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SONG FOR TASSO. - Percy Bysshe Shelley, Posthumous Poems [1824]

Edition used:

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

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SONG FOR TASSO.

    • I loved—alas! our life is love;
    • But when we cease to breathe and move
    • I do suppose love ceases too.
    • I thought, but not as now I do,
    • Keen thoughts and bright of linked lore,
    • Of all that men had thought before,
    • And all that nature shows, and more.
    • And still I love and still I think,
    • But strangely, for my heart can drink
    • The dregs of such despair, and live,
    • And love; []
    • And if I think, my thoughts come fast,
    • I mix the present with the past,
    • And each seems uglier than the last.
    • Sometimes I see before me flee
    • A silver spirit’s form, like thee,
    • O Leonora, and I sit
    • [[         ]] still watching it,
    • Till by the grated casement’s ledge
    • It fades, with such a sigh, as sedge
    • Breathes o’er the breezy streamlet’s edge.