SONG ("A widow bird sat mourning for her love").

This song was printed as it stands in the text in the Posthumous Poems. Mr. Rossetti discovered the same poem in a fragmentary scene of Shelley's incomplete drama, Charles the First, where it is put into the mouth of Archy, the Court Fool, with the following introductory stanza prefixed:

"The Magnetic Lady" is doubtless Mrs. Williams; a copy of the poem in Shelley's writing among the Trelawny MS. is headed, "For Jane and Williams only to see." According to Medwin, Shelley was hypnotized by Mrs. Williams, by Mrs. Shelley, and by Medwin himself to relieve him from paroxysms of pain to which he was subject. In one of these trances he gave the answer to Medwin recorded in the forty-second line of this poem.

285 11. he: Williams.

286 42. The reading in the text is that of the Trelawny MS. As given by Mrs. Shelley and by Medwin in his Memoir of Shelley, the line reads:

'T would kill me what would cure my pain.

LINES ("When the lamp is shattered").

This poem as here printed follows Mrs. Shelley's text; there is an autograph copy among the Trelawny MS. which has notes for "tones in 1. 6, in for "through" in l. 14, and chose for "choose" in l. 23.

287 17-24. The weaker heart is the more faithful, and retains its love, though love has turned to pain because the loved one has grown cold.

287 25. Its the weaker heart's. thee: Love.

TO JANE THE INVITATION.

“A part of this and a part of the next poem were published by Mrs. Shelley in the Posthumous Poems (1824) as one composition, under the title of The Pine Forest of the Cascine near Pisa, and this arrangement was followed in the first edition of 1839; but in the second edition of that year the poem was divided into two as in the text, and given in substantial accordance with the autograph in Mr. Trelawny's hands" (Forman's note). There are considerable variations between the earlier and later forms, for which the reader is referred to the collected editions. 289 43-45. There is confusion between "thy" and "your." 290 58. The daisy-star, etc.: cf. The Question, l. 11 and note.

TO JANE THE RECOLLECTION.

290 6. fled so in the earlier edition and the later collected editions; but the second edition of 1839 and the Trelawny MS. have dead. 291 24. This line reads in the earlier version: With stems like serpents interlaced; with this text, the "as rude" of the previous line might be interpreted either as rude as giants or as rude as storms. It might seem as if Shelley, on revising the poem, had mended the halting metre without noting that the change involved an inappropriate comparison: "serpents interlaced" can scarcely be called "rude."

291 42.

white stands in the Trelawny MS. and in the earlier version; but in the second edition of 1839 wide is found. "White" is evidently the better reading; the mountains were on the horizon, and the width of the mountain waste would not be apparent.

292 52.

After this line in the earlier version stood :

Were not the crocuses that grew

Under the ilex tree,

As beautiful for scent and hue

As ever fed the bee?

292 53-80. Note Shelley's delight in the reflections in the water; the reflection, with its softened outlines and mysterious suggestiveness, is a sort of idealization of the real scene.

WITH A GUITAR TO JANE.

"The strong light streamed through an opening of the trees. One of the pines, undermined by the water, had fallen into it. Under its lee, and nearly hidden, sat the Poet, gazing on the dark mirror beneath, so lost in his bardish revery that he did not hear my approach. . . . The day I found Shelley in the pine-forest he was writing verses on a guitar. I picked up a fragment but could not make out the first two lines. . . . It was a frightful scrawl; words smeared over with his finger, and one upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all run together in most admired disorder'" (Trelawny, Records, I, pp. 103, 107).

Shelley's identification of himself with Shakespeare's infinitely poetical and spritelike Ariel, now imprisoned in a body, is a very happy and suggestive fancy.

294 23-24.

See note on Prometheus, II, iv, 91.

LINES WRITTEN IN THE BAY OF LERICI.

The Bay of Lerici is a portion of the Bay of Spezzia, upon which Casa Magni, where Shelley was residing at the time of his death, was situated.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY.

TEXT.

The best critical edition of Shelley's complete works is that by H. B. Forman in eight volumes (four of poetry and four of prose), London, 1880. Mr. Forman has also published a popular edition of the poetical works, without notes, in Bell's Aldine Series, five volumes. A useful and excellent critical edition of the poetical works is that of Prof. G. E. Woodberry in four volumes, Boston and New York, 1892. Mr. W. M. Rossetti's edition, London, 1881, contains in three volumes a revised text, notes, and memoir. The most convenient edition of the complete poetical works for the ordinary reader is that by Professor Dowden in one volume.

The chief sources for the text are (1) the various existing MSS. in the poet's handwriting or in that of his wife; the bulk of these are among the family papers at Boscombe Manor, but there is also a valuable collection at Harvard; (2) the various volumes printed in Shelley's lifetime (several of these have been reprinted in the Shelley Society's Publications), and for some of the shorter poems, the pages of the Examiner, Keepsake, and other periodicals to which the poet occasionally contributed; (3) Mrs. Shelley's editions of her husband's works, viz., Posthumous Poems, 1824, and her editions of the collected poetical works, two of which appeared in 1839, and a third in 1841. Relics of Shelley, edited by Dr. Garnett, London, 1862, affords poetical matter which had not hitherto been printed.

For an account of these various earlier publications of Shelley's works, The Shelley Library, an Essay in Bibliography, by H. B. Forman (Shelley Society's Publications) should be consulted.