Page:Prometheus Unbound - Shelley.djvu/183

Rh Transversely dividing the stream of the storm; As an arrowy serpent, pursuing the form Of an elephant, bursts through the brakes of the waste. Black as a cormorant the screaming blast, Between ocean and heaven, like an ocean, past, Till it came to the clouds on the verge of the world Which, based on the sea and to heaven upcurl'd, Like columns and walls did surround and sustain The dome of the tempest; it rent them in twain, As a flood rends its barriers of mountainous crag: And the dense clouds in many a ruin and rag, Like the stones of a temple ere earthquake has past, Like the dust of its fall, on the whirlwind are cast; They are scatter'd like foam on the torrent; and where The wind has burst out from the chasm, from the air Of clear morning, the beams of the sunrise flow in, Unimpeded, keen, golden, and crystalline, Banded armies of light and of air; at one gate They encounter, but interpenetrate. And that breach in the tempest is widening away, And the caverns of clouds are torn up by the day, And the fierce winds are sinking with weary wings Lulled by the motion and murmurings, M 2