The tree-fringed peak
Of hill upon lofty hill let us seek
That we may look on the cliffs far-seen,
And the sacred land’s water that lends its green
To the fruits, and the whispering rush of the rivers divine
And the clamorous roar of the dashing brine.
For Ether’s eye is flashing his light
Untired by glare as of marble bright.”
The “meteor eyes” of the sun gaze “sanguine” and unblinking upon the cloud-palisades, glaring bright as the marble of Mount Pentelicus. Readers of the Greek will recognize here and there how an Aristophanic epithet or thought has been precipitated and recombined by Shelley into new and radiant shapes that drift through his own cloud-land,—“I change but I cannot die!”
Aristophanes’s observation of nature is varied and exact. He had nothing but ridicule for the pale student within doors, and only a man who kept up an intimacy with “the open road” could have made the naturalistic painting in the “Peace” of the serenity of country life:—