Alastor or the Spirit of Solitude and Other Poems

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1816 Excerpt: ... Had e'er disturbed before. The Poet longed To deck with their bright hues his withered hah', But on his heart its solitude returned, And he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid 415 In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frame Had yet performed its ministry: it hung Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods Of night close over it. The noonday sun 420 Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves, Scooped in the dark base of their1 aery rocks Mocking its moans, respond and roar for ever. 425 The meeting boughs and implicated leaves Wove twilight o'er the Poet's path, as led By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death, He sought in Nature's dearest haunt, some bank, Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark 430 And dark the shades accumulate. The oak, Expanding its immense and knotty2 arms, Embraces the light beech. The pyramids Of the tall cedar overarching, frame Most solemn domes within, and far below, 435 Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky, The ash and the acacia floating hang Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed In rainbow and in fire, the parasites, Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around uo 1 Mrs. Shelley substituted those for 3 Immeasurable is substituted for their in 1824, and has been followed immense and knotty in the Posthumous in all editions of any authority. I Poems; but Mrs. Shelley restored the cannot see sufficient advantage in right reading in 1839. disturbing Shelley's text. The gray trunks, and, as gamesome infants' eyes, With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles, Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love, These twine their tendrils with the wedded houghs Uniting th...

Genres: Poetry

101 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1975

About the author

Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, British romantic poet, include "To a Skylark" in 1820; Prometheus Unbound , the lyric drama; and "Adonais," an elegy of 1821 to John Keats.

The Cenci , work of art or literature of Percy Bysshe Shelley of 1819, depicts Beatrice Cenci, Italian noblewoman.

People widely consider Percy Bysshe Shelley among the finest majors of the English language. He is perhaps most famous for such anthology pieces as Ozymandias , Ode to the West Wind , and The Masque of Anarchy . His major long visionary Alastor , The Revolt of Islam , and the unfinished The Triumph of Life .

Unconventional life and uncompromising idealism of Percy Bysshe Shelley combined with his strong skeptical voice to make an authoritative and much denigrated figure during his life. He became the idol of the next two or three generations, the major Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as William Butler Yeats and in other languages, such as Jibanananda Das and Subramanya Bharathy . Karl Marx, Henry Stephens Salt, and [authorm:Bertrand Russell] also admired him. Famous for his association with his contemporaries Lord Byron, he also married Mary Shelley, novelist.