The tempest is his steed, he strides the air; And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare, "Heaven, hast thou secrets ? Man unveils me: I have none." 575 From its own wreck the thing it con templates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor re pent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory. 555 sholvers for 1 Demogorgon This is the day which down the void abysm, At the Earth-born's spell, yawns for Heaven's despotism, And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep: Love, from its awful throne of patient power In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour Of dead endurance, from the slippery, steep, And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs And folds over the world its healing wings. THE CLOUD Ily flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when In their noóndảy dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken 5 The sweet buds every one, When rocked to on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; 10 And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder. 560 rest 20 An empire o'er the disentangled doom. I sift the snow on the mountains below, And their great pines groan aghast; And all the night 'tis my pillow white, 15 While I sleep in the arms of the blast. Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers, Lightning my pilot sits In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, It struggles and howls at fits. Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, This pilot is guiding me, Lured by the love of the genii that move In the depths of the purple sea; Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Over the lakes and the plains, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream 570 25 To suffer woes which Hope thinks in finite: To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnip otent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates 30 65 35 an 70 40 75 And I all the while bask in heaven's blue The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel smile, and swim, Whilst he is dissolving in rains. When the whirlwinds my banner un furl. The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, eyes, And his burning plumes outspread, Over a torrent sea, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch through which I Which march With hurricane, fire, and snow, When the powers of the air are chained In the light of its golden wings. to my chair, And when sunset may breathe, from the Is the million-colored bow; lit sea beneath, The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove, Its ardors of rest and of love, While the moist earth was laughing And the crimson pall of eve may fall below. From the depth of heaven above, With wings folded I rest, on mine airy I am the daughter of earth and waier, And the nursling of the sky; nest, As still as a brooding dove. I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; That orbed maiden I change, but I cannot die. with white fire For after the rain when with never a laden, stain, Whom mortals call the Moon, Glides glimmering o'er my feece-like floor, The pavilion of heaven is bare, By the midnight breezes strewn; And the winds and sunbeams with their And wherever the beat of her unseen convex gleams, feet, Build up the blue dome of air, Which only the angels hear, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, May have broken the woof of my tent's Like a child from the womb, like a ghost thin roof, from the tomb, The stars peep behind her and peer; I arise and unbuild it again. Like a swarm of golden bees, ARETHUSA 55 (1820) Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me Arethusa arose on high, From her couch of snows Are each paved with the moon and In the Acroceraunian mountains, these. From cloud and from crag, With many a jag, I bind the sun's throne with a burning Shepherding her bright fountains. zone, She leapt down the rocks, And the moon's with a girdle of With her rainbow locks pearl. Streaming among the streams; 45 80 50 60 10 55 Her steps paved with green The downward ravine Which slopes to the western gleams; And gliding and springing She went, ever singing, The Earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her, As she lingered towards the deep. 15 GO Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearlèd thrones; Through the coral woods Of the weltering floods, Over heaps of unvalued stones; Through the dim beams Which amid the streams Weave a network of colored light; And under the caves, Where the shadowy waves Are as green as the forest's night, Outspeeding the shark, And the sword-fish dark, Under the ocean foam And up through the rifts Of the mountain clifts: They passed to their Dorian home. 65 20 70 25 Then Alpheus bold, On his glacier cold, And opened a chasm - with the spasm All Erymanthus shook. And the black south wind It unsealed behind And earthquake and thunder Did rend in sunder The beard and the hair Of the River-god were As he followed the light Of the fleet nymph's Aight To the brink of the Dorian deep. 30 80 35 And now from their fountains In Enna's mountains, Down one vale where the morning basks, 75 Like friends once parted Grown single-hearted, They ply their watery tasks. At sunrise they leap From their cradles steep At noontide they flow Through the woods below And the meadows of asphodel; And at night they sleep In the rocking deep Beneath the Ortygian shore, Like spirits that lie In the azure sky 85 40 90 45 "Oh save me! Oh guide me! And bid the deep hide me, For he grasps me now by the hair!" The loud Ocean heard, To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer; And under the water The Earth's white daughter Fled like a sunny beam; Behind her descended Her billows, unblended Like a gloomy stain On the emerald main Alpheus rushed behind, As an eagle pursuing A dove to its ruin Down the streams of the cloudy wind. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest The blue deep thou wingest, ever singest. Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soul in secret hour Aows her bower: 10 45 In the golden lightning Like a glowworm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aërial hue Like an unbodied joy whose race is just Among the flowers and grass which screen begun. it from the view: 15 50 |