Lot Essay
This drawing illustrates an episode from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, Asia's song, Act II, sc. V:
'My soul is like an enchanted boat,
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
And thine doth like an angel sit
Beside a helm conducting it,
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
It seems to float ever, for ever,
Upon that many-winding river,
Between mountains, woods, abysses,
A paradise of wildernesses!
Till, like one in slumber bound,
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound...'
Crane's vision and style was at its most poetic in the early part of his career, and this drawing clearly dates from the late 1860s, confirmed by the label on the verso which gives the artist's address as 46 Argyle Square WC, where he lived from 1861 until his marriage ten years later. Crane often depicted river landscapes in this period, in works including Such Sights as Youthful Poets Dream (Dudley Gallery, 1869) and Ormuzd and Ahriman (Dudley Gallery, 1870).
'My soul is like an enchanted boat,
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
And thine doth like an angel sit
Beside a helm conducting it,
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
It seems to float ever, for ever,
Upon that many-winding river,
Between mountains, woods, abysses,
A paradise of wildernesses!
Till, like one in slumber bound,
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound...'
Crane's vision and style was at its most poetic in the early part of his career, and this drawing clearly dates from the late 1860s, confirmed by the label on the verso which gives the artist's address as 46 Argyle Square WC, where he lived from 1861 until his marriage ten years later. Crane often depicted river landscapes in this period, in works including Such Sights as Youthful Poets Dream (Dudley Gallery, 1869) and Ormuzd and Ahriman (Dudley Gallery, 1870).