An Exhortation

Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 (Horsham) – 1822 (Lerici)



Chameleons feed on light and air:
Poets' food is love and fame:
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they,
Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a day?

Poets are on this cold earth,
As chameleons might be,
Hidden from their early birth
In a cave beneath the sea;
Where light is, chameleons change:
Where love is not, poets do:
Fame is love disguised: if few
Find either, never think it strange
That poets range.

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
A poet's free and heavenly mind:
If bright chameleons should devour
Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are.
Children of a sunnier star,
Spirits from beyond the moon,
O, refuse the boon!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

45 sec read
117

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCDDCC EFEFGDDGG HIHIJKKJJ
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 802
Words 150
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 9, 9, 9

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is regarded by critics as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. more…

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