Page:Shelley, a poem, with other writings (Thomson, Debell).djvu/75

Rh artistic instinct: first, the impulse to balance and contrast the masculine Spirit of a dreadful countenance in his dark chariot, the exponent of the agony and terror of the Doom dethroning Jupiter, with the feminine Spirit of the dovelike eyes of hope in her ivory shell inlaid with crimson fire, the exponent of the glory and bliss of the triumph of the Titan; and, secondly, to balance and complement this triumph with one of equal splendour of ostentation for his Bride rejoining him; and here Shelley's artistic instinct was at one with his fervid faith in the high equality of the sexes.

In Act III. sc. iii. Prometheus sends this feminine spirit to announce throughout the universe the final victory of Good over Evil: "Once again outspeed the sun around the orbèd world"; and she on her return (sc. iv.) describes the effects of this announcement; yet before her return from this rapid mission the Spirit of the Earth, the guide of Prometheus and his companions almost immediately after the departure of the other, tells Asia that he is grown wiser "within this day," and relates the great musical announcement and the like effects of beatific transformation following it, as witnessed by himself "lately," when his path lay through a great city, first in the night and then when the dawn came; which night and dawn, with the "lately," throw back the restoration certainly before the Spirit of the Hour could have proclaimed it, strictly even before the noon-triumph of Prometheus. Nor does this Spirit's delay after the proclamation, "I wandering went among the haunts and dwellings of mankind," affect the anachronism. Finally, at the end of the drama, as we read in Demogorgon's concluding speech, we are still in the very day of the catastrophe:—