Whilst its mother's is lustreless: "Smile not, my child,

But sleep deeply and sweetly, and so be beguiled
Of the pang that awaits us, whatever that be,
So dreadful since thou must divide it with me!
Dream, sleep! This pale bosom, thy cradle and
bed,

Will it rock thee not, infant? 'Tis beating with dread!

Alas! what is life, what is death, what are we, That when the ship sinks we no longer may be? What! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no more?

To be after life what we have been before?

Not to touch those sweet hands, not to look on those eyes,

Those lips, and that hair, all that smiling disguise Thou yet wearest, sweet spirit, which I, day by day,

Have so long called my child, but which now fades

away

Like a rainbow, and I the fallen shower?" Lo! the ship

Is settling, it topples, the leeward ports dip;
The tigers leap up when they feel the slow brine
Crawling inch by inch on them; hair, ears, limbs,
and eyne

Stand rigid with horror; a loud, long, hoarse cry
Bursts at once from their vitals tremendously,
And 'tis borne down the mountainous vale of the

wave,

Rebounding, like thunder, from crag to cave, 87 all the, Harvard MS.

Mixed with the clash of the lashing rain,
Hurried on by the might of the hurricane.
The hurricane came from the west, and passed on
By the path of the gate of the eastern sun,
Transversely dividing the stream of the storm;
As an arrowy serpent, pursuing the form

Of an elephant, bursts through the brakes of the waste.

Black as a cormorant the screaming blast,
Between ocean and heaven, like an ocean, passed,
Till it came to the clouds on the verge of the
world

Which, based on the sea and to heaven upcurled, Like columns and walls did surround and sustain The dome of the tempest; it rent them in twain, As a flood rends its barriers of mountainous crag; And the dense clouds in many a ruin and rag, Like the stones of a temple ere earthquake has passed,

Like the dust of its fall, on the whirlwind are cast;

They are scattered like foam on the torrent; and where

The wind has burst out through the chasm, from the air

Of clear morning the beams of the sunrise flow in,
Unimpeded, keen, golden, and crystalline,
Banded armies of light and of air; at one gate
They encounter, but interpenetrate.

And that breach in the tempest is widening away,
And the caverns of cloud are torn up by the day,

122 cloud, Harvard MS., Mrs. Shelley, 18391 || clouds, Shelley,

1820.

And the fierce winds are sinking with weary

wings,

Lulled by the motion and murmurings

And the long glassy heave of the rocking sea,
And overhead glorious, but dreadful to see,
The wrecks of the tempest, like vapors of gold,
Are consuming in sunrise. The heaped waves
behold

The deep calm of blue heaven dilating above,
And, like passions made still by the presence of
Love,

Beneath the clear surface reflecting it slide
Tremulous with soft influence; extending its tide
From the Andes to Atlas, round mountain and
isle,

Round sea-birds and wrecks, paved with heaven's azure smile,

The wide world of waters is vibrating. Where Is the ship? On the verge of the wave where it lay

One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray

With a sea-snake. The foam and the smoke of the battle

Stain the clear air with sunbows. The jar, and the rattle

Of solid bones crushed by the infinite stress
Of the snake's adamantine voluminousness;
And the hum of the hot blood that spouts and
rains

Where the gripe of the tiger has wounded the veins,

Swollen with rage, strength, and effort; the whirl and the splash

As of some hideous engine whose brazen teeth smash

The thin winds and soft waves into thunder; the

screams

And hissings, crawl fast o'er the smooth oceanstreams,

Each sound like a centipede. Near this commo

tion

A blue shark is hanging within the blue ocean,
The fin-winged tomb of the victor. The other
Is winning his way from the fate of his brother,
To his own with the speed of despair. Lo! a boat
Advances; twelve rowers with the impulse of
thought

Urge on the keen keel, — the brine foams. At the

stern

Three marksmen stand levelling. Hot bullets burn

In the breast of the tiger, which yet bears him on
To his refuge and ruin. One fragment alone
'Tis dwindling and sinking, 'tis now almost gone -
Of the wreck of the vessel peers out of the sea.
With her left hand she grasps it impetuously,
With her right hand she sustains her fair infant.
Death, Fear,

Love, Beauty, are mixed in the atmosphere,
Which trembles and burns with the fervor of dread
Around her wild eyes, her bright hand, and her
head,

Like a meteor of light o'er the waters! her child Is yet smiling, and playing, and murmuring; so smiled

160 impetuously, Shelley, 1820 || convulsively, Harvard MS.

The false deep ere the storm. Like a sister and

brother

The child and the ocean still smile on each other, Whilst

THE CLOUD

I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest 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, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast ;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

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,

The Cloud. Published with Prometheus Unbound.
6 buds, Mrs. Shelley, 18391 || birds, Shelley, 1820.