chapter 1
, pages 53, 54, 56.) The most valuable lives are daily destroyed by diseases that it is dangerous to palliate and impossible to cure by medicine. How much longer will man continue to pimp for the gluttony of Death, his most insidious, implacable, and eternal foe?
Alla drakontas agrious kaleite kai pardaleis kai leontas, autoi de miaiphoneite eis omoteta katalipontes ekeinois ouden ekeinois men gar o phonos trophe, umin de opson estin...“Oti gar ouk estin anthropo kata phusin to sarkophagein, proton men apo ton somaton deloutai tes kataskeues. Oudeni gar eoike to anthropou soma ton epi sarkophagia gegonoton, ou grupotes cheilous, ouk ozutes onuchos, ou traxutes odontos prosestin, ou koilias eutonia kai pneumatos thermotes, trepsai kai katergasasthai dunate to baru kai kreodes all autothen e phusis te leioteti ton odonton kai te smikroteti tou stomatos kai te malakoteti tes glosses kai te pros pepsin ambluteti tou pneumatos, exomnutai ten sarkophagian. Ei de legeis pephukenai seauton epi toiauten edoden, o boulei phagein proton autos apokteinon, all autos dia seauton, me chesamenos kopidi mede tumpano tini mede pelekei alla, os lukoi kai arktoi kai leontes autoi osa esthiousi phoneuousin, anele degmati boun e stomati sun, e apna e lagoon diarrexon kai phage prospeson eti zontos, os ekeina...Emeis d’ outos en to miaiphono truphomen, ost ochon to kreas prosagoreuomen, eit ochon pros auto to kreas deometha, anamignuntes elaion oinon meli garon oxos edusmasi Suriakois Arabikois, oster ontos nekron entaphiazontes. Kai gar outos auton dialuthenton kai melachthenton kai tropon tina prosapenton ergon esti ten pechin kratesai, kai diakratepheises de deinas barutetas empoiei kai nosodeis apechias...Outo to proton agprion ti zoon ebrothe kai kakourgon, eit ornis tis e ichthus eilkusto kai geusamenon outo kai promeletesan en ekeinois to thonikon epi boun ergaten elthe kai to kosmion probaton kai ton oikouron alektruona kai kata mikron outo ten aplestian stomosantes epi sphagas anthropon kai polemous kai phonous proelthon.—Plout. peri tes Sarkophagias.
***
NOTE ON QUEEN MAB, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
Shelley was eighteen when he wrote “Queen Mab”; he never published it. When it was written, he had come to the decision that he was too young to be a ‘judge of controversies’; and he was desirous of acquiring ‘that sobriety of spirit which is the characteristic of true heroism.’ But he never doubted the truth or utility of his opinions; and, in printing and privately distributing “Queen Mab”, he believed that he should further their dissemination, without occasioning the mischief either to others or himself that might arise from publication. It is doubtful whether he would himself have admitted it into a collection of his works. His severe classical taste, refined by the constant study of the Greek poets, might have discovered defects that escape the ordinary reader; and the change his opinions underwent in many points would have prevented him from putting forth the speculations of his boyish days. But the poem is too beautiful in itself, and far too remarkable as the production of a boy of eighteen, to allow of its being passed over: besides that, having been frequently reprinted, the omission would be vain. In the former edition certain portions were left out, as shocking the general reader from the violence of their attack on religion. I myself had a painful feeling that such erasures might be looked upon as a mark of disrespect towards the author, and am glad to have the opportunity of restoring them. The notes also are reprinted entire—not because they are models of reasoning or lessons of truth, but because Shelley wrote them, and that all that a man at once so distinguished and so excellent ever did deserves to be preserved. The alterations his opinions underwent ought to be recorded, for they form his history.
A series of articles was published in the “New Monthly Magazine” during the autumn of the year 1832, written by a man of great talent, a fellow-collegian and warm friend of Shelley: they describe admirably the state of his mind during his collegiate life. Inspired with ardour for the acquisition of knowledge, endowed with the keenest sensibility and with the fortitude of a martyr, Shelley came among his fellow-creatures, congregated for the purposes of education, like a spirit from another sphere; too delicately organized for the rough treatment man uses towards man, especially in the season of youth, and too resolute in carrying out his own sense of good and justice, not to become a victim. To a devoted attachment to those he loved he added a determined resistance to oppression. Refusing to fag at Eton, he was treated with revolting cruelty by masters and boys: this roused instead of taming his spirit, and he rejected the duty of obedience when it was enforced by menaces and punishment. To aversion to the society of his fellow-creatures, such as he found them when collected together in societies, where one egged on the other to acts of tyranny, was joined the deepest sympathy and compassion; while the attachment he felt for individuals, and the admiration with which he regarded their powers and their virtues, led him to entertain a high opinion of the perfectibility of human nature; and he believed that all could reach the highest grade of moral improvement, did not the customs and prejudices of society foster evil passions and excuse evil actions.
The oppression which, trembling at every nerve yet resolute to heroism, it was his ill-fortune to encounter at school and at college, led him to dissent in all things from those whose arguments were blows, whose faith appeared to engender blame and hatred. ‘During my existence,’ he wrote to a friend in 1812, ‘I have incessantly speculated, thought, and read.’ His readings were not always well chosen; among them were the works of the French philosophers: as far as metaphysical argument went, he temporarily became a convert. At the same time, it was the cardinal article of his faith that, if men were but taught and induced to treat their fellows with love, charity, and equal rights, this earth would realize paradise. He looked upon religion, as it is professed, and above all practised, as hostile instead of friendly to the cultivation of those virtues which would make men brothers.
Can this be wondered at? At the age of seventeen, fragile in health and frame, of the purest habits in morals, full of devoted generosity and universal kindness, glowing with ardour to attain wisdom, resolved at every personal sacrifice to do right, burning with a desire for affection and sympathy,—he was treated as a reprobate, cast forth as a criminal.
The cause was that he was sincere; that he believed the opinions which he entertained to be true. And he loved truth with a martyr’s love; he was ready to sacrifice station and fortune, and his dearest affections, at its shrine. The sacrifice was demanded from, and made by, a youth of seventeen. It is a singular fact in the history of society in the civilized nations of modern times that no false step is so irretrievable as one made in early youth. Older men, it is true, when they oppose their fellows and transgress ordinary rules, carry a certain prudence or hypocrisy as a shield along with them. But youth is rash; nor can it imagine, while asserting what it believes to be true, and doing what it believes to be right, that it should be denounced as vicious, and pursued as a criminal.
Shelley possessed a quality of mind which experience has shown me to be of the rarest occurrence among human beings: this was his UNWORLDLINESS. The usual motives that rule men, prospects of present or future advantage, the rank and fortune of those around, the taunts and censures, or the praise, of those who were hostile to him, had no influence whatever over his actions, and apparently none over his thoughts. It is difficult even to express the simplicity and directness of purpose that adorned him. Some few might be found in the history of mankind, and some one at least among his own friends, equally disinterested and scornful, even to severe personal sacrifices, of every baser motive. But no one, I believe, ever joined this noble but passive virtue to equal active endeavours for the benefit of his friends and mankind in general, and to equal power to produce the advantages he desired. The world’s brightest gauds and its most solid advantages were of no worth in his eyes, when compared to the cause of what he considered truth, and the good of his fellow-creatures. Born in a position which, to his inexperienced mind, afforded the greatest facilities to practise the tenets he espoused, he boldly declared the use he would make of fortune and station, and enjoyed the belief that he should materially benefit his fellow-creatures by his actions; while, conscious of surpassing powers of reason and imagination, it is not strange that he should, even while so young, have believed that his written thoughts would tend to disseminate opinions which he believed conducive to the happiness of the human race.
If man were a creature devoid of passion, he might have said and done all this with quietness. But he was too enthusiastic, and too full of hatred of all the ills he witnessed, not to scorn danger. Various disappointments tortured, but could not tame, his soul. The more enmity he met, the more earnestly he became attached to his peculiar views, and hostile to those of the men who persecuted him.
He was animated to greater zeal by compassion for his fellow-creatures. His sympathy was excited by the misery with which the world is burning. He witnessed the sufferings of the poor, and was aware of the evils of ignorance. He desired to induce every rich man to despoil himself of superfluity, and to create a brotherhood of property and service, and was ready to be the first to lay down the advantages of his birth. He was of too uncompromising a disposition to join any party. He did not in his youth look forward to gradual improvement: nay, in those days of intolerance, now almost forgotten, it seemed as easy to look forward to the sort of millennium of freedom and brotherhood which he thought the proper state of mankind as to the present reign of moderation and improvement. Ill-health made him believe that his race would soon be run; that a year or two was all he had of life. He desired that these years should be useful and illustrious. He saw, in a fervent call on his fellow-creatures to share alike the blessings of the creation, to love and serve each other, the noblest work that life and time permitted him. In this spirit he composed “Queen Mab”.
He was a lover of the wonderful and wild in literature, but had not fostered these tastes at their genuine sources—the romances and chivalry of the middle ages—but in the perusal of such German works as were current in those days. Under the influence of these he, at the age of fifteen, wrote two short prose romances of slender merit. The sentiments and language were exaggerated, the composition imitative and poor. He wrote also a poem on the subject of Ahasuerus—being led to it by a German fragment he picked up, dirty and torn, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. This fell afterwards into other hands, and was considerably altered before it was printed. Our earlier English poetry was almost unknown to him. The love and knowledge of Nature developed by Wordsworth—the lofty melody and mysterious beauty of Coleridge’s poetry—and the wild fantastic machinery and gorgeous scenery adopted by Southey—composed his favourite reading; the rhythm of “Queen Mab” was founded on that of “Thalaba”, and the first few lines bear a striking resemblance in spirit, though not in idea, to the opening of that poem. His fertile imagination, and ear tuned to the finest sense of harmony, preserved him from imitation. Another of his favourite books was the poem of “Gebir” by Walter Savage Landor. From his boyhood he had a wonderful facility of versification, which he carried into another language; and his Latin school-verses were composed with an ease and correctness that procured for him prizes, and caused him to be resorted to by all his friends for help. He was, at the period of writing “Queen Mab”, a great traveller within the limits of England, Scotland, and Ireland. His time was spent among the loveliest scenes of these countries. Mountain and lake and forest were his home; the phenomena of Nature were his favourite study. He loved to inquire into their causes, and was addicted to pursuits of natural philosophy and chemistry, as far as they could be carried on as an amusement. These tastes gave truth and vivacity to his descriptions, and warmed his soul with that deep admiration for the wonders of Nature which constant association with her inspired.
He never intended to publish “Queen Mab” as it stands; but a few years after, when printing “Alastor”, he extracted a small portion which he entitled “The Daemon of the World”. In this he changed somewhat the versification, and made other alterations scarcely to be called improvements.
Some years after, when in Italy, a bookseller published an edition of “Queen Mab” as it originally stood. Shelley was hastily written to by his friends, under the idea that, deeply injurious as the mere distribution of the poem had proved, the publication might awaken fresh persecutions. At the suggestion of these friends he wrote a letter on the subject, printed in the “Examiner” newspaper—with which I close this history of his earliest work.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE ‘EXAMINER.’
‘Sir,
‘Having heard that a poem entitled “Queen Mab” has been surreptitiously published in London, and that legal proceedings have been instituted against the publisher, I request the favour of your insertion of the following explanation of the affair, as it relates to me.
‘A poem entitled “Queen Mab” was written by me at the age of eighteen, I daresay in a sufficiently intemperate spirit—but even then was not intended for publication, and a few copies only were struck off, to be distributed among my personal friends. I have not seen this production for several years. I doubt not but that it is perfectly worthless in point of literary composition; and that, in all that concerns moral and political speculation, as well as in the subtler discriminations of metaphysical and religious doctrine, it is still more crude and immature. I am a devoted enemy to religious, political, and domestic oppression; and I regret this publication, not so much from literary vanity, as because I fear it is better fitted to injure than to serve the sacred cause of freedom. I have directed my solicitor to apply to Chancery for an injunction to restrain the sale; but, after the precedent of Mr. Southey’s “Wat Tyler” (a poem written, I believe, at the same age, and with the same unreflecting enthusiasm), with little hope of success.
‘Whilst I exonerate myself from all share in having divulged opinions hostile to existing sanctions, under the form, whatever it may be, which they assume in this poem, it is scarcely necessary for me to protest against the system of inculcating the truth of Christianity or the excellence of Monarchy, however true or however excellent they may be, by such equivocal arguments as confiscation and imprisonment, and invective and slander, and the insolent violation of the most sacred ties of Nature and society.
‘SIR,
‘I am your obliged and obedient servant,
‘PERCY B. SHELLEY.
‘Pisa, June 22, 1821.’
***
[Of the following pieces the “Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire”, the Poems from “St. Irvyne, or The Rosicrucian”, “The Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson” and “The Devil’s Walk”, were published by Shelley himself; the others by Medwin, Rossetti, Forman and Dowden, as indicated in the several prefatory notes.]
VERSES ON A CAT.
[Published by Hogg, “Life of Shelley”, 1858; dated 1800.]
1. A cat in distress, Nothing more, nor less; Good folks, I must faithfully tell ye, As I am a sinner, It waits for some dinner _5 To stuff out its own little belly.
2. You would not easily guess All the modes of distress Which torture the tenants of earth; And the various evils, _10 Which like so many devils, Attend the poor souls from their birth.
3. Some a living require, And others desire An old fellow out of the way; _15 And which is the best I leave to be guessed, For I cannot pretend to say.
4. One wants society, Another variety, _20 Others a tranquil life; Some want food, Others, as good, Only want a wife.
5. But this poor little cat _25 Only wanted a rat, To stuff out its own little maw; And it were as good SOME people had such food, To make them HOLD THEIR JAW! _30
***
FRAGMENT: OMENS.
[Published by Medwin, “Shelley Papers”, 1833; dated 1807.]
Hark! the owlet flaps his wings In the pathless dell beneath; Hark! ’tis the night-raven sings Tidings of approaching death.
***
EPITAPHIUM.
[LATIN VERSION OF THE EPITAPH IN GRAY’S ELEGY.]
[Published by Medwin, “Life of Shelley”, 1847; dated 1808-9.]
1. Hic sinu fessum caput hospitali Cespitis dormit juvenis, nec illi Fata ridebant, popularis ille Nescius aurae.
2. Musa non vultu genus arroganti _5 Rustica natum grege despicata, Et suum tristis puerum notavit Sollicitudo.
3. Indoles illi bene larga, pectus Veritas sedem sibi vindicavit, _10 Et pari tantis meritis beavit Munere coelum.
4. Omne quad moestis habuit miserto Corde largivit lacrimam, recepit Omne quod coelo voluit, fidelis _15 Pectus amici.
5. Longius sed tu fuge curiosus Caeteras laudes fuge suspicari, Caeteras culpas fuge velle tractas Sede tremenda. _20
6. Spe tremescentes recubant in illa Sede virtutes pariterque culpae, In sui Patris gremio, tremenda Sede Deique.
***
IN HOROLOGIUM.
[Published by Medwin, “Life of Shelley”, 1847; dated 1809.]
Inter marmoreas Leonorae pendula colles Fortunata nimis Machina dicit horas. Quas MANIBUS premit illa duas insensa papillas Cur mihi sit DIGITO tangere, amata, nefas?
***
A DIALOGUE.
[Published (without title) by Hogg, “Life of Shelley”, 1858; dated 1809. Included in the Esdaile manuscript book.]
DEATH: For my dagger is bathed in the blood of the brave, I come, care-worn tenant of life, from the grave, Where Innocence sleeps ‘neath the peace-giving sod, And the good cease to tremble at Tyranny’s nod; I offer a calm habitation to thee,— _5 Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me? My mansion is damp, cold silence is there, But it lulls in oblivion the fiends of despair; Not a groan of regret, not a sigh, not a breath, Dares dispute with grim Silence the empire of Death. _10 I offer a calm habitation to thee,— Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me?
MORTAL: Mine eyelids are heavy; my soul seeks repose, It longs in thy cells to embosom its woes, It longs in thy cells to deposit its load, _15 Where no longer the scorpions of Perfidy goad,— Where the phantoms of Prejudice vanish away, And Bigotry’s bloodhounds lose scent of their prey. Yet tell me, dark Death, when thine empire is o’er, What awaits on Futurity’s mist-covered shore? _20
DEATH: Cease, cease, wayward Mortal! I dare not unveil The shadows that float o’er Eternity’s vale; Nought waits for the good but a spirit of Love, That will hail their blest advent to regions above. For Love, Mortal, gleams through the gloom of my sway, _25 And the shades which surround me fly fast at its ray. Hast thou loved?—Then depart from these regions of hate, And in slumber with me blunt the arrows of fate. I offer a calm habitation to thee.— Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me? _30
MORTAL: Oh! sweet is thy slumber! oh! sweet is the ray Which after thy night introduces the day; How concealed, how persuasive, self-interest’s breath, Though it floats to mine ear from the bosom of Death! I hoped that I quite was forgotten by all, _35 Yet a lingering friend might be grieved at my fall, And duty forbids, though I languish to die, When departure might heave Virtue’s breast with a sigh. O Death! O my friend! snatch this form to thy shrine, And I fear, dear destroyer, I shall not repine. _40
NOTE: _22 o’er Esdaile manuscript; on 1858.
***
TO THE MOONBEAM.
[Published by Hogg, “Life of Shelley”, 1858: dated 1809. Included in the Esdaile manuscript book.]
1. Moonbeam, leave the shadowy vale, To bathe this burning brow. Moonbeam, why art thou so pale, As thou walkest o’er the dewy dale, Where humble wild-flowers grow? _5 Is it to mimic me? But that can never be; For thine orb is bright, And the clouds are light, That at intervals shadow the star-studded night. _10
2. Now all is deathy still on earth; Nature’s tired frame reposes; And, ere the golden morning’s birth Its radiant hues discloses, Flies forth its balmy breath. _15 But mine is the midnight of Death, And Nature’s morn To my bosom forlorn Brings but a gloomier night, implants a deadlier thorn.
3. Wretch! Suppress the glare of madness _20 Struggling in thine haggard eye, For the keenest throb of sadness, Pale Despair’s most sickening sigh, Is but to mimic me; And this must ever be, _25 When the twilight of care, And the night of despair, Seem in my breast but joys to the pangs that rankle there.
NOTE: _28 rankle Esdaile manuscript wake 1858.
***
THE SOLITARY.
[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870; dated 1810. Included in the Esdaile manuscript book.]
1. Dar’st thou amid the varied multitude To live alone, an isolated thing? To see the busy beings round thee spring, And care for none; in thy calm solitude, A flower that scarce breathes in the desert rude _5 To Zephyr’s passing wing?
2. Not the swart Pariah in some Indian grove, Lone, lean, and hunted by his brother’s hate, Hath drunk so deep the cup of bitter fate As that poor wretch who cannot, cannot love: _10 He bears a load which nothing can remove, A killing, withering weight.
3. He smiles—’tis sorrow’s deadliest mockery; He speaks—the cold words flow not from his soul; He acts like others, drains the genial bowl,— _15 Yet, yet he longs—although he fears—to die; He pants to reach what yet he seems to fly, Dull life’s extremest goal.
***
TO DEATH.
[Published (without title) by Hogg, “Life of Shelley”, 1858; dated 1810. Included (under the title, “To Death”) in the Esdaile manuscript book.]
Death! where is thy victory? To triumph whilst I die, To triumph whilst thine ebon wing Enfolds my shuddering soul? O Death! where is thy sting? _5 Not when the tides of murder roll, When nations groan, that kings may bask in bliss, Death! canst thou boast a victory such as this— When in his hour of pomp and power His blow the mightiest murderer gave, _10 Mid Nature’s cries the sacrifice Of millions to glut the grave; When sunk the Tyrant Desolation’s slave; Or Freedom’s life-blood streamed upon thy shrine; Stern Tyrant, couldst thou boast a victory such as mine? _15
To know in dissolution’s void That mortals’ baubles sunk decay; That everything, but Love, destroyed Must perish with its kindred clay,— Perish Ambition’s crown, _20 Perish her sceptred sway: From Death’s pale front fades Pride’s fastidious frown. In Death’s damp vault the lurid fires decay, That Envy lights at heaven-born Virtue’s beam— That all the cares subside, _25 Which lurk beneath the tide Of life’s unquiet stream;— Yes! this is victory! And on yon rock, whose dark form glooms the sky, To stretch these pale limbs, when the soul is fled; _30 To baffle the lean passions of their prey, To sleep within the palace of the dead! Oh! not the King, around whose dazzling throne His countless courtiers mock the words they say, Triumphs amid the bud of glory blown, _35 As I in this cold bed, and faint expiring groan!
Tremble, ye proud, whose grandeur mocks the woe Which props the column of unnatural state! You the plainings, faint and low, From Misery’s tortured soul that flow, _40 Shall usher to your fate.
Tremble, ye conquerors, at whose fell command The war-fiend riots o’er a peaceful land! You Desolation’s gory throng Shall bear from Victory along _45 To that mysterious strand.
NOTE: _10 murderer Esdaile manuscript; murders 1858.
***
LOVE’S ROSE.
[Published (without title) by Hogg, “Life of Shelley”, 1858; dated 1810. Included in the Esdaile manuscript book.]
1. Hopes, that swell in youthful breasts, Live not through the waste of time! Love’s rose a host of thorns invests; Cold, ungenial is the clime, Where its honours blow. _5 Youth says, ‘The purple flowers are mine,’ Which die the while they glow.
2. Dear the boon to Fancy given, Retracted whilst it’s granted: Sweet the rose which lives in Heaven, _10 Although on earth ’tis planted, Where its honours blow, While by earth’s slaves the leaves are riven Which die the while they glow.
3. Age cannot Love destroy, _15 But perfidy can blast the flower, Even when in most unwary hour It blooms in Fancy’s bower. Age cannot Love destroy, But perfidy can rend the shrine _20 In which its vermeil splendours shine.
NOTES: Love’s Rose—The title is Rossetti’s, 1870. _2 not through Esdaile manuscript; they this, 1858.
***
EYES: A FRAGMENT.
[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870; dated 1810. Included (four unpublished eight-line stanzas) in the Esdaile manuscript book.)]
How eloquent are eyes! Not the rapt poet’s frenzied lay When the soul’s wildest feelings stray Can speak so well as they. How eloquent are eyes! _5 Not music’s most impassioned note On which Love’s warmest fervours float Like them bids rapture rise.
Love, look thus again,— That your look may light a waste of years, _10 Darting the beam that conquers cares Through the cold shower of tears. Love, look thus again!
***
ORIGINAL POETRY BY VICTOR AND CAZIRE.
[Published by Shelley, 1810. A Reprint, edited by Richard Garnett, C.B., LL.D., was issued by John Lane, in 1898. The punctuation of the original edition is here retained.]
A Person complained that whenever he began to write, he never could arrange his ideas in grammatical order. Which occasion suggested the idea of the following lines:
1. Here I sit with my paper, my pen and my ink, First of this thing, and that thing, and t’other thing think; Then my thoughts come so pell-mell all into my mind, That the sense or the subject I never can find: This word is wrong placed,—no regard to the sense, The present and future, instead of past tense, Then my grammar I want; O dear! what a bore, I think I shall never attempt to write more, With patience I then my thoughts must arraign, Have them all in due order like mutes in a train, _10 Like them too must wait in due patience and thought, Or else my fine works will all come to nought. My wit too’s so copious, it flows like a river, But disperses its waters on black and white never; Like smoke it appears independent and free, _15 But ah luckless smoke! it all passes like thee— Then at length all my patience entirely lost, My paper and pens in the fire are tossed; But come, try again—you must never despair, Our Murray’s or Entick’s are not all so rare, _20 Implore their assistance—they’ll come to your aid, Perform all your business without being paid, They’ll tell you the present tense, future and past, Which should come first, and which should come last, This Murray will do—then to Entick repair, _25 To find out the meaning of any word rare. This they friendly will tell, and ne’er make you blush, With a jeering look, taunt, or an O fie! tush! Then straight all your thoughts in black and white put, Not minding the if’s, the be’s, and the but, _30 Then read it all over, see how it will run, How answers the wit, the retort, and the pun, Your writings may then with old Socrates vie, May on the same shelf with Demosthenes lie, May as Junius be sharp, or as Plato be sage. _35 The pattern or satire to all of the age; But stop—a mad author I mean not to turn, Nor with thirst of applause does my heated brain burn, Sufficient that sense, wit, and grammar combined, My letters may make some slight food for the mind; _40 That my thoughts to my friends I may freely impart, In all the warm language that flows from the heart. Hark! futurity calls! it loudly complains, It bids me step forward and just hold the reins, My excuse shall be humble, and faithful, and true, _45 Such as I fear can be made but by few— Of writers this age has abundance and plenty, Three score and a thousand, two millions and twenty, Three score of them wits who all sharply vie, To try what odd creature they best can belie, _50 A thousand are prudes who for CHARITY write, And fill up their sheets with spleen, envy, and spite[,] One million are bards, who to Heaven aspire, And stuff their works full of bombast, rant, and fire, T’other million are wags who in Grubstreet attend, _55 And just like a cobbler the old writings mend, The twenty are those who for pulpits indite, And pore over sermons all Saturday night. And now my good friends—who come after I mean, As I ne’er wore a cassock, or dined with a dean. _60 Or like cobblers at mending I never did try, Nor with poets in lyrics attempted to vie; As for prudes these good souls I both hate and detest, So here I believe the matter must rest.— I’ve heard your complaint—my answer I’ve made, _65 And since to your calls all the tribute I’ve paid, Adieu my good friend; pray never despair, But grammar and sense and everything dare, Attempt but to write dashing, easy, and free, Then take out your grammar and pay him his fee, _70 Be not a coward, shrink not to a tense, But read it all over and make it out sense. What a tiresome girl!—pray soon make an end, Else my limited patience you’ll quickly expend. Well adieu, I no longer your patience will try— _75 So swift to the post now the letter shall fly.
JANUARY, 1810.
2.
TO MISS — — [HARRIET GROVE] FROM MISS — — [ELIZABETH SHELLEY].
For your letter, dear — [Hattie], accept my best thanks, Rendered long and amusing by virtue of franks, Though concise they would please, yet the longer the better, The more news that’s crammed in, more amusing the letter, All excuses of etiquette nonsense I hate, _5 Which only are fit for the tardy and late, As when converse grows flat, of the weather they talk, How fair the sun shines—a fine day for a walk, Then to politics turn, of Burdett’s reformation, One declares it would hurt, t’other better the nation, _10 Will ministers keep? sure they’ve acted quite wrong, The burden this is of each morning-call song. So — is going to — you say, I hope that success her great efforts will pay [—] That [the Colonel] will see her, be dazzled outright, _15 And declare he can’t bear to be out of her sight. Write flaming epistles with love’s pointed dart, Whose sharp little arrow struck right on his heart, Scold poor innocent Cupid for mischievous ways, He knows not how much to laud forth her praise, _20 That he neither eats, drinks or sleeps for her sake, And hopes her hard heart some compassion will take, A refusal would kill him, so desperate his flame, But he fears, for he knows she is not common game, Then praises her sense, wit, discernment and grace, _25 He’s not one that’s caught by a sly looking face, Yet that’s TOO divine—such a black sparkling eye, At the bare glance of which near a thousand will die; Thus runs he on meaning but one word in ten, More than is meant by most such kind of men, _30 For they’re all alike, take them one with another, Begging pardon—with the exception of my brother. Of the drawings you mention much praise I have heard, Most opinion’s the same, with the difference of word, Some get a good name by the voice of the crowd, _35 Whilst to poor humble merit small praise is allowed, As in parliament votes, so in pictures a name, Oft determines a fate at the altar of fame.— So on Friday this City’s gay vortex you quit, And no longer with Doctors and Johnny cats sit— _40 Now your parcel’s arrived — [Bysshe’s] letter shall go, I hope all your joy mayn’t be turned into woe, Experience will tell you that pleasure is vain, When it promises sunshine how often comes rain. So when to fond hope every blessing is nigh, _45 How oft when we smile it is checked with a sigh, When Hope, gay deceiver, in pleasure is dressed, How oft comes a stroke that may rob us of rest. When we think ourselves safe, and the goal near at hand, Like a vessel just landing, we’re wrecked near the strand, _50 And though memory forever the sharp pang must feel, ’Tis our duty to bear, and our hardship to steel— May misfortunes dear Girl, ne’er thy happiness cloy, May thy days glide in peace, love, comfort and joy, May thy tears with soft pity for other woes flow, _55 Woes, which thy tender heart never may know, For hardships our own, God has taught us to bear, Though sympathy’s soul to a friend drops a tear. Oh dear! what sentimental stuff have I written, Only fit to tear up and play with a kitten. _60 What sober reflections in the midst of this letter! Jocularity sure would have suited much better; But there are exceptions to all common rules, For this is a truth by all boys learned at schools. Now adieu my dear — [Hattie] I’m sure I must tire, _65 For if I do, you may throw it into the fire, So accept the best love of your cousin and friend, Which brings this nonsensical rhyme to an end.
APRIL 30, 1810.
NOTE: _19 mischievous]mischevious 1810.
3. SONG.
Cold, cold is the blast when December is howling, Cold are the damps on a dying man’s brow,— Stern are the seas when the wild waves are rolling, And sad is the grave where a loved one lies low; But colder is scorn from the being who loved thee, _5 More stern is the sneer from the friend who has proved thee, More sad are the tears when their sorrows have moved thee, Which mixed with groans anguish and wild madness flow—
And ah! poor — has felt all this horror, Full long the fallen victim contended with fate: _10 ‘Till a destitute outcast abandoned to sorrow, She sought her babe’s food at her ruiner’s gate— Another had charmed the remorseless betrayer, He turned laughing aside from her moans and her prayer, She said nothing, but wringing the wet from her hair, _15 Crossed the dark mountain side, though the hour it was late. ’Twas on the wild height of the dark Penmanmawr, That the form of the wasted — reclined; She shrieked to the ravens that croaked from afar, And she sighed to the gusts of the wild sweeping wind.— _20 I call not yon rocks where the thunder peals rattle, I call not yon clouds where the elements battle, But thee, cruel — I call thee unkind!’—
Then she wreathed in her hair the wild flowers of the mountain, And deliriously laughing, a garland entwined, _25 She bedewed it with tears, then she hung o’er the fountain, And leaving it, cast it a prey to the wind. ‘Ah! go,’ she exclaimed, ‘when the tempest is yelling, ’Tis unkind to be cast on the sea that is swelling, But I left, a pitiless outcast, my dwelling, _30 My garments are torn, so they say is my mind—’
Not long lived —, but over her grave Waved the desolate form of a storm-blasted yew, Around it no demons or ghosts dare to rave, But spirits of peace steep her slumbers in dew. _35 Then stay thy swift steps mid the dark mountain heather, Though chill blow the wind and severe is the weather, For perfidy, traveller! cannot bereave her, Of the tears, to the tombs of the innocent due.—
JULY, 1810.
4. SONG.
Come [Harriet]! sweet is the hour, Soft Zephyrs breathe gently around, The anemone’s night-boding flower, Has sunk its pale head on the ground.
’Tis thus the world’s keenness hath torn, _5 Some mild heart that expands to its blast, ’Tis thus that the wretched forlorn, Sinks poor and neglected at last.—
The world with its keenness and woe, Has no charms or attraction for me, _10 Its unkindness with grief has laid low, The heart which is faithful to thee. The high trees that wave past the moon, As I walk in their umbrage with you, All declare I must part with you soon, _15 All bid you a tender adieu!—
Then [Harriet]! dearest farewell, You and I love, may ne’er meet again; These woods and these meadows can tell How soft and how sweet was the strain.— _20
APRIL, 1810.
5. SONG.
DESPAIR.
Ask not the pallid stranger’s woe, With beating heart and throbbing breast, Whose step is faltering, weak, and slow, As though the body needed rest.—
Whose ‘wildered eye no object meets, _5 Nor cares to ken a friendly glance, With silent grief his bosom beats,— Now fixed, as in a deathlike trance.
Who looks around with fearful eye, And shuns all converse with man kind, _10 As though some one his griefs might spy, And soothe them with a kindred mind.
A friend or foe to him the same, He looks on each with equal eye; The difference lies but in the name, _15 To none for comfort can he fly.—
’Twas deep despair, and sorrow’s trace, To him too keenly given, Whose memory, time could not efface— His peace was lodged in Heaven.— _20
He looks on all this world bestows, The pride and pomp of power, As trifles best for pageant shows Which vanish in an hour.
When torn is dear affection’s tie, _25 Sinks the soft heart full low; It leaves without a parting sigh, All that these realms bestow.
JUNE, 1810.
6. SONG.
SORROW.
To me this world’s a dreary blank, All hopes in life are gone and fled, My high strung energies are sank, And all my blissful hopes lie dead.—
The world once smiling to my view, _5 Showed scenes of endless bliss and joy; The world I then but little knew, Ah! little knew how pleasures cloy;
All then was jocund, all was gay, No thought beyond the present hour, _10 I danced in pleasure’s fading ray, Fading alas! as drooping flower.
Nor do the heedless in the throng, One thought beyond the morrow give[,] They court the feast, the dance, the song, _15 Nor think how short their time to live.
The heart that bears deep sorrow’s trace, What earthly comfort can console, It drags a dull and lengthened pace, ‘Till friendly death its woes enroll.— _20
The sunken cheek, the humid eyes, E’en better than the tongue can tell; In whose sad breast deep sorrow lies, Where memory’s rankling traces dwell.—
The rising tear, the stifled sigh, _25 A mind but ill at ease display, Like blackening clouds in stormy sky, Where fiercely vivid lightnings play.
Thus when souls’ energy is dead, When sorrow dims each earthly view, _30 When every fairy hope is fled, We bid ungrateful world adieu.
AUGUST, 1810.
7. SONG.
HOPE.
And said I that all hope was fled, That sorrow and despair were mine, That each enthusiast wish was dead, Had sank beneath pale Misery’s shrine.—
Seest thou the sunbeam’s yellow glow, _5 That robes with liquid streams of light; Yon distant Mountain’s craggy brow. And shows the rocks so fair,—so bright—
Tis thus sweet expectation’s ray, In softer view shows distant hours, _10 And portrays each succeeding day, As dressed in fairer, brighter flowers,—
The vermeil tinted flowers that blossom; Are frozen but to bud anew, Then sweet deceiver calm my bosom, _15 Although thy visions be not true,—
Yet true they are,—and I’ll believe, Thy whisperings soft of love and peace, God never made thee to deceive, ’Tis sin that bade thy empire cease. _20
Yet though despair my life should gloom, Though horror should around me close, With those I love, beyond the tomb, Hope shows a balm for all my woes.
AUGUST, 1810.
8. SONG.
TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN.
Oh! what is the gain of restless care, And what is ambitious treasure? And what are the joys that the modish share, In their sickly haunts of pleasure?
My husband’s repast with delight I spread, _5 What though ’tis but rustic fare, May each guardian angel protect his shed, May contentment and quiet be there.
And may I support my husband’s years, May I soothe his dying pain, _10 And then may I dry my fast falling tears, And meet him in Heaven again.
JULY, 1810.
9. SONG.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN.
Ah! grasp the dire dagger and couch the fell spear, If vengeance and death to thy bosom be dear, The dastard shall perish, death’s torment shall prove, For fate and revenge are decreed from above.
Ah! where is the hero, whose nerves strung by youth, _5 Will defend the firm cause of justice and truth; With insatiate desire whose bosom shall swell, To give up the oppressor to judgement and Hell—
For him shall the fair one twine chaplets of bays, To him shall each warrior give merited praise, _10 And triumphant returned from the clangour of arms, He shall find his reward in his loved maiden’s charms.
In ecstatic confusion the warrior shall sip, The kisses that glow on his love’s dewy lip, And mutual, eternal, embraces shall prove, _15 The rewards of the brave are the transports of love.
OCTOBER, 1809.
10. THE IRISHMAN’S SONG.
The stars may dissolve, and the fountain of light May sink into ne’er ending chaos and night, Our mansions must fall, and earth vanish away, But thy courage O Erin! may never decay.
See! the wide wasting ruin extends all around, _5 Our ancestors’ dwellings lie sunk on the ground, Our foes ride in triumph throughout our domains, And our mightiest heroes lie stretched on the plains.
Ah! dead is the harp which was wont to give pleasure, Ah! sunk is our sweet country’s rapturous measure, _10 But the war note is waked, and the clangour of spears, The dread yell of Sloghan yet sounds in our ears.
Ah! where are the heroes! triumphant in death, Convulsed they recline on the blood sprinkled heath, Or the yelling ghosts ride on the blast that sweeps by, _15 And ‘my countrymen! vengeance!’ incessantly cry.
OCTOBER, 1809.
11. SONG.
Fierce roars the midnight storm O’er the wild mountain, Dark clouds the night deform, Swift rolls the fountain—
See! o’er yon rocky height, _5 Dim mists are flying— See by the moon’s pale light, Poor Laura’s dying!
Shame and remorse shall howl, By her false pillow— _10 Fiercer than storms that roll, O’er the white billow;
No hand her eyes to close, When life is flying, But she will find repose, _15 For Laura’s dying!
Then will I seek my love, Then will I cheer her, Then my esteem will prove, When no friend is near her. _20
On her grave I will lie, When life is parted, On her grave I will die, For the false hearted.
DECEMBER, 1809.
12. SONG.
TO [HARRIET].
Ah! sweet is the moonbeam that sleeps on yon fountain, And sweet the mild rush of the soft-sighing breeze, And sweet is the glimpse of yon dimly-seen mountain, ‘Neath the verdant arcades of yon shadowy trees.
But sweeter than all was thy tone of affection, _5 Which scarce seemed to break on the stillness of eve, Though the time it is past!—yet the dear recollection, For aye in the heart of thy [Percy] must live.
Yet he hears thy dear voice in the summer winds sighing, Mild accents of happiness lisp in his ear, _10 When the hope-winged moments athwart him are flying, And he thinks of the friend to his bosom so dear.—
And thou dearest friend in his bosom for ever Must reign unalloyed by the fast rolling year, He loves thee, and dearest one never, Oh! never _15 Canst thou cease to be loved by a heart so sincere.
AUGUST, 1810.
NOTE: _11 hope-winged]hoped-winged 1810.
13. SONG.
TO — [HARRIET].
Stern, stern is the voice of fate’s fearful command, When accents of horror it breathes in our ear, Or compels us for aye bid adieu to the land, Where exists that loved friend to our bosom so dear,
’Tis sterner than death o’er the shuddering wretch bending, _5 And in skeleton grasp his fell sceptre extending, Like the heart-stricken deer to that loved covert wending, Which never again to his eyes may appear—
And ah! he may envy the heart-stricken quarry, Who bids to the friend of affection farewell, _10 He may envy the bosom so bleeding and gory, He may envy the sound of the drear passing knell,
Not so deep is his grief on his death couch reposing, When on the last vision his dim eyes are closing! As the outcast whose love-raptured senses are losing, _15 The last tones of thy voice on the wild breeze that swell!
Those tones were so soft, and so sad, that ah! never, Can the sound cease to vibrate on Memory’s ear, In the stern wreck of Nature for ever and ever, The remembrance must live of a friend so sincere. _20
AUGUST, 1810.
14. SAINT EDMOND’S EVE.
Oh! did you observe the Black Canon pass, And did you observe his frown? He goeth to say the midnight mass, In holy St. Edmond’s town.
He goeth to sing the burial chaunt, _5 And to lay the wandering sprite, Whose shadowy, restless form doth haunt, The Abbey’s drear aisle this night.
It saith it will not its wailing cease, ‘Till that holy man come near, _10 ‘Till he pour o’er its grave the prayer of peace, And sprinkle the hallowed tear.
The Canon’s horse is stout and strong The road is plain and fair, But the Canon slowly wends along, _15 And his brow is gloomed with care.
Who is it thus late at the Abbey-gate? Sullen echoes the portal bell, It sounds like the whispering voice of fate, It sounds like a funeral knell. _20
The Canon his faltering knee thrice bowed, And his frame was convulsed with fear, When a voice was heard distinct and loud, ‘Prepare! for thy hour is near.’
He crosses his breast, he mutters a prayer, _25 To Heaven he lifts his eye, He heeds not the Abbot’s gazing stare, Nor the dark Monks who murmured by.
Bare-headed he worships the sculptured saints That frown on the sacred walls, _30 His face it grows pale,—he trembles, he faints, At the Abbot’s feet he falls.
And straight the father’s robe he kissed, Who cried, ‘Grace dwells with thee, The spirit will fade like the morning mist, _35 At your benedicite.
‘Now haste within! the board is spread, Keen blows the air, and cold, The spectre sleeps in its earthy bed, ‘Till St. Edmond’s bell hath tolled,— _40
‘Yet rest your wearied limbs to-night, You’ve journeyed many a mile, To-morrow lay the wailing sprite, That shrieks in the moonlight aisle.
‘Oh! faint are my limbs and my bosom is cold, _45 Yet to-night must the sprite be laid, Yet to-night when the hour of horror’s told, Must I meet the wandering shade.
‘Nor food, nor rest may now delay,— For hark! the echoing pile, _50 A bell loud shakes!—Oh haste away, O lead to the haunted aisle.’
The torches slowly move before, The cross is raised on high, A smile of peace the Canon wore, _55 But horror dimmed his eye—
And now they climb the footworn stair, The chapel gates unclose, Now each breathed low a fervent prayer, And fear each bosom froze— _60
Now paused awhile the doubtful band And viewed the solemn scene,— Full dark the clustered columns stand, The moon gleams pale between—
‘Say father, say, what cloisters’ gloom _65 Conceals the unquiet shade, Within what dark unhallowed tomb, The corse unblessed was laid.’
‘Through yonder drear aisle alone it walks, And murmurs a mournful plaint, _70 Of thee! Black Canon, it wildly talks, And call on thy patron saint—
The pilgrim this night with wondering eyes, As he prayed at St. Edmond’s shrine, From a black marble tomb hath seen it rise, _75 And under yon arch recline.’—
‘Oh! say upon that black marble tomb, What memorial sad appears.’— ‘Undistinguished it lies in the chancel’s gloom, No memorial sad it bears’— _80
The Canon his paternoster reads, His rosary hung by his side, Now swift to the chancel doors he leads, And untouched they open wide,
Resistless, strange sounds his steps impel, _85 To approach to the black marble tomb, ‘Oh! enter, Black Canon,’ a whisper fell, ‘Oh! enter, thy hour is come.’
He paused, told his beads, and the threshold passed. Oh! horror, the chancel doors close, _90 A loud yell was borne on the rising blast, And a deep, dying groan arose.
The Monks in amazement shuddering stand, They burst through the chancel’s gloom, From St. Edmond’s shrine, lo! a skeleton’s hand, _95 Points to the black marble tomb.
Lo! deeply engraved, an inscription blood red, In characters fresh and clear— ‘The guilty Black Canon of Elmham’s dead, And his wife lies buried here!’ _100
In Elmham’s tower he wedded a Nun, To St. Edmond’s his bride he bore, On this eve her noviciate here was begun, And a Monk’s gray weeds she wore;—
O! deep was her conscience dyed with guilt, _105 Remorse she full oft revealed, Her blood by the ruthless Black Canon was spilt, And in death her lips he sealed;
Her spirit to penance this night was doomed, ‘Till the Canon atoned the deed, _110 Here together they now shall rest entombed, ‘Till their bodies from dust are freed—
Hark! a loud peal of thunder shakes the roof, Round the altar bright lightnings play, Speechless with horror the Monks stand aloof, _115 And the storm dies sudden away—
The inscription was gone! a cross on the ground, And a rosary shone through the gloom, But never again was the Canon there found, Or the Ghost on the black marble tomb. _120
15. REVENGE.
‘Ah! quit me not yet, for the wind whistles shrill, Its blast wanders mournfully over the hill, The thunder’s wild voice rattles madly above, You will not then, cannot then, leave me my love.—’
I must dearest Agnes, the night is far gone— _5 I must wander this evening to Strasburg alone, I must seek the drear tomb of my ancestors’ bones, And must dig their remains from beneath the cold stones.
‘For the spirit of Conrad there meets me this night, And we quit not the tomb ‘till dawn of the light, _10 And Conrad’s been dead just a month and a day! So farewell dearest Agnes for I must away,—
‘He bid me bring with me what most I held dear, Or a month from that time should I lie on my bier, And I’d sooner resign this false fluttering breath, _15 Than my Agnes should dread either danger or death,
‘And I love you to madness my Agnes I love, My constant affection this night will I prove, This night will I go to the sepulchre’s jaw Alone will I glut its all conquering maw’— _20
‘No! no loved Adolphus thy Agnes will share, In the tomb all the dangers that wait for you there, I fear not the spirit,—I fear not the grave, My dearest Adolphus I’d perish to save’—
‘Nay seek not to say that thy love shall not go, _25 But spare me those ages of horror and woe, For I swear to thee here that I’ll perish ere day, If you go unattended by Agnes away’—
The night it was bleak the fierce storm raged around, The lightning’s blue fire-light flashed on the ground, _30 Strange forms seemed to flit,—and howl tidings of fate, As Agnes advanced to the sepulchre gate.—
The youth struck the portal,—the echoing sound Was fearfully rolled midst the tombstones around, The blue lightning gleamed o’er the dark chapel spire, _35 And tinged were the storm clouds with sulphurous fire.
Still they gazed on the tombstone where Conrad reclined, Yet they shrank at the cold chilling blast of the wind, When a strange silver brilliance pervaded the scene, And a figure advanced—tall in form—fierce in mien. _40
A mantle encircled his shadowy form, As light as a gossamer borne on the storm, Celestial terror sat throned in his gaze, Like the midnight pestiferous meteor’s blaze.—
SPIRIT: Thy father, Adolphus! was false, false as hell, _45 And Conrad has cause to remember it well, He ruined my Mother, despised me his son, I quitted the world ere my vengeance was done.
I was nearly expiring—’twas close of the day,— A demon advanced to the bed where I lay, _50 He gave me the power from whence I was hurled, To return to revenge, to return to the world,—
Now Adolphus I’ll seize thy best loved in my arms, I’ll drag her to Hades all blooming in charms, On the black whirlwind’s thundering pinion I’ll ride, _55 And fierce yelling fiends shall exult o’er thy bride—
He spoke, and extending his ghastly arms wide, Majestic advanced with a swift noiseless stride, He clasped the fair Agnes—he raised her on high, And cleaving the roof sped his way to the sky— _60
All was now silent,—and over the tomb, Thicker, deeper, was swiftly extended a gloom, Adolphus in horror sank down on the stone, And his fleeting soul fled with a harrowing groan.
DECEMBER, 1809.
16. GHASTA OR, THE AVENGING DEMON!!!
The idea of the following tale was taken from a few unconnected German Stanzas.—The principal Character is evidently the Wandering Jew, and although not mentioned by name, the burning Cross on his forehead undoubtedly alludes to that superstition, so prevalent in the part of Germany called the Black Forest, where this scene is supposed to lie.
Hark! the owlet flaps her wing, In the pathless dell beneath, Hark! night ravens loudly sing, Tidings of despair and death.—
Horror covers all the sky, _5 Clouds of darkness blot the moon, Prepare! for mortal thou must die, Prepare to yield thy soul up soon—
Fierce the tempest raves around, Fierce the volleyed lightnings fly, _10 Crashing thunder shakes the ground, Fire and tumult fill the sky.—
Hark! the tolling village bell, Tells the hour of midnight come, Now can blast the powers of Hell, _15 Fiend-like goblins now can roam—
See! his crest all stained with rain, A warrior hastening speeds his way, He starts, looks round him, starts again, And sighs for the approach of day. _20
See! his frantic steed he reins, See! he lifts his hands on high, Implores a respite to his pains, From the powers of the sky.—
He seeks an Inn, for faint from toil, _25 Fatigue had bent his lofty form, To rest his wearied limbs awhile, Fatigued with wandering and the storm.
... ...
Slow the door is opened wide— With trackless tread a stranger came, _30 His form Majestic, slow his stride, He sate, nor spake,—nor told his name—
Terror blanched the warrior’s cheek, Cold sweat from his forehead ran, In vain his tongue essayed to speak,— _35 At last the stranger thus began:
‘Mortal! thou that saw’st the sprite, Tell me what I wish to know, Or come with me before ’tis light, Where cypress trees and mandrakes grow. _40
‘Fierce the avenging Demon’s ire, Fiercer than the wintry blast, Fiercer than the lightning’s fire, When the hour of twilight’s past’—
The warrior raised his sunken eye. _45 It met the stranger’s sullen scowl, ‘Mortal! Mortal! thou must die,’ In burning letters chilled his soul.
WARRIOR: Stranger! whoso’er you are, I feel impelled my tale to tell— _50 Horrors stranger shalt thou hear, Horrors drear as those of Hell.
O’er my Castle silence reigned, Late the night and drear the hour, When on the terrace I observed, _55 A fleeting shadowy mist to lower.—
Light the cloud as summer fog, Which transient shuns the morning beam; Fleeting as the cloud on bog, That hangs or on the mountain stream.— _60
Horror seized my shuddering brain, Horror dimmed my starting eye. In vain I tried to speak,—In vain My limbs essayed the spot to fly—
At last the thin and shadowy form, _65 With noiseless, trackless footsteps came,— Its light robe floated on the storm, Its head was bound with lambent flame.
In chilling voice drear as the breeze Which sweeps along th’ autumnal ground, _70 Which wanders through the leafless trees, Or the mandrake’s groan which floats around.
‘Thou art mine and I am thine, ‘Till the sinking of the world, I am thine and thou art mine, _75 ‘Till in ruin death is hurled—
‘Strong the power and dire the fate, Which drags me from the depths of Hell, Breaks the tomb’s eternal gate, Where fiendish shapes and dead men yell, _80
‘Haply I might ne’er have shrank From flames that rack the guilty dead, Haply I might ne’er have sank On pleasure’s flowery, thorny bed—
—‘But stay! no more I dare disclose, _85 Of the tale I wish to tell, On Earth relentless were my woes, But fiercer are my pangs in Hell—
‘Now I claim thee as my love, Lay aside all chilling fear, _90 My affection will I prove, Where sheeted ghosts and spectres are!
‘For thou art mine, and I am thine, ‘Till the dreaded judgement day, I am thine, and thou art mine— _95 Night is past—I must away.’
Still I gazed, and still the form Pressed upon my aching sight, Still I braved the howling storm, When the ghost dissolved in night.— _100
Restless, sleepless fled the night, Sleepless as a sick man’s bed, When he sighs for morning light, When he turns his aching head,—
Slow and painful passed the day. _105 Melancholy seized my brain, Lingering fled the hours away, Lingering to a wretch in pain.—
At last came night, ah! horrid hour, Ah! chilling time that wakes the dead, _110 When demons ride the clouds that lower, —The phantom sat upon my bed.
In hollow voice, low as the sound Which in some charnel makes its moan, What floats along the burying ground, _115 The phantom claimed me as her own.
Her chilling finger on my head, With coldest touch congealed my soul— Cold as the finger of the dead, Or damps which round a tombstone roll— _120
Months are passed in lingering round, Every night the spectre comes, With thrilling step it shakes the ground, With thrilling step it round me roams—
Stranger! I have told to thee, _125 All the tale I have to tell— Stranger! canst thou tell to me, How to ‘scape the powers of Hell?—
STRANGER: Warrior! I can ease thy woes, Wilt thou, wilt thou, come with me— _130 Warrior! I can all disclose, Follow, follow, follow me.
Yet the tempest’s duskiest wing, Its mantle stretches o’er the sky, Yet the midnight ravens sing, _135 ‘Mortal! Mortal! thou must die.’
At last they saw a river clear, That crossed the heathy path they trod, The Stranger’s look was wild and drear, The firm Earth shook beneath his nod— _140
He raised a wand above his head, He traced a circle on the plain, In a wild verse he called the dead, The dead with silent footsteps came.
A burning brilliance on his head, _145 Flaming filled the stormy air, In a wild verse he called the dead, The dead in motley crowd were there.—
‘Ghasta! Ghasta! come along, Bring thy fiendish crowd with thee, _150 Quickly raise th’ avenging Song, Ghasta! Ghasta! come to me.’
Horrid shapes in mantles gray, Flit athwart the stormy night, ‘Ghasta! Ghasta! come away, _155 Come away before ’tis light.’
See! the sheeted Ghost they bring, Yelling dreadful o’er the heath, Hark! the deadly verse they sing, Tidings of despair and death! _160
The yelling Ghost before him stands, See! she rolls her eyes around, Now she lifts her bony hands, Now her footsteps shake the ground.
STRANGER: Phantom of Theresa say, _165 Why to earth again you came, Quickly speak, I must away! Or you must bleach for aye in flame,—
PHANTOM: Mighty one I know thee now, Mightiest power of the sky, _170 Know thee by thy flaming brow, Know thee by thy sparkling eye.
That fire is scorching! Oh! I came, From the caverned depth of Hell, My fleeting false Rodolph to claim, _175 Mighty one! I know thee well.—
STRANGER: Ghasta! seize yon wandering sprite, Drag her to the depth beneath, Take her swift, before ’tis light, Take her to the cells of death! _180
Thou that heardst the trackless dead, In the mouldering tomb must lie, Mortal! look upon my head, Mortal! Mortal! thou must die.
Of glowing flame a cross was there, _185 Which threw a light around his form, Whilst his lank and raven hair, Floated wild upon the storm.—
The warrior upwards turned his eyes, Gazed upon the cross of fire, _190 There sat horror and surprise, There sat God’s eternal ire.—
A shivering through the Warrior flew, Colder than the nightly blast, Colder than the evening dew, _195 When the hour of twilight’s past.—
Thunder shakes th’ expansive sky, Shakes the bosom of the heath, ‘Mortal! Mortal! thou must die’— The warrior sank convulsed in death. _200
JANUARY, 1810.
NOTES: _114 its]it 1810. _115 What]query Which?
17. FRAGMENT, OR THE TRIUMPH OF CONSCIENCE.
’Twas dead of the night when I sate in my dwelling, One glimmering lamp was expiring and low,— Around the dark tide of the tempest was swelling, Along the wild mountains night-ravens were yelling, They bodingly presaged destruction and woe! _5
’Twas then that I started, the wild storm was howling, Nought was seen, save the lightning that danced on the sky, Above me the crash of the thunder was rolling, And low, chilling murmurs the blast wafted by.—
My heart sank within me, unheeded the jar _10 Of the battling clouds on the mountain-tops broke, Unheeded the thunder-peal crashed in mine ear, This heart hard as iron was stranger to fear, But conscience in low noiseless whispering spoke. ’Twas then that her form on the whirlwind uprearing, _15 The dark ghost of the murdered Victoria strode, Her right hand a blood reeking dagger was bearing, She swiftly advanced to my lonesome abode.— I wildly then called on the tempest to bear me!
... ...
***
POEMS FROM ST. IRVYNE, OR, THE ROSICRUCIAN.
[“St. Irvyne; or The Rosicrucian”, appeared early in 1811 (see “Bibliographical List”). Rossetti (1870) relying on a passage in Medwin’s “Life of Shelley” (1 page 74), assigns 1, 4, 5, and 6 to 1808, and 2 and 4 to 1809. The titles of 1, 3, 4, and 5 are Rossetti’s; those of 2 and 6 are Dowden’s.]
***
1.—VICTORIA.
[Another version of “The Triumph of Conscience” immediately preceding.]
1. ’Twas dead of the night, when I sat in my dwelling; One glimmering lamp was expiring and low; Around, the dark tide of the tempest was swelling, Along the wild mountains night-ravens were yelling,— They bodingly presaged destruction and woe. _5
2. ’Twas then that I started!—the wild storm was howling, Nought was seen, save the lightning, which danced in the sky; Above me, the crash of the thunder was rolling, And low, chilling murmurs, the blast wafted by.
3. My heart sank within me—unheeded the war _10 Of the battling clouds, on the mountain-tops, broke;— Unheeded the thunder-peal crashed in mine ear— This heart, hard as iron, is stranger to fear; But conscience in low, noiseless whispering spoke.
4. ’Twas then that her form on the whirlwind upholding, _15 The ghost of the murdered Victoria strode; In her right hand, a shadowy shroud she was holding, She swiftly advanced to my lonesome abode.
5. I wildly then called on the tempest to bear me—’
...
NOTE: 1.—Victoria: without title, 1811.
2.—ON THE DARK HEIGHT OF JURA.
1. Ghosts of the dead! have I not heard your yelling Rise on the night-rolling breath of the blast, When o’er the dark aether the tempest is swelling, And on eddying whirlwind the thunder-peal passed?
2. For oft have I stood on the dark height of Jura, _5 Which frowns on the valley that opens beneath; Oft have I braved the chill night-tempest’s fury, Whilst around me, I thought, echoed murmurs of death.
3. And now, whilst the winds of the mountain are howling, O father! thy voice seems to strike on mine ear; _10 In air whilst the tide of the night-storm is rolling, It breaks on the pause of the elements’ jar.
4. On the wing of the whirlwind which roars o’er the mountain Perhaps rides the ghost of my sire who is dead: On the mist of the tempest which hangs o’er the fountain, Whilst a wreath of dark vapour encircles his head.
NOTE: 2.—On the Dark, etc.: without title, 1811; The Father’s Spectre, Rossetti, 1870.
3.—SISTER ROSA: A BALLAD.
1. The death-bell beats!— The mountain repeats The echoing sound of the knell; And the dark Monk now Wraps the cowl round his brow, _5 As he sits in his lonely cell.
2. And the cold hand of death Chills his shuddering breath, As he lists to the fearful lay Which the ghosts of the sky, _10 As they sweep wildly by, Sing to departed day. And they sing of the hour When the stern fates had power To resolve Rosa’s form to its clay. _15
3. But that hour is past; And that hour was the last Of peace to the dark Monk’s brain. Bitter tears, from his eyes, gushed silent and fast; And he strove to suppress them in vain. _20
4. Then his fair cross of gold he dashed on the floor, When the death-knell struck on his ear.— ‘Delight is in store For her evermore; But for me is fate, horror, and fear.’ _25
5. Then his eyes wildly rolled, When the death-bell tolled, And he raged in terrific woe. And he stamped on the ground,— But when ceased the sound, _30 Tears again began to flow.
6. And the ice of despair Chilled the wild throb of care, And he sate in mute agony still; Till the night-stars shone through the cloudless air, _35 And the pale moonbeam slept on the hill.
7. Then he knelt in his cell:— And the horrors of hell Were delights to his agonized pain, And he prayed to God to dissolve the spell, _40 Which else must for ever remain.
8. And in fervent pray’r he knelt on the ground, Till the abbey bell struck One: His feverish blood ran chill at the sound: A voice hollow and horrible murmured around— _45 ‘The term of thy penance is done!’
9. Grew dark the night; The moonbeam bright Waxed faint on the mountain high; And, from the black hill, _50 Went a voice cold and still,— ‘Monk! thou art free to die.’
10. Then he rose on his feet, And his heart loud did beat, And his limbs they were palsied with dread; _55 Whilst the grave’s clammy dew O’er his pale forehead grew; And he shuddered to sleep with the dead.
11. And the wild midnight storm Raved around his tall form, _60 As he sought the chapel’s gloom: And the sunk grass did sigh To the wind, bleak and high, As he searched for the new-made tomb.
12. And forms, dark and high, _65 Seemed around him to fly, And mingle their yells with the blast: And on the dark wall Half-seen shadows did fall, As enhorrored he onward passed. _70
13. And the storm-fiends wild rave O’er the new-made grave, And dread shadows linger around. The Monk called on God his soul to save, And, in horror, sank on the ground. _75
14. Then despair nerved his arm To dispel the charm, And he burst Rosa’s coffin asunder. And the fierce storm did swell More terrific and fell, _80 And louder pealed the thunder.
15. And laughed, in joy, the fiendish throng, Mixed with ghosts of the mouldering dead: And their grisly wings, as they floated along, Whistled in murmurs dread. _85
16. And her skeleton form the dead Nun reared Which dripped with the chill dew of hell. In her half-eaten eyeballs two pale flames appeared, And triumphant their gleam on the dark Monk glared, As he stood within the cell. _90
17. And her lank hand lay on his shuddering brain; But each power was nerved by fear.— ‘I never, henceforth, may breathe again; Death now ends mine anguished pain.— The grave yawns,—we meet there.’ _95
18. And her skeleton lungs did utter the sound, So deadly, so lone, and so fell, That in long vibrations shuddered the ground; And as the stern notes floated around, A deep groan was answered from hell.
NOTE: 3.—Sister Rosa: Ballad, 1811.
4.—ST. IRVYNE’S TOWER.
1. How swiftly through Heaven’s wide expanse Bright day’s resplendent colours fade! How sweetly does the moonbeam’s glance With silver tint St. Irvyne’s glade!
2. No cloud along the spangled air, _5 Is borne upon the evening breeze; How solemn is the scene! how fair The moonbeams rest upon the trees!
3. Yon dark gray turret glimmers white, Upon it sits the mournful owl; _10 Along the stillness of the night, Her melancholy shriekings roll.
4. But not alone on Irvyne’s tower, The silver moonbeam pours her ray; It gleams upon the ivied bower, _15 It dances in the cascade’s spray.
5. ‘Ah! why do dark’ning shades conceal The hour, when man must cease to be? Why may not human minds unveil The dim mists of futurity?— _20
6. ‘The keenness of the world hath torn The heart which opens to its blast; Despised, neglected, and forlorn, Sinks the wretch in death at last.’
NOTE: 4.—St. Irvyne’s Tower: Song, 1810.
5.—BEREAVEMENT.
1. How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner, As he bends in still grief o’er the hallowed bier, As enanguished he turns from the laugh of the scorner, And drops, to Perfection’s remembrance, a tear; When floods of despair down his pale cheek are streaming, _5 When no blissful hope on his bosom is beaming, Or, if lulled for awhile, soon he starts from his dreaming, And finds torn the soft ties to affection so dear.
2. Ah! when shall day dawn on the night of the grave, Or summer succeed to the winter of death? _10 Rest awhile, hapless victim, and Heaven will save The spirit, that faded away with the breath. Eternity points in its amaranth bower, Where no clouds of fate o’er the sweet prospect lower, Unspeakable pleasure, of goodness the dower, _15 When woe fades away like the mist of the heath.
NOTE: 5.—Bereavement: Song, 1811.
6.—THE DROWNED LOVER.
1. Ah! faint are her limbs, and her footstep is weary, Yet far must the desolate wanderer roam; Though the tempest is stern, and the mountain is dreary, She must quit at deep midnight her pitiless home. I see her swift foot dash the dew from the whortle, _5 As she rapidly hastes to the green grove of myrtle; And I hear, as she wraps round her figure the kirtle, ‘Stay thy boat on the lake,—dearest Henry, I come.’
2. High swelled in her bosom the throb of affection, As lightly her form bounded over the lea, _10 And arose in her mind every dear recollection; ‘I come, dearest Henry, and wait but for thee.’ How sad, when dear hope every sorrow is soothing, When sympathy’s swell the soft bosom is moving, And the mind the mild joys of affection is proving, _15 Is the stern voice of fate that bids happiness flee!
3. Oh! dark lowered the clouds on that horrible eve, And the moon dimly gleamed through the tempested air; Oh! how could fond visions such softness deceive? Oh! how could false hope rend, a bosom so fair? _20 Thy love’s pallid corse the wild surges are laving, O’er his form the fierce swell of the tempest is raving; But, fear not, parting spirit; thy goodness is saving, In eternity’s bowers, a seat for thee there.
6.—The Drowned Lover: Song. 1811; The Lake-Storm, Rossetti, 1870.
***
POSTHUMOUS FRAGMENTS OF MARGARET MCHOLSON.
Being Poems found amongst the Papers of that noted Female who attempted the life of the King in 1786. Edited by John Fitzvictor.
[The “Posthumous Fragments”, published at Oxford by Shelley, appeared in November, 1810. See “Bibliographical List”.]
ADVERTISEMENT.
The energy and native genius of these Fragments must be the only apology which the Editor can make for thus intruding them on the public notice. The first I found with no title, and have left it so. It is intimately connected with the dearest interests of universal happiness; and much as we may deplore the fatal and enthusiastic tendency which the ideas of this poor female had acquired, we cannot fail to pay the tribute of unequivocal regret to the departed memory of genius, which, had it been rightly organized, would have made that intellect, which has since become the victim of frenzy and despair, a most brilliant ornament to society.
In case the sale of these Fragments evinces that the public have any curiosity to be presented with a more copious collection of my unfortunate Aunt’s poems, I have other papers in my possession which shall, in that case, be subjected to their notice. It may be supposed they require much arrangement; but I send the following to the press in the same state in which they came into my possession. J. F.
WAR.
Ambition, power, and avarice, now have hurled Death, fate, and ruin, on a bleeding world. See! on yon heath what countless victims lie, Hark! what loud shrieks ascend through yonder sky; Tell then the cause, ’tis sure the avenger’s rage _5 Has swept these myriads from life’s crowded stage: Hark to that groan, an anguished hero dies, He shudders in death’s latest agonies; Yet does a fleeting hectic flush his cheek, Yet does his parting breath essay to speak— _10 ‘Oh God! my wife, my children—Monarch thou For whose support this fainting frame lies low; For whose support in distant lands I bleed, Let his friends’ welfare be the warrior’s meed. He hears me not—ah! no—kings cannot hear, _15 For passion’s voice has dulled their listless ear. To thee, then, mighty God, I lift my moan, Thou wilt not scorn a suppliant’s anguished groan. Oh! now I die—but still is death’s fierce pain— God hears my prayer—we meet, we meet again.’ _20 He spake, reclined him on death’s bloody bed, And with a parting groan his spirit fled. Oppressors of mankind to YOU we owe The baleful streams from whence these miseries flow; For you how many a mother weeps her son, _25 Snatched from life’s course ere half his race was run! For you how many a widow drops a tear, In silent anguish, on her husband’s bier! ‘Is it then Thine, Almighty Power,’ she cries, ‘Whence tears of endless sorrow dim these eyes? _30 Is this the system which Thy powerful sway, Which else in shapeless chaos sleeping lay, Formed and approved?—it cannot be—but oh! Forgive me, Heaven, my brain is warped by woe.’ ’Tis not—He never bade the war-note swell, _35 He never triumphed in the work of hell— Monarchs of earth! thine is the baleful deed, Thine are the crimes for which thy subjects bleed. Ah! when will come the sacred fated time, When man unsullied by his leaders’ crime, _40 Despising wealth, ambition, pomp, and pride, Will stretch him fearless by his foe-men’s side? Ah! when will come the time, when o’er the plain No more shall death and desolation reign? When will the sun smile on the bloodless field, _45 And the stern warrior’s arm the sickle wield? Not whilst some King, in cold ambition’s dreams, Plans for the field of death his plodding schemes; Not whilst for private pique the public fall, And one frail mortal’s mandate governs all. _50 Swelled with command and mad with dizzying sway; Who sees unmoved his myriads fade away. Careless who lives or dies—so that he gains Some trivial point for which he took the pains. What then are Kings?—I see the trembling crowd, _55 I hear their fulsome clamours echoed loud; Their stern oppressor pleased appears awhile, But April’s sunshine is a Monarch’s smile— Kings are but dust—the last eventful day Will level all and make them lose their sway; _60 Will dash the sceptre from the Monarch’s hand, And from the warrior’s grasp wrest the ensanguined brand. Oh! Peace, soft Peace, art thou for ever gone, Is thy fair form indeed for ever flown? And love and concord hast thou swept away, _65 As if incongruous with thy parted sway? Alas, I fear thou hast, for none appear. Now o’er the palsied earth stalks giant Fear, With War, and Woe, and Terror, in his train;— List’ning he pauses on the embattled plain, _70 Then speeding swiftly o’er the ensanguined heath, Has left the frightful work to Hell and Death. See! gory Ruin yokes his blood-stained car, He scents the battle’s carnage from afar; Hell and Destruction mark his mad career, _75 He tracks the rapid step of hurrying Fear; Whilst ruined towns and smoking cities tell, That thy work, Monarch, is the work of Hell. ‘It is thy work!’ I hear a voice repeat, Shakes the broad basis of thy bloodstained seat; _80 And at the orphan’s sigh, the widow’s moan, Totters the fabric of thy guilt-stained throne— ‘It is thy work, O Monarch;’ now the sound Fainter and fainter, yet is borne around, Yet to enthusiast ears the murmurs tell _85 That Heaven, indignant at the work of Hell, Will soon the cause, the hated cause remove, Which tears from earth peace, innocence, and love.
NOTE: War: the title is Woodberry’s, 1893; no title, 1810.
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FRAGMENT: SUPPOSED TO BE AN EPITHALAMIUM OF FRANCIS RAVAILLAC AND CHARLOTTE CORDAY.
’Tis midnight now—athwart the murky air, Dank lurid meteors shoot a livid gleam; From the dark storm-clouds flashes a fearful glare, It shows the bending oak, the roaring stream.
I pondered on the woes of lost mankind, _5 I pondered on the ceaseless rage of Kings; My rapt soul dwelt upon the ties that bind The mazy volume of commingling things, When fell and wild misrule to man stern sorrow brings.
I heard a yell—it was not the knell, _10 When the blasts on the wild lake sleep, That floats on the pause of the summer gale’s swell, O’er the breast of the waveless deep.
I thought it had been death’s accents cold That bade me recline on the shore; _15 I laid mine hot head on the surge-beaten mould, And thought to breathe no more.
But a heavenly sleep That did suddenly steep In balm my bosom’s pain, _20 Pervaded my soul, And free from control, Did mine intellect range again.
Methought enthroned upon a silvery cloud, Which floated mid a strange and brilliant light; _25 My form upborne by viewless aether rode, And spurned the lessening realms of earthly night. What heavenly notes burst on my ravished ears, What beauteous spirits met my dazzled eye! Hark! louder swells the music of the spheres, _30 More clear the forms of speechless bliss float by, And heavenly gestures suit aethereal melody.
But fairer than the spirits of the air, More graceful than the Sylph of symmetry, Than the enthusiast’s fancied love more fair, _35 Were the bright forms that swept the azure sky. Enthroned in roseate light, a heavenly band Strewed flowers of bliss that never fade away; They welcome virtue to its native land, And songs of triumph greet the joyous day _40 When endless bliss the woes of fleeting life repay.
Congenial minds will seek their kindred soul, E’en though the tide of time has rolled between; They mock weak matter’s impotent control, And seek of endless life the eternal scene. _45 At death’s vain summons THIS will never die, In Nature’s chaos THIS will not decay— These are the bands which closely, warmly, tie Thy soul, O Charlotte, ‘yond this chain of clay, To him who thine must be till time shall fade away. _50
Yes, Francis! thine was the dear knife that tore A tyrant’s heart-strings from his guilty breast, Thine was the daring at a tyrant’s gore, To smile in triumph, to contemn the rest; And thine, loved glory of thy sex! to tear _55 From its base shrine a despot’s haughty soul, To laugh at sorrow in secure despair, To mock, with smiles, life’s lingering control, And triumph mid the griefs that round thy fate did roll.
Yes! the fierce spirits of the avenging deep _60 With endless tortures goad their guilty shades. I see the lank and ghastly spectres sweep Along the burning length of yon arcades; And I see Satan stalk athwart the plain; He hastes along the burning soil of Hell. _65 ‘Welcome, ye despots, to my dark domain, With maddening joy mine anguished senses swell To welcome to their home the friends I love so well.’
...
Hark! to those notes, how sweet, how thrilling sweet They echo to the sound of angels’ feet. _70
...
Oh haste to the bower where roses are spread, For there is prepared thy nuptial bed. Oh haste—hark! hark!—they’re gone.
...
CHORUS OF SPIRITS: Stay, ye days of contentment and joy, Whilst love every care is erasing, _75 Stay ye pleasures that never can cloy, And ye spirits that can never cease pleasing.
And if any soft passion be near, Which mortals, frail mortals, can know, Let love shed on the bosom a tear, _80 And dissolve the chill ice-drop of woe.
SYMPHONY.
FRANCIS: ‘Soft, my dearest angel, stay, Oh! you suck my soul away; Suck on, suck on, I glow, I glow! Tides of maddening passion roll, _85 And streams of rapture drown my soul. Now give me one more billing kiss, Let your lips now repeat the bliss, Endless kisses steal my breath, No life can equal such a death.’ _90
CHARLOTTE: ‘Oh! yes I will kiss thine eyes so fair, And I will clasp thy form; Serene is the breath of the balmy air, But I think, love, thou feelest me warm And I will recline on thy marble neck _95 Till I mingle into thee; And I will kiss the rose on thy cheek, And thou shalt give kisses to me. For here is no morn to flout our delight, Oh! dost thou not joy at this? _100 And here we may lie an endless night, A long, long night of bliss.’
Spirits! when raptures move, Say what it is to love, When passion’s tear stands on the cheek, _105 When bursts the unconscious sigh; And the tremulous lips dare not speak What is told by the soul-felt eye. But what is sweeter to revenge’s ear Than the fell tyrant’s last expiring yell? _110 Yes! than love’s sweetest blisses ’tis more dear To drink the floatings of a despot’s knell. I wake—’tis done—’tis over.
NOTE: _66 ye]thou 1810.
***
DESPAIR.
And canst thou mock mine agony, thus calm In cloudless radiance, Queen of silver night? Can you, ye flow’rets, spread your perfumed balm Mid pearly gems of dew that shine so bright? And you wild winds, thus can you sleep so still _5 Whilst throbs the tempest of my breast so high? Can the fierce night-fiends rest on yonder hill, And, in the eternal mansions of the sky, Can the directors of the storm in powerless silence lie?
Hark! I hear music on the zephyr’s wing, _10 Louder it floats along the unruffled sky; Some fairy sure has touched the viewless string— Now faint in distant air the murmurs die. Awhile it stills the tide of agony. Now—now it loftier swells—again stern woe _15 Arises with the awakening melody. Again fierce torments, such as demons know, In bitterer, feller tide, on this torn bosom flow.
Arise ye sightless spirits of the storm, Ye unseen minstrels of the aereal song, _20 Pour the fierce tide around this lonely form, And roll the tempest’s wildest swell along. Dart the red lightning, wing the forked flash, Pour from thy cloud-formed hills the thunder’s roar; Arouse the whirlwind—and let ocean dash _25 In fiercest tumult on the rocking shore,— Destroy this life or let earth’s fabric be no more.
Yes! every tie that links me here is dead; Mysterious Fate, thy mandate I obey, Since hope and peace, and joy, for aye are fled, _30 I come, terrific power, I come away. Then o’er this ruined soul let spirits of Hell, In triumph, laughing wildly, mock its pain; And though with direst pangs mine heart-strings swell, I’ll echo back their deadly yells again, _35 Cursing the power that ne’er made aught in vain.
***
FRAGMENT.
Yes! all is past—swift time has fled away, Yet its swell pauses on my sickening mind; How long will horror nerve this frame of clay? I’m dead, and lingers yet my soul behind. Oh! powerful Fate, revoke thy deadly spell, _5 And yet that may not ever, ever be, Heaven will not smile upon the work of Hell; Ah! no, for Heaven cannot smile on me; Fate, envious Fate, has sealed my wayward destiny.
I sought the cold brink of the midnight surge, _10 I sighed beneath its wave to hide my woes, The rising tempest sung a funeral dirge, And on the blast a frightful yell arose. Wild flew the meteors o’er the maddened main, Wilder did grief athwart my bosom glare; _15 Stilled was the unearthly howling, and a strain, Swelled mid the tumult of the battling air, ’Twas like a spirit’s song, but yet more soft and fair.
I met a maniac—like he was to me, I said—‘Poor victim, wherefore dost thou roam? _20 And canst thou not contend with agony, That thus at midnight thou dost quit thine home?’ ‘Ah there she sleeps: cold is her bloodless form, And I will go to slumber in her grave; And then our ghosts, whilst raves the maddened storm, _25 Will sweep at midnight o’er the wildered wave; Wilt thou our lowly beds with tears of pity lave?’
‘Ah! no, I cannot shed the pitying tear, This breast is cold, this heart can feel no more— But I can rest me on thy chilling bier, _30 Can shriek in horror to the tempest’s roar.’
***
THE SPECTRAL HORSEMAN.
What was the shriek that struck Fancy’s ear As it sate on the ruins of time that is past? Hark! it floats on the fitful blast of the wind, And breathes to the pale moon a funeral sigh. It is the Benshie’s moan on the storm, _5 Or a shivering fiend that thirsting for sin, Seeks murder and guilt when virtue sleeps, Winged with the power of some ruthless king, And sweeps o’er the breast of the prostrate plain. It was not a fiend from the regions of Hell _10 That poured its low moan on the stillness of night: It was not a ghost of the guilty dead, Nor a yelling vampire reeking with gore; But aye at the close of seven years’ end, That voice is mixed with the swell of the storm, _15 And aye at the close of seven years’ end, A shapeless shadow that sleeps on the hill Awakens and floats on the mist of the heath. It is not the shade of a murdered man, Who has rushed uncalled to the throne of his God, _20 And howls in the pause of the eddying storm. This voice is low, cold, hollow, and chill, ’Tis not heard by the ear, but is felt in the soul. ’Tis more frightful far than the death-daemon’s scream, Or the laughter of fiends when they howl o’er the corpse _25 Of a man who has sold his soul to Hell. It tells the approach of a mystic form, A white courser bears the shadowy sprite; More thin they are than the mists of the mountain, When the clear moonlight sleeps on the waveless lake. _30 More pale HIS cheek than the snows of Nithona, When winter rides on the northern blast, And howls in the midst of the leafless wood. Yet when the fierce swell of the tempest is raving, And the whirlwinds howl in the caves of Inisfallen, _35 Still secure mid the wildest war of the sky, The phantom courser scours the waste, And his rider howls in the thunder’s roar. O’er him the fierce bolts of avenging Heaven Pause, as in fear, to strike his head. _40 The meteors of midnight recoil from his figure, Yet the ‘wildered peasant, that oft passes by, With wonder beholds the blue flash through his form: And his voice, though faint as the sighs of the dead, The startled passenger shudders to hear, _45 More distinct than the thunder’s wildest roar. Then does the dragon, who, chained in the caverns To eternity, curses the champion of Erin, Moan and yell loud at the lone hour of midnight, And twine his vast wreaths round the forms of the daemons; _50 Then in agony roll his death-swimming eyeballs, Though ‘wildered by death, yet never to die! Then he shakes from his skeleton folds the nightmares, Who, shrieking in agony, seek the couch Of some fevered wretch who courts sleep in vain; _55 Then the tombless ghosts of the guilty dead In horror pause on the fitful gale. They float on the swell of the eddying tempest, And scared seek the caves of gigantic... Where their thin forms pour unearthly sounds _60 On the blast that sweets the breast of the lake, And mingles its swell with the moonlight air.
***
MELODY TO A SCENE OF FORMER TIMES.
Art thou indeed forever gone, Forever, ever, lost to me? Must this poor bosom beat alone, Or beat at all, if not for thee? Ah! why was love to mortals given, _5 To lift them to the height of Heaven, Or dash them to the depths of Hell? Yet I do not reproach thee, dear! Ah, no! the agonies that swell This panting breast, this frenzied brain, _10 Might wake my —‘s slumb’ring tear. Oh! Heaven is witness I did love, And Heaven does know I love thee still, Does know the fruitless sick’ning thrill, When reason’s judgement vainly strove _15 To blot thee from my memory; But which might never, never be. Oh! I appeal to that blest day When passion’s wildest ecstasy Was coldness to the joys I knew, _20 When every sorrow sunk away. Oh! I had never lived before, But now those blisses are no more. And now I cease to live again, I do not blame thee, love; ah, no! _25 The breast that feels this anguished woe. Throbs for thy happiness alone. Two years of speechless bliss are gone, I thank thee, dearest, for the dream. ’Tis night—what faint and distant scream _30 Comes on the wild and fitful blast? It moans for pleasures that are past, It moans for days that are gone by. Oh! lagging hours, how slow you fly! I see a dark and lengthened vale, _35 The black view closes with the tomb; But darker is the lowering gloom That shades the intervening dale. In visioned slumber for awhile I seem again to share thy smile, _40 I seem to hang upon thy tone. Again you say, ‘Confide in me, For I am thine, and thine alone, And thine must ever, ever be.’ But oh! awak’ning still anew, _45 Athwart my enanguished senses flew A fiercer, deadlier agony!
[End of “Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson”.]
***
STANZA FROM A TRANSLATION OF THE MARSEILLAISE HYMN.
[Published by Forman, “Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1876; dated 1810.]
Tremble, Kings despised of man! Ye traitors to your Country, Tremble! Your parricidal plan At length shall meet its destiny... We all are soldiers fit to fight, _5 But if we sink in glory’s night Our mother Earth will give ye new The brilliant pathway to pursue Which leads to Death or Victory...
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BIGOTRY’S VICTIM.
[Published (without title) by Hogg, “Life of Shelley”, 1858; dated 1809-10. The title is Rossetti’s (1870).]
1. Dares the lama, most fleet of the sons of the wind, The lion to rouse from his skull-covered lair? When the tiger approaches can the fast-fleeting hind Repose trust in his footsteps of air? No! Abandoned he sinks in a trance of despair, _5 The monster transfixes his prey, On the sand flows his life-blood away; Whilst India’s rocks to his death-yells reply, Protracting the horrible harmony.
2. Yet the fowl of the desert, when danger encroaches, _10 Dares fearless to perish defending her brood, Though the fiercest of cloud-piercing tyrants approaches Thirsting—ay, thirsting for blood; And demands, like mankind, his brother for food; Yet more lenient, more gentle than they; _15 For hunger, not glory, the prey Must perish. Revenge does not howl in the dead. Nor ambition with fame crown the murderer’s head.
3. Though weak as the lama that bounds on the mountains, And endued not with fast-fleeting footsteps of air, _20 Yet, yet will I draw from the purest of fountains, Though a fiercer than tiger is there. Though, more dreadful than death, it scatters despair, Though its shadow eclipses the day, And the darkness of deepest dismay _25 Spreads the influence of soul-chilling terror around, And lowers on the corpses, that rot on the ground.
4. They came to the fountain to draw from its stream Waves too pure, too celestial, for mortals to see; They bathed for awhile in its silvery beam, _30 Then perished, and perished like me. For in vain from the grasp of the Bigot I flee; The most tenderly loved of my soul Are slaves to his hated control. He pursues me, he blasts me! ’Tis in vain that I fly: _35 - What remains, but to curse him,—to curse him and die?
***
ON AN ICICLE THAT CLUNG TO THE GRASS OF A GRAVE.
[Published (without title) by Hogg, “Life of Shelley”, 1858; dated 1809-10. The poem, with title as above, is included in the Esdaile manuscript book.]
1. Oh! take the pure gem to where southerly breezes, Waft repose to some bosom as faithful as fair, In which the warm current of love never freezes, As it rises unmingled with selfishness there, Which, untainted by pride, unpolluted by care, _5 Might dissolve the dim icedrop, might bid it arise, Too pure for these regions, to gleam in the skies.
2. Or where the stern warrior, his country defending, Dares fearless the dark-rolling battle to pour, Or o’er the fell corpse of a dread tyrant bending, _10 Where patriotism red with his guilt-reeking gore Plants Liberty’s flag on the slave-peopled shore, With victory’s cry, with the shout of the free, Let it fly, taintless Spirit, to mingle with thee.
3. For I found the pure gem, when the daybeam returning, _15 Ineffectual gleams on the snow-covered plain, When to others the wished-for arrival of morning Brings relief to long visions of soul-racking pain; But regret is an insult—to grieve is in vain: And why should we grieve that a spirit so fair _20 Seeks Heaven to mix with its own kindred there?
4. But still ’twas some Spirit of kindness descending To share in the load of mortality’s woe, Who over thy lowly-built sepulchre bending Bade sympathy’s tenderest teardrop to flow. _25 Not for THEE soft compassion celestials did know, But if ANGELS can weep, sure MAN may repine, May weep in mute grief o’er thy low-laid shrine.
5. And did I then say, for the altar of glory, That the earliest, the loveliest of flowers I’d entwine, _30 Though with millions of blood-reeking victims ’twas gory, Though the tears of the widow polluted its shrine, Though around it the orphans, the fatherless pine? Oh! Fame, all thy glories I’d yield for a tear To shed on the grave of a heart so sincere. _35
***
LOVE.
[Published (without title) by Hogg, “Life of Shelley”, 1858; dated 1811. The title is Rossetti’s (1870).]
Why is it said thou canst not live In a youthful breast and fair, Since thou eternal life canst give, Canst bloom for ever there? Since withering pain no power possessed, _5 Nor age, to blanch thy vermeil hue, Nor time’s dread victor, death, confessed, Though bathed with his poison dew, Still thou retain’st unchanging bloom, Fixed tranquil, even in the tomb. _10 And oh! when on the blest, reviving, The day-star dawns of love, Each energy of soul surviving More vivid, soars above, Hast thou ne’er felt a rapturous thrill, _15 Like June’s warm breath, athwart thee fly, O’er each idea then to steal, When other passions die? Felt it in some wild noonday dream, When sitting by the lonely stream, _20 Where Silence says, ‘Mine is the dell’; And not a murmur from the plain, And not an echo from the fell, Disputes her silent reign.
***
ON A FETE AT CARLTON HOUSE: FRAGMENT.
[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870; dated 1811.]
By the mossy brink, With me the Prince shall sit and think; Shall muse in visioned Regency, Rapt in bright dreams of dawning Royalty.
***
TO A STAR.
[Published (without title) by Hogg, “Life of Shelley”, 1858; dated 1811. The title is Rossetti’s (1870).]
Sweet star, which gleaming o’er the darksome scene Through fleecy clouds of silvery radiance fliest, Spanglet of light on evening’s shadowy veil, Which shrouds the day-beam from the waveless lake, Lighting the hour of sacred love; more sweet _5 Than the expiring morn-star’s paly fires:— Sweet star! When wearied Nature sinks to sleep, And all is hushed,—all, save the voice of Love, Whose broken murmurings swell the balmy blast Of soft Favonius, which at intervals _10 Sighs in the ear of stillness, art thou aught but Lulling the slaves of interest to repose With that mild, pitying gaze? Oh, I would look In thy dear beam till every bond of sense Became enamoured— _15
***
TO MARY WHO DIED IN THIS OPINION.
[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870; dated 1810-11.]
1. Maiden, quench the glare of sorrow Struggling in thine haggard eye: Firmness dare to borrow From the wreck of destiny; For the ray morn’s bloom revealing _5 Can never boast so bright an hue As that which mocks concealing, And sheds its loveliest light on you.
2. Yet is the tie departed Which bound thy lovely soul to bliss? _10 Has it left thee broken-hearted In a world so cold as this? Yet, though, fainting fair one, Sorrow’s self thy cup has given, Dream thou’lt meet thy dear one, Never more to part, in Heaven. _15
3. Existence would I barter For a dream so dear as thine, And smile to die a martyr On affection’s bloodless shrine. _20 Nor would I change for pleasure That withered hand and ashy cheek, If my heart enshrined a treasure Such as forces thine to break.
***
A TALE OF SOCIETY AS IT IS: FROM FACTS, 1811.
[Published (from Esdaile manuscript with title as above) by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870. Rossetti’s title is “Mother and Son”.]
1. She was an aged woman; and the years Which she had numbered on her toilsome way Had bowed her natural powers to decay. She was an aged woman; yet the ray Which faintly glimmered through her starting tears, _5 Pressed into light by silent misery, Hath soul’s imperishable energy. She was a cripple, and incapable To add one mite to gold-fed luxury: And therefore did her spirit dimly feel _10 That poverty, the crime of tainting stain, Would merge her in its depths, never to rise again.
2. One only son’s love had supported her. She long had struggled with infirmity, Lingering to human life-scenes; for to die, _15 When fate has spared to rend some mental tie, Would many wish, and surely fewer dare. But, when the tyrant’s bloodhounds forced the child For his cursed power unhallowed arms to wield— Bend to another’s will—become a thing _20 More senseless than the sword of battlefield— Then did she feel keen sorrow’s keenest sting; And many years had passed ere comfort they would bring.
3. For seven years did this poor woman live In unparticipated solitude. _25 Thou mightst have seen her in the forest rude Picking the scattered remnants of its wood. If human, thou mightst then have learned to grieve. The gleanings of precarious charity Her scantiness of food did scarce supply. _30 The proofs of an unspeaking sorrow dwelt Within her ghastly hollowness of eye: Each arrow of the season’s change she felt. Yet still she groans, ere yet her race were run, One only hope: it was—once more to see her son. _35
4. It was an eve of June, when every star Spoke peace from Heaven to those on earth that live. She rested on the moor. ’Twas such an eve When first her soul began indeed to grieve: Then he was here; now he is very far. _40 The sweetness of the balmy evening A sorrow o’er her aged soul did fling, Yet not devoid of rapture’s mingled tear: A balm was in the poison of the sting. This aged sufferer for many a year _45 Had never felt such comfort. She suppressed A sigh—and turning round, clasped William to her breast!
5. And, though his form was wasted by the woe Which tyrants on their victims love to wreak, Though his sunk eyeballs and his faded cheek _50 Of slavery’s violence and scorn did speak, Yet did the aged woman’s bosom glow. The vital fire seemed re-illumed within By this sweet unexpected welcoming. Oh, consummation of the fondest hope _55 That ever soared on Fancy’s wildest wing! Oh, tenderness that foundst so sweet a scope! Prince who dost pride thee on thy mighty sway, When THOU canst feel such love, thou shalt be great as they!
6. Her son, compelled, the country’s foes had fought, _60 Had bled in battle; and the stern control Which ruled his sinews and coerced his soul Utterly poisoned life’s unmingled bowl, And unsubduable evils on him brought. He was the shadow of the lusty child _65 Who, when the time of summer season smiled, Did earn for her a meal of honesty, And with affectionate discourse beguiled The keen attacks of pain and poverty; Till Power, as envying her this only joy, _70 From her maternal bosom tore the unhappy boy.
7. And now cold charity’s unwelcome dole Was insufficient to support the pair; And they would perish rather than would bear The law’s stern slavery, and the insolent stare _75 With which law loves to rend the poor man’s soul— The bitter scorn, the spirit-sinking noise Of heartless mirth which women, men, and boys Wake in this scene of legal misery.
...
NOTES: _28 grieve Esdaile manuscript; feel, 1870. _37 to those on earth that live Esdaile manuscripts; omitted, 1870.
***
TO THE REPUBLICANS OF NORTH AMERICA.
[Published (from the Esdaile manuscript with title as above) by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870; dated 1812. Rossetti’s title is “The Mexican Revolution”.]
1. Brothers! between you and me Whirlwinds sweep and billows roar: Yet in spirit oft I see On thy wild and winding shore Freedom’s bloodless banners wave,— _5 Feel the pulses of the brave Unextinguished in the grave,— See them drenched in sacred gore,— Catch the warrior’s gasping breath Murmuring ‘Liberty or death!’ _10
2. Shout aloud! Let every slave, Crouching at Corruption’s throne, Start into a man, and brave Racks and chains without a groan: And the castle’s heartless glow, _15 And the hovel’s vice and woe, Fade like gaudy flowers that blow— Weeds that peep, and then are gone Whilst, from misery’s ashes risen, Love shall burst the captive’s prison. _20
3. Cotopaxi! bid the sound Through thy sister mountains ring, Till each valley smile around At the blissful welcoming! And, O thou stern Ocean deep, _25 Thou whose foamy billows sweep Shores where thousands wake to weep Whilst they curse a villain king, On the winds that fan thy breast Bear thou news of Freedom’s rest! _30
4. Can the daystar dawn of love, Where the flag of war unfurled Floats with crimson stain above The fabric of a ruined world? Never but to vengeance driven _35 When the patriot’s spirit shriven Seeks in death its native Heaven! There, to desolation hurled, Widowed love may watch thy bier, Balm thee with its dying tear. _40
***
TO IRELAND.
[Published, 1-10, by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870; 11-17, 25-28, by Dowden, “Life of Shelley”, 1887; 18-24 by Kingsland, “Poet-Lore”, July, 1892. Dated 1812.]
1. Bear witness, Erin! when thine injured isle Sees summer on its verdant pastures smile, Its cornfields waving in the winds that sweep The billowy surface of thy circling deep! Thou tree whose shadow o’er the Atlantic gave _5 Peace, wealth and beauty, to its friendly wave, its blossoms fade, And blighted are the leaves that cast its shade; Whilst the cold hand gathers its scanty fruit, Whose chillness struck a canker to its root. _10
2. I could stand Upon thy shores, O Erin, and could count The billows that, in their unceasing swell, Dash on thy beach, and every wave might seem An instrument in Time the giant’s grasp, _15 To burst the barriers of Eternity. Proceed, thou giant, conquering and to conquer; March on thy lonely way! The nations fall Beneath thy noiseless footstep; pyramids That for millenniums have defied the blast, _20 And laughed at lightnings, thou dost crush to nought. Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp, Is but the fungus of a winter day That thy light footstep presses into dust. Thou art a conqueror, Time; all things give way _25 Before thee but the ‘fixed and virtuous will’; The sacred sympathy of soul which was When thou wert not, which shall be when thou perishest.
...
***
ON ROBERT EMMET’S GRAVE.
[Published from the Esdaile manuscript book by Dowden, “Life of Shelley”, 1887; dated 1812.]
...
6. No trump tells thy virtues—the grave where they rest With thy dust shall remain unpolluted by fame, Till thy foes, by the world and by fortune caressed, Shall pass like a mist from the light of thy name.
7. When the storm-cloud that lowers o’er the day-beam is gone, _5 Unchanged, unextinguished its life-spring will shine; When Erin has ceased with their memory to groan, She will smile through the tears of revival on thine.
***
THE RETROSPECT: CWM ELAN, 1812.
[Published from the Esdaile manuscript book by Dowden, “Life of Shelley”, 1887.]
A scene, which ‘wildered fancy viewed In the soul’s coldest solitude, With that same scene when peaceful love Flings rapture’s colour o’er the grove, When mountain, meadow, wood and stream _5 With unalloying glory gleam, And to the spirit’s ear and eye Are unison and harmony. The moonlight was my dearer day; Then would I wander far away, _10 And, lingering on the wild brook’s shore To hear its unremitting roar, Would lose in the ideal flow All sense of overwhelming woe; Or at the noiseless noon of night _15 Would climb some heathy mountain’s height, And listen to the mystic sound That stole in fitful gasps around. I joyed to see the streaks of day Above the purple peaks decay, _20 And watch the latest line of light Just mingling with the shades of night; For day with me was time of woe When even tears refused to flow; Then would I stretch my languid frame _25 Beneath the wild woods’ gloomiest shade, And try to quench the ceaseless flame That on my withered vitals preyed; Would close mine eyes and dream I were On some remote and friendless plain, _30 And long to leave existence there, If with it I might leave the pain That with a finger cold and lean Wrote madness on my withering mien.
It was not unrequited love _35 That bade my ‘wildered spirit rove; ’Twas not the pride disdaining life, That with this mortal world at strife Would yield to the soul’s inward sense, Then groan in human impotence, _40 And weep because it is not given To taste on Earth the peace of Heaven. ’Twas not that in the narrow sphere Where Nature fixed my wayward fate There was no friend or kindred dear _45 Formed to become that spirit’s mate, Which, searching on tired pinion, found Barren and cold repulse around; Oh, no! yet each one sorrow gave New graces to the narrow grave. _50 For broken vows had early quelled The stainless spirit’s vestal flame; Yes! whilst the faithful bosom swelled, Then the envenomed arrow came, And Apathy’s unaltering eye _55 Beamed coldness on the misery; And early I had learned to scorn The chains of clay that bound a soul Panting to seize the wings of morn, And where its vital fires were born _60 To soar, and spur the cold control Which the vile slaves of earthly night Would twine around its struggling flight.
Oh, many were the friends whom fame Had linked with the unmeaning name, _65 Whose magic marked among mankind The casket of my unknown mind, Which hidden from the vulgar glare Imbibed no fleeting radiance there. My darksome spirit sought—it found _70 A friendless solitude around. For who that might undaunted stand, The saviour of a sinking land, Would crawl, its ruthless tyrant’s slave, And fatten upon Freedom’s grave, _75 Though doomed with her to perish, where The captive clasps abhorred despair.
They could not share the bosom’s feeling, Which, passion’s every throb revealing, Dared force on the world’s notice cold _80 Thoughts of unprofitable mould, Who bask in Custom’s fickle ray, Fit sunshine of such wintry day! They could not in a twilight walk Weave an impassioned web of talk, _85 Till mysteries the spirits press In wild yet tender awfulness, Then feel within our narrow sphere How little yet how great we are! But they might shine in courtly glare, _90 Attract the rabble’s cheapest stare, And might command where’er they move A thing that bears the name of love; They might be learned, witty, gay, Foremost in fashion’s gilt array, _95 On Fame’s emblazoned pages shine, Be princes’ friends, but never mine!
Ye jagged peaks that frown sublime, Mocking the blunted scythe of Time, Whence I would watch its lustre pale _100 Steal from the moon o’er yonder vale Thou rock, whose bosom black and vast, Bared to the stream’s unceasing flow, Ever its giant shade doth cast On the tumultuous surge below: _105
Woods, to whose depths retires to die The wounded Echo’s melody, And whither this lone spirit bent The footstep of a wild intent:
Meadows! whose green and spangled breast _110 These fevered limbs have often pressed, Until the watchful fiend Despair Slept in the soothing coolness there! Have not your varied beauties seen The sunken eye, the withering mien, _115 Sad traces of the unuttered pain That froze my heart and burned my brain. How changed since Nature’s summer form Had last the power my grief to charm, Since last ye soothed my spirit’s sadness, _120 Strange chaos of a mingled madness! Changed!—not the loathsome worm that fed In the dark mansions of the dead, Now soaring through the fields of air, And gathering purest nectar there, _125 A butterfly, whose million hues The dazzled eye of wonder views, Long lingering on a work so strange, Has undergone so bright a change. How do I feel my happiness? _130 I cannot tell, but they may guess Whose every gloomy feeling gone, Friendship and passion feel alone; Who see mortality’s dull clouds Before affection’s murmur fly, _135 Whilst the mild glances of her eye Pierce the thin veil of flesh that shrouds The spirit’s inmost sanctuary. O thou! whose virtues latest known, First in this heart yet claim’st a throne; _140 Whose downy sceptre still shall share The gentle sway with virtue there; Thou fair in form, and pure in mind, Whose ardent friendship rivets fast The flowery band our fates that bind, _145 Which incorruptible shall last When duty’s hard and cold control Has thawed around the burning soul,— The gloomiest retrospects that bind With crowns of thorn the bleeding mind, _150 The prospects of most doubtful hue That rise on Fancy’s shuddering view,— Are gilt by the reviving ray Which thou hast flung upon my day.
***
FRAGMENT OF A SONNET.
TO HARRIET.
[Published from the Esdaile manuscript book by Dowden, “Life of Shelley”, 1887; dated August 1, 1812.]
Ever as now with Love and Virtue’s glow May thy unwithering soul not cease to burn, Still may thine heart with those pure thoughts o’erflow Which force from mine such quick and warm return.
***
TO HARRIET.
[Published, 5-13, by Forman, “Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1876; 58-69, by Shelley, “Notes to Queen Mab”, 1813; and entire (from the Esdaile manuscript book) by Dowden, “Life of Shelley”, 1887; dated 1812.]
It is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven More perfectly will give those nameless joys Which throb within the pulses of the blood And sweeten all that bitterness which Earth Infuses in the heaven-born soul. O thou _5 Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path Which this lone spirit travelled, drear and cold, Yet swiftly leading to those awful limits Which mark the bounds of Time and of the space When Time shall be no more; wilt thou not turn _10 Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me, Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven, And Heaven is Earth?—will not thy glowing cheek, Glowing with soft suffusion, rest on mine, And breathe magnetic sweetness through the frame _15 Of my corporeal nature, through the soul Now knit with these fine fibres? I would give The longest and the happiest day that fate Has marked on my existence but to feel ONE soul-reviving kiss...O thou most dear, _20 ’Tis an assurance that this Earth is Heaven, And Heaven the flower of that untainted seed Which springeth here beneath such love as ours. Harriet! let death all mortal ties dissolve, But ours shall not be mortal! The cold hand _25 Of Time may chill the love of earthly minds Half frozen now; the frigid intercourse Of common souls lives but a summer’s day; It dies, where it arose, upon this earth. But ours! oh, ’tis the stretch of Fancy’s hope _30 To portray its continuance as now, Warm, tranquil, spirit-healing; nor when age Has tempered these wild ecstasies, and given A soberer tinge to the luxurious glow Which blazing on devotion’s pinnacle _35 Makes virtuous passion supersede the power Of reason; nor when life’s aestival sun To deeper manhood shall have ripened me; Nor when some years have added judgement’s store To all thy woman sweetness, all the fire _40 Which throbs in thine enthusiast heart; not then Shall holy friendship (for what other name May love like ours assume?), not even then Shall Custom so corrupt, or the cold forms Of this desolate world so harden us, _45 As when we think of the dear love that binds Our souls in soft communion, while we know Each other’s thoughts and feelings, can we say Unblushingly a heartless compliment, Praise, hate, or love with the unthinking world, _50 Or dare to cut the unrelaxing nerve That knits our love to virtue. Can those eyes, Beaming with mildest radiance on my heart To purify its purity, e’er bend To soothe its vice or consecrate its fears? _55 Never, thou second Self! Is confidence So vain in virtue that I learn to doubt The mirror even of Truth? Dark flood of Time, Roll as it listeth thee; I measure not By month or moments thy ambiguous course. _60 Another may stand by me on thy brink,, And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken, Which pauses at my feet. The sense of love, The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought Prolong my being; if I wake no more, _65 My life more actual living will contain Than some gray veteran’s of the world’s cold school, Whose listless hours unprofitably roll By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed, Virtue and Love! unbending Fortitude, _70 Freedom, Devotedness and Purity! That life my Spirit consecrates to you.
***
SONNET.
TO A BALLOON LADEN WITH KNOWLEDGE.
[Published from the Esdaile manuscript book by Dowden, “Life of Shelley”, 1887; dated August, 1812.]
Bright ball of flame that through the gloom of even Silently takest thine aethereal way, And with surpassing glory dimm’st each ray Twinkling amid the dark blue depths of Heaven,— Unlike the fire thou bearest, soon shalt thou _5 Fade like a meteor in surrounding gloom, Whilst that, unquenchable, is doomed to glow A watch-light by the patriot’s lonely tomb; A ray of courage to the oppressed and poor; A spark, though gleaming on the hovel’s hearth, _10 Which through the tyrant’s gilded domes shall roar; A beacon in the darkness of the Earth; A sun which, o’er the renovated scene, Shall dart like Truth where Falsehood yet has been.
***
SONNET.
ON LAUNCHING SOME BOTTLES FILLED WITH KNOWLEDGE INTO THE BRISTOL CHANNEL.
[Published from the Esdaile manuscript book by Dowden, “Life of Shelley”, 1887; dated August, 1812.]
Vessels of heavenly medicine! may the breeze Auspicious waft your dark green forms to shore; Safe may ye stem the wide surrounding roar Of the wild whirlwinds and the raging seas; And oh! if Liberty e’er deigned to stoop _5 From yonder lowly throne her crownless brow, Sure she will breathe around your emerald group The fairest breezes of her West that blow. Yes! she will waft ye to some freeborn soul Whose eye-beam, kindling as it meets your freight, _10 Her heaven-born flame in suffering Earth will light, Until its radiance gleams from pole to pole, And tyrant-hearts with powerless envy burst To see their night of ignorance dispersed.
***
THE DEVIL’S WALK.
A BALLAD.
[Published as a broadside by Shelley, 1812.]
1. Once, early in the morning, Beelzebub arose, With care his sweet person adorning, He put on his Sunday clothes.
2. He drew on a boot to hide his hoof, _5 He drew on a glove to hide his claw, His horns were concealed by a Bras Chapeau, And the Devil went forth as natty a Beau As Bond-street ever saw.
3. He sate him down, in London town, _10 Before earth’s morning ray; With a favourite imp he began to chat, On religion, and scandal, this and that, Until the dawn of day.
4. And then to St. James’s Court he went, _15 And St. Paul’s Church he took on his way; He was mighty thick with every Saint, Though they were formal and he was gay.
5. The Devil was an agriculturist, And as bad weeds quickly grow, _20 In looking over his farm, I wist, He wouldn’t find cause for woe.
6. He peeped in each hole, to each chamber stole, His promising live-stock to view; Grinning applause, he just showed them his claws, _25 And they shrunk with affright from his ugly sight, Whose work they delighted to do.
7. Satan poked his red nose into crannies so small One would think that the innocents fair, Poor lambkins! were just doing nothing at all _30 But settling some dress or arranging some ball, But the Devil saw deeper there.
8. A Priest, at whose elbow the Devil during prayer Sate familiarly, side by side, Declared that, if the Tempter were there, _35 His presence he would not abide. Ah! ah! thought Old Nick, that’s a very stale trick, For without the Devil, O favourite of Evil, In your carriage you would not ride.
9. Satan next saw a brainless King, _40 Whose house was as hot as his own; Many Imps in attendance were there on the wing, They flapped the pennon and twisted the sting, Close by the very Throne.
10. Ah! ah! thought Satan, the pasture is good, _45 My Cattle will here thrive better than others; They dine on news of human blood, They sup on the groans of the dying and dead, And supperless never will go to bed; Which will make them fat as their brothers. _50
11. Fat as the Fiends that feed on blood, Fresh and warm from the fields of Spain, Where Ruin ploughs her gory way, Where the shoots of earth are nipped in the bud, Where Hell is the Victor’s prey, _55 Its glory the meed of the slain.
12. Fat—as the Death-birds on Erin’s shore, That glutted themselves in her dearest gore, And flitted round Castlereagh, When they snatched the Patriot’s heart, that HIS grasp _60 Had torn from its widow’s maniac clasp, —And fled at the dawn of day.
13. Fat—as the Reptiles of the tomb, That riot in corruption’s spoil, That fret their little hour in gloom, _65 And creep, and live the while.
14. Fat as that Prince’s maudlin brain, Which, addled by some gilded toy, Tired, gives his sweetmeat, and again Cries for it, like a humoured boy. _70
15. For he is fat,—his waistcoat gay, When strained upon a levee day, Scarce meets across his princely paunch; And pantaloons are like half-moons Upon each brawny haunch. _75
16. How vast his stock of calf! when plenty Had filled his empty head and heart, Enough to satiate foplings twenty, Could make his pantaloon seams start.
17. The Devil (who sometimes is called Nature), _80 For men of power provides thus well, Whilst every change and every feature, Their great original can tell.
18. Satan saw a lawyer a viper slay, That crawled up the leg of his table, _85 It reminded him most marvellously Of the story of Cain and Abel.
19. The wealthy yeoman, as he wanders His fertile fields among, And on his thriving cattle ponders, _90 Counts his sure gains, and hums a song; Thus did the Devil, through earth walking, Hum low a hellish song.
20. For they thrive well whose garb of gore Is Satan’s choicest livery, _95 And they thrive well who from the poor Have snatched the bread of penury, And heap the houseless wanderer’s store On the rank pile of luxury.
21. The Bishops thrive, though they are big; _100 The Lawyers thrive, though they are thin; For every gown, and every wig, Hides the safe thrift of Hell within.
22. Thus pigs were never counted clean, Although they dine on finest corn; _105 And cormorants are sin-like lean, Although they eat from night to morn.
23. Oh! why is the Father of Hell in such glee, As he grins from ear to ear? Why does he doff his clothes joyfully, _110 As he skips, and prances, and flaps his wing, As he sidles, leers, and twirls his sting, And dares, as he is, to appear?
24. A statesman passed—alone to him, The Devil dare his whole shape uncover, _115 To show each feature, every limb, Secure of an unchanging lover.
25. At this known sign, a welcome sight, The watchful demons sought their King, And every Fiend of the Stygian night, _120 Was in an instant on the wing.
26. Pale Loyalty, his guilt-steeled brow, With wreaths of gory laurel crowned: The hell-hounds, Murder, Want and Woe, Forever hungering, flocked around; _125 From Spain had Satan sought their food, ’Twas human woe and human blood!
27. Hark! the earthquake’s crash I hear,— Kings turn pale, and Conquerors start, Ruffians tremble in their fear, _130 For their Satan doth depart.
28. This day Fiends give to revelry To celebrate their King’s return, And with delight its Sire to see Hell’s adamantine limits burn. _135
29. But were the Devil’s sight as keen As Reason’s penetrating eye, His sulphurous Majesty I ween, Would find but little cause for joy.
30. For the sons of Reason see _140 That, ere fate consume the Pole, The false Tyrant’s cheek shall be Bloodless as his coward soul.
NOTE: _55 Where cj. Rossetti; When 1812.
***
FRAGMENT OF A SONNET.
FAREWELL TO NORTH DEVON.
[Published (from the Esdaile manuscript book) by Dowden, “Life of Shelley”, 1887; dated August, 1812.]
Where man’s profane and tainting hand Nature’s primaeval loveliness has marred, And some few souls of the high bliss debarred Which else obey her powerful command; ...mountain piles _5 That load in grandeur Cambria’s emerald vales.
***
ON LEAVING LONDON FOR WALES.
[Published (from the Esdaile manuscript book) by Dowden, “Life of Shelley”, 1887; dated November, 1812.]
Hail to thee, Cambria! for the unfettered wind Which from thy wilds even now methinks I feel, Chasing the clouds that roll in wrath behind, And tightening the soul’s laxest nerves to steel; True mountain Liberty alone may heal _5 The pain which Custom’s obduracies bring, And he who dares in fancy even to steal One draught from Snowdon’s ever sacred spring Blots out the unholiest rede of worldly witnessing.
And shall that soul, to selfish peace resigned, _10 So soon forget the woe its fellows share? Can Snowdon’s Lethe from the free-born mind So soon the page of injured penury tear? Does this fine mass of human passion dare To sleep, unhonouring the patriot’s fall, _15 Or life’s sweet load in quietude to bear While millions famish even in Luxury’s hall, And Tyranny, high raised, stern lowers on all?
No, Cambria! never may thy matchless vales A heart so false to hope and virtue shield; _20 Nor ever may thy spirit-breathing gales Waft freshness to the slaves who dare to yield. For me!...the weapon that I burn to wield I seek amid thy rocks to ruin hurled, That Reason’s flag may over Freedom’s field, _25 Symbol of bloodless victory, wave unfurled, A meteor-sign of love effulgent o’er the world.
...
Do thou, wild Cambria, calm each struggling thought; Cast thy sweet veil of rocks and woods between, That by the soul to indignation wrought _30 Mountains and dells be mingled with the scene; Let me forever be what I have been, But not forever at my needy door Let Misery linger speechless, pale and lean; I am the friend of the unfriended poor,— _35 Let me not madly stain their righteous cause in gore.
***
THE WANDERING JEW’S SOLILOQUY.
[Published (from the Esdaile manuscript book) by Bertram Dobell, 1887.]
Is it the Eternal Triune, is it He Who dares arrest the wheels of destiny And plunge me in the lowest Hell of Hells? Will not the lightning’s blast destroy my frame? Will not steel drink the blood-life where it swells? _5 No—let me hie where dark Destruction dwells, To rouse her from her deeply caverned lair, And, taunting her cursed sluggishness to ire, Light long Oblivion’s death-torch at its flame And calmly mount Annihilation’s pyre. _10 Tyrant of Earth! pale Misery’s jackal Thou! Are there no stores of vengeful violent fate Within the magazines of Thy fierce hate? No poison in the clouds to bathe a brow That lowers on Thee with desperate contempt? _15 Where is the noonday Pestilence that slew The myriad sons of Israel’s favoured nation? Where the destroying Minister that flew Pouring the fiery tide of desolation Upon the leagued Assyrian’s attempt? _20 Where the dark Earthquake-daemon who engorged At the dread word Korah’s unconscious crew? Or the Angel’s two-edged sword of fire that urged Our primal parents from their bower of bliss (Reared by Thine hand) for errors not their own _25 By Thine omniscient mind foredoomed, foreknown? Yes! I would court a ruin such as this, Almighty Tyrant! and give thanks to Thee— Drink deeply—drain the cup of hate; remit this—I may die.
***
EVENING.
TO HARRIET.
[Published by Dowden, “Life of Shelley”, 1887. Composed July 31, 1813.]
O thou bright Sun! beneath the dark blue line Of western distance that sublime descendest, And, gleaming lovelier as thy beams decline, Thy million hues to every vapour lendest, And, over cobweb lawn and grove and stream _5 Sheddest the liquid magic of thy light, Till calm Earth, with the parting splendour bright, Shows like the vision of a beauteous dream; What gazer now with astronomic eye Could coldly count the spots within thy sphere? _10 Such were thy lover, Harriet, could he fly The thoughts of all that makes his passion dear, And, turning senseless from thy warm caress,— Pick flaws in our close-woven happiness.
***
TO IANTHE.
[Published by Dowden, “Life of Shelley”, 1887. Composed September, 1813.]
I love thee, Baby! for thine own sweet sake; Those azure eyes, that faintly dimpled cheek, Thy tender frame, so eloquently weak, Love in the sternest heart of hate might wake; But more when o’er thy fitful slumber bending _5 Thy mother folds thee to her wakeful heart, Whilst love and pity, in her glances blending, All that thy passive eyes can feel impart: More, when some feeble lineaments of her, Who bore thy weight beneath her spotless bosom, _10 As with deep love I read thy face, recur,— More dear art thou, O fair and fragile blossom; Dearest when most thy tender traits express The image of thy mother’s loveliness.
***
SONG FROM THE WANDERING JEW.
[Published as Shelley’s by Medwin, “Life of Shelley”, 1847, 1 page 58.]
See yon opening flower Spreads its fragrance to the blast; It fades within an hour, Its decay is pale—is fast. Paler is yon maiden; _5 Faster is her heart’s decay; Deep with sorrow laden, She sinks in death away.
***
FRAGMENT FROM THE WANDERING JEW.
[Published as Shelley’s by Medwin, “Life of Shelley”, 1847, 1 page 56.]
The Elements respect their Maker’s seal! Still Like the scathed pine tree’s height, Braving the tempests of the night Have I ‘scaped the flickering flame. Like the scathed pine, which a monument stands _5 Of faded grandeur, which the brands Of the tempest-shaken air Have riven on the desolate heath; Yet it stands majestic even in death, And rears its wild form there. _10,
***
TO THE QUEEN OF MY HEART.
[Published as Shelley’s by Medwin, “The Shelley Papers”, 1833, and by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition; afterwards suppressed as of doubtful authenticity.]
1. Shall we roam, my love, To the twilight grove, When the moon is rising bright; Oh, I’ll whisper there, In the cool night-air, _5 What I dare not in broad daylight!
2. I’ll tell thee a part Of the thoughts that start To being when thou art nigh; And thy beauty, more bright _10 Than the stars’ soft light, Shall seem as a weft from the sky.
3. When the pale moonbeam On tower and stream Sheds a flood of silver sheen, _15 How I love to gaze As the cold ray strays O’er thy face, my heart’s throned queen!
4. Wilt thou roam with me To the restless sea, _20 And linger upon the steep, And list to the flow Of the waves below How they toss and roar and leap?
5. Those boiling waves, _25 And the storm that raves At night o’er their foaming crest, Resemble the strife That, from earliest life, The passions have waged in my breast. _30
6. Oh, come then, and rove To the sea or the grove, When the moon is rising bright; And I’ll whisper there, In the cool night-air, _35 What I dare not in broad daylight.
***
NOTES ON THE TEXT AND ITS PUNCTUATION.
In the case of every poem published during Shelley’s lifetime, the text of this edition is based upon that of the editio princeps or earliest issue. Wherever our text deviates verbally from this exemplar, the word or words of the editio princeps will be found recorded in a footnote. In like manner, wherever the text of the poems first printed by Mrs. Shelley in the “Posthumous Poems” of 1824 or the “Poetical Works” of 1839 is modified by manuscript authority or otherwise, the reading of the earliest printed text has been subjoined in a footnote. Shelley’s punctuation—or what may be presumed to be his—has been retained, save in the case of errors (whether of the transcriber or the printer) overlooked in the revision of the proof-sheets, and of a few places where the pointing, though certainly or seemingly Shelley’s, tends to obscure the sense or grammatical construction. In the following notes the more important textual difficulties are briefly discussed, and the readings embodied in the text of this edition, it is hoped, sufficiently justified. An attempt has also been made to record the original punctuation where it is here departed from.
1. THE DAEMON OF THE WORLD: PART 1.
The following paragraph, relating to this poem, closes Shelley’s “Preface” to “Alastor”, etc., 1816:—‘The Fragment entitled “The Daemon of the World” is a detached part of a poem which the author does not intend for publication. The metre in which it is composed is that of “Samson Agonistes” and the Italian pastoral drama, and may be considered as the natural measure into which poetical conceptions, expressed in harmonious language, necessarily fall.’
2. Lines 56, 112, 184, 288. The editor has added a comma at the end of these lines, and a period (for the comma of 1816) after by, line 279.
3. Lines 167, 168. The editio princeps has a comma after And, line 167, and heaven, line 168.
1. THE DAEMON OF THE WORLD: PART 2.
Printed by Mr. Forman from a copy in his possession of “Queen Mab”, corrected by Shelley’s hand. See “The Shelley Library”, pages 36-44, for a detailed history and description of this copy.
2. Lines 436-438. Mr. Forman prints:— Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise In time-destroying infiniteness, gift, etc. Our text exhibits both variants—lore for ‘store,’ and Dawns for ‘Draws’—found in Shelley’s note on the corresponding passage of “Queen Mab” (8 204-206). See editor’s note on this passage. Shelley’s comma after infiniteness, line 438, is omitted as tending to obscure the construction.
1. ALASTOR; OR THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE.
“Preface”. For the concluding paragraph see editor’s note on “The Daemon of the World”: Part 1.
2. Conducts, O Sleep, to thy, etc. (line 219.) The Shelley texts, 1816, 1824, 1839, have Conduct here, which Forman and Dowden retain. The suggestion that Shelley may have written ‘death’s blue vaults’ (line 216) need not, in the face of ‘the dark gate of death’ (line 211), be seriously considered; Conduct must, therefore, be regarded as a fault in grammar. That Shelley actually wrote Conduct is not impossible, for his grammar is not seldom faulty (see, for instance, “Revolt of Islam, Dedication”, line 60); but it is most improbable that he would have committed a solecism so striking both to eye and ear. Rossetti and Woodberry print Conducts, etc. The final s is often a vanishing quantity in Shelley’s manuscripts. Or perhaps the compositor’s hand was misled by his eye, which may have dropped on the words, Conduct to thy, etc., seven lines above.
3. Of wave ruining on wave, etc. (line 327.) For ruining the text of “Poetical Works”, 1839, both editions, has running—an overlooked misprint, surely, rather than a conjectural emendation. For an example of ruining as an intransitive (= ‘falling in ruins,’ or, simply, ‘falling in streams’) see “Paradise Lost”, 6 867-869:— Hell heard th’ insufferable noise, Hell saw Heav’n ruining from Heav’n, and would have fled Affrighted, etc. Ruining, in the sense of ‘streaming,’ ‘trailing,’ occurs in Coleridge’s “Melancholy: a Fragment” (Sibylline Leaves, 1817, page 262):— Where ruining ivies propped the ruins steep— “Melancholy” first appeared in “The Morning Post”, December 7, 1797, where, through an error identical with that here assumed in the text of 1839, running appears in place of ruining—the word intended, and doubtless written, by Coleridge.
4. Line 349. With Mr. Stopford Brooke, the editor substitutes here a colon for the full stop which, in editions 1816, 1824, and 1839, follows ocean. Forman and Dowden retain the full stop; Rossetti and Woodberry substitute a semicolon.
5. And nought but gnarled roots of ancient pines Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots The unwilling soil. (lines 530-532.) Editions 1816, 1824, and 1839 have roots (line 530)—a palpable misprint, the probable origin of which may be seen in the line which follows. Rossetti conjectures trunks, but stumps or stems may have been Shelley’s word.
6. Lines 543-548. This somewhat involved passage is here reprinted exactly as it stands in the editio princeps, save for the comma after and, line 546, first introduced by Dowden, 1890. The construction and meaning are fully discussed by Forman (“Poetical Works” of Shelley, edition 1876, volume 1 pages 39, 40), Stopford Brooke (“Poems of Shelley”, G. T. S., 1880, page 323), Dobell (“Alastor”, etc., Facsimile Reprint, 2nd edition 1887, pages 22-27), and Woodberry (“Complete P. W. of Shelley”, 1893, volume 1 page 413).
1. THE REVOLT OF ISLAM.
The revised text (1818) of this poem is given here, as being that which Shelley actually published. In order to reconvert the text of “The Revolt of Islam” into that of “Laon and Cythna”, the reader must make the following alterations in the text. At the end of the “Preface” add:—
‘In the personal conduct of my Hero and Heroine, there is one circumstance which was intended to startle the reader from the trance of ordinary life. It was my object to break through the crust of those outworn opinions on which established institutions depend. I have appealed therefore to the most universal of all feelings, and have endeavoured to strengthen the moral sense, by forbidding it to waste its energies in seeking to avoid actions which are only crimes of convention. It is because there is so great a multitude of artificial vices that there are so few real virtues. Those feelings alone which are benevolent or malevolent, are essentially good or bad. The circumstance of which I speak was introduced, however, merely to accustom men to that charity and toleration which the exhibition of a practice widely differing from their own has a tendency to promote. (The sentiments connected with and characteristic of this circumstance have no personal reference to the Writer.—[Shelley’s Note.]) Nothing indeed can be more mischievous than many actions, innocent in themselves, which might bring down upon individuals the bigoted contempt and rage of the multitude.’
2 21 1: I had a little sister whose fair eyes
2 25 2: To love in human life, this sister sweet,
3 1 1: What thoughts had sway over my sister’s slumber
3 1 3: As if they did ten thousand years outnumber
4 30 6: And left it vacant—’twas her brother’s face—
5 47 5: I had a brother once, but he is dead!—
6 24 8: My own sweet sister looked), with joy did quail,
6 31 6: The common blood which ran within our frames,
6 39 6-9: With such close sympathies, for to each other Had high and solemn hopes, the gentle might Of earliest love, and all the thoughts which smother Cold Evil’s power, now linked a sister and a brother.
6 40 1: And such is Nature’s modesty, that those
8 4 9: Dream ye that God thus builds for man in solitude?
8 5 1: What then is God? Ye mock yourselves and give
8 6 1: What then is God? Some moonstruck sophist stood
8 6 8, 9: And that men say God has appointed Death On all who scorn his will to wreak immortal wrath.
8 7 1-4: Men say they have seen God, and heard from God, Or known from others who have known such things, And that his will is all our law, a rod To scourge us into slaves—that Priests and Kings
8 8 1: And it is said, that God will punish wrong;
8 8 3, 4: And his red hell’s undying snakes among Will bind the wretch on whom he fixed a stain
8 13 3, 4: For it is said God rules both high and low, And man is made the captive of his brother;
9 13 8: To curse the rebels. To their God did they
9 14 6: By God, and Nature, and Necessity.
9 15. The stanza contains ten lines—lines 4-7 as follows: There was one teacher, and must ever be, They said, even God, who, the necessity Of rule and wrong had armed against mankind, His slave and his avenger there to be;
9 18 3-6: And Hell and Awe, which in the heart of man Is God itself; the Priests its downfall knew, As day by day their altars lovelier grew, Till they were left alone within the fane;
10 22 9: On fire! Almighty God his hell on earth has spread!
10 26 7, 8: Of their Almighty God, the armies wind In sad procession: each among the train
10 28 1: O God Almighty! thou alone hast power.
10 31 1: And Oromaze, and Christ, and Mahomet,
10 32 1: He was a Christian Priest from whom it came
10 32 4: To quell the rebel Atheists; a dire guest
10 32 9: To wreak his fear of God in vengeance on mankind
10 34 5, 6: His cradled Idol, and the sacrifice Of God to God’s own wrath—that Islam’s creed
10 35 9: And thrones, which rest on faith in God, nigh overturned.
10 39 4: Of God may be appeased. He ceased, and they
10 40 5: With storms and shadows girt, sate God, alone,
10 44 9: As ‘hush! hark! Come they yet? God, God, thine hour is near!’
10 45 8: Men brought their atheist kindred to appease
10 47 6: The threshold of God’s throne, and it was she!
11 16 1: Ye turn to God for aid in your distress;
11 25 7: Swear by your dreadful God.’—‘We swear, we swear!’
12 10 9: Truly for self, thus thought that Christian Priest indeed,
12 11 9: A woman? God has sent his other victim here.
12 12 6-8: Will I stand up before God’s golden throne, And cry, ‘O Lord, to thee did I betray An Atheist; but for me she would have known
12 29 4: In torment and in fire have Atheists gone;
12 30 4: How Atheists and Republicans can die;
2. Aught but a lifeless clod, until revived by thee (Dedic. 6 9).
So Rossetti; the Shelley editions, 1818 and 1839, read clog, which is retained by Forman, Dowden, and Woodberry. Rossetti’s happy conjecture, clod, seems to Forman ‘a doubtful emendation, as Shelley may have used clog in its [figurative] sense of weight, encumbrance.’—Hardly, as here, in a poetical figure: that would be to use a metaphor within a metaphor. Shelley compares his heart to a concrete object: if clog is right, the word must be taken in one or other of its two recognized LITERAL senses—‘a wooden shoe,’ or ‘a block of wood tied round the neck or to the leg of a horse or a dog.’ Again, it is of others’ hearts, not of his own, that Shelley here deplores the icy coldness and weight; besides, how could he appropriately describe his heart as a weight or encumbrance upon the free play of impulse and emotion, seeing that for Shelley, above all men, the heart was itself the main source and spring of all feeling and action? That source, he complains, has been dried up—its emotions desiccated—by the crushing impact of other hearts, heavy, hard and cold as stone. His heart has become withered and barren, like a lump of earth parched with frost—‘a lifeless clod.’ Compare “Summer and Winter”, lines 11-15:— ‘It was a winter such as when birds die In the deep forests; and the fishes lie Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes A wrinkled clod as hard as brick;’ etc., etc.
The word revived suits well with clod; but what is a revived clog? Finally, the first two lines of the following stanza (7) seem decisive in favour of Roseetti’s word.
If any one wonders how a misprint overlooked in 1818 could, after twenty-one years, still remain undiscovered in 1839, let him consider the case of clog in Lamb’s parody on Southey’s and Coleridge’s “Dactyls” (Lamb, “Letter to Coleridge”, July 1, 1796):— Sorely your Dactyls do drag along limp-footed; Sad is the measure that hangs a clog round ’em so, etc., etc.
Here the misprint, clod, which in 1868 appeared in Moxon’s edition of the “Letters of Charles Lamb”, has through five successive editions and under many editors—including Fitzgerald, Ainger, and Macdonald—held its ground even to the present day; and this, notwithstanding the preservation of the true reading, clog, in the texts of Talfourd and Carew Hazlitt. Here then is the case of a palpable misprint surviving, despite positive external evidence of its falsity, over a period of thirty-six years.
3. And walked as free, etc. (Ded. 7 6).
Walked is one of Shelley’s occasional grammatical laxities. Forman well observes that walkedst, the right word here, would naturally seem to Shelley more heinous than a breach of syntactic rule. Rossetti and, after him, Dowden print walk. Forman and Woodberry follow the early texts.
4. 1 9 1-7. Here the text follows the punctuation of the editio princeps, 1818, with two exceptions: a comma is inserted (1) after scale (line 201), on the authority of the Bodleian manuscript (Locock); and (2) after neck (line 205), to indicate the true construction. Mrs. Shelley’s text, 1839, has a semicolon after plumes (line 203), which Rossetti adopts. Forman (1892) departs from the pointing of Shelley’s edition here, placing a period at the close of line 199, and a dash after blended (line 200).
5. What life, what power, was, etc. (1 11 1.) The editio princeps, 1818, wants the commas here.
6. ...and now We are embarked—the mountains hang and frown Over the starry deep that gleams below, A vast and dim expanse, as o’er the waves we go. (1 23 6-9.) With Woodberry I substitute after embarked (7) a dash for the comma of the editio princeps; with Rossetti I restore to below (8) a comma which I believe to have been overlooked by the printer of that edition. Shelley’s meaning I take to be that ‘a vast and dim expanse of mountain hangs frowning over the starry deep that gleams below it as we pass over the waves.’
7. As King, and Lord, and God, the conquering Fiend did own,—(1 28 9.) So Forman (1892), Dowden; the editio princeps, has a full stop at the close of the line,—where, according to Mr. Locock, no point appears in the Bodleian manuscript.
8. Black-winged demon forms, etc. (1 30 7.) The Bodleian manuscript exhibits the requisite hyphen here, and in golden-pinioned (32 2).
9. 1 31 2, 6. The ‘three-dots’ point, employed by Shelley to indicate a pause longer than that of a full stop, is introduced into these two lines on the authority of the Bodleian manuscript. In both cases it replaces a dash in the editio princeps. See list of punctual variations below. Mr. Locock reports the presence in the manuscript of what he justly terms a ‘characteristic’ comma after Soon (31 2).
10. ...mine shook beneath the wide emotion. (1 38 9.) For emotion the Bodleian manuscript has commotion (Locock)—perhaps the fitter word here.
11. Deep slumber fell on me:—my dreams were fire— (1 40 1.) The dash after fire is from the Bodleian manuscript,—where, moreover, the somewhat misleading but indubitably Shelleyan comma after passion (editio princeps, 40 4) is wanting (Locock). I have added a dash to the comma after cover (40 5) in order to clarify the sense.
12. And shared in fearless deeds with evil men, (1 44 4.) With Forman and Dowden I substitute here a comma for the full stop of the editio princeps. See also list of punctual variations below (stanza 44).
13. The Spirit whom I loved, in solitude Sustained his child: (1 45 4, 5.) The comma here, important as marking the sense as well as the rhythm of the passage, is derived from the Bodleian manuscript (Locock).
14. I looked, and we were sailing pleasantly, Swift as a cloud between the sea and sky; Beneath the rising moon seen far away, Mountains of ice, etc. (1 47 4-7.) The editio princeps has a comma after sky (5) and a semicolon after away (6)—a pointing followed by Forman, Dowden, and Woodberry. By transposing these points (as in our text), however, a much better sense is obtained; and, luckily, this better sense proves to be that yielded by the Bodleian manuscript, where, Mr. Locock reports, there is a semicolon after sky (5), a comma after moon (6), and no point whatsoever after away (6).
15. Girt by the deserts of the Universe; (1 50 4.) So the Bodleian manuscript, anticipated by Woodberry (1893). Rossetti (1870) had substituted a comma for the period of editio princeps.
16. Hymns which my soul had woven to Freedom, strong The source of passion, whence they rose, to be; Triumphant strains, which, etc. (2 28 6-8.) The editio princeps, followed by Forman, has passion whence (7). Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works” 1839, both editions, prints: strong The source of passion, whence they rose to be Triumphant strains, which, etc.
17. But, pale, were calm with passion—thus subdued, etc. (2 49 6.) With Rossetti, Dowden, Woodberry, I add a comma after But to the pointing of the editio princeps. Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, both editions, prints: But pale, were calm.—With passion thus subdued, etc.
18. Methought that grate was lifted, etc. (3 25 1.) Shelley’s and Mrs. Shelley’s editions have gate, which is retained by Forman. But cf. 3 14 2, 7. Dowden and Woodberry follow Rossetti in printing grate.
19. Where her own standard, etc. (4 24 5.) So Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, both editions.
20. Beneath whose spires, which swayed in the red flame, (5 54 6.) Shelley’s and Mrs. Shelley’s editions (1818, 1839) give red light here,—an oversight perpetuated by Forman, the rhyme-words name (8) and frame (9) notwithstanding. With Rossetti, Dowden, Woodberry, I print red flame,—an obvious emendation proposed by Fleay.
21. —when the waves smile, As sudden earthquakes light many a volcano-isle, Thus sudden, unexpected feast was spread, etc. (6 7 8, 9; 8 1.) With Forman, Dowden, Woodberry, I substitute after isle (7 9) a comma for the full stop of editions 1818, 1839 (retained by Rossetti). The passage is obscure: perhaps Shelley wrote ‘lift many a volcano-isle.’ The plain becomes studded in an instant with piles of corpses, even as the smiling surface of the sea will sometimes become studded in an instant with many islands uplifted by a sudden shock of earthquake.
22. 7 7 2-6. The editio princeps punctuates thus:— and words it gave Gestures and looks, such as in whirlwinds bore Which might not be withstood, whence none could save All who approached their sphere, like some calm wave Vexed into whirlpools by the chasms beneath; This punctuation is retained by Forman; Rossetti, Dowden, Woodberry, place a comma after gave (2) and Gestures (3), and—adopting the suggestion of Mr. A.C. Bradley—enclose line 4 (Which might...could save) in parentheses; thus construing which might not be withstood and whence none could save as adjectival clauses qualifying whirlwinds (3), and taking bore (3) as a transitive verb governing All who approached their sphere (5). This, which I believe to be the true construction, is perhaps indicated quite as clearly by the pointing adopted in the text—a pointing moreover which, on metrical grounds, is, I think, preferable to that proposed by Mr. Bradley. I have added a dash to the comma after sphere (5), to indicate that it is Cythna herself (and not All who approached, etc.) that resembles some calm wave, etc.
23. Which dwell in lakes, when the red moon on high Pause ere it wakens tempest;— (7 22 6, 7.) Here when the moon Pause is clearly irregular, but it appears in editions 1818, 1839, and is undoubtedly Shelley’s phrase. Rossetti cites a conjectural emendation by a certain ‘C.D. Campbell, Mauritius’:—which the red moon on high Pours eve it wakens tempest; but cf. “Julian and Maddalo”, lines 53, 54:— Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight, Over the horizon of the mountains. —and “Prince Athanase”, lines 220, 221:— When the curved moon then lingering in the west Paused, in yon waves her mighty horns to wet, etc.
24. —time imparted Such power to me—I became fearless-hearted, etc. (7 30 4, 5.) With Woodberry I replace with a dash the comma (editio princeps) after me (5)retained by Forman, deleted by Rossetti and Dowden. Shelley’s (and Forman’s) punctuation leaves the construction ambiguous; with Woodberry’s the two clauses are seen to be parallel—the latter being appositive to and explanatory of the former; while with Dowden’s the clauses are placed in correlation: time imparted such power to me that I became fearless-hearted.
25. Of love, in that lorn solitude, etc. (7 32 7.) All editions prior to 1876 have lone solitude, etc. The important emendation lorn was first introduced into the text by Forman, from Shelley’s revised copy of “Laon and Cythna”, where lone is found to be turned into lorn by the poet’s own hand.
26. And Hate is throned on high with Fear her mother, etc. (8 13 5.) So the editio princeps; Forman, Dowden, Woodberry, following the text of “Laon and Cythna”, 1818, read, Fear his mother. Forman refers to 10 42 4, 5, where Fear figures as a female, and Hate as ‘her mate and foe.’ But consistency in such matters was not one of Shelley’s characteristics, and there seems to be no need for alteration here. Mrs. Shelley (1839) and Rossetti follow the editio princeps.
27. The ship fled fast till the stars ‘gan to fail, And, round me gathered, etc. (8 26 5, 6.) The editio princeps has no comma after And (6). Mrs. Shelley (1839) places a full stop at fail (5) and reads, All round me gathered, etc.
28. Words which the lore of truth in hues of flame, etc. (9 12 6.) The editio princeps, followed by Rossetti and Woodberry, has hues of grace [cf. note (20) above]; Forman and Dowden read hues of flame. For instances of a rhyme-word doing double service, see 9 34 6, 9 (thee...thee); 6 3 2, 4 (arms...arms); 10 5 1, 3 (came...came).
29. Led them, thus erring, from their native land; (10 5 6.) Editions 1818, 1839 read home for land here. All modern editors adopt Fleay’s cj., land [rhyming with band (8), sand (9)].
30. 11 11 7. Rossetti and Dowden, following Mrs. Shelley (1839), print writhed here.
31. When the broad sunrise, etc. (12 34 3.) When is Rossetti’s cj. (accepted by Dowden) for Where (1818, 1839), which Forman and Woodberry retain. In 11 24 1, 12 15 2 and 12 28 7 there is Forman’s cj. for then (1818).
32. a golden mist did quiver Where its wild surges with the lake were blended,— (12 40 3, 4.) Where is Rossetti’s cj. (accepted by Forman and Dowden) for When (editions 1818, 1839; Woodberry). See also list of punctual variations below.
33. Our bark hung there, as on a line suspended, etc. (12 40 5.) Here on a line is Rossetti’s cj. (accepted by all editors) for one line (editions 1818, 1839). See also list of punctual variations below.
34. LIST OF PUNCTUAL VARIATIONS. Obvious errors of the press excepted, our text reproduces the punctuation of Shelley’s edition (1818), save where the sense is likely to be perverted or obscured thereby. The following list shows where the pointing of the text varies from that of the editio princeps (1818) which is in every instance recorded here.
DEDICATION, 7. long. (9).
## CANTO 1.
9. scale (3), neck (7). 11. What life what power (1). 22. boat, (8), lay (9). 23. embarked, (7), below A vast (8, 9). 26. world (1), chaos: Lo! (2). 28. life: (2), own. (9). 29. mirth, (6). 30. language (2), But, when (5). 31. foundations—soon (2), war— thrones (6), multitude, (7). 32. flame, (4). 33. lightnings (3), truth, (5), brood, (5), hearts, (8). 34. Fiend (6). 35. keep (8). 37. mountains— (8). 38. unfold, (1), woe: (4), show, (5). 39. gladness, (6) 40 fire, (1), cover, (5), far (6). 42. kiss. (9). 43. But (5). 44. men. (4), fame; (7). 45. loved (4). 47. sky, (5), away (6). 49. dream, (2), floods. (9). 50. Universe. (4), language (6). 54. blind. (4). 57. mine—He (8). 58. said— (5). 60. tongue, (9).
## CANTO 2.
1. which (4). 3. Yet flattering power had (7). 4. lust, (6). 6. kind, (2). 11. Nor, (2). 13. ruin. (3), trust. (9). 18. friend (3). 22. thought, (6), fancies (7). 24. radiancy, (3). 25. dells, (8). 26. waste, (4) 28. passion (7). 31. yet (4). 32. which (3). 33. blight (8), who (8). 37. seat; (7). 39. not—‘wherefore (1). 40. good, (5). 41. tears (7). 43. air (2). 46. fire, (3). 47. stroke, (2). 49. But (6).
## CANTO 3.
1. dream, (4). 3. shown (7), That (9). 4. when, (3). 5. ever (7). 7. And (1). 16. Below (6). 19. if (4). 25. thither, (2). 26. worm (2), there, (3). 27. beautiful, (8). 28. And (1). 30. As (1).
## CANTO 4.
2. fallen—We (6). 3. ray, (7). 4. sleep, (5). 8. fed (6). 10. wide; (1), sword (7). 16. chance, (7). 19. her (3), blending (8). 23. tyranny, (4). 24. unwillingly (1). 26. blood; (2). 27. around (2), as (4). 31. or (4). 33. was (5).
## CANTO 5.
1. flow, (5). 2. profound—Oh, (4), veiled, (6). 3. victory (1), face— (8). 4. swim, (5) 6. spread, (2), outsprung (5), far, (6), war, (8). 8. avail (5). 10. weep; (4), tents (8). 11. lives, (8). 13. beside (1). 15. sky, (3). 17. love (4). 20. Which (9). 22. gloom, (8). 23. King (6). 27. known, (4). 33. ye? (1), Othman— (3). 34. pure— (7). 35. people (1). 36. where (3). 38. quail; (2). 39. society, (8). 40. see (1). 43. light (8), throne. (9). 50. skies, (6). 51. Image (7), isles; all (9), amaze. When (9, 10), fair. (12). 51. 1: will (15), train (15). 51. 2: wert, (5). 51. 4: brethren (1). 51. 5: steaming, (6). 55. creep. (9).
## CANTO 6.
1. snapped (9). 2. gate, (2). 5. rout (4), voice, (6), looks, (6). 6. as (1). 7. prey, (1), isle. (9). 8. sight (2). 12. glen (4). 14. almost (1), dismounting (4). 15. blood (2). 21. reins:—We (3), word (3). 22. crest (6). 25. And, (1), and (9). 28. but (3), there, (8). 30. air. (9). 32. voice:— (1). 37. frames; (5). 43. mane, (2), again, (7). 48. Now (8). 51. hut, (4). 54. waste, (7).
## CANTO 7.
2. was, (5). 6. dreams (3). 7. gave Gestures and (2, 3), withstood, (4), save (4), sphere, (5). 8. sent, (2). 14. taught, (6), sought, (8). 17. and (6). 18. own (5), beloved:— (5). 19. tears; (2), which, (3), appears, (5). 25. me, (1), shapes (5). 27. And (1). 28. strength (1). 30. Aye, (3), me, (5). 33. pure (9). 38. wracked; (4), cataract, (5).
## CANTO 8.
2. and (2). 9. shadow (5). 11. freedom (7), blood. (9). 13. Woman, (8), bond-slave, (8). 14. pursuing (8), wretch! (9). 15. home, (3). 21. Hate, (1). 23. reply, (1). 25. fairest, (1). 26. And (6). 28. thunder (2).
## CANTO 9.
4. hills, (1), brood, (6). 5. port—alas! (1). 8. grave (2). 9. with friend (3), occupations (7), overnumber, (8). 12. lair; (5), Words, (6). 15. who, (4), armed, (5), misery. (9). 17. call, (4). 20. truth (9). 22. sharest; (4). 23. Faith, (8). 28. conceive (8). 30. and as (5), hope (8). 33. thoughts:—Come (7). 34. willingly (2). 35. ceased, (8). 36. undight; (4).
## CANTO 10.
2. tongue, (1). 7. conspirators (6), wolves, (8). 8. smiles, (5). 9. bands, (2) 11. file did (5). 18. but (5). 19. brought, (5). 24. food (5). 29. worshippers (3). 32. west (2). 36. foes, (5). 38. now! (2). 40. alone, (5). 41. morn—at (1). 42. below, (2). 43. deep, (7), pest (8). 44. drear (8). 47. ‘Kill me!’ they (9). 48. died, (8).
## CANTO 11.
4. which, (6), eyes, (8). 5. tenderness (7). 7. return—the (8). 8. midnight— (1). 10. multitude (1). 11. cheeks (1), here (4). 12. come, give (3). 13. many (1). 14. arrest, (4), terror, (6). 19. thus (1). 20. Stranger: ‘What (5). 23. People: (7).
## CANTO 12.
3. and like (7). 7. away (7). 8. Fairer it seems than (7). 10. self, (9). 11. divine (2), beauty— (3). 12. own. (9). 14. fear, (1), choose, (4). 17. death? the (1). 19. radiance (3). 22. spake; (5). 25. thee beloved;— (8). 26. towers (6). 28. repent, (2). 29. withdrawn, (2). 31. stood a winged Thought (1). 32. gossamer, (6). 33. stream (1). 34. sunrise, (3), gold, (3), quiver, (4). 35. abode, (4). 37. wonderful; (3), go, (4). 40. blended: (4), heavens, (6), lake; (6).
1. PRINCE ATHANASE.
Lines 28-30. The punctuation here (“Poetical Works”, 1839) is supported by the Bodleian manuscript, which has a full stop at relief (line 28), and a comma at chief (line 30). The text of the “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, has a semicolon at relief and a full stop at chief. The original draft of lines 29, 30, in the Bodleian manuscript, runs:— He was the child of fortune and of power, And, though of a high race the orphan Chief, etc. —which is decisive in favour of our punctuation (1839). See Locock, “Examination”, etc., page 51.
2. Which wake and feed an ever-living woe,— (line 74.) All the editions have on for an, the reading of the Bodleian manuscript, where it appears as a substitute for his, the word originally written. The first draft of the line runs: Which nursed and fed his everliving woe. Wake, accordingly, is to be construed as a transitive (Locock).
3. Lines 130-169. This entire passage is distinctly cancelled in the Bodleian manuscript, where the following revised version of lines 125-129 and 168-181 is found some way later on:— Prince Athanase had one beloved friend, An old, old man, with hair of silver white, And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend With his wise words; and eyes whose arrowy light Was the reflex of many minds; he filled From fountains pure, nigh overgrown and [lost], The spirit of Prince Athanase, a child; And soul-sustaining songs of ancient lore And philosophic wisdom, clear and mild. And sweet and subtle talk they evermore The pupil and the master [share], until Sharing that undiminishable store, The youth, as clouds athwart a grassy hill Outrun the winds that chase them, soon outran His teacher, and did teach with native skill Strange truths and new to that experienced man; So [?] they were friends, as few have ever been Who mark the extremes of life’s discordant span. The words bracketed above, and in Fragment 5 of our text, are cancelled in the manuscript (Locock).
4. And blighting hope, etc. (line 152.) The word blighting here, noted as unsuitable by Rossetti, is cancelled in the Bodleian manuscript (Locock).
5. She saw between the chestnuts, far beneath, etc. (line 154.) The reading of editions 1824, 1839 (beneath the chestnuts) is a palpable misprint.
6. And sweet and subtle talk they evermore, The pupil and the master, shared; (lines 173, 174.) So edition 1824, which is supported by the Bodleian manuscript,—both the cancelled draft and the revised version: cf. note above. “Poetical Works”, 1839, has now for they—a reading retained by Rossetti alone of modern editors.
7. Line 193. The ‘three-dots’ point at storm is in the Bodleian manuscript.
8. Lines 202-207. The Bodleian manuscript, which has a comma and dash after nightingale, bears out James Thomson’s (‘B. V.’s’) view, approved by Rossetti, that these lines form one sentence. The manuscript has a dash after here (line 207), which must be regarded as ‘equivalent to a full stop or note of exclamation’ (Locock). Editions 1824, 1839 have a note of exclamation after nightingale (line 204) and a comma after here (line 207).
9. Fragment 3 (lines 230-239). First printed from the Bodleian manuscript by Mr. C.D. Locock. In the space here left blank, line 231, the manuscript has manhood, which is cancelled for some monosyllable unknown—query, spring?
10. And sea-buds burst under the waves serene:— (line 250.) For under edition 1839 has beneath, which, however, is cancelled for under in the Bodleian manuscript (Locock).
11. Lines 251-254. This, with many other places from line 222 onwards, evidently lacks Shelley’s final corrections.
12. Line 259. According to Mr. Locock, the final text of this line in the Bodleian manuscript runs:— Exulting, while the wide world shrinks below, etc.
13. Fragment 5 (lines 261-278). The text here is much tortured in the Bodleian manuscript. What the editions give us is clearly but a rough and tentative draft. ‘The language contains no third rhyme to mountains (line 262) and fountains (line 264).’ Locock. Lines 270-278 were first printed by Mr. Locock.
14. Line 289. For light (Bodleian manuscript) here the editions read bright. But light is undoubtedly the right word: cf. line 287. Investeth (line 285), Rossetti’s cj. for Investeth (1824, 1839) is found in the Bodleian manuscript.
15. Lines 297-302 (the darts...ungarmented). First printed by Mr. Locock from the Bodleian manuscript.
16. Another Fragment (A). Lines 1-3 of this Fragment reappear in a modified shape in the Bodleian manuscript of “Prometheus Unbound”, 2 4 28-30:— Or looks which tell that while the lips are calm And the eyes cold, the spirit weeps within Tears like the sanguine sweat of agony; Here the lines are cancelled—only, however, to reappear in a heightened shape in “The Cenci”, 1 1 111-113:— The dry, fixed eyeball; the pale quivering lip, Which tells me that the spirit weeps within Tears bitterer than the bloody sweat of Christ. (Garnett, Locock.)
17. PUNCTUAL VARIATIONS. The punctuation of “Prince Athanase” is that of “Poetical Works”, 1839, save in the places specified in the notes above, and in line 60—where there is a full stop, instead of the comma demanded by the sense, at the close of the line.
ROSALIND AND HELEN.
1. A sound from there, etc. (line 63.) Rossetti’s cj., there for thee, is adopted by all modern editors.
2. And down my cheeks the quick tears fell, etc. (line 366.) The word fell is Rossetti’s cj. (to rhyme with tell, line 369) for ran 1819, 1839).
3. Lines 405-409. The syntax here does not hang together, and Shelley may have been thinking of this passage amongst others when, on September 6, 1819, he wrote to Ollier:—‘In the “Rosalind and Helen” I see there are some few errors, which are so much the worse because they are errors in the sense.’ The obscurity, however, may have been, in part at least, designed: Rosalind grows incoherent before breaking off abruptly. No satisfactory emendation has been proposed.
4. Where weary meteor lamps repose, etc. (line 551.) With Woodberry I regard Where, his cj. for When (1819, 1839), as necessary for the sense.
5. With which they drag from mines of gore, etc. (line 711.) Rossetti proposes yore for gore here, or, as an alternative, rivers of gore, etc. If yore be right, Shelley’s meaning is: ‘With which from of old they drag,’ etc. But cf. Note (3) above.
6. Where, like twin vultures, etc. (line 932.) Where is Woodberry’s reading for When (1819, 1839). Forman suggests Where but does not print it.
7. Lines 1093-1096. The editio princeps (1819) punctuates:— Hung in dense flocks beneath the dome, That ivory dome, whose azure night With golden stars, like heaven, was bright O’er the split cedar’s pointed flame;
8. Lines 1168-1170. Sunk (line 1170) must be taken as a transitive in this passage, the grammar of which is defended by Mr. Swinburne.
9. Whilst animal life many long years Had rescue from a chasm of tears; (lines 1208-9.) Forman substitutes rescue for rescued (1819, 1839)—a highly probable cj. adopted by Dowden, but rejected by Woodberry. The sense is: ‘Whilst my life, surviving by the physical functions merely, thus escaped during many years from hopeless weeping.’
10. PUNCTUAL VARIATIONS. The following is a list of punctual variations, giving in each case the pointing of the editio princeps (1819):—heart 257; weak 425; Aye 492; There—now 545; immortally 864; not, 894; bleeding, 933; Fidelity 1055; dome, 1093; bright 1095; tremble, 1150; life-dissolving 1166; words, 1176; omit parentheses lines 1188-9; bereft, 1230.
JULIAN AND MADDALO.
1. Line 158. Salutations past; (1824); Salutations passed; (1839). Our text follows Woodberry.
2. —we might be all We dream of happy, high, majestical. (lines 172-3.) So the Hunt manuscript, edition 1824, has a comma after of (line 173), which is retained by Rossetti and Dowden.
3. —his melody Is interrupted—now we hear the din, etc. (lines 265-6.) So the Hunt manuscript; his melody Is interrupted now: we hear the din, etc., 1824, 1829.
4. Lines 282-284. The editio princeps (1824) runs:— Smiled in their motions as they lay apart, As one who wrought from his own fervid heart The eloquence of passion: soon he raised, etc.
5. Line 414. The editio princeps (1824) has a colon at the end of this line, and a semicolon at the close of line 415.
6. The ‘three-dots’ point, which appears several times in these pages, is taken from the Hunt manuscript and serves to mark a pause longer than that of a full stop.
7. He ceased, and overcome leant back awhile, etc. (line 511.) The form leant is retained here, as the stem-vowel, though unaltered in spelling, is shortened in pronunciation. Thus leant (pronounced ‘lent’) from lean comes under the same category as crept from creep, lept from leap, cleft from cleave, etc.—perfectly normal forms, all of them. In the case of weak preterites formed without any vowel-change, the more regular formation with ed is that which has been adopted in this volume. See Editor’s “Preface”.
8. CANCELLED FRAGMENTS OF JULIAN AND MADDALO. These were first printed by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.
9. PUNCTUAL VARIATIONS. Shelley’s final transcript of “Julian and Maddalo”, though written with great care and neatness, is yet very imperfectly punctuated. He would seem to have relied on the vigilance of Leigh Hunt—or, failing Hunt, of Peacock—to make good all omissions while seeing the poem through the press. Even Mr. Buxton Forman, careful as he is to uphold manuscript authority in general, finds it necessary to supplement the pointing of the Hunt manuscript in no fewer than ninety-four places. The following table gives a list of the pointings adopted in our text, over and above those found in the Hunt manuscript. In all but four or five instances, the supplementary points are derived from Mrs. Shelley’s text of 1824.
1. Comma added at end of line: 40, 54, 60, 77, 78, 85, 90, 94, 107, 110, 116, 120, 123, 134, 144, 145, 154, 157, 168, 179, 183, 191, 196, 202, 203, 215, 217, 221, 224, 225, 238, 253, 254, 262, 287, 305, 307, 331, 338, 360, 375, 384, 385, 396, 432, 436, 447, 450, 451, 473, 475, 476, 511, 520, 526, 541, 582, 590, 591, 592, 593, 595, 603, 612.
2. Comma added elsewhere: seas, 58; vineyards, 58; dismounted, 61; evening, 65; companion, 86; isles, 90; meant, 94; Look, Julian, 96; maniacs, 110; maker, 113; past, 114; churches, 136; rainy, 141; blithe, 167; beauty, 174; Maddalo, 192; others, 205; this, 232; respects, 241; shriek, 267; wrote, 286; month, 300; cried, 300; O, 304; and, 306; misery, disappointment, 314; soon, 369; stay, 392; mad, 394; Nay, 398; serpent, 399; said, 403; cruel, 439; hate, 461; hearts, 483; he, 529; seemed, 529; Unseen, 554; morning, 582; aspect, 585; And, 593; remember, 604; parted, 610.
3. Semicolon added at end of line: 101, 103, 167, 181, 279, 496.
4. Colon added at end of line: 164, 178, 606, 610.
5. Full stop added at end of line: 95, 201, 299, 319, 407, 481, 599, 601, 617.
6. Full stop added elsewhere: transparent. 85; trials. 472; Venice, 583.
7. Admiration—note added at end of line: 392, 492; elsewhere: 310, 323,
8. Dash added at end of line: 158, 379.
9. Full stop for comma (manuscript): eye. 119.
10. Full stop for dash (manuscript): entered. 158.
11. Colon for full stop (manuscript): tale: 596.
12. Dash for colon (manuscript): this— 207; prepared— 379.
13. Comma and dash for semicolon (manuscript): expressionless,— 292.
14. Comma and dash for comma (manuscript): not,— 127.
PROMETHEUS UNBOUND.
The variants of B. (Shelley’s ‘intermediate draft’ of “Prometheus Unbound”, now in the Bodleian Library), here recorded, are taken from Mr. C.D. Locock’s “Examination”, etc., Clarendon Press, 1903. See Editor’s Prefatory Note, above.
1.
## Act 1, line 204. B. has—shaken in pencil above—peopled.
2. Hark that outcry, etc. (1 553.) All editions read Mark that outcry, etc. As Shelley nowhere else uses Mark in the sense of List, I have adopted Hark, the reading of B.
3. Gleamed in the night. I wandered, etc. (1 770.) Forman proposes to delete the period at night.
4. But treads with lulling footstep, etc. (1 774.) Forman prints killing—a misreading of B. Editions 1820, 1839 read silent.
5. ...the eastern star looks white, etc. (1 825.) B. reads wan for white.
6. Like footsteps of weak melody, etc. (2 1 89.) B. reads far (above a cancelled lost) for weak.
7. And wakes the destined soft emotion,— Attracts, impels them; (2 2 50, 51.) The editio princeps (1820) reads destined soft emotion, Attracts, etc.; “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition reads destined: soft emotion Attracts, etc. “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition reads destined, soft emotion Attracts, etc. Forman and Dowden place a period, and Woodberry a semicolon, at destined (line 50).
8. There steams a plume-uplifting wind, etc. (2 2 53.) Here steams is found in B., in the editio princeps (1820) and in the 1st edition of “Poetical Works”, 1839. In the 2nd edition, 1839, streams appears—no doubt a misprint overlooked by the editress.
9. Sucked up and hurrying: as they fleet, etc. (2 2 60.) So “Poetical Works”, 1839, both editions. The editio princeps (1820) reads hurrying as, etc.
10. See’st thou shapes within the mist? (2 3 50.) So B., where these words are substituted for the cancelled I see thin shapes within the mist of the editio princeps (1820). ‘The credit of discovering the true reading belongs to Zupitza’ (Locock).
11. 2 4 12-18. The construction is faulty here, but the sense, as Professor Woodberry observes, is clear.
12. ...but who rains down, etc. (2 4 100.) The editio princeps (1820) has reigns—a reading which Forman bravely but unsuccessfully attempts to defend.
13. Child of Light! thy limbs are burning, etc. (2 5 54.) The editio princeps (1820) has lips for limbs, but the word membre in Shelley’s Italian prose version of these lines establishes limbs, the reading of B. (Locock).
14. Which in the winds and on the waves doth move, (2 5 96.) The word and is Rossetti’s conjectural emendation, adopted by Forman and Dowden. Woodberry unhappily observes that ‘the emendation corrects a faultless line merely to make it agree with stanzaic structure, and...is open to the gravest doubt.’ Rossetti’s conjecture is fully established by the authority of B.
15. 3 4 172-174. The editio princeps (1820) punctuates: mouldering round These imaged to the pride of kings and priests, A dark yet mighty faith, a power, etc. This punctuation is retained by Forman and Dowden; that of our text is Woodberry’s.
16. 3 4 180, 188. A dash has been introduced at the close of these two lines to indicate the construction more clearly. And for the sake of clearness a note of interrogation has been substituted for the semicolon of 1820 after Passionless (line 198).
17. Where lovers catch ye by your loose tresses; (4 107.) B. has sliding for loose (cancelled).
18. By ebbing light into her western cave, (4 208.) Here light is the reading of B. for night (all editions). Mr. Locock tells us that the anticipated discovery of this reading was the origin of his examination of the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian. In printing night Marchant’s compositor blundered; yet ‘we cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it being so proper.’
19. Purple and azure, white, and green, and golden, (4 242.) The editio princeps (1820) reads white, green and golden, etc.—white and green being Rossetti’s emendation, adopted by Forman and Dowden. Here again—cf. note on (17) above—Prof. Woodberry commits himself by stigmatizing the correction as one ‘for which there is no authority in Shelley’s habitual versification.’ Rossetti’s conjecture is confirmed by the reading of B., white and green, etc.
20. Filling the abyss with sun-like lightenings, (4 276.) The editio princeps (1820) reads lightnings, for which Rossetti substitutes lightenings—a conjecture described by Forman as ‘an example of how a very slight change may produce a very calamitous result.’ B. however supports Rossetti, and in point of fact Shelley usually wrote lightenings, even where the word counts as a dissyllable (Locock).
21. Meteors and mists, which throng air’s solitudes:— (4 547.) For throng (cancelled) B. reads feed, i.e., ‘feed on’ (cf. Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire, 3 4 110)—a reading which carries on the metaphor of line 546 (ye untameable herds), and ought, perhaps, to be adopted into the text.
22. PUNCTUAL VARIATIONS. The punctuation of our text is that of the editio princeps (1820), except in the places indicated in the following list, which records in each instance the pointing of 1820:—
## Act 1.—empire. 15; O, 17; God 144; words 185; internally. 299; O, 302;
gnash 345; wail 345; Sufferer 352; agony. 491; Between 712; cloud 712; vale 826.
## Act 2:
## Scene 1.—air 129; by 153; fire, 155.
## Scene 2.—noonday, 25; hurrying 60.
## Scene 3.—mist. 50.
## Scene 4.—sun, 4; Ungazed 5; on 103; ay 106; secrets. 115.
## Scene 5.—brightness 67.
## Act 3:
## Scene 3.—apparitions, 49; beauty, 51; phantoms, (omit parentheses) 52;
reality, 53; wind 98.
## Scene 4.—toil 109; fire. 110; feel; 114; borne; 115; said 124;
priests, 173; man, 180; hate, 188; Passionless; 198.
## Act 4.—dreams, 66; be. 165; light. 168; air, 187; dreams, 209; woods 211;
thunder-storm, 215; lie 298; bones 342; blending. 343; mire. 349; pass, 371; kind 385; move. 387.
THE CENCI.
1. The deed he saw could not have rated higher Than his most worthless life:— (1 1 24, 25.) Than is Mrs. Shelley’s emendation (1839) for That, the word in the editio princeps (1819) printed in Italy, and in the (standard) edition of 1821. The sense is: ‘The crime he witnessed could not have proved costlier to redeem than his murder has proved to me.’
2. And but that there yet remains a deed to act, etc. (1 1 100.) Read: And but : that there yet : remains : etc.
3. 1 1 111-113. The earliest draft of these lines appears as a tentative fragment in the Bodleian manuscript of “Prince Athanase” (vid. supr.). In the Bodleian manuscript of “Prometheus Unbound” they reappear (after 2 4 27) in a modified shape, as follows:— Or looks which tell that while the lips are calm And the eyes cold, the spirit weeps within Tears like the sanguine sweat of agony; Here again, however, the passage is cancelled, once more to reappear in its final and most effective shape in “The Cenci” (Locock).
4. And thus I love you still, but holily, Even as a sister or a spirit might; (1 2 24, 25.) For this, the reading of the standard edition (1821), the editio princeps has, And yet I love, etc., which Rossetti retains. If yet be right, the line should be punctuated:— And yet I love you still,—but holily, Even as a sister or a spirit might;
5. What, if we, The desolate and the dead, were his own flesh, His children and his wife, etc. (1 3 103-105.) For were (104) Rossetti cj. are or wear. Wear is a plausible emendation, but the text as it stands is defensible.
6. But that no power can fill with vital oil That broken lamp of flesh. (3 2 17, 18.) The standard text (1821) has a Shelleyan comma after oil (17), which Forman retains. Woodberry adds a dash to the comma, thus making that (17) a demonstrative pronoun indicating broken lamp of flesh. The pointing of our text is that of editions 1819, 1839, But that (17) is to be taken as a prepositional conjunction linking the dependent clause, no power...lamp of flesh, to the principal sentence, So wastes...kindled mine (15, 16).
7. The following list of punctual variations indicates the places where our pointing departs from that of the standard text of 1821, and records in each instance the pointing of that edition:—
## Act 1, Scene 2:—Ah! No, 34; Scene 3:—hope, 29; Why 44;
love 115; thou 146; Ay 146.
## Act 2, Scene 1:—Ah! No, 13; Ah! No, 73; courage 80; nook 179;
## Scene 2:—fire, 70; courage 152.
## Act 3, Scene 1:—Why 64; mock 185; opinion 185; law 185; strange 188;
friend 222;
## Scene 2:—so 3; oil, 17.
## Act 4, Scene 1:—wrong 41; looked 97; child 107;
## Scene 3:—What 19; father, (omit quotes) 32.
## Act 5, Scene 2:—years 119;
## Scene 3:—Ay, 5; Guards 94;
## Scene 4:—child, 145.
THE MASK OF ANARCHY.
Our text follows in the main the transcript by Mrs. Shelley (with additions and corrections in Shelley’s hand) known as the ‘Hunt manuscript.’ For the readings of this manuscript we are indebted to Mr. Buxton Forman’s Library Edition of the Poems, 1876. The variants of the ‘Wise manuscript’ (see Prefatory Note) are derived from the Facsimile edited in 1887 for the Shelley Society by Mr. Buxton Forman.
1. Like Eldon, an ermined gown; (4 2.) The editio princeps (1832) has Like Lord E— here. Lord is inserted in minute characters in the Wise manuscript, but is rejected from our text as having been cancelled by the poet himself in the (later) Hunt manuscript.
2. For he knew the Palaces Of our Kings were rightly his; (20 1, 2.) For rightly (Wise manuscript) the Hunt manuscript and editions 1832, 1839 have nightly which is retained by Rossetti and in Forman’s text of 1876. Dowden and Woodberry print rightly which also appears in Forman’s latest text (“Aldine Shelley”, 1892).
3. In a neat and happy home. (54 4.) For In (Wise manuscript, editions 1832, 1839) the Hunt manuscript reads To a neat, etc., which is adopted by Rossetti and Dowden, and appeared in Forman’s text of 1876. Woodberry and Forman (1892) print In a neat, etc.
4. Stanzas 70 3, 4; 71 1. These form one continuous clause in every text save the editio princeps, 1832, where a semicolon appears after around (70 4).
5. Our punctuation follows that of the Hunt manuscript, save in the following places, where a comma, wanting in the manuscript, is supplied in the text:—gay 47; came 58; waken 122; shaken 123; call 124; number 152; dwell 163; thou 209; thee 249; fashion 287; surprise 345; free 358. A semicolon is supplied after earth (line 131).
PETER BELL THE THIRD.
Thomas Brown, Esq., the Younger, H. F., to whom the “Dedication” is addressed, is the Irish poet, Tom Moore. The letters H. F. may stand for ‘Historian of the Fudges’ (Garnett), Hibernicae Filius (Rossetti), or, perhaps, Hibernicae Fidicen. Castles and Oliver (3 2 1; 7 4 4) were government spies, as readers of Charles Lamb are aware. The allusion in 6 36 is to Wordsworth’s “Thanksgiving Ode on The Battle of Waterloo”, original version, published in 1816:— But Thy most dreaded instrument, In working out a pure intent, Is Man—arrayed for mutual slaughter, —Yea, Carnage is Thy daughter!
1. Lines 547-549 (6 18 5; 19 1, 2). These lines evidently form a continuous clause. The full stop of the editio princeps at rocks, line 547, has therefore been deleted, and a semicolon substituted for the original comma at the close of line 546.
2. ‘Ay—and at last desert me too.’ (line 603.) Rossetti, who however follows the editio princeps, saw that these words are spoken—not by Peter to his soul, but—by his soul to Peter, by way of rejoinder to the challenge of lines 600-602:—‘And I and you, My dearest Soul, will then make merry, As the Prince Regent did with Sherry.’ In order to indicate this fact, inverted commas are inserted at the close of line 602 and the beginning of line 603.
3. The punctuation of the editio princeps, 1839, has been throughout revised, but—with the two exceptions specified in notes (1) and (2) above—it seemed an unprofitable labour to record the particular alterations, which serve but to clarify—in no instance to modify—the sense as indicated by Mrs. Shelley’s punctuation.
LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE.
Our text mainly follows Mrs. Shelley’s transcript, for the readings of which we are indebted to Mr. Buxton Forman’s Library Edition of the Poems, 1876. The variants from Shelley’s draft are supplied by Dr. Garnett.
1. Lines 197-201. These lines, which are wanting in editions 1824 and 1839 (1st edition), are supplied from Mrs. Shelley’s transcript and from Shelley’s draft (Boscombe manuscript). In the 2nd edition of 1839 the following lines appear in their place:— Your old friend Godwin, greater none than he; Though fallen on evil times, yet will he stand, Among the spirits of our age and land, Before the dread tribunal of To-come The foremost, whilst rebuke stands pale and dumb.
2. Line 296. The names in this line are supplied from the two manuscripts. In the “Posthumous Poems” of 1824 the line appears:—Oh! that H— — and — were there, etc.
3. The following list gives the places where the pointing of the text varies from that of Mrs. Shelley’s transcript as reported by Mr. Buxton Forman, and records in each case the pointing of that original:—Turk 26; scorn 40; understood, 49; boat— 75; think, 86; believe; 158; are; 164; fair 233; cameleopard; 240; Now 291.
THE WITCH OF ATLAS.
1. The following list gives the places where our text departs from the pointing of the editio princeps (“Dedication”, 1839; “Witch of Atlas”, 1824), and records in each case the original pointing:— DEDIC.—pinions, 14; fellow, 41; Othello, 45. WITCH OF ATLAS.—bliss; 164; above. 192; gums 258; flashed 409; sunlight, 409; Thamondocana. 424; by. 432; engraven. 448; apart, 662; mind! 662.
EPIPSYCHIDION.
1. The following list gives the places where our text departs from the pointing of the editio princeps, 1821, with the original point in each case:—love, 44; pleasure; 68; flowing 96; where! 234; passed 252; dreamed, 278; Night 418; year), 440; children, 528.
ADONAIS.
1. The following list indicates the places in which the punctuation of this edition departs from that of the editio princeps, of 1821, and records in each instance the pointing of that text:—thou 10; Oh 19; apace, 65; Oh 73; flown 138; Thou 142; Ah 154; immersed 167; corpse 172; tender 172; his 193; they 213; Death 217; Might 218; bow, 249; sighs 314; escape 320; Cease 366; dark 406; forth 415; dead, 440; Whilst 493.
HELLAS.
A Reprint of the original edition (1822) of “Hellas” was edited for the Shelley Society in 1887 by Mr. Thomas J. Wise. In Shelley’s list of Dramatis Personae the Phantom of Mahomet the Second is wanting. Shelley’s list of Errata in edition 1822 was first printed in Mr. Buxton Forman’s Library Edition of the Poems, 1876 (4 page 572). These errata are silently corrected in the text.
1. For Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind, etc. (lines 728-729.) ‘“For” has no rhyme (unless “are” and “despair” are to be considered such): it requires to rhyme with “hear.” From this defect of rhyme, and other considerations, I (following Mr. Fleay) used to consider it almost certain that “Fear” ought to replace “For”; and I gave “Fear” in my edition of 1870...However, the word in the manuscript [“Williams transcript”] is “For,” and Shelley’s list of errata leaves this unaltered—so we must needs abide by it.’—Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, edition 1878 (3 volumes), 2 page 456.
2. Lines 729-732. This quatrain, as Dr. Garnett (“Letters of Shelley”, 1884, pages 166, 249) points out, is an expansion of the following lines from the “Agamemmon” of Aeschylus (758-760), quoted by Shelley in a letter to his wife, dated ‘Friday, August 10, 1821’:— to dussebes— meta men pleiona tiktei, sphetera d’ eikota genna.
3. Lines 1091-1093. This passage, from the words more bright to the close of line 1093, is wanting in the editio princeps, 1822, its place being supplied by asterisks. The lacuna in the text is due, no doubt, to the timidity of Ollier, the publisher, whom Shelley had authorised to make excisions from the notes. In “Poetical Works”, 1839, the lines, as they appear in our text, are restored; in Galignani’s edition of “Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats” (Paris, 1829), however, they had already appeared, though with the substitution of wise for bright (line 1091), and of unwithstood for unsubdued (line 1093). Galignani’s reading—native for votive—in line 1095 is an evident misprint. In Ascham’s edition of Shelley (2 volumes, fcp. 8vo., 1834), the passage is reprinted from Galignani.
4. The following list shows the places in which our text departs from the punctuation of the editio princeps, 1822, and records in each instance the pointing of that edition:—dreams 71; course. 125; mockery 150; conqueror 212; streams 235; Moslems 275; West 305; moon, 347; harm, 394; shame, 402; anger 408; descends 447; crime 454; banner. 461; Phanae, 470; blood 551; tyrant 557; Cydaris, 606; Heaven 636; Highness 638; man 738; sayest 738; One 768; mountains 831; dust 885; consummation? 902; dream 921; may 923; death 935; clime. 1005; feast, 1025; horn, 1032; Noon, 1045; death 1057; dowers 1094.
CHARLES THE FIRST.
To Mr. Rossetti we owe the reconstruction of this fragmentary drama out of materials partly published by Mrs. Shelley in 1824, partly recovered from manuscript by himself. The bracketed words are, presumably, supplied by Mr. Rossetti to fill actual lacunae in the manuscript; those queried represent indistinct writing. Mr. Rossetti’s additions to the text are indicated in the footnotes. In one or two instances Mr. Forman and Dr. Garnett have restored the true reading. The list of Dramatis Personae is Mr. Forman’s.
THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE.
1. Lines 131-135. This grammatically incoherent passage is thus conjecturally emended by Rossetti:— Fled back like eagles to their native noon; For those who put aside the diadem Of earthly thrones or gems..., Whether of Athens or Jerusalem, Were neither mid the mighty captives seen, etc. In the case of an incomplete poem lacking the author’s final corrections, however, restoration by conjecture is, to say the least of it, gratuitous.
2. Line 282. The words, ‘Even as the deeds of others, not as theirs.’ And then—are wanting in editions 1824, 1839, and were recovered by Dr. Garnett from the Boscombe manuscript. Mrs. Shelley’s note here runs:—‘There is a chasm here in the manuscript which it is impossible to fill. It appears from the context that other shapes pass and that Rousseau still stood beside the dreamer.’ Mr. Forman thinks that the ‘chasm’ is filled up by the words restored from the manuscript by Dr. Garnett. Mr. A.C. Bradley writes: ‘It seems likely that, after writing “I have suffered...pain”, Shelley meant to strike out the words between “known” [276] and “I” [278], and to fill up the gap in such a way that “I” would be the last word of the line beginning “May well be known”.’
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
1. TO —. Mrs. Shelley tentatively assigned this fragment to 1817. ‘It seems not improbable that it was addressed at this time [June, 1814] to Mary Godwin.’ Dowden, “Life”, 1 422, Woodberry suggests that ‘Harriet answers as well, or better, to the situation described.’
2. ON DEATH. These stanzas occur in the Esdaile manuscript along with others which Shelley intended to print with “Queen Mab” in 1813; but the text was revised before publication in 1816.
3. TO —. ‘The poem beginning “Oh, there are spirits in the air,” was addressed in idea to Coleridge, whom he never knew’—writes Mrs. Shelley. Mr. Bertram Dobell, Mr. Rossetti and Professor Dowden, however, incline to think that we have here an address by Shelley in a despondent mood to his own spirit.
4. LINES. These appear to be antedated by a year, as they evidently allude to the death of Harriet Shelley in November, 1816.
5. ANOTHER FRAGMENT TO MUSIC. To Mr. Forman we owe the restoration of the true text here—‘food of Love.’ Mrs. Shelley printed ‘god of Love.’
6. MARENGHI, lines 92, 93. The 1870 (Rossetti) version of these lines is:— White bones, and locks of dun and yellow hair, And ringed horns which buffaloes did wear— The words locks of dun (line 92) are cancelled in the manuscript. Shelley’s failure to cancel the whole line was due, Mr. Locock rightly argues, to inadvertence merely; instead of buffaloes the manuscript gives the buffalo, and it supplies the ‘wonderful line’ (Locock) which closes the stanza in our text, and with which Mr. Locock aptly compares “Mont Blanc”, line 69:— Save when the eagle brings some hunter’s bone, And the wolf tracks her there.
7. ODE TO LIBERTY, lines 1, 2. On the suggestion of his brother, Mr. Alfred Forman, the editor of the Library Edition of Shelley’s Poems (1876), Mr. Buxton Forman, printed these lines as follows:— A glorious people vibrated again: The lightning of the nations, Liberty, From heart to heart, etc. The testimony of Shelley’s autograph in the Harvard College manuscript, however, is final against such a punctuation.
8. Lines 41, 42. We follow Mrs. Shelley’s punctuation (1839). In Shelley’s edition (1820) there is no stop at the end of line 41, and a semicolon closes line 42.
9. ODE TO NAPLES. In Mrs. Shelley’s editions the various sections of this Ode are severally headed as follows:—‘Epode 1 alpha, Epode 2 alpha, Strophe alpha 1, Strophe beta 2, Antistrophe alpha gamma, Antistrophe beta gamma, Antistrophe beta gamma, Antistrophe alpha gamma, Epode 1 gamma, Epode 2 gamma. In the manuscript, Mr. Locock tells us, the headings are ‘very doubtful, many of them being vaguely altered with pen and pencil.’ Shelley evidently hesitated between two or three alternative ways of indicating the structure and corresponding parts of his elaborate song; hence the chaotic jumble of headings printed in editions 1824, 1839. So far as the “Epodes” are concerned, the headings in this edition are those of editions 1824, 1839, which may be taken as supported by the manuscript (Locock). As to the remaining sections, Mr. Locock’s examination of the manuscript leads him to conclude that Shelley’s final choice was:—‘Strophe 1, Strophe 2, Antistrophe 1, Antistrophe 2, Antistrophe 1 alpha, Antistrophe 2 alpha.’ This in itself would be perfectly appropriate, but it would be inconsistent with the method employed in designating the “Epodes”. I have therefore adopted in preference a scheme which, if it lacks manuscript authority in some
## particulars, has at least the merit of being absolutely logical and
consistent throughout.
Mr. Locock has some interesting remarks on the metrical features of this complex ode. On the 10th line of Antistrophe 1a (line 86 of the ode)—Aghast she pass from the Earth’s disk—which exceeds by one foot the 10th lines of the two corresponding divisions, Strophe 1 and Antistrophe 1b, he observes happily enough that ‘Aghast may well have been intended to disappear.’ Mr. Locock does not seem to notice that the closing lines of these three answering sections—(1) hail, hail, all hail!—(2) Thou shalt be great—All hail!—(3) Art Thou of all these hopes.—O hail! increase by regular lengths—two, three, four iambi. Nor does he seem quite to grasp Shelley’s intention with regard to the rhyme scheme of the other triple group, Strophe 2, Antistrophe 2a, Antistrophe 2b. That of Strophe 2 may be thus expressed:—a-a-bc; d-d-bc; a-c-d; b-c. Between this and Antistrophe 2a (the second member of the group) there is a general correspondence with, in one particular, a subtle modification. The scheme now becomes a-a-bc; d-d-bc; a-c-b; d-c: i.e. the rhymes of lines 9 and 10 are transposed—God (line 9) answering to the halfway rhymes of lines 3 and 6, gawd and unawed, instead of (as in Strophe 2) to the rhyme-endings of lines 4 and 5; and, vice versa, fate (line 10) answering to desolate and state (lines 4 and 5), instead of to the halfway rhymes aforesaid. As to Antistrophe 2b, that follows Antistrophe 2a, so far as it goes; but after line 9 it breaks off suddenly, and closes with two lines corresponding in length and rhyme to the closing couplet of Antistrophe 1b, the section immediately preceding, which, however, belongs not to this group, but to the other. Mr. Locock speaks of line 124 as ‘a rhymeless line.’ Rhymeless it is not, for shore, its rhyme-termination, answers to bower and power, the halfway rhymes of lines 118 and 121 respectively. Why Mr. Locock should call line 12 an ‘unmetrical line,’ I cannot see. It is a decasyllabic line, with a trochee substituted for an iambus in the third foot—Around : me gleamed : many a : bright se : pulchre.
10. THE TOWER OF FAMINE.—It is doubtful whether the following note is Shelley’s or Mrs. Shelley’s: ‘At Pisa there still exists the prison of Ugolino, which goes by the name of “La Torre della Fame”; in the adjoining building the galley-slaves are confined. It is situated on the Ponte al Mare on the Arno.’
11. GINEVRA, line 129: Through seas and winds, cities and wildernesses. The footnote omits Professor Dowden’s conjectural emendation—woods—for winds, the reading of edition 1824 here.
12. THE LADY OF THE SOUTH. Our text adopts Mr. Forman’s correction—drouth for drought—in line 3. This should have been recorded in a footnote.
13. HYMN TO MERCURY, line 609. The period at now is supported by the Harvard manuscript.
JUVENILIA.
QUEEN MAB.
1. Throughout this varied and eternal world Soul is the only element: the block That for uncounted ages has remained The moveless pillar of a mountain’s weight Is active, living spirit. (4, lines 139-143.) This punctuation was proposed in 1888 by Mr. J. R. Tutin (see “Notebook of the Shelley Society”, Part 1, page 21), and adopted by Dowden, “Poetical Works of Shelley”, Macmillan, 1890. The editio princeps (1813), which is followed by Forman (1892) and Woodberry (1893), has a comma after element and a full stop at remained.
2. Guards...from a nation’s rage Secure the crown, etc. (4, lines 173-176.) So Mrs. Shelley (“Poetical Works”, 1839, both editions), Rossetti, Forman, Dowden. The editio princeps reads Secures, which Woodberry defends and retains.
3. 4, lines 203-220: omitted by Mrs. Shelley from the text of “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition, but restored in the 2nd edition of 1839. See above, “Note on Queen Mab, by Mrs. Shelley”.
4. All germs of promise, yet when the tall trees, etc. (5, line 9.) So Rossetti, Dowden, Woodberry. In editions 1813 (editio princeps) and 1839 (“Poetical Works”, both editions) there is a full stop at promise which Forman retains.
5. Who ever hears his famished offspring’s scream, etc. (5, line 116.) The editio princeps has offsprings—an evident misprint.
6. 6, lines 54-57, line 275: struck out of the text of “Poetical Works”, 1839 (1st edition), but restored in the 2nd edition of that year. See Note 3 above.
7. The exterminable spirit it contains, etc. (7, line 23.) Exterminable seems to be used here in the sense of ‘illimitable’ (N. E. D.). Rossetti proposes interminable, or inexterminable.
8. A smile of godlike malice reillumed, etc. (7, line 180.) The editio princeps and the first edition of “Poetical Works”, 1839, read reillumined here, which is retained by Forman, Dowden, Woodberry. With Rossetti, I follow Mrs. Shelley’s reading in “Poetical Works”, 1839 (2nd edition).
9. One curse alone was spared—the name of God. (8, line 165.) Removed from the text, “Poetical Works”, 1839 (1st edition); restored, “Poetical Works”, 1839 (2nd edition). See Notes 3 and 6 above.
10. Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal Dawns on the virtuous mind, etc. (8, lines 204-205.) With some hesitation as to lore, I reprint these lines as they are given by Shelley himself in the note on this passage (supra). The text of 1813 runs:— Which from the exhaustless store of human weal Draws on the virtuous mind, etc. This is retained by Woodberry, while Rossetti, Forman, and Dowden adopt eclectic texts, Forman and Dowden reading lore and Draws, while Rossetti, again, reads store and Dawns. Our text is supported by the authority of Dr. Richard Garnett. The comma after infiniteness (line 206) has a metrical, not a logical, value.
11. Nor searing Reason with the brand of God. (9, line 48.) Removed from the text, “Poetical Works”, 1839 (1st edition), by Mrs. Shelley, who failed, doubtless through an oversight, to restore it in the second edition. See Notes 3, 6, and 9 above.
12. Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, nor care, etc. (9, line 67.) The editio princeps reads pride, or care, which is retained by Forman and Woodberry. With Rossetti and Dowden, I follow Mrs. Shelley’s text, “Poetical Works”, 1839 (both editions).
NOTES TO QUEEN MAB.
1. The mine, big with destructive power, burst under me, etc. (Note on 7 67.) This is the reading of the “Poetical Works” of 1839 (2nd edition). The editio princeps (1813) reads burst upon me. Doubtless under was intended by Shelley: the occurrence, thrice over, of upon in the ten lines preceding would account for the unconscious substitution of the word here, either by the printer, or perhaps by Shelley himself in his transcript for the press.
2. ...it cannot arise from reasoning, etc. (Note on 7 135.) The editio princeps (1813) has conviction for reasoning here—an obvious error of the press, overlooked by Mrs. Shelley in 1839, and perpetuated in his several editions of the poems by Mr. H. Buxton Forman. Reasoning, Mr. W.M. Rossetti’s conjectural emendation, is manifestly the right word here, and has been adopted by Dowden and Woodberry.
3. Him, still from hope to hope, etc. (Note on 8 203-207.) See editor’s note 10 on “Queen Mab” above.
1. A DIALOGUE.—The titles of this poem, of the stanzas “On an Icicle”, etc., and of the lines “To Death”, were first given by Professor Dowden (“Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1890) from the Esdaile manuscript book. The textual corrections from the same quarter (see footnotes passim) are also owing to Professor Dowden.
2. ORIGINAL POETRY BY VICTOR AND CAZIRE.—Dr. Garnett, who in 1898 edited for Mr. John Lane a reprint of these long-lost verses, identifies “Victor’s” coadjutrix, “Cazire”, with Elizabeth Shelley, the poet’s sister. ‘The two initial pieces are the only two which can be attributed to Elizabeth Shelley with absolute certainty, though others in the volume may possibly belong to her’ (Garnett).
3. SAINT EDMOND’S EVE. This ballad-tale was “conveyed” in its entirety by “Cazire” from Matthew Gregory Lewis’s “Tales of Terror”, 1801, where it appears under the title of “The Black Canon of Elmham; or, Saint Edmond’s Eve”. Stockdale, the publisher of “Victor and Cazire”, detected the imposition, and communicated his discovery to Shelley—when ‘with all the ardour natural to his character he [Shelley] expressed the warmest resentment at the imposition practised upon him by his coadjutor, and entreated me to destroy all the copies, of which about one hundred had been put into circulation.’
4. TO MARY WHO DIED IN THIS OPINION.—From a letter addressed by Shelley to Miss Hitchener, dated November 23, 1811.
5. A TALE OF SOCIETY.—The titles of this and the following piece were first given by Professor Dowden from the Esdaile manuscript, from which also one or two corrections in the text of both poems, made in Macmillan’s edition of 1890, were derived.
***
A LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL EDITIONS OF SHELLEY’S POETICAL WORKS,
SHOWING THE VARIOUS PRINTED SOURCES OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS EDITION.
1. (1) Original Poetry; : By : Victor and Cazire. : Call it not vain:—they do not err, : Who say, that, when the poet dies, : Mute Nature mourns her worshipper. : “Lay of the Last Minstrel.” : Worthing : Printed by C. and W. Phillips, : for the Authors; : And sold by J. J. Stockdale, 41, Pall-Mall, : And all other Booksellers. 1810.
(2) Original : Poetry : By : Victor & Cazire : [Percy Bysshe Shelley : & Elizabeth Shelley] : Edited by : Richard Garnett C.B., LL.D. : Published by : John Lane, at the Sign : of the Bodley Head in : London and New York : MDCCCXCVIII.
2. Posthumous Fragments : of : Margaret Nicholson; : Being Poems Found Amongst the Papers of that : Noted Female who attempted the Life : of the King in 1786. : Edited by : John Fitz-Victor. : Oxford: : Printed and sold by J. Munday : 1810.
3. St. Irvyne; : or, : The Rosicrucian. : A Romance. : By : A Gentleman : of the University of Oxford. : London: : Printed for J. J. Stockdale, : 41, Pall Mall. : 1811.
4. The Devil’s Walk; a Ballad. Printed as a broadside, 1812.
5. Queen Mab; : a : Philosophical Poem: : with Notes. : By : Percy Bysshe Shelley. : Ecrasez l’Infame! : “Correspondance de Voltaire.” : Avia Pieridum peragro loca, nullius ante : Trita solo; iuvat integros accedere fonteis; : Atque haurire: iuratque (sic) novos decerpere flores. : Unde prius nulli velarint tempora nausae. : Primum quod magnis doceo de rebus; et arctis : Religionum animos nodis exsolvere pergo. : Lucret. lib. 4 : Dos pou sto, kai kosmon kineso. : Archimedes. : London: : Printed by P. B. Shelley, : 23, Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square. : 1813.
6. Alastor; : or, : The Spirit of Solitude: : and Other Poems. : By : Percy Bysshe Shelley : London : Printed for Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, Pater-:noster Row; and Carpenter and Son, : Old Bond Street: : By S. Hamilton, Weybridge, Surrey : 1816.
7. (1) Laon and Cythna; : or, : The Revolution : of : the Golden City: : A Vision of the Nineteenth Century. : In the Stanza of Spenser. : By : Percy B. Shelley. : Dos pou sto, kai kosmon kineso. : Archimedes. : London: : Printed for Sherwood, Neely, & Jones, Paternoster-:Row; and C. and J. Ollier, Welbeck-Street: : By B. M’Millan, Bow-Street, Covent-Garden. : 1818.
(2) The : Revolt of Islam; : A Poem, : in Twelve Cantos. : By : Percy Bysshe Shelley. : London: : Printed for C. and J. Ollier, Welbeck-Street; : By B. M’Millan, Bow-Street, Covent-Garden. : 1818.
(3) A few copies of “The Revolt of Islam” bear date 1817 instead of 1818.
(4) ‘The same sheets were used again in 1829 with a third title-page similar to the foregoing [2], but with the imprint “London: : Printed for John Brooks, : 421 Oxford-Street. : 1829.”’ (H. Buxton Forman, C.B.: The Shelley Library, page 73.)
(5) ‘Copies of the 1829 issue of “The Revolt of Islam” not infrequently occur with “Laon and Cythna” text.’ (Ibid., page 73.)
8. Rosalind and Helen, : A Modern Eclogue; : With Other Poems: : By : Percy Bysshe Shelley. : London: : Printed for C. and J. Ollier, : Vere Street, Bond Street. : 1819.
9. (1) The Cenci. : A Tragedy, : In Five Acts. : By Percy B. Shelley. : Italy. : Printed for C. and J. Ollier, : Vere Street, Bond Street. : London. : 1819.
(2) The Cenci : A Tragedy : In Five Acts : By : Percy Bysshe Shelley : Second Edition : London : C. and J. Ollier Vere Street Bond Street : 1821.
10. Prometheus Unbound : A Lyrical Drama : In Four Acts : With Other Poems : By : Percy Bysshe Shelley : Audisne haec, Amphiarae, sub terram abdite? : London : C. and J. Ollier Vere Street Bond Street : 1820.
11. Oedipus Tyrannus; : or, : Swellfoot The Tyrant. : A Tragedy. : In Two Acts. : Translated from the Original Doric. : —Choose Reform or civil-war, : When thro’ thy streets, instead of hare with dogs, A CONSORT-QUEEN shall hunt a KING with hogs, : Riding on the IONIAN MINOTAUR. : London: : Published for the Author, : By J. Johnston, 98, Cheapside, and sold by all booksellers. : 1820.
12. Epipsychidion : Verses Addressed to the Noble : And Unfortunate Lady : Emilia V— : Now Imprisoned in the Convent of — : L’ anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nel infinito : un Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso : baratro. Her Own Words. : London : C. and J. Ollier Vere Street Bond Street : MDCCCXXI.
13. (1) Adonais : An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, : Author of Endymion, Hyperion etc. : By : Percy B. Shelley : Aster prin men elampes eni zooisin eoos. : Nun de thanon, lampeis esmeros en phthimenois. : Plato. : Pisa : With the Types of Didot : MDCCCXXI.
(2) Adonais. : An Elegy : on the : Death of John Keats, : Author of Endymion, Hyperion, etc. : By : Percy B. Shelley. : [Motto as in (1)] Cambridge: : Printed by W. Metcalfe, : and sold by Messrs. Gee & Bridges, Market-Hill. : MDCCCXXIX.
14. Hellas : A Lyrical Drama : By : Percy B. Shelley : MANTIS EIM’ ESTHAON ‘AGONON : Oedip. Colon. : London : Charles and James Ollier Vere Street : Bond Street : MDCCCXXII. (The last work issued in Shelley’s lifetime.)
15. Posthumous Poems : of : Percy Bysshe Shelley. : In nobil sangue vita umile e queta, : Ed in alto intelletto on puro core; : Frutto senile in sul giovenil fiore, : E in aspetto pensoso anima lieta. : Petrarca. : London, 1824: : Printed for John and Henry L. Hunt, : Tavistock Street, Covent Garden. (Edited by Mrs. Shelley.)
16. The : Masque of Anarchy. : A Poem. : By Percy Bysshe Shelley. Now first published, with a Preface : by Leigh Hunt. : Hope is Strong; : Justice and Truth their winged child have found. : “Revolt of Islam”. : London: : Edward Moxon, 64, New Bond Street. : 1832.
17. The Shelley Papers : Memoir : of : Percy Bysshe Shelley : By T. Medwin, Esq. : And : Original Poems and Papers : By Percy Bysshe Shelley. : Now first collected. : London: : Whittaker, Treacher, & Co. : 1833. (The Poems occupy pages 109-126.)
18. The : Poetical Works : of : Percy Bysshe Shelley. : Edited : by Mrs Shelley. : Lui non trov’ io, ma suoi santi vestigi : Tutti rivolti alla superna strada : Veggio, lunge da’ laghi averni e stigi.—Petrarca. : In Four Volumes. : Vol. 1 [2 3 4] : London: : Edward Moxon, Dover Street. : MDCCCXXXIX.
19. (1) The : Poetical Works : of : Percy Bysshe Shelley: [Vignette of Shelley’s Tomb.] London. : Edward Moxon, Dover Street. : 1839. (This is the engraved title-page. The printed title-page runs:—)
(2) The : Poetical Works : of Percy Bysshe Shelley. : Edited : By Mrs. Shelley. : [Motto from Petrarch as in 18] London: : Edward Moxon, Dover Street. : M.DCCC.XL. (Large octavo, printed in double columns. The Dedication is dated 11th November, 1839.)
20. Essays, : Letters from Abroad, : Translations and Fragments, : By : Percy Bysshe Shelley. : Edited : By Mrs. Shelley. : [Long prose motto translated from Schiller] : In Two Volumes. : Volume 1 [2] : London: : Edward Moxon, Dover Street. : MDCCCXL.
21. Relics of Shelley. : Edited by : Richard Garnett. : [Lines 20-24 of “To Jane”: ‘The keen stars,’ etc.] : London: : Edward Moxon & Co., Dover Street. : 1862.
22. The : Poetical Works : of : Percy Bysshe Shelley: : Including Various Additional Pieces : From Manuscript and Other Sources. : The Text carefully revised, with Notes and : A Memoir, : By William Michael Rossetti. : Volume 1 [2] : [Moxon’s Device.] : London: : E. Moxon, Son, & Co., 44 Dover Street, W. : 1870.
23. The Daemon of the World : By : Percy Bysshe Shelley : The First Part : as published in 1816 with “Alastor” : The Second Part : Deciphered and now First Printed from his own Manuscript : Revision and Interpolations in the Newly Discovered : Copy of “Queen Mab” : London : Privately printed by H. Buxton Forman : 38 Marlborough Hill : 1876.
24. The Poetical Works : of : Percy Bysshe Shelley : Edited by : Harry Buxton Forman : In Four Volumes : Volume 1 [2 3 4] London : Reeves and Turner 196 Strand : 1876.
25. The Complete : Poetical Works : of : Percy Bysshe Shelley. : The Text carefully revised with Notes and : A Memoir, : by : William Michael Rossetti. : In Three Volumes. : Volume 1 [2 3] London: : E. Moxon, Son, And Co., : Dorset Buildings, Salisbury Square, E.C. : 1878.
26. The Poetical Works : of Percy Bysshe Shelley : Given from His Own Editions and Other Authentic Sources : Collated with many Manuscripts and with all Editions of Authority : Together with Prefaces and Notes : His Poetical Translations and Fragments : and an Appendix of : Juvenilia : [Publisher’s Device.] Edited by Harry Buxton Forman : In Two Volumes. : Volume 1 [2] London : Reeves and Turner, 196, Strand : 1882.
27. The : Poetical Works : of : Percy Bysshe Shelley : Edited by : Edward Dowden : London : Macmillan and Co, Limited : New York: The Macmillan Company : 1900.
28. The Poetical Works of : Percy Bysshe Shelley : Edited with a Memoir by : H. Buxton Forman : In Five Volumes [Publisher’s Device.] Volume 1 [2 3 4 5] London : George Bell and Sons : 1892.
29. The : Complete Poetical Works : of : Percy Bysshe Shelley : The Text newly collated and revised : and Edited with a Memoir and Notes : By George Edward Woodberry : Centenary Edition : In Four Volumes : Volume 1 [2 3 4] [Publisher’s Device.] London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co. : Limited : 1893.
30. An Examination of the : Shelley Manuscripts : In the Bodleian Library : Being a collation thereof with the printed : texts, resulting in the publication of : several long fragments hitherto unknown, : and the introduction of many improved : readings into “Prometheus Unbound”, and : other poems, by : C.D. Locock, B.A. : Oxford : At the Clarendon Press : 1903.
The early poems from the Esdaile manuscript book, which are included in this edition by the kind permission of the owner of the volume, Charles E.J. Esdaile, Esq., appeared for the first time in Professor Dowden’s “Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, published in the year 1887.
One poem from the same volume; entitled “The Wandering Jew’s Soliloquy”, was printed in one of the Shelley Society Publications (Second Series, No. 12), a reprint of “The Wandering Jew”, edited by Mr. Bertram Dobell in 1887.
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INDEX OF FIRST LINES.
A cat in distress : A gentle story of two lovers young : A glorious people vibrated again : A golden-winged Angel stood : A Hater he came and sat by a ditch : A man who was about to hang himself : A pale Dream came to a Lady fair : A portal as of shadowy adamant : A rainbow’s arch stood on the sea : A scene, which ‘wildered fancy viewed : A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew : A shovel of his ashes took : A widow bird sate mourning : A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune : Ah! faint are her limbs, and her footstep is weary : Ah! grasp the dire dagger and couch the fell spear : Ah! quit me not yet, for the wind whistles shrill : Ah, sister! Desolation is a delicate thing : Ah! sweet is the moonbeam that sleeps on yon fountain : Alas! for Liberty! : Alas, good friend, what profit can you see : Alas! this is not what I thought life was : Ambition, power, and avarice, now have hurled : Amid the desolation of a city : Among the guests who often stayed : An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king : And can’st thou mock mine agony, thus calm : And earnest to explore within—around : And ever as he went he swept a lyre : And, if my grief should still be dearer to me : And like a dying lady, lean and pale : And many there were hurt by that strong boy : And Peter Bell, when he had been : And said I that all hope was fled : And that I walk thus proudly crowned withal : And the cloven waters like a chasm of mountains : And when the old man saw that on the green : And where is truth? On tombs? for such to thee : And who feels discord now or sorrow? : Arethusa arose : Ariel to Miranda:—Take : Arise, arise, arise! : Art thou indeed forever gone : Art thou pale for weariness : As a violet’s gentle eye : As from an ancestral oak : As I lay asleep in Italy : As the sunrise to the night : Ask not the pallid stranger’s woe : At the creation of the Earth : Away! the moor is dark beneath the moon :
Bear witness, Erin! when thine injured isle : Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth : Beside the dimness of the glimmering sea : Best and brightest, come away! : Break the dance, and scatter the song : Bright ball of flame that through the gloom of even : Bright clouds float in heaven : Bright wanderer, fair coquette of Heaven : Brothers! between you and me : ‘Buona notte, buona notte!’—Come mai : By the mossy brink :
Chameleons feed on light and air : Cold, cold is the blast when December is howling : Come, be happy!—sit near me : Come [Harriet]! sweet is the hour : Come hither, my sweet Rosalind : Come, thou awakener of the spirit’s ocean : Corpses are cold in the tomb :
Dares the lama, most fleet of the sons of the wind : Dar’st thou amid the varied multitude : Darkness has dawned in the East : Daughters of Jove, whose voice is melody : Dear home, thou scene of earliest hopes and joys : Dearest, best and brightest : Death is here and death is there : Death! where is thy victory? : Do evil deeds thus quickly come to end? Do you not hear the Aziola cry? :
Eagle! why soarest thou above that tomb? : Earth, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood : Echoes we: listen! Ever as now with Love and Virtue’s glow :
Faint with love, the Lady of the South : Fairest of the Destinies : False friend, wilt thou smile or weep : Far, far away, O ye : Fiend, I defy thee! with a calm, fixed mind : Fierce roars the midnight storm : Flourishing vine, whose kindling clusters glow : Follow to the deep wood’s weeds : For me, my friend, if not that tears did tremble : For my dagger is bathed in the blood of the brave : For your letter, dear [Hattie], accept my best thanks : From all the blasts of heaven thou hast descended : From the cities where from caves : From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth : From the forests and highlands : From unremembered ages we :
Gather, O gather : Ghosts of the dead! have I not heard your yelling : God prosper, speed, and save : Good-night? ah! no; the hour is ill : Great Spirit whom the sea of boundless thought : Guido, I would that Lapo, thou, and I :
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! : Hail to thee, Cambria! for the unfettered wind : Hark! the owlet flaps her wing : Hark! the owlet flaps his wings : Hast thou not seen, officious with delight : He came like a dream in the dawn of life : He wanders, like a day-appearing dream : Hell is a city much like London : Her hair was brown, her sphered eyes were brown : Her voice did quiver as we parted : Here I sit with my paper, my pen and my ink : ‘Here lieth One whose name was writ on water’ : Here, my dear friend, is a new book for you : Here, oh, here : Hic sinu fessum caput hospitali : His face was like a snake’s—wrinkled and loose : Honey from silkworms who can gather : Hopes, that swell in youthful breasts : How eloquent are eyes : How, my dear Mary,—are you critic-bitten : How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner : How sweet it is to sit and read the tales : How swiftly through Heaven’s wide expanse : How wonderful is Death : How wonderful is Death :
I am afraid these verses will not please you, but : I am as a spirit who has dwelt : I am drunk with the honey wine : I arise from dreams of thee : I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers : I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way : I dreamed that Milton’s spirit rose, and took : I faint, I perish with my love! I grow : I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden : I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan : I love thee, Baby! for thine own sweet sake : I loved—alas! our life is love : I met a traveller from an antique land : I mourn Adonis dead—loveliest Adonis : I pant for the music which is divine : I rode one evening with Count Maddalo : I sate beside a sage’s bed : I sate beside the Steersman then, and gazing : I sing the glorious Power with azure eyes : I stood upon a heaven-cleaving turret : I stood within the City disinterred : I weep for Adonais—he is dead’ : I went into the deserts of dim sleep : I would not be a king—enough : If gibbets, axes, confiscations, chains : If I esteemed you less, Envy would kill : If I walk in Autumn’s even : In the cave which wild weeds cover : In the sweet solitude of this calm place : Inter marmoreas Leonorae pendula colles : Is it that in some brighter sphere : Is it the Eternal Triune, is it He : Is not to-day enough? Why do I peer : It is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven : It is the day when all the sons of God : It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky : It was a bright and cheerful afternoon :
Kissing Helena, together :
Let there be light! said Liberty : Let those who pine in pride or in revenge : Life of Life! thy lips enkindle : Lift not the painted veil which those who live : Like the ghost of a dear friend dead : Listen, listen, Mary mine : Lo, Peter in Hell’s Grosvenor Square :
Madonna, wherefore hast thou sent to me : Maiden, quench the glare of sorrow : Many a green isle needs must be : Melodious Arethusa, o’er my verse : Men of England, wherefore plough : Methought I was a billow in the crowd : Mighty eagle! thou that soarest : Mine eyes were dim with tears unshed : Monarch of Gods and Daemons, and all Spirits : Month after month the gathered rains descend : Moonbeam, leave the shadowy vale : Muse, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite : Music, when soft voices die : My coursers are fed with the lightning : My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone : My faint spirit was sitting in the light : My head is heavy, my limbs are weary : My head is wild with weeping for a grief : My lost William, thou in whom : My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few : My soul is an enchanted boat : My spirit like a charmed bark doth swim : My thoughts arise and fade in solitude : My wings are folded o’er mine ears :
Night, with all thine eyes look down! : Night! with all thine eyes look down! : No access to the Duke! You have not said : No, Music, thou art not the ‘food of Love’ : No trump tells thy virtues : Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame : Not far from hence. From yonder pointed hill : Now had the loophole of that dungeon, still : Now the last day of many days :
O Bacchus, what a world of toil, both now : O happy Earth! reality of Heaven : O Mary dear, that you were here : O mighty mind, in whose deep stream this age : O pillow cold and wet with tears! : O Slavery! thou frost of the world’s prime : O that a chariot of cloud were mine! : O that mine enemy had written : O thou bright Sun! beneath the dark blue line : O thou immortal deity : O thou, who plumed with strong desire : O universal Mother, who dost keep : O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being : O world! O life! O time! : Offspring of Jove, Calliope, once more : Oh! did you observe the black Canon pass : Oh! take the pure gem to where southerly breezes : Oh! there are spirits of the air : Oh! what is the gain of restless care : On a battle-trumpet’s blast : On a poet’s lips I slept : On the brink of the night and the morning : Once, early in the morning : One sung of thee who left the tale untold : One word is too often profaned : Orphan Hours, the Year is dead : Our boat is asleep on Serchio’s stream : Our spoil is won : Out of the eastern shadow of the Earth : Over the utmost hill at length I sped :
Palace-roof of cloudless nights! : Pan loved his neighbour Echo—but that child : People of England, ye who toil and groan : Peter Bells, one, two and three : Place, for the Marshal of the Masque! : Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know : Prince Athanase had one beloved friend :
Rarely, rarely, comest thou : Reach me that handkerchief!—My brain is hurt : Returning from its daily quest, my Spirit : Rome has fallen, ye see it lying : Rough wind, that moanest loud :
Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth : See yon opening flower : Serene in his unconquerable might : Shall we roam, my love : She comes not; yet I left her even now : She left me at the silent time : She saw me not—she heard me not—alone : She was an aged woman; and the years : Silence! Oh, well are Death and Sleep and Thou : Silver key of the fountain of tears : Sing, Muse, the son of Maia and of Jove : Sleep, sleep on! forget thy pain : So now my summer task is ended, Mary : So we sate joyous as the morning ray : Stern, stern is the voice of fate’s fearful command : Such hope, as is the sick despair of good : Such was Zonoras; and as daylight finds : Summer was dead and Autumn was expiring : Sweet Spirit! Sister of that orphan one : Sweet star, which gleaming o’er the darksome scene : Swift as a spirit hastening to his task : Swifter far than summer’s flight : Swiftly walk o’er the western wave :
Tell me, thou Star, whose wings of light : That matter of the murder is hushed up : That night we anchored in a woody bay : That time is dead for ever, child! : The awful shadow of some unseen Power : The babe is at peace within the womb : The billows on the beach are leaping around it : The cold earth slept below : The curtain of the Universe : The death-bell beats! : The death knell is ringing : The Devil, I safely can aver : The Devil now knew his proper cue : The Elements respect their Maker’s seal! : The everlasting universe of things : The fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses : The fiery mountains answer each other : The fitful alternations of the rain : The flower that smiles to-day : The fountains mingle with the river : The gentleness of rain was in the wind : The golden gates of Sleep unbar : The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness : The keen stars were twinkling : The odour from the flower is gone : The old man took the oars, and soon the bark : The pale stars are gone : The pale stars of the morn : The pale, the cold, and the moony smile : The path through which that lovely twain : The rose that drinks the fountain dew : The rude wind is singing : The season was the childhood of sweet June : The serpent is shut out from Paradise : The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie : The spider spreads her webs, whether she be : The starlight smile of children, the sweet looks : The stars may dissolve, and the fountain of light : The sun is set; the swallows are asleep : The sun is warm, the sky is clear : The sun makes music as of old : The transport of a fierce and monstrous gladness : The viewless and invisible Consequence : The voice of the Spirits of Air and of Earth : The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing : The waters are flashing : The wind has swept from the wide atmosphere : The world is dreary : The world is now our dwelling-place : The world’s great age begins anew : Then weave the web of the mystic measure : There is a voice, not understood by all : There is a warm and gentle atmosphere : There late was One within whose subtle being : There was a little lawny islet : There was a youth, who, as with toil and travel : These are two friends whose lives were undivided : They die—the dead return not—Misery : Those whom nor power, nor lying faith, nor toil : Thou art fair, and few are fairer : Thou art the wine whose drunkenness is all : Thou living light that in thy rainbow hues : Thou supreme Goddess! by whose power divine : Thou wert not, Cassius, and thou couldst not be : Thou wert the morning star among the living : Thrice three hundred thousand years : Thus to be lost and thus to sink and die : Thy beauty hangs around thee like : Thy country’s curse is on thee, darkest crest : Thy dewy looks sink in my breast : Thy little footsteps on the sands : Thy look of love has power to calm : ’Tis midnight now—athwart the murky air : ’Tis the terror of tempest. The rags of the sail : To me this world’s a dreary blank : To the deep, to the deep : To thirst and find no fill—to wail and wander : Tremble, Kings despised of man : ’Twas at the season when the Earth upsprings : ’Twas at this season that Prince Athanase : ’Twas dead of the night, when I sat in my dwelling : ’Twas dead of the night when I sate in my dwelling :
Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years : Unrisen splendour of the brightest sun :
Vessels of heavenly medicine! may the breeze : Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream :
Wake the serpent not—lest he : Was there a human spirit in the steed : We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon : We come from the mind : We join the throng : We meet not as we parted : We strew these opiate flowers : Wealth and dominion fade into the mass : Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze : Weep not, my gentle boy; he struck but me : What! alive and so bold, O Earth? : What art thou, Presumptuous, who profanest : What Mary is when she a little smiles : What men gain fairly—that they should possess : ‘What think you the dead are?’ : What thoughts had sway o’er Cythna’s lonely slumber : What was the shriek that struck Fancy’s ear : When a lover clasps his fairest : When May is painting with her colours gay : When passion’s trance is overpast : When soft winds and sunny skies : When the lamp is shattered : When the last hope of trampled France had failed : When winds that move not its calm surface sweep : Where art thou, beloved To-morrow? : Where man’s profane and tainting hand : Whose is the love that gleaming through the world : Why is it said thou canst not live : Wild, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one : Wilt thou forget the happy hours : Within a cavern of man’s trackless spirit : Worlds on worlds are rolling ever : Would I were the winged cloud :
Ye congregated powers of heaven, who share : Ye Dorian woods and waves, lament aloud : Ye gentle visitations of calm thought : Ye hasten to the grave! What seek ye there : Ye who intelligent the Third Heaven move : Ye wild-eyed Muses, sing the Twins of Jove : Yes! all is past—swift time has fled away : Yes, often when the eyes are cold and dry : Yet look on me—take not thine eyes away : You said that spirits spoke, but it was thee : Your call was as a winged car :