Percy's own words

Here are Percy's words from Alastor:

In lone and silent hours,

When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,

Like an inspired and desperate alchymist

Staking his very life on some dark hope,

I'd like to use that as an epigram leading into chapter two.

The poem invokes death as the next step in enlightenment. Percy wrote it in 1816 while he and Mary were in Bishopsgate, England, near Windsor Forest (above) where he loved to tramp about. He became ill and was falsely diagnosed with consumption--he feared his life was at an end. Perhaps, in some sense, he came to accept that he would die young.

The hero of the poem is a poet, so we can probably assume it is somewhat biographical with regard to Percy's own thoughts at the time.

The painting in the photo is by Paul Sandby.