Explore "Dirge for the Year" by Percy Bysshe Shelley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
1.
Orphan Hours, the Year is dead, / Come and sigh, come and weep! / Merry Hours, smile instead, / For the Year is but asleep. / See, it smiles as it is sleeping, / Mocking your untimely weeping.
2.
As an earthquake rocks a corse / In its coffin in the clay, / So White Winter, that rough nurse, / Rocks the death-cold Year to-day; / Solemn Hours! wail aloud / For your mother in her shroud.
3.
As the wild air stirs and sways / The tree-swung cradle of a child, / So the breath of these rude days / Rocks the Year: -be calm and mild, / Trembling Hours, she will arise / With new love within her eyes.
4.
January gray is here, / Like a sexton by her grave; / February bears the bier, / March with grief doth howl and rave, / And April weeps-but, O ye Hours! / Follow with May's fairest flowers.