The story the male Spirit tells is the core of the poem. It is a narrative of a failed revolution in a fictional Levantine state called Argolis. Argolis groans under the oppressive regime of the despot Othman, which Shelley evokes with his characteristic blend of conceptual cloudiness and vivid metaphor:

        The land in which I lived, by a fell ban
        Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side,
        And stabled in our homes, — until the chain
        Stifled the captive's cry, and to abide

        That blasting curse men had not shame — all vied
        In evil, slave and despot; fear with lust
        Strange fellowship through mutual hate had tied,
        Like two dark serpents tangled in the dust,
        Which on the paths of men their mingling poison thrust.
                            (II.4)

Shelley's hero, Laon, an unmistakable proxy for the poet himself, and his moral idealism, determines to lead a revolt against the tyrant:

        It shall be thus no more! too long, too long,
        Sons of the glorious dead, have ye lain bound
        In darkness and in ruin! — Hope is strong,
        Justice and Truth their wingèd child have found —
        Awake! arise! until the mighty sound     
        Of your career shall scatter in its gust
        The thrones of the oppressor, and the ground
        Hide the last altar's unregarded dust,
        Whose Idol has so long betrayed your impious trust!  
                            (II.13)

The references to altars and idols, dictated by Shelley's fervent deism, reveal an important difference between his Islamic revolt and the upheavals of 2011, which if not always prompted by Islamic fundamentalism, at least seem not to take issue with it directly.

Laon, assisted by his sister Cythna (with whom he has a rapturous, and morally revolutionary, incestuous liaison), overturns the tyrant in a Shelleyan fantasy of bloodless regime change and spontaneous fraternity:

        Lifting the thunder of their acclamation,
        Towards the City then the multitude,
        And I among them, went in joy — a nation
        Made free by love; — a mighty brotherhood
        Linked by a jealous interchange of good;
        A glorious pageant, more magnificent
        Than kingly slaves arrayed in gold and blood,
        When they return from carnage, and are sent
        In triumph bright beneath the populous battlement.  
                            (V.14)