Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO CONSTANTIA, SINGING (2), by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY


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TO CONSTANTIA, SINGING (2), by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Thy voice, slow rising like a spirit, lingers
Last Line: Such things the heart can feel and learn, but not forget!


Thy voice, slow rising like a spirit, lingers
O'ersgadowing me with soft and lulling wings;
The blood and life within thy snowy fingers
Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings!
My brain is wild, my breath comes quick,
The blood is listening in my frame,
And thronging shadows fast and thick
Fall on my overflowing eyes,
My heart is quivering like a flame—
As morning-dew that in the sunbeam dies
I am dissolved in these consuming ecstasies.

I have no life, Constantia, but in thee,
Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, thy song
Flows on, and fills all things with melody!
Now is thy voice a tempest swift and strong
On which, as one in trance upborne,
Secure o'er woods and waves I sweep
Rejoicing like a cloud of morn—
Now 'tis the breath of summer's night
Which, where the starry waters sleep
Round western isles with incense-blossoms bright,
Lingering suspends my soul in voluptuous flight.

A deep and breathless awe (like the swift change
Of dreams unseen, but felt, in youthful slumbers),
Wild, sweet, yet incommunicably strange,
Thou breathless now, in fast-ascending numbers.
The cope of Heaven seems rent and cloven
By the enchantment of thy strain,
And o'er my shoulders wings are woven
To follow is sublime career
Beyond the mighty moons that wane
Upon the verge of Nature's utmost sphere,
Till the world's shadowy walls are past, and disappear.

Cease, cease, for such wild lessons madmen learn!
Long thus to sink, thus to be lost and die,
Perhaps is death indeed—Constantia turn!
Yes, in thine eyes a power like light doth lie
Even though the sounds—its voice—that were
Between thy lips are laid to sleep,
Within thy breath and on thy hair
Like odour is lingering yet,
And from thy touch like fire doth leap!
Even while I write my burning cheeks are wet—
Such things the heart can feel and learn, but not forget!




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