The Two Spirits An Allegory
ST
IT:
O thou, who plumed with strong
Wouldst float above the earth, beware!
A Shadow tracks thy flight of fire--Night is coming!
Bright are the regions of the air,
And among the winds and
It were delight to wander there--Night is coming!
ND
IT:
The deathless stars are bright above;
If I would cross the shade of night,
Within my heart is the lamp of love,
And that is day!
And the moon will smile with gentle
On my golden plumes where’er they move;
The meteors will linger round my flight,
And make night day.
ST
IT:
But if the whirlwinds of darkness
Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain;
See, the bounds of the air are shaken--Night is coming!
The red swift clouds of the
Yon declining sun have overtaken,
The clash of the hail sweeps over the plain--Night is coming!
ND
IT:
I see the light, and I hear the sound; 25I’ll sail on the flood of the tempest
With the calm within and the light
Which makes night day:
And thou, when the gloom is deep and stark,
Look from thy dull earth, slumber-bound,
My moon-like flight thou then mayst
On high, far away....
Some say there is a
Where one vast pine is frozen to ruinO’er piles of snow and chasms of ice Mid Alpine mountains;
And that the languid storm
That winged shape, for ever
Round those hoar branches, aye
Its aery fountains.
Some say when nights are dry and clear,
And the death-dews sleep on the morass,
Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller,
Which make night day:
And a silver shape like his early love doth pass Upborne by her wild and glittering hair,
And when he awakes on the fragrant grass,
He finds night day.
Assigned to 1820 by Mary Shelley, the poet's wife.
A notebook draft, whose many variants are of doubtful authority for establishing Shelley's final intention, survives.
Two important variants are listed (from the Julian edition) in the notes below.25.
Light.
MS. reads "glare."41.
Nights are.
MS. starts to change this to the singular, correcting "are" to "is," but not going on to correct the subject.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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