| NOW the last day of many days, | |
| All beautiful and bright as thou, | |
| The loveliest and the last, is dead: | |
| Rise, Memory, and write its praise! | |
| Up—to thy wonted work! come, trace | 5 |
| The epitaph of glory fled, | |
| For now the earth has changed its face, | |
| A frown is on the heaven's brow. | |
| |
| We wander'd to the Pine Forest | |
| That skirts the ocean's foam. | 10 |
| The lightest wind was in its nest, | |
| The tempest in its home; | |
| The whispering waves were half asleep, | |
| The clouds were gone to play, | |
| And on the bosom of the deep | 15 |
| The smile of heaven lay: | |
| It seem'd as if the hour were one | |
| Sent from beyond the skies | |
| Which scatter'd from above the sun | |
| A light of Paradise! | 20 |
| |
| We paused amid the pines that stood | |
| The giants of the waste, | |
| Tortured by storms to shapes as rude | |
| As serpents interlaced,— | |
| And soothed by every azure breath | 25 |
| That under heaven is blown, | |
| To harmonies and hues beneath, | |
| As tender as its own. | |
| Now all the tree-tops lay asleep | |
| Like green waves on the sea, | 30 |
| As still as in the silent deep | |
| The ocean-woods may be. | |
| |
| How calm it was!—The silence there | |
| By such a chain was bound, | |
| That even the busy woodpecker | 35 |
| Made stiller by her sound | |
| The inviolable quietness; | |
| The breath of peace we drew | |
| With its soft motion made not less | |
| The calm that round us grew. | 40 |
| There seem'd, from the remotest seat | |
| Of the wide mountain waste | |
| To the soft flower beneath our feet, | |
| A magic circle traced,— | |
| A spirit interfused around | 45 |
| A thrilling silent life; | |
| To momentary peace it bound | |
| Our mortal nature's strife;— | |
| And still I felt the centre of | |
| The magic circle there | 50 |
| Was one fair form that fill'd with love | |
| The lifeless atmosphere. | |
| |
| We paused beside the pools that lie | |
| Under the forest bough; | |
| Each seem'd as 'twere a little sky | 55 |
| Gulf'd in a world below— | |
| A firmament of purple light | |
| Which in the dark earth lay, | |
| More boundless than the depth of night | |
| And purer than the day— | 60 |
| In which the lovely forests grew | |
| As in the upper air, | |
| More perfect both in shape and hue | |
| Than any spreading there. | |
| There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn, | 65 |
| And through the dark-green wood | |
| The white sun twinkling like the dawn | |
| Out of a speckled cloud. | |
| Sweet views which in our world above | |
| Can never well be seen | 70 |
| Were imaged in the water's love | |
| Of that fair forest green; | |
| And all was interfused beneath | |
| With an Elysian glow, | |
| An atmosphere without a breath, | 75 |
| A softer day below. | |
| Like one beloved, the scene had lent | |
| To the dark water's breast | |
| Its every leaf and lineament | |
| With more than truth exprest; | 80 |
| Until an envious wind crept by, | |
| Like an unwelcome thought | |
| Which from the mind's too faithful eye | |
| Blots one dear image out. | |
| —Though thou art ever fair and kind, | 85 |
| The forests ever green, | |
| Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind | |
| Than calm in waters seen! | |
| |
