REMEMBRANCE. Mr. Rossetti states that this song was sent to Mrs. Williams with the following: "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 Do not say it is mine to any one, even if you think so; indeed, it is from the torn leaf of a book out of date.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 to-day, and how is Williams? Tell him that I dreamed of nothing but sailing and fishing up coral. Your ever affectionate, P. B. S.” There are at least three versions of this poem, doubtless representing various stages of the poet's work, viz.: as printed in the Posthumous Poems, as contained in a MS. belonging to Trelawny, as existing in Shelley's handwriting on a fly leaf in a copy of Adonais which belonged to Lord Houghton. The latter is followed in our text. 276 2-3. 276 5-7. 276 8. In Trelawny's version these two lines were transposed. As the earth when leaves are dead, As the night when sleep is sped, As the heart when joy is fled. The Trelawny version has alone, alone. 276 10.. Houghton MS. The other authorities have her for "his.” 276 13. The Trelawny version has to-day for "each day.” 277 24. The Trelawny version has Sadder flowers find for me. Pansies referring to the significance of the flower; the name is derived from French pensée, thought; cf. Hamlet, IV, 5: "There's pansies, that's for thoughts." BRIDAL SONG. This song is here printed as it appeared in Posthumous Poems. Medwin, in his Life of Shelley, gives another version written as a chorus for a drama by Edward Williams, and a third version is furnished by Williams's MS. of his play. These two versions, which differ in their form from the poem printed in the text, may be found in the complete editions. SONG FROM "HELLAS." Hellas is a lyrical drama inspired by the proclamation of Greek independence in 1821, and written towards the close of that year. It describes, by anticipation, the fall of the Turkish Empire and the triumph of Greece. This extract begins at 1. 34 of the drama, and in the original the first and third portions are assigned to Semi-chorus I, the second to Semichorus II. CHORUS FROM "HELLAS.” The extract contains II. 1031-49 of the drama. This Chorus, as well as in the Final Chorus which follows, anticipates the universal "Golden Age" upon earth, of which the Greek revolution is but a prelude. FINAL CHORUS FROM "HELLAS." "The final chorus is indistinct and obscure, as the events of the living drama whose arrival it foretells. Prophecies of wars and rumors of wars, etc., may be safely made by poet or prophet in any age, but to anticipate, however darkly, a period of regeneration and happiness is a more hazardous exercise of the faculty which bards possess or feign. It will remind the reader 'magno nec proximus intervallo' of Isaiah and Virgil, whose ardent spirits, overleaping the actual reign of evil which we endure and bewail, already saw the possible and perhaps approaching state of society in which the lion shall lie down with the lamb' and 'omnis feret omnia tellus.' Let these great names be my authority and excuse" (Shelley's note). The reference in the case of Virgil is, of course, to the famous " Pollio " eclogue, imitated by Pope in his Messiah. 281 1. The world's great age: the annus magnus of the ancients, at the end of which the sun, moon, and planets return to their original relative position (see Plato, Timæus, 39; Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, 2, 20). With the astronomical conception was connected the idea that the history of the world would recommence and repeat itself. 281 9. Peneus: a river in Thessaly. 281 10. Tempe: the beautiful valley through which the Peneus flows. 281 12. Cyclads: the Cyclades, a group of islands in the Ægean. 281 13. Argo: the vessel in which Jason sailed in search of the Golden Fleece. 282 18. Calypso: the nymph of the island of Ogygia, with whom Ulysses would not remain, though she promised him the gift of immortality. 282 19-24. In the previous stanzas the poet has been imagining various events which according to Greek tradition happened in earlier ages as repeating themselves when the "great age begins anew"; but, the story of Troy coming to his mind, he recoils at the thought that the horrors of war and of crime should be renewed, even although he admits that death will not be abolished (see Prometheus, III, iii, 105 ff.). 282 21. Laian. Laius, king of Thebes, learned from the oracle that he was destined to perish at the hands of his son, who should also wed his own mother, Jocasta. To avoid such horrors, this son, Edipus, was exposed immediately after birth; was found, however, by a shepherd, and ultimately adopted by the king of Corinth. Edipus, on arriving at maturity, learned at Delphi the fate that was in store for him, and, ignorant of his true parentage, thought to shun it by leaving Corinth. He turned his steps to Thebes, met his true father, and slew him in a scuffle. Meanwhile Thebes was afflicted by the presence of a monster, the Sphinx, who, sitting by the roadside, proposed a riddle to each passer-by, and, on his failing to solve it, slew him. In their distress, the Thebans promised the kingdom and the hand of Queen Jocasta to him who should rid them of this plague. Edipus solved the riddle and received the reward. The gods visited these unwitting crimes with a series of dire calamities, which afforded a favorite source of material to the Greek tragedians. 282 31-33. "Saturn and Love were among the deities of a real or imaginary state of innocence and happiness. All those who fell, or the Gods of Greece, Asia, and Egypt; the One who rose, or Jesus Christ, at whose appearance the idols of the Pagan World were amerced of their worship; and the many unsubdued, or the monstrous objects of the idolatry of China, India, the Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of America, certainly have reigned over the understandings of men, in conjunction or in succession, during periods in which all we know of evil has been in a state of portentous, and, until the revival of learning and arts, perpetually increasing activity" (Shelley's note). 282 37-42. According to the idea connected with "the world's great age," the whole of history repeats itself, so that not only the 'Golden Age' returns, but this must be followed by ages of degradation and evil. Hence the cry of the poetic seer. The stanza is also characteristic of Shelley's temperament. His periods of intense hopefulness and exaltation were liable to be followed by moods of depression. He seemed often to feel the unreality and unattainableness of those dreams of regeneration in which at other times he fondly indulged. TO EDWARD WILLIAMS. This poem, in the MS. which Trelawny possessed, is accompanied by the following note: "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 occasion of the lines, as we gather from the poem itself, was some jealousy of Mrs. Williams on the part of Mary, which put a check to the freedom of intercourse between the two families. According to Trelawny, Mary was prone to jealousy. With the feeling expressed in the poem we may compare the following extract from one of Shelley's letters to Mrs. Gisborne, dated June 18, 1822 (quoted in Dowden's Life, Vol. II, p. 472): "As to me, Italy is more and more delightful to I only feel the want of those who can feel, and understand Whether from proximity and the continuity of domestic intercourse, Mary does not. The necessity of concealing from her thoughts that would pain her, necessitates this, perhaps. It is the curse of Tantalus that a person possessing such excellent powers and so pure a mind as hers, should not excite the sympathy indispensable to their application to domestic life.” me. me. 283 1. Byron named Shelley 'the Snake'; "his bright eyes, slim figure, and noiseless movements strengthening, if they did not suggest, the comparison" (Trelawny's Records, p. 85). 284 41-43. Cf. Alastor, 11. 280 ff. 284 43. When: whence is the reading of Mrs. Shelley's first edition, but when of her second and of the Trelawny MS. SONG ("A widow bird sat mourning for her love "). This song was printed as it stands in the text in the Posthumous Poems. Mr. Rossetti discovered the same poem in a fragmentary scene of Shelley's incomplete drama, Charles the First, where it is put into the mouth of Archy, the Court Fool, with the following introductory stanza prefixed: Heighho! the lark and the owl! One flies the morning, and one lulls the night : Sings like the fool through darkness and light. THE MAGNETIC LADỲ TO HER PATIENT. "The Magnetic Lady" is doubtless Mrs. Williams; a copy of the poem in Shelley's writing among the Trelawny MS. is headed, "For Jane and Williams only to see." According to Medwin, Shelley was hypnotized by Mrs. Williams, by Mrs. Shelley, and by Medwin himself to relieve him from paroxysms of pain to which he was subject. In one of these trances he gave the answer to Medwin recorded in the forty-second line of this poem. 285 11. he: Williams. 286 42. The reading in the text is that of the Trelawny MS. As given by Mrs. Shelley and by Medwin in his Memoir of Shelley, the line reads: 'T would kill me what would cure my pain. LINES ("When the lamp is shattered "). This poem as here printed follows Mrs. Shelley's text; there is an autograph copy among the Trelawny MS. which has notes for "tones " in 1. 6, in for “through" in l. 14, and chose for “choose” in 1. 23. 287 17-24. The weaker heart is the more faithful, and retains its love, though love has turned to pain because the loved one has grown cold. 287 25. Its: the weaker heart's. thee: Love. कई |