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ReadingWillow structured literacy program for Australian students

Ode to Heaven

Percy Bysshe Shelley·1792–1822
Lines:58Movement:Romanticism
CHORUS OF SPIRITS: FIRST SPIRIT:Palace-roof of cloudless nights!Paradise of golden lights!Deep, immeasurable, vast,Which art now, and which wert thenOf the Present and the Past,Of the eternal Where and When,Presence-chamber, temple, home,Ever-canopying dome,Of acts and ages yet to come! Glorious shapes have life in thee,Earth, and all earth's company;Living globes which ever throngThy deep chasms and wildernesses;And green worlds that glide along;And swift stars with flashing tresses;And icy moons most cold and bright,And mighty suns beyond the night,Atoms of intensest light. Even thy name is as a god,Heaven! for thou art the abodeOf that Power which is the glassWherein man his nature sees.Generations as they passWorship thee with bended knees.Their unremaining gods and theyLike a river roll away:Thou remainest such--alway!-- SECOND SPIRIT:Thou art but the mind's first chamber,Round which its young fancies clamber,Like weak insects in a cave,Lighted up by stalactites;But the portal of the grave,Where a world of new delightsWill make thy best glories seemBut a dim and noonday gleamFrom the shadow of a dream! THIRD SPIRIT:Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scornAt your presumption, atom-born!What is Heaven? and what are yeWho its brief expanse inherit?What are suns and spheres which fleeWith the instinct of that SpiritOf which ye are but a part?Drops which Nature's mighty heartDrives through thinnest veins! Depart! What is Heaven? a globe of dew,Filling in the morning newSome eyed flower whose young leaves wakenOn an unimagined world:Constellated suns unshaken,Orbits measureless, are furledIn that frail and fading sphere,With ten millions gathered there,To tremble, gleam, and disappear.