A Vision of the Sea

A Vision of the Sea by Percy Bysshe Shelley

After weeks becalmed at sea, a ship loses its crew to pestilence and a storm. As the vessel sinks, a mother holds her child while two escaped tigers struggle in the water; one fights a sea-snake, and marksmen in an approaching boat shoot the other. The unfinished narrative leaves the mother gripping a sinking fragment of wreckage, her child still smiling.

By Percy Bysshe Shelley · Genre: Narrative Poetry, Maritime Literature · 2,306 words

First lines

'Tis the terror of tempest. The rags of the sail / Are flickering in ribbons within the fierce gale: / From the stark night of vapours the dim rain is driven, / And when lightning is loosed, like a deluge from Heaven, / She sees the black trunks of the waterspouts spin / And bend, as if Heaven was ruining in, / Which they seemed to sustain with their terrible mass / As if ocean had sunk from beneath them: they pass / To their graves in the deep with an earthquake of sound, / And the waves and the thunders, made silent around, / Leave the wind to its echo. The vessel, now tossed / Through the low-trailing rack of the tempest, is lost / In the skirts of the thunder-cloud: now down the sweep / Of the wind-cloven wave to the chasm of the deep / It sinks, and the walls of the watery vale / Whose depths of dread calm are unmoved by the gale, / Dim mirrors of ruin, hang gleaming about; / While the surf, like a chaos of stars, like a rout / Of death-flames, like whirlpools of fire-flowing iron, / With splendour and terror the black ship environ, / Or like sulphur-flakes hurled from a mine of pale fire / In fountains spout o'er it. In many a spire / The pyramid-billows with white points of brine / In the cope of the lightning inconstantly shine, / As piercing the sky from the floor of the sea. / The great ship seems splitting! it cracks as a tree, / While an earthquake is splintering its root, ere the blast / Of the whirlwind that stripped it of branches has passed. / The intense thunder-balls which are raining from Heaven / Have shattered its mast, and it stands black and riven. / The chinks suck destruction. The heavy dead hulk / On the living sea rolls an inanimate bulk, / Like a corpse on the clay which is hungering to fold / Its corruption around it. Meanwhile, from the hold, / One deck is burst up by the waters below, / And it splits like the ice when the thaw-breezes blow / O'er the lakes of the desert! Who sit on the other? / Is that all the crew that lie burying each other, / Like the dead in a breach, round the foremast? Are those / Twin tigers, who burst, when the waters arose, / In the agony of terror, their chains in the hold; / (What now makes them tame, is what then made them bold; ) / Who crouch, side by side, and have driven, like a crank, / The deep grip of their claws through the vibrating plank / Are these all? Nine weeks the tall vessel had lain / On the windless expanse of the watery plain, / Where the death-darting sun cast no shadow at noon, / And there seemed to be fire in the beams of the moon, / Till a lead-coloured fog gathered up from the deep, / Whose breath was quick pestilence; then, the cold sleep / Crept, like blight through the ears of a thick field of corn, / O'er the populous vessel. And even and morn, / With their hammocks for coffins the seamen aghast / Like dead men the dead limbs of their comrades cast / Down the deep, which closed on them above and around, / And the sharks and the dogfish their grave-clothes unbound, / And were glutted like Jews with this manna rained down / From God on their wilderness. One after one / The mariners died; on the eve of this day, / When the tempest was gathering in cloudy array, / But seven remained. Six the thunder has smitten, / And they lie black as mummies on which Time has written / His scorn of the embalmer; the seventh, from the deck / An oak-splinter pierced through his breast and his back, / And hung out to the tempest, a wreck on the wreck. / No more? At the helm sits a woman more fair / Than Heaven, when, unbinding its star-braided hair, / It sinks with the sun on the earth and the sea. / She clasps a bright child on her upgathered knee; / It laughs at the lightning, it mocks the mixed thunder / Of the air and the sea, with desire and with wonder / It is beckoning the tigers to rise and come near, / It would play with those eyes where the radiance of fear / Is outshining the meteors; its bosom beats high, / The heart-fire of pleasure has kindled its eye, / While its mother's is lustreless. ‘Smile not, my child, / But sleep deeply and sweetly, and so be beguiled / Of the pang that awaits us, whatever that be, / So dreadful since thou must divide it with me! / Dream, sleep! This pale bosom, thy cradle and bed, / Will it rock thee not, infant? 'Tis beating with dread! / Alas! what is life, what is death, what are we, / That when the ship sinks we no longer may be? / What! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no more? / To be after life what we have been before? / Not to touch those sweet hands? Not to look on those eyes, / Those lips, and that hair,-all the smiling disguise / Thou yet wearest, sweet Spirit, which I, day by day, / Have so long called my child, but which now fades away / Like a rainbow, and I the fallen shower? '-Lo! the ship / Is settling, it topples, the leeward ports dip; / The tigers leap up when they feel the slow brine / Crawling inch by inch on them; hair, ears, limbs, and eyne, / Stand rigid with horror; a loud, long, hoarse cry / Bursts at once from their vitals tremendously, / And 'tis borne down the mountainous vale of the wave, / Rebounding, like thunder, from crag to cave, / Mixed with the clash of the lashing rain, / Hurried on by the might of the hurricane: / The hurricane came from the west, and passed on / By the path of the gate of the eastern sun, / 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, passed, / Till it came to the clouds on the verge of the world / Which, based on the sea and to Heaven upcurled, / 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 passed, / Like the dust of its fall, on the whirlwind are cast; / They are scattered like foam on the torrent; and where / The wind has burst out through 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 cloud are torn up by the day, / And the fierce winds are sinking with weary wings, / Lulled by the motion and murmurings / And the long glassy heave of the rocking sea, / And overhead glorious, but dreadful to see, / The wrecks of the tempest, like vapours of gold, / Are consuming in sunrise. The heaped waves behold / The deep calm of blue Heaven dilating above, / And, like passions made still by the presence of Love, / Beneath the clear surface reflecting it slide / Tremulous with soft influence; extending its tide / From the Andes to Atlas, round mountain and isle, / Round sea-birds and wrecks, paved with Heaven's azure smile, / The wide world of waters is vibrating. Where / Is the ship? On the verge of the wave where it lay / One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray / With a sea-snake. The foam and the smoke of the battle / Stain the clear air with sunbows; the jar, and the rattle / Of solid bones crushed by the infinite stress / Of the snake's adamantine voluminousness; / And the hum of the hot blood that spouts and rains / Where the gripe of the tiger has wounded the veins / Swollen with rage, strength, and effort; the whirl and the splash / As of some hideous engine whose brazen teeth smash / The thin winds and soft waves into thunder; the screams / And hissings crawl fast o'er the smooth ocean-streams, / Each sound like a centipede. Near this commotion, / A blue shark is hanging within the blue ocean, / The fin-winged tomb of the victor. The other / Is winning his way from the fate of his brother / To his own with the speed of despair. Lo! a boat / Advances; twelve rowers with the impulse of thought / Urge on the keen keel,-the brine foams. At the stern / Three marksmen stand levelling. Hot bullets burn / In the breast of the tiger, which yet bears him on / To his refuge and ruin. One fragment alone,- / 'Tis dwindling and sinking, 'tis now almost gone,- / Of the wreck of the vessel peers out of the sea. / With her left hand she grasps it impetuously. / With her right she sustains her fair infant. Death, Fear, / Love, Beauty, are mixed in the atmosphere, / Which trembles and burns with the fervour of dread / Around her wild eyes, her bright hand, and her head, / Like a meteor of light o'er the waters! her child / Is yet smiling, and playing, and murmuring; so smiled / The false deep ere the storm. Like a sister and brother / The child and the ocean still smile on each other, / Whilst-

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Tags

shipwreck · storms · maternal love · tigers · pestilence · survival at sea

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