[The fortunate discovery of the revised copy of Queen Mab mentioned in Middleton's Shelley and His Writings, and of which a full account will be given in the Appendix, would have been still more fortunate had it been made before the first volume of this edition was printed; for it contains a Second Part of The Damon of the World; and this might best have been introduced immediately after the "Fragment" so named, which Shelley put forth with Alastor, and which it completes. The "Fragment" is in fact Part I of the remodelling, and what I here introduce among the Poems of 1814 to 1816 is Part II. These two parts shew us pretty clearly what the mature Shelley of 1815 considered worth preserving of Queen Mab; and it seems to me far better to introduce Part II here, among the mature works, than to give it in the form of extensive notes along with the immature Queen Mab, reserved for the appendix of juvenilia. Indeed, no ordinary reader could form an idea of the scope of The Damon of the World if it were left to be picked out from notes, however carefully those might be framed with a view to facilitate this operation; and only a few students would find time to reconstruct the poem in imagination; but there will now be no difficulty in appreciating The Demon of the World as a whole, for any one who will read Part I of it in the first volume of this edition, and Part II as printed in the present division of this volume.-H. B. F.] POEMS WRITTEN FROM 1814 TO 1816. STANZA,1 WRITTEN AT BRACKNELL. THY dewy looks sink in my breast; I could have borne my wayward lot: 1 This stanza is from Hogg's Life of Shelley (vol. II, p. 516). It is part of a letter from Shelley to Hogg dated Bracknell, March 16, 1814," written while Shelley was staying at the house of Mrs. Boinville, shortly before the separation from Harriett, and, as Mr. Rossetti says, "under the influence of very gloomy feelings as to his domestic relations and prospects." Mr. Rossetti adds that the person addressed is "apparently" Mrs Boinville, or her daughter, Mrs. Newton. Shelley in troduces the stanza to Hogg by saying "I have written nothing, but one stanza, which has no meaning, and that I have only written in thought:" and he follows it up with the comment, "This is the vision of a delirious and distempered dream, which passes away at the cold clear light of morning. Its surpassing excellence and exquisite perfections have no more reality than the colour of an autumnal sunset." TO MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN.1 I. MINE eyes were dim with tears unshed; To meet thy looks-I could not know II. To sit and curb the soul's mute rage To curse the life which is the cage Of fettered grief that dares not groan, Hiding from many a careless eye III. Whilst thou alone, then not regarded, The thou alone should be, To spend years thus, and be rewarded, 1 In Mrs. Shelley's editions, from the Posthumous Poems onward, this poem is headed To —— and assign ed to the year 1821; but in 1862 Mr. Garnett wrote thus of it in the Relics of Shelley (pp. 160-1)-"Much light has been recently thrown upon the feelings which actuated Shelley at this critical period [the period of the sepa ration from Harriett] of his history, by an interesting and unexpected discovery made during the preparation of this volume. It appears that a poem [the poem given above], hitherto referred to the date of 1821, was in fact written in June, 1814, and addressed to Mary.... This poem has hitherto been wholly unintelligible; no one could conjecture either the occasion of its composition or the person to whom it was addressed." In the Posthumous Poems, did; but wert in later editions. |