Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

I

THE AWFUL shadow of some unseen Power

  Floats though unseen among us,ãvisiting

  This various world with as inconstant wing

As summer winds that creep from flower to flower,ã

Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,

    It visits with inconstant glance

    Each human heart and countenance;

Like hues and harmonies of evening,ã

    Like clouds in starlight widely spread,ã

    Like memory of music fled,ã

    Like aught that for its grace may be

Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

II

Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate

  With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon

  Of human thought or form,ãwhere art thou gone?

Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,

This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?

    Ask why the sunlight not for ever

    Weaves rainbows oπer yon mountain-river,

Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,

    Why fear and dream and death and birth

    Cast on the daylight of this earth

    Such gloom,ãwhy man has such a scope

For love and hate, despondency and hope?

III

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever

  To sage or poet these responses givenã

  Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven,

Remain the records of their vain endeavour,

Frail spellsãwhose uttered charm might not avail to sever,

    From all we hear and all we see,

    Doubt, chance, and mutability.

Thy light aloneãlike mist oπer mountains driven,

    Or music by the night-wind sent

    Through strings of some still instrument,

    Or moonlight on a midnight stream,

Gives grace and truth to lifeπs unquiet dream.

IV

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart

  And come, for some uncertain moments lent.

  Man were immortal, and omnipotent,

Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,

Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.

    Thou messenger of sympathies,

    That wax and wane in loversπ eyesã

Thouãthat to human thought art nourishment,

    Like darkness to a dying flame!

    Depart not as thy shadow came,

    Depart notãlest the grave should be,

Like life and fear, a dark reality.

V

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped

  Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,

  And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing

Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.

I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;

    I was not heardãI saw them notã

    When musing deeply on the lot

Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing

    All vital things that wake to bring

    News of birds and blossoming,ã

    Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;

I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!

VI

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers

  To thee and thineãhave I not kept the vow?

  With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now

I call the phantoms of a thousand hours

Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers

    Of studious zeal or loveπs delight

    Outwatched with me the envious nightã

They know that never joy illumed my brow

    Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free

    This world from its dark slavery,

    That thouãO awful LOVELINESS,

Wouldst give whateπer these words cannot express.

VII

The day becomes more solemn and serene

  When noon is pastãthere is a harmony

  In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,

Which through the summer is not heard or seen,

As if it could not be, as if it had not been!

    Thus let thy power, which like the truth

    Of nature on my passive youth

Descended, to my onward life supply

    Its calmãto one who worships thee,

    And every form containing thee,

    Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind

To fear himself, and love all human kind.