See you not this rock suspended, so that it appears with difficulty kept up? and still it hangs as it has hung for unnumbered ages; for it is a gag which checks and interferes with the breath that escapes from the cave, wherewith the melancholy mountain yawns.
No ves ese peñasco, que parece
Que se está sustendando con trabajo,
Y con el ansia misma que padece,
Ha tantos siglos que se viene abajo?
Pues mordaza es, que sella y enmudece
El aliento á una boca, que debajo
Abierta está, por donde con pereza
El monte melancolico bosteza.
Que se está sustendando con trabajo,
Y con el ansia misma que padece,
Ha tantos siglos que se viene abajo?
Pues mordaza es, que sella y enmudece
El aliento á una boca, que debajo
Abierta está, por donde con pereza
El monte melancolico bosteza.
Original text (Spanish)
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Notes from Wikiquote
Shelley in The Cenci has copied this idea:— | But I remember,
Two miles on this side of the fort, the road
Crosses a deep ravine; 'tis rough and narrow,
And winds with short turns down the precipice;
And in its depth there is a mighty rock
Which has from unimaginable years
Sustained itself with terror and with toil
Over the gulf, and with the agony
With which it clings seems slowly coming down;
Even as a wretched soul, hour after hour,
Clings to the mass of life; yet clinging, leans,
And leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss
In which it fears to fall; beneath this crag,
Huge as despair, as if in weariness,
The melancholy mountain yawns.