glowed
The isle-sustaining ocean-flood, 10
A plane of light between two heavens of azure! 
Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre
Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure
Were to spare Death, had never made erasure;
But every living lineament was clear 15
As in the sculptor’s thought; and there
The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy, and pine,
Like winter leaves o’ergrown by moulded snow,
Seemed only not to move and grow
Because the crystal silence of the air 20
Weighed on their life; even as the Power divine
Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine.

NOTE: 
1 Pompeii.—­[SHELLEY’S NOTE.]

EPODE 2a.

Then gentle winds arose
With many a mingled close
Of wild Aeolian sound, and mountain-odours keen; 25
And where the Baian ocean
Welters with airlike motion,
Within, above, around its bowers of starry green,
Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves,
Even as the ever stormless atmosphere 30
Floats o’er the Elysian realm,
It bore me, like an Angel, o’er the waves
Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air
No storm can overwhelm. 
I sailed, where ever flows 35
Under the calm Serene
A spirit of deep emotion
From the unknown graves
Of the dead Kings of Melody. 
Shadowy Aornos darkened o’er the helm 40
The horizontal aether; Heaven stripped bare
Its depth over Elysium, where the prow
Made the invisible water white as snow;
From that Typhaean mount, Inarime,
There streamed a sunbright vapour, like the standard 45
Of some aethereal host;
Whilst from all the coast,
Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered
Over the oracular woods and divine sea
Prophesyings which grew articulate—­
They seize me—­I must speak them!—­be they fate! 50

NOTES:  25 odours B.; odour 1824. 42 depth B.; depths 1824. 45 sun-bright B.; sunlit 1824. 39 Homer and Virgil.—­[SHELLEY’S NOTE.]

STROPHE 1.

Naples! thou Heart of men which ever pantest
Naked, beneath the lidless eye of Heaven! 
Elysian City, which to calm enchantest
The mutinous air and sea! they round thee, even 55
As sleep round Love, are driven! 
Metropolis of a ruined Paradise
Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained! 
Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice
Which armed Victory offers up unstained 60
To Love, the flower-enchained! 
Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be,
Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free,
If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail,—­
Hail, hail, all hail! 65