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I have no idea what this poetic fragment by Percy Shelley means or where he was going with it. Perhaps the Gentle Reader may have better luck:
Wake the serpent not -- lest he
Should not know the way to go, --
Let him crawl which yet lies sleeping
Through the deep grass of the meadow!
Not a bee shall hear him creeping,
Not a may-fly shall awaken
From its cradling blue-bell shaken,
Not the starlight as he's sliding
Through the grass with silent gliding.
1 comment:
I wonder if in fact what we have is an unresolved protasis, and he just never finished it.
"Let him but....[and then]".
Or maybe it is nonsense but "ravishing poetry", as Housman said of "Nymphs and Shepherds, dance no more".
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