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A FRAGMENT. - Percy Bysshe Shelley, Posthumous Poems [1824]

Edition used:

Posthumous Poems (London: John and Henry L. Hunt, 1824).

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A FRAGMENT.

  • They were two cousins, almost like to twins,
  • Except that from the catalogue of sins
  • Nature had razed their love—which could not be
  • But by dissevering their nativity.
  • And so they grew together, like two flowers
  • Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers
  • Lull or awaken in their purple prime,
  • Which the same hand will gather—the same clime
  • Shake with decay. This fair day smiles to see
  • All those who love,—and who ever loved like thee,
  • Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo,
  • Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow
  • The ardours of a vision which obscure
  • The very idol of its portraiture;
  • He faints, dissolved into a sense of love;
  • But thou art as a planet sphered above,
  • But thou art Love itself—ruling the motion
  • Of his subjected spirit—such emotion
  • Must end in sin or sorrow, if sweet May
  • Had not brought forth this morn—your wedding day.