The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (ed. Hutchinson, 1914)/Passage of the Apennines
PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES
[Composed May 4, 1818. Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. There is a copy amongst the Shelley MSS. at the Bodleian Library, which supplies the last word of the fragment.]
Listen, listen, Mary mine,
To the whisper of the Apennine,
It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar,
Or like the sea on a northern shore,
Heard in its raging ebb and flow 5
By the captives pent in the cave below.
The Apennine in the light of day
Is a mighty mountain dim and gray,
Which between the earth and sky doth lay;
But when night comes, a chaos dread 10
On the dim starlight then is spread.
And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm,
Shrouding . . .
To the whisper of the Apennine,
It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar,
Or like the sea on a northern shore,
Heard in its raging ebb and flow 5
By the captives pent in the cave below.
The Apennine in the light of day
Is a mighty mountain dim and gray,
Which between the earth and sky doth lay;
But when night comes, a chaos dread 10
On the dim starlight then is spread.
And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm,
Shrouding . . .