Poetic Pause: 'The Cloud' by P.B. Shelley.

If I would ever make a list of my favourite poems, Percy Bysshe Shelley's 'The Cloud' would certainly be on it.

Few poets have managed to evoke and animate nature like he did, with power, passion and imagination, presented in beautiful, rhythmic language and backed up by (early 19th century) scientific fact.

'The Cloud' is quite a long poem, so for this poetic pause I have chosen just the last stanza. I find it the most powerful - and empowering - part.

VI
I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky:
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain, when with never a stain
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, --
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise, and unbuild it again.
-- P.B. Shelley

You can read and listen to the entire poem on YouTube.

Enjoy!

Photo: landscape in the Czech Republic, 2005 by K.C. Woolf.

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