THE DEMON OF THE WORLD.

A FRAGMENT.

Nec tantum prodere vati,

Quantum scire licet. Venit ætas omnis in unam
Congeriem, miserumque premunt tot sæcula pectus.
Lucan Phars. L. v. 1. 176.

THE DEMON OF THE WORLD.

A FRAGMENT. 1

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,

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,

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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

1 A revised fragment of Queen Mab, -of which Poem Shelley's edition

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will be found in its place among the youthful poems.

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,
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
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;

On their translucent lids, whose texture fine

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,

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

When west winds sigh and evening waves respond

In whispers from the shore:

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'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 Dæmon 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 Dæmon leaning from the etherial car

Gazed on the slumbering maid.

Human eye hath ne'er beheld

A shape so wild, so bright, so beautiful,

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

Waving a starry wand,

Hung like a mist of light.

Such sounds as breathed around like odorous winds

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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.

For thou hast earned a mighty boon,

The truths which wisest poets see