PART III
THE SENSITIVE PLANT
591
That, garden sweet, that lady fair, 130
And all sweet shapes and odours there,
In truth have never passed away:
'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they.
And all sweet shapes and odours there,
In truth have never passed away:
'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they.
For love, and beauty, and delight,
There is no death nor change: their might 135
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.
There is no death nor change: their might 135
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.
CANCELLED PASSAGE
[This stanza followed III. 62-65 in the editio princeps, 1820, but was omitted by Mrs. Shelley from all editions from 1839 onwards. It is cancelled in the Harvard MS.]
Their moss rotted off them, flake by flake,
Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer's stake,
Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high,
Infecting the winds that wander by.
Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer's stake,
Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high,
Infecting the winds that wander by.
A VISION OF THE SEA
[Composed at Pisa early in 1820, and published with Prometheus Unbound in the same year. A transcript in Mrs. Shelley's handwriting is included in the Harvard MS. book, where it is dated 'April, 1820.']
'Tis the terror of tempest. The rags of the sail
Are flickering in ribbons within the fierce gale:
From the stark night of vapours the dim rain is driven,
And when lightning is loosed, like a deluge from Heaven,
She sees the black trunks of the waterspouts spin 5
And bend, as if Heaven was ruining[1] in,
Which they seemed to sustain with their terrible mass
As if ocean had sunk [2] from beneath them: they pass
To their graves in the deep with an earthquake of sound,
And the waves and the thunders, made silent around, 10
Leave the wind to its echo. The vessel, now tossed
Through the low-trailing rack of the tempest, is lost
In the skirts of the thunder-cloud: now down the sweep
Of the wind-cloven wave to the chasm of the deep
It sinks, and the walls of the watery vale 15
Whose depths of dread calm are unmoved by the gale,
Dim mirrors of ruin, hang gleaming about;
While the surf, like a chaos of stars, like a rout
Of death-flames, like whirlpools of fire-flowing iron,
With splendour and terror the black ship environ, 20
Or like sulphur-flakes hurled from a mine of pale fire
In fountains spout o'er it. In many a spire
Are flickering in ribbons within the fierce gale:
From the stark night of vapours the dim rain is driven,
And when lightning is loosed, like a deluge from Heaven,
She sees the black trunks of the waterspouts spin 5
And bend, as if Heaven was ruining[1] in,
Which they seemed to sustain with their terrible mass
As if ocean had sunk [2] from beneath them: they pass
To their graves in the deep with an earthquake of sound,
And the waves and the thunders, made silent around, 10
Leave the wind to its echo. The vessel, now tossed
Through the low-trailing rack of the tempest, is lost
In the skirts of the thunder-cloud: now down the sweep
Of the wind-cloven wave to the chasm of the deep
It sinks, and the walls of the watery vale 15
Whose depths of dread calm are unmoved by the gale,
Dim mirrors of ruin, hang gleaming about;
While the surf, like a chaos of stars, like a rout
Of death-flames, like whirlpools of fire-flowing iron,
With splendour and terror the black ship environ, 20
Or like sulphur-flakes hurled from a mine of pale fire
In fountains spout o'er it. In many a spire
