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THE DAEMON OF THE WORLD

A FRAGMENT

PART I

[Sections i and ii of Queen Mab rehandled, and published by Shelley in the Alastor volume, 1816. See Bibliographical List, and the Editor's Introductory Note to Queen Mab.]

Nec tantum prodere vati,

Quantum scire licet. Venit aetas omnis in unam
Congeriem, miserumque premunt tot saecula pectus.

How wonderful is Death,

Death and his brother Sleep!

LUCAN, Phars. v. 176.

One pale as yonder wan and hornèd moon,
With lips of lurid blue,

The other glowing like the vital morn,
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,
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,
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?—
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?

Will they, when morning's beam

Flows through those wells of light,

Seek far from noise and day some western cave,

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Where woods and streams with soft and pausing winds

A lulling murmur weave?—

Ianthe doth not sleep

The dreamless sleep of death:

Nor in her moonlight chamber silently

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Doth Henry hear her regular pulses throb,

Or mark her delicate cheek

With interchange of hues mock the broad moon,
Outwatching weary night,

Without assured reward.

Her dewy eyes are closed;

Scarce hides the dark blue orbs that burn below

On their translucent lids, whose texture fine

With unapparent fire,

The baby Sleep is pillowed:

Her golden tresses shade

The bosom's stainless pride,

Twining like tendrils of the parasite

Around a marble column.

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Hark! whence that rushing sound?

"Tis like a wondrous strain that sweeps

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When west winds sigh and evening waves respond

Around a lonely ruin

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.

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

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
Check their unearthly speed; they stop and fold
Their wings of braided air:

The Daemon leaning from the ethereal car

Gazed on the slumbering maid.

Human eye hath ne'er beheld

A shape so wild, so bright, so beautiful,

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As that which o'er the maiden's charmed sleep

Waving a starry wand,

Hung like a mist of light.

Such sounds as breathed around like odorous winds

Of wakening spring arose,

Filling the chamber and the moonlight sky.

Maiden, the world's supremest spirit

Beneath the shadow of her wings

Folds all thy memory doth inherit
From ruin of divinest things,
Feelings that lure thee to betray,
And light of thoughts that pass away.

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