To the Nile by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The speaker describes rains, mountain snow, and waters driven toward the Nile’s floods over Egypt, where both sustaining fruits and poisons arise. A closing warning compares knowledge’s effects on humanity to the flood’s effects on Egypt.
By Percy Bysshe Shelley · Genre: Sonnet, Nature Poetry, Philosophical Poetry · 156 words
First lines
Month after month the gathered rains descend / Drenching yon secret Aethiopian dells, / And from the desert's ice-girt pinnacles / Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend / On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend. / Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells / By Nile's aereal urn, with rapid spells / Urging those waters to their mighty end. / O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level / And they are thine, O Nile-and well thou knowest / That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil / And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest. / Beware, O Man-for knowledge must to thee, / Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.
Genres
- Sonnet — Fourteen rhymed lines turn from the Nile’s waters to a concluding couplet warning humanity about knowledge.
- Nature Poetry — Rain, mountain snow, storms, and river floods form the poem’s account of waters reaching Egypt.
- Philosophical Poetry — The closing warning compares knowledge to a flood that supports life while also producing harmful effects.
Tags
rivers · floods · Egypt · knowledge · rain · sonnet
What this Textopian page supports
To the Nile is listed on Textopian as a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, dated Date unknown.
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- Work type: Poem
- Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Sonnet, Nature Poetry, Philosophical Poetry
- Length: 156 words
- Structure: 1 section, 1 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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