Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the belovèd's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley
Commentary:
"Music, When Soft Voices Die" is a major poem by , written in 1821 and first published in Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1824 in London by John and Henry L. Hunt with a preface by Mary Shelley.[1] The poem is one of the most anthologised, influential, and well-known of Shelley's works.[2][3]