Fragment: Rome and Nature
Rome has fallen, ye see it lying Heaped in undistinguished ruin: Nature is alone undying.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Rome has fallen, ye see it lying Heaped in undistinguished ruin: Nature is alone undying.
In just three lines, Shelley confronts us with the simple, stark contrast between a fallen empire and the living world. He gestures toward the ruins of Rome—once a name that meant power and order—now scattered in a heap, so broken and time-worn that its pieces are “undistinguished.”
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