P. 85.
Time Long Past.

As to these touching and musical verses, unprinted till 1870, see also the above-named note. The last stanza seems to allude to the death of William Shelley.

"

P. 85.
Sonnet.

Shelley's own MS. of this profoundly moving sonnet was sold in the Ollier sale. It gives, in line 1, the word "grave"; in 5, "pale Expectation"; in 8, "all that (instead of "dead," and anticipation,' and that which," as printed in the Posthumous Poems. Dead" is cancelled, and "grave" substituted).

P. 87.

"It was on a beautiful summer evening."

This looks like a slip of Mrs. Shelley's, similar to the one noted from p. 8: for we have just before been told that the sojourn of Shelley near Leghorn was for a week or two in the Spring, and his letters indicate the middle of May as the approximate time. However, he was certainly there again in the summer, for his letter to Mrs. Gisborne, written in the same house, is dated 1st July 1820 (vol. ii., p. 317).

P. 88.

Dirge for the Year.

This lyric must be conceived as spoken by "Two Voices"; one of them condoling the death of the Year, and the other predicting her return to life. To mark this, I have introduced the inverted commas.

P. 89.

"Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day."

The reader will observe here a replica of an image which Shelley used in one of his earliest poems, the Summer-Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, st. ii. (p. 5), and also in Alastor (vol. i. p. 261). In the song To Night, Day is a female impersonation

"Kiss her until she be wearied out."

But in the succeeding stanza we find, according to previous editions,

"And the weary Day turned to his rest."

I have altered this into "her," regarding the incongruity as beyond the bounds of tolerance.

P. 91.

From the Arabic. An Imitation.

Medwin says that these lines are "almost a translation from a translation" in the romance of Antar.

P. 91.

"Send the stars light" &c.

This line, and the two that succeed, were found in MS. by Mr. Garnett. They had not hitherto been published as an integral part of the poem, but I think they should be.

P. 93.

"And Fear'st thou?' and 'Fear'st thou?'"

I apprehend that we are to understand these interrogations as so many interjectional queries exchanged between the lovers: I have therefore punctuated the stanza accordingly. Hitherto it has been given as one continuous speech from beginning to end.

P. 94.
Το

It seems feasible to regard these lovely lines as addressed to Emilia Viviani.

P. 96.

"What, Mother, dost thou laugh now he is dead?"

I have here substituted "thou" for "you," in conformity with the diction of the remainder of this poem-one of Shelley's most Titanic utterances.

P. 97.

"But we, though soon they fall."

It appears to me almost certain that this should be either "though soon we fall," or "so soon they fall."

"

P. 98.

" Shepherd those herds" &c.

'Shepherd," in lieu of "shepherds," is a grammatical laxity which Shelley probably fell into without reflecting about it: but which, had he reflected, he would perhaps have retained, rather than incur the cacophony of "shepherds " and "herds" in the same line.

P. 98.

"In thy place-ah well-a-day!

We find the thing we fled-Today."

B. V. suggests to me "well-a-way " as more correct and more probable for the rhyme.

P. 98.
Lines.

Hitherto (1870) unpublished. Communicated to me by Mr. Garnett.

Mr. Forman has printed this stanza as forming a second stanza of Tomorrow. I would gladly follow his lead, were it not that I fail to discern any real connexion of thought between the two. Tomorrow sets forth that the anticipated brightness of each tomorrow turns in actual experience into the dullness of today. The Lines set forth (as in the latter verse of the Lament, p. 99) that, as years pass over the writer's head, the wonder and delight of the four seasons wane; they are no longer the same seasons that they once were. Between these two ideas there is a considerable break of continuity.

P. 99.

"Unlike and far sweeter than them all."

"Them" (not "they," as in subsequent reprints) appears in the earliest printed form of this charming poem-viz.: in the Keepsake for 1829; also "ere stars (not "ere the stars ") were lit." The poems Summer and Winter and The Tower of Famine are in the same volume.

The rhythm of the above-cited line (which is moreover rhymeless and loose in syntax) is, as it stands printed, anomalous, though certainly far from unbeautiful. The line seems intended for a decasyllabic rather than anything else, and should possibly stand

"Unlike them, and far sweeter than them all."

Dr. Dobbin has proposed to me an ingenious emendation for the preceding line, supplying the needed rhyme (completely enough according to Shelley's practice), and re-knitting the syntax

"Soul ever stirred withal."

P. 99.

"Fresh Spring, and Summer, and Winter hoar."

Mr. Fleay proposed to me to read

"Fresh Spring, and Summer, Autumn, and Winter hoar";

and in my edition of 1870 I introduced Autumn." He considers that the word is required for the purpose of completing, not only the full conception, but also the metre in correspondence with the preceding stanza. To my mind there is a great deal of reason in this. On the other hand, it is, I think, perfectly true that the rhythmical music is finer-is indeed singularly exquisitewithout the added word, and the accretion has been most severely denounced by Mr. Swinburne, and perhaps by others. I therefore withdraw it-still entertaining nevertheless a serious suspicion that Shelley wrote, or meant to write, the line with "Autumn."

P. 100.
Remembrance.

This lyric has hitherto been entitled A Lament: but I find the title Remembrance on the original MS., for which I am indebted to Mr. Trelawnyas also for the MSS. of the lines To Edward Williams; The Magnetic Lady to her Patient; Lines (When the lamp is shattered); to Jane, The Invitation; To Jane, The Recollection; With a Guitar, to Jane; and To Jane (The keen stars were twinkling). Most of them are written out by Shelley with exquisite neatness. From these MSS. I have been enabled to introduce several revisions of text, as well as title: I only specify the more important ones.— "My heart today [each day] desires tomorrow [the morrow]." "Waste a [one] hope, a [one] fear, for me."

The poem was addressed to Mrs. Williams with these lines of message. "Dear Jane, If this melancholy old song suits any of your tunes, or any that humour of the moment may dictate, you are welcome to it. Do not say it is mine to any one, even if you think so: indeed, it is from the torn leaf of a book out of date. How are you today, and how is Williams? Tell him that I dreamed of nothing but sailing, and fishing up coral. Your ever affectionate P. B. S." Of course this letter, and those quoted in the sequel to others of the above-named poems, had never yet been printed.

P. 100.

"Pansies let my flowers be."

In Mr. Trelawny's MS. copy this line stands

"Sadder flowers find for me."

But here the rhyme is faulty; and the alteration we find in the text was printed by Mrs. Shelley, and written by Shelley himself in a copy of the verses belonging to Lord Houghton. That copy, used by Mr. Forman, gives some other variations, especially in stanza 1, which I have followed.

P. 100.

To Edward Williams.

This poem has hitherto been headed To—, and may have puzzled many readers to guess the person addressed, or the condition of things referred to. One might have been disposed to fancy that the person addressed was a woman rather than a man. Some question may still exist as to the exact circumstances which gave rise to so desolate an utterance of manifestly real personal feeling; for myself, I can only infer that Shelley's intimacy with the Williamses and frequent excursions to Pugnano to see them, had excited some degree of feminine pique-hardly to be called jealousy-in the bosom of Mrs. Shelley. In other respects, at any rate, the case is now cleared up. This poem in MS. is headed simply To- but is accompanied by a letter from Shelley as

follows:-"My dear Williams, Looking over the portfolio in which my friend used to keep his verses, and in which those I sent you the other day were found, I have lit upon these; which, as they are too dismal for me to keep, I send you. If any of the stanzas should please you, you may read them to Jane, but to no one else. And yet, on second thoughts, I had rather you would not. Yours ever affectionately, P. B. S." The more important revisions which the MS. supplies are these:

"The wounded deer must seek the herb [herd] no more."

"Indifference, which [that] once hurt me, is now [now is] grown."

"Why I am not as I have lately [ever] been."

"Would do, and leave the scorner unrelieved [unreprieved]."

"Unrelieved" is not a correct rhyme, having to pair off with "believed" and "relieved" but on the other hand "unreprieved" has not a very clear meaning, and I can hardly imagine there is any authority for it.

P. 103.

"But two, which move

And form all others, life and love."

"Form" is the correction given by Mr. Garnett (Relics of Shelley), instead of "for."

See also Appendix, pp. 388-9.

P. 103.

A Bridal Song.

P. 104.

"There is much in the Adonais" &c.

Though I have separated Adonais from the shorter poems of 1821, it has not appeared to me worth while to separate also this very brief note of Mrs. Shelley's upon the elegy.

P. 104.

"He, together with a friend, contrived a boat" &c.

This friend was Lieutenant Williams.

P. 105.

"Some friends lived at the village of Pugnano."

The Williamses.

P. 106.

The Magnetic Lady to her Patient.

This poem appeared first in the Shelley Papers. The circumstances are thus narrated in the accompanying memoir by Captain Medwin. "Shelley was a martyr to a most painful complaint, which constantly menaced to terminate fatally; and was subject to violent paroxysms which, to his irritable nerves, were each a separate death. I had seen magnetism practised in India and at Paris, and, at his earnest request, consented to try its efficacy. Mesmer himself could not have hoped for more complete success. The imposition of my hand on his forehead instantaneously put a stop to the spasm, and threw him into a magnetic sleep, which (for want of a better word) is called somnambulism. Mrs. Shelley and another lady were present. The experiment was repeated more than once. During his trances I put some questions to him. He always pitched his voice in the same tone as mine. I enquired about his complaint, and its cure-the usual magnetic enquiries. His reply was, 'What would cure me would kill me' (alluding probably to lithotomy). . . It is remarkable that in the case of the boy Matthew Schwir recorded by Dr. Tritchler, the patient spoke in French, as Shelley in Italian. He improvised also verses in Italian, in which language he was never known to write poetry. . . Shelley was afterwards magnetized by a lady; to whom he addressed some lines, of which 1 remember some of the stanzas

...

The copy of this poem confided to me by Captain Trelawny is headed"For Jane and Williams only to see," and supplies the following emendations: Might then have charmed [chased] his agony."

"What would cure that would kill me, Jane"-instead of
"Twould kill me, what would cure my pain."

This original line of course shows-what Medwin says elsewhere-that the
Magnetic Lady was Mrs. Williams.

P. 107.
Lines.

Captain Trelawny's copy of this lyric lacks the last stanza. It furnishes three emendations:

"Sweet notes [tones] are remembered not."

"Like the wind in [through] a ruined cell."

"

Why chose [choose] you the frailest."

It also gives the reading "the lost (instead of "dead") seaman's knell "; but the latter seems to me preferable, and the circumstances, I think, justify its retention.

P. 108.

To Jane-The Invitation.

In the first collected edition this poem is entitled The Pine-forest of the Cascine near Pisa, which is worth bearing in mind as determining the locality. Captain Trelawny's copy supplies the revisions :

"Sit by the fireside with [of] Sorrow."

"At length I find one moment's [moment] good.”
And [To] the pools where winter-rains."

"In the deep east, dun [dim] and blind."

"

P. 109.

Long having lived on your sweet food."

"Your" is my own substitution for "thy"-to harmonize with all the other pronouns in the context.

P. 110.

To Jane-The Recollection.

This was inscribed on the outside cover-"To Jane: not to be opened unless you are alone, or with Williams." The chief emendations derived from the original MS. are—

"Of the white [wide] mountain-waste."
"Than calm in water [waters] seen.'

The 6th line stands in the MS.

"The epitaph of glory dead:"

Somebody has altered this into "fled" in the collected editions, possibly without authority; but it sets the rhyming right, and I retain it.

P. 112.

"Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind."

The name is left blank in the MS., and Stands "S-'s" in the collected editions: it seems time now to supply the right and only possible name.

P. 112.

With a Guitar, to Jane.

Trelawny remembers accompanying Shelley in his purchase of this immortalized guitar, at Leghorn. He gives in his Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron (pp. 67-75) a capital sketch of the circumstances under