Page:Prometheus Unbound - Shelley.djvu/182

"Dream, sleep! This pale bosom, thy cradle and bed,
"Will it rock thee not, infant? 'Tis beating with dread!
"Alas! what is life, what is death, what are we,
"That when the ship sinks we no longer may be?
"What! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no more?
"To be after life what we have been before?
"Not to touch those sweet hands? Not to look on those eyes.
"Those lips, and that hair, all that smiling disguise
"Thou yet wearest, sweet spirit, which I, day by day,
"Have so long called my child, but which now fades away
"Like a rainbow, and I the fallen shower?" Lo! the ship
Is settling, it topples, the leeward ports dip;
The tygers leap up when they feel the slow brine
Crawling inch by inch on them, hair, ears, limbs, and eyne,
Stand rigid with horror; a loud, long, hoarse cry
Bursts at once from their vitals tremendously,
And 'tis borne down the mountainous vale of the wave,
Rebounding, like thunder, from crag to cave,
Mixed with the clash of the lashing rain,
Hurried on by the might of the hurricane:
The hurricane came from the west, and past on
By the path of the gate of the eastern sun,