Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

The awful shadow of some unseen Power

        Floats though unseen among us; visiting

        This various world with as inconstant wing

As summer winds that creep from flower to flower;

Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,

            It visits with inconstant glance

            Each human heart and countenance;

Like hues and harmonies of evening,

            Like clouds in starlight widely spread,

            Like memory of music fled,

            Like aught that for its grace may be

Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
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Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate

        With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon

        Of human thought or form, where art thou gone?

Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,

This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?

            Ask why the sunlight not for ever

            Weaves rainbows o’er yon mountain-river,

Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,

            Why fear and dream and death and birth

            Cast on the daylight of this earth

            Such gloom, why man has such a scope

For love and hate, despondency and hope?
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Listen to Vincent Price read this poem