day you shall read them all." Lord Houghton, Life and Letters of Keats, i. 98, 99. Shelley's sonnet was supposed to be Ozymandias until this was published. TEXT: 5 fields of loosening snow depend intermediate MS. reading cancelled. Forman gives a facsimile of the MS. 204 The Past. TEXT: ii. 5 ghostly Rossetti. 205 On a Faded Violet. Shelley, (from Pisa) to Miss Sophia Stacey, March 7, 1820: "I promised you what I cannot perform : a song on singing : there are only two subjects remaining. I have a few old stanzas on one which, though simple and rude, look as if they were dictated by the heart. And so if you tell no one whose they are, you are welcome to them. [Here follows the poem.] Pardon these dull verses from one who is dull - but who is not the less, ever yours, P. B. S. When you come to Pisa, contrive to see us." Forman, iii. 150. TEXT: 18392 follows 18391. 206 Lines Written among the Euganean Hills. “I do not know which of the few scattered poems I left in England will be selected by my bookseller to add to this collection. One, which I sent from Italy, was written after a day's excursion among those lovely mountains which surround what was once the retreat, and where is now the sepulchre, of Petrarch. If any one is inclined to condemn the insertion of the introductory lines, which image forth the sudden relief of a state of deep despondency by the radiant visions disclosed by the sudden burst of an Italian sunrise in autumn, on the highest peak of those delightful mountains, I can only offer as my excuse, that they were not erased at the request of a dear friend, with whom added years of intercourse only add to my apprehension of its value, and who would have had more right than any one to complain, that she has not been able to extinguish in me the very power of delineating sadness. - Naples, December 20, 1818." Shelley, Preface to Rosalind and Helen, 1819. Shelley (from Leghorn) to Peacock, April 6, 1819 : "By the by, have you seen Ollier? I never hear from him, and am ignorant whether some verses I sent him from Naples, entitled, I think, Lines on the Euganean Hills, have reached him in safety or not.” Mrs. Shelley, Essays and Letters, ii. 213. "It was at I Capuccini that he etched though it appears that he did not complete the poem till his stay at Naples." Medwin, MS. note in a copy of his Life, quoted by Dowden, ii. 233. 66 Others, as, for instance, Rosalind and Helen and Lines written among the Euganean Hills, I found among his papers by chance; and with some difficulty urged him to complete them." Mrs. Shelley, 18391, I. xi. The lines on Byron were interpolated after the poem was sent to the publisher, as is shown by Mr. Frederick Locker-Lampson's copy of Rosalind and Helen. TEXT: 43 Rossetti's emendation is a correction. 54 Sea-mew's Rossetti. 115 Palgrave's emendation is plainly wrong. 175 Forman's emendation destroys the highly imaginative unity of the figure, and substitutes a mere mixed metaphor therefor. "Had 218 Misery. See Mrs. Shelley's Note on Shelley at Naples, above, p. 503. On this Medwin comments: she been able to disentangle the threads of the mystery, she would have attributed his feelings to more than purely physical causes. Among the verses which she had probably never seen till they appeared in print was the Invocation to Misery, an idea taken from Shakespeare-making love to Misery, betokening his soul lacerated to rawness by the tragic event above detailed - the death of his unknown adorer." Life, i. 330, 331. He refers to a story, previously told by him in The Angler in Wales, ii. 194, related by Shelley to him and Byron, that “the night before his departure from London in 1814 [1816], he re ceived a visit from a married lady, young, handsome, and of noble connections, and whose disappearance from the world of fashion, in which she moved, may furnish to those curious in such inquiries a clue to her identity;" and he goes on to describe how, in spite of Shelley's entreaty and unknown to him, this lady followed him to the continent, kept near him, and at Naples, in this year, met him, told her wandering devotion, and there died. (Life, i. 324-329.) Medwin ascribes to this incident the next poem, and also the lines On a Faded Violet. Rossetti (i. 90) says he is "assured on good authority" that Medwin's connecting Misery with these events is "not correct." Lady Shelley says: "Of this strange narrative it will be sufficient to say here that not the slightest allusion to it is to be found in any of the family documents." (Shelley Memorials, p. 92.) Rossetti connects with the story Shelley's letter to Peacock, May, 1820, in which he refers to his health as affected "by certain moral causes," and also his letter to Ollier, December 15, 1819, in which he expresses his intention to "write three other poems [besides Julian and Maddalo] the scenes of which will be laid at Rome, Florence, and Naples, but the subjects of which will be all drawn from dreadful or beautiful realities, as that of this was." Miss Clairmont asserted that she knew the lady's name and had seen her. At Naples there died a little girl who was to some extent in Shelley's charge, and of whom he wrote with feeling. Dowden (ii. 252, 253), suggests some connection between the two incidents. TEXT: i. 1 by Rossetti, Forman. iv. 4 We will Forman. vi. 2 Thine arm shall be my Rossetti, Forman, Dowden. Mrs. Shelley's reading seems right, in poetic feeling. viii. 5 Forman's conjecture is prosaic. x. 2 lovers Rossetti. xi. 3 even Rossetti. Medwin's copy is inferior throughout to Mrs. Shelley's, but doubtless embodies an early state as well as errors of his own. 221 Stanzas written in dejection near Naples. See preceding Note. TEXT: i. 4 light 18391,2. 5 air 18392. These lines, as printed, are beyond doubt. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819 [The material parts of Mrs. Shelley's note are given under the poems to which they refer.] 226 Lines written during the Castlereagh Administration. TEXT: i. 4 death omit 18391,2, Forman, Dowden. iv. 1 festal Forman. 4 which 18391,2, Rossetti, Forman, Dowden. v. 4 God 18391,2, Forman, Dowden. 5 thy Forman. MSS. Harvard, Frederickson. 228 To Sidmouth and Castlereagh. TEXT: ii. 2 hue 18391,2, Rossetti. 4 morn 18391,2. 229 England in 1819. Shelley (from Florence) to Hunt, November 23, 1819: “I send you a Sonnet. I don't expect you to publish it, but you may show it to whom you please." Hunt, Lord Byron, etc., i. 399. TEXT: 9 wield, 18392; wield, — Rossetti; wield Forman, Dowden. 230 National Anthem. See below, note on Ode written October, 1819. TEXT : iii. 6 Where'er Rossetti conj. 232 Ode to Heaven. Mrs. Shelley, Essays and Letters, I. xii. : "Shelley was a disciple of the immaterial philosophy of Berkeley. This theory gave unity and grandeur to his ideas, while it opened a wide field for his imagination. The creation, such as it was perceived by his mind. a unit in immensity, was slight and narrow compared with the interminable forms of thought that might exist beyond, to be perceived per haps hereafter by his own mind; all of which are "Peace! the abyss is wreathed in scorn he expresses his despair of being able to conceive, far 234 An Exhortation. Shelley to Mrs. Gisborne, May 8, 1820: "As an excuse for mine and Mary's incurable stupidity, I send a little thing about poets, which is itself a kind of excuse for Wordsworth." Shelley Memorials, p. 141. MS. Harvard. 235 Ode to the West Wind. Shelley's Note: "This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapors which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions. "The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathizes with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce it." TEXT: i. 13 are 18391. ii. 11 doom 18392. iv. 8 the 18392. 238 An Ode written October, 1819, before the Spaniards had recovered their Liberty. Mrs. Shelley's Note, 18392, p. |