Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/35

That quivers to the passing breeze
Is less instinct with thee,—
Yet not the meanest worm.
That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead,
Less shares thy eternal breath.185
Spirit of Nature! thou
Imperishable as this glorious scene,
Here is thy fitting temple.
 
If solitude hath ever led thy steps
To the shore of the immeasurable sea,190
And thou hast lingered there
Until the sun's broad orb
Seemed resting on the fiery line of ocean.
Thou must have marked the braided webs of gold
That without motion hang195
Over the sinking sphere:
Thou must have marked the billowy mountain clouds,
Edged with intolerable radiancy,
Towering like rocks of jet
Above the burning deep:200
And yet there is a moment
When the sun's highest point
Peers like a star o'er ocean's western edge,
When those far clouds of feathery purple gleam
Like fairy lands girt by some heavenly sea:205
Then has thy rapt imagination soared
Where in the midst of all existing things
The temple of the mightiest Daemon stands.
 
Yet not the golden islands
That gleam amid yon flood of purple light,210
Nor the feathery curtains
That canopy the sun's resplendent couch,
Nor the burnished ocean waves
Paving that gorgeous dome,
So fair, so wonderful a sight215
As the eternal temple could afford.
The elements of all that human thought
Can frame of lovely or sublime, did join
To rear the fabric of the fane, nor aught
Of earth may image forth its majesty.220
Yet likest evening's vault that faëry hall,
As heaven low resting on the wave it spread
Its floors of flashing light,
Its vast and azure dome;
And on the verge of that obscure abyss225
Where crystal battlements o'erhang the gulf
Of the dark world, ten thousand spheres diffuse
Their lustre through its adamantine gates.
 
The magic car no longer moved;