Lines of gold

Theresa Gooda shares lines from Shelley’s poem, ‘The Sunset’

We’ve gone from snow to sunshine in an instant.

After a bitterly cold first few weeks of April, much of Sussex has enjoyed days of blue skies and uninterrupted sun followed by glorious sunsets. As wild flowers fill the hedgerows, perhaps the evenings call to mind the 'lines of gold' on the 'old dandelion's hoary beard', 'mingled with the shades of twilight' in Shelley's (1816) poem The Sunset:

There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold
Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points
Of the far level grass and nodding flowers
And the old dandelion's hoary beard,
And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay
On the brown massy woods -- and in the east
The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose
Between the black trunks of the crowded trees,
While the faint stars were gathering overhead--

It's not a cheery poem overall - dealing with the death of a young man and the yearning of his lover to follow him to peace in the tomb - but perhaps there is a desolate beauty to be found in Shelley's depiction of the natural world.