As like his father, as I'm unlike mine, Feasting on which we will philosophize! And we'll have fires out of the Grand Duke's wood, And then we'll talk;-what shall we talk about? 300 305 310 31 Outlast the leafless time; till buds and flowers 320 Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew ;- * "Iμepos, from which the river Himera was named, is, with some slight shade of difference, a synonyme of Love. 1 This line, which is in the transcript, appears now, I believe, for the first time. 2 In the transcript, in the Posthumous Poems, and in the first edition of 1839, we'll come; but in the second edition of 1839, and onwards, well, come. 3 Three asterisks have hitherto stood in this place in all editions; and the blank has been much discussed and debated. Sir Percy Shelley's MS. affords no clue to the lost word, now [SHELLEY'S NOTE.] given from the transcript, which also supports the word despite, given in the Posthumous Poems, but dropped in favour of spite, in Mrs. Shelley's later editions. 4 So in the transcript, and of course rightly; but in all Mrs. Shelley's editions we read Will for We'll, a corruption doubtless consequent on the former one, we'll for well in line 317, but not corrected when that was put right. [Mrs. Shelley tells us that, during some of the hottest days of August 1820, Shelley made an excursion from the Baths of San Giuliano to the summit of Monte San Pellegrino, and wrote, in the three days immediately after his return, The Witch of Atlas,-a poem which Mrs. Shelley characterizes as "a brilliant congregation of ideas, such as his senses gathered, and his fancy coloured, during his rambles in the sunny land he so much loved." The poem was sent to Mr. Ollier for publication; and in writing to that gentleman on the 22nd of February 1821, Shelley directed that it should not be included in the same volume as Julian and Maddalo, adding (Shelley Memorials, p. 154)—“You may put my name to The Witch of Atlas, as usual." It was not, however, published until 1824, when Mrs. Shelley included it in the Posthumous Poems. Sir Percy Shelley has a perfect MS. of it in Shelley's handwriting, from which Mr. Garnett gave some emendations in his Relics of Shelley; and among the Leigh Hunt MSS. placed at my disposal by Mr. Townshend Mayer, is a transcript in Mrs. Shelley's writing. This transcript is of great interest, as shewing variations from the received text. The six stanzas to Mary were not given in the Posthumous Poems, perhaps on account of the references to Wordsworth in the last three,-which Mrs. Shelley issued for the first time in her second collected edition of 1839, Wordsworth being still alive. The reference to Laon and Cythna in the third of these stanzas is very striking. Shelley seems to have hardly suspected that there would be a resurrection for that poem, in any form, much less in the very form in which it was most dear to him.-H. B. F.] TO MARY, (ON HER OBJECTING TO THE FOLLOWING POEM, UPON THE SCORE OF ITS CONTAINING NO HUMAN INTEREST.) I. How, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten, (For vipers kill, though dead,) by some review, That you condemn these verses I have written, Because they tell no story, false or true! What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten, II. What hand would crush the silken-wingèd fly, Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions? Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die, When day shall hide within her twilight pinions, The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile, Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile. III. To thy fair feet a wingèd Vision came, Whose date should have been longer than a day, And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame, And in thy sight its fading plumes display; 244 LINES TO MARY ON THE WITCH OF ATLAS. The watery bow burned in the evening flame, But the shower fell, the swift sun went his wayAnd that is dead.- O, let me not believe That any thing of mine is fit to live! IV. Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to hell V. My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays, Like King Lear's "looped and windowed raggedness.' VI. If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow, A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at; If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate 1 In Mrs. Shelley's editions this period is misprinted as a comma. " |