{tumblr} James Clarke ~ Clouds 200

Originally published on New Year’s Day, 2014, on Tumblr.

Happy New Year … one more time …

The Cloud (excerpt)

                              —Percy Bysshe Shelley

I bind the Sun’s throne with a burning zone,

 And the Moon’s with a girdle of pearl;

The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,

         When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.

From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

         Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,

         The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march

         With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,

         Is the million-coloured bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,

         While the moist Earth was laughing below.

   I am the daughter of 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,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

         I arise and unbuild it again.

Christo Redentor by Harvey Mandel