Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/589

Rh Itself how low, how high beyond all height The heaven where it would perish!—and every form That worshipped in the temple of the night

Was awed into delight, and by the charm Girt as with an interminable zone, Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm

Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion Out of their dreams; harmony became love In every soul but one. And so this man returned with axe and saw At evening close from killing the tall treen, The soul of whom by Nature's gentle law

Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green The pavement and the roof of the wild copse, Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene

With jagged leaves,—and from the forest tops Singing the winds to sleep—or weeping oft Fast showers of aëreal water-drops

Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft, Nature's pure tears which have no bitterness;— Around the cradles of the birds aloft

They spread themselves into the loveliness Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers Hang like moist clouds:—or, where high branches kiss,

Make a green space among the silent bowers, Like a vast fane in a metropolis, Surrounded by the columns and the towers

All overwrought with branch-like traceries In which there is religion—and the mute Persuasion of unkindled melodies,

Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lule Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,

Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed To such brief unison as on the brain One tone, which never can recur, has cast, One accent never to return again. The world is full of Woodmen who expel Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life, And vex the nightingales in every dell.