But this is not his most characteristic feature. Himself of the race of Titans and giants, he loves the Titanic and gigantic beauty of nature--his manner of doing so again differing entirely from Byron's. It is not the tangible, easily accessible poetry of nature, that of the flowers of the field or the trees of the forest, which inspires him at his highest. No! the finest inspirations of his great spirit are received from the grand and the distant, from the forceful motions of the sea and the air and the dance of the spheres in the firmament of heaven. In this familiarity with the great phenomena and the great vicissitudes of nature Shelley resembles Byron, but he resembles him as a fair genius resembles a dark, as Ariel resembles Lucifer the Son of the Morning. The poetry of the sea was to Byron the poetry of shipwreck, of the raging hurricane, of the insatiable cry of the waves for prey; to him the poetry of the sky lay in the howling of the storm, the roaring of the thunder, the crackle of the lightning. It is nature as the annihilator that he lives with and glories in. The famous passage in the Fourth Canto of _Childe Harold_, beginning: "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!" is a jubilant record of the sea's exploits in sweeping argosies from its surface and sinking empires into its depths. It boasts that nothing longer-lived than a bubble tells where man has gone down. The passage is like a prelude to the magnificent Deluge scene which is entitled _Heaven and Earth_, and which is a glorification of the lust of annihilation.[3] After such verse read Shelley's famous poem, _The Cloud_. In it we hear all the elementary forces of nature playing and jesting, with the gaiety of giants, benevolent giants, who joy in pouring bounteous gifts upon the earth. What freshness in the lines: "I bring fresh showers for the thirsty flowers From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams." How wanton is the cloud when it sings: "I wield the flail of the lashing hail And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder, I sift the snow on the mountains below, And their great pines groan aghast; And all the night 'tis my pillow white, While I sleep in the arms of the Blast" And "The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, When the Whirlwinds my banner unfurl." How proud when it shouts: "The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes, And his burning plumes outspread, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, When the morning star shines dead." What calm is in this: