Percy Bysshe Shelley - The Sunset lyrics

[Written at Bishopsgate, 1816 (spring). Published in full in the "Posthumous Poems", 1824. Lines 9-20, and 28-42, appeared in Hunt's "Literary Pocket-Book", 1823, under the titles, respectively, of "Sunset. From an Unpublished Poem", And "Grief. A Fragment".] There late was One within whose subtle being, As light and wind within some delicate cloud That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky, Genius and d**h contended. None may know The sweetness of the joy which made his breath Fail, like the trances of the summer air, When, with the Lady of his love, who then First knew the unreserve of mingled being, He walked along the pathway of a field Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er, But to the west was open to the sky. There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points Of the far level gra** and nodding flowers And the old dandelion's hoary beard, And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay On the brown ma**y woods—and in the east The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose Between the black trunks of the crowded trees, While the faint stars were gathering overhead.— 'Is it not strange, Isabel,' said the youth, 'I never saw the sun? We will walk here To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me.' That night the youth and lady mingled lay In love and sleep—but when the morning came The lady found her lover dead and cold. Let none believe that God in mercy gave That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild, But year by year lived on—in truth I think Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles, And that she did not die, but lived to tend Her aged father, were a kind of madness, If madness 'tis to be unlike the world. For but to see her were to read the tale Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief;— Her eyes were black and lustreless and wan: Her eyelashes were worn away with tears, Her lips and cheeks were like things dead—so pale; Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins And weak articulations might be seen Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day, Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee! 'Inheritor of more than earth can give, Pa**ionless calm and silence unreproved, Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest, And are the uncomplaining things they seem, Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love; Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were—Peace!' This was the only moan she ever made.