Percy Bysshe Shelley

Lines: 'Far, far away

your false spring

Memories promise emotional warmth but deliver nothing—they're a "false spring" that can't actually thaw "heart's winter." The possessive "your" blames the memories themselves for lying.

I
Far, far away, O ye
Halcyons of Memory,

Halcyons of Memory

Halcyons are kingfisher birds from Greek myth that calmed seas to nest in winter—a symbol of impossible peace. Shelley's telling memories to find someone else's mind to haunt.

Seek some far calmer nest
Than this abandoned breast!

your false spring

Memories promise emotional warmth but deliver nothing—they're a "false spring" that can't actually thaw "heart's winter." The possessive "your" blames the memories themselves for lying.

No news of your false spring5
To my heart's winter bring,
Once having gone, in vain
Ye come again.
II
Vultures, who build your bowers

Vultures, who build

Architectural metaphor: vultures don't just circle, they construct homes in future time. The poem switches from banishing past (halcyons) to feeding future (vultures) on the same emotional corpses.

High in the Future's towers,10
Withered hopes on hopes are spread!

choked by the dead

"Dying joys, choked by the dead"—new hopes strangled by accumulated failures. The vultures eat a self-perpetuating pile of disappointment where each dead hope kills the next.

Dying joys, choked by the dead,
Will serve your beaks for prey
Many a day.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Architecture of Despair

Shelley structures depression as a real estate problem. Stanza I evicts the past (memories as halcyons seeking nests), stanza II feeds the future (vultures building in towers). Both bird species get architectural verbs—"seek some nest," "build your bowers." The speaker's mind is property to be colonized, and he's discovered he can't control the tenants.

The halcyon myth matters here. According to Ovid, Alcyone's grief over her drowned husband was so profound the gods transformed the couple into kingfishers and calmed the winter seas for their nesting. Shelley inverts this: he's denying the calming miracle. His memories can't bring peace, their "spring" is "false," and his heart stays winter. The classical reference to divine mercy becomes a rejection letter.

The vulture stanza does something structurally weird: it's all one sentence describing what the vultures will eat, but never actually tells them to do anything (unlike "Seek" in stanza I). The future isn't being commanded—it's being predicted. Shelley knows exactly what's coming: "Withered hopes on hopes are spread" like a buffet table, each layer of failure feeding scavengers "Many a day." The phrase "choked by the dead" is particularly brutal—even dying hopes can't finish dying because the corpses are piled too high.

What Changed Between Stanzas

Stanza I still has agency: the speaker commands memories to leave ("Seek some far calmer nest"). He's setting boundaries, however bitterly. The tone is dismissive—"Once having gone, in vain / Ye come again"—like slamming a door on unwanted guests.

Stanza II surrenders. No commands to the vultures, just observation of their inevitable feast. The shift from halcyons (beautiful, mythologically blessed) to vultures (carrion birds, no redemption narrative) marks the collapse from grief-with-dignity to simple rot. The Future's towers suggest time as a vertical structure the speaker must look up at, built on heights he can't reach, populated by birds that eat decay.

The meter tightens this despair. Both stanzas use trochaic lines (stressed-unstressed), but stanza II adds more compressed phrases: "Dying joys, choked by the dead" crams three states of failure into one line. The final couplet—"Will serve your beaks for prey / Many a day"—has a nursery-rhyme simplicity that makes the endlessness worse. Depression as a children's song that never stops playing.