Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

      At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore

      He paused, a wide and melancholy waste

      Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged

      His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there,

      Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds.

      It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings

      Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course

      High over the immeasurable main.

      His eyes pursued its flight:—‘Thou hast a home,

      Beautiful bird! thou voyagest to thine home,

      Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck

      With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes

      Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy.

      And what am I that I should linger here,

      With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes,

      Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned

      To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers

      In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven

      That echoes not my thoughts?’ A gloomy smile

      Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips.

      For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly

      Its precious charge, and silent death exposed,

      Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure,

      With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.

      Startled by his own thoughts, he looked around.

      There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight

      Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind.

      A little shallop floating near the shore

      Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze.

      It had been long abandoned, for its sides

      Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints

      Swayed with the undulations of the tide.

      A restless impulse urged him to embark

      And meet lone Death on the drear ocean’s waste;

      For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves

      The slimy caverns of the populous deep.

      The day was fair and sunny; sea and sky

      Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind

      Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves.

      Following his eager soul, the wanderer

      Leaped in the boat; he spread his cloak aloft

      On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat,

      And felt the boat speed o’er the tranquil sea

      Like a torn cloud before the hurricane.

      As one that in a silver vision floats

      Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds

      Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly

      Along the dark and ruffled waters fled

      The straining boat. A whirlwind swept it on,

      With fierce gusts and precipitating force,

      Through the white ridges of the chafèd sea.

      The waves arose. Higher and higher still

      Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest’s scourge

      Like serpents struggling in a vulture’s grasp.

      Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war

      Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast

      Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven

      With dark obliterating course, he sate:

      As if their genii were the ministers

      Appointed to conduct him to the light

      Of those beloved eyes, the Poet sate,

      Holding the steady helm. Evening came on;

      The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues

      High ’mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray

      That canopied his path o’er the waste deep;

      Twilight, ascending slowly from the east,

      Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks

      O’er the fair front and radiant eyes of Day;

      Night followed, clad with stars. On every side

      More horribly the multitudinous streams

      Of ocean’s mountainous waste to mutual war

      Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock

      The calm and spangled sky. The little boat

      Still fled before the storm; still fled, like foam

      Down the steep cataract of a wintry river;

      Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave;

      Now leaving far behind the bursting mass

      That fell, convulsing ocean; safely fled—

      As if that frail and wasted human form

      Had been an elemental god.

      At midnight

      The moon arose; and lo! the ethereal cliffs

      Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone

      Among the stars like sunlight, and around

      Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves

      Bursting and eddying irresistibly

      Rage and resound forever.—Who shall save?—

      The boat fled on,—the boiling torrent drove,—

      The crags closed round with black and jagged arms,

      The shattered mountain overhung the sea,

      And faster still, beyond all human speed,

      Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave,

      The little boat was driven. A cavern there

      Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths

      Ingulphed the rushing sea. The boat fled on

      With unrelaxing speed.—‘Vision and Love!’

      The Poet cried aloud, ‘I have beheld

      The path of thy departure. Sleep and death

      Shall not divide us long.’

      The boat pursued

      The windings of the cavern. Daylight shone

      At length upon that gloomy river’s flow;

      Now, where the fiercest war among the waves

      Is calm, on the unfathomable stream

      The boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, riven,

      Exposed those black depths to the azure sky,

      Ere yet the flood’s enormous volume fell

      Even to the base of Caucasus, with sound

      That shook the everlasting rocks, the mass

      Filled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm;

      Stair