The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface.
• Julian and Maddalo; a Conversation.
• The Witch of Atlas.
• Letter to —
• The Triumph of Life.
• Fragments From an Unfinished Drama.
• Prince Athanase: a Fragment.
• Ode to Naples. *
• Marianne’s Dream.
• Mont Blanc. Lines Written In the Vale of Chamouni.
• Miscellaneous Poems.
• On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci, In the Florentine Gallery.
• Song.
• To Constantia, Singing.
• The Fugitives.
• A Lament.
• The Pine Forest of the Cascine, Near Pisa.
• To Night.
• Evening. Ponte a Mare, Pisa.
• Arethusa.
• The Question.
• Lines to an Indian Air.
• Stanzas Written In Dejection, Near Naples.
• Autumn: a Dirge.
• Hymn of Apollo.
• Hymn of Pan.
• The Boat On the Serchio.
• The Zucca. *
• The Two Spirits. an Allegory.
• A Fragment.
• A Bridal Song.
• The Sunset.
• Song, On a Faded Violet.
• Lines to a Critic.
• Good Night.
• To-morrow.
• Death.
• A Lament.
• Love’s Philosophy.
• To E*** V***
• To —
• Lines.
• To William Shelley.
• An Allegory.
• Mutability.
• From the Arabic. an Imitation.
• To —
• Music.
• Lines.
• Death.
• To —
• Passage of the Apennines.
• To Mary —
• The Past.
• Song of a Spirit.
• Liberty.
• To —
• The Isle.
• To —
• Time.
• Lines.
• A Song.
• The World’s Wanderers.
• A Dirge.
• Lines.
• Dirge For the Year.
• Sonnet I.
• Sonnet II. Political Greatness.
• Sonnet III.
• Sonnet IV.
• Fragments.
• Ginevra. *
• Charles the First. Fragments.
• Prince Athanase. Part II.
• Mazenghi. *
• The Woodman and the Nightingale.
• To the Moon.
• Song For Tasso.
• The Waning Moon.
• Epitaph.
• Alastor; Or the Spirit of Solitude.
• Translations.
• Hymn to Mercury. Translated From the Greek of Homer
• The Cyclops; a Satyric Drama.
• Translation From Moschus.
• Scenes From the “magico Prodigioso” of Calderon.
• Scenes From the Faust of GoËthe.

THE TWO SPIRITS.

AN ALLEGORY.

first spirit.

• Oh thou, who plumed with strong desire
• Would 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 beams
• It were delight to wander there—
• Night is coming!

second spirit.

• 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 light
• On my golden plumes where’er they move;
• The meteors will linger round my flight
• And make night day.

first spirit.

• But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken
• Hail and lightning and stormy rain;
• See the bounds of the air are shaken—
• Night is coming!
• The red swift clouds of the hurricane
• Yon declining sun have overtaken,
• The clash of the hail sweeps over the plain—
• Night is coming!

second spirit.

• • I see the light, and I hear the sound;
  • I’ll sail on the flood of the tempest dark
  • With the calm within and the light around
  • 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 may’st mark
  • On high, far away.
• • Some say, there is a precipice
  • Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin
  • O’er piles of snow and chasms of ice
  • Mid Alpine mountains;
  • And that the languid storm pursuing
  • That winged shape for ever flies
  • Round those hoar branches, aye renewing
  • 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 makes 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.