Explore "To Edward Williams" by Percy Bysshe Shelley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The serpent is shut out from Paradise. / The wounded deer must seek the herb no more / In which its heart-cure lies: / The widowed dove must cease to haunt a bower / Like that from which its mate with feigned sighs / Fled in the April hour. / I too must seldom seek again / Near happy friends a mitigated pain.
Of hatred I am proud,-with scorn content; / Indifference, that once hurt me, now is grown / Itself indifferent; / But, not to speak of love, pity alone / Can break a spirit already more than bent. / The miserable one / Turns the mind's poison into food,- / Its medicine is tears,-its evil good.