The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelleyby Percy Bysshe Shelley

To the Nile

The Past

Passage of the Apennines

Composed May 4, 1818. Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. There is a copy amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, which supplies the last word of the fragment.

Listen, listen, Mary mine,
To the whisper of the Apennine,
It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar,
Or like the sea on a northern shore,
Heard in its raging ebb and flow 
By the captives pent in the cave below.
The Apennine in the light of day
Is a mighty mountain dim and gray,
Which between the earth and sky doth lay;
But when night comes, a chaos dread 
On the dim starlight then is spread,
And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm,
Shrouding...

Contents

To the Nile

The Past