Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

art pervaded with that ceaseless motion,

      Thou art the path of that unresting sound—

      Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee

      I seem as in a trance sublime and strange

      To muse on my own separate fantasy,

      My own, my human mind, which passively

      Now renders and receives fast influencings,

      Holding an unremitting interchange

      With the clear universe of things around;

      One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings

      Now float above thy darkness, and now rest

      Where that or thou art no unbidden guest,

      In the still cave of the witch Poesy,

      Seeking among the shadows that pass by

      Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,

      Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast

      From which they fled recalls them, thou art there!

      III.

      Some say that gleams of a remoter world

      Visit the soul in sleep, that death is slumber,

      And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber

      Of those who wake and live.—I look on high;

      Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled

      The veil of life and death? or do I lie

      In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep

      Spread far around and inaccessibly

      Its circles? For the very spirit fails,

      Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep

      That vanishes among the viewless gales!

      Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,

      Mont Blanc appears—still, snowy, and serene—

      Its subject mountains their unearthly forms

      Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between

      Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps,

      Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread

      And wind among the accumulated steeps;

      A desert peopled by the storms alone,

      Save when the eagle brings some hunter’s bone,

      And the wolf tracks her there—how hideously

      Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high,

      Ghastly, and scarred, and riven.—Is this the scene

      Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young

      Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea

      Of fire envelop once this silent snow?

      None can reply—all seems eternal now.

      The wilderness has a mysterious tongue

      Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,

      So solemn, so serene, that man may be,

      But for such faith, with Nature reconcil’d;

      Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal

      Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood

      By all, but which the wise, and great, and good

      Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.

      IV.

      The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,

      Ocean, and all the living things that dwell

      Within the dædal earth; lightning, and rain,

      Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane,

      The torpor of the year when feeble dreams

      Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep

      Holds every future leaf and flower;—the bound

      With which from that detested trance they leap;

      The works and ways of man, their death and birth,

      And that of him and all that his may be;

      All things that move and breathe with toil and sound

      Are born and die; revolve, subside, and swell.

      Power dwells apart in its tranquillity,

      Remote, serene, and inaccessible:

      And this, the naked countenance of earth,

      On which I gaze, even these primeval mountains

      Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep

      Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,

      Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice

      Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power

      Have piled: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,

      A city of death, distinct with many a tower

      And wall impregnable of beaming ice.

      Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin

      Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky

      Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing

      Its destined path, or in the mangled soil

      Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down

      From yon remotest waste, have overthrown

      The limits of the dead and living world,

      Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place

      Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil;

      Their food and their retreat for ever gone,

      So much of life and joy is lost. The race

      Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling

      Vanish, like smoke before the tempest’s stream,

      And their place is not known. Below, vast caves

      Shine in the rushing torrents’ restless gleam,

      Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling

      Meet in the vale, and one majestic River,

      The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever

      Rolls its loud waters to the ocean-waves,

      Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.

      V.

      Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:—the power is there,

      The still and solemn power of many sights,

      And many sounds, and much of life and death.

      In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,

      In the lone glare of day, the snows descend

      Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,

      Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,

      Or the star-beams dart through them. Winds contend

      Silently there, and heap the snow with breath

      Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home

      The voiceless lightning in these solitudes

      Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods

      Over