The Question – Percy Bysshe Shelley,💥

I dreamed that,

as I wandered by the way,

Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,

And gentle odours led my steps astray,

Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring

Along a shelving bank of turf,

which lay Under a copse, and

hardly dared to fling

Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,

But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets, Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,

The constellated flower that never sets;

Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth

The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth

Its mother’s face with Heaven’s collected tears,

When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,

Green combined and the moonlight-coloured may,

And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew,

yet drained not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,

With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;

And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,

Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.

And nearer to the river’s trembling edge

There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white, And starry river buds among the sedge,

And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge With moonlight beams of their watery light;

And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green

As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

Meth ought that of these visionary flowers I made a nosegay, bound in such a way

That the same hues, which in their natural bowers

Were mingled or opposed, the like array Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours Within my hand,–and then, elate and gay,

I hastened to the spot whence I had come, That I might there present it!

Oh! to whom?

~ The Question – Percy Bysshe Shelley,

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