  I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain; And laugh as I pass in thunder. I sift the snow on the mountains below, And their great pines groan aghast; And all the night ’tis my pillow white, While I sleep in the arms of the blast. Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers Lightning, my pilot, sits; In a cavern under is fettered the thunder; It struggles and howls at fits. Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, This pilot is guiding me, Lured by the love of the In the depths of the purple sea; Over the lakes and the plains, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream. The spirit he loves remains; And I all the while bask in heaven’s blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains. I am the daughter of the earth and water, And the nursling of the sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain, when, with never a stain, The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams, Build up the blue dome of air,— I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, I rise and unbuild it again. Percy Bysshe Shelley. HELPS TO STUDY Make a list of the things the cloud does. Read aloud the lines in which the poet tells of each of these. Why is lightning spoken of as the pilot of the cloud? Where does it sit? Where is the thunder? How is the cloud “the daughter of the earth and water”? How “a nursling of the sky”? Explain “I change, but I cannot die.” A cenotaph is a memorial built to one who is buried elsewhere. Why should the clear sky be the cloud’s cenotaph? How does the reappearing of the cloud unbuild it? |
|
