Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/661

III

When I arose and saw the dawn,15

I sighed for thee;
When light rode high, and the dew was gone,
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary Day turned to his rest,
Lingering like an unloved guest,20
I sighed for thee.

IV

Thy brother Death came, and cried,

Wouldst thou me?
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmured like a noontide bee,25
Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me?—And I replied,
No, not thee!

V

Death will come when thou art dead,

Soon, too soon—
Sleep will come when thou art fled;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, belovèd Night—
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!35

 

TIME

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.]

Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality,5
And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea?10

 

LINES

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.]

I

Far, far away, O ye

Halcyons of Memory,
Seek some far calmer nest
Than this abandoned breast!
No news of your false spring5
To my heart's winter bring,
Once having gone, in vain
Ye come again.

II

Vultures, who build your bowers

High in the Future's towers,10
Withered hopes on hopes are spread!
Dying joys, choked by the dead,
Will serve your beaks for prey
Many a day.

 

FROM THE ARABIC: AN IMITATION

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. There is an intermediate draft amongst the Bodleian MSS. See Locock, Examination, &c., 1903, p. 13.]

I

My faint spirit was sitting in the light

Of thy looks, my love;
It panted for thee like the hind at noon
For the brooks, my love.