Robert Bridges, ed. (1844–1930). The Spirit of Man: An Anthology. 1916. | | | | From Prometheus, i, 1 |
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) |
| | PANTHEA LOOK, 1 sister, where a troop of spirits gather, | |
| Like flocks of clouds in spring’s delightful weather, | |
| Thronging in the blue air! | |
| |
IONE And see! more come, | |
| Like fountain-vapours when the winds are dumb, | 5 |
| That climb up the ravine in scatter’d lines. | |
| And hark! is it the music of the pines? | |
| Is it the lake? Is it the waterfall? | |
| |
PANTHEA ’Tis something sadder, sweeter far than all. | |
| |
CHORUS OF SPIRITS From unremember’d ages we | 10 |
| Gentle guides and guardians be | |
| Of heaven-oppressed mortality: | |
| And we breathe, and sicken not, | |
| The atmosphere of human thought;— | |
| Be it dim and dank and grey | 15 |
| Like a storm-extinguish’d day, | |
| Travel’d o’er by dying gleams; | |
| Be it bright as all between | |
| Cloudless skies and windless streams, | |
| Silent, liquid, and serene;— | 20 |
| As the birds within the wind, | |
| As the fish within the wave, | |
| As the thoughts of man’s own mind | |
| Float thro’ all above the grave; | |
| We make there our liquid lair, | 25 |
| Voyaging cloudlike and unpent | |
| Through the boundless element … | |
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