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

  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—

  But from these create he can

  Forms more real than living Man,

  Nurslings of Immortality!