The Planet-Tempest Passage in Epipsychidion

Abstract

The action of the central autobiographical passage (lines 267–383) of Epipsychidion runs roughly as follows. The poet, in his search for love, first encountered several “mortal forms”, some of them “fair”, others “wise”, one of them “not true”; then, for some unexplained reason he entered a period of emotional crisis—“stood at bay, wounded and weak and panting” (272-275)—from which he was rescued by one whom he compares to his ideal of love as the Moon to the Sun. At first, we gather, he was enchanted with this moonlike love (276–280) but later began to realize that she was “cold” (281–307) : And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed;Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead.