315 Like a torn cloud before the hurricane.3
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 chafed 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 crashingDescending, 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, Entwin'd 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; torn asunder 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.4
At midnight The moon arose: and lo! the etherial cliffs5 Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone Among the stars like sunlight, and around
3. If the Poet's boat is being carried upstream on human race. But it is also possible that the starting the Oxus River from the Aral Sea to the river's point for this journey is the Caspian Sea, in which
headwaters in the Hindu Kush Mountains (the case the journey would end near the traditional site 'Indian Caucasus' that is the setting for Prome-of the Garden of Eden. theus Unbound), then the journey is taking him to 4. A god of one of the natural elements (see
a region that the naturalist Buffon (whom Shelley line 1).
often read) had identified as the cradle of the 5. I.e., cliffs high in the air.
.
ALASTOR / 75 1
355 Whose cavern'd base the whirlpools and the waves
Bursting and eddying irresistibly
Rage and resound for ever.?Who shall save??
The boat fled on,?the boiling torrent drove,?
The crags closed round with black and jagged arms,
360 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
365 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
370 The winding of the cavern. Day-light 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,
375 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;
380 Stair above stair the eddying waters rose, Circling immeasurably fast, and laved0 washed
With alternating dash the knarled roots
Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms
In darkness over it. I' the midst was left,
385 Reflecting, yet distorting every cloud, A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm.
Seized by the sway of the ascending stream,
