“When the still voices die”: Percy Bysshe Shelley; poem and analysis

“When the still voices die”: Percy Bysshe Shelley; poem and analysis.

When the soft voices die (When Soft Voices Die) —whose full title is: Music: when the soft voices die (Music, When Soft Voices Die)—is a romantic poem by the English writer Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), composed in 1821 and published in the 1824 anthology: Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley ), with a preface by his wife, the writer Mary Shelley.

When the soft voices dieone of Percy Shelley’s best love poems, and undoubtedly one of the most representative of romanticism, expresses how some events and sensations, despite the passage of time, remain intact in memory.

When the soft voices die.
When Soft Voices Die, Percy Shelley (1792-1822)

When the soft voices die,
His music still vibrates in memory;
When the sweet violets get sick,
Its fragrance lingers in the senses.

The leaves of the rose bush, when the rose dies,
They pile up for the lover’s bed;
And so in your thoughts, when you’re gone,
love itself will sleep.

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 beloved’s bed;
And so your thoughts, when your art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

Percy Shelley

(1792-1822)

Gothic poems. I Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

More gothic literature:

The analysis, translation into Spanish and summary of the poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley: Music: when the soft voices die (Music, When Soft Voices Die), were performed by . For reproduction, write to us at