Love's Philosophy

Love's Philosophy

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The fountains mingle with the river

And the rivers with the ocean,

The winds of Heaven mix for ever

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single,

All things by a law divine

In one spirit meet and mingle -

Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high Heaven

And the waves clasp one another;

No sister-flower would be forgiven

If it disdained its brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth,

And the moonbeams kiss the sea -

What are all these kissings worth

If thou kiss not me?

* * *

Funeral Blues 

by W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message “He is Dead”.

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

* * *

The Triumph of Life

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Swift as a spirit hastening to his task

Of glory & of good, the Sun sprang forth

Rejoicing in his splendour, & the mask

Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.

The smokeless altars of the mountain snows

Flamed above crimson clouds, & at the birth

Of light, the Ocean's orison arose

To which the birds tempered their matin lay,

All flowers in field or forest which unclose

Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,

Swinging their censers in the element,

With orient incense lit by the new ray

Burned slow & inconsumably, & sent

Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,

And in succession due, did Continent,

Isle, Ocean, & all things that in them wear

The form & character of mortal mould

Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear

Their portion of the toil which he of old

Took as his own & then imposed on them;

But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold

Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem

The cone of night, now they were laid asleep,

Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem

Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep

Of a green Apennine: before me fled

The night; behind me rose the day; the Deep

Was at my feet, & Heaven above my head

When a strange trance over my fancy grew

Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread

Was so transparent that the scene came through

As clear as when a veil of light is drawn

O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew

That I had felt the freshness of that dawn,

Bathed in the same cold dew my brow & hair

And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn

Under the self same bough, & heard as there

The birds, the fountains & the Ocean hold

Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air.

And then a Vision on my brain was rolled.