She, dark angel

She, dark angel lifts her veiled eyes
To the empyrean o’erhead, and sighs,
What sovereign light is that? in thrall
Alas her wings were of glory clipped,
She has no more the strength to soar,
And bitter, rues her untimely fall:
When from the highest perch she slipped.

~

Neither Milton nor Shelley could help me with their notions of angelic beings: they wrote of ministering angels and muses. My poor little dark angel simply finds herself in a plight; no angel of death is she.

So I wrote myself a verse from an epic in the style of these poets. I don’t know the rest of her story, how or why she fell. Perhaps all she needs is a tall mountain to climb, a springboard to launch her back into the heavens from whence she came.

I looked for quotations about angels, and found two lines that intrigued me until I discovered their context. It was interesting to learn that both poets mourn a lost friend, and Shelley was inspired during the writing of his poem by one of Milton’s – the very one I had already considered. I call that a pretty serendipity of sorts.