Silent Laughter



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.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley,
The Cloud, 1820







images © 1998 by Randy Wang
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