IV. The moon made thy lips pale, beloved The wind made thy bosom chill The night did shed on thy dear head DEATH.1 I. DEATH is here and death is there, Death is busy everywhere, All around, within, beneath, Above is death-and we are death. II. Death has set his mark and seal On all we are and all we feel, On all we know and all we fear, III. First our pleasures die-and then Our hopes, and then our fears-and when Shelley wrote it as in the Pocket-Book, where also the punctuation (followed here) varies slightly from that of other texts. There can be no great rashness in suggesting that the subject of the poem is the death of Harriett Shelley, who drowned herself on the 9th of November 1816. In that case 1815 and raven hair were used as disguises, -Harriett's hair having been light brown. 1 Mrs. Shelley places this poem among those of 1820. These are dead, the debt is due, Dust claims dust-and we die too. IV. All things that we love and cherish, LINES.1 1. THAT time is dead for ever, child, We look on the past And stare aghast At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast, II. The stream we gazed on then, rolled by; But we yet stand In a lone land, Like tombs to mark the memory Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee 1 Mrs. Shelley places this among poems of 1817: in the Posthumous Poems it is dated at the end, "November 5th, 1817." 2 In Mr. Rossetti's edition flee is changed to fly, which alters the sense and deteriorates the rhyme. DEATH.1 I. THEY die-the dead return not-Misery Sits near an open grave and calls them over, II. Misery, my sweetest friend-oh! weep no more! These tombs alone remain. 1 Classed by Mrs. Shelley among the poems of 1817. 2 The word the, which stands here in the Posthumous Poems, and is neces sary, is omitted in Mrs. Shelley's editions of 1839 and onward. 3 In the Posthumous Poems, called,— in the collected editions, calls. SONG, ON A FADED VIOLET.1 I. THE odour from the flower is gone II. A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form, It lies on my abandoned breast, And mocks the heart which yet is warm, With cold and silent rest. III. I weep, my tears revive it not! I sigh, it breathes no more on me; Its mute and uncomplaining lot Is such as mine should be. 1 Printed in The Literary PocketBook for 1821, signed “A,” and headed Song. On a faded Violet as in the Posthumous Poems. In later editions Mrs. Shelley dropped the word Song, and classed the poem among those of 1818. General C. Parker Catty has a letter from Mrs. Shelley, of the 7th of March 1820, to his mother, then Miss Sophia Stacey on one of the " 'doublings" Shelley added "I promised you what I cannot perform; a song on singing:- there are only two subjects remaining. I have a few old stanzas on one which though simple and rude, look as if they were dicated by the heart.-And so-if you tell no one whose they are you are welcome to them. On a Dead Violet. Το [then the 3 stanzas of the Song] Pardon these dull verses from one who is dull -but who is not the less ever your's PBS The Pocket-Book version, doubtless from another MS., I have followed: that of the Posthumous Poems varies in punctuation only. General Catty's MS. shews no verbal variation from the Pocket-Book but in stanza II, where the last line is With its cold, silent rest. Probably Mrs. Shelley had another MS.; for in her collected editions not only is shrivelled in stanza II altered to withered; but stanza I stands thus: The colour from the flower is gone, Which like thy sweet eyes smiled on me; The odour from the flower is flown, Which breathed of thee and only thee! STANZAS.1 WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES. I. THE sun is warm, the sky is clear, The waves are dancing fast and bright, Like many a voice of one delight, II. I see the Deep's untrampled floor With green and purple seaweeds strown; Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown: 1 These stanzas are given by Mrs. Shelley among the poems of 1818 in the collected editions; and in the Posthumous Poems the date "December, 1818," is printed at the end. 2 In the Posthumous Poems this line does not occur; but in that and Mrs. Shelley's other editions the line before ends with light. When the missing line was restored, the word air was printed where earth is given in the text. The words earth and might rest on Mr. Garnett's authority: he has seen them in Shelley's writing; and in the absence of any second copy, they must stand. Nevertheless so good an authority as Mr. Browning writes to me "I prefer, in the 'Stanzas ... at Naples,' the 'Moon's transparent light,' to 'might'-which isles and mountains hardly wear': the line was first restored in a strange edition of Shelley published by Benbow in 1826-and Leigh Hunt, in '28, quotes the poem without it, remarking on its loss: it was myself who told him of its existence, to his surprise and pleasure. The notion of light as a veil and transparent is familiar with Shelley; and the Italian practice of making words rhyme which have the same sound but a different sense, not infrequent in this stanza there is 'delight' for 'light's' fellow." Medwin's desperate inaccuracy makes his evidence of little account; but he, |