Percy Bysshe Shelley (पर्सी बिश शेली)

HELEN,Come hither, my sweet Rosalind.

'Tis long since thou and I have met,And yet methinks it were unkind.

Those moments to forget,Come, sit by me. I see thee stand.

By this lone lake, in this far land,Thy loose hair in the light wind flying.

Thy sweet voice to each tone of even,United, and thine eyes replying.

To the hues of yon fair heaven,Come, gentle friend: wilt sit by me?.

And be as thou wert wont to be,Ere we were disunited?.

None doth behold us now; the power,That led us forth at this lone hour.

Will be but ill requited,If thou depart in scorn: oh! come.

And talk of our abandoned home,Remember, this is Italy.

And we are exiles. Talk with me,Of that our land, whose wilds and floods.

Barren and dark although they be,Were dearer than these chestnut woods.

Those heathy paths, that inland stream,And the blue mountains, shapes which seem.

Like wrecks of childhood's sunny dream,Which that we have abandoned now.

Weighs on the heart like that remorse,Which altered friendship leaves. I seek.

No more our youthful intercourse,That cannot be! Rosalind, speak.

Speak to me. Leave me not.--When morn did come,When evening fell upon our common home.

When for one hour we parted,--do not frown,I would not chide thee, though thy faith is broken.

But turn to me. Oh! by this cherished token,Of woven hair, which thou wilt not disown.

Turn, as 'twere but the memory of me,And not my scorned self who prayed to thee.

ROSALIND,Is it a dream, or do I see.

And hear frail Helen? I would flee,Thy tainting touch; but former years.

Arise, and bring forbidden tears,And my o'erburthened memory.

Seeks yet its lost repose in thee,I share thy crime. I cannot choose.

But weep for thee: mine own strange grief,But seldom stoops to such relief.

Nor ever did I love thee less,Though mourning o'er thy wickedness.

Even with a sister's woe. I knew,What to the evil world is due.

And therefore sternly did refuse,To link me with the infamy.

Of one so lost as Helen. Now,Bewildered by my dire despair.

Wondering I blush, and weep that thou,Should'st love me still,--thou only!--There.

Let us sit on that gray stone,Till our mournful talk be done.

HELEN,Alas! not there; I cannot bear.

The murmur of this lake to hear,A sound from there, Rosalind dear.

Which never yet I heard elsewhere,But in our native land, recurs.

Even here where now we meet. It stirs,Too much of suffocating sorrow!.

In the dell of yon dark chestnutwood,Is a stone seat, a solitude.

Less like our own. The ghost of Peace,Will not desert this spot. To-morrow.

If thy kind feelings should not cease,We may sit here.

ROSALIND,Thou lead, my sweet.

And I will follow,HENRY.

'Tis Fenici's seat,Where you are going? This is not the way.

Mamma; it leads behind those trees that grow,Close to the little river.

I was bewildered. Kiss me and be gay,Dear boy: why do you sob?.

HENRY,I do not know.

But it might break any one's heart to see,You and the lady cry so bitterly.

HELEN,It is a gentle child, my friend. Go home.

Henry, and play with Lilla till I come,We only cried with joy to see each other.

We are quite merry now: Good-night,The boy.

Lifted a sudden look upon his mother,And in the gleam of forced and hollow joy.

Which lightened o'er her face, laughed with the glee,Of light and unsuspecting infancy.

And whispered in her ear, 'Bring home with you,That sweet strange lady-friend.' Then off he flew.

But stopped, and beckoned with a meaning smile,Where the road turned. Pale Rosalind the while.

Hiding her face, stood weeping silently,In silence then they took the way.

Beneath the forest's solitude,It was a vast and antique wood.

Thro' which they took their way,And the gray shades of evening.

O'er that green wilderness did fling,Still deeper solitude.

Pursuing still the path that wound,The vast and knotted trees around.

Through which slow shades were wandering,To a deep lawny dell they came.

To a stone seat beside a spring,O'er which the columned wood did frame.

A roofless temple, like the fane,Where, ere new creeds could faith obtain.

Man's early race once knelt beneath,The overhanging deity.

O'er this fair fountain hung the sky,Now spangled with rare stars. The snake.

The pale snake, that with eager breath,Creeps here his noontide thirst to slake.

Is beaming with many a mingled hue,Shed from yon dome's eternal blue.

When he floats on that dark and lucid flood,In the light of his own loveliness.

And the birds that in the fountain dip,Their plumes, with fearless fellowship.

Above and round him wheel and hover,The fitful wind is heard to stir.

One solitary leaf on high,The chirping of the grasshopper.

Fills every pause. There is emotion,In all that dwells at noontide here.

Then, through the intricate wild wood,A maze of life and light and motion.

Is woven. But there is stillness now,Gloom, and the trance of Nature now.

The snake is in his cave asleep,The birds are on the branches dreaming.

Only the shadows creep,Only the glow-worm is gleaming.

Only the owls and the nightingales,Wake in this dell when daylight fails.

And gray shades gather in the woods,And the owls have all fled far away.

In a merrier glen to hoot and play,For the moon is veiled and sleeping now.

The accustomed nightingale still broods,On her accustomed bough.

But she is mute; for her false mate,Has fled and left her desolate.

This silent spot tradition old,Had peopled with the spectral dead.

For the roots of the speaker's hair felt cold,And stiff, as with tremulous lips he told.

That a hellish shape at midnight led,The ghost of a youth with hoary hair.

And sate on the seat beside him there,Till a naked child came wandering by.

When the fiend would change to a lady fair!,A fearful tale! The truth was worse.

For here a sister and a brother,Had solemnized a monstrous curse.

Meeting in this fair solitude,For beneath yon very sky.

Had they resigned to one another,Body and soul. The multitude.

Tracking them to the secret wood,Tore limb from limb their innocent child.

And stabbed and trampled on its mother,But the youth, for God's most holy grace.

A priest saved to burn in the market-place,Duly at evening Helen came.

To this lone silent spot,From the wrecks of a tale of wilder sorrow.

So much of sympathy to borrow,As soothed her own dark lot.

Duly each evening from her home,With her fair child would Helen come.

To sit upon that antique seat,While the hues of day were pale.

And the bright boy beside her feet,Now lay, lifting at intervals.

His broad blue eyes on her,Now, where some sudden impulse calls.

Following. He was a gentle boy,And in all gentle sorts took joy.

Oft in a dry leaf for a boat,With a small feather for a sail.

His fancy on that spring would float,If some invisible breeze might stir.

Its marble calm: and Helen smiled,Through tears of awe on the gay child.

To think that a boy as fair as he,In years which never more may be.

By that same fount, in that same wood,The like sweet fancies had pursued.