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POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822.

THE ZUCCA.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, and dated ‘January, 1822.’  There is a copy amongst the Boscombe manuscripts.]

1. 
Summer was dead and Autumn was expiring,
And infant Winter laughed upon the land
All cloudlessly and cold;—­when I, desiring
More in this world than any understand,
Wept o’er the beauty, which, like sea retiring, 5
Had left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand
Of my lorn heart, and o’er the grass and flowers
Pale for the falsehood of the flattering Hours.

2. 
Summer was dead, but I yet lived to weep
The instability of all but weeping; 10
And on the Earth lulled in her winter sleep
I woke, and envied her as she was sleeping. 
Too happy Earth! over thy face shall creep
The wakening vernal airs, until thou, leaping
From unremembered dreams, shalt ... see 15
No death divide thy immortality.

3. 
I loved—­oh, no, I mean not one of ye,
Or any earthly one, though ye are dear
As human heart to human heart may be;—­
I loved, I know not what—­but this low sphere 20
And all that it contains, contains not thee,
Thou, whom, seen nowhere, I feel everywhere. 
From Heaven and Earth, and all that in them are,
Veiled art thou, like a ... star.

4. 
By Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou flowest, 25
Neither to be contained, delayed, nor hidden;
Making divine the loftiest and the lowest,
When for a moment thou art not forbidden
To live within the life which thou bestowest;
And leaving noblest things vacant and chidden, 30
Cold as a corpse after the spirit’s flight
Blank as the sun after the birth of night.

5. 
In winds, and trees, and streams, and all things common,
In music and the sweet unconscious tone
Of animals, and voices which are human, 35
Meant to express some feelings of their own;
In the soft motions and rare smile of woman,
In flowers and leaves, and in the grass fresh-shown,
Or dying in the autumn, I the most
Adore thee present or lament thee lost. 40

6. 
And thus I went lamenting, when I saw
A plant upon the river’s margin lie
Like one who loved beyond his nature’s law,
And in despair had cast him down to die;
Its leaves, which had outlived the frost, the thaw 45
Had blighted; like a heart which hatred’s eye
Can blast not, but which pity kills; the dew
Lay on its spotted leaves like tears too true.

7.  The Heavens had wept upon it, but the Earth Had crushed it on her maternal breast 50