The Grave of Shelley by Oscar Wilde

Like burnt-out torches by a sick man's bed
Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone;
Here doth the little night-owl make her throne,
And the slight lizard show his jewelled head.
And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red,
In the still chamber of yon pyramid
Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid,
Grim warder of this pleasaunce of the dead.

Ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb
Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep,
But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb
In the blue cavern of an echoing deep,
Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom
Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep

To a Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley

    Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
    Bird thou never wert,
    That from Heaven, or near it,
    Pourest thy full heart
    In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

    Higher still and higher
    From the earth thou springest
    Like a cloud of fire;
    The blue deep thou wingest,
    And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

    In the golden lightning
    Of the sunken sun,
    O'er which clouds are bright'ning.
    Thou dost float and run;
    Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

    The pale purple even
    Melts around thy flight;
    Like a star of Heaven,
    In the broad daylight
    Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,

    Keen as are the arrows
    Of that silver sphere,
    Whose intense lamp narrows
    In the white dawn clear
    Until we hardly see - we feel that it is there.

    All the earth and air
    With thy voice is loud,
    As, when night is bare,
    From one lonely cloud
    The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflowed.

    What thou art we know not;
    What is most like thee?
    From rainbow clouds there flow not
    Drops so bright to see
    As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

    Like a Poet hidden
    In the light of thought,
    Singing hymns unbidden,
    Till the world is wrought
    To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

    Like a high-born maiden
    In a palace-tower,
    Soothing her love-laden
    Soul in secret hour
    With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

    Like a glow-worm golden
    In a dell of dew,
    Scattering unbeholden
    Its aereal hue
    Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view!

    Like a rose embowered
    In its own green leaves,
    By warm winds deflowered,
    Till the scent it gives
    Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves:

    Sound of vernal showers
    On the twinkling grass,
    Rain-awakened flowers,
    All that ever was
    Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass:

    Teach us, Sprite or Bird,
    What sweet thoughts are thine:
    I have never heard
    Praise of love or wine
    That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

    Chorus Hymeneal,
    Or triumphal chant,
    Matched with thine would be all
    But an empty vaunt,
    A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

    What objects are the fountains
    Of thy happy strain?
    What fields, or waves, or mountains?
    What shapes of sky or plain?
    What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

    With thy clear keen joyance
    Languor cannot be:
    Shadow of annoyance
    Never came near thee:
    Thou lovest - but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

    Waking or asleep,
    Thou of death must deem
    Things more true and deep
    Than we mortals dream,
    Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

    We look before and after,
    And pine for what is not:
    Our sincerest laughter
    With some pain is fraught;
    Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

    Yet if we could scorn
    Hate, and pride, and fear;
    If we were things born
    Not to shed a tear,
    I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

    Better than all measures
    Of delightful sound,
    Better than all treasures
    That in books are found,
    Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

    Teach me half the gladness
    That thy brain must know,
    Such harmonious madness
    From my lips would flow
    The world should listen then - as I am listening now.

Lines Written on Hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon by Percy Bysshe Shelley

    What! alive and so bold, O Earth?
    Art thou not overbold?
    What! leapest thou forth as of old
    In the light of thy morning mirth,
    The last of the flock of the starry fold?
    Ha! leapest thou forth as of old?
    Are not the limbs still when the ghost is fled,
    And canst thou move, Napoleon being dead?

    How! is not thy quick heart cold?
    What spark is alive on thy hearth?
    How! is not HIS death-knell knolled?
    And livest THOU still, Mother Earth?
    Thou wert warming thy fingers old
    O'er the embers covered and cold
    Of that most fiery spirit, when it fled -
    What, Mother, do you laugh now he is dead?

    'Who has known me of old,' replied Earth,
    'Or who has my story told?
    It is thou who art overbold.'
    And the lightning of scorn laughed forth
    As she sung, 'To my bosom I fold
    All my sons when their knell is knolled,
    And so with living motion all are fed,
    And the quick spring like weeds out of the dead.

    'Still alive and still bold,' shouted Earth,
    'I grow bolder and still more bold.
    The dead fill me ten thousandfold
    Fuller of speed, and splendour, and mirth.
    I was cloudy, and sullen, and cold,
    Like a frozen chaos uprolled,
    Till by the spirit of the mighty dead
    My heart grew warm. I feed on whom I fed.

    'Ay, alive and still bold.' muttered Earth,
    'Napoleon's fierce spirit rolled,
    In terror and blood and gold,
    A torrent of ruin to death from his birth.
    Leave the millions who follow to mould
    The metal before it be cold;
    And weave into his shame, which like the dead
    Shrouds me, the hopes that from his glory fled.'

A Summer Evening Churchyard by Percy Bysshe Shelley

    The wind has swept from the wide atmosphere
    Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray;
    And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair
    In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day:
    Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men,
    Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.

    They breathe their spells towards the departing day,
    Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea;
    Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway,
    Responding to the charm with its own mystery.
    The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass
    Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.

    Thou too, aereal Pile! whose pinnacles
    Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,
    Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells,
    Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire,
    Around whose lessening and invisible height
    Gather among the stars the clouds of night.

    The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres:
    And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound,
    Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs,
    Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around,
    And mingling with the still night and mute sky
    Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.

    Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild
    And terrorless as this serenest night:
    Here could I hope, like some inquiring child
    Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight
    Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep
    That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

    I met a traveller from an antique land
    Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
    Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,
    Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
    And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
    Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
    The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
    And on the pedestal these words appear:
    'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
    Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
    Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
    Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
    The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley

    1.
    O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
    Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
    Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

    Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
    Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
    Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

    The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
    Each like a corpse within its grave, until
    Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

    Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
    (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
    With living hues and odours plain and hill:

    Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
    Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

    2.
    Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,
    Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
    Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

    Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
    On the blue surface of thine aery surge,
    Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

    Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
    Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
    The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

    Of the dying year, to which this closing night
    Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
    Vaulted with all thy congregated might

    Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
    Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!

    3.
    Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
    The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
    Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

    Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
    And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
    Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

    All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
    So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
    For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

    Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
    The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
    The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

    Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
    And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

    4.
    If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
    If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
    A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

    The impulse of thy strength, only less free
    Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
    I were as in my boyhood, and could be

    The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
    As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
    Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

    As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
    Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
    I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

    A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
    One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

    5.
    Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
    What if my leaves are falling like its own!
    The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

    Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
    Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
    My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

    Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
    Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
    And, by the incantation of this verse,

    Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
    Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
    Be through my lips to unawakened earth

    The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,
    If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?