The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 695 pages of information about The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 1.

The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 695 pages of information about The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 1.

LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE.

The witch of Atlas
To Mary
The witch of Atlas
Note by Mrs. Shelley.

Oedipus Tyrannus; or, Swellfoot the tyrant.  A tragedy in two acts
Note by Mrs. Shelley.

Epipsychidion
Fragments connected with Epipsychidion.

AdonaisAn elegy on the death of John Keats
Preface
Adonais
Cancelled passages.

Hellas.  A lyrical drama
Preface
Prologue
Hellas
Shelley’s notes
Note by Mrs. Shelley.

Fragments of an unfinished drama.

Charles the first.

The triumph of life.

Cancelled opening.

***

THE DAEMON OF THE WORLD.

A fragment.

PART 1.

[Sections 1 and 2 of “Queen Mab” rehandled, and published by Shelley in the “Alastor” volume, 1816.  See “Bibliographical List”, and the Editor’s Introductory Note to “Queen Mab".]

Nec tantum prodere vati,
Quantum scire licet.  Venit aetas omnis in unam
Congeriem, miserumque premunt tot saecula pectus. 
Lucan, Phars. v. 176.

How wonderful is Death,
Death and his brother Sleep! 
One pale as yonder wan and horned moon,
With lips of lurid blue,
The other glowing like the vital morn, 5
When throned on ocean’s wave
It breathes over the world: 
Yet both so passing strange and wonderful!

Hath then the iron-sceptred Skeleton,
Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres, 10
To the hell dogs that couch beneath his throne
Cast that fair prey?  Must that divinest form,
Which love and admiration cannot view
Without a beating heart, whose azure veins
Steal like dark streams along a field of snow,
15
Whose outline is as fair as marble clothed
In light of some sublimest mind, decay? 
Nor putrefaction’s breath
Leave aught of this pure spectacle
But loathsomeness and ruin?—­ 20
Spare aught but a dark theme,
On which the lightest heart might moralize? 
Or is it but that downy-winged slumbers
Have charmed their nurse coy Silence near her lids
To watch their own repose?

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.