Lines: ‘When The Lamp Is Shattered’

Percy Bysshe Shelley * Track #175 On The Complete Poetical Works Of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume 2

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Percy Bysshe Shelley

Lines: 'When The Lamp Is Shattered' by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Percy Bysshe Shelley

About

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), one of the ‘Big Six’ Romantic poets, the others being Coleridge, Blake, Wordsworth, Byron and Keats.

Romantic Poetry
A tenet of Romantic poetry is its focus on nature and man’s insignificance in comparison to the natural world. This was a subject of particular inte...

Lines: ‘When The Lamp Is Shattered’ Annotated

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824.
There is a copy amongst the Trelawny manuscripts.]

1.
When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead—
When the cloud is scattered
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.

2.
As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart's echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute:—
No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman's knell.

3.
When hearts have once mingled
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possessed.
O Love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home, and your bier?

4.
Its passions will rock thee
As the storms rock the ravens on high;
Bright reason will mock thee,
Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.

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