in March 1816 a few months before the excursion to Lake Geneva. The protagonist of
that poem is haunted by the two eyes of a "veilèd maid" (line 151) of whom he dreamed
and whom he subsequently pursues to the end of his life. As he dies his last glimpse
is of "two lessening points of light [that] / Gleamed through the darkness" (lines
654-55), an all-consuming ideal that is the ironic cause of his destruction.