THE ENCHANTRESS COMES FORTH.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
ENCHANTRESS:
He came like a dream in the dawn of life,
He fled like a shadow before its noon;
He is gone, and my peace is turned to strife,
And I wander and wane like the weary moon.
O, sweet Echo, wake, _5
And for my sake
Make answer the while my heart shall break!
But my heart has a music which Echo’s lips,
Though tender and true, yet can answer not,
And the shadow that moves in the soul’s eclipse _10
Can return not the kiss by his now forgot;
Sweet lips! he who hath
On my desolate path
Cast the darkness of absence, worse than death!
NOTE:
_8 my omitted 1824.
[THE ENCHANTRESS MAKES HER SPELL: SHE IS ANSWERED BY A SPIRIT.]
SPIRIT:
Within the silent centre of the earth _15
My mansion is; where I have lived insphered
From the beginning, and around my sleep
Have woven all the wondrous imagery
Of this dim spot, which mortals call the world;
Infinite depths of unknown elements _20
Massed into one impenetrable mask;
Sheets of immeasurable fire, and veins
Of gold and stone, and adamantine iron.
And as a veil in which I walk through Heaven
I have wrought mountains, seas, and waves, and clouds, _25
And lastly light, whose interfusion dawns
In the dark space of interstellar air.
NOTES:
_15-_27 Within...air. 1839; omitted 1824.
See these lines in “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, page 209: “Song of a Spirit”.
_16 have 1839; omitted 1824, page 209.
_25 seas, and waves 1824, page 209; seas, waves 1839.
[A good Spirit, who watches over the Pirate’s fate, leads, in a
mysterious manner, the lady of his love to the Enchanted Isle. She is
accompanied by a Youth, who loves the lady, but whose passion she
returns only with a sisterly affection. The ensuing scene takes place
between them on their arrival at the Isle. [MRS. SHELLEY’S NOTE,