Selected Poems and Prose

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  10 scourge: Whip.

  27–8 The sense of the couplet is: ‘You yourselves have manufactured the chains and the steel that are now used against you.’ The verb ‘glance’ can mean both ‘flash’ and ‘strike a blow obliquely’.

  To —– (‘Corpses are cold in the tomb’)

  Text from Harvard MS Eng. 822 (see MYR (Shelley) V). This bitterly defiant lament for the state of England was probably written in the early months of 1820 and may have been intended for a collection of political songs that PBS planned but never completed. See previous headnote. It was not published until 1832, in The Athenaeum, under the title ‘Lines Written during the Castlereagh Administration’. The conspicuous absence of a name in the title suggests that some individual too dangerous to specify is being addressed as the ‘Oppressor’ of l. 11, perhaps Castlereagh himself or the home secretary, Sidmouth. See headnote to ‘To S[idmouth] and C[astlereagh]’.

  3  Abortions: Lifeless foetuses.

  5  Albion: England.

  9  travaileth: Labours in childbirth; see note to l. 3.

  12 redressor: One who puts right a wrong.

  18 crying ‘havoc’: To ‘cry havoc’ was to license a victorious army to plunder a defeated enemy.

  19 Bacchanal triumph: In ancient Rome, the Bacchanalia was an orgiastic ritual, often disorderly, in honour of Bacchus (the god of wine and ecstasy); a ‘triumph’ was a public procession celebrating victory over a foreign foe.

  20 Epithalamium: A wedding song; see ‘Epithalamium’.

  24 Hell: PBS originally wrote ‘God’ before altering the word to the present reading.

  The Sensitive-Plant

  PBS composed ‘The Sensitive-Plant’ in Pisa in spring 1820, probably in March. It was published as one of the ‘Miscellaneous Poems’ in 1820, which supplies our text, though we have adopted some features of MWS’s fair copy in Harvard MS Eng. 258.2 (see MYR (Shelley) V). The plant of the title is the Mimosa pudica, popularly known as the ‘humble plant’ or ‘shame plant’, which shrinks from contact and closes its leaves at night. Its sensitivity to changes in light and temperature, as well as to touch – and hence the resemblance of its movements to animal reactions – had made its place in nature, on the border between animal and vegetable, the object of scientific interest. Mimosa pudica is an annual, a characteristic of importance for its representation in the poem. PBS’s intriguing ‘Conclusion’ speculates on the existence of a transcendent dimension in which the features of the exquisite garden and its lovely custodian continue to exist in permanent perfection despite the seasonal alterations they have undergone. In creating the garden in which the plant grows, and the lady who tends it, PBS drew upon (and revised) a long tradition of fictional gardens presided over by a female attendant, including those in: Genesis 1–3; Dante, Purgatorio XXVIII; Spenser, The Faerie Queene III.vi.30–50; Milton, Paradise Lost IV and IX; and the botanical verses of Erasmus Darwin’s The Botanic Garden (1791). William Cowper’s brief moral fable in verse, ‘The Poet, the Oyster, and the Sensitive Plant’ (1782), makes a revealing contrast with PBS’s poem.

  The sparse commentary on ‘The Sensitive-Plant’ includes: Desmond King-Hele’s chapter on Shelley in Erasmus Darwin and the Romantic Poets (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986); R. M. Maniquis, ‘The Puzzling Mimosa: Sensitivity and Plant Symbols in Romanticism’, SiR 8 (1969), pp. 129–55; and Michael O’Neill, ‘The Sensitive-Plant: Evaluation and the Self-Conscious Poem’, in his Romanticism and the Self-Conscious Poem (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).

  PART FIRST

  3–4 The mimosa ‘Shuts her sweet eye-lids to approaching night; / And hails with freshen’d charms the rising light’ in Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden II.i.307–8.

  17 wind-flowers: Anemones.

  18–20 Alluding to the myth of Narcissus who, having scorned the love of the nymph Echo, pined away to death for love of his own reflection in a pool and was changed into a flower (Ovid, Metamorphoses III.344–511).

  21 Naiad-like: In Greek mythology, Naiads were water nymphs.

  24 pavilions: Coverings, canopies.

  25 hyacinth: In Classical myth, Apollo loved the youth Hyacinth; when he died, the god caused a flower to spring from his blood.

  27–8 The first of many examples of synaesthesia, representing one sense-impression in terms of another – a principal stylistic figure in the poem.

  34 Maenad: See note to ‘Ode to the West Wind’, l. 21.

  37 jessamine: Jasmine.

  42 prankt: Ornamented, decorated.

  54 asphodels: A plant of the lily family imagined by Homer as growing in the Elysian Fields (Odyssey XI.539) and by Milton in Paradise (Paradise Lost IX.1040).

  63 mine-lamps: In 1815 Humphry Davy invented a miner’s lamp which could be used safely underground.

  76–7 Recalling Plato’s Symposium, which PBS translated in July 1818: ‘Love wants and does not possess beauty’ (Ingpen and Peck VII, p. 195).

  88 spirits: Angelic beings who guided the concentric spheres that made up the heavens, in older astronomy.

  108 Elysian: Exquisitely delightful, as in Elysium, the abode of the blessed after death in Classical mythology.

  PART SECOND

  2  grace: In Classical myth, the Graces were three sisters, goddesses of beauty, ministers of joy and affection and sources of artistic inspiration.

  10 meteors: Any luminous atmospheric phenomenon.

  sublunar: Under the moon’s influence, earthly, and so subject to change.

  38 ozier: Willow.

  43 woof: Woven material.

  49 ephemeris: An insect (usually ‘ephemerid’) whose brief winged adult life may fill no more than a day.

  53 antenatal tomb: The pupal case from which the adult butterfly emerges.

  PART THIRD

  3–4 Mount Vesuvius is visible from Baiae on the Bay of Naples, which PBS visited in December 1818 (MWS Journal I, p. 242).

  34–41 The lines rework ‘Ode to the West Wind’, ll. 2–8.

  48 parasite bowers: Bowers formed by climbing plants, not necessarily those that feed off a host.

  54 darnels: Weeds, harmful grasses generally.

  55 Dock is a weed with deep roots and broad leaves; henbane and hemlock are both poisonous and foul-smelling.

  56 shank: The stem or footstalk.

  62 agarics: A variety of fungi with gills on the underside, including edible mushrooms.

  66–9 The fungi that emerge from the ground in the previous stanza are compared as they decay to the rotting corpse of an executed criminal exposed on a gibbet.

  70 Spawn: The fibre-like filaments of a mushroom or other fungus.

  72 flags: This perhaps designates a species of iris, though in older usage it could also signify a reed or rush.

  78 unctuous meteors: Unctuous = ‘inflammable’ (cp. OED unctuous 3); for meteors, see note to II.10 above. The will-o’-the-wisp or marsh fire – glowing gases resulting from decaying vegetation – is here imagined as flitting from plant to plant spreading infection.

  82 forbid: Accursed.

  91 choppy: Chapped, cracked; cp. Shakespeare, Macbeth I.iii.42–3 describing the weird sisters: ‘By each at once her choppy finger laying / Upon her skinny lips’.

  113 griff: Claw.

  116 mandrakes: Plants common in the Mediterranean area, having white flowers tinged with purple and traditionally thought to possess magical properties. Their large roots were supposed to resemble the human form and to shriek when plucked.

  117 charnels: Places of burial, tombs.

  CONCLUSION

  9–12 Relevant antecedents for the life-dream comparison would be Shakespeare, The Tempest IV.i.156–7, ‘We are such stuff / As dreams are made on’, and Calderón’s play La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream).

  15 own: Acknowledge.

  16 mockery: Illusion; PBS formulates this intuition more firmly in ‘On Life’: ‘Whatever may be his [man’s] true and final dest
ination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with change and extinction’ (here).

  21 PBS’s first version was ‘For love & thought there is not death’ (Huntington Library HM 2176 f. 33r reverso: see MYR (Shelley) VI).

  22–4 their might … obscure: The sense is that our limited organs of perception are inadequate to discern the permanent transcendent radiance of ‘love, and beauty, and delight’ (l. 21).

  23 Exceeds our organs: PBS first wrote ‘Outlives our feelings/visions’ (see MYR (Shelley) VI).

  An Exhortation

  Composed between late 1819 and spring 1820, published in 1820, which provides our copy-text; punctuation has been somewhat modified, taking into account the fair copy in Harvard MS Eng. 258.2 (see MYR (Shelley) V). PBS’s remark in a letter of May 1820 to John and Maria Gisborne in London probably refers to the present poem: ‘I send a little thing about Poets; which is itself a kind of an excuse for Wordsworth … You may shew it [Leigh] Hunt if you like’ (Letters II, p. 195). This lyric handles lightly and deftly the theme of the poet’s relation to ‘wealth or power’ (l. 19) which PBS had treated more seriously – with Wordsworth as case in point – in ‘To Wordsworth’ and Peter Bell the Third. The chameleon’s capacity to change colour in response to its environment made it an emblem of inconstancy, while its ability to exist for long periods without food gave rise to the belief that it fed on air.

  7  light: Both the senses ‘agile’ and ‘fickle’ appear to be intended.

  10–18 Just as an undersea cave would provide no light to bring about a change in the chameleon’s colour, so the world cannot offer poets the love and fame they need. No wonder, then, that poets behave with inconstancy in their search for both.

  Song of Apollo

  PBS composed these lines and their companion piece, ‘Song of Pan’, in April–May 1820 for a scene in Midas, a mythological drama that MWS adapted from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Our texts are based on PBS’s drafts in the Bodleian Library (MS Shelley adds e. 6: see BSM V) rather than the fair copies by MWS (BSM X), which differ from the drafts at a number of points. In MWS’s play, as in her source (Metamorphoses XI.146–93), Midas attends a singing contest between Apollo and Pan which is judged by Tmolus, the local deity of the mountain of the same name. In Ovid, Pan sings first and is declared the victor by Midas; when Apollo’s song is judged superior by Tmolus, Midas objects, provoking Apollo to punish him by causing ass’s ears to grow on his head. MWS departs from Ovid by having Apollo sing first. In Greek myth and religion, Apollo was a god of music, poetry, healing, archery and prophecy (ll. 13–14, 33–4), and, as god of light (l. 35), was associated with the sun. Earl Wasserman, Shelley: A Critical Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), pp. 46–56, makes an illuminating comparison of the two songs.

  Title Neither of PBS’s drafts is titled. In 1824 MWS supplied the titles ‘Hymn of Apollo’ and ‘Hymn of Pan’.

  22 cinctured: Encircled, girded.

  27 even: Evening.

  31–2 Wasserman, Shelley: A Critical Reading, p. 48, notices in these lines a reworking of the Sun’s declaration in Metamorphoses IV.226–8: ‘Lo, I am he who measure out the year, who behold all things, by whom the earth beholds all things – the world’s eye.’

  Song of Pan

  For composition and context, see previous headnote. The god Pan was a rural deity, particularly of shepherds and flocks, who was reputed to haunt mountains and caves. His cult originated in Arcadia. Rough and shaggy in appearance, he was represented as half man and half goat and personified erotic energy, figuring in several myths of sexual pursuit. Because the Greek word pan means ‘all’, he was sometimes regarded as a universal deity.

  Title See note to previous poem.

  3  river-girt: Surrounded by rivers.

  9  cicadae: Cicadas were traditionally imagined as blithe and carefree. See also note to The Witch of Atlas, l. 108.

  11 even old Tmolus: The local deity presiding over the contest between Apollo and Pan (see previous headnote); ‘even’ – because Tmolus preferred Apollo’s song.

  13–15 The river Pineios (Peneus) flows through the valley of Tempe in north-eastern Thessaly, in Greece, and is overshadowed by the mountains of Pelion, Ossa and Olympus.

  15 [ ? ]: PBS first wrote then cancelled ‘Ossa’s’, substituting an illegible word above the line. Editors have read this as ‘Pelion’ or ‘Olympus’. See previous note.

  18–19 sileni … nymphs: Minor demi-gods in Greek and Roman myth, often associated with particular localities or aspects of nature such as trees or streams.

  26 daedal: Intricately formed; from Daedalus, the skilled inventor and father of Icarus. See ‘Mont Blanc’, l. 86, and ‘Ode to Liberty’, l. 18.

  27 the giant wars: Pan sings of the archaic Greek myth of the battles for dominion over the world waged by the Olympian gods against the Giants, the offspring of Gaia (the Earth). The Olympians defeated the Giants with the aid of the mortal hero Heracles.

  30–31 The nymph Syrinx, pursued by Pan, was transformed into a reed to escape him. Intrigued by the sound of the wind in the reeds, Pan joined several of different lengths together to make the musical pipes called syrinx traditionally associated with him. The Mainalo (Maenalus) Mountains are in northern Arcadia, a region sacred to Pan.

  34 both ye: Apollo and Tmolus.

  The Cloud

  Composed in spring 1820, published in 1820, which furnishes our copy-text. Partial drafts of a few lines and an autograph fair copy of ll. 35–84 have survived (see BSM V) and have been consulted. The punctuation of 1820 has been somewhat modified.

  The two major literary precedents for PBS’s poem are Aristophanes’ comedy The Clouds, in which the chorus of female clouds points out the benefits they bring to the world by providing both rain and shade, and Leigh Hunt’s poem ‘The Nymphs’ (published in Foliage, 1818), which gives voice to a group of ‘Nepheliads’, each of them a nymph-like spirit that guides a cloud as it travels through the heavens. PBS praised ‘The Nymphs’ as ‘delightful’ and ‘truly poetical, in the intense and emphatic sense of the word’ (Letters II, pp. 2–3). The poem also exhibits an understanding of the atmospheric cycle of evaporation–condensation–precipitation by which the earth is supplied with rain and which contemporary science had elucidated. Luke Howard’s On the Modifications of Clouds (1803), for example, had established that the identifiable types of clouds were not fixed but that their existence involved constant transformation one into another. See Richard Hamblyn, The Invention of Clouds (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), and Desmond King-Hele, Shelley: His Thought and Work, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 219–27.

  9  flail: A staff to which a freely swinging club is attached, used for threshing grain; also a weapon consisting of a handle to which a spiked ball is fastened by a chain.

  17–30 The passage is influenced by the view of some contemporary scientists – no longer accepted by meteorologists – that the interaction of electrical charges in the atmosphere and in bodies of water on earth furnishes the energy for the production of clouds and rain. Adam Walker, who lectured at both Syon House Academy and Eton during PBS’s time at each, held that ‘water rises through the air, flying on the wings of electricity’ (A System of Familiar Philosophy (London: 1799), p. 358). Equally important in these lines, however, is the analogy between cloud formation and erotic attraction.

  23 genii: Spirits that preside in particular places.

  31 sanguine: Blood-red.

  33 rack: A mass of high clouds driven by the wind.

  44 Echoing the apostrophe to the Holy Spirit in Milton, Paradise Lost I.20–21: ‘[thou] with mighty wings outspread / Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast abyss.’

  45–58 The stanza imagines the moon’s footsteps as making gaps in the cloud through which the stars appear to ‘whirl and flee’ as it is driven along by the wind; thus exposed, the moon and stars are reflected in the waters below.

  59–60 zone
… girdle: The halos of illuminated cloud round the sun and moon.

  67–9 In ancient Rome, a triumphal arch was a monument commemorating a victory over a foreign foe. PBS had seen several examples in Rome. The victorious commander was typically represented in a chariot (‘chair’) and the foreign captives in chains. Cp. The Triumph of Life, l. 252, in which defeated prisoners are ‘chained to the triumphal chair’. The ‘Powers of the Air’ are atmospheric forces considered as celestial divinities. Cp. Hellas, l. 230.

  71 sphere-fire: The sun.

  75 pores: The moisture that forms the cloud has been drawn through the minute interstices between the particles that form the matter of sea and land.

  78 pavilion: A large tent.

  79 convex: ‘The earth’s atmosphere bends a ray of sunlight into a curve … convex to an observer in a cloud looking down’ (King-Hele, Shelley: His Thought and Work, p. 225).

  81 cenotaph: A funerary monument for one whose body rests elsewhere. Here it is the ‘blue Dome of Air’ (l. 80) which the winds and sunbeams have built for the cloud and which it destroys in ll. 83–4.

  ‘God save the Queen!’

  In 1840 MWS published without title six stanzas of this parody of the British national anthem, which PBS had drafted and left in a notebook, now Bodleian Shelley MS adds. e. 6 (see BSM V) and from which our text has been edited. Additional punctuation has been provided. The draft, which is rough and unfinished, appears to date from April–May 1820. The present title was supplied in Rossetti 1870. ‘A New National Anthem’ was the title given by Edward Dowden in his edition of the poem (1891) and has been followed by several twentieth-century editions. It is likely that the ‘anthem’ was intended for a collection of songs on political themes that PBS planned but never completed: see headnote to ‘Song: To the Men of England’.