Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

      Or the mariner, worn and wan,

      Never thus could voyage on

      Day and night, and night and day,

      Drifting on his dreary way,

      With the solid darkness black

      Closing round his vessel’s track;

      Whilst above, the sunless sky,

      Big with clouds, hangs heavily,

      And behind, the tempest fleet

      Hurries on with lightning feet,

      Riving sail, and cord, and plank,

      Till the ship has almost drank

      Death from the o’er-brimming deep;

      And sinks down, down, like that sleep

      When the dreamer seems to be

      Weltering through eternity;

      And the dim low line before

      Of a dark and distant shore

      Still recedes, as ever still

      Longing with divided will,

      But no power to seek or shun,

      He is ever drifted on

      O’er the unreposing wave

      To the haven of the grave.

      What, if there no friends will greet;

      What, if there no heart will meet

      His with love’s impatient beat;

      Wander wheresoe’er he may,

      Can he dream before that day

      To find refuge from distress

      In friendship’s smile, in love’s caress?

      Then ’twill wreak him little woe

      Whether such there be or no:

      Senseless is the breast and cold

      Which relenting love would fold;

      Bloodless are the veins and chill

      Which the pulse of pain did fill;

      Every little living nerve

      That from bitter words did swerve

      Round the tortured lips and brow,

      Are like sapless leaflets now

      Frozen upon December’s bough.

      On the beach of a northern sea

      Which tempests shake eternally,

      As once the wretch there lay to sleep,

      Lies a solitary heap,

      One white skull and seven dry bones,

      On the margin of the stones,

      Where a few gray rushes stand,

      Boundaries of the sea and land:

      Nor is heard one voice of wail

      But the sea-mews, as they sail

      O’er the billows of the gale;

      Or the whirlwind up and down

      Howling, like a slaughtered town,

      When a king in glory rides

      Through the pomp of fratricides:

      Those unburied bones around

      There is many a mournful sound;

      There is no lament for him,

      Like a sunless vapour, dim,

      Who once clothed with life and thought

      What now moves nor murmurs not.

      Ay, many flowering islands lie

      In the waters of wide Agony:

      To such a one this morn was led

      My bark, by soft winds piloted—

      ’Mid the mountains Euganean

      I stood listening to the pæan

      With which the legioned rooks did hail

      The sun’s uprise majestical;

      Gathering round with wings all hoar,

      Through the dewy mist they soar

      Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven

      Bursts, and then, as clouds of even,

      Flecked with fire and azure, lie

      In the unfathomable sky,

      So their plumes of purple grain,

      Starr’d with drops of golden rain,

      Gleam above the sunlight woods,

      As in silent multitudes

      On the morning’s fitful gale

      Through the broken mist they sail,

      And the vapours cloven and gleaming

      Follow, down the dark steep streaming,

      Till all is bright, and clear, and still,

      Round the solitary hill.

      Beneath is spread like a green sea

      The waveless plain of Lombardy,

      Bounded by the vaporous air,

      Islanded by cities fair;

      Underneath Day’s azure eyes

      Ocean’s nursling, Venice lies,

      A peopled labyrinth of walls,

      Amphitrite’s destined halls,

      Which her hoary sire now paves

      With his blue and beaming waves.—

      Lo! the sun upsprings behind,

      Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined

      On the level quivering line

      Of the water crystalline;

      And before that chasm of light,

      As within a furnace bright,

      Column, tower, and dome, and spire,

      Shine like obelisks of fire,

      Pointing with inconstant motion

      From the altar of dark ocean

      To the sapphire-tinted skies;

      As the flames of sacrifice

      From the marble shrines did rise,

      As to pierce the dome of gold

      Where Apollo spoke of old.

      Sun-girt City, thou hast been

      Ocean’s child, and then his queen;

      Now is come a darker day,

      And thou soon must be his prey,

      If the power that rais’d thee here

      Hallow so thy watery bier.

      A less drear ruin then than now,

      With thy conquest-branded brow

      Stooping to the slave of slaves

      From thy throne, among the waves

      Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew

      Flies, as once before it flew,

      O’er thine isles depopulate,

      And all is in its ancient state,

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