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TO WILLIAM SHELLEY. - Percy Bysshe Shelley, Posthumous Poems [1824]

Edition used:

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

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TO WILLIAM SHELLEY.

  • (With what truth I may say—
  • Roma! Roma! Roma!
  • Non è più come era prima!)
    • My lost William, thou in whom
    • Some bright spirit lived, and did
    • That decaying robe consume
    • Which its lustre faintly hid,
    • Here its ashes find a tomb,
    • But beneath this pyramid
    • Thou art not—if a thing divine
    • Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine
    • Is thy mother’s grief and mine.
    • Where art thou, my gentle child?
    • Let me think thy spirit feeds,
    • Within its life intense and mild,
    • The love of living leaves and weeds,
    • Among these tombs and ruins wild;—
    • Let me think that through low seeds
    • Of the sweet flowers and sunny grass,
    • Into their hues and scents may pass
    • A portion—