Select Poems of Shelley

Bright reason will mock thee, Like the sun from a wintry sky. From thy nest every rafter

Will rot, and thine eagle home

Leave thee naked to laughter,

When leaves fall and cold winds come.

1822.

TO JANE-THE INVITATION.

BEST and brightest, come away!
Fairer far than this fair Day,
Which, like thee to those in sorrow,
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough Year just awake.
In its cradle on the brake.

The brightest hour of unborn Spring,
Through the winter wandering,
Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn

To hoar February born;

Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,
It kissed the forehead of the Earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams be free,
And waked to music all their fountains,
And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
And like a prophetess of May
Strewed flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear

Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.

Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs-

To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music lest it should not find
An echo in another's mind,
While the touch of Nature's art
Harmonizes heart to heart.

I leave this notice on my door
For each accustomed visitor :—
“I am gone into the fields

To take what this sweet hour yields;-
Reflexion, you may come to-morrow,
Sit by the fireside with Sorrow.
You with the unpaid bill, Despair, -
You tiresome verse-reciter, Care, —
I will pay you in the grave,
Death will listen to your stave.

Expectation too, be off!

And the sand-hills of the sea
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets,
And wind-flowers, and violets,
Which yet join not scent to hue,
Crown the pale year weak and new;
When the night is left behind
In the deep east, dun and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous

Billows murmur at our feet,

Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one
In the universal sun.

February, 1822.

TO JANE-THE RECOLLECTION.

Now the last day of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,

The loveliest and the last, is dead,
Rise, Memory, and write its praise!
Up to thy wonted work! come, trace
The epitaph of glory fled,—

For now the Earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven's brow.