For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept, ΤΟ Too late, since thou and France are in the dust, Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime, LINES [Published in Hunt's Literary Pocket-Book, 1823, where it is headed November, 1815. Reprinted in the Posthumous Poems, 1824. See Editor's Note.] NOTE ON THE EARLY POEMS, BY MRS. SHELLEY THE remainder of Shelley's Poems up the Thames in 1815, He had been will be arranged in the order in which advised by a physician to live as much they were written. Of course, mistakes as possible in the open air; and a will occur in placing some of the shorter fortnight of a bright warm July was ones; for, as I have said, many of these spent in tracing the Thames to its were thrown aside, and I never saw source. He never spent a season more them till I had the misery of looking tranquilly than the summer of 1815. over his writings after the hand that He had just recovered from a severe traced them was dust; and some were pulmonary attack; the weather was in the hands of others, and I never saw warm and pleasant. He lived near them till now. The subjects of the Windsor Forest; and his life was spent poems are often to me an unerring under its shades or on the water, mediguide; but on other occasions I can tating subjects for verse. Hitherto, he only guess, by finding them in the had chiefly aimed at extending his popages of the same manuscript book litical doctrines, and attempted so to that contains poems with the date of do by appeals in prose essays to the whose composition I am fully con- people, exhorting them to claim their versant. In the present arrangement rights; but he had now begun to feel all his poetical translations will be that the time for action was not ripe placed together at the end. in England, and that the pen was the only instrument wherewith to prepare the way for better things. The loss of his early papers prevents my being able to give any of the poetry of his boyhood. Of the few I give as In the scanty journals kept during Early Poems, the greater part were those years I find a record of the books published with Alastor; some of them that Shelley read during several years. were written previously, some at the During the years of 1814 and 1815 the same period. The poem beginning list is extensive. It includes, in Greek, 'Oh, there are spirits in the air' was Homer, Hesiod, Theocritus, the hisaddressed in idea to Coleridge, whom tories of Thucydides and Herodotus, he never knew; and at whose character and Diogenes Laertius. In Latin, Pehe could only guess imperfectly, through tronius, Suetonius, some of the works his writings, and accounts he heard of of Cicero, a large proportion of those him from some who knew him well. of Seneca and Livy. In English, He regarded his change of opinions as Milton's poems, Wordsworth's Excurrather an act of will than conviction, sion, Southey's Madoc and Thalaba, and believed that in his inner heart Locke On the Human Understanding, he would be haunted by what Shelley Bacon's Novum Organum. In Italian, considered the better and holier aspi- Ariosto, Tasso, and Alfieri. In French, rations of his youth. The summer the Réveries d'un Solitaire of Rousevening that suggested to him the seau. To these may be added several poem written in the churchyard of modern books of travels. He read few Lechlade occurred during his voyage novels. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816 THE SUNSET [Written at Bishopsgate, 1816 (spring). Published in full in the Posthumous Poems, 1824. Lines 9-20, and 28-42, appeared in Hunt's Literary Pocket-Book, 1823, under the titles, respectively, of Sunset. From an Unpublished Poem, and Grief. A Fragment.] THERE late was One within whose subtle being, That night the youth and lady mingled lay That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild, Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts Her lips and cheeks were like things dead-so pale; 4 death 1839; youth 1824. wake cj. Forman. 1824; torn 1839. 37 Her eyes ... 22 sun? We will walk 1824; sunrise? 5 10 155 20 25 30 35 We will 38 worn Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY 40 45 50 [Composed, probably, in Switzerland, in the summer of 1816. Published in Hunt's Examiner, January 19, 1817, and with Rosalind and Helen, 1819.] I THE awful shadow of some unseen Power This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower, Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower, It visits with inconstant glance Each human heart and countenance; Like hues and harmonies of evening,- Like aught that for its grace may be Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. II Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form,-where art thou gone? Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown, Such gloom,-why man has such a scope III No voice from some sublimer world hath ever Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven, 2 among 1819; amongst 1817. 1819; care and pain Boscombe MS. 14 dost 1819; doth 1817. 5 ΙΟ 15 20 25 21 fear and dream Remain the records of their vain endeavour, Frail spells-whose uttered charm might not avail to sever, From all we hear and all we see, Doubt, chance, and mutability. Thy light alone-like mist o'er mountains driven, Or music by the night-wind sent Through strings of some still instrument, Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream. IV 30 35 Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart 40 Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart. Thou messenger of sympathies, That wax and wane in lovers' eyes Thou that to human thought art nourishment, Like darkness to a dying flame! Depart not as thy shadow came, Depart not-lest the grave should be, Like life and fear, a dark reality. V While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. I was not heard-I saw them not I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed; When musing deeply on the lot Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy! VI I vowed that I would dedicate my powers To thee and thine-have I not kept the vow? With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now I call the phantoms of a thousand hours Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers Of studious zeal or love's delight Outwatched with me the envious night They know that never joy illumed my brow Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express. 37-48 omitted Boscombe MS. 44 art 1817; are 1819, 45 50 55 60 65 70 |