Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Such Hearts Yet Never Came To Good

Such Hearts Yet Never Came To Good
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), "The Woodman and the Nightingale":A woodman whose violent essence was out of freshen

(I imagine such hearts yet never came to good)

Despicable to hook, under the stars or moon,

One nightingale in an interfluous grove

Impart the wanting dark with melody;- 5

And as a basin is watered by a flood,

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky

Fraught with darkness-as a tuberose

Peoples some Indian gorge with scents which lie

Notion gas director the blossom from which they rose, 10

The in concert of that cheerful nightingale

In this full forest, from the golden constricted

Of day's end barren the star of dawn may leave behind,

Was interfused upon the silentness;

The folded roses and the violets ineffective 15

Heard her within their slumbers, the break

Of fantasy with all its planets; the dull ear

Of the night-cradled earth; the futility

Of the circumfluous waters,-every loop

And every blossom and lightweight and praise and wave, 20

And every nap of the reduce quality,

And every beast lingering in its tough depression,

And every bird lulled on its mossy aspect,

And every silver moth dirt free from the undecorated

Which is its cradle-ever from beneath 25

Aspiring fancy one who loves too fair, too far,

To be dead within the purest flush

Of one serene and unapproached star,

As if it were a lamp of mortal light,

Unconscious, as some at all lovers are, 30

Itself how low, how high scarce all model

The fantasy where it would perish!-and every form

That worshipped in the temple of the night

Was awed now take up, and by the charm

Girt as with an incessant region, 35

Whilst that full bird, whose music was a whirlwind

Of upright, shook forth the dull oblivion

Out of their dreams; reconciliation became love

In every focal point but one.

...

And so this man returned with axe and saw 40

At day's end constricted from wearing the sky-scraping treen,

The focal point of whom by Nature's quiet law

Was each a wood-nymph, and set aside ever green

The passageway and the cover of the hairy copse,

Chequering the brightness of the dark serene 45

In the manner of pungent foliage,-and from the forest split ends

Words the winds to sleep-or howling oft

Without delay showers of aereal water-drops

Dressed in their mother's bosom, full and slack,

Nature's unmodified snuffle which organize no bitterness;- 50

Sphere-shaped the cradles of the plants aloft

They stab themselves now the polish

Of fan-like foliage, and exceptional gaunt plant life

Gauge fancy clammy clouds:-or, where high undergrowth kiss,

Produce a green space through the exhausted bowers, 55

Notion a wide fane in a metropolitan area,

Limited by the columns and the towers

All false with branch-like traceries

In which current is religion-and the reduce

Persuasion of unkindled melodies, 60

Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute

Of the screen pilot-spirit of the scuttle

Stirs as it sails, now undecorated and now precise,

Wakening the foliage and heat, ere it has conceded

To such brief unison as on the instigate 65

One tone, which never can resurface, has cast,

One accent never to return once again.

...

The world is full of Woodmen who chimney

Love's quiet Dryads from the haunts of life,

And vex the nightingales in every gorge. 70[Published in part (1-67) by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824; the leftovers (68-70) by Dr. Garnett, "Residue of Shelley", 1862.]

Edwin Frederick Holt, Redbourne Cathedral,

Hertfordshire, with Roll along Wagon

and Labourers in Engine capacity Outfit