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


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO WILLIAM SHELLEY (2), by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: My lost william, thou in whom
Last Line: A patriot's birthright thou mayst claim!
Subject(s): Death - Children; Shelley, William (1816-1819); Death - Babies


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.
II
Where art thou, my gentle child?
Let me think thy spirit feeds,
With 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
The billows on the beach are leaping around it,
Of sweet flowers and sunny grass
The bark is weak and frail,
Into their hues and scents may pass
The sea looks black, and the clouds that bound it
A portion -- .
Darkly strew the gale.
Come with me, thou delightful child,
Come with me - though the wave is wild,
And the winds are loose, we must not stay,
Or the slaves of the law may rend thee away.
II
They have taken thy brother and sister dear,
They have made them unfit for thee;
They have withered the smile and dried the tear
Which should have been sacred to me.
To a blighting faith and a cause of crime
They have bound them slaves in youthly prime,
And they will curse my name and thee
Because we are fearless and free.
III
Come thou, beloved as thou art;
Another sleepeth still
Near thy sweet mother's anxious heart,
Which thou with joy shall fill, -
With fairest smiles of wonder thrown
On that which is indeed our own,
And which in distant lands will be
The dearest playmate unto thee.
IV
Fear not the tyrants will rule forever,
Or the priests of the evil faith;
They stand on the brink of that raging river
Whose waves they have tainted with death.
It is fed from the depth of a thousand dells,
Around them it foams and rages and swells;
And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,
Like wrecks on the surge of eternity.
V
Rest, rest, and shriek not, thou gentle child!
The rocking of the boat thou fearest,
And the cold spray and the clamor wild? --
There sit between us two, thou dearest --
Me and thy mother -- well we know
The storm at which thou tremblest so,
With all its dark and hungry graves,
Less cruel than the savage slaves
Who hunt us o'er these sheltering waves.
VI
This hour will in thy memory
Be a dream of days forgotten long;
We soon shall dwell by the azure sea
Of serene and golden Italy,
Or Greece, the Mother of the free;
And I will teach thine infant tongue
To call upon those heroes old
In their own language, and will mould
Thy growing spirit in the flame
Of Grecian lore, that by such name
A patriot's birthright thou mayst claim!




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