Lyric Poem · Nature
To Ireland
1Bear witness, Erin! when thine injured isle
2Sees summer on its verdant pastures smile,
3Its cornfields waving in the winds that sweep
4The billowy surface of thy circling deep!
5Thou tree whose shadow o'er the Atlantic gave
6Peace, wealth and beauty, to its friendly wave, its blossoms fade,
7And blighted are the leaves that cast its shade;
8Whilst the cold hand gathers its scanty fruit,
9Whose chillness struck a canker to its root.
10I could stand
11Upon thy shores, O Erin, and could count
12The billows that, in their unceasing swell,
13Dash on thy beach, and every wave might seem
14An instrument in Time the giant's grasp,
15To burst the barriers of Eternity.
16Proceed, thou giant, conquering and to conquer;
17March on thy lonely way! The nations fall
18Beneath thy noiseless footstep; pyramids
19That for millenniums have defied the blast,
20And laughed at lightnings, thou dost crush to nought.
21Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp,
22Is but the fungus of a winter day
23That thy light footstep presses into dust.
24Thou art a conqueror, Time; all things give way
25Before thee but the 'fixed and virtuous will';
26The sacred sympathy of soul which was
27When thou wert not, which shall be when thou perishest.
28...
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“To Ireland” by Percy Bysshe Shelley — quilloak.com/poems/to-ireland
Quick facts
- Poem
- To Ireland
- Poet
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Length
- 28 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Nature, Winter, Summer
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 28 lines · 3 stanzas of 1–18 lines
- Line length
- Lines run 9-12 syllables (median 10), consistent with pentameter. No single length dominates, which is normal once elision and contraction are in play.
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822
- Source record
- PoetryDBTo Ireland by percy-bysshe-shelley, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 72bd2133611ca83c…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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