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LINES. - Percy Bysshe Shelley, Posthumous Poems [1824]

Edition used:

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

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LINES.

    • The cold earth slept below;
    • Above the cold sky shone;
    • And all around,
    • With a chilling sound,
    • From caves of ice and fields of snow,
    • The breath of night like death did flow
    • Beneath the sinking moon.
    • The wintry hedge was black,
    • The green grass was not seen,
    • The birds did rest
    • On the bare thorn’s breast,
    • Whose roots, beside the pathway track,
    • Had bound their folds o’er many a crack
    • Which the frost had made between.
    • Thine eyes glowed in the glare
    • Of the moon’s dying light;
    • As a fen-fire’s beam,
    • On a sluggish stream,
    • Gleams dimly—so the moon shone there,
    • And it yellowed the strings of thy tangled hair
    • That shook in the wind of night.
    • The moon made thy lips pale, beloved;
    • The wind made thy bosom chill;
    • The night did shed
    • On thy dear head
    • Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
    • Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
    • Might visit thee at will.