“Love’s Philosophy” (1819)
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
After an unhappy first marriage to schoolmate Harriet Westbrook, Shelley wed Mary Godwin, who was the daughter of philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft and a talented author in her own right. (Mary [Godwin] Shelley went on to pen the novel Frankenstein.) His romantic and sociopolitical ideas influenced generations of poets and artists afterward, including the Victorian Pre-Raphaelites.
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—
See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
