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Percy Bysshe Shelley - On Death
Work rating: Medium

There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. ~ Ecclesiastes.


The pale, the cold, and the moony smile
     Which the meteor beam of a starless night
Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,
     Ere the dawning of morn`s undoubted light,
Is the flame of life so fickle and wan
That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.

O man! hold thee on in courage of soul
     Through the stormy shades of thy wordly way,
And the billows of clouds that around thee roll
     Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day,
Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free
To the universe of destiny.

This world is the nurse of all we know,
     This world is the mother of all we feel,
And the coming of death is a fearful blow
     To a brain unencompass`d by nerves of steel:
When all that we know, or feel, or see,
Shall pass like an unreal mystery.

The secret things of the grave are there,
     Where all but this frame must surely be,
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear
     No longer will live, to hear or to see
All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change.

Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death?
     Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?
Who painteth the shadows that are beneath
     The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be
With the fears and the love for that which we see?
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