Poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats

A thing of beauty is a joy forever By John Keats


A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast
That, whether there be shine or gloom o'ercast,
They always must be with us, or we die.

Therefore, 'tis with full happiness that I
Will trace the story of Endymion.
The very music of the name has gone
Into my being, and each pleasant scene
Is growing fresh before me as the green
Of our own valleys: so I will begin
Now while I cannot hear the city's din;
Now while the early budders are just new,
And run in mazes of the youngest hue
About old forests; while the willow trails
Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails
Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year
Grows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly steer
My little boat, for many quiet hours,
With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.
Many and many a verse I hope to write,
Before the daisies, vermeil rimmed and white,
Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle of my story.
O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,
See it half finished: but let Autumn bold,
With universal tinge of sober gold,
Be all about me when I make an end!
And now at once, adventuresome, I send
My herald thought into a wilderness:
There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress
My uncertain path with green, that I may speed
Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.

HYMN TO APOLLO
By Percy Shelley 

"The sleepless hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries
From the broad moonlight of the sky,
Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes.
Waken me when their mother, the grey Dawn,
Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.

"Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome,
I walk over the mountains and the waves
Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam;
My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves
Are filled with my bright presence, and the air
Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare. 

"The sunbeams are my shafts with which I kill
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day;
All men who do or even imagine ill
Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
Good minds and open actions take new might
Until diminished by the reign of night. 

"I feel the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers
With their ethereal colors; the moon's globe
And the pure stars in their eternal bowers
Are cinctured with my power as with a robe;
Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine
Are portions of one power, which is mine. 

"I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven,
Then with unwilling steps I wander down
Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;
For grief that I depart they weep and frown.
What look is more delightful than the smile
With which I soothe them from the Western isle? 

"I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself and knows itself divine;
All harmony, all medicine are mine,
All light of Art or Nature; to my song
Victory and praise in their own right belong."

Song of Proserpine By Percy Shelley

Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth,
Thou from whose immortal bosom
Gods, and men, and beasts have birth,
Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom,
breathe thine influnce most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.
If with mists of evening dew
thou dost nourish these young flowers
Till they grow in scent and hue,
Fairest children of the hours,
breathe thine influnce most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.

"To Sleep-By John Keats


O soft embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes.
Or wait the Amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still hoards
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.

Time by Percy Shelley- Nile By Percy Shelley

Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality,
And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore:
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea?

Ozymandias Percy Bysshe Shelley -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear -- "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Might, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

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Month after month the gathered rains descend
Drenching yon secret Aethiopian dells,
And from the desert’s ice-girt pinnacles
Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend
On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend.
Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells
By Nile’s aereal urn, with rapid spells
Urging those waters to their mighty end.
O’er Egypt’s land of Memory floods are level
And they are thine, O Nile--and well thou knowest
That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil
And fruits and poisons spring where’er thou flowest.
Beware, O Man--for knowledge must to thee,
Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.

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Lines addressing Mr. Leigh Hunt by John Keats

Glory and loviness have passed away;
For if we wander out in early morn,
no wreathed incense do we see upborne
Into the east, to meet the smiling day:
No crowd of Nymphs soft-voic'd and young, and gay,
In woven baskets bringing ears of corn,
Roses, and pinks, and violets, to adorn
The shrine of Flora in Her early may.
But there are left delights as high as these,
And I shall ever bless my destiny,
That in a time, when under pleasant trees
Pan is no longer sought, I feel a free,
A leafy luxury, seeing i could please
With these poor offerings, a man like thee.

Lines addressing Mr. Leigh Hunt by John Keats

The Earth
I spin beneathe my pyramid of night
Which, points into the heavens, dreaming delight,
Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep;
As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,
Under the shadow of his beauty lying,
Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep.

The Moon
As in soft and sweet eclipse,
When soul meets soul on lovers' lips,
high hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull;
So when thy shadow falls on me,
Then I am mute and still by thee
Covered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful,
Full, oh, too full!

Thou art speeding round the sun,
brighest world of many a one;
Green and azure sphere which shinest
With a light that is divinest
Amoung all the lamps of heaven
To whom light and life are given;

Hymn of Pan By John Keats

From the forests and highlands We come, we come; From the river-girt islands, Where loud waves are dumb Listening my sweet pipings. The wind in the reeds and the rushes, The bees on the bells of thyme, The birds on the myrtle bushes, The cicale above in the lime, And the lizards below in the grass, Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was, Listening my sweet pipings.

Liquid Peneus was flowing, And all dark Tempe lay In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing The light of the dying day, Speeded by my sweet pipings. The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns, And the Nymphs of the woods and the waves, To the edge of the moist river-lawns, And the brink of the dewy caves, And all that did then attend and follow, Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo, With envy of my sweet pipings.

I sang of the dancing stars, I sang of the daedal Earth And of Heaven, and the giant wars, And Love, and Death, and Birth-- And then I chang'd my pipings, Singing how down the vale of Maenalus I pursu'd a maiden and clasp'd a reed. Gods and men, we are all deluded thus! It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed. All wept, as I think both ye now would, If envy or age had not frozen your blood, At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.