Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Francis T. Palgrave, ed. (1824–1897). The Golden Treasury. 1875.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

CCLIX. The Invitation

BEST and brightest, come away,—

Fairer far than this fair day,

Which, like thee, to those in sorrow

Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow

To the rough year just awake

In its cradle on the brake.

The brightest hour of unborn Spring

Through the winter wandering,

Found, it seems, the halcyon morn

To hoar February born;

Bending from heaven, in azure mirth,

It kiss’d the forehead of the earth,

And smiled upon the silent sea,

And bade the frozen streams be free,

And waked to music all their fountains,

And breathed upon the frozen mountains,

And like a prophetess of May

Strew’d flowers upon the barren way,

Making the wintry world appear

Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.

Away, away, from men and towns,

To the wild woods and the downs—

To the silent wilderness,

Where the soul need not repress

Its music, lest it should not find

An echo in another’s mind,

While the touch of Nature’s art

Harmonizes heart to heart.

Radiant Sister of the Day

Awake! arise! and come away!

To the wild woods and the plains,

To the pools where winter rains

Image all their roof of leaves,

Where the pine its garland weaves

Of sapless green, and ivy dun,

Round stems that never kiss the sun;

Where the lawns and pastures be

And the sandhills of the sea;

Where the melting hoar-frost wets

The daisy-star that never sets,

And wind-flowers and violets

Which yet join not scent to hue

Crown the pale year weak and new;

When the night is left behind

In the deep east, dim and blind,

And the blue noon is over us,

And the multitudinous

Billows murmur at our feet,

Where the earth and ocean meet,

And all things seem only one

In the universal Sun.