Seest thou not a pale,

380

Faust.

Fair girl, standing alone, far, far away?

She drags herself now forward with slow steps,
And seems as if she moved with shackled feet:
I cannot overcome the thought that she

Is like poor Margaret.
Mephistopheles.

Let it be-pass on

No good can come of it-it is not well
To meet it-it is an enchanted phantom,

A lifeless idol; with its numbing look,
It freezes up the blood of man; and they
Who meet its ghastly stare are turned to stone,
Like those who saw Medusa.

Her eyes are like the eyes of a fresh corpse
Which no beloved hand has closed, alas!
That is the breast which Margaret yielded to me-
Those are the lovely limbs which I enjoyed!

385

390

Mephistopheles. It is all magic, poor deluded fool!

She looks to every one like his first love.

395

Faust. Oh, what delight! what woe! I cannot turn

My looks from her sweet piteous countenance.

How strangely does a single blood-red line,

End in delusion.-Gain this rising ground,

Not broader than the sharp edge of a knife,
Adorn her lovely neck!

Mephistopheles.

Her head under her arm upon occasion;

Perseus has cut it off for her. These pleasures

Ay, she can carry

400

It is as airy here as in a

And if I am not mightily deceived,

I see a theatre.-What may this mean?

405

Attendant. Quite a new piece, the last of seven, for tis

The custom now to represent that number.

The actors who perform are Dilettanti ;

"Tis written by a Dilettante, and

Excuse me, gentlemen; but I must vanish.
I am a Dilettante curtain-lifter.

392 breast edd. 1839; heart 1822, 1824.

410

JUVENILIA

QUEEN MAB

· A PHILOSOPHICAL POEM, WITH NOTES

[An edition (250 copies) of Queen Mab was printed at London in the summer of 1813 by Shelley himself, whose name, as author and printer, appears on the title-page (see Bibliographical List). Of this edition about seventy copies were privately distributed. Sections i, ii, viii, and ix were afterwards rehandled, and the intermediate sections here and there revised and altered; and of this new text sections i and ii were published by Shelley in the Alastor volume of 1816, under the title, The Daemon of the World. The remainder lay unpublished till 1876, when sections viii and ix were printed by Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B., from a printed copy of Queen Mab with Shelley's MS. corrections. See The Shelley Library, pp. 36-44, for a description of this copy, which is in Mr. Forman's possession. Sources of the text are (1) the editio princeps of 1813; (2) text (with some omissions) in the Poetical Works of 1839, edited by Mrs. Shelley; (3) text (one line only wanting) in the 2nd edition of the P. W., 1839 (same editor).

Queen Mab was probably written during the year 1812-it is first heard of at Lynmouth, August 18, 1812 (Shelley Memorials, p. 39)—but the text may be assumed to include earlier material.]

ECRASEZ L'INFAME!-Correspondance de Voltaire.

Avia Pieridum peragro loca, nullius ante
Trita solo; juvat integros accedere fonteis;
Atque haurire: juvatque novos decerpere flores.

Unde prius nulli velarint tempora musae.

Primum quod magnis doceo de rebus; et arctis

Religionum animos nodis exsolvere pergo.-Lucret. lib. iv.
Δος που στῶ, καὶ κοσμον κινησω.—Archimedes.

Their filmy pennons at her word they furl,

Which the breath of roseate morn- And stop obedient to the reins of light:

And on their lids, whose texture fine As that which reined the coursers of