Fragment: The Lake's Margin
The fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses Track not the steps of him who drinks of it; For the light breezes, which for ever fleet Around its margin, heap the sand thereon.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses Track not the steps of him who drinks of it; For the light breezes, which for ever fleet Around its margin, heap the sand thereon.
In Shelley’s four-line fragment, a lake’s edge becomes a quiet sanctuary. Anyone who drinks there finds their footprints immediately smoothed away by the light breezes that constantly drift around the margin, piling sand over each mark.
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