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(From Prometheus Unbound, Act II)
FIT throne for such a power! Magnificent! | |
| How glorious art thou, Earth! And if thou be | |
| The shadow of some spirit lovelier still, | |
| Though evil stain its work, and it should be | |
| Like its creation, weak yet beautiful, | 5 |
| I could fall down and worship that and thee. | |
| Even now my heart adoreth: Wonderful! | |
| Look, sister, ere the vapor dim thy brain: | |
| Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist, | |
| As a lake, paving in the morning sky, | 10 |
| With azure waves which burst in silver light, | |
| Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on | |
| Under the curdling winds, and islanding | |
| The peak whereon we stand, midway, around, | |
| Encinctured by the dark and blooming forests, | 15 |
| Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumined caves, | |
| And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist; | |
| And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains | |
| From icy spires of sunlike radiance fling | |
| The dawn, as lifted Ocean’s dazzling spray, | 20 |
| From some Atlantic islet scattered up, | |
| Spangles the wind with lamp-like water-drops, | |
| The vale is girdled with their walls, a howl | |
| Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines | |
| Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast, | 25 |
| Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow! | |
| The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass, | |
| Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there | |
| Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds | |
| As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth | 30 |
| Is loosened, and the nations echo round, | |
| Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now. | |
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