Page:Shelley, a poem, with other writings (Thomson, Debell).djvu/72

54 and at length to this "Pinnacle of Rock among Mountains," from midday to night and all through the night. This apparently long stretch of hours for the buoyant flight of these immortals may have been intentional on the part of the poet, as expounding an awful remoteness in the Cave of Demogorgon; and, if the vulgar relations of geographical horology were in his mind, the vaster the interval of space the less the sun-marked interval of time, whether the flight swept eastward to encounter a second dawn or westward to overtake the first. On the other hand, we seem to be still in the regions of the Indian Caucasus; nor is it easy to imagine those enchanted eddies of echoes, which draw all spirits on that secret way (sc. ii. vv. 41-5) to the cave, circling with potent attraction at an enormous distance from their centre. On the whole, it seems to me impossible to decide from the text whether this dawn is of the first or of the second day; though probably it was the latter in the mind of the poet, who, we must remember, did not write, as we may read, his lyrical drama at a sitting, but with intervals of nights and days.

From this dawn, at the invocation of the spirits, Asia and Panthea descend "Down, down!" to their interview with Demogorgon; and this interview, though not long, leads us into night, sc. iv. v. 129, et seq.:—

At first we might think "night" here a general term, expressing the gloom of the cave even when the roofing rocks were cloven, and think of the stars as visible by day because of the awful profundity; but when (vv. 150-5) the