Love’s Philosophy

by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822)

The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever,
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another’s being mingle;—
Why not I with thine?

See! the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven,
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;—
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

“The engraved portraits of Bysshe, which have hitherto been published, are frightful pictures for a spiritual-looking being, like the poet. Yet I do not expect that my ideal will ever be created, because he must have altered from boy to man. His forehead was white, the eyes deep blue,—darker than John’s. He had an eccentric quantity of hair, in those days, when he came by stealth to Field Place; and Elizabeth, on one occasion, made him sit down to have it cut, and be made to look like a Christian.” from Anecdote biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley edited by Richard Henry Stoddard

Percy Bysshe Shelley Contemporaries
John Clare
William Cullen Bryant
John Keats
Samuel Lover