Explore "St. Irvyne's Tower" by Percy Bysshe Shelley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
How swiftly through Heaven's wide expanse / Bright day's resplendent colours fade! / How sweetly does the moonbeam's glance / With silver tint St. Irvyne's glade!
No cloud along the spangled air, / Is borne upon the evening breeze; / How solemn is the scene! how fair / The moonbeams rest upon the trees!
Yon dark gray turret glimmers white, / Upon it sits the mournful owl; / Along the stillness of the night, / Her melancholy shriekings roll.
But not alone on Irvyne's tower, / The silver moonbeam pours her ray; / It gleams upon the ivied bower, / It dances in the cascade's spray.
‘Ah! why do dark'ning shades conceal / The hour, when man must cease to be? / Why may not human minds unveil / The dim mists of futurity? -
‘The keenness of the world hath torn / The heart which opens to its blast; / Despised, neglected, and forlorn, / Sinks the wretch in death at last. '