Lines: The cold earth slept below
Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 (Horsham) – 1822 (Lerici)
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, belov{`e}d;
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.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 17, 2023
- 50 sec read
- 250 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AXBBAAX CDEECCD FGHHFFG XIJJKKI |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,002 |
Words | 161 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 7, 7, 7, 7 |
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"Lines: The cold earth slept below" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/29154/lines:-the-cold-earth-slept-below>.
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