stream, The Spirit he loves remains; And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile,3 30 Whilst he is dissolving in rains. The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes, And his burning plumes outspread,4 Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,5 When the morning star shines dead; 35 As on the jag of a mountain crag, Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit In the light of its golden wings. And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit Sea beneath, 40 Its ardours of rest and of love, And the crimson pall? of eve may fall rich coverlet From the depth of Heaven above,
1. Either a weapon fashioned as a ball and chain 3. The upper part of the cloud remains exposed to or a tool for threshing grain. the sun. 2. I.e., atmospheric electricity, guiding the cloud 4. The sun's corona. 'Meteor eyes': as bright as a (line 18), discharges as lightning when 'lured' by burning meteor. the attraction of an opposite charge. 5. High, broken clouds, driven by the wind.
.
81 6 / PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
With wings folded I rest, on mine aery nest,
As still as a brooding dove.6
45 That orbed maiden with white fire laden
Whom mortals call the Moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
50 Which only the angels hear, May have broken the woof,? of my tent's thin roof, texture
The stars peep behind her, and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
55 When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.7
I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone0 belt, sash 60 And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanos are dim and the stars reel and swim
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
65 Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof?
The mountains its columns be!
The triumphal arch, through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the Air, are chained to my chair,0 chariot
70 Is the million-coloured Bow; The sphere-fire? above its soft colours wove sunlight
While the moist Earth was laughing below.
I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
75 I pass through the pores, of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die?
For after the rain, when with never a stain The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,
so Build up the blue dome of Air8?
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,9
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise, and unbuild it again.?
1820 1820
6. An echo of Milton's description of his Muse, Shelley indicates, results from the way 'sunbeams' identified with the Holy Spirit, who 'with mighty are filtered by the earth's atmosphere. wings outspread / Dove-like sat'st brooding on the 9. The memorial monument of the dead cloud is vast abyss' (Paradise Lost 1.20-21). the cloudless blue dome of the sky. (The point is 7. The stars reflected in the water. that a cenotaph is a monument that does not con8. The blue color of the sky. The phenomenon, as tain a corpse.)
