The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (ed. Hutchinson, 1914)/To the Nile
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POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818
TO THE NILE
['Found by Mr. Townshend Meyer among the papers of Leigh Hunt, [and] published in the St. James's Magazine for March, 1876.' (Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B.; P. W. of P. B. S., Library Edition, 1876, vol. iii, p. 410.) First included among Shelley's poetical works in Mr. Forman's Library Edition, where a facsimile of the MS. is given. Composed February 4, 1818. See Complete Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Glasgow, 1901, vol. iv, p. 76.]
Month after month the gathered rains descend
Drenching yon secret Aethiopian dells,
And from, the desert's ice-girt pinnacles
Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend
On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend. 5
Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells
By Nile's aëreal urn, with rapid spells
Urging those waters to their mighty end.
O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level
And they are thine, Nile—and well thou knowest 10
That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil
And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest.
Beware, O Man—for knowledge must to thee,
Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.
Drenching yon secret Aethiopian dells,
And from, the desert's ice-girt pinnacles
Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend
On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend. 5
Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells
By Nile's aëreal urn, with rapid spells
Urging those waters to their mighty end.
O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level
And they are thine, Nile—and well thou knowest 10
That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil
And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest.
Beware, O Man—for knowledge must to thee,
Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.