HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. 

The awful shadow of some unseen Power 
Floats tho' unseen among us ; visiting 
This various world with as inconstant wing 
As summer winds that creep from flower to 
flower; 
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower, 

It visits with inconstant glance 

Each human heart and countenance ; 

Like hues and harmonies of evening, 

Like clouds in starlight widely spread, 
Like memory of music fled, 
Like aught that for its grace may be 
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. 
Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate 

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon 
Of human thought or form, where art thou 
gone ? 
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, 
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate? 
Ask why the sunlight not forever 
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river; 
Why aught should fail and fade that once is 
shewn ; 
Why fear and dream and death and birth 
Cast on the daylight of this earth 
Such gloom, why man has such a scope 
For love and hate, despondency and hope ? 

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever 
To sage or poet these responses given : 
Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and 
Heaven, 
Remain the records of their vain endeavour : 
Frail spells, whose uttered charm might not 
avail to sever, 
From all we hear and all we see. 
Doubt, chance, and mutability. 

Thy light alone, like mist o'er mountains driven, 
Or music by the night wind sent 
Thro' strings of some still instrument, 
Or moonlight on a midnight stream, 

Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream. 

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds, depart 
And come, for some uncertain moments lent. 
Man were immortal, and omnipotent, 
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, 
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within 
his heart. 
Thou messenger of sympathies 
That wax and wane in lover's eyes; 
Thou, that to human thought are nourishment, 
Like darkness to a dying flame ! 
Depart not as thy shadow came: 
Depart not, lest the grave should be, 
Like life and fear, a dark reality. 


While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped 
Thro' many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, 
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pur- 
suing 
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. 
I called on poisonous names with which our 
youth is fed : 
I was not heard : I saw them not : 
When musing deeply on the lot 
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing 
All vital things that wake to bring 
News of birds and blossoming, 
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me : 
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in extacy ! 

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers 
To thee and thine : have I not kept the vow? 
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even 
now 
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours 
Each from his voiceless grave : they have in 
visioned bowers 


Of studious zeal or loves delight 
Outwatched with me the envious night : 

They know that never joy illumed my brow, 
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free 
This world from its dark slavery, 
That thou O awful Loveliness, 

Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot ex- 
press. 

The day becomes more solemn and serene 
When noon is past : there is a harmony 
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, 

Which thro' the summer is not heard or seen, 

As if it could not be, as if it had not been ! 
Thus let thy power, which like the truth 
Of nature on my passive youth 

Descended, to my onward life supply 
Its calm, to one who worships thee, 
And every form containing thee, 
Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind 

To fear himself, and love all human kind. 


SONNET. 

OZYMANDIAS. 

I met a traveller from an antique land 
Who said : Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand, 
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, 
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, 
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read 
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless 
things, 
The hand that mocked them and the heart that 
fed: 
And on the pedestal these words appear : 
" My name is Ozymandias, king of kings : 
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" 
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay 
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare 
The lone and level sands stretch far away. 

FINIS. 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 
LONDON: 
PRINTED FOR C. AND J. COLLIER, 
VERE STREET, BOND STREET. 
1819.