Explore "The Cloud" by Théophile Gautier on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Lightly in the azure air / Soars a cloud, emerging free / Like a virgin from the fair / Blue sea;
Or an Aphrodite sweet, / Floating upright and empearled / In the shell, about its feet / Foam-curled.
Undulating overhead, / How its changing body glows! / On its shoulder dawn hath spread / A rose.
Marble, snow, blend amorously / In that form by sunlight kissed -- / Slumbering Antiope / Of mist!
Sailing unto distant goal, / Over Alps and Apennines, / Sister of the woman-soul, / It shines;
Till my heart flies forth at last / On the wings of passion warm, / And I yearn to gather fast / Its form.
Reason saith: "Mere vapour thing! / Bursting bubble! Yet, we deem, / Holds this wind-distorted ring / Our dream."
Faith declareth: "Beauty seen, / Like a cloud, is but a thought, / Or a breath, that, having been, / Is naught.
"Have thy vision. Build it proud. / Let thy soul be full thereof. / Love a woman -- love a cloud -- / But love! "