Page:Shelley, a poem, with other writings (Thomson, Debell).djvu/78

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The image of a temple, built above, Distinct with column, arch, and architrave, And palm-like capital, and over wrought, And populous most with living imagery, Praxitelean shapes, whose marble smiles Fill the hushed air with everlasting love. It is deserted now, but once it bore Thy name, Prometheus; there the emulous youths Bore to thy honour thro' the divine gloom The lamp which was thine emblem. . . . Beside that temple is the destined cave.

So astonishing, indeed, to my apprehension, is the irreconcilable duality pervading these last two scenes of Act III. (which originally concluded the drama)—the two records of the effects of the proclamation of the triumph of Prometheus, the two caves, and the two temples—that remote commentators may be pardoned if they divine and affirm a double authorship or redaction, such as scholars of our own day distinguish in the Elohistic and Jehovistic legends, not fused but confused, in the book of Genesis.

IV. It may be worth while to note the passages which mark the sex and the immortality or mortality of the Hours, or Spirits of the Hours as they are termed in the Dramatis Personæ, although Demogorgon at their first apparition (II. iv.) simply says, "These are the immortal Hours." They are here spoken of collectively as masculine; Asia, addressing the one with whom Demogorgon ascends, cries:—

The young Spirit with whom Asia and Panthea ascend is first spoken of in the neuter, as we often speak of a child, "How its soft smiles attract the soul!" but