"And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned / In an ocean of dreams without a sound; / Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress / The light sand which paves it, consciousness"
— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)
Work Title
Date
1820
Metaphor
"And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned / In an ocean of dreams without a sound; / Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress / The light sand which paves it, consciousness"
Metaphor in Context
And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned
In an ocean of dreams without a sound;
Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress
The light sand which paves it, consciousness;
(Only overhead the sweet nightingale
Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail,
And snatches of its Elysian chant
Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant);--
The Sensitive Plant was the earliest
Upgathered into the bosom of rest;
A sweet child weary of its delight,
The feeblest and yet the favourite,
Cradled within the embrace of Night.
(ll. 98-114)
In an ocean of dreams without a sound;
Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress
The light sand which paves it, consciousness;
(Only overhead the sweet nightingale
Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail,
And snatches of its Elysian chant
Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant);--
The Sensitive Plant was the earliest
Upgathered into the bosom of rest;
A sweet child weary of its delight,
The feeblest and yet the favourite,
Cradled within the embrace of Night.
(ll. 98-114)
Categories
Provenance
Reading Reisner, Thomas A. "Tablua Rasa: Shelley's Metaphor of Mind." Ariel IV.2 (197): 90-102. p. 95.
Citation
Published in Prometheus Unbound and Other Poems (1820).
Text from the University of Adelaide's "eBooks@Adelaide." http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/s/shelley/percy_bysshe/
Text from the University of Adelaide's "eBooks@Adelaide." http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/s/shelley/percy_bysshe/
Date of Entry
10/03/2006
