The Cloud: I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers I bear light shade for the leaves, when laid From my wings are shaken the dews that waken When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; That orbed maiden, with white fire laden, Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor Which only the angels hear, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, The stars peep behind her and peer: And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, I bind the sun's throne with the burning zone, The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, I am the daughter of earth and water, I And the nursling of the sky; pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain, when with never a stain The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams, Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again. To a Skylark: Hail to thee, blithe spirit! bird thou never wert, O'er which clouds are brightening, thou dost float and run, 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, Like a poet hidden in the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, till the world is wrought Soothing her love-laden soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower : Scattering unbeholden its aërial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view. Teach us, sprite or bird, what sweet thoughts are thine : I have never heard praise of love or wine That panted forth a rapture so divine. Chorus hymeneal, or triumphant chant, Matched with thine would be all but an empty vaunt— We look before and after, and pine for what is not; Teach me half the gladness that thy brain must know, Note the brilliant fancy gleaming throughout these stanzas: few poets, if any, since Spenser, have possessed such an exuberance of beautiful imagery as Shelley and Keats. Had they not died so young, it is impossible to conjecture what wonders they might have achieved in the world of song. Now let us gather a few fair flowers from Shelley's various poems: Music: Music, when soft voices die, Odours, when sweet violets sicken, And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Sensitive Plant : A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew, And each flower and herb on earth's dark breast But none ever trembled and panted with bliss, In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, Like a doe in the noontide with love's sweet want, Autumn: The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying; Come, months, come away, from November to May, In your saddest array; Follow the bier of the dead cold year, And, like dim shadows, watch by her sepulchre. The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling, For the year; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone Come, months, come away; put on white, black, and gray, Spring: Up, follow the bier of the dead cold year, And make her grave green with tear on tear. O Spring! of hope, and love, and youth, and gladness, Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest A short time before poor KEATS's death, he told an artist-friend that he thought his intensest pleasure in life had been to watch the growth of flowers; and not long before he died, he said, “I feel the flowers growing over me." "His grave, at Rome, is marked by a little head-stone, on which are carved, somewhat rudely, his name and age, and the epitaph dictated by himself a few days previously |