Upon the sleeping eyelids of the plant,
So that perhaps it dreamed that Spring was come,
And crept abroad into the moonlight air,
And loosened all its limbs, as, noon by noon,
The sun averted less his oblique beam.
And the plant died not in the frost?
And went out of the lattice which I left
Half open for it, trailing its quaint spires
Along the garden and across the lawn,
And down the slope of moss and through the tufts
Of wild-flower roots, and stumps of trees o'ergrown
With simple lichens, and old hoary stones,
On to the margin of the glassy pool,
Even to a nook of unblown violets
And lilies-of-the-valley yet unborn,
Under a pine with ivy overgrown.
And there its fruit lay like a sleeping lizard
Under the shadows; but when Spring indeed
Came to unswathe her infants, and the lilies
Peeped from their bright green masks to wonder at
This shape of autumn couched in their recess,
Then it dilated, and it grew until
One half lay floating on the fountain wave,
Whose pulse, elapsed in unlike sympathies,
Kept time
Among the snowy water-lily buds.
Its shape was such as summer melody
Of the south wind in spicy vales might give
To some light cloud bound from the golden dawn
To fairy isles of evening, and it seemed
In hue and form that it had been a mirror
Of all the hues and forms around it and
Upon it pictured by the sunny beams
Which, from the bright vibrations of the pool,
Were thrown upon the rafters and the roof
Of boughs and leaves, and on the pillared stems
Of the dark sylvan temple, and reflections
Of every infant flower and star of moss
And veined leaf in the azure odorous air.
And thus it lay in the Elysian calm
Of its own beauty, floating on the line
Which, like a film in purest space, divided
The heaven beneath the water from the heaven
Above the clouds; and every day I went
Watching its growth and wondering;
And as the day grew hot, methought I saw
A glassy vapor dancing on the pool,
And on it little quaint and filmy shapes,
With dizzy motion, wheel and rise and fall,
Like clouds of gnats with perfect lineaments.
O friend, sleep was a veil uplift from heaven
As if heaven dawned upon the world of dream
When darkness rose on the extinguished day
Out of the eastern wilderness.
Have found a moment's paradise in sleep
Half compensate a hell of waking sorrow.
SWIFT as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendor, and the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth;
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth
Of light the Ocean's orison arose,
To which the birds tempered their matin lay.
All flowers in field or forest, which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air;
And, in succession due, did continent,
The Triumph of Life. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824, dated, 1822.
Out of the eastern shadow of the Earth
Amid the clouds upon its margin gray,
Scattered by night to swathe in its bright birth
In gold and fleecy snow the infant Day,
The glorious Sun arose, beneath his light
Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear
The form and character of mortal mould,
Rise, as the Sun their father rose, to bear
Their portion of the toil which he of old
Took as his own and then imposed on them.
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary
Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep
Of a green Apennine. Before me fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the deep
Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head; When a strange trance over my fancy grew Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
Was so transparent that the scene came through,
As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew
That I had felt the freshness of that dawn Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair,
And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
Under the self-same bough, and heard as there
The birds, the fountains and the ocean hold
35 Bathed, Mrs. Shelley, 1814.
Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air.
And then a vision on my brain was rolled.
As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay,
This was the tenor of my waking dream.
Methought I sate beside a public way
Thick strewn with summer dust; and a great stream
Of people there was hurrying to and fro,
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,
All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know Whither he went, or whence he came, or why He made one of the multitude, and so
Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky
One of the million leaves of summer's bier.
Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,
Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear;
Some flying from the thing they feared, and
Seeking the object of another's fear;
And others, as with steps towards the tomb,
Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath;
And others mournfully within the gloom
Of their own shadow walked, and called it death;
And some fled from it as it were a ghost,
Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath;
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