THE INVITATION

THE INVITATION
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY


Best and brightest, come away,
Fairer far than this fair Day,
Which, like thee to those in sorrow,
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough Year just awake
In its cradle on the brake.
The brightest hour of unborn spring
Though the winter wandering,
Found, it seems the halcyon Morn
To hoar February;
Bending frum Heaven, in azure mirth,
It kiss’d the forehead of the Earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams he free,
And waked to music all their fountains,
And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
And like a prophetess of May.
Strew’d flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom bhou smiles, dear.

Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs-
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music, lest it should not find
An echo in another’s mind,
While the touch of Nature’s art
Harmonizes heart to heart.
Radiant Sister of the Day
Awake! Arise! And come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
And the pools where winter rains
Image all their roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garland weaves
Of sapless green and ivy dun
Round stems that never kiss the sun;
Where the lawns and pastures be
And the sandhills of the sea;
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets,
And wind-flowers and violets,
Which yet join not scent to hue,
Crown the pale year weak and new;
When the night is left behind
In the deep east, dun and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous
Billows murmur at out feet,
Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one
In the universal sun.