Title:  The Witch of Atlas

Author:  Percy Bysshe Shelley

Release Date:  November, 2003 [Etext #4696] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 3, 2002]

Edition:  10

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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 To Mary
 (on her objecting to the following poem, upon the
 Score of its containing no human interest).

1.  How, my dear Mary,—­are you critic-bitten (For vipers kill, though dead) by some review, That you condemn these verses I have written, Because they tell no story, false or true?  What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten, 5 May it not leap and play as grown cats do, Till its claws come?  Prithee, for this one time, Content thee with a visionary rhyme.

2.  What hand would crush the silken-winged fly, The youngest of inconstant April’s minions, 10 Because it cannot climb the purest sky, Where the swan sings, amid the sun’s dominions?  Not thine.  Thou knowest ’tis its doom to die, When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile, 15 Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.

3.  To thy fair feet a winged Vision came, Whose date should have been longer than a day, And o’er thy head did beat its wings for fame, And in thy sight its fading plumes display; 20 The watery bow burned in the evening flame.  But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way—­ And that is dead.—­O, let me not believe That anything of mine is fit to live!

4.  Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years 25 Considering and retouching Peter Bell; Watering his laurels with the killing tears Of slow, dull care, so that their