Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/81

I was awaken’d by a shriek of woe;
And over me a mystic robe was thrown,
By viewless hands, and a bright Star did glow
Before my steps—the Snake then met his mortal foe.
XLVII.

Thou fearest not then the Serpent on thy heart?
Fear it! she said, with brief and passionate cry,
And spake no more: that silence made me start—
I look’d, and we were sailing pleasantly,
Swift as a cloud between the sea and sky;
Beneath the rising moon seen far away;
Mountains of ice, like sapphire, piled on high,
Hemming the horizon round, in silence lay
On the still waters—these we did approach alway.
XLVIII.

And swift and swifter grew the vessel’s motion,
So that a dizzy trance fell on my brain—
Wild music woke me; we had past the ocean
Which girds the pole, Nature’s remotest reign—
And we glode fast o’er a pellucid plain
Of waters, azure with the noon-tide day.
Ethereal mountains shone around—a Fane
Stood in the midst, girt by green isles which lay
On the blue sunny deep, resplendent far away.
XLIX.

It was a Temple, such as mortal hand
Has never built, nor ecstasy, nor dream
Rear’d in the cities of enchanted land:
’Twas likest Heaven, ere yet day’s purple stream
Ebbs o’er the western forest, while the gleam
Of the unrisen moon among the clouds
Is gathering—when with many a golden beam
The thronging constellations rush in crowds,
Paving with fire the sky and the marmoreal floods.
L.

Like what may be conceived of this vast dome,
When from the depths which thought can seldom pierce,
Genius beholds it rise, his native home,
Girt by the deserts of the Universe,
Yet, nor in painting’s light, or mightier verse,
Or sculpture’s marble language, can invest
That shape to mortal sense—such glooms immerse
That incommunicable sight, and rest
Upon the laboring brain and overburthen’d breast.
LI.

Winding among the lawny islands fair,
Whose bloomy forests starr’d the shadowy deep,
The wingless boat paused where an ivory stair