To Wordsworth

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
   
Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know  
That things depart which never may return:  
Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow,  
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.  
These common woes I feel.  One loss is mine 5
Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.  
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine  
On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:  
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood  
Above the blind and battling multitude: 10
In honored poverty thy voice did weave  
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, —  
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,  
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.  
 
 
bark — a ship, in this case a small ship or boat that may be driven by sails or oars
 

that thou shouldst cease to be — not as in death, but effectively “that having been the way I described, that you would have changed.” Although Wordsworth was older than Shelley, he outlived the younger man by about twenty-eight years.