Explore "Summer and Winter" by Percy Bysshe Shelley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was a bright and cheerful afternoon, / Towards the end of the sunny month of June, / When the north wind congregates in crowds / The floating mountains of the silver clouds / From the horizon-and the stainless sky / Opens beyond them like eternity. / All things rejoiced beneath the sun; the weeds, / The river, and the corn-fields, and the reeds; / The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze, / And the firm foliage of the larger trees.
It was a winter such as when birds die / In the deep forests; and the fishes lie / Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes / Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes / A wrinkled clod as hard as brick; and when, / Among their children, comfortable men / Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold: / Alas, then, for the homeless beggar old!