Percy Bysshe Shelley, "To Wordsworth"

To Wordsworth
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine	5
Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:	10
In honored poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, —
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.



bark — a ship, in this case a small ship or boat that may be driven by sails or oars

that thou shouldst cease to be — not as in death, but effectively “that having been the way I described, that you would have changed from the man I have described.” Although Wordsworth was older than Shelley, he outlived the younger man by about twenty-eight years.