"Not until my dream became / Like a child's legend on the tideless sand. / Which the first foam erases half, and half / Leaves legible"

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)


Date
1817
Metaphor
"Not until my dream became / Like a child's legend on the tideless sand. / Which the first foam erases half, and half / Leaves legible"
Metaphor in Context
Not until my dream became
Like a child's legend on the tideless sand.
Which the first foam erases half, and half
Leaves legible
. At length I rose, and went,
Visiting my flowers from pot to pot, and thought 155
To set new cuttings in the empty urns,
And when I came to that beside the lattice,
I saw two little dark-green leaves
Lifting the light mould at their birth, and then
I half-remembered my forgotten dream.
Provenance
Reading Reisner, Thomas A. "Tablua Rasa: Shelley's Metaphor of Mind." Ariel IV.2 (197): 90-102. p. 95.
Citation
Text from the University of Adelaide's "eBooks@Adelaide." http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/s/shelley/percy_bysshe/
Date of Entry
10/03/2006

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.