THE DAEMON OF THE WORLD.

A FRAGMENT.


By Percy Bysshe Shelley






PART 1.


PART 2.






PART 1.

     Nec tantum prodere vati,     Quantum scire licet. Venit aetas omnis in unam     Congeriem, miserumque premunt tot saecula pectus.     LUCAN, Phars. v. 176.       How wonderful is Death,       Death and his brother Sleep!     One pale as yonder wan and horned moon,       With lips of lurid blue,     The other glowing like the vital morn,                        5       When throned on ocean's wave       It breathes over the world:     Yet both so passing strange and wonderful!     Hath then the iron-sceptred Skeleton,     Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres,                    10     To the hell dogs that couch beneath his throne     Cast that fair prey? Must that divinest form,     Which love and admiration cannot view     Without a beating heart, whose azure veins     Steal like dark streams along a field of snow,               15     Whose outline is as fair as marble clothed     In light of some sublimest mind, decay?       Nor putrefaction's breath     Leave aught of this pure spectacle       But loathsomeness and ruin?—                               20       Spare aught but a dark theme,     On which the lightest heart might moralize?     Or is it but that downy-winged slumbers     Have charmed their nurse coy Silence near her lids       To watch their own repose?                                 25       Will they, when morning's beam       Flows through those wells of light,     Seek far from noise and day some western cave,     Where woods and streams with soft and pausing winds       A lulling murmur weave?—                                   30       Ianthe doth not sleep       The dreamless sleep of death:     Nor in her moonlight chamber silently     Doth Henry hear her regular pulses throb,       Or mark her delicate cheek                                 35     With interchange of hues mock the broad moon,       Outwatching weary night,       Without assured reward.       Her dewy eyes are closed;     On their translucent lids, whose texture fine                40     Scarce hides the dark blue orbs that burn below       With unapparent fire,       The baby Sleep is pillowed:       Her golden tresses shade       The bosom's stainless pride,                               45     Twining like tendrils of the parasite       Around a marble column.       Hark! whence that rushing sound?       'Tis like a wondrous strain that sweeps       Around a lonely ruin                                       50     When west winds sigh and evening waves respond       In whispers from the shore:     'Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes     Which from the unseen lyres of dells and groves       The genii of the breezes sweep.                            55     Floating on waves of music and of light,     The chariot of the Daemon of the World       Descends in silent power:     Its shape reposed within: slight as some cloud     That catches but the palest tinge of day                     60       When evening yields to night,     Bright as that fibrous woof when stars indue       Its transitory robe.     Four shapeless shadows bright and beautiful     Draw that strange car of glory, reins of light               65     Check their unearthly                         
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