Percy Bysshe Shelley

Related poetry:

1. Rome at the Pyramid of Cestius Near the Graves of Shelley and Keats Who, then, was Cestius, And what is he to me? – Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous One thought alone brings he. I can recall no word Of anything he did; For me he is a man who died and was interred To leave a pyramid Whose purpose was exprest Not with its first design, […]...
2. The Grave Of Shelley Like burnt-out torches by a sick man’s bed Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone; Here doth the little night-owl make her throne, And the slight lizard show his jewelled head. And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red, In the still chamber of yon pyramid Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid, Grim warder […]...
3. The Philosopher, the Young Man, and his Statue A Fond Athenian Mother brought A Sculptor to indulge her Thought, And carve her Only Son; Who to such strange perfection wrought, That every Eye the Statue caught Nor ought was left undone. A youthful Smile adorn’d the Face, The polish gave that Smile a Grace; And through the Marble reigns (Which well the Artist’s […]...
4. Dora Williams When Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me I went to Springfield. There I met a lush, Whose father just deceased left him a fortune. He married me when drunk. My life was wretched. A year passed and one day they found him dead. That made me rich. I moved on to Chicago. After a […]...
5. The Artist The Artist and his Luckless Wife They lead a horrid haunted life, Surrounded by the things he’s made That are not wanted by the trade. The world is very fair to see; The Artist will not let it be; He fiddles with the works of God, And makes them look uncommon odd. The Artist is […]...
6. Anonymous Drawing A delicate young Negro stands With the reins of a horse clutched loosely in his hands; So delicate, indeed, that we wonder if he can hold the spirited creature Beside him Until the master shall arrive to ride him. Already the animal’s nostrils widen with rage or fear. But if we imagine him snorting, about […]...
7. The Ancient World Today the Masons are auctioning Their discarded pomp: a trunk of turbans, Gemmed and ostrich-plumed, and operetta costumes Labeled inside the collar “Potentate” And “Vizier.” Here their chairs, blazoned With the Masons’ sign, huddled Like convalescents, lean against one another On the grass. In a casket are rhinestoned poles The hierophants carried in parades; Here’s […]...
8. Permanence Set within a desert lone, Circled by an arid sea, Stands a figure carved in stone, Where a fountain used to be. Two abraded, pleading hands Held below a shapeless mouth, Human-like the fragment stands, Tortured by perpetual drouth. Once the form was drenched with spray, Deluged with the rainbow flushes; Surplus water dashed away […]...
9. A Cap of Lead across the sky A Cap of Lead across the sky Was tight and surly drawn We could not find the mighty Face The Figure was withdrawn A Chill came up as from a shaft Our noon became a well A Thunder storm combines the charms Of Winter and of Hell....
10. Mae Marsh, Motion Picture Actress I The arts are old, old as the stones From which man carved the sphinx austere. Deep are the days the old arts bring: Ten thousand years of yesteryear. II She is madonna in an art As wild and young as her sweet eyes: A frail dew flower from this hot lamp That is today’s […]...
11. Shelley Knight-errant of the Never-ending Quest, And Minstrel of the Unfulfilled Desire; For ever tuning thy frail earthly lyre To some unearthly music, and possessed With painful passionate longing to invest The golden dream of Love’s immortal fire In mortal robes of beautiful attire, And fold perfection to thy throbbing breast! What wonder, Shelley, if the […]...
12. I Held A Shelley Manuscript My hands did numb to beauty As they reached into Death and tightened! O sovereign was my touch Upon the tan-inks’s fragile page! Quickly, my eyes moved quickly, Sought for smell for dust for lace For dry hair! I would have taken the page Breathing in the crime! For no evidence have I wrung from […]...
13. Dove in the Arch Cursed! Be the father of the bride Of the blacksmith who forged the iron for the axe With which the woodsman hacked down the oak From which the bed was carved In which was conceived the great-grandfather Of the man who was driving the carriage In which your mother met your father....
14. Shelley's Skylark (The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March) Somewhere afield here something lies In Earth’s oblivious eyeless trust That moved a poet to prophecies – A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust The dust of the lark that Shelley heard, And made immortal through times to be; – Though it only lived like another bird, And knew not its immortality. Lived its meek life; […]...
15. Goodbye To The Poetry Of Calcium Dark cypresses The world is uneasily happy; It will all be forgotten. Theodore Storm Mother of roots, you have not seeded The tall ashes of loneliness For me. Therefore, Now I go. If I knew the name, Your name, all trellises of vineyards and old fire Would quicken to shake terribly my Earth, mother of […]...
16. I've dropped my Brain My Soul is numb I’ve dropped my Brain My Soul is numb The Veins that used to run Stop palsied ’tis Paralysis Done perfecter on stone Vitality is Carved and cool. My nerve in Marble lies A Breathing Woman Yesterday Endowed with Paradise. Not dumb I had a sort that moved A Sense that smote and stirred Instincts for […]...
17. Knowlt Hoheimer I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge. When I felt the bullet enter my heart I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary, Instead of running away and joining the army, Rather a thousand times the county jail Than to lie […]...
18. Archibald Higbie I loathed you, Spoon River. I tried to rise above you, I was ashamed of you. I despised you As the place of my nativity. And there in Rome, among the artists, Speaking Italian, speaking French, I seemed to myself at times to be free Of every trace of my origin. I seemed to be […]...
19. A British-Roman Song (A. D. 406) “A Centurion of the Thirtieth” Puck of Pook’s Hill My father’s father saw it not, And I, belike, shall never come To look on that so-holly spot That very Rome Crowned by all Time, all Art, all Might, The equal work of Gods and Man, City beneath whose oldest height The Race […]...
20. Oaks Tutt My mother was for woman’s rights And my father was the rich miller at London Mills. I dreamed of the wrongs of the world and wanted to right them. When my father died, I set out to see peoples and countries In order to learn how to reform the world. I traveled through many lands. […]...
21. Cinderella Her imaginary playmate was a grown-up In sea-coal satin. The flame-blue glances, The wings gauzy as the membrane that the ashes Draw over an old ember as the mother In a jug of cider were a comfort to her. They sat by the fire and told each other stories. “What men want…” said the godmother […]...
22. Some Clouds Now that I’ve unplugged the phone, No one can reach me At least for this one afternoon They will have to get by without my advice Or opinion. Now nobody else is going to call & ask in a tentative voice If I haven’t yet heard that she’s dead, That woman I once loved Nothing […]...
23. Her south china sea eyes young girl With her south china sea Eyes Where an ocean wind Sighs Stands as she tries. In the silence Between day and night Between hope and dreaming, Water is carved Deep In where a poet grows In where a child to woman Perceives. A young girl dares To paint Her colors true To dance […]...
24. On An Italian Shore Kimos, son of Menedoros, a young Greek-Italian, Devotes his life to amusing himself, Like most young men in Greater Greece Brought up in the lap of luxury. But today, in spite of his nature, He is preoccupied, dejected. Near the shore He watched, deeply distressed, as they unload Ships with booty taken from the Peloponnese. […]...
25. From "Adonais," 49-52 49 Go thou to Rome, at once the Paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness; And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress The bones of Desolation’s nakedness Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead Thy footsteps to a slope of green access Where, like […]...
26. On such a night, or such a night On such a night, or such a night, Would anybody care If such a little figure Slipped quiet from its chair So quiet Oh how quiet, That nobody might know But that the little figure Rocked softer to and fro On such a dawn, or such a dawn Would anybody sigh That such a little […]...
27. What He Thought We were supposed to do a job in Italy And, full of our feeling for Ourselves (our sense of being Poets from America) we went From Rome to Fano, met The Mayor, mulled a couple Matters over. The Italian literati seemed Bewildered by the language of America: they asked us What does “flat drink” mean? […]...
28. The Ruins Of Time (Quevedo, Mire los muros de la partia mia and Buscas en Roma a Roma, (!)O peregrino!) I I saw the musty shingles of my house, Raw wood and fixed once, now a wash of moss Eroded by the ruin of age Furning all fair and green things into waste. I climbed the pasture. I saw […]...
29. THE CARDINAL LOOKS BACK I was a good father to my people, Their houses among the terraced hills Adored God every day, grape-clusters on the vines Made Christ’s blood richer in the goblet My father gave me: the chased silver had vines Round the stem and Cellini made it, ‘Let him take it to Rome’, he had said, ‘The […]...
30. Thin Strips IN a jeweler’s shop I saw a man beating Out thin sheets of gold. I heard a woman Laugh many years ago. Under a peach tree I saw petals scattered .. torn strips of a bride’s dress. I heard A woman laugh many years ago....
31. Statue of a Couple Your hand, my wonder, is now icy cold. The purest light of the celestial dome Has burned me through. And now we are As two still plams lying in darlmess, As two black banks of a frozen stream In the chasm of the world. Our hair combed back is carved in wood, The moon walks […]...
32. An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet W. Shakespeare What needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones The labor of an age in piled stones? Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid Under a star-ypointing pyramid? Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame, What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thy self […]...
33. Sonnet 15 XV On The Late Massacher In Piemont Avenge O lord thy slaughter’d Saints, whose bones Lie scatter’d on the Alpine mountains cold, Ev’n them who kept thy truth so pure of old When all our Fathers worship’t Stocks and Stones, Forget not: in thy book record their groanes Who were thy Sheep and in their […]...
34. Put Off the Wedding Five Times and Nobody Comes to It (Handbook for Quarreling Lovers)I THOUGHT of offering you apothegms. I might have said, “Dogs bark and the wind carries it away.” I might have said, “He who would make a door of gold must knock a nail in every day.” So easy, so easy it would have been to inaugurate a high impetuous moment for […]...
35. Silence I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea, And the silence of the city when it pauses, And the silence of a man and a maid, And the silence of the sick When their eyes roam about the room. And I ask: For the depths, Of what use is language? A […]...
36. Rome Rome is but nature’s twin, which has reflected Rome. We see its civic might, the signs of its decorum In the transparent air, the firmament’s blue dome, The colonnades of groves and in the meadow’s forum....
37. A GENERAL SUMMARY We are very slightly changed From the semi-apes who ranged India’s Prehistoric clay; He that drew the longest bow Ran his brother down, you know, As we run men down to-tday. “Dowb,” the first of all his race, Met the Mammoth face to face On the lake or in the cave: Stole the steadiest canoe, […]...
38. At The Window Every morning, as I walk down From my dreary lodgings, toward the town, I see at a window, near the street, The face of a woman, fair and sweet, With soft brown eyes and chestnut hair, And red lips, warm with the kisses left there. And she stands there as long as she can see […]...
39. I’m A Fool To Love You Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman, Some type of supernatural creature. My mother would tell you, if she could, About her life with my father, A strange and sometimes cruel gentleman. She would tell you about the choices A young black woman faces. Is falling in love with some man A […]...
40. Baby Vamps BABY vamps, is it harder work than it used to be? Are the new soda parlors worse than the old time saloons? Baby vamps, do you have jobs in the day time or is this all you do? do you come out only at night? In the winter at the skating rinks, in the summer […]...