It is the shadow which doth float unseen, But not unfelt, o’er blind mortality, Whose divine darkness fled not, from that green And lone recess, where lapt in peace did lie Our linkèd frames; till, from the changing sky, That night and still another day had fled; And then I saw and felt. The moon was high, The clouds, as of coming storm, were spread Under its orb,--loud winds were gathering overhead. Cythna’s sweet lips seemed lurid in the moon, Her fairest limbs with the night wind were chill, And her dark tresses were all loosely strewn O’er her pale bosom:--all within was still, And the sweet peace of joy did almost fill The depth of her unfathomable look:-- And we sate calmly, though that rocky hill, The waves contending in its caverns strook, For they foreknew the storm, and the grey ruin shook. There we unheeding sate, in the communion Of interchangèd vows, which, with a rite Of faith most sweet and sacred, stamped our union.-- Few were the living hearts which could unite Like ours, or celebrate a bridal night With such close sympathies, for to each other Had high and solemn hopes, the gentle might Of earliest love, and all the thoughts which smother Cold Evil’s power, now linked a sister and a brother.’ At the poem’s close, in reward for all their good deeds in a naughty world, and all their pains of self-sacrifice for the promotion of human happiness, this brother and sister (after death), together with the charming child, who is the issue of their incestuous embraces, are permitted to enter the boat of hollow pearl, in which they are carried to the islands of the blest, to repose in everlasting felicity near ‘The Temple of the Spirit.’ Lest it should be said that I misrepresent the story in a particular, which, though important, affects in no way the poem’s principal doctrine, let it be observed that to some readers this charming child appears to have been the tyrant’s daughter, instead of Laon’s offspring. Sir John Taylor Coleridge’s memorable article in the _Quarterly Review_ shows that, whilst recognizing with repugnance, the incest of Laon’s intercourse with his sister, he regarded the child as the issue of the despot’s passion. But on this point I conceive the reviewer to have erred through the mystifications and ambiguities of the narrative. To me it is clear that Shelley meant to intimate to careful readers of the monstrous story, that Cythna’s child was Laon’s daughter. The question, however, does not touch the poem’s main purpose, as offspring would be the natural sequence of the endearments interchanged by the brother and sister in the picturesque ruin.