The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (ed. Hutchinson, 1914)/Apostrophe to Silence

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

FRAGMENT: APOSTROPHE TO SILENCE

[Published by Dr. Garnett, Relics of Shelley, 1862. A transcript by Mrs. Shelley, given to Charles Cowden Clarke, presents one or two variants.]

Silence! Oh, well are Death and Sleep and Thou
Three brethren named, the guardians gloomy-winged
Of one abyss, where life, and truth, and joy
Are swallowed up—yet spare me, Spirit,^[1] pity me,
Until the sounds I hear become my soul. 5
And it has left these faint and weary limbs,
To track along the lapses of the air
This wandering melody^[2] until it rests
Among lone mountains in some . . .

 

1. Apostrophe—4 Spirit 1862; O Spirit C.C.C. MS.
2. 8 This wandering melody 1862; These wandering melodies . . . C.C.C. MS.