Music, When Soft Voices Die
"Music, When Soft Voices Die" is a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, written in 1821 and first published in the collection Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1824 in London by John and Henry L. Hunt with a preface by Mary Shelley. The poem is one of the most anthologised, influential, and well-known of Shelley's works.
Text
Music, When Soft Voices Die
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 belovèd's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
Summary
The poem was published as "To---" in 1824 under Miscellaneous Poems in Posthumous Poems. It is composed of two stanzas containing two couplets each.The theme of the poem is the endurance of the memories of events and of sensations.
Mary Shelley edited the poems and wrote the preface to the collection. She described the poems: "Many of the Miscellaneous Poems, written on the spur of the occasion, and never retouched, I found among his manuscript books, and have carefully copied: I have subjoined, whenever I have been able, the date of their composition."