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Passage of the Apennines

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[Composed May 4, 1818. Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems",
1824. There is a copy amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian
Library, which supplies the last word of the fragment.]
Listen, listen, Mary mine,
To the whisper of the Apennine,
It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar,
Or like the sea on a northern shore,
Heard in its raging ebb and flow                                     _5
By the captives pent in the cave below.
The Apennine in the light of day
Is a mighty mountain dim and gray,
Which between the earth and sky doth lay;
But when night comes, a chaos dread                                  _10
On the dim starlight then is spread,
And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm,
Shrouding...

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