]
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 mass--
***
TO THE MOON.
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 mass--
***
TO THE MOON.
Shelley
Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards, _170
And frowns and fears from thee,
Would not more swiftly flee
Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds. --
Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine
Thou yieldest or withholdest, oh, let be _175
This city of thy worship ever free!
NOTES:
_143 old 1824; lost B.
_147 black 1824; blue B.
***
AUTUMN: A DIRGE.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "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. Shelley, "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 mass--
***
TO THE MOON.
[Published (1) by Mrs. Shelley, "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. Shelley, "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.
