Page:Shelley, a poem, with other writings (Thomson, Debell).djvu/79

Rh (III. iii.) as feminine, "Ione, give her that curved shell," and only one of many such:—

But in Act IV. the Chorus of Hours (not Spirits of the Hours)—the living Hours as distinguished from the foregoing dark Forms and Shadows who chant,

are again masculine, singing of themselves,

it being observable that both Semichorous I. and II. have part in these lines. And it will be noted that we have dead Hours, although Demogorgon himself termed them immortal.

V. And on this one point I see that Mr. Forman has a supplementary note of the same general purport as mine; there appears to be some confusion of the Earth and the Spirit of the Earth (both in the Dramatis Personæ), and of the Moon and the Spirit of the Moon (only the latter in the Dramatis Personæ, and placed there by Mrs. Shelley). Throughout the first three acts the Earth is the great Mother, and is clearly distinguished from "the delicate Spirit that guides the earth through heaven " (III. iv.), the male child, yet ancient, for "before Jove reigned it loved Asia" and came to call her Mother, as it calls her now, meeting again, in the drama. In the same scene Asia says to it:

And never will we part, till thy chaste Sister, Who guides the frozen and inconstant moon,