The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 220 pages of information about The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 2.

The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 220 pages of information about The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 2.

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.

2. 
Death has set his mark and seal 5
On all we are and all we feel,
On all we know and all we fear,

...

3. 
First our pleasures die—­and then
Our hopes, and then our fears—­and when
These are dead, the debt is due, 10
Dust claims dust—­and we die too.

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Project Gutenberg
The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 2 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.