Phantasies on a Stream



    And others came . . . Desires and Adorations,
    Winged Persuasions and veil'd Destinies,
    Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations
    Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;
    And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,
    And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
    Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,
    Came in slow pomp; the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley,
Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, 1821







images © 1997 by Randy Wang
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