The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface.
• Julian and Maddalo; a Conversation.
• The Witch of Atlas.
• Letter to —
• The Triumph of Life.
• Fragments From an Unfinished Drama.
• Prince Athanase: a Fragment.
• Ode to Naples. *
• Marianne’s Dream.
• Mont Blanc. Lines Written In the Vale of Chamouni.
• Miscellaneous Poems.
• On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci, In the Florentine Gallery.
• Song.
• To Constantia, Singing.
• The Fugitives.
• A Lament.
• The Pine Forest of the Cascine, Near Pisa.
• To Night.
• Evening. Ponte a Mare, Pisa.
• Arethusa.
• The Question.
• Lines to an Indian Air.
• Stanzas Written In Dejection, Near Naples.
• Autumn: a Dirge.
• Hymn of Apollo.
• Hymn of Pan.
• The Boat On the Serchio.
• The Zucca. *
• The Two Spirits. an Allegory.
• A Fragment.
• A Bridal Song.
• The Sunset.
• Song, On a Faded Violet.
• Lines to a Critic.
• Good Night.
• To-morrow.
• Death.
• A Lament.
• Love’s Philosophy.
• To E*** V***
• To —
• Lines.
• To William Shelley.
• An Allegory.
• Mutability.
• From the Arabic. an Imitation.
• To —
• Music.
• Lines.
• Death.
• To —
• Passage of the Apennines.
• To Mary —
• The Past.
• Song of a Spirit.
• Liberty.
• To —
• The Isle.
• To —
• Time.
• Lines.
• A Song.
• The World’s Wanderers.
• A Dirge.
• Lines.
• Dirge For the Year.
• Sonnet I.
• Sonnet II. Political Greatness.
• Sonnet III.
• Sonnet IV.
• Fragments.
• Ginevra. *
• Charles the First. Fragments.
• Prince Athanase. Part II.
• Mazenghi. *
• The Woodman and the Nightingale.
• To the Moon.
• Song For Tasso.
• The Waning Moon.
• Epitaph.
• Alastor; Or the Spirit of Solitude.
• Translations.
• Hymn to Mercury. Translated From the Greek of Homer
• The Cyclops; a Satyric Drama.
• Translation From Moschus.
• Scenes From the “magico Prodigioso” of Calderon.
• Scenes From the Faust of GoËthe.

THE SUNSET.

• • There late was One within whose subtle being,
  • As light and wind within some delicate cloud
  • That fades amid the blue noon’s burning sky,
  • Genius and youth contended. None may know
  • The sweetness of the joy which made his breath
  • Fail, like the trances of the summer air,
  • When, with the Lady of his love, who then
  • First knew the unreserve of mingled being,
  • He walked along the pathway of a field
  • Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o’er,
  • But to the west was open to the sky.
  • There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold
  • Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points
  • Of the far level grass and nodding flowers
  • And the old dandelion’s hoary beard,
  • And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay
  • On the brown massy woods—and in the east
  • The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose
  • Between the black trunks of the crowded trees,
  • While the faint stars were gathering overhead.—
  • “Is it not strange, Isabel,” said the youth,
  • “I never saw the sun? We will walk here
  • To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me.”
• • That night the youth and lady mingled lay
  • In love and sleep—but when the morning came
  • The lady found her lover dead and cold.
  • Let none believe that God in mercy gave
  • That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild,
  • But year by year lived on—in truth I think
  • Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles,
  • And that she did not die, but lived to tend
  • Her aged father, were a kind of madness,
  • If madness ’tis to be unlike the world.
  • For but to see her were to read the tale
  • Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts
  • Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief;—
  • Her eyelashes were worn away with tears,
  • Her lips and cheeks were like things dead—so pale;
  • Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins
  • And weak articulations might be seen
  • Day’s ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self
  • Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day,
  • Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!
• • “Inheritor of more than earth can give,
  • Passionless, calm and silence unreproved,
  • Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,
  • And are the uncomplaining things they seem,
  • Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love;
  • Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were—Peace!”
  • This was the only moan she ever made.

1816.