Selected Poems and Prose

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  The poem was first published (in an inaccurate text) in Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country (November 1832), pp. 599–600; Rossetti 1870 published a version with corrections from the fair copy sent to Edward Williams.

  2–3 Cp. Adonais, l. 297, where PBS portrays himself as ‘A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter’s dart’. In traditional animal lore, the deer seeks medicinal herbs when wounded. Cp. Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814) VI.107–12.

  16 its evil, good: Cp. Satan in Milton, Paradise Lost IV.109–10: ‘Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost; / Evil be thou my good.’

  18 dear friend: Deliberately ambiguous: either Edward or Jane Williams could be intended.

  28–31 Adapting the Shakespearean conceit that ‘All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players’ (As You Like It II.vii.139–40).

  36 Vision long since fled: A recurrent motif in PBS’s verse: cp. Alastor, ll. 149–91; Epipsychidion, ll. 190–255; and ‘The Magnetic lady to her patient’, ll. 24–5. The formulation is Wordsworthian: see ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’ (1807), ll. 56–7.

  49 her: Apparently MWS.

  54–5 were … but: Would have been … except.

  To Jane. The Invitation

  On 2 February 1822, PBS, MWS and Jane Williams (see previous headnote) walked out in fine weather from Pisa ‘through the Pine Forest to the sea’ (MWS Journal I, p. 393). This poem and its companion piece, ‘To Jane—The Recollection’, commemorate the occasion. Our text is based on the fair copy which PBS gave to Jane Williams, now in the Cambridge University Library (MS ADD 4444: see MYR (Shelley) VIII). Together the poems share with a number of other pieces that PBS composed in the spring of 1822 a concern with the role of memory, and of poetry itself, in reconstituting and preserving intense and valued moments. In 1824 MWS published a combined text entitled ‘The Pine Forest of the Cascine, near Pisa’, based on her transcript of PBS’s drafts of this poem and of ‘The Recollection’, which suggests that he may originally have composed the two poems as one. In 1840 she published a separate text of each from his fair copies.

  6  brake: A thicket or clump of bushes.

  9  halcyon: Calm; the legendary halcyon (kingfisher) was able to quieten the waves and nest at sea. Cp. ‘Far, far away, O ye / Halcyons of Memory’.

  10 hoar: White (with frost and with age).

  35–7 Cp. Byron, Don Juan (1819–24), X.xxxviii.5–7: ‘Care, like a housekeeper, brings every week / His bills in, and however we may storm, / They must be paid.’ Byron is unlikely to have known PBS’s poem, and it is possible that the similarity points to a common source.

  38 stave: A stanza of a poem or song.

  55 lawns: Grassy glades in the forest.

  57 hoar-frost: Frozen dew.

  59 wind-flowers: Wood anemones.

  65–6 the multitudinous / Billows: The numerous waves (of the sea); cp. Shakespeare, Macbeth II.ii.59–60: ‘No, this my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas incarnadine.’

  To Jane—The Recollection

  Composed and given to Jane Williams (see headnote to ‘To —–’ (‘The serpent is shut out from Paradise’)) in early February 1822, as the companion piece of ‘To Jane. The Invitation’ (see previous headnote). Only a few lines of draft have survived (see BSM XXI). Our text is based on the fair copy that PBS transcribed for Jane, now in the British Library (BL Add. MS 37538: see MYR (Shelley) VIII). Beneath the title the MS bears the date 2 February 1822. On this day PBS, MWS and Jane took the walk through the pine forest to the sea that is recalled in this poem and in ‘The Invitation’. ‘The Recollection’ was first published in combination with ‘The Invitation’ in 1824 and as a separate poem in 1840. The first (unnumbered) stanza, an invocation to memory, serves as a prologue to the four succeeding stanzas.

  5  wonted: Accustomed, usual.

  6  fled: PBS’s fair copy reads ‘dead’, presumably inadvertently copied from l. 3. MWS’s transcription from PBS’s draft in Bodleian MS Shelley adds. d. 7 and 1824 both read ‘fled’.

  10 skirts: Borders.

  29–32 PBS’s note to ‘Ode to the West Wind’ cites a ‘phenomenon … well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathizes with that of the land’.

  41–2 the remotest … waste: The snow-capped peaks of the Apennines, visible from Pisa.

  45 Cp. Wordsworth, ‘Tintern Abbey’ (1798), ll. 96–7: ‘a sense sublime / Of something far more deeply interfused’.

  51 one fair form: Jane Williams; see headnote to ‘To —–’ (‘The serpent is shut out from Paradise’).

  63–4 Cp. PBS’s observation in a working notebook (Bodleian MS Shelley adds. e. 7: see BSM XVI), probably made in 1821: ‘Why is the reflexion in that canal far more beautiful than the objects it reflects. The colours are more vivid, & yet blended with more harmony & the openings from within into the soft & tender colours of the distant wood & the intersection of the mountain line surpass & misrepresent truth.’

  65 lawn: A grassy clearing in a forest.

  74 Elysian: Heavenly; from Elysium, the mythical abode of blessed souls after death.

  79 lineament: Feature.

  81–4 An analogy is suggested between the image in the pool erased by the wind and the memory of MWS, who, although present on the walk, is not addressed or represented in the poem.

  85 thou: Jane Williams.

  87 ——’s: The missing word invites the name ‘Shelley’.

  88 Below this line PBS has written the numeral 5 followed by a line of x’s. Norton 2002 suggests that these might signal to Jane Williams that he has omitted as too intimate a further stanza which he had written or might write.

  ‘When the lamp is shattered’

  Probably composed in spring 1822. The position of the draft (Bodleian MS Shelley adds. e. 18: see BSM XIX) suggests that it may have been intended for a play that PBS was then attempting to write in the same notebook for the members of his circle at Pisa. In 1839 MWS described PBS’s idea for the surviving ‘Fragments of an Unfinished Drama’:

  An Enchantress, living in one of the islands of the Indian Archipelago, saves the life of a Pirate, a man of savage but noble nature. She becomes enamoured of him; and he, inconstant to his mortal love, for a while returns her passion; but at length, recalling the memory of her whom he left, and who laments his loss, he escapes from the Enchanted Island and returns to his lady. His mode of life makes him go again to sea, and the Enchantress seizes the opportunity to bring him, by a spirit-brewed tempest, back to her Island. (IV, pp. 168–9)

  There is an incomplete fair copy in Glasgow University Library (MS Gen. 505/34: see MYR (Shelley) VIII) and a complete fair copy in the British Library (Add. MS 37232: see MYR (Shelley) VIII), which provides our copy-text. The lyric shares, with a number of other poems that PBS composed in late 1821 and early 1822, a melancholy insistence on the impermanence of love. Published in 1824 as ‘Lines’, it is the first of four poems in the volume with that title.

  17 In the Glasgow fair copy, which appears to have preceded our copy-text, stanzas 3 and 4 are headed ‘second part’, suggesting that at that point PBS intended the lines for a dramatic or musical arrangement.

  19–20 Love departs first from the stronger of two hearts that have come together, leaving the weaker heart to suffer the love it once enjoyed.

  ‘One word is too often prophaned’

  Our text is based on the sole recorded MS, a transcription by MWS into her copy-book, now in the Bodleian Library (MS Shelley adds. d. 7: see BSM II). She published the poem in 1824 as ‘To —–’, the second of five poems with that title, and in 1839 grouped it with those ‘written in 1821’, although it probably dates from the spring of 1822, possibly April. Geoffrey Matthews suggested that the lyric might be connected with the drama (the immediately preceding transcription in MWS’s copy-book) which PBS was attempting to compose for the members of his circle at Pisa in the spring of 1822
, and which contains parts for a number of disconsolate lovers (see BSM II and BSM XIX, pp. xlix–l). See headnote to ‘When the lamp is shattered’. The situation of poet and beloved bears comparison with that of practitioner and sufferer in ‘The Magnetic lady to her patient’, and other poems given to Jane Williams (see headnote to ‘To —–’ (‘The serpent is shut out from Paradise’)).

  3  falsely: 1824 reads thus, presumably MWS’s correction of ‘often’, which is the reading of her transcription.

  The Magnetic lady to her patient

  Probably composed in spring 1822, this poem is an imaginative portrayal of an occasion, which may actually have occurred, on which PBS was hypnotized (‘magnetized’ or ‘mesmerized’, in contemporary parlance) by Jane Williams, who is identified in l. 42. For PBS’s relationship with Edward and Jane Williams, see headnote to ‘To —–’ (‘The serpent is shut out from Paradise’). No draft has been recorded. Our text is based on the fair copy which PBS gave to Jane Williams, now in Aberdeen University Library (MS 937: see MYR (Shelley) VIII). On the cover sheet, PBS wrote ‘To Jane. Not to be opened unless you are alone, or with Williams’, and above the poem itself ‘For Jane and Williams alone to see’.

  ‘Animal magnetism’, based on the theories and practice of the Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), posited the existence of an invisible ‘magnetic fluid’, a sort of vital energy present in all beings and able to pass from one to the other by a force analogous to magnetism. Adepts varied in their understanding of the phenomenon and its therapeutic application. The practitioner might, as in the present poem, lay hands on a patient, inducing a hypnotic state. The aim was to provoke an improved circulation of the fluid in the sufferer until a state of equilibrium conducive to health was achieved.

  In the last eighteen months of his life, PBS was ‘magnetized’ on a number of occasions in order to alleviate the pain in his side (l. 41) and abdomen, which he believed to be a symptom of kidney stones. The first to do this was Thomas Medwin, in December 1820 (MWS Journal I, p. 342, and Medwin 1913, pp. 269–70), but the practice was later continued by MWS and, so this poem suggests, by Jane Williams. PBS here displays little interest in the cosmic aspect of mesmerism or its physiological basis; his focus is on the interchange between patient and therapist.

  A text (inaccurate) was first published in The Athenaeum (11 August 1832), pp. 522–23; it was reprinted in 1839 and (corrected) in 1840.

  6  sign: Protective mark, like the Christian ‘sign of the cross’. Cp. the ‘Incantation’ of the female spirit of Manfred’s dead beloved in Byron, Manfred (1817), I.i.200–201: ‘Shall my soul be upon thine, / With a power and with a sign.’

  11 he: Edward Williams.

  19–20 the slumber … unborn: Alluding to the Pythagorean doctrine of the antenatal and post-mortal existence of the soul.

  28–30 In a letter of 19 June 1822 to Leigh Hunt, PBS compares Jane Williams to the Lady who tends the mimosa in ‘The Sensitive-Plant’, while, in a letter to Claire Clairmont of 11 December 1821, he acknowledges Claire’s nickname for him, ‘The Exotic [plant]’ (Letters II, pp. 438, 367).

  35–6 Cp. Epipsychidion, ll. 51–2: ‘How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me! / I am not thine: I am a part of thee’.

  42–5 Commentators have variously proposed that these lines were influenced by PBS’s fear of the dangerous surgery to remove kidney stones, by suicidal thoughts, by his troubled marriage with MWS. The name Jane first appeared in Rossetti 1870.

  With a Guitar. To Jane

  PBS wrote these lines to accompany a guitar that he purchased for Jane Williams (see headnote to ‘To —–’ (‘The serpent is shut out from Paradise’)) probably in March or early April 1822 (Letters II, p. 412; and see ‘To Jane’ (‘The keen stars were twinkling’)). A draft of ll. 1–12 is in the Bodleian Library (see BSM XIX), as is the guitar itself (for a photograph and description see Bruce Barker-Benfield, Shelley’s Guitar (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 1992)). Our text is based on the copy given to Jane, also in the Bodleian (MS Shelley adds. e.3: see BSM XXI). The poem is in octosyllabic couplets which PBS employed in other poems inspired by Jane: ‘To Jane. The Invitation’ and ‘Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici’. As the first line indicates, the poet assumes the character and voice of Prospero’s servant, the ‘airy spirit’ Ariel, in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, imagining Jane and Edward Williams (see headnote to ‘To —–’ (‘The serpent is shut out from Paradise’)) as Prospero’s daughter Miranda and her beloved ‘prince Ferdinand’ (l. 10). Light and playful in tone, the poem nevertheless raises serious questions about the role of impersonation, tradition, formal harmony, performance and audience response in art.

  First published in The Athenaeum for 20 October 1832 (ll. 43–90), and in Fraser’s Magazine for January 1833 (ll. 1–42); a full and corrected text appeared in 1840.

  13–15 The immortal ‘guardian spirit Ariel’ promotes Jane’s happiness through successive existences. See note to ll. 23–30.

  17–22 At the conclusion of The Tempest (Shakespeare’s ‘mighty verses’), Prospero instructs Ariel to guide Ferdinand, Miranda, King Alonso and his retinue safely back across the sea to Naples.

  23–30 A whimsical reference to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls or reincarnation.

  23–6 the silent Moon … Ariel: A footnote in Fraser’s Magazine compares these lines with Milton, Samson Agonistes, ll. 87–9: ‘silent as the moon, / When she deserts the night / Hid in her vacant interlunar cave’; ‘interlunar’ describes the period between the old and new moons.

  28 Star of birth: Traditional astrology held that the star or planet under which an individual was born influenced his disposition and later life.

  36 remembered not: Because the reincarnated soul’s memory of its previous lives is erased on rebirth. See note to ll. 23–30.

  39 Shakespeare’s Ariel had been imprisoned by a witch in a cloven pine tree until released by Prospero (The Tempest I.ii.270–94).

  43 idol: Image, likeness – alluding to the tree in which Ariel was imprisoned (see previous note) and looking forward to the one from which the guitar is fashioned (ll. 53–8).

  48 Apennine: The Apennine range runs down the centre of the Italian peninsula.

  57 Heaven’s fairest star: The planet Venus, the morning and evening star.

  75–8 The revolving earth participates in the ‘music of the spheres’, which expresses the cosmic harmony of the planets in motion.

  76 diurnal: Daily.

  ‘Far, far away, O ye / Halcyons of Memory’

  Our text is taken from the draft, revised by PBS, in a notebook now in the Huntington Library (MS HM 2111: see MYR (Shelley) VII), which he used between the latter half of 1821 and his death in July 1822. In 1839 MWS dated the poem 1820 but MYR (Shelley) VII adduces MS evidence for composition between January and June 1822. Two words, ‘Ye birds’, on the page following the draft of the second stanza, suggest that PBS at first thought of continuing the poem. The scope and limitations of memory are also addressed in other poems of late 1821 to early 1822, such as ‘To Jane—The Recollection’ and ‘Remembrance’. First published in 1824 as ‘Lines’, the fourth poem of that title in the volume. Both the 1824 text and MWS’s transcript (see Massey) lack ll. 11–12, evidently a deliberate omission on her part.

  2  Halcyons: Legendary birds, ‘usually identified with a species of kingfisher’ (OED), which were supposed to nest on the ocean in a period of calm around the winter solstice. ‘Halcyons’ also signifies ‘Halcyon days’, a period of fourteen days of tranquil seas during which the halcyon could nest.

  13 Wrecked: Both MWS’s fair copy and 1824 read ‘Withered’.

  ‘Tell me star, whose wings of light’

  Composed sometime between January 1822 and PBS’s death in July of that year. The rough and unfinished draft, which supplies our copy-text, closely follows the draft for ‘Far, far away, O ye / Halcyons of Memory’ in PBS’s notebook, now in the Huntington Library (MS H
M 2111: see MYR (Shelley) VII). The three stanzas were published without date in 1824, as ‘The World’s Wanderers’.

  4  pinions: Wings.

  9–12 Cp. ‘To —–’ (‘The serpent is shut out from Paradise’), ll. 41–8; ‘When the lamp is shattered’, ll. 17–18; and ‘Far, far away, O ye / Halcyons of Memory’, ll. 3–4.

  12 This line is cancelled in PBS’s draft. There follow two cancelled lines and part of a third:

  Restless Life, whose spirit flies

  From birth to death without repose

  And from

  THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE

  PBS began The Triumph of Life (TofL) in late May 1822, while he was living at San Terenzo on the north-west coast of Italy, and left the poem unfinished at his death on 8 July. Our text is based on PBS’s unfinished and in places very rough and unresolved draft, now in the Bodleian Library (MS Shelley adds. c. 4: see BSM I). A text derived from it was first published in 1824, where MWS noted that it ‘was left in so unfinished a state, that I arranged it in its present form with great difficulty’ (p. vii).

  TofL offers a bleak assessment of the human condition, in which ‘life’ in the form of a blind and brutal juggernaut is perceived to ride in ‘triumph’ over almost every form of human aspiration and endeavour. In particular, the poem interrogates the recent cultural history of Europe, leading up to and including the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, ‘the times that were / And scarce have ceased to be’ (ll. 233–4).