No More Learning

***


TO --.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. ]

1.
One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair _5
For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.

2.
I can give not what men call love,
But wilt thou accept not _10
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not,--
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar _15
From the sphere of our sorrow?

***


TO --.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824.
There is a Boscombe manuscript. ]

1.
When passion's trance is overpast,
If tenderness and truth could last,
Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep
Some mortal slumber, dark and deep,
I should not weep, I should not weep! _5

2.
It were enough to feel, to see,
Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly,
And dream the rest--and burn and be
The secret food of fires unseen,
Couldst thou but be as thou hast been, _10

3.
After the slumber of the year
The woodland violets reappear;
All things revive in field or grove,
And sky and sea, but two, which move
And form all others, life and love. _15

NOTE:
_15 form Boscombe manuscript; for editions 1824, 1839.

***


A BRIDAL SONG.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. ]

1.
The golden gates of Sleep unbar
Where Strength and Beauty, met together,
Kindle their image like a star
In a sea of glassy weather!
Night, with all thy stars look down,-- _5
Darkness, weep thy holiest dew,--
Never smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair so true.
Let eyes not see their own delight;--
Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight _10
Oft renew.

2.
Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!
Holy stars, permit no wrong!
And return to wake the sleeper,
Dawn,--ere it be long! _15
O joy! O fear! what will be done
In the absence of the sun!