None but the living mock,
Though not for sober ear;
It may be all that hear
Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.

Is thine hour come to wake, O slumbering Night?
Hath not the Dawn a message in thine ear?
Though thou be stone and sleep, yet shalt thou hear
When the word falls from heaven—Let there be light.
Thou knowest we would not do thee the despite
To wake thee while the old sorrow and shame were near;
We spake not loud for thy sake, and for fear
Lest thou shouldst lose the rest that was thy right,
The blessing given thee that was thine alone,
The happiness to sleep and to be stone:
Nay, we kept silence of thee for thy sake
Albeit we knew thee alive, and left with thee
The great good gift to feel not nor to see;
But will not yet thine Angel bid thee wake?

Posthumous Fragments Of Margaret Mcholson.

Being Poems found amongst the Papers of that noted Female who attempted the life of the King in 1786. Edited by John Fitzvictor.

[The "Posthumous Fragments", published at Oxford by Shelley, appeared in November, 1810.]



Fragment: Supposed To Be An Epithalamium Of Francis Ravaillac And Charlotte Corday.

'Tis midnight now - athwart the murky air,
Dank lurid meteors shoot a livid gleam;
From the dark storm-clouds flashes a fearful glare,
It shows the bending oak, the roaring stream.

I pondered on the woes of lost mankind,
I pondered on the ceaseless rage of Kings;
My rapt soul dwelt upon the ties that bind
The mazy volume of commingling things,
When fell and wild misrule to man stern sorrow brings.

It was the winter wild,
While the heaven-born Child
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature in awe to Him
Had doffed her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.

Only with speeches fair
She woos the gentle air
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow,
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinful blame,
The saintly veil of maiden white to throw,
Confounded that her Maker's eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

But He, her fears to cease,
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace;
She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphere,
His ready harbinger,
With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;<...

Non numero horas nisi serenas

When Fall drowns morns in mist, it seems
In soul I am a part of it;
A portion of its humid beams,
A form of fog, I seem to flit
From dreams to dreams....

An old château sleeps 'mid the hills
Of France: an avenue of sorbs
Conceals it: drifts of daffodils
Bloom by a 'scutcheoned gate with barbs
Like iron bills.

I pass the gate unquestioned; yet,
I feel, announced. Broad holm-oaks make
Dark pools of restless violet.
Between high bramble banks a lake, -
As in a net

The tangled scales twist silver, - shines....
Gray, mossy turrets swell above
A sea of leaves. And where the pines
Shade ivied walls, there lies my love,
My heart divines.

I know her window, slimly seen
From...

Not knowing when the dawn will come
I open every door;
Or has it feathers like a bird,
Or billows like a shore?

O, holy Spirit of the Hazel, hearken now,
Though shining suns and silver moons burn on the bough,
And though the fruit of stars by many myriads gleam,
Yet in the undergrowth below, still in thy dream,
Lighting the labyrinthine maze and monstrous gloom
Are many gem-winged flowers with gay and delicate bloom;
And in the shade, hearken, O Dreamer of the Tree,
One wild rose blossom of thy spirit breathed on me
With lovely and still light, a little sister flower
To those that whitely on the tall moon branches tower,
Lord of the Hazel now, oh hearken while I pray,
This wild rose blossom of thy spirit fades away.

"Come to the window, mother!
    Look out, and you will see
How fast these little clouds sail on,
    Above our old elm tree!

"And tell me, dearest mother,
    Are these the sheep of heaven,
That in that land are feeding,
    From morning until even?

"How soft and white and shining!
    Oh! say, dear mother, there
Is everything so gentle,
    So lovely and so fair?"

"We cannot see them, darling,
    The sheep of heaven, here;
And far more beautiful than this
    Does that bright land appear.

"Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard,
    Nor tongue of man can tell
The glories of that home above,
    Where all the good shall dwell."

No sound of wheels or hoof-beat breaks
    The silence of the summer day,
As by the loveliest of all lakes
    I while the idle hours away.

I pace the leafy colonnade
    Where level branches of the plane
Above me weave a roof of shade
    Impervious to the sun and rain.

At times a sudden rush of air
    Flutters the lazy leaves o'erhead,
And gleams of sunshine toss and flare
    Like torches down the path I tread.

By Somariva's garden gate
    I make the marble stairs my seat,
And hear the water, as I wait,
    Lapping the steps beneath my feet.

The undulation sinks and swells
    Along the stony parapets,
And far away the floating bells
    Tinkle upon the fisher's nets.

Silent and slow, by tower and town

    You have become a forge of snow white fire,
    A crucible of molten steel, O France!
    Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn
    And fade in light for you, O glorious France!
    They pass through meteor changes with a song
    Which to all islands and all continents
    Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame,
    Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child
    Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power,
    Nor many days spent in a chosen work,
    Nor honored merit, nor the patterned theme
    Of daily labor, nor the crowns nor wreaths
    Or seventy years.

    These are not all of life,
    O France, whose sons amid the rolling thunder
    Of cannon stand in trenches where the dead
    Clog the ensanguinéd ice. But li...