Selected Poems and Prose

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  35 blood, and gold: PBS’s work habitually associates tyranny with violence and wealth.

  Epithalamium

  In summer 1821, PBS inserted this antiphonal lyric into the MS of a play by his friend Edward Williams, now Bodleian MS Shelley adds. d. 3. The play, a romantic comedy entitled The Promise; or, A Year, a Month, and a Day, finishes with a wedding, and PBS’s ‘Epithalamium’ was intended to be sung to the music which introduces the feast that follows the ceremony. MWS published a shorter version of the text in 1824 as ‘A Bridal Song’; a somewhat garbled and inaccurate redaction was given by Thomas Medwin (Medwin 1913) under the present title, which is also the title adopted for the briefer variant in Williams’s revised copy of the play. Our text has been edited with minor modifications from MS Shelley adds. d. 3.

  The word ‘epithalamium’ derives from the Greek for ‘at the nuptial chamber’, and the poetic form of the wedding song that it designates has a long history in Classical and Renaissance literature. Williams and PBS have followed the practice of seventeenth-century English dramatists by providing an epithalamium to accompany a wedding, as in Act I of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher’s The Maid’s Tragedy (1619).

  20 Vesper: Hesperus, the evening star, which was traditionally imagined as a boy holding a flaming torch.

  car: The chariot in which the evening star is imagined as riding across the sky.

  The Aziola

  Probably composed in summer 1821, and first published posthumously in 1828 in the Christmas annual The Keepsake for 1829. PBS’s partial and untitled draft is in the Bodleian Library (see BSM XXI), and there are three transcripts by MWS, which are reproduced in BSM II (first stanza only), Massey and MYR (Shelley) VIII. The third of these, under the present title, is in the Morgan Library and Museum (MA 406.15) and furnishes our copy-text. G. M. Matthews pointed out that the poem may be unfinished and that the reading of the other MS copies raises the possibility that MWS altered the final word to ‘cry’ in order to make a rhyme (Shelley: Selected Poems and Prose (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964)). The aziola (Italian assiolo) is a scops owl, small and brownish with a shrill cry.

  9  No mockery of myself: No resemblance to myself as a human being.

  HELLAS

  PBS began work on Hellas: A Lyrical Drama (Hellas is the original name for Greece) in late September or early October 1821, in response to the Greek rebellion against Ottoman rule which began in March of that year. Much of PBS’s draft survives in the Bodleian Library (see BSM XXI). Our text is based on the fair copy made by Edward Williams, with corrections by PBS, which PBS sent to his publisher, Charles Ollier, on 11 November 1821, insisting that ‘what little interest this poem may ever excite, depends upon its immediate publication’ (Letters II, p. 365; PBS’s emphasis). This fair copy is now in the Huntington Library (MYR (Shelley) III). Hellas was first published in 1822, with some of its more controversial religious and political passages expurgated. PBS had indicated, in his letter of 11 November, that Ollier was ‘at liberty to suppress’ anything that alarmed him in the Notes, anticipating the publisher’s fear of prosecution for sedition or blasphemy (Letters II, p. 365). Ollier also printed a limited number of unexpurgated copies for private circulation. PBS wrote to him on 11 April 1822, the day after he received a copy of Hellas, sending a list of errata: we have consulted this list (which is now in the Huntington Library: see MYR (Shelley) III) in preparing our text.

  In a letter to John Gisborne of 22 October 1821, PBS described Hellas as ‘a sort of imitation of the Persae of Aeschylus’ (Letters II, p. 364), a Greek play of the fifth century BC about the failed Persian invasion of Greece in 480–479 BC. Hellas borrows a number of dramatic and narrative features from Aeschylus, including the use of messengers to relay information from disparate sources and locations, the appearance of a vision to the main character, and graphic accounts of battles on land and sea. However, while Aeschylus presents the defeat of the Persian invasion of Greece as a direct result of the hubris of the Persian leader Xerxes, PBS imagines the Greek rebellion and predicts the collapse of the Ottoman Empire as consequences of an unjust political system of which both the oppressed and the oppressors are the victims: unlike Aeschylus’ critical portrayal of Xerxes, PBS offers a strikingly sympathetic portrait of the Ottoman sultan Mahmud II (see note to ‘Dramatis Personae’), who was known to PBS’s contemporaries as a moderate and a reformer.

  Subtitled ‘A Lyrical Drama’, Hellas combines both choral lyrics and dramatic sequences in blank verse. In the main, the choral lyrics offer generalized reflections on the Greek struggle as part of the wider history of political liberty (similar to the conspectus offered in ‘Ode to Liberty’), while the dramatic passages focus more on the specific historical incidents and human interest of the Greek cause. In his Preface, PBS apologizes to the reader for what he calls a ‘display of newspaper erudition’. While this overstates the case somewhat, the dramatic parts of Hellas are indeed much indebted to contemporary reports on the progress of the Greek struggle in newspapers like The Examiner and Galignani’s Messenger, on which the Shelleys relied for much of their information about current affairs while living in Italy. Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88) is another important source, and Shelley also makes reference to a broad range of Greek myth, literature and historiography.

  1822 was the last volume of PBS’s poetry to be published during his lifetime. In a letter to Horace Smith of 11 April of that year, PBS told his friend that he had ‘just dropped [ano]ther mite into his [Time’s] treasury, called Hellas which [I] know not how to send to you, but I dare say some fury of the Hades of authors will bring one to Paris’ (Letters II, p. 411). Contemporary notices of Hellas were few and not, in the main, particularly flattering. The General Weekly Register of News for 30 June 1822 (No. 13), for example, found

  much to censure and but little to admire; the ideas are neither original nor poetical, the language obscure and frequently unpolished, and although the poem undoubtedly possesses some beauties, yet its defects as certainly predominate … upon the whole, though not entirely devoid of merit, [it] is but a bad specimen of Mr. Shelley’s powers, and but ill calculated to increase the former fame of its author. (here)

  Such comments should be seen within the context of the hostility towards PBS in much of the conservative press.

  For a work of its substance by a canonical poet, Hellas has received comparatively little critical attention. Studies of significance include: Kenneth Neill Cameron, Shelley: The Golden Years (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 375–93; Michael Erkelenz, ‘Inspecting the Tragedy of Empire: Shelley’s Hellas and Aeschylus’ Persians’, Philological Quarterly 76/3 (1997), pp. 313–37; Mark Kipperman, ‘History and Ideality: The Politics of Shelley’s Hellas’, SiR 30/2 (Summer 1991), pp. 147–68; Jerome J. McGann, ‘“The Secrets of an Elder Day”: Shelley after Hellas’, KSJ 15 (Winter 1966), pp. 25–41; Constance Walker, ‘“The Urn of Bitter Prophecy”: Antithetical Patterns in Hellas’, KSJ 33 (1982), pp. 36–48; William A. Ulmer, ‘Hellas and the Historical Uncanny’, ELH 58/3 (1991), pp. 611–32; and Jennifer Wallace, Shelley and Greece (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), passim.

  Epigraph ‘I predict victorious struggles’, Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, l. 1078. In a letter of 21 March 1821, PBS asked T. L. Peacock to have two letter-seals engraved with the same phrase (Letters II, pp. 276–7). Cp. Hellas, l. 664.

  Dedication Alexandros Mavrokordatos (1791–1865), to whom the Shelleys had been introduced at Pisa during the winter of 1820–21, was the nephew of the Hospodar (Governor) of Wallachia, an Ottoman province in Eastern Europe. Mavrokordatos joined the Greek struggle in June 1821 and later served four times as prime minister of independent Greece.

  PREFACE

  p. 513 The drama … goat: According to tradition, Thespis, the Greek dramatist of the sixth century BC and reputed founder of Greek tragedy, used to travel with his actors in a cart which doubled as a stage.
The Greek word for tragedy is thought to derive from ‘goat song’ because a goat was awarded as a prize for the best tragedy in the competitions which were held during the festival of Dionysus at Athens. PBS says his drama is too inartistic (‘inartificial’) to have won.

  the Aristarchi of the hour The Greek literary critic Aristarchus of Samothrace (c.220–c.143 BC) was known for the severity of his judgements.

  The only goat-song PBS’s tragedy The Cenci.

  fame Rumour.

  their defeat in Wallachia On 19 June 1821, Greek forces led by Alexandros Ypsilantis (1792–1828) suffered a heavy defeat by the Ottoman army at the Battle of Drăgăşani (in present-day Romania). This marked the formal end of Ypsilantis’s attempted invasion of the so-called ‘Danubian Principalities’ (Moldavia and Wallachia) of the Ottoman Empire. See also notes to ll. 287–94, 361–2, 373–452.

  We are all Greeks PBS is indebted here to Leigh Hunt’s estimation of the debt owed by European civilization to Classical Greece in The Examiner for 7 October 1821 (No. 718), pp. 626–7.

  p. 514 Anastasius: Thomas Hope’s novel Anastasius; or, Memoirs of a Greek (1819) describes the rise and fall of an adventurous and cunning Greek convert to Islam in the Ottoman Empire. In a letter to MWS of 11 August 1821, PBS described the novel as ‘a faithful picture they say of modern Greek manners’ (Letters II, p. 332).

  The wise and generous … just PBS may reply, here, to an editorial from the New Times reprinted in Galignani’s Messenger on 29 October 1821, which asserted that Greece could not support itself as an independent nation, and argued against British support for Greek independence, on the grounds that it would constitute a betrayal of the Ottoman Empire, which had aided the British campaign against Napoleon in Egypt. PBS shares the view of Leigh Hunt in The Examiner for 2 September 1821 (No. 713): ‘the interest as well as moral duty of England we consider then to consist in a prompt declaration in favour of Greek independence, and such aid as its own exhausted condition could reasonably afford’ (p. 545).

  pp. 514–15 Should … dread: Ollier omitted this paragraph from 1822.

  p. 515 Of this holy alliance: The Holy Alliance, a treaty signed by Russia, Austria and Prussia in September 1815 (following Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo), had the ostensible aim of establishing Christianity as the basis for international relations. For liberals, the Holy Alliance epitomized the reactionary climate of post-Napoleonic Europe.

  Well do these … rest of Europe Cp. Leigh Hunt on ‘the Governments of Europe’ in The Examiner for 7 October 1821 (No. 718): ‘They see the Greek insurrection forerunning a Prussian insurrection, an Italian insurrection, insurrection everywhere’ (p. 625).

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  The characters in PBS’s ‘Lyrical Drama’ exemplify its mixture of the actual and the imagined. Mahmud is a representation of the historical Mahmud II (1785–1839), who ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1808. Ahasuerus, or the Wandering Jew, is a legendary figure who appears elsewhere in PBS’s work; see notes to Queen Mab VII.67, 170–72, and to Alastor, ll. 675–81. Hassan, a not uncommon Turkish name, might mean to recall the celebrated Grand Admiral Cezayirli Gazi Hasan, who commanded the Ottoman navy 1774–89, subdued Egypt and served as Grand Vizier from 1789 until his death in 1790.

  [Hellas]

  Scene Constantinople: The name by which Istanbul was known from AD 330, after the emperor Constantine the Great (c. AD 272–337), who changed it from ‘Byzantium’.

  Stage direction Seraglio: In PBS’s day, the term ‘seraglio’ usually referred to ‘a palace, especially the palace of the Sultan at Constantinople’ (OED).

  16 Samian: From the Greek island of Samos, in the Aegean Sea near the coast of Turkey.

  38 charnel: A repository for corpses and bones in a cemetery.

  48 The flag of Freedom: Cp. PBS’s epigraph to ‘Ode to Liberty’, taken from Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto IV (1818), stanza 98, ll. 1–2: ‘Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, / Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind.’

  49 banded Anarchs: Allied tyrants; cp. ll. 318–19, where the reference is extended to comprise priests as well as political rulers.

  50 In Classical literature, Imaus variously appears as both a mountain and a mountain range in Central Asia, and most probably refers to the western range of the Himalayas. In Milton, Paradise Lost III.431, Satan is described as ‘a vulture on Imaus bred’.

  54 Thermopylae and Marathon: The sites of two celebrated battles in the long-running war between Greece and Persia which forms the backdrop to Aeschylus’ Persians.

  57 Philippi: A city founded by Philip of Macedon where, in 42 BC, the armies of Mark Antony and Octavius Caesar defeated Brutus and Cassius, effectively ending the power of the Roman Senate.

  60 See PBS’s Note 1. Milan was the chief city in the Lombard League, an alliance of northern Italian city states established in 1167 to repel the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I (called ‘Barbarossa’). Sacked in 1162, the city was gradually rebuilt and played a leading role in the League’s final victory over the emperor at the Battle of Legnano in 1176.

  63 The Florentine republic, which, in A Philosophical View of Reform, PBS praised as the ‘citadel’ which ‘long balanced, divided, and weakened the strength of the [Holy Roman] Empire and the Popedom’; the consolidation of parliamentary government in England (Albion) by the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Bill of Rights of 1689; and the ‘consolidation’ and ‘union’ of the Swiss cantons, which PBS traced to the same ‘progress of philosophy and civilization’ that produced the Reformation.

  70 far Atlantis: America; adapting Plato’s myth of a powerful island kingdom, located to the west of the Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of Gibraltar), and now sunk into the Atlantic Ocean.

  72 Referring to the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

  116 the Bosphorus: The narrow strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara (‘Marmora’ in l. 177) on which Istanbul is situated.

  124–7 The times … of them: Cp. Shakespeare, Macbeth I.iii.77–8: ‘The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, / And these are of them.’

  143–4 instinct / With: Charged with, imbued with.

  152 Enoch: Old Testament patriarch; said not to have died in Genesis 5:23–4: ‘And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years: And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.’

  153 preadamite: One of a legendary race that lived before Adam.

  159 science: Acquired knowledge.

  164 the Demonesi: The Prince (or Princes) Islands just south of Istanbul in the Sea of Marmara.

  168 westering: Setting in the west.

  171 Erebinthus: An older name for one of the Princes Islands. See l. 164 and note.

  195–6 Norton 2002 cites Francis Bacon, ‘Of Empire’ (1612): ‘Princes are like to Heavenly Bodies, which … have much Veneration, but no Rest.’

  197–238 See PBS’s Note 2. This chorus narrates the rise of Christianity and Islam (ll. 211–24), and the concomitant decline in worship of the gods of Classical Greece (ll. 225–38). Cp. Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto II (1812), ll. 23–6: ‘Even gods must yield – religions take their turn: / ’Twas Jove’s – ’tis Mahomet’s – and other creeds / Will rise with other years, till man shall learn / Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds.’

  197–210 These lines bear an analogy to the Platonic doctrine of the transmigration of souls from one body to another, as in Phaedo 87–8.

  211 A Power: Jesus Christ. For ‘the unknown God’, see St Paul’s address to the Athenians in Acts 17:22–3.

  212 A Promethean Conqueror: The conflation of Prometheus and Christ entails another, between an oppressive Jupiter and the God of the Old Testament. Cp. PBS’s Note 8.

  217 the orient planet: Venus, seen in the eastern sky as the morning star.

  221–4 The crescent moon is an important emblem of Islam. Norton 2002 identifie
s an allusion to the vision of the Cross seen in the noontide sky by the Roman emperor Constantine before his victory in a decisive battle in AD 312 which led to his conversion to Christianity.

  225–38 Cp. Milton’s account of the decline of the Classical gods (‘The Powers of earth and air’) after the coming of Christ in ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ (1645).

  227 fond: Foolish; cp. l. 909.

  231 folding star: A star in the evening sky at the time when sheep return to their fold; specifically, the star that led the wise men to the newborn Jesus in Bethlehem in Matthew 2.

  238 the golden years: See note to l. 1061 below.

  240 The Janizars: The Janissary Corps was the elite section of the Ottoman army; because of its strength and influence, the Ottoman government often found the Corps difficult to manage and Mahmud II eventually disbanded it in 1826.

  245 Patriarch: See PBS’s Note 3 and editorial note on it.

  252 victorious Solyman: Suleiman I (‘the Magnificent’) brought the Ottoman Empire to the height of its power and extent during his reign (1520–66); he was also an important patron of the arts and sciences and presided over many of the Empire’s greatest cultural achievements.

  267 Caucasus … Ceraunia: Mountain ranges at the eastern and western extremities of the Ottoman Empire in the early nineteenth century. The Caucasus range stretches between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. The Ceraunian (Kanalit) range runs along the coast of Epirus and Albania; it is rich in marble, hence ‘white’.

  275 Four hundred thousand: Galignani’s Messenger for 18 April 1821 estimates the Ottoman army at 406,400 soldiers.

  277 the Sirocco: A hot wind which blows from North Africa towards the Mediterranean and southern Europe.