Five lines are all that survive of this fragment by Shelley, and they are enough to make the skin prickle. A guilty person lies asleep while something unseen hovers above, reading every deed they have done and every thought behind it. The central idea is that actions do not end when they are finished. They leave behind a presence that follows us, and it can see even the parts of ourselves we have never shown anyone.
The poem begins by making an abstract noun into a character. "Consequence" has a capital letter, like a name, and it is described as "viewless and invisible". The two adjectives mean nearly the same thing, and the doubling is deliberate: the pile-up of near-synonyms makes the figure feel more absent and more unnerving. There is a paradox in it, too. This presence cannot be seen, yet it sees everything. The line runs to eleven syllables, a roughly iambic pentameter with an extra unstressed beat at the end, so that "Consequence" trails off like a footstep fading down a corridor. The poem has no rhyme, which suits its tone. There is no tidy chime to close a line and let the reader relax.
The second line widens the surveillance to cover all of life: "Watches thy goings-out, and comings-in". The hyphenated, plural phrases take in every ordinary journey, every routine exit and return. The rhythm sounds a little like the language of the Bible, where a similar phrase about "going out" and "coming in" appears in a protective blessing. If Shelley meant that echo, he has turned comfort into menace, so that the watcher is no longer a guardian. The line also opens on the stressed verb "Watches", which lands like a hand on the shoulder. The address to "thy" is accusing and personal, and it makes the reader the suspect.
The third line is where the text itself breaks. The ellipsis after "And" leaves a gap, and without it the line falls two syllables short of the pentameter around it, which suggests a word or two is missing. The gap makes a strange accident of form: the poem has a hole in it, just as the watcher is a presence we cannot quite see. What remains is "hovers o'er thy guilty sleep". "Hovers" suggests something between a bird of prey and a ghost, waiting without needing to move. "Guilty" is also placed unusually. It is the sleeper who is guilty, yet the word is attached to the sleep, so that rest itself becomes contaminated. Sleep is when we are most defenceless, and the poem takes even that refuge away.
The last two lines turn from action to the mind. "Unveiling every new-born deed" treats deeds as living things that have only just come into the world, still growing, still able to come to light. Then the sentence changes direction: "and thoughts / More ghastly than those deeds". Here the line break lets "thoughts" stand alone for a moment before the comparison drops on us. The claim is startling. What we imagine and intend may be darker than what we actually do. The poem breaks off on a dash, so we never learn what the thoughts are. The silence suggests that nothing needs to be said, and it leaves the reader to fill the space with their own.
What makes the fragment memorable is how much it does with so little. It names no judge, whether god, law or neighbour. The only thing that holds the sleeper to account is consequence, an impersonal force that works without anyone to accuse or forgive. That is arguably a more modern kind of fear than the fear of punishment, since it is the fear of being known completely. Whether the poem's brokenness is an accident of survival or not, it works in its favour. A finished poem might have offered an answer, such as repentance or relief. The fragment gives only the watching, the hovering and the dash, and so it leaves the reader in the same unsettled position as the sleeper.