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About This Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was one of the major Romantic poets, and wrote what is critically recognised as some of the finest lyric poetry in the English language. This is the first volume of the five-volume The Poems of Shelley, which presents all of Shelley's poems in chronological order and with full annotation. Date and circumstances of composition are provided for each poem and all manuscript and printed sources relevant to establishing an authoritative text are freshly examined and assessed. Headnotes and footnotes supply the personal, literary, historical and scientific information necessary to an informed reading of Shelley's varied and allusive verse.
The present volume includes the 'Esdaile' poems, which only entered the public domain in the 1950s, printed in chronological order and integrated with the rest of Shelley's early output, and Queen Mab, the first of Shelley's major poems, together with its extensive prose notes. The seminal Alastor volume is placed in the detailed context of Shelley's overall poetic development. The 'Scrope Davies' notebook, only discovered in 1976, furnishes two otherwise unknown sonnets as well as alternative versions of 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty' and 'Mont Blanc', which significantly influence our understanding of these important poems.
This first volume contains new datings, and makes numerous corrections to long-established errors and misunderstandings in the transmission of Shelley's work. Its annotations and headnotes provide new perspectives on Shelley's literary, philosophical and political development The volumes of The Poems of Shelley form the most comprehensive edition of Shelley's poetry available to students and scholars.
Frequently asked questions
Information
1 ‘A Cat in distress'
1A Cat in distressNothing more or less,Good folks I must faithfully tell ye,As I am a sinnerIt wants for some dinnerTo stuff out its own little belly.
2You mightn’t easily guessAll the modes of distressWhich torture the tenants of earth,And the various evilsWhich like many devilsAttend the poor dogs from their birth.
3Some a living require,And others desireAn old fellow out of the way,And which is the bestI leave to be guessedFor I cannot pretend to say.
4One wants society,T’other variety,Others a tranquil life,Some want food,Others as goodOnly require a wife.
5But this poor little CatOnly wanted a RatTo stuff out its own little maw,And ‘twere as goodHad some people such foodTo make them hold their jaw.
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or] nor Hogg.
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wants] waits Hogg.
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mightn’t] would not Hogg.
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Peck comments (Peck i 8) ‘Here is expressed that sympathy with suffering humanity… which… is heard as an undertone in almost all of his poetry’. But all the ‘evils’ enumerated (except ‘food’) are those of traditional comic drama.
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like many] like so many Hogg. A pencilled so has been added in the transcript, apparendy in Elizabeth S.’s hand, but whether the correction is textual or stylistic is uncertain.
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dogs] souls Hogg.
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a living] an ecclesiastical benefice.
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T’other] Another Hogg.
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Only require] Only want Hogg.
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’twere] it were Hogg.
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Had some people] Some people had Hogg.
2 Written in Very Early Youth
I’ll lay me down by the church-yard treeAnd resign me to my destiny;I’ll bathe my brow with the poison dewThat falls from yonder deadly yew,And if it steal my soul awayTo bid it wake in realms of day,Spring’s sweetest flowers shall never beSo dear to gratitude and me!Earthborn glory cannot breatheWithin the damp recess of death;Avarice, Envy, Lust, Revenge,Suffer there a fearful change;All that grandeur ever gaveMoulders in the silent grave;Oh! that I slept near yonder yew,That this tired frame might moulder too!Yet Pleasure’s folly is not mine,No votarist I at Glory’s shrine;The sacred gift for which I sighIs not to live to feel alone,I only ask to calmly dieThat the tomb might melt this heart of stoneTo love beyond the grave.
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Traditionally associated with death (cp. Parnell, ‘A Night-Piece on Death’ 53–4: ‘yon black and funeral yew, / That bathes the charnel-house with dew’; Erasmus Darwin, Temple of Nature ii (1803) 189–90: ‘O’er gaping tombs where shed umbrageous Yews / On mouldering bones their cold unwholesome dews’), the yew in literature acquired further sinister powers after 1783 from the legendary Upas, ‘The baleful tree of Java, / Whose death-distilling boughs dropt poisonous dew’ (Coleridge, The Fall of Robespierre (Cambridge 1794) III 1–2. Act III was written by Southcy).
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This stanza draws heavily on Gray’s Elegy, esp. 33–6.
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shrine] shine Esd.
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Unpunctuated in Esd. S. probably means The gift I seek is that of no longer existing merely to experience emotions in solitude’. Cameron (Esd Nbk 147) punctuates line 20: ‘Is not to live, to feel, alone;’; Rogers (Esd Poems 95): ‘Is not to live, to feel alone;’; but no pointing avoids ambiguities.
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this heart of stone] Presumably Harriet Grove’s, i.e. ‘That this hard-hearted mistress of mine might be induced to love me when I am dead’. Cp. ‘Lines Written among the Euganean Hills’ 24–44; ‘Stanzas Written in Dejection at Naples’ 37–45.
3 Sadak the Wanderer. A Fragment
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Half Title Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Note by the General Editor
- Introduction
- Acknowledgements
- Chronological Table of Shelley’s Life and Publications
- The Poems
- 1 ‘A Cat in distress'
- 2 Written in Very Early Youth
- 3 Sadak the Wanderer. A Fragment
- 4 To the Moonbeam
- 5 Song. Translated from the German
- 6 The Irishman's Song
- 7 Henry and Louisa
- 8 Revenge
- 9 Song
- 10 Ghasta; or the Avenging Demon!!!
- 11 The Wandering Jew; or the Victim of the Eternal Avenger
- 12 Olympia
- 13 The Revenge
- 14 February 28th 1805: To St Irvyne
- 15 Song
- 16 ‘How swiftly through Heaven's wide expanse'
- 17 ‘How eloquent are eyes!'
- 18 ‘Hopes that bud in youthful breasts'
- 19 Song: Despair
- 20 ‘Cold are the blasts'
- 21 Song. Translated from the Italian
- 22 Fragment, or the Triumph of Conscience
- 23 Song: Sorrow
- 24 Song: Hope
- 25 Song: To——
- 26 Song: To ——
- 27 Song: ‘How stern are the woes'
- 28 Song: ‘Ah! faint are her limbs'
- 29 ‘Late was the night'
- 30 ‘Ghosts of the dead!'
- 31 Ballad: ‘The death-bell beats!'
- 32 ‘Ambition, power, and avarice'
- 33 Fragment. Supposed to be an Epithalamium of Francis Ravaillac and Charlotte Cordé
- 34 Despair
- 35 Fragment
- 36 The Spectral Horseman
- 37 Melody to a Scene of Former Times
- 38 To Mary-I
- 39 To Mary-II
- 40 To Mary who died in this opinion
- 41 To Mary-III
- 42 To the Lover of Mary
- 43 To Death
- 44 To the Emperors of Russia and Austria
- 45 To Liberty
- 46 The Solitary
- 47 The Monarch's Funeral: An Anticipation
- 48 The Wandering Jew's Soliloquy
- 49 ‘I will kneel at thine altar'
- 50 On an Icicle that clung to the grass of a grave
- 51 Fragment of a Poem
- 52 A Translation of the Marseillaise Hymn
- 53 ‘Dares the llama'
- 54 A Dialogue
- 55 ‘Why is it said thou canst but live'
- 56 Letter to Edward Fergus Graham
- 57 Second Letter to Edward Fergus Graham
- 58 Zeinab and Kathema
- 59 ‘Sweet star!'
- 60 On a Fête at Carlton House
- 61 Written at Cwm Elan
- 62 ‘Death-spurning rocks!'
- 63 To Harriet *********
- 64 To November
- 65 ‘Full many a mind with radiant genius fraught'
- 66 Passion: To the [Woody Nightshade]
- 67 A Winter's Day
- 68 A Tale of Society as it is: from facts, 1811
- 69 A Sabbath Walk
- 70 The Crisis
- 71 The Tombs
- 72 On Robert Emmet's Tomb
- 73 To the Republicans of North America
- 74 ‘The Ocean rolls between us'
- 75 ‘Bear witness, Erin!'
- 76 Falsehood and Vice: A Dialogue
- 77 Written on a Beautiful Day in Spring
- 78 ‘Dark Spirit of the desert rude'
- 79 The Retrospect: Cwm Elan 1812
- 80 To Harriet
- 81 Mary to the Sea-Wind
- 82 Sonnet: To Harriet on her Birthday, August 1 1812
- 83 The Devil's Walk: A Ballad
- 84 Sonnet: On Launching some Bottles filled with Knowledge into the Bristol Channel
- 85 Sonnet: To a Balloon, Laden with Knowledge
- 86 A Retrospect of Times of Old
- 87 To Harriet
- 88 Sonnet: On Waiting for a Wind to Cross the Bristol Channel from Devonshire to Wales
- 89 The Voyage. A Fragment… Devonshire-August 1812
- 90 On Leaving London for Wales
- 91 To Harriet
- 92 Queen Mab
- 93 ‘The pale, the cold, and the moony smile'
- 94 To Harriet
- 95 To Ianthe
- 96 Evening: To Harriet
- 97 To Harriet
- 98 Stanza, written at Bracknell
- 99 Lines: ‘That moment is gone for ever'
- 100 Fragments written in Claire Clairmont's Journal
- 101 Stanzas.-April, 1814
- 102 ‘Mine eyes were dim with tears unshed'
- 103 ‘Dear Home …'
- 104 ‘On her hind paws the Dormouse stood'
- 105 ‘What Mary is …'
- 106 ‘O! there are spirits of the air'
- 107 Translated from the Greek of Moschus
- 108 Sonnet. From the Italian of Dante Alighieri to Guido Cavalcanti
- 109 A Summer-Evening Church-yard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire
- 110 Guido Cavalcanti to Dante Alighieri
- 111 To Wordsworth
- 112 Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte
- 113 Mutability
- 114 Alas tor; or, The Spirit of Solitude
- 115 The Daemon of the World
- 115a [Fragment revised from Queen Mab v 1–15]
- 116 The Sunset
- 117 The Sunset
- 118 Lines to Leigh Hunt
- 119 ‘A shovel of his ashes'
- 120 To Laughter
- 121 ‘Upon the wandering winds'
- 122 ‘O that a chariot of cloud were mine'
- 123 Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
- 124 Mont Blanc. Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni
- 125 ‘My thoughts arise and fade in solitude'
- 126 ‘Her voice did quiver as we parted'
- 127 To [ ]
- 128 To[ ]
- 129 ‘They die-the dead return not'
- 130 A Hate-Song (improvised)
- 131 To the [Lord Chancellor]
- 132 ‘Maiden / Thy delightful eyne'
- 133 ‘In the yellow western sky'
- 134 To Wilson S_____th
- 135 Otho
- 136 ‘Mighty Eagle, thou that soarest'
- 137 ‘I visit thee but thou art sadly changed'
- 138 Marianne's Dream
- 139 ‘The billows on the beach are leaping around it'
- 140 Translated from an Epigram of Plato, cited in the Apologia of Apuleius
- 141 ‘Shapes about my steps assemble'
- Appendix A The Order of the Poems in the Esdaile Notebook
- Appendix B The Order of the Poems in Shelley's Collections, 1810–1816
- Appendix C ‘Thy dewy looks sink in my breast' and ‘Thy gentle face, Priscilla dear’
- Index