The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley: (A Modern Library E-Book) Read online

  I must add a few words concerning the contents of this volume. Julian and Maddalo, the Witch of Atlas, and most of the Translations, were written some years ago; and, with the exception of the Cyclops, and the Scenes from the Magico Prodigioso, may be considered as having received the author’s ultimate corrections. The Triumph of Life was his last work, and was left in so unfinished a state that I arranged it in its present form with great difficulty. All his poems which were scattered in periodical works are collected in this volume, and I have added a reprint of Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude: the difficulty with which a copy can be obtained is the cause of its republication. Many of the Miscellaneous Poems, written on the spur of the occasion, and never retouched, I found among his manuscript books, and have carefully copied. I have subjoined, whenever I have been able, the date of their composition.

  I do not know whether the critics will reprehend the insertion of some of the most imperfect among them; but I frankly own that I have been more actuated by the fear lest any monument of his genius should escape me than the wish of presenting nothing but what was complete to the fastidious reader. I feel secure that the lovers of Shelley’s poetry (who know how, more than any poet of the present day, every line and word he wrote is instinct with peculiar beauty) will pardon and thank me: I consecrate this volume to them.

  The size of this collection has prevented the insertion of any prose pieces. They will hereafter appear in a separate publication.

  MARY W. SHELLEY.

  LONDON, June 1, 1824.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  MRS. SHELLEY’S PREFACE TO FIRST COLLECTED EDITION, 1839

  POSTSCRIPT IN SECOND EDITION OF 1839

  MRS. SHELLEY’S PREFACE TO Posthumous Poems, 1824

  ALASTOR; OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE (1815)

  Note by Mrs. Shelley

  THE DAEMON OF THE WORLD. A FRAGMENT (1816)

  Part I

  Part II

  THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. A POEM IN TWELVE CANTOS (1817)

  Preface

  Dedication: To Mary —— ——

  Canto I

  Canto II

  Canto III

  Canto IV

  Canto V

  Canto VI

  Canto VII

  Canto VIII

  Canto IX

  Canto X

  Canto XI

  Canto XII

  Note by Mrs. Shelley

  PRINCE ATHANASE. A FRAGMENT (1817)

  ROSALIND AND HELEN. A MODERN ECLOGUE (1817)

  Note by Mrs. Shelley

  JULIAN AND MADDALO. A CONVERSATION (1818)

  Note by Mrs. Shelley

  PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. A LYRICAL DRAMA IN FOUR ACTS (1819)

  Preface

  Act I

  Act II

  Act III

  Act IV

  Note by Mrs. Shelley

  THE CENCI. A TRAGEDY IN FIVE ACTS (1819)

  Dedication, to Leigh Hunt, Esq.

  Preface

  Act I

  Act II

  Act III

  Act IV

  Act V

  Note by Mrs. Shelley

  THE MASK OF ANARCHY (1819)

  Note by Mrs. Shelley

  PETER BELL THE THIRD (1819)

  Note by Mrs. Shelley

  OEDIPUS TYRANNUS; OR, SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT. A TRAGEDY IN TWO ACTS (1819)

  Note by Mrs. Shelley

  CHARLES THE FIRST (1819)

  LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE (1820)

  THE WITCH OF ATLAS (1820)

  To Mary

  The Witch of Atlas

  Note by Mrs. Shelley

  EPIPSYCHIDION (1821)

  Fragments connected with Epipsychidion

  ADONAIS. AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS (1821)

  Preface

  Adonais

  Cancelled Passages

  HELLAS. A LYRICAL DRAMA (1821)

  Preface

  Prologue

  Hellas

  Shelley’s Notes

  Note by Mrs. Shelley

  FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED DRAMA (1822)

  THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE (1822)

  EARLY POEMS (1814, 1815)

  Stanza, written at Bracknell

  Stanzas.—April, 1814

  To Harriet

  To Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  To ——.‘Yet look on me’

  Mutability

  On Death

  A Summer Evening Churchyard

  To ——. ‘Oh! there are spirits of the air’

  To Wordsworth

  Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte

  Lines: ‘The cold earth slept below’

  Note on the Early Poems, by Mrs. Shelley

  POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816

  The Sunset

  Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

  Mont Blanc

  Fragment: Home

  Fragment of a Ghost Story

  Note on Poems of 1816, by Mrs. Shelley

  POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817

  Marianne’s Dream

  To Constantia, Singing

  To Constantia

  Fragment: To One Singing

  A Fragment: To Music

  Another Fragment to Music

  ‘Mighty Eagle’

  To the Lord Chancellor

  To William Shelley

  From the Original Draft of the Poem to William Shelley

  On Fanny Godwin

  Lines: ‘That time is dead for ever’

  Death

  Otho

  Fragments supposed to be parts of Otho

  ‘O that a Chariot of Cloud were mine’

  Fragments:

  To a Friend released from Prison

  Satan broken loose

  Igniculus Desiderii

  Amor Aeternus

  Thoughts come and go in Solitude

  A Hate-Song

  Lines to a Critic

  Ozymandias

  Note on Poems of 1817, by Mrs. Shelley

  POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818

  To the Nile

  Passage of the Apennines

  The Past

  To Mary——

  On a Faded Violet

  Lines written among the Euganean Hills

  Scene from ‘Tasso’

  Song for ‘Tasso’

  Invocation to Misery

  Stanzas written in Dejection, near Naples

  The Woodman and the Nightingale

  Marenghi

  Sonnet: ‘Lift not the painted veil’

  Fragments:

  To Byron

  Apostrophe to Silence

  The Lake’s Margin

  ‘My head is wild with weeping’

  The Vine-Shroud

  Note on Poems of 1818, by Mrs. Shelley

  POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819

  Lines written during the Castlereagh Administration

  Song to the Men of England

  Similes for two Political Characters of 1819

  Fragment: To the People of England

  Fragment: ‘What men gain fairly’

  A New National Anthem

  Sonnet: England in 1819

  An Ode written October, 1819

  Cancelled Stanza

  Ode to Heaven

  Ode to the West Wind

  An Exhortation

  The Indian Serenade

  Cancelled Passage

  To Sophia [Miss Stacey]

  To William Shelley, I

  To William Shelley, II

  To Mary Shelley, I

  To Mary Shelley, II

  On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci

  Love’s Philosophy

  Fragment: ‘Follow to the deep wood’s weeds’

  The Birth of Pleasure

  Fragments:

  Love the Universe to-day

  ‘A gentle story of two lovers young’

  Love’s Tender Atmosphere

  Wedded Souls

  ‘Is it
that in some brighter sphere’

  Sufficient unto the day

  ‘Ye gentle visitations of calm thought’

  Music and Sweet Poetry

  The Sepulchre of Memory

  ‘When a lover clasps his fairest’

  ‘Wake the serpent not’

  Rain

  A Tale Untold

  To Italy

  Wine of the Fairies

  A Roman’s Chamber

  Rome and Nature

  Variation of the Song of the Moon

  Cancelled Stanza of the Mask of Anarchy

  Note by Mrs. Shelley

  POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820

  The Sensitive Plant

  A Vision of the Sea

  The Cloud

  To a Skylark

  Ode to Liberty

  To ——. ‘I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden’

  Arethusa

  Song of Proserpine

  Hymn of Apollo

  Hymn of Pan

  The Question

  The Two Spirits: An Allegory

  Ode to Naples

  Autumn: A Dirge

  The Waning Moon

  To the Moon

  Death

  Liberty

  Summer and Winter

  The Tower of Famine

  An Allegory

  The World’s Wanderers

  Sonnet: ‘Ye hasten to the grave!’

  Lines to a Reviewer

  Fragment of a Satire on Satire

  Good-night

  Buona Notte

  Orpheus

  Fiordispina

  Time Long Past

  Fragments:

  The Deserts of Dim Sleep

  ‘The viewless and invisible consequence’

  A Serpent-face

  Death in Life

  ‘Such hope, as is the sick despair of good’

  ‘Alas! this is not what I thought life was’

  Milton’s Spirit

  ‘Unrisen splendour of the brightest sun’

  Pater Omnipotens

  To the Mind of Man

  Note on Poems of 1820, by Mrs. Shelley

  POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821

  Dirge for the Year

  To Night

  Time

  Lines: ‘Far, far away’

  From the Arabic: An Imitation

  To Emilia Viviani

  The Fugitives

  To ——. ‘Music, when soft voices die’

  Song: ‘Rarely, rarely, comest thou’

  Mutability

  Lines written on hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon

  Sonnet: Political Greatness

  The Aziola

  A Lament

  Remembrance

  To Edward Williams

  To ——. ‘One word is too often profaned’

  To ——. ‘When passion’s trance is overpast’

  A Bridal Song

  Epithalamium

  Another Version of the Same

  Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear

  Fragments written for Hellas

  Fragment: ‘I would not be a king’

  Ginevra

  Evening: Ponte al Mare, Pisa

  The Boat on the Serchio

  Music

  Sonnet to Byron

  Fragment on Keats

  Fragment: ‘Methought I was a billow in the crowd’

  To-morrow

  Stanza: ‘If I walk in Autumn’s even’

  Fragments:

  A Wanderer

  Life rounded with Sleep

  ‘I faint, I perish with my love’

  The Lady of the South

  Zephyrus the Awakener

  Rain

  ‘When soft winds and sunny skies’

  ‘And that I walk thus proudly crowned’

  ‘The rude wind is singing’

  ‘Great Spirit’

  ‘O thou immortal deity’

  The False Laurel and the True

  May the Limner

  Beauty’s Halo

  ‘The death knell is ringing’

  ‘I stood upon a heaven-cleaving turret’

  Note on Poems of 1821, by Mrs. Shelley

  POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822

  The Zucca

  The Magnetic Lady to her Patient

  Lines: ‘When the lamp is shattered’

  To Jane: The Invitation

  To Jane: The Recollection

  The Pine Forest of the Cascine near Pisa

  With a Guitar, to Jane

  To Jane: ‘The keen stars were twinkling’

  A Dirge

  Lines written in the Bay of Lerici

  Lines: ‘We meet not as we parted’

  The Isle

  Fragment: To the Moon

  Epitaph

  Note on Poems of 1822, by Mrs. Shelley

  TRANSLATIONS

  Hymn to Mercury. Translated from the Greek of Homer

  Homer’s Hymn to Castor and Pollux

  Homer’s Hymn to the Moon

  Homer’s Hymn to the Sun

  Homer’s Hymn to the Earth: Mother of All

  Homer’s Hymn to Minerva

  Homer’s Hymn to Venus

  The Cyclops: A Satyric Drama. Translated from the Greek of Euripides

  Epigrams:

  I. To Stella. From the Greek of Plato

  II. Kissing Helena. From the Greek of Plato

  III. Spirit of Plato. From the Greek

  IV. Circumstance. From the Greek

  Fragment of the Elegy on the Death of Adonis. From the Greek of Bion

  Fragment of the Elegy on the Death of Bion. From the Greek of Moschus

  From the Greek of Moschus

  Pan, Echo, and the Satyr. From the Greek of Moschus

  From Vergil’s Tenth Eclogue

  From Vergil’s Fourth Georgic

  Sonnet. From the Italian of Dante

  The First Canzone of the Convito. From the Italian of Dante

  Matilda gathering Flowers. From the Purgatorio of Dante

  Fragment. Adapted from the Vita Nuova of Dante

  Ugolino. Inferno, xxxiii. 22–75

  Sonnet. From the Italian of Cavalcanti

  Scenes from the Magico Prodigioso. From the Spanish of Calderon

  Stanzas from Calderon’s Cisma de Inglaterra

  Scenes from the Faust of Goethe

  JUVENILIA

  QUEEN MAB. A PHILOSOPHICAL POEM.

  To Harriet*****

  Queen Mab

  Note by Mrs. Shelley

  Verses on a Cat

  Fragment: Omens

  Epitaphium [Latin Version of the Epitaph is Gray’s Elegy]

  In Horologium

  A Dialogue

  To the Moonbeam

  The Solitary

  To Death

  Love’s Rose

  Eyes: a Fragment

  ORIGINAL POETRY BY VICTOR AND CAZIRE

  I. ‘Here I sit with my paper, my pen and my ink’

  II. To Miss —— —— [Harriet Grove] From Miss —— —— [Elizabeth Shelley]

  III. Song: ‘Cold, cold is the blast’

  IV. Song: ‘Come [Harriet]! sweet is the hour’

  V. Song: Despair

  VI. Song: Sorrow

  VII. Song: Hope

  VIII. Song: Translated from the Italian

  IX. Song: Translated from the German

  X. The Irishman’s Song

  XI. Song: ‘Fierce roars the midnight storm’

  XII. Song: To —— [Harriet]

  XIII. Song: To —— [Harriet]

  XIV. Saint Edmond’s Eve

  XV. Revenge

  XVI. Ghasta; or, The Avenging Demon

  XVII. Fragment; or, The Triumph of Conscience

  POEMS FROM ST. IRVYNE; OR, THE ROSICRUCIAN

  I. Victoria

  II. ‘On the Dark Height of Jura’

  III. Sister Rosa. A Ballad

  IV. St. Irvyne’s Tower

  V. Bereavement

  VI. The Drowned Lover

&nbs
p; POSTHUMOUS FRAGMENTS OF MARGARET NICHOLSON

  Advertisement

  War

  Fragment: Supposed to be an Epithalamium of Francis Ravaillac and Charlotte Corday

  Despair

  Fragment

  The Spectral Horseman

  Melody to a Scene of Former Times

  Stanza from a Translation of the Marseillaise Hymn

  Bigotry’s Victim

  On an Icicle that clung to the Grass of a Grave

  Love

  On a Fěte at Carlton House: Fragment

  To a Star

  To Mary, who died in this opinion

  A Tale of Society as it is: From Facts, 1811

  To the Republicans of North America

  To Ireland

  On Robert Emmet’s Grave

  The Retrospect: Cwm Elan, 1812

  Fragment of a Sonnet: To Harriet

  To Harriet

  Sonnet: To a Balloon laden with Knowledge

  Sonnet: On launching some Bottles filled with Knowledge into the Bristol Channel

  The Devil’s Walk

  Fragment of a Sonnet: Farewell to North Devon

  On leaving London for Wales

  The Wandering Jew’s Soliloquy

  Evening: To Harriet

  To Ianthe

  Song from the Wandering Jew

  Fragment from the Wandering Jew

  To the Queen of my Heart

  INDEX OF FIRST LINES

  ALASTOR

  OR

  THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE

  PREFACE

  THE poem entitled Alastor may be considered as allegorical of one of the most interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, and affords to their modifications a variety not to be exhausted. So long as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous, and tranquil, and self-possessed. But the period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He images to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant with speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in which he embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or wise, or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover could depicture. The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functions of sense, have their respective requisitions on the sympathy of corresponding powers in other human beings. The Poet is represented as uniting these requisitions, and attaching them to a single image. He seeks in vain for a prototype of his conception. Blasted by his disappointment, he descends to an untimely grave.