Behind, its gathering billows meet
And to the fatal mountain bear
Like clouds amid the yielding air.
First Faun. Canst thou imagine
where those spirits live

Which make such delicate music in the
woods?
We haunt within the least frequented

day.

caves

When one with bliss or sadness fails,
And thro' the windless ivy-boughs, And closest coverts, and we know these
Sick with sweet love, droops dying
away

wilds,
Yet never meet them, tho' we hear them
oft:

On its mate's music-panting bosom;
Another from the swinging blossom,

Watching to catch the languid close
Of the last strain, then lifts on high
The wings of the weak melody,
'Till some new strain of feeling bear

Where may they hide themselves?
Second Faun.
'Tis hard to tell:
I have heard those more skilled in
spirits say,
The bubbles, which the enchantment of
the sun

The song, and all the woods are mute;
When there is heard thro' the dim air
The rush of wings, and rising there

Sucks from the pale faint water-flowers that pave

The oozy bottom of clear lakes and
pools,

Like many a lake-surrounded flute,
Sounds overflow the listener's brain
So sweet, that joy is almost pain.
Semichorus I.
There those enchanted eddies play

Are the pavilions where such dwell and
float

Under the green and golden atmosphere

Which noontide kindles thro' the woven Which lonely men drink wandering in leaves; their youth,

And when these burst, and the thin fiery And call truth, virtue, love, genius, or

air,

joy,

The which they breathed within those That maddening wine of life, whose lucent domes, dregs they drain

Ascends to flow like meteors thro' the
night,

To deep intoxication; and uplift,
Like Mænads who cry loud, Evoe!
Evoe!

The voice which is contagion to the
world.

And bow their burning crests, and glide
in fire

Asia. Fit throne for such a power!
Magnificent!

Under the waters of the earth again.

First Faun. If such live thus, have How glorious art thou, Earth! And if others other lives,

thou be

Under pink blossoms or within the bells Of meadow flowers, or folded violets deep,

Or on their dying odours, when they die,

They ride on them, and rein their headlong speed,

The shadow of some spirit lovelier still, Though evil stain its work, and it should be

Like its creation, weak yet beautiful,
I could fall down and worship that and
thee.

Or in the sunlight of the spherèd dew?
Second Faun. Ay, many more which Even now my heart adoreth: Wonder-

ful!

we may well divine.

But, should we stay to speak, noontide Look, sister, ere the vapour dim thy would come,

brain :

And thwart Silenus finds his goats un

drawn,

Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist, As a lake, paving in the morning sky, And grudge to sing those wise and With azure waves which burst in silver lovely songs Of fate, and chance, and God, and Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on Chaos old, Under the curdling winds, and islanding And Love, and the chained Titan's The peak whereon we stand, midway, woeful doom,

light,

around,

And how he shall be loosed, and make Encinctured by the dark and blooming the earth forests, One brotherhood: delightful strains Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumined which cheer Our solitary twilights, and which charm And wind-enchanted shapes of wanderTo silence the unenvying nightingales. ing mist;

caves,

And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains SCENE III.—A PINNACLE OF ROCK From icy spires of sun-like radiance fling The dawn, as lifted Ocean's dazzling spray,

AMONG MOUNTAINS. ASIA and
PANTHEA.

Panthea. Hither the sound has From some Atlantic islet scattered up,
borne us to the realm
Spangles the wind with lamp-like water-

drops.

Of Demogorgon, and the mighty portal,
Like a volcano's meteor-breathing chasm, The vale is girdled with their walls, a
Whence the oracular vapour is hurled up
howl

Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven While the sound whirls around, ravines, Down, down! Satiates the listening wind, continuous, As the fawn draws the hound, vast, As the lightning the vapour, Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing As a weak moth the taper ; snow! Death, despair; love, sorrow; The sun-awakened avalanche! whose Time both; to-day, to-morrow; mass, As steel obeys the spirit of the stone, Down, down!

Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered

there

Flake after flake, in heaven-defying

minds

As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth

Is loosened, and the nations echo round, Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now.

Panthea. Look how the gusty sea of mist is breaking In crimson foam, even at our feet! it

rises

As Ocean at the enchantment of the

Through the gray, void abysm,
Down, down!
Where the air is no prism,
And the moon and stars are not,
And the cavern-crags wear not
The radiance of Heaven,
Nor the gloom to Earth given,
Where there is one pervading, one alone,
Down, down!

moon

Round foodless men wrecked on some oozy isle.

Asia.

The fragments of the cloud are scattered up; The wind that lifts them disentwines my hair;

Its billows now sweep o'er mine eyes; We have bound thee, we guide thee;

my brain

the mist.

Panthea. A countenance with beckoning smiles there burns

An azure fire within its golden locks! Another and another: hark! they speak!

In the depth of the deep
Like veiled lightning asleep,
Down, down!
The last look Love remembers,
Like the spark nursed in embers,
Like a diamond, which shines
On the dark wealth of mines,

A spell is treasured but for thee alone.
Down, down!

Down, down!

Grows dizzy; I see thin shapes within With the bright form beside thee;
Resist not the weakness,
Such strength is in meekness
That the Eternal, the Immortal,
Must unloose through life's portal
The snake-like Doom coiled underneath
his throne

By that alone.

Song of Spirits.
To the deep, to the deep,
Down, down!
Through the shade of sleep,
Through the cloudy strife
Of Death and of Life;
Through the veil and the bar
Of things which seem and are

Even to the steps of the remotest throne,
Down, down!

SCENE IV. THE CAVE OF
DEMOGORGON. ASIA and PANTHEA
Panthea. What veiled form sits on
that ebon throne?

Asia. The veil has fallen.
Panthea. I see a mighty darkness
Filling the seat of power, and rays of

gloom

Dart round, as light from the meridian Asks but his name: curses shall drag

sun,

He reigns.

him down.
Demogorgon.
Asia. I feel, I know it: who?
Demogorgon.
He reigns.
Asia.

Who reigns? There was the
Heaven and Earth at first,
Light and Love; then Saturn,
from whose throne

Ungazed upon and shapeless; neither limb,

Nor form, nor outline; yet we feel it is
A living Spirit.
Demogorgon.
know.

Ask what thou wouldst

Asia. What canst thou tell?
Demogorgon.

dar'st demand.

state

Asia.

Who made the living world? Of the earth's primal spirits beneath his
God.
sway,

Demogorgon.

Asia. Who made all As the calm joy of flowers and living That it contains? thought, passion, leaves reason, will, Before the wind or sun has withered Imagination? them Demogorgon.

And semivital worms; but he refused
The birthright of their being, knowledge,

power,
The skill which wields the elements,
the thought

Which pierces this dim universe like light,

And

All things thou Time fell, an envious shadow: such the

God Almighty God. Asia. Who made that sense which, when the winds of spring In rarest visitation, or the voice Of one beloved heard in youth alone, Fills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim

The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers,
And leaves this peopled earth a solitude
When it returns no more?

Demogorgon.
Merciful God.
Asia. And who made terror, mad-
ness, crime, remorse,
Which from the links of the great chain
of things,

To every thought within the mind of

man

Sway and drag heavily, and each one
reels

Under the load towards the pit of death;
Abandoned hope, and love that turns to
hate;
And self-contempt, bitterer to drink
than blood;
Pain, whose unheeded and familiar
speech

Self-empire, and the majesty of love;
For thirst of which they fainted. Then
Prometheus

Gave wisdom, which is strength, to

Jupiter,

And with this law alone, "Let man be
free,"

Clothed him with the dominion of wide
Heaven.

To know nor faith, nor love, nor law;
to be

Omnipotent but friendless is to reign; And Jove now reigned; for on the race of man

First famine, and then toil, and then disease,

Strife, wounds, and ghastly death unseen before,

Fell; and the unseasonable

drove

Is howling, and keen shrieks, day after day;

With alternating shafts of frost and fire, And Hell, or the sharp fear of Hell? Their shelterless, pale tribes to mounDemogorgon. He reigns. tain caves: Asia. Utter his name: a world pin- And in their desert hearts fierce wants ing in pain

he sent,

seasons

And mad disquietudes, and shadows And mothers, gazing, drank the love idle

men see

Of unreal good, which levied mutual Reflected in their race, behold, and

perish.

He told the hidden power of herbs and springs,

war,

So ruining the lair wherein they raged.
Prometheus saw,
and waked the legioned
hopes

Which sleep within folded Elysian
flowers,

And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep.

He taught the implicated orbits woven Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth, fadeless Of the wide-wandering stars; and how blooms, the sun That they might hide with thin and Changes his lair, and by what secret

rainbow wings

spell

The shape of Death; and Love he sent The pale moon is transformed, when her to bind broad eye

Gazes not on the interlunar sea:

The disunited tendrils of that vine
Which bears the wine of life, the human

He taught to rule, as life directs the
limbs,

heart;

And he tamed fire which, like some The tempest-winged chariots of the beast of prey,

Ocean,

Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities The frown of man; and tortured to his will

then

Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed

Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power,

The warm winds, and the azure æther shone,

And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms

And the blue sea and shadowy hills were

Hidden beneath the mountains and the

seen.

waves.

Such, the alleviations of his state,

He gave man speech, and speech created Prometheus gave to man, for which he

thought,

Which is the measure of the universe; And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven,

hangs

Withering in destined pain: but who rains down

Evil, the immedicable plague, which,

while

Man looks on his creation like a God
And sees that it is glorious, drives him

on

The wreck of his own will, the scorn of earth,

The outcast, the abandoned, the alone?
Not Jove: while yet his frown shook
heaven, ay when

His adversary from adamantine chains
Cursed him, he trembled like a slave.
Declare

Who is his master? Is he too a slave? Demogorgon. All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil :