The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Witch of Atlas, by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Title: The Witch of Atlas

Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley

Posting Date: August 24, 2009 [EBook #4696]
Release Date: November, 2003
First Posted: March 3, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WITCH OF ATLAS ***

Produced by Sue Asscher

The Witch of Atlas

by

Percy Bysshe Shelley

TO MARY
(ON HER OBJECTING TO THE FOLLOWING POEM, UPON THE
SCORE OF ITS CONTAINING NO HUMAN INTEREST).

1.
How, my dear Mary,--are you critic-bitten
(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written,
Because they tell no story, false or true?
What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten, _5
May it not leap and play as grown cats do,
Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,
Content thee with a visionary rhyme.

2.
What hand would crush the silken-winged fly,
The youngest of inconstant April's minions, _10
Because it cannot climb the purest sky,
Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions?
Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die,
When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions
The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile, _15
Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.

3.
To thy fair feet a winged Vision came,
Whose date should have been longer than a day,
And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame,
And in thy sight its fading plumes display; _20
The watery bow burned in the evening flame.
But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way--
And that is dead.--O, let me not believe
That anything of mine is fit to live!

4.
Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years _25
Considering and retouching Peter Bell;
Watering his laurels with the killing tears
Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to Hell
Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres
Of Heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers; this well _30
May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil
The over-busy gardener's blundering toil.

5.
My