The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (ed. Hutchinson, 1914)/Song for Tasso

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

SONG FOR 'TASSO'

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.]

i.

I loved—alas! our life is love;

But when we cease to breathe and move
I do suppose love ceases too.
I thought, but not as now I do,
Keen thoughts and bright of linked lore, 5
Of all that men had thought before,
And all that Nature shows, and more.

ii.

And still I love and still I think,

But strangely, for my heart can drink
The dregs of such despair, and live, 10
And love;. . .
And if I think, my thoughts come fast,
I mix the present with the past,
And each seems uglier than the last.

iii.

Sometimes I see before me flee 15

A silver spirit's form, like thee,
O Leonora, and I sit
. . . still watching it,
Till by the grated casement's ledge
It fades, with such a sigh, as sedge 20
Breathes o'er the breezy streamlet's edge.