The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (ed. Hutchinson, 1914)/Song for Tasso
I loved—alas! our life is love;
And still I love and still I think,
Sometimes I see before me flee 15
SONG FOR 'TASSO'
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.]
i.
But when we cease to breathe and move
I do suppose love ceases too.
I thought, but not as now I do,
Keen thoughts and bright of linked lore, 5
Of all that men had thought before,
And all that Nature shows, and more.
ii.
But strangely, for my heart can drink
The dregs of such despair, and live, 10
And love;. . .
And if I think, my thoughts come fast,
I mix the present with the past,
And each seems uglier than the last.
iii.
A silver spirit's form, like thee,
O Leonora, and I sit
. . . still watching it,
Till by the grated casement's ledge
It fades, with such a sigh, as sedge 20
Breathes o'er the breezy streamlet's edge.