The Last Man

These are wild dreams. Yet since, now a week ago, on me, as I stood on the height of St. Peter’s, they have ruled my imagination. I have chosen my boat, and laid out my scant stores. I have selected a few books; the principal are Homer and Shakespeare. But the libraries of the world are thrown open to me—and in any port I can renew my stock. I form no expectation of alteration for the better; but the monotonous present is intolerable to me. Neither hope nor joy are my pilots—restless despair and fierce desire of change lead me on. I long to grapple with danger, to be excited by fear, to have some task however slight or voluntary for each days fulfillment. I shall witness all the variety of appearance, that the elements can assume—I shall read fair augury in the rainbow — menace in the cloud—some lesson or record dear to my heart in everything. Thus around the shores of deserted Earth, when the sun is high, and the moon waxes or wanes, angels, the spirits of the dead, and the ever-open eye of the Supreme, will behold the tiny bark, freighted with Verney, The Last Man. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, The Last Man.