Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
Shelley, too, could create these beautiful and unsubstantial shapes from hour to hour, feeling that each was but a new metamorphosis of universal beauty. “The Cloud” is the divine comedy of metamorphosis. The “Hymn of Pan” is its tragedy:
I sang of the dancing stars,
I sang of the dædal Earth,
And of Heaven—and the giant wars,
And Love, and Death, and Birth—
And then I changed my pipings—
Singing how down the vale of Menalus
I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed: