Poetry Sunday: Lines: The cold earth slept below by Percy Bysshe Shelley

This melancholy poem by the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley is evocative of winter and loss. He was inspired to write it in response to the death of his beloved wife. I feel the cold and his sadness just from reading it.

Lines: The cold earth slept below

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The cold earth slept below; 

         Above the cold sky shone; 

                And all around, 

                With a chilling sound, 

From caves of ice and fields of snow 

The breath of night like death did flow 

                Beneath the sinking moon. 

The wintry hedge was black; 

         The green grass was not seen; 

                The birds did rest 

                On the bare thorn’s breast, 

Whose roots, beside the pathway track, 

Had bound their folds o’er many a crack 

                Which the frost had made between. 

Thine eyes glow’d in the glare 

         Of the moon’s dying light; 

                As a fen-fire’s beam 

                On a sluggish stream 

Gleams dimly—so the moon shone there, 

And it yellow’d the strings of thy tangled hair, 

                That shook in the wind of night. 

The moon made thy lips pale, beloved; 

         The wind made thy bosom chill; 

                The night did shed 

                On thy dear head 

Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie 

Where the bitter breath of the naked sky 

                Might visit thee at will.