Explore "To Constantia, Singing" by Percy Bysshe Shelley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Thus to be lost and thus to sink and die, / Perchance were death indeed! -Constantia, turn! / In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie, / Even though the sounds which were thy voice, which burn / Between thy lips, are laid to sleep; / Within thy breath, and on thy hair, like odour, it is yet, / And from thy touch like fire doth leap. / Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet. / Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but not forget!
A breathless awe, like the swift change / Unseen, but felt in youthful slumbers, / Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange, / Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers. / The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven / By the enchantment of thy strain, / And on my shoulders wings are woven, / To follow its sublime career / Beyond the mighty moons that wane / Upon the verge of Nature's utmost sphere, / Till the world's shadowy walls are past and disappear.