Of dazzling mist within my brain";

but 'we' know that the substance behind the mist is Shelley's
"immaterial philosophy," the doctrine that nothing is real
except the one eternal Mind. Ever louder and more confident
sounds this note, until it drowns even the cries of victory
when the tide of battle turns in favour of the Turks. The
chorus, lamenting antiphonally the destruction of liberty, are
interrupted by repeated howls of savage triumph: "Kill! crush!
despoil! Let not a Greek escape'" But these discords are
gradually resolved, through exquisitely complicated cadences,
into the golden and equable flow of the concluding song:

"The world's great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn:
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream."

Breezy confidence has given place to a poignant mood of
disillusionment.

"Oh, cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
Of bitter prophecy.
The world is weary of the past,
Oh, might it die or rest at last!"