Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ODE TO SHELLEY, by BAYARD TAYLOR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ODE TO SHELLEY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Why art thou dead? Upon the hills once more
Last Line: His own soul's voice, nor crave a brother's string.
Alternate Author Name(s): Taylor, James Bayard
Subject(s): Death; Poetry & Poets; Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822); Soul; Dead, The


I.

WHY art thou dead? Upon the hills once more
The golden mist of waning Autumn lies;
The slow-pulsed billows wash along the shore,
And phantom isles are floating in the skies.
They wait for thee: a spirit in the sand
Hushes, expectant for thy coming tread;
The light wind pants to lift thy trembling hair;
Inward, the silent land
Lies with its mournful woods; -- why art thou dead,
When Earth demands that thou shalt call her fair?

II.

Why art thou dead? I too demand thy song,
To speak the language yet denied to mine,
Twin-doomed with thee, to feel the scorn of Wrong,
To worship Beauty as a thing divine!
Thou art afar: wilt thou not soon return
To tell me that which thou hast never told?
To clasp my throbbing hand, and, by the shore
Or dewy mountain-fern,
Pour out thy heart as to a friend of old,
Touched with a twilight sadness? Nevermore.

III

I could have told thee all the sylvan joy
Of trackless woods; the meadows far apart,
Within whose fragrant grass, a lonely boy,
I thought of God; the trumpet at my heart,
When on bleak mountains roared the midnight storm,
And I was bathed in lightning, broad and grand:
Oh, more than all, with soft and reverent breath
And forehead flushing warm,
I would have led thee through the summer land
Of early Love, and past my dreams of Death!

IV.

In thee, Immortal Brother! had I found
That Voice of Earth, that fails my feebler lines:
The awful speech of Rome's sepulchral ground;
The dusky hymn of Vallombrosa's pines!
From thee the noise of Ocean would have taken
A grand defiance round the moveless shores,
And vocal grown the Mountain's silent head:
Canst thou not yet awaken
Beneath the funeral cypress? Earth implores
Thy presence for her son; -- why art thou dead?

v.

I do but rave: for it is better thus.
Were once thy starry nature given to mine,
In the one life which would encircle us
My voice would melt, my soul be lost in thine.
Better to bear the far sublimer pain
Of Thought that has not ripened into speech,
To hear in silence Truth and Beauty sing
Divinely to the brain;
For thus the Poet at the last shall reach
His own soul's voice, nor crave a brother's string.





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