[ { "title": "To Harriet", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Ever as now with Love and Virtue's glow", "May thy unwithering soul not cease to burn,", "Still may thine heart with those pure thoughts o'erflow", "Which force from mine such quick and warm return." ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "To Harriet", "author": "George Gordon, Lord Byron", "lines": [ "Harriet! to see such Circumspection,", "In Ladies I have no objection", " Concerning what they read;", "An ancient Maid's a sage adviser,", "Like _her_, you will be much the wiser,", " In word, as well as Deed.", "", "But Harriet, I don't wish to flatter,", "And really think 't would make the matter", " More perfect if not quite,", "If other Ladies when they preach,", "Would certain Damsels also teach", " More cautiously to write." ], "linecount": "12" }, { "title": "To Harriet", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "It is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven", "More perfectly will give those nameless joys", "Which throb within the pulses of the blood", "And sweeten all that bitterness which Earth", "Infuses in the heaven-born soul. O thou", "Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path", "Which this lone spirit travelled, drear and cold,", "Yet swiftly leading to those awful limits", "Which mark the bounds of Time and of the space", "When Time shall be no more; wilt thou not turn", "Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me,", "Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven,", "And Heaven is Earth?--will not thy glowing cheek,", "Glowing with soft suffusion, rest on mine,", "And breathe magnetic sweetness through the frame", "Of my corporeal nature, through the soul", "Now knit with these fine fibres? I would give", "The longest and the happiest day that fate", "Has marked on my existence but to feel", "ONE soul-reviving kiss...O thou most dear,", "'Tis an assurance that this Earth is Heaven,", "And Heaven the flower of that untainted seed", "Which springeth here beneath such love as ours.", "Harriet! let death all mortal ties dissolve,", "But ours shall not be mortal! The cold hand", "Of Time may chill the love of earthly minds", "Half frozen now; the frigid intercourse", "Of common souls lives but a summer's day;", "It dies, where it arose, upon this earth.", "But ours! oh, 'tis the stretch of Fancy's hope", "To portray its continuance as now,", "Warm, tranquil, spirit-healing; nor when age", "Has tempered these wild ecstasies, and given", "A soberer tinge to the luxurious glow", "Which blazing on devotion's pinnacle", "Makes virtuous passion supersede the power", "Of reason; nor when life's aestival sun", "To deeper manhood shall have ripened me;", "Nor when some years have added judgement's store", "To all thy woman sweetness, all the fire", "Which throbs in thine enthusiast heart; not then", "Shall holy friendship (for what other name", "May love like ours assume?), not even then", "Shall Custom so corrupt, or the cold forms", "Of this desolate world so harden us,", "As when we think of the dear love that binds", "Our souls in soft communion, while we know", "Each other's thoughts and feelings, can we say", "Unblushingly a heartless compliment,", "Praise, hate, or love with the unthinking world,", "Or dare to cut the unrelaxing nerve", "That knits our love to virtue. Can those eyes,", "Beaming with mildest radiance on my heart", "To purify its purity, e'er bend", "To soothe its vice or consecrate its fears?", "Never, thou second Self! Is confidence", "So vain in virtue that I learn to doubt", "The mirror even of Truth? Dark flood of Time,", "Roll as it listeth thee; I measure not", "By month or moments thy ambiguous course.", "Another may stand by me on thy brink,,", "And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken,", "Which pauses at my feet. The sense of love,", "The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought", "Prolong my being; if I wake no more,", "My life more actual living will contain", "Than some gray veteran's of the world's cold school,", "Whose listless hours unprofitably roll", "By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed,", "Virtue and Love! unbending Fortitude,", "Freedom, Devotedness and Purity!", "That life my Spirit consecrates to you." ], "linecount": "72" }, { "title": "To Harriet", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "O thou bright Sun! beneath the dark blue line", "Of western distance that sublime descendest,", "And, gleaming lovelier as thy beams decline,", "Thy million hues to every vapour lendest,", "And, over cobweb lawn and grove and stream", "Sheddest the liquid magic of thy light,", "Till calm Earth, with the parting splendour bright,", "Shows like the vision of a beauteous dream;", "What gazer now with astronomic eye", "Could coldly count the spots within thy sphere?", "Such were thy lover, Harriet, could he fly", "The thoughts of all that makes his passion dear,", "And, turning senseless from thy warm caress,--", "Pick flaws in our close-woven happiness." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "To Harriet", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Thy look of love has power to calm", "The stormiest passion of my soul;", "Thy gentle words are drops of balm", "In life's too bitter bowl;", "No grief is mine, but that alone", "These choicest blessings I have known.", "", "Harriet! if all who long to live", "In the warm sunshine of thine eye,", "That price beyond all pain must give,--", "Beneath thy scorn to die;", "Then hear thy chosen own too late", "His heart most worthy of thy hate.", "", "Be thou, then, one among mankind", "Whose heart is harder not for state,", "Thou only virtuous, gentle, kind,", "Amid a world of hate;", "And by a slight endurance seal", "A fellow-being's lasting weal.", "", "For pale with anguish is his cheek,", "His breath comes fast, his eyes are dim,", "Thy name is struggling ere he speak,", "Weak is each trembling limb;", "In mercy let him not endure", "The misery of a fatal cure.", "", "Oh, trust for once no erring guide!", "Bid the remorseless feeling flee;", "'Tis malice, 'tis revenge, 'tis pride,", "'Tis anything but thee;", "Oh, deign a nobler pride to prove,", "And pity if thou canst not love." ], "linecount": "30" } ]