Sleep keeps
most relentlessly
its precious charge
and silent death exposes
faithless perhaps as sleep
a shadowy lure
with doubtful smile
mocking
its own strange charms.

– percy at shadow of iris
strange charms
[Creatively adapted from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Alastor]

The solemn mood
of her pure mind
kindled through all her frame
a permeating fire
vast as her voice
and still she was not incapable
of tremulous sobs
as she became seduced
by her own pathos;
fair hands
swept the curved harp
as a symphony of strange proportions
branched into networks of veins
revealing a tale told in blood
that stretched back
into the ineffable past.

– percy at shadow of iris
the ineffable past
[Creatively adapted from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Alastor]

Such magic as compels
the charmed night
to render up your surrender.

You unveiled
lead me in
to your inmost sanctuary
where lost in love,
twilight ecstasies lure me
even further into a dream
from which I need not
awake.

– percy at shadow of iris
the charmed night
[Creatively adapted from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Alastor]

Mighty trees
rise up
from gnarled roots
and stretch their giant arms
upward toward the night
holding in place
the falling stars.

Tall spires of soft grass
throw shadows
down a rugged slope.

Gray rocks peep
from spare moss
and stem the tide
of a struggling brook.

– percy at shadow of iris
the falling stars
[Creatively adapted from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Alastor]

The wave of a dolphin’s fin
as it sets off
on a pensive task
reflects the shadowy form
of a vagrant bird
flying in the wanton wind;
this is the butterfly’s flutter
that gave birth to the thought
of you touching me.

– percy at shadow of iris
butterfly effect
[Creatively adapted from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Alastor]