MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
1.
TO —. Mrs. Shelley tentatively assigned this fragment to 1817. ‘It
seems not improbable that it was addressed at this time [June, 1814] to
Mary Godwin.’ Dowden, “Life”, 1 422, Woodberry suggests that ‘Harriet
answers as well, or better, to the situation described.’
2.
ON DEATH. These stanzas occur in the Esdaile manuscript along with
others which Shelley intended to print with “Queen Mab” in 1813; but the
text was revised before publication in 1816.
3.
TO —. ‘The poem beginning “Oh, there are spirits in the air,” was
addressed in idea to Coleridge, whom he never knew’—writes Mrs.
Shelley. Mr. Bertram Dobell, Mr. Rossetti and Professor Dowden, however,
incline to think that we have here an address by Shelley in a despondent
mood to his own spirit.
4.
LINES. These appear to be antedated by a year, as they evidently allude
to the death of Harriet Shelley in November, 1816.
5.
ANOTHER FRAGMENT TO MUSIC. To Mr. Forman we owe the restoration of the
true text here—‘food of Love.’ Mrs. Shelley printed ‘god of Love.’
6.
MARENGHI, lines 92, 93. The 1870 (Rossetti) version of these lines is:—
White bones, and locks of dun and yellow hair,
And ringed horns which buffaloes did wear—
The words locks of dun (line 92) are cancelled in the manuscript.
Shelley’s failure to cancel the whole line was due, Mr. Locock rightly
argues, to inadvertence merely; instead of buffaloes the manuscript
gives the buffalo, and it supplies the ‘wonderful line’ (Locock) which
closes the stanza in our text, and with which Mr. Locock aptly compares
“Mont Blanc”, line 69:—
Save when the eagle brings some hunter’s bone,
And the wolf tracks her there.
7.
ODE TO LIBERTY, lines 1, 2. On the suggestion of his brother, Mr. Alfred
Forman, the editor of the Library Edition of Shelley’s Poems (1876), Mr.
Buxton Forman, printed these lines as follows:—
A glorious people vibrated again:
The lightning of the nations, Liberty,
From heart to heart, etc.
The testimony of Shelley’s autograph in the Harvard College manuscript,
however, is final against such a punctuation.
8.
Lines 41, 42. We follow Mrs. Shelley’s punctuation (1839). In Shelley’s
edition (1820) there is no stop at the end of line 41, and a semicolon
closes line 42.
9.
ODE TO NAPLES. In Mrs. Shelley’s editions the various sections of this
Ode are severally headed as follows:—‘Epode 1 alpha, Epode 2 alpha,
Strophe alpha 1, Strophe beta 2, Antistrophe alpha gamma, Antistrophe
beta gamma, Antistrophe beta gamma, Antistrophe alpha gamma, Epode 1
gamma, Epode 2 gamma. In the manuscript, Mr. Locock tells us, the
headings are ‘very doubtful, many of them being vaguely altered with pen
and pencil.’ Shelley evidently hesitated between two or three
alternative ways of indicating the structure and corresponding parts of
his elaborate song; hence the chaotic jumble of headings printed in
editions 1824, 1839. So far as the “Epodes” are concerned, the headings
in this edition are those of editions 1824, 1839, which may be taken as
supported by the manuscript (Locock). As to the remaining sections, Mr.
Locock’s examination of the manuscript leads him to conclude that
Shelley’s final choice was:—‘Strophe 1, Strophe 2, Antistrophe 1,
Antistrophe 2, Antistrophe 1 alpha, Antistrophe 2 alpha.’ This in itself
would be perfectly appropriate, but it would be inconsistent with the
method employed in designating the “Epodes”. I have therefore adopted in
preference a scheme which, if it lacks manuscript authority in some
particulars, has at least the merit of being absolutely logical and
consistent throughout.
Mr. Locock has some interesting remarks on the metrical features of this
complex ode. On the 10th line of Antistrophe 1a (line 86 of the
ode)—Aghast she pass from the Earth’s disk—which exceeds by one foot
the 10th lines of the two corresponding divisions, Strophe 1 and
Antistrophe 1b, he observes happily enough that ‘Aghast may well have
been intended to disappear.’ Mr. Locock does not seem to notice that the
closing lines of these three answering sections—(1) hail, hail, all
hail!—(2) Thou shalt be great—All hail!—(3) Art Thou of all these
hopes.—O hail! increase by regular lengths—two, three, four iambi. Nor
does he seem quite to grasp Shelley’s intention with regard to the rhyme
scheme of the other triple group, Strophe 2, Antistrophe 2a, Antistrophe
2b. That of Strophe 2 may be thus expressed:—a-a-bc; d-d-bc; a-c-d;
b-c. Between this and Antistrophe 2a (the second member of the group)
there is a general correspondence with, in one particular, a subtle
modification. The scheme now becomes a-a-bc; d-d-bc; a-c-b; d-c: i.e.
the rhymes of lines 9 and 10 are transposed—God (line 9) answering to
the halfway rhymes of lines 3 and 6, gawd and unawed, instead of (as in
Strophe 2) to the rhyme-endings of lines 4 and 5; and, vice versa, fate
(line 10) answering to desolate and state (lines 4 and 5), instead of to
the halfway rhymes aforesaid. As to Antistrophe 2b, that follows
Antistrophe 2a, so far as it goes; but after line 9 it breaks off
suddenly, and closes with two lines corresponding in length and rhyme to
the closing couplet of Antistrophe 1b, the section immediately
preceding, which, however, belongs not to this group, but to the other.
Mr. Locock speaks of line 124 as ‘a rhymeless line.’ Rhymeless it is
not, for shore, its rhyme-termination, answers to bower and power, the
halfway rhymes of lines 118 and 121 respectively. Why Mr. Locock should
call line 12 an ‘unmetrical line,’ I cannot see. It is a decasyllabic
line, with a trochee substituted for an iambus in the third foot—Around
: me gleamed : many a : bright se : pulchre.
10.
THE TOWER OF FAMINE.—It is doubtful whether the following note is
Shelley’s or Mrs. Shelley’s: ‘At Pisa there still exists the prison of
Ugolino, which goes by the name of “La Torre della Fame”; in the
adjoining building the galley-slaves are confined. It is situated on the
Ponte al Mare on the Arno.’
11.
GINEVRA, line 129: Through seas and winds, cities and wildernesses. The
footnote omits Professor Dowden’s conjectural emendation—woods—for
winds, the reading of edition 1824 here.
12.
THE LADY OF THE SOUTH. Our text adopts Mr. Forman’s correction—drouth
for drought—in line 3. This should have been recorded in a footnote.
13.
HYMN TO MERCURY, line 609. The period at now is supported by the Harvard
manuscript.