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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Russia: Vol. XX. 1876–79.

Asiatic Russia: Caucasus, the Mountains

Caucasus

By Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

(From Prometheus Unbound, Act II)

FIT throne for such a power! Magnificent!

How glorious art thou, Earth! And if thou be

The shadow of some spirit lovelier still,

Though evil stain its work, and it should be

Like its creation, weak yet beautiful,

I could fall down and worship that and thee.

Even now my heart adoreth: Wonderful!

Look, sister, ere the vapor dim thy brain:

Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist,

As a lake, paving in the morning sky,

With azure waves which burst in silver light,

Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on

Under the curdling winds, and islanding

The peak whereon we stand, midway, around,

Encinctured by the dark and blooming forests,

Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumined caves,

And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist;

And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains

From icy spires of sunlike radiance fling

The dawn, as lifted Ocean’s dazzling spray,

From some Atlantic islet scattered up,

Spangles the wind with lamp-like water-drops,

The vale is girdled with their walls, a howl

Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines

Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast,

Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow!

The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass,

Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there

Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds

As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth

Is loosened, and the nations echo round,

Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now.