#title An Exhortation
#author Percy Bysshe Shelley
#SORTtopics poetry
#date 1820
#source https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Exhortation
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-03-14T23:54:16



Camelions feed on light and air:
<br>
Poets’ food is love and fame:
<br>
If in this wide world of care
<br>
Poets could but find the same
<br>
With as little toil as they,
<br>
Would they ever change their hue
<br>
As the light camelions do,
<br>
Suiting it to every ray
<br>
Twenty times a-day?

<br>
Poets are on this cold earth,
<br>
As camelions might be,
<br>
Hidden from their early birth
<br>
In a cave beneath the sea;
<br>
​ Where light is camelions change:
<br>
Where love is not, poets do:
<br>
Fame is love disguised: if few
<br>
Find either never think it strange
<br>
That poets range.

<br>
Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
<br>
A poet’s free and heavenly mind:
<br>
If bright camelions should devour
<br>
Any food but beams and wind,
<br>
They would grow as earthly soon
<br>
As their brother lizards are.
<br>
Children of a sunnier star,
<br>
Spirits from beyond the moon,
<br>
O, refuse the boon!