human
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep! He hath awakened from the dream of life. 'Tis we, who, lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife.
gpt
Which wields the world with never wearied love, Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.
human
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given.
gpt
to whom 'Epipsychidion' is addressed. Shelley begins by exhausting, in the effort to express her perfection, all the metaphors that rapture can suggest. He calls her his adored nightingale, a spirit-winged heart, a seraph of heaven, sweet benediction in the eternal curse, moon beyond the clouds, star above the storm,
human
She is a sweet lamp, a
gpt
a star, a tone, a light, a solitude, a refuge, a delight, a lute, a buried treasure, a cradle, a violet-shaded grave, an antelope, a moon shining through a mist of dew. But all his
human
That best philosophy, whose taste Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom As glorious as a fiery martyrdom,
gpt
which requires that everyone should bind himself for life to one mistress or friend; for the secret of true love is that it is increased, not diminished, by division; like imagination, it fills the universe; the parts exceed the whole, and this is the great characteristic distinguishing all things good from all things evil. We then have a shadowy record of love's dealings with him. In childhood he clasped the vision in every natural sight and sound, in verse, and in philosophy. Then it fled, this
human
He goes into the wintry forest of life, where
gpt
entraps and poisons his youth. The ideal is sought in vain in many mortal shapes, until the moon rises on him,
human
smiling on his soul, which lies in a death-like trance, a frozen ocean. At last the long-sought vision comes into the wintry forest; it is Emily, like the sun, bringing light and odour and new life. Henceforth he is a world ruled by and rejoicing in these twin spheres.
gpt
As to real flesh and blood, he said in a letter to Leigh Hunt,
human
Yet it is certain that the figures behind the shifting web of metaphors are partly real--that the poisonous enchantress is his first wife, and the moon that saved him from despair his second wife. The last part of the poem hymns the bliss of union with the ideal. Emily must fly with him;
gpt
and there is
human
Woe is me! The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the heights of love's rare universe, Are chains of lead around its flight of fire-- I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire.