There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. ~ Ecclesiastes.
The pale, the cold, and the moony smile Which the meteor beam of a starless
Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle, Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light,
Is the flame of life so fickle and
That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.
O man! hold thee on in courage of soul Through the stormy shades of thy wordly way,
And the billows of clouds that around thee roll Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day,
Where hell and heaven shall leave thee
To the universe of destiny.
This world is the nurse of all we know, This world is the mother of all we feel,
And the coming of death is a fearful blow To a brain unencompass'd by nerves of steel:
When all that we know, or feel, or see,
Shall pass like an unreal mystery.
The secret things of the grave are there, Where all but this frame must surely be,
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear No longer will live, to hear or to
All that is great and all that is
In the boundless realm of unending change.
Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death? Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?
Who painteth the shadows that are beneath The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall
With the fears and the love for that which we see?
These stanzas occur in the Esdaile MS. along with others which Shelley intended to print with Queen Mab in 1813; but the text was revised before publication in 1816.
