The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe

The Sunset

Subscribe for ad free access & additional features for teachers. Authors: 267, Books: 3,607, Poems & Short Stories: 4,435, Forum Members: 71,154, Forum Posts: 1,238,602, Quizzes: 344

***

[Written at Bishopsgate, 1816 (spring). Published in full in the

"Posthumous Poems", 1824. Lines 9-20, and 28-42, appeared in Hunt's

"Literary Pocket-Book", 1823, under the titles, respectively, of

"Sunset. From an Unpublished Poem", And "Grief. A Fragment".]

There late was One within whose subtle being,

As light and wind within some delicate cloud

That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky,

Genius and death contended. None may know

The sweetness of the joy which made his breath _5

Fail, like the trances of the summer air,

When, with the Lady of his love, who then

First knew the unreserve of mingled being,

He walked along the pathway of a field

Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er, _10

But to the west was open to the sky.

There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold

Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points

Of the far level grass and nodding flowers

And the old dandelion's hoary beard, _15

And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay

On the brown massy woods--and in the east

The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose

Between the black trunks of the crowded trees,

While the faint stars were gathering overhead.-- _20

'Is it not strange, Isabel,' said the youth,

'I never saw the sun? We will walk here

To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me.'

That night the youth and lady mingled lay

In love and sleep--but when the morning came _25

The lady found her lover dead and cold.

Let none believe that God in mercy gave

That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild,

But year by year lived on--in truth I think

Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles, _30

And that she did not die, but lived to tend

Her aged father, were a kind of madness,

If madness 'tis to be unlike the world.

For but to see her were to read the tale

Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts _35

Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief;--

Her eyes were black and lustreless and wan:

Her eyelashes were worn away with tears,

Her lips and cheeks were like things dead--so pale;

Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins _40

And weak articulations might be seen

Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self

Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day,

Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!

'Inheritor of more than earth can give, _45

Passionless calm and silence unreproved,

Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,

And are the uncomplaining things they seem,

Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love;

Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were--Peace!' _50

This was the only moan she ever made.

NOTES:

_4 death 1839; youth 1824.

_22 sun? We will walk 1824; sunrise? We will wake cj. Forman.

_37 Her eyes...wan Hunt, 1823; omitted 1824, 1839.

_38 worn 1824; torn 1839.

Art of Worldly Wisdom Daily

In the 1600s, Balthasar Gracian, a jesuit priest wrote 300 aphorisms on living life called "The Art of Worldly Wisdom." Join our newsletter below and read them all, one at a time.

Email:

Sonnet-a-Day Newsletter

Shakespeare wrote over 150 sonnets! Join our Sonnet-A-Day Newsletter and read them all, one at a time.

Email: