# The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (ed. Hutchinson, 1914)/Zucca

* THE ZUCCA.
* I.
* Summer was dead and Autumn was expiring,
* And infant Winter laughed upon the land
* All cloudlessly and cold;—when I, desiring
* More in this world than any understand,
* Wept o’er the beauty, which like sea retiring,
* Had left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand
* Of my poor heart, and o’er the grass and flowers
* Pale for the falsehood of the flattering hours.
* II.
* Summer was dead, but I yet lived to weep
* The instability of all but weeping;
* And on the earth lulled in her winter sleep
* I woke, and envied her as she was sleeping.
* Too happy Earth! over thy face shall creep
* The wakening vernal airs, until thou, leaping
* From unremembered dreams, shalt [[ ]] see
* No death divide thy immortality.
* III.
* I loved—O no, I mean not one of ye,
* Or any earthly one, though ye are dear
* As human heart to human heart may be;—
* I loved, I know not what—but this low sphere
* And all that it contains, contains not thee,
* Thou, whom seen no where, I feel everywhere,
* Dim object of my soul’s idolatry.
* Veiled art thou like—
* IV.
* By Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou flowest,
* Neither to be contained, delayed, or hidden,
* Making divine the loftiest and the lowest,
* When for a moment thou art not forbidden
* To live within the life which thou bestowest;
* And leaving noblest things vacant and chidden,
* Cold as a corpse after the spirit’s flight,
* Blank as the sun after the birth of night.
* V.
* In winds, and trees, and streams, and all things common,
* In music and the sweet unconscious tone
* Of animals, and voices which are human,
* Meant to express some feelings of their own;
* In the soft motions and rare smile of woman,
* In flowers and leaves, and in the fresh grass shewn,
* Or dying in the autumn, I the most
* Adore thee present or lament thee lost.
* VI.
* And thus I went, lamenting when I saw
* A plant upon the river’s margin lie,
* Like one who loved beyond his Nature’s law,
* And in despair had cast him down to die;
* Its leaves which had outlived the frost, the thaw
* Had blighted as a heart which hatred’s eye
* Can blast not, but which pity kills; the dew
* Lay on its spotted leaves like tears too true.
* VII.
* The Heavens had wept upon it, but the Earth
* Had crushed it on her unmaternal breast.
* VIII.
* I bore it to my chamber, and I planted
* It in a vase full of the lightest mould;
* The winter beams which out of Heaven slanted
* Fell through the window panes, disrobed of cold,
* Upon its leaves and flowers; the star which panted
* In evening for the Day, whose car has rolled
* Over the horizon’s wave, with looks of light
* Smiled on it from the threshold of the night.
* IX.
* The mitigated influences of air
* And light revived the plant, and from it grew
* Strong leaves and tendrils, and its flowers fair,
* Full as a cup with the vine’s burning dew,
* O’erflowed with golden colours; an atmosphere
* Of vital warmth infolded it anew,
* And every impulse sent to every part
* The unbeheld pulsations of its heart.
* X.
* Well might the plant grow beautiful and strong,
* Even if the sun and air had smiled not on it;
* For one wept o’er it all the winter long
* Tears pure as Heaven’s rain, which fell upon it
* Hour after hour; for sounds of softest song
* Mixed with the stringed melodies that won it
* To leave the gentle lips on which it slept,
* Had loosed the heart of him who sat and wept.
* XI.
* Had loosed his heart, and shook the leaves and flowers
* On which he wept, the while the savage storm
* Waked by the darkest of December’s hours
* Was raving round the chamber hushed and warm;
* The birds were shivering in their leafless bowers,
* The fish were frozen in the pools, the form
* Of every summer plant was dead [[ ]]
* Whilst this * * *
* January, 1822.

## Notes

* ↑ Zucca is Italian for pumpkin.