The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawl ing, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each And make her grave green with tear on tear. DEATH I DEATH is here, and death is there, Death is busy everywhere, All around, within, beneath, Above, is death — and we are death. Our hopes, and then our fears—and when Death. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824. These are dead, the debt is due, IV All things that we love and cherish, Love itself would, did they not. LIBERTY I THE fiery mountains answer each other, II From a single cloud the lightning flashes, III But keener thy gaze than the lightning's glare, And swifter thy step than the earthquake's tramp; Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun's bright lamp To thine is a fen-fire damp. Liberty. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824. IV From billow and mountain and exhalation The sunlight is darted through vapor and blast; SUMMER AND WINTER It was a bright and cheerful afternoon All things rejoiced beneath the sun; the weeds, It was a winter such as when birds die Summer and Winter. Published by Mrs. Shelley, in The Keepsake, 1829. THE TOWER OF FAMINE AMID the desolation of a city, Which was the cradle and is now the grave Weeps o'er the shipwrecks of oblivion's wave, For bread, and gold, and blood; pain, linked to guilt, There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers Of solitary wealth; the tempest-proof Are by its presence dimmed-they stand aloof, And are withdrawn so that the world is bare; As if a spectre, wrapped in shapeless terror, Amid a company of ladies fair Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror and their hair and hue, The Tower of Famine. Published by Mrs. Shelley, in The Keepsake, 1829. 11-14 Each... temple... wealth, i' the... pavilion, Rossetti conj. 16 world || void, Rossetti conj. The life of their sweet eyes, with all its error, Should be absorbed, till they to marble grew. AN ALLEGORY I A PORTAL as of shadowy adamant Stands yawning on the highway of the life Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt; Around it rages an unceasing strife Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky. II And many pass it by with careless tread, Pause to examine; these are very few, THE WORLD'S WANDERERS I TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light An Allegory. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824. The World's Wanderers. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824. |