THE RECOLLECTION

THE RECOLLECTION
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY

Now the last day of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead,
Rise, memory and write its praise!
Up- to thy wonted work! Com trace
The epitaph of glory fled,
For now the Earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven’s brow,

We wander’s to the Pine forest!
That skirts the Ocean’s foam;
The highest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.
The whispering waves were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep
The smile of Heaven lay;
It seem’d as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies
Which scatter’d from above the sun
A light of Paradise,
A light of Paradise.

We passed amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced,
And soothed by every azure breath
That under heaven is blown
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own;
Now all the tree-tops lay asleep
Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The ovean woods may be
How calm it was the silence ther
By such a chain was bound,
That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;
The breath of peace we drew with its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew,
There seem’d from the remotest seat
Of the wide mountain waste,
To the soft flower beneath our feet
A magic circle traced,-

A spirit interfused around,
A thrilling silent life;
To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature’s strife;-
And still I felt the center of the magic circle there
Was one fair form that fill’s with love
The lifeless atmosphere.

We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough;
Each seem’s as twere a little sky
Gulf’d in a world below;
A firmament of purple light
Which in the dark earth lay?
More boundless than the depth of night
And pure than the day-
In which the lovely forests grew
As in the upper air,
More perfect both in shape and hue
Than any spreading there.
There lay the glade and neighboring lawn,
And through the dark green wood
The white sun twinkling like the dawn
Out of a speckled cloud,
Sweet views which in our world above
Can never well be seen
Were imaged by the water’s love

Of that fair forest green;
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow,
An atmosphere without a breath,
A softer day below
Like one beloved the scene had lent
To the dark water’s breast
Its every leaf and lineament
With more than truth exprest;
Until an envious wind crept by
Like an unwelcome thought
Which from the minds too faithful eye
Blots one dear image out.
Though thou art ever fair and kind,
The forests ever green,
Less oft is peace in shelley’s mind
Than calm n waters seen.