The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 2 by Percy Bysshe Shelley
page 41 of 374 (10%)
page 41 of 374 (10%)
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From which they fled recalls them, thou art there!
3. Some say that gleams of a remoter world Visit the soul in sleep,--that death is slumber, _50 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 _55 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, _60 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 _65 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 tracts her there--how hideously Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high, _70 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 envelope once this silent snow? None can reply--all seems eternal now. _75 |
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