520. The Poet's Dream. Percy Bysshe Shelley. 1909-14. English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald. The Harvard Classics

English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

520. The Poet’s Dream

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)


ON a Poet’s lips I slept
Dreaming like a love-adept
In the sound his breathing kept;
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,
But feeds on the ae¨rial kisses	5
Of shapes that haunt Thought’s wildernesses.

He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,
Nor heed nor see what things they be—	10
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living Man,
Nurslings of Immortality!