Poem by Bessie Rayner Parkes

Two Graves

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, drowned July 8, 1822.
MARY WOLSTONCRAFT SHELLEY, died Feb. 1, 1851.
In death they are not divided.

TWO graves within one year I saw,
Where sleep, a thousand miles apart,
Husband and wife, whose living law
Was but to know one soul, one heart.

He sleeps beneath the Roman rose
And violets, like his verse divine;
She, where the tenderest snowdrop blows,
Amidst the heather and the pine.

And yet we hope they are not here,
But where the heavenly lilies bloom,
And amaranth, to the angels dear,
Mocks our pale buds which deck the tomb.

There no dark cypress grows nor pine,
Where they, the husband and the wife,
Their long-dissevered lives entwine,
And dwell beneath the Tree of Life!

1. La Rose de Sens
2. Life’s River
3. Under the Olives
4. The Garden of the Palais Royal
5. A Carol for Willie

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