The Daemon of the World

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The Daemon of the World
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
THE DAEMON OF THE WORLD.
A FRAGMENT.
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,?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,?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:?'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,?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.?For thou hast earned a mighty boon,?The truths which wisest poets see?Dimly, thy mind may make its own,?Rewarding its own majesty,?Entranced in some diviner mood?Of self-oblivious solitude.
Custom, and Faith, and Power thou spurnest;?From hate and awe thy heart is free;?Ardent and pure as day thou burnest,?For dark and cold mortality?A living light, to cheer it long,?The watch-fires of the world among.
Therefore from nature's inner shrine,?Where gods and fiends in worship bend,?Majestic spirit, be it thine?The flame to seize, the veil to rend,?Where the vast snake Eternity?In charmed sleep doth ever lie.
All that inspires thy voice of love,?Or speaks in thy unclosing eyes,?Or through thy frame doth burn or move,?Or think or feel, awake, arise!?Spirit, leave for mine and me?Earth's unsubstantial mimicry!
It ceased, and from the mute and moveless frame?A radiant spirit arose,?All beautiful in naked purity.?Robed in its human hues it did ascend,?Disparting as it went the silver clouds,?It moved towards the car, and took its seat?Beside the Daemon shape.
Obedient to the sweep of aery song,?The mighty ministers?Unfurled their prismy wings.?The magic car moved on;?The night was fair, innumerable stars?Studded heaven's dark blue vault;?The eastern wave grew pale?With the first smile of morn.?The magic car moved on.?From the swift sweep of wings?The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew;?And where the burning wheels?Eddied above the mountain's loftiest peak?Was traced a line of lightning.?Now far above a rock the utmost verge?Of the wide earth it flew,?The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow?Frowned o'er the silver sea.?Far, far below the chariot's stormy path,?Calm as a slumbering babe,?Tremendous ocean lay.?Its broad and silent mirror gave to view?The pale and waning stars,?The chariot's fiery track,?And the grey light of morn?Tingeing those fleecy clouds?That cradled in their folds the infant dawn.?The chariot seemed to fly?Through the abyss of an immense concave,?Radiant with million constellations, tinged?With shades of infinite colour,?And semicircled with a belt?Flashing incessant meteors.
As they approached their goal,?The winged shadows seemed to gather speed.?The sea no longer was distinguished; earth?Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere, suspended?In the black