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    The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume II
    The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume II
    The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume II
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    The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume II

    By Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mint Editions

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    The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume II (1914) compiles some of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s best-known works as a leading poet, playwright, and political thinker of the nineteenth century. As a leading figure among the English Romantics, Shelley was a master of poetic form and tradition who recognized the need for radical change in the social order. His work has influenced such writers and intellectuals as Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi, W. B. Yeats, and George Bernard Shaw. In “Ozymandias,” Shelley employs the language of archaeology to mask one of the greatest political poems of all time. The sonnet depicts a statue of an ancient king discovered in the Egyptian desert. Barely visible above the shifting sand, its pedestal reads “‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’” Juxtaposed with this language of bluster, the three remaining lines dispel the myth of power with expert precision: “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.” For Shelley, who identifies with the knowing, mischievous sculptor, the dominion of kings is nothing but hubris, a grain of sand in the vast expanse of time. In “To a Skylark,” Shelley immortalizes the song of a bird heard once and remembered forever: “The blue deep thou wingest, / And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.” As he longs to know the bird in order to mimic the celebratory nature of its song, Shelley reaches an understanding of the human condition, the tragic temperament of those who “look before and after, / And pine for what is not.” Unlike the poet, who must struggle to achieve his song, the skylark soars and sings and remains above the world of men, whose “sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.” This edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume II is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

    Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

    With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMint Editions
    Release dateJun 1, 2021
    ISBN9781513287003
    The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume II
    Author

    Percy Bysshe Shelley

    Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was an English Romantic poet. Born into a prominent political family, Shelley enjoyed a quiet and happy childhood in West Sussex, developing a passion for nature and literature at a young age. He struggled in school, however, and was known by his colleagues at Eton College and University College, Oxford as an outsider and eccentric who spent more time acquainting himself with radical politics and the occult than with the requirements of academia. During his time at Oxford, he began his literary career in earnest, publishing Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire (1810) and St. Irvine; or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance (1811) In 1811, he married Harriet Westbrook, with whom he lived an itinerant lifestyle while pursuing affairs with other women. Through the poet Robert Southey, he fell under the influence of political philosopher William Godwin, whose daughter Mary soon fell in love with the precocious young poet. In the summer of 1814, Shelley eloped to France with Mary and her stepsister Claire Claremont, travelling to Holland, Germany, and Switzerland before returning to England in the fall. Desperately broke, Shelley struggled to provide for Mary through several pregnancies while balancing his financial obligations to Godwin, Harriet, and his own father. In 1816, Percy and Mary accepted an invitation to join Claremont and Lord Byron in Europe, spending a summer in Switzerland at a house on Lake Geneva. In 1818, following several years of unhappy life in England, the Shelleys—now married—moved to Italy, where Percy worked on The Masque of Anarchy (1819), Prometheus Unbound (1820), and Adonais (1821), now considered some of his most important works. In July of 1822, Shelley set sail on the Don Juan and was lost in a storm only hours later. His death at the age of 29 was met with despair and contempt throughout England and Europe, and he is now considered a leading poet and radical thinker of the Romantic era.

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      The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume II - Percy Bysshe Shelley

      EARLY POEMS (1814, 1815)

      (The poems which follow appeared, with a few exceptions, either in the volumes published from time to time by Shelley himself, or in the "Posthumous Poems of 1824, or in the Poetical Works" of 1839, of which a second and enlarged edition was published by Mrs. Shelley in the same year. A few made their first appearance in some fugitive publication—such as Leigh Hunt’s "Literary Pocket-Book"—and were subsequently incorporated in the collective editions. In every case the editio princeps and (where this is possible) the exact date of composition are indicated below the title.)

      STANZA, WRITTEN AT BRACKNELL

      (Composed March, 1814. Published in Hogg’s "Life of Shelley", 1858.)

      Thy dewy looks sink in my breast;

      Thy gentle words stir poison there;

      Thou hast disturbed the only rest

      That was the portion of despair!

      Subdued to Duty’s hard control,

      I could have borne my wayward lot:

      The chains that bind this ruined soul

      Had cankered then—but crushed it not.

      STANZAS.—APRIL, 1814

      (Composed at Bracknell, April, 1814. Published with "Alastor", 1816.)

      Away! the moor is dark beneath the moon,

      Rapid clouds have drank the last pale beam of even:

      Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon,

      And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven.

      Pause not! The time is past! Every voice cries, Away!

      Tempt not with one last tear thy friend’s ungentle mood:

      Thy lover’s eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay:

      Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.

      Away, away! to thy sad and silent home;

      Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth;

      Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come,

      And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth.

      The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head:

      The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy feet:

      But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead,

      Ere midnight’s frown and morning’s smile, ere thou and peace may meet.

      The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own repose,

      For the weary winds are silent, or the moon is in the deep:

      Some respite to its turbulence unresting ocean knows;

      Whatever moves, or toils, or grieves, hath its appointed sleep.

      Thou in the grave shalt rest—yet till the phantoms flee

      Which that house and heath and garden made dear to thee erewhile,

      Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings are not free

      From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile.

      TO HARRIET

      (Composed May, 1814. Published (from the Esdaile manuscript) by Dowden, "Life of Shelley", 1887.)

      Thy look of love has power to calm

      The stormiest passion of my soul;

      Thy gentle words are drops of balm

      In life’s too bitter bowl;

      No grief is mine, but that alone

      These choicest blessings I have known.

      Harriet! if all who long to live

      In the warm sunshine of thine eye,

      That price beyond all pain must give,—

      Beneath thy scorn to die;

      Then hear thy chosen own too late

      His heart most worthy of thy hate.

      Be thou, then, one among mankind

      Whose heart is harder not for state,

      Thou only virtuous, gentle, kind,

      Amid a world of hate;

      And by a slight endurance seal

      A fellow-being’s lasting weal.

      For pale with anguish is his cheek,

      His breath comes fast, his eyes are dim,

      Thy name is struggling ere he speak,

      Weak is each trembling limb;

      In mercy let him not endure

      The misery of a fatal cure.

      Oh, trust for once no erring guide!

      Bid the remorseless feeling flee;

      ’Tis malice, ’tis revenge, ’tis pride,

      ’Tis anything but thee;

      Oh, deign a nobler pride to prove,

      And pity if thou canst not love.

      TO MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN

      (Composed June, 1814. Published in "Posthumous Poems", 1824.)

      1

      Mine eyes were dim with tears unshed;

      Yes, I was firm—thus wert not thou;—

      My baffled looks did fear yet dread

      To meet thy looks—I could not know

      How anxiously they sought to shine

      With soothing pity upon mine.

      2

      To sit and curb the soul’s mute rage

      Which preys upon itself alone;

      To curse the life which is the cage

      Of fettered grief that dares not groan,

      Hiding from many a careless eye

      The scorned load of agony.

      3

      Whilst thou alone, then not regarded,

      The… thou alone should be,

      To spend years thus, and be rewarded,

      As thou, sweet love, requited me

      When none were near—Oh! I did wake

      From torture for that moment’s sake.

      4

      Upon my heart thy accents sweet

      Of peace and pity fell like dew

      On flowers half dead;—thy lips did meet

      Mine tremblingly; thy dark eyes threw

      Their soft persuasion on my brain,

      Charming away its dream of pain.

      5

      We are not happy, sweet! our state

      Is strange and full of doubt and fear;

      More need of words that ills abate;—

      Reserve or censure come not near

      Our sacred friendship, lest there be

      No solace left for thee and me.

      6

      Gentle and good and mild thou art,

      Nor can I live if thou appear

      Aught but thyself, or turn thine heart

      Away from me, or stoop to wear

      The mask of scorn, although it be

      To hide the love thou feel’st for me.

      TO—

      (Published in "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition. See Editor’s Note.)

      Yet look on me—take not thine eyes away,

      Which feed upon the love within mine own,

      Which is indeed but the reflected ray

      Of thine own beauty from my spirit thrown.

      Yet speak to me—thy voice is as the tone

      Of my heart’s echo, and I think I hear

      That thou yet lovest me; yet thou alone

      Like one before a mirror, without care

      Of aught but thine own features, imaged there;

      And yet I wear out life in watching thee;

      A toil so sweet at times, and thou indeed

      Art kind when I am sick, and pity me…

      MUTABILITY

      (Published with "Alastor", 1816.)

      We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;

      How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,

      Streaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soon

      Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

      Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings

      Give various response to each varying blast,

      To whose frail frame no second motion brings

      One mood or modulation like the last.

      We rest.—A dream has power to poison sleep;

      We rise.—One wandering thought pollutes the day;

      We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;

      Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

      It is the same!—For, be it joy or sorrow,

      The path of its departure still is free:

      Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;

      Nought may endure but Mutability.

      ON DEATH

      (For the date of composition see Editor’s Note. Published with "Alastor", 1816.)

      There is No Work, Nor Device, Nor Knowledge, Nor Wisdom, In the Grave, Whither Thou Goest.

      —Ecclesiastes

      The pale, the cold, and the moony smile

      Which the meteor beam of a starless night

      Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,

      Ere the dawning of morn’s undoubted light,

      Is the flame of life so fickle and wan

      That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.

      O man! hold thee on in courage of soul

      Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way,

      And the billows of cloud that around thee roll

      Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day,

      Where Hell and Heaven shall leave thee free

      To the universe of destiny.

      This world is the nurse of all we know,

      This world is the mother of all we feel,

      And the coming of death is a fearful blow

      To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel;

      When all that we know, or feel, or see,

      Shall pass like an unreal mystery.

      The secret things of the grave are there,

      Where all but this frame must surely be,

      Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear

      No longer will live to hear or to see

      All that is great and all that is strange

      In the boundless realm of unending change.

      Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death?

      Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?

      Who painteth the shadows that are beneath

      The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?

      Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be

      With the fears and the love for that which we see?

      A SUMMER EVENING CHURCHYARD

      Lechlade, Gloucestershire

      (Composed September, 1815. Published with "Alastor", 1816.)

      The wind has swept from the wide atmosphere

      Each vapour that obscured the sunset’s ray;

      And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair

      In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day:

      Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men,

      Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.

      They breathe their spells towards the departing day,

      Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea;

      Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway,

      Responding to the charm with its own mystery.

      The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass

      Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.

      Thou too, aereal Pile! whose pinnacles

      Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,

      Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells,

      Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire,

      Around whose lessening and invisible height

      Gather among the stars the clouds of night.

      The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres:

      And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound,

      Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs,

      Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around,

      And mingling with the still night and mute sky

      Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.

      Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild

      And terrorless as this serenest night:

      Here could I hope, like some inquiring child

      Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight

      Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep

      That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.

      TO—

      (Published with "Alastor", 1816. See Editor’s Note.)

      Dakrtsi Dioiso Potmon ’Apotmon

      Oh! there are spirits of the air,

      And genii of the evening breeze,

      And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair

      As star-beams among twilight trees:—

      Such lovely ministers to meet

      Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.

      With mountain winds, and babbling springs,

      And moonlight seas, that are the voice

      Of these inexplicable things,

      Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice

      When they did answer thee; but they

      Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.

      And thou hast sought in starry eyes

      Beams that were never meant for thine,

      Another’s wealth:—tame sacrifice

      To a fond faith! still dost thou pine?

      Still dost thou hope that greeting hands,

      Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands?

      Ah! wherefore didst thou build thine hope

      On the false earth’s inconstancy?

      Did thine own mind afford no scope

      Of love, or moving thoughts to thee?

      That natural scenes or human smiles

      Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles?

      Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled

      Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted;

      The glory of the moon is dead;

      Night’s ghosts and dreams have now departed;

      Thine own soul still is true to thee,

      But changed to a foul fiend through misery.

      This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever

      Beside thee like thy shadow hangs,

      Dream not to chase;—the mad endeavour

      Would scourge thee to severer pangs.

      Be as thou art. Thy settled fate,

      Dark as it is, all change would aggravate.

      TO WORDSWORTH

      (Published with "Alastor", 1816.)

      Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know

      That things depart which never may return:

      Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow,

      Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.

      These common woes I feel. One loss is mine

      Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.

      Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine

      On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:

      Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood

      Above the blind and battling multitude:

      In honoured poverty thy voice did weave

      Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,—

      Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,

      Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

      FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE

      (Published with "Alastor", 1816.)

      I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan

      To think that a most unambitious slave,

      Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave

      Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne

      Where it had stood even now: thou didst prefer

      A frail and bloody pomp which Time has swept

      In fragments towards Oblivion. Massacre,

      For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept,

      Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust,

      And stifled thee, their minister. I know

      Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,

      That Virtue owns a more eternal foe

      Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime,

      And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time.

      LINES

      (Published in Hunt’s "Literary Pocket-Book, 1823, where it is headed November, 1815". Reprinted in the "Posthumous Poems", 1824. See Editor’s Note.)

      1

      The cold earth slept below,

      Above the cold sky shone;

      And all around, with a chilling sound,

      From caves of ice and fields of snow,

      The breath of night like death did flow

      Beneath the sinking moon.

      2

      The wintry hedge was black,

      The green grass was not seen,

      The birds did rest on the bare thorn’s breast,

      Whose roots, beside the pathway track,

      Had bound their folds o’er many a crack

      Which the frost had made between.

      3

      Thine eyes glowed in the glare

      Of the moon’s dying light;

      As a fen-fire’s beam on a sluggish stream

      Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there,

      And it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair,

      That shook in the wind of night.

      4

      The moon made thy lips pale, beloved—

      The wind made thy bosom chill—

      The night did shed on thy dear head

      Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie

      Where the bitter breath of the naked sky

      Might visit thee at will.

      NOTE ON THE EARLY POEMS, BY MRS. SHELLEY

      The remainder of Shelley’s Poems will be arranged in the order in which they were written. Of course, mistakes will occur in placing some of the shorter ones; for, as I have said, many of these were thrown aside, and I never saw them till I had the misery of looking over his writings after the hand that traced them was dust; and some were in the hands of others, and I never saw them till now. The subjects of the poems are often to me an unerring guide; but on other occasions I can only guess, by finding them in the pages of the same manuscript book that contains poems with the date of whose composition I am fully conversant. In the present arrangement all his poetical translations will be placed together at the end.

      The loss of his early papers prevents my being able to give any of the poetry of his boyhood. Of the few I give as "Early Poems, the greater part were published with Alastor"; some of them were written previously, some at the same period. The poem beginning ‘Oh, there are spirits in the air’ was addressed in idea to Coleridge, whom he never knew; and at whose character he could only guess imperfectly, through his writings, and accounts he heard of him from some who knew him well. He regarded his change of opinions as rather an act of will than conviction, and believed that in his inner heart he would be haunted by what Shelley considered the better and holier aspirations of his youth. The summer evening that suggested to him the poem written in the churchyard of Lechlade occurred during his voyage up the Thames in 1815. He had been advised by a physician to live as much as possible in the open air; and a fortnight of a bright warm July was spent in tracing the Thames to its source. He never spent a season more tranquilly than the summer of 1815. He had just recovered from a severe pulmonary attack; the weather was warm and pleasant. He lived near Windsor Forest; and his life was spent under its shades or on the water, meditating subjects for verse. Hitherto, he had chiefly aimed at extending his political doctrines, and attempted so to do by appeals in prose essays to the people, exhorting them to claim their rights; but he had now begun to feel that the time for action was not ripe in England, and that the pen was the only instrument wherewith to prepare the way for better things.

      In the scanty journals kept during those years I find a record of the books that Shelley read during several years. During the years of 1814 and 1815 the list is extensive. It includes, in Greek, Homer, Hesiod, Theocritus, the histories of Thucydides and Herodotus, and Diogenes Laertius. In Latin, Petronius, Suetonius, some of the works of Cicero, a large proportion of those of Seneca and Livy. In English, Milton’s poems, Wordsworth’s "Excursion", Southey’s "Madoc and Thalaba", Locke "On the Human Understanding", Bacon’s "Novum Organum". In Italian, Ariosto, Tasso, and Alfieri. In French, the "Reveries d’un Solitaire" of Rousseau. To these may be added several modern books of travel. He read few novels.

      POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816

      The Sunset

      (Written

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