* * *

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The season was the childhood of sweet June,

Whose sunny hours from morning until noon

Went creeping through the day with silent feet,

Each with its load of pleasure; slow yet sweet;

Like the long years of blest Eternity 

Never to be developed. Joy to thee,

Fiordispina and thy Cosimo,

For thou the wonders of the depth canst know

Of this unfathomable flood of hours,

Sparkling beneath the heaven which embowers--

...

They were two cousins, almost like to twins,

Except that from the catalogue of sins

Nature had rased their love—which could not be

But by dissevering their nativity.

And so they grew together like two flowers 

Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers

Lull or awaken in their purple prime,

Which the same hand will gather—the same clime

Shake with decay. This fair day smiles to see

All those who love—and who e’er loved like thee, 

Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo,

Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow

The ardours of a vision which obscure

The very idol of its portraiture.

He faints, dissolved into a sea of love;

But thou art as a planet sphered above;

But thou art Love itself—ruling the motion

Of his subjected spirit: such emotion

Must end in sin and sorrow, if sweet May

Had not brought forth this morn—your wedding-day. 

...

‘Lie there; sleep awhile in your own dew,

Ye faint-eyed children of the ... Hours,’

Fiordispina said, and threw the flowers

Which she had from the breathing--

...

A table near of polished porphyry.

They seemed to wear a beauty from the eye

That looked on them—a fragrance from the touch

Whose warmth ... checked their life; a light such

As sleepers wear, lulled by the voice they love, which did reprove 

The childish pity that she felt for them,

And a ... remorse that from their stem

She had divided such fair shapes ... made

A feeling in the ... which was a shade

Of gentle beauty on the flowers: there lay 

All gems that make the earth’s dark bosom gay.

... rods of myrtle-buds and lemon-blooms,

And that leaf tinted lightly which assumes

The livery of unremembered snow--

Violets whose eyes have drunk--

...

Fiordispina and her nurse are now

Upon the steps of the high portico,

Under the withered arm of Media

She flings her glowing arm

...

... step by step and stair by stair, 

That withered woman, gray and white and brown--

More like a trunk by lichens overgrown

Than anything which once could have been human.

And ever as she goes the palsied woman

...

'How slow and painfully you seem to walk,

Poor Media! you tire yourself with talk.'

‘And well it may,

Fiordispina, dearest—well-a-day!

You are hastening to a marriage-bed;

I to the grave!’—‘And if my love were dead,

Unless my heart deceives me, I would lie

Beside him in my shroud as willingly

As now in the gay night-dress Lilla wrought.'

'Fie, child! Let that unseasonable thought

Not be remembered till it snows in June;

Such fancies are a music out of tune

With the sweet dance your heart must keep to-night.

What! would you take all beauty and delight

Back to the Paradise from which you sprung,

And leave to grosser mortals?--

And say, sweet lamb, would you not learn the sweet

And subtle mystery by which spirits meet?

Who knows whether the loving game is played,

When, once of mortal [vesture] disarrayed,

The naked soul goes wandering here and there

Through the wide deserts of Elysian air?

The violet dies not till it’--