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possibly by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822) and possibly by James Augustus St. John (1795 - 1875)

Shall we roam, my love
Language: English 
Shall we roam, my love,
To the twilight grove,
When the moon is rising bright?
Oh, I'll whisper there, 
In the cool night air,
What I dare not in broad daylight!

I'll tell thee a part
Of the thoughts that start
To being when thou art nigh;
And thy beauty, more bright
Than the stars' soft light,
Shall seem as a weft from the sky.

When the pale moonbeam
On tower and stream
Sheds a flood of silver sheen,
How I love to gaze
As the cold ray strays
O'er thy face, my heart's throned queen!

Wilt thou roam with me
To the restless sea,
And linger upon the steep,
And list to the flow
Of the waves below
How they toss and roar and leap?

Those boiling waves,
And the storm that raves
At night o'er their foaming crest,
Resemble the strife
That, from earliest life,
The passions have waged in my breast.

Oh, come then, and rove
To the sea or the grove,
When the moon is rising bright,
And I'll whisper there,
In the cool night air,
What I dare not in broad daylight.

About the headline (FAQ)

This poem might have been written by James Augustus St. John and published as a hoax, according to The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Volume 1, ed. by Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, Baltimore and London, The John Hopkins University Press, 2000. A discussion of the evidence for this position appears in the section "Lost Works" at the very end of the book (no pagination could be seen in Google Books).


Text Authorship:

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 36
Word count: 187