Shelley_poems

11.Give yourself no unnecessary pain

Give yourself no unnecessary pain,
My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, mother, tie
My girdle for me, and bind up this hair
In any simple knot. Ay, that does well;
And yours, I see, is coming down. How often
Have we done this for one another! now
We shall not do it any more. My Lord,
We are quite ready. Well, 'tis very well.


02.A GARISH DAY. (said by a potent ruffian.)

The all-beholding sun yet shines ; I hear
A busy stir of men about the streets ;
I see the bright sky through the window-panes :
It is a garish, broad, and peering day;
Loud, light, suspicious, full of eyes and ears :
And every little corner, nook, and hole,
Is penetrated with the insolent light.
Come, darkness!


03.CONTEMPLATION OF VIOLENCE. (by a man not bad.)

Spare me now.
I am as one lost in a midnight wood,
Who dares not ask some harmless passenger
The path across the wilderness, lest he,
As my thoughts are, should be a murderer.


04.A ROCK AND A CHASM.

I remember,
Two miles on this side of the fort, the road
Crosses a deep ravine: 't is rough and narrow,
And winds with short turns down the precipice ;
And in its depth there is a mighty rock,
Which has, from unimaginable years,
Sustained itself with terror and with toil
Over a gulf, and with the agony
With which it clings seems slowly coming down ;
Even as a wretched soul, hour after hour,
Clings to the mass of life ; yet clinging leans,
And, leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss
In which it fears to fall. Beneath this crag,
Huge as despair, as if in weariness,
The melancholy mountain yawns. Below
You hear, but see not, an impetuous torrent
Raging among the caverns ; and a bridge
Crosses the chasm ; and high above these grow,
With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag,
Cedars, and yews, and pines ; whose tangled hair
Is matted in one solid roof of shade
By the dark ivy's twine. At noon-day here
'Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night.


05.LOVELINESS INEXPRESSIBLE.

Sweet lamp ! my moth-like muse has burnt its wings,
Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings,
Young Love should teach Time in his own gray style
All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile;
A lovely soul form'd to be blest and bless?
A well of seal'd and secret happiness,
Whose waters like blithe light and music are,
Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? -- a star
Which moves not in the moving heavens, alone?
A smile amid dark frowns? -- a gentle tone
Amid rude voices? -- a beloved sight?
A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight?
A lute, which those whom love has taught to play,
Make music on, to soothe the roughest day,
And lull fond grief asleep? -- a buried treasure?
A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure?
A violet-shrouded grave of woe? I measure
The world of fancies, seeking one like thee,
And find -- alas! mine own infirmity.


06.EXISTENCE IN SPACE.

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity.