A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune (I think such hearts yet never came to good) Hated to hear, under the stars or moon, One nightingale in an interfluous wood Satiate the hungry dark with melody;– And as a vale is watered by a flood, Or as the moonlight fills the open sky […]

Silence! Oh, well are Death and Sleep and Thou Three brethren named, the guardians gloomy-winged Of one abyss, where life, and truth, and joy Are swallowed up–yet spare me, Spirit, pity me, Until the sounds I hear become my soul, And it has left these faint and weary limbs, To track along the lapses of […]

Lift not the painted veil which those who live Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there, And it but mimic all we would believe With colours idly spread,–behind, lurk Fear And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave Their shadows, o’er the chasm, sightless and drear. I knew one who had lifted it–he sought, For […]

1. Let those who pine in pride or in revenge, Or think that ill for ill should be repaid, Who barter wrong for wrong, until the exchange Ruins the merchants of such thriftless trade, Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn 5 Such bitter faith beside Marenghi’s urn. 2. A massy tower yet overhangs the […]

Flourishing vine, whose kindling clusters glow Beneath the autumnal sun, none taste of thee; For thou dost shroud a ruin, and below The rotting bones of dead antiquity.

My head is wild with weeping for a grief Which is the shadow of a gentle mind. I walk into the air (but no relief To seek,–or haply, if I sought, to find; It came unsought);–to wonder that a chief Among men’s spirits should be cold and blind.

The fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses Track not the steps of him who drinks of it; For the light breezes, which for ever fleet Around its margin, heap the sand thereon.

1. Corpses are cold in the tomb; Stones on the pavement are dumb; Abortions are dead in the womb, And their mothers look pale–like the death-white shore Of Albion, free no more. 5 2. Her sons are as stones in the way– They are masses of senseless clay– They are trodden, and move not away,– […]

1. As from an ancestral oak Two empty ravens sound their clarion, Yell by yell, and croak by croak, When they scent the noonday smoke Of fresh human carrion:– 2. As two gibbering night-birds flit From their bowers of deadly yew Through the night to frighten it, When the moon is in a fit, And […]

1. Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay ye low? Wherefore weave with toil and care The rich robes your tyrants wear? 2. Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save, From the cradle to the grave, Those ungrateful drones who would Drain your sweat–nay, drink your blood? 3. Wherefore, Bees of England, forge […]

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,– Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn,–mud from a muddy spring,– Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling, Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,– A people starved and stabbed in the […]

1. God prosper, speed,and save, God raise from England’s grave Her murdered Queen! Pave with swift victory The steps of Liberty, Whom Britons own to be Immortal Queen. 2. See, she comes throned on high, On swift Eternity! God save the Queen! Millions on millions wait, Firm, rapid, and elate, On her majestic state! God […]

What men gain fairly–that they should possess, And children may inherit idleness, From him who earns it–This is understood; Private injustice may be general good. But he who gains by base and armed wrong, Or guilty fraud, or base compliances, May be despoiled; even as a stolen dress Is stripped from a convicted thief; and […]

People of England, ye who toil and groan, Who reap the harvests which are not your own, Who weave the clothes which your oppressors wear, And for your own take the inclement air; Who build warm houses… And are like gods who give them all they have, And nurse them from the cradle to the […]

Gather, O gather, Foeman and friend in love and peace! Waves sleep together When the blasts that called them to battle, cease. For fangless Power grown tame and mild Is at play with Freedom’s fearless child– The dove and the serpent reconciled!

CHORUS OF SPIRITS: FIRST SPIRIT: Palace-roof of cloudless nights! Paradise of golden lights! Deep, immeasurable, vast, Which art now, and which wert then Of the Present and the Past, Of the eternal Where and When, Presence-chamber, temple, home, Ever-canopying dome, Of acts and ages yet to come! Glorious shapes have life in thee, Earth, and […]

BEFORE THE SPANIARDS HAD RECOVERED THEIR LIBERTY. [Published with “Prometheus Unbound”, 1820.] Arise, arise, arise! There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread; Be your wounds like eyes To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead. What other grief were it just to pay? Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they; […]

(This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail […]

The [living frame which sustains my soul] Is [sinking beneath the fierce control] Down through the lampless deep of song I am drawn and driven along– When a Nation screams aloud Like an eagle from the cloud When a… … When the night… … Watch the look askance and old– See neglect, and falsehood fold…

[Published with “Prometheus Unbound”, 1820. Dated ‘Pisa, April, 1820’ in Harvard manuscript (Woodberry), but assigned by Mrs. Shelley to 1819.] Chameleons feed on light and air: Poets’ food is love and fame: If in this wide world of care Poets could but find the same With as little toil as they, Would they ever change […]