Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ode to Heaven

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 delights

Will make thy best glories seem

But a dim and noonday gleam

From the shadow of a dream!