(no subject)
from Epipsychidion, Shelley
But the chief marvel of the wilderness
Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how
None of the rustic island-people know:
'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height
It overtops the woods; but, for delight,
Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime
Had been invented, in the world's young prime,
Reared it, a wonder of that simple time,
An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house
Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.
It scarce seems now a wreck of human art,
But, as it were Titanic; in the heart
Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown
Out of the mountains, from the living stone,
Lifting itself in caverns light and high:
For all the antique and learned imagery
Has been erased, and in the place of it
The ivy and the wild-vine interknit
The volumes of their many-twining stems;
Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems
The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky
Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery
With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen,
Or fragments of the day's intense serene;--
Working mosaic on their Parian floors.
And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers
And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem
To sleep in one another's arms, and dream
Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we
Read in their smiles, and call reality.
Just belatedly remembered this while trying to think of anticipations of Thoreau's nature house, in turn anticipating Crowley's Little Bel Aire, Edgewood and to some extent Blackberry Jams. But of course Crowley wrote a play about Shelley and Byron around the time Engine Summer was germinating - someday need to go break into wherever one can read that.
Shelley wrote a few of these - the one in his prose fragment "The Assassins" may vie with this one as his best. Though the backwards boat in Prometheus Bound, one of his absolute moments, isn't so different.
An outdoors that is itself your home, Thoreau's most wistful dream. A non-stepmother nature. A place where matter and consciousness (Earth, Ocean?) don't even know they're two.
But the chief marvel of the wilderness
Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how
None of the rustic island-people know:
'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height
It overtops the woods; but, for delight,
Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime
Had been invented, in the world's young prime,
Reared it, a wonder of that simple time,
An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house
Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.
It scarce seems now a wreck of human art,
But, as it were Titanic; in the heart
Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown
Out of the mountains, from the living stone,
Lifting itself in caverns light and high:
For all the antique and learned imagery
Has been erased, and in the place of it
The ivy and the wild-vine interknit
The volumes of their many-twining stems;
Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems
The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky
Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery
With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen,
Or fragments of the day's intense serene;--
Working mosaic on their Parian floors.
And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers
And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem
To sleep in one another's arms, and dream
Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we
Read in their smiles, and call reality.
Just belatedly remembered this while trying to think of anticipations of Thoreau's nature house, in turn anticipating Crowley's Little Bel Aire, Edgewood and to some extent Blackberry Jams. But of course Crowley wrote a play about Shelley and Byron around the time Engine Summer was germinating - someday need to go break into wherever one can read that.
Shelley wrote a few of these - the one in his prose fragment "The Assassins" may vie with this one as his best. Though the backwards boat in Prometheus Bound, one of his absolute moments, isn't so different.
An outdoors that is itself your home, Thoreau's most wistful dream. A non-stepmother nature. A place where matter and consciousness (Earth, Ocean?) don't even know they're two.