In the rapture of its mirth, The thin and painted garment of the earth, 1821. 1822. TO JANE-THE RECOLLECTION. (OMITTED PASSAGE.) WERE not the crocuses that grew As beautiful in scent and hue 1822. THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. (CANCELLED OPENING.) OUT of the eastern shadow of the earth, .... NOTES BY W. M. ROSSETTI. P. 2. Stanzas.-April 1814. The purport of these Stanzas has never, so far as I know, been cleared up to the reader by any of the persons who could speak with authority. They might appear to be addressed by way of apostrophe to Shelley himself, on his ther. impending separation from his first wife Harriet. If so, they are important in point of date, as the separation did not actually take place till about 17th June. A person likely to know the facts has, however, stated in writing (within my knowledge) that the stanzas have a personal application of a different kind, which it is not my province to detail. P. 5. "Obey'st in silence." In the original and other editions, "Obeyest," which, giving as it does an extra syllable to the line, is, I suppose, a mere laxity in writing. P. 6. "To think that a most unambitious slave, Like thou, should dance" &c. This All editions hitherto have given "shouldst" instead of "should." emendation ought perhaps to be companioned by another-a change of "thou" into "thee." P. 8. "The greater part were published with Alastor." All were so published, except the Lines dated November 1815. These first appeared among the Posthumous Poems: of their purport I find no explanation. "Coleridge, whom he never knew." P. 8. This appears to be a correct statement: though the contrary would certainly be inferred from Shelley's Letter to Mrs. Gisborne (vol. ii, p. 321-2), in which Godwin, Coleridge, Hunt, Horace Smith, and some others, are named, with the concluding remark "And these (With some exceptions, which I need not teaze Your patience by descanting on) are all You and I know in London." P. 8. "The summer evening. . occurred in 1815." Previous editions say "in the autumn of 1815": an "Irish bull" which may very reasonably be suppressed by this time. P. 9. In the Ollier sale (see vol. ii. p. 423) was included a letter written by Mrs. Shelley, saying that in the Literary Pocket-book for 1821 "there appeared two extracts entitled Sunset and Grief, taken from a longer poem of Mr. Shelley's." I have not succeeded in seeing a copy of this Pocket-book. As a matter of guess, I should suppose that the two extracts referred to by Mrs. Shelley made up together the poem now known as The Sunset: one might reasonably infer also that this poem is itself only a portion of the "longer poem" which she speaks of. The Sunset appears to me to be written by Shelley as personal to himself and Mary, at the time when he was expecting that his life would be soon terminated by consumption. P. 9. "Genius and death contended." The original volume of Posthumous Poems gives “youth " instead of "death." I presume it to be a misprint. P. 13. "The strange sleep Which, when the voices of the desert fail, This clause seems to have no defined syntactical position. I leave its punctuation much as I find it. P. 13. "Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion A loud lone sound.' I follow the Posthumous Poems in leaving (contrary to most other editions) no comma after "commotion." P. 14. "Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled The veil of life and death?" "Upfurled" would apparently (as B. V. points out to me) be a more correct term here. In Mrs. Shelley's editions of 1839 "speed" is substituted for "spread"; the sense thus is a little less clear, but I think quite as poetical. I presume, however, it was a misprint. P. 14. "Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between." One would expect here "round" rather than “around." P. 15. So solemn, so serene, that Man may be, But for such faith, with Nature reconciled." The meaning first suggested by the words "but for such faith" is "were it not for such faith." The real meaning must however be "only by means of such faith," or else (as Mr. J. L. Walker, of Albany Courtyard, observes to me) 'only to obtain such faith." A draft of the poem gives the phrase "In such a faith"-which should, I humbly think, have been retained by the poet. " P. 15. "Slow rolling on." The poem of Mont Blanc was first published in the History of a Six Weeks Tour &c., 1817, and again in the Posthumous Poems. Both these editions give the word "slow." In later texts, the word is " slowly "-which might almost claim a preference for descriptive force of sound; but it is, I suppose, a mere misprint.-Mrs. Shelley (p. 17) speaks of the Six Weeks' Tour as if it was Shelley's own writing: but in fact it is hers. P. 15. "Is there, that from the boundary of the skies." Hitherto this has stood printed "the boundaries of the sky." There is no rhyme to "sky"; whereas "skies" rhymes fairly enough with "precipice" and ice." I think this may be regarded as sufficient justification of the change. Not that this "sky" would be the only instance of rhymelessness in Mont Blanc; the verses ending with "there,' forms," and "spread," on p. 14, and with world" and "sun on p. 16, have no rhymes. P. 16. July must be the correct date-not "June," as in other editions. Shelley's excursion to Mont Blanc only took place in July. P. 18. Marianne's Dream. The Marianne of this poem was Mrs. Leigh Hunt, who did in fact dream this dream. A letter from her husband to Shelley and his wife, 12th November 1818 (Correspondence of Leigh Hunt, vol. i. p. 125), says: "I have been writing a Pocket-book. It is entitled The Literary Pocket-book, or Companion for the Lover of Art and Nature, and contains.. original poetry; among which I have taken the liberty (Hunt is too ceremonious sometimes) of publishing Marianne's Dream, to the great delight of said Marianne, not to mention its various MS. readers." P. 20. "Shot o'er the vales, or lustre lent Possibly this ought to stand "Shot o'er the vales a lustre lent From their own shapes magnificent." None of the editions, however, countenances such an alteration. In Stanza viii. we were told of "two mighty cities." In the present stanza, again, there are "two flames "-presumably one for each city. If so, the phrase "that city" should probably be "each city." B. V. called my attention to this. P. 21. "The flames were fiercely vomited From every tower and every dome, And dreary light did widely shed O'er that vast flood's suspended foam." |