The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (ed. Hutchinson, 1914)/Evening: Ponte Al Mare, Pisa

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

EVENING: PONTE AL MARE, PISA

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. There is a draft amongst the Boscombe MSS.]

IThe sun is set; the swallows are asleep;The bats are flitting fast in the gray air;The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep,And evening's breath, wandering here and thereOver the quivering surface of the stream, 5Wakes not one ripple from its summer^[1] dream.

IIThere is no dew on the dry grass to-night,Nor damp within the shadow of the trees;The wind is intermitting, dry, and light;And in the inconstant motion of the breeze 10The dust and straws are driven up and down,And whirled about the pavement of the town.

IIIWithin the surface of the fleeting riverThe wrinkled image of the city lay,Immovably unquiet, and foreverIt trembles, but it never fades away; 15Go to the . . .You, being changed, will find it then as now.

IVThe chasm in which the sun has sunk is shutBy darkest barriers of cinereous^[2] cloud, 20Like mountain over mountain huddled—butGrowing and moving upwards in a crowd,And over it a space of watery blue,Which the keen evening star is shining through.

 

1. 6 summer 1839, 2nd ed. ; silent 1824, 1839, 1st ed.
2. Evening, &c.—20 cinereous Boscombe MS.; enormous edd. 1824, 1839.