Explore "The Grave of Shelley" by Oscar Wilde on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Like burnt-out torches by a sick man's bed / Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone;
Here doth the little night-owl make her throne, / And the slight lizard show his jewelled head.
And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red, / In the still chamber of yon pyramid / Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid, / Grim warder of this pleasaunce of the dead.
Ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb / Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep, / But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb / In the blue cavern of an echoing deep, / Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom / Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep.
Rome.