The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (ed. Hutchinson, 1914)/Fragment: To One Singing

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

FRAGMENT: TO ONE SINGING

[Dated 1817 by Mrs. Shelley, and published in the Poetical Works, 1839, 1st edition. The MS. original, by which Mr. Locock has revised and (by one line) enlarged the text, is amongst the Shelley MSS. at the Bodleian. The metre, as Mr. Locock (Examination, &c., 1903, p. 63) points out, is terza rima.]

My spirit like a charmèd bark doth swim
Upon the liquid waves of thy sweet singing,
Far far away^[1] into the regions dim

Of rapture—as a boat, with swift sails winging
Its way adown some many-winding river,5
Speeds through dark forests o'er the waters swinging^[2]. . .

 

1. Far far away B.; Far away 1889.
2. Speeds . . . swinging B.; omitted 1839