The Complete Poetical Works by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Author:Percy Bysshe Shelley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ManyBooks.net

NOTE:

_29 pleasures]pleasure 1824.

LADY:

I offer only _30 That which I seek, some human sympathy

In this mysterious island.

INDIAN:

Oh! my friend,

My sister, my beloved!--What do I say?

My brain is dizzy, and I scarce know whether

I speak to thee or her.

LADY:

Peace, perturbed heart! _35 I am to thee only as thou to mine,

The passing wind which heals the brow at noon,

And may strike cold into the breast at night,

Yet cannot linger where it soothes the most,

Or long soothe could it linger.

INDIAN:

But you said _40 You also loved?

NOTE:

32-41 Assigned to INDIAN, 1824.

LADY:

Loved! Oh, I love. Methinks

This word of love is fit for all the world,

And that for gentle hearts another name

Would speak of gentler thoughts than the world owns.

I have loved.

INDIAN:

And thou lovest not? if so, _45 Young as thou art thou canst afford to weep.

LADY:

Oh! would that I could claim exemption

From all the bitterness of that sweet name.

I loved, I love, and when I love no more

Let joys and grief perish, and leave despair _50 To ring the knell of youth. He stood beside me,

The embodied vision of the brightest dream,

Which like a dawn heralds the day of life;

The shadow of his presence made my world

A Paradise. All familiar things he touched, _55 All common words he spoke, became to me

Like forms and sounds of a diviner world.

He was as is the sun in his fierce youth,

As terrible and lovely as a tempest;

He came, and went, and left me what I am. _60 Alas! Why must I think how oft we two

Have sate together near the river springs,

Under the green pavilion which the willow

Spreads on the floor of the unbroken fountain,

Strewn, by the nurslings that linger there, _65 Over that islet paved with flowers and moss,

While the musk-rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,

Showered on us, and the dove mourned in the pine,

Sad prophetess of sorrows not her own?

The crane returned to her unfrozen haunt, _70 And the false cuckoo bade the spray good morn;

And on a wintry bough the widowed bird,

Hid in the deepest night of ivy-leaves,

Renewed the vigils of a sleepless sorrow.

I, left like her, and leaving one like her, _75 Alike abandoned and abandoning

(Oh! unlike her in this!) the gentlest youth,

Whose love had made my sorrows dear to him,

Even as my sorrow made his love to me!

NOTE:

_71 spray Rossetti 1870, Woodberry; Spring Forman, Dowden.

INDIAN:

One curse of Nature stamps in the same mould _80 The features of the wretched; and they are

As like as violet to violet,

When memory, the ghost, their odours keeps

Mid the cold relics of abandoned joy.--

Proceed.

LADY:

He was a simple innocent boy. _85 I loved him well, but not as he desired;

Yet even thus he was content to be:--

A short content, for I was--

INDIAN [ASIDE]:

God of Heaven!

From such an islet, such a river-spring--!

I dare not ask her if there stood upon it _90 A pleasure-dome surmounted by a crescent,

With steps to the blue water.

[ALOUD.]

It may be

That Nature masks in life several copies

Of the same lot, so that the sufferers

May feel another's sorrow as their own, _95 And find in friendship what they lost in love.

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