Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

FRAGMENT.

THE gentleness of rain was in the wind

FRAGMENT OF A DREAM.

METHOUGHT I was a billow in the crowd

Of common men, that stream without a shore, That ocean which at once is deaf and loud; That I, a man, stood amid many more which the aspect bore

By a wayside.

Of some imperial metropolis,

Where mighty shapes-pyramid, dome, and

tower

Gleamed like a pile of crags.

FRAGMENT ON KEATS,

WHO DESIRED THAT ON HIS TOMB SHOULD BE INSCRIBED

"HERE lieth One whose name was writ on water."

But, ere the breath that could erase it blew, Death, in remorse for that fell slaughter, Death, the immortalizing winter, flew Athwart the stream,-and time's printless torrent grew

A scroll of crystal, blazoning the name
Of Adonais.-

FRAGMENT: INSECURITY.

WHEN Soft winds and sunny skies
With the green earth harmonize,

And the young and dewy dawn,
Bold as an unhunted fawn,
Up the windless heaven is gone,-
Laugh-for ambushed in the day,
Clouds and whirlwinds watch their prey.

COUPLETS.

AND that I walk thus proudly crowned withal
Is that 't is my distinction; if I fall,
I shall not weep out of the vital day,
To-morrow dust, nor wear a dull decay.

FRAGMENT.

THE rude wind is singing
The dirge of the music dead,
The cold worms are clinging
Where kisses were lately fed.

FRAGMENT OF TERZA RIMA:1

FALSE LAURELS AND TRUE.

"WHAT art thou, Presumptuous, who profanest

The wreath to mighty poets only due, Even whilst like a forgotten moon thou wanest ?

1 It seems probable that this fragment is connected with The Triumph of Life.-ED.

Touch not those leaves which for the eternal

few,

Who wander o'er the paradise of fame,

In sacred dedication ever grew:

One of the crowd thou art without a name.'

66

Ah, friend, 'tis the false laurel that I wear; Bright though it seem, it is not the same

As that which bound Milton's immortal hair; Its dew is poison and the hopes that quicken Under its chilling shade, though seeming fair, Are flowers which die almost before they sicken."

TWO FRAGMENTS OF INVOCATION.1

I.

GREAT Spirit whom the sea of boundless thought

Nurtures within its unimagined caves, In which thou sittest sole, as in my mind, Giving a voice to its mysterious waves.

II.

O thou immortal deity

Whose throne is in the depth of human thought, I do adjure thy power and thee

By all that man may be, by all that he is not, By all that he has been and yet must be!

1 Probably addressed to Liberty.-ED.

POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822.

THE ZUCCA.'

I.

SUMMER was dead and Autumn was expiring,
And infant Winter laughed upon the land
All cloudlessly and cold;-when I, desiring
More in this world than any understand,
Wept o'er the beauty which, like sea retiring,
Had left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand
Of
my lorn heart, and o'er the grass and flowers
Pale for the falsehood of the flattering Hours.

II.

Summer was dead, but I yet lived to weep
The instability of all but weeping;
And on the Earth lulled in her winter sleep
I woke, and envied her as she was sleeping.
Too happy Earth! over thy face shall creep
The wakening vernal airs, until thou, leaping
From unremembered dreams, shalt
No death divide thy immortality.

III.

I loved-O no, I mean not one of ye,

see

Or any earthly one, though ye are dear As human heart to human heart may be ;I loved, I know not what-but this low sphere,

And all that it contains, contains not thee, Thou whom, seen nowhere, I feel everywhere.

1 Mrs. Shelley explains that a zucca is a pumpkin.-ED.

From heaven and earth, and all that in them

are,

Veiled art thou, like a

IV.

star.

By Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou flowest.

Neither to be contained, delayed, nor hidden, Making divine the loftiest and the lowest,

When for a moment thou art not forbidden To live within the life which thou bestowest; And leaving noblest things vacant and chidden,

Cold as a corpse after the spirit's flight,
Blank as the sun after the birth of night.

V.

In winds, and trees, and streams, and all things

common,

In music and the sweet unconscious tone Of animals, and voices which are human,

Meant to express some feelings of their own; In the soft motions and rare smile of woman, In flowers and leaves, and in the grass freshshown,

Or dying in the autumn, I the most
Adore thee present or lament thee lost.

VI.

And thus I went lamenting, when I saw
A plant upon the river's margin lie,
Like one who loved beyond his Nature's law,

And in despair had cast him down to die; Its leaves, which had outlived the frost, the

thaw

Had blighted; like a heart which hatred's eye Can blast not, but which pity kills; the dew Lay on its spotted leaves like tears too true.

« AnteriorContinuar »