Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/754

 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance

Languor cannot be. Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee: Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet, if we could scorn

Hate and pride and fear, If we were things born

Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

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