PANTHEA: 
Canst thou speak, sister? all my words are drowned.

IONE: 
Their beauty gives me voice.  See how they float
On their sustaining wings of skiey grain, 760
Orange and azure deepening into gold: 
Their soft smiles light the air like a star’s fire.

CHORUS OF SPIRITS: 
Hast thou beheld the form of Love?

FIFTH SPIRIT: 
As over wide dominions
I sped, like some swift cloud that wings the wide air’s wildernesses,
That planet-crested shape swept by on lightning-braided pinions, 765
Scattering the liquid joy of life from his ambrosial tresses: 
His footsteps paved the world with light; but as I passed ’twas fading,
And hollow Ruin yawned behind:  great sages bound in madness,
And headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, unupbraiding,
Gleamed in the night.  I wandered o’er, till thou, O King of sadness, 770
Turned by thy smile the worst I saw to recollected gladness.

SIXTH SPIRIT: 
Ah, sister!  Desolation is a delicate thing: 
It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air,
But treads with lulling footstep, and fans with silent wing
The tender hopes which in their hearts the best and gentlest bear; 775
Who, soothed to false repose by the fanning plumes above
And the music-stirring motion of its soft and busy feet,
Dream visions of aereal joy, and call the monster, Love,
And wake, and find the shadow Pain, as he whom now we greet.

NOTE: 
774 lulling B; silent 1820.

CHORUS: 
Though Ruin now Love’s shadow be, 780
Following him, destroyingly,
On Death’s white and winged steed,
Which the fleetest cannot flee,
Trampling down both flower and weed,
Man and beast, and foul and fair, 785
Like a tempest through the air;
Thou shalt quell this horseman grim,
Woundless though in heart or limb.

PROMETHEUS: 
Spirits! how know ye this shall be?

CHORUS: 
In the atmosphere we breathe, 790
As buds grow red when the snow-storms flee,
From Spring gathering up beneath,
Whose mild winds shake the elder-brake,
And the wandering herdsmen know
That the white-thorn soon will blow:  795
Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Peace,
When they struggle to increase,
Are to us as soft winds be
To shepherd boys, the prophecy
Which begins and ends in thee. 800

IONE: 
Where are the Spirits fled?

PANTHEA: 
Only a sense
Remains of them, like the omnipotence
Of music, when the inspired voice and lute
Languish, ere yet the responses are mute,
Which through the deep and labyrinthine soul, 805
Like echoes through long caverns, wind and roll.