Garden Bloggers Muse Day, September

Love’s Philosophy

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 another’s being mingle–
Why not I with thine?

See, the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower could 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?

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, was a contemporary of John Keats and Lord Byron. His second marriage was to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein. He remains famous for the lyrical quality of his poetry, and he was idolized by the generation of poets who came after him. Shelley drowned in a boating accident just before he turned thirty.  Although the centerpiece of a memorial to Shelley at University College, Oxford, shows a reclining statue of his body washed upon the shore, his body was actually cremated when found, and he was kicked out of Oxford when he was a student.  If you’d like to hear the poem recited, then take a listen below.

Garden Bloggers’ Muse Day is sponsored by Carolyn Gail of Sweet Home and Garden Chicago.  Thanks Carolyn.