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rains: The spirit of the cloud - the invisible water-vapor - remains, while the form of the cloud, and with it the lightning, dissolves. (The antecedent of "I" is apparently the "Spirit" in the preceding line.) The idea that clouds "die in rain" occurs also in "The Triumph of Life," lines 155-157.

(200.) 58. these: that is, the stars (line 52).

67-70. The triumphal arch

bow: Cf. "Prometheus Unbound," Act First, line 708 ff. (page 194).

73-76. I am the daughter etc.: See note to line 29, above.

81. cenotaph: a tomb in honor of a person whose remains are elsewhere. The cloud's cenotaph is "the blue dome of air" in the preceding line.

ARETHUSA

The Fountain of Arethusa is close to the shore of the island Ortygia, which was part of the ancient Greek city of Syracuse in Sicily. Alpheus is the leading river of Peloponnesus in Greece, in certain parts of its course flowing underground. The fountain and the river were connected, mythically, as follows: As the nymph Arethusa was bathing one day in the waters of the Alpheus, she heard the voice of the river-god Alpheus, who, enamored of her, bade her not to flee. She ran, however, and he pursued, 'till at length Diana changed her into a fountain. Then Alpheus, sundering the rocks of the Erymanthus mountains, followed the fleet nymph with his waters to the very sea. save me!" she cried, and Diana (or Ocean, in Shelley's poem) opened a secret passage under sea and earth, through which she passed, Alpheus ever pursuing, from the Greek coast all the way to Sicily, until at length their married waters came to the surface in Syracuse, where the Fountain of Arethusa may be seen to this day. Shelley, in the last stanza of his poem, follows in imagination the daily flow of waters from Enna in central Sicily, down the valleys, through woods and through meadows gay with asphodel flowers (daffodils), until at night they rest in the

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POLITICAL GREATNESS

(207.) 8. that heaven: the glass of art (line 6).

MUTABILITY

Compare Wordsworth's sonnet on the same subject, written in the same year (page 53).

EPIPSYCHIDION

For the meaning of the title, see line 238 ("soul out of my soul"). The motto may be translated as follows: The loving soul hurls itself beyond the created world, and creates for itself in the infinite a world all its own, very different from this dark and fearful abyss.

"The noble and unfortunate lady" to whom Shelley addressed this poem was Emilia Viviani, daughter of an Italian noban, who had been placed by her fam

the convent of St. Anna near Pisa. "lia, beautiful, spiritual, sorrowing, became for him a type and symbol of what Goethe names 'the eternal feminine,' a type and symbol of all that is most radiant and divine in nature, all that is most remote and unattainable, yet ever to be pursued the ideal of beauty, truth, and love" (Dowden, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, II, 378). Rapt away by his feelings, Shelley wrote this long and ardent poem. Presently, however, disillusionment set in, and he remarked bitterly that "the person whom it celebrates was a cloud instead of a Juno. . . . It is an idealized history of my life and feelings. I think one is always in love with something or other; the error and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal." This yearning for the eternal conceived as perfect beauty,

"The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow,"

is also the theme of the brief preceding poem, "To" (page 208), written in

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In "Epipsychidion," the two types of love are not differentiated or reconciled, any more than they were in Shelley's experience, but mingled, sometimes confusedly. Natural love and ideal love become one, the former disappearing as such, for, as Shelley said in regard to the poem, "You might as well go to a gin-shop for a leg of mutton, as expect anything human or earthly from me." Earthly associations he reduced further by publishing the poem anonymously and by prefixing the following remarks: "The Writer of the following lines died at Florence, as he was

preparing for a voyage to one of the wildest of the Sporades, which he had bought, and where he had fitted up the ruins of an old building, and where it was his hope to have realised a scheme of life suited perhaps to that happier and better world of which he is now an inhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. His life was singular; less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it, than the ideal tinge which it received from his own character and feelings. The present Poem, like the Vita Nuova of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter-of-fact history of the circumstances to which it relates; and to a certain other class it must ever remain incomprehensible, from a defect of common organ of perception for the ideas of which it treats.' (208.) 1-2. that orphan weepest on: Shortly after Mary Shelley's birth, her mother died. "The name" is Shelley.

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9-12. This song etc.: alluding to the old fable of the nightingale who loved a rose and remained faithful to its thorny bush in autumn when the flower had faded. 21-24. Seraph of Heaven! etc.: The particular woman is here, and often in the poem, symbolic of a love and beauty more than earthly. Shelley has more or less in mind the idealism of Platonic philosophers and poets. For a satirical treatment of "Platonic love," see Byron's "Don Juan," Canto Second, stanza CCXII ff. (text, page 165; notes, page 681), written a year or so before the present poem. (209.) 42. Youth's vision etc.: See, for instance, "To Mary," stanzas VI, XI (pages 177, 178).

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glow around her cheeks and out to her very finger-tips, flowing continuously with her blood. They suggest, and pass insensibly into, a vision of the Supreme Beauty.

(210.) 117. third sphere: Venus, the third sphere from the earth in the old astronomy. The goddess, he conceives, has assumed "mortal shape" and left her sphere "pilotless."

(211.) 169-173. Narrow The heart etc.: See note on "To the Moon" (page 688, above).

190 ff. There was a Being etc.: A vision of her is given in "Alastor," written six years earlier. See also "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," stanzas v-vi (pages 175-176).

(212.) 220-224. like a dizzy moth etc.: Cf. line 53, above; and the preceding poem, line 13 (page 208).

240. sightless: invisible. (213.) 277. One stood: alluding to his wife, Mary.

321. obscure forest: See line (214.) 345. Twin Spheres: Cf. lin 48, 279-280.

368. Comet: This wild star of love (whomever it may represent) is now to become the quiet evening star (line 374). The "heart" (line 369) is Shelley's.

374. folding-star: the evening star that appears at the time for folding the sheep.

(215.) 404. he or they: Death, air, or lightning.

412. halcyons: kingfishers, which, according to ancient fable, nested upon the sea in the winter season, tranquillizing the waters while they brooded.

(216.) 477-482. Yet, like a buried lamp etc.: This is an expansion of lines 453456. Compare lines 77-79, 102-104.

507. Parian floors: floors of beautiful marble, such as the ancients quarried on the island of Paros. (217.) 538-540. Let us

inseparable,

one: Cf. lines 477-482, and the note, above. For the whole idea of union with nature, in life and in death, compare Byron's "Childe Harold," Canto Third, stanzas LXXII-XC (pages 112-115).

546-572. Or linger where etc.: This Arcadian love-scene on the shore re

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160. brere: briar.

167-168. in the stream

softer light: In the life-giving vapors of the spring air (cf. line 164), the lights of the sky have lost their hard, wintry glitter. (222.) 186. who lends what life must borrow: i.e., a little time for living.

191-196. Wake thou etc.: See lines 12-16, above.

(223.) 250 The Pythian of the age: Byron is compared with Apollo, named Pythian because he slew the Python, a serpent that delivered oracles. Byron's "arrow" was his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

262. shepherds: the poet friends of Keats. The image is familiar in pastoral verse, e.g., Milton's "Lycidas."

264. The Pilgrim of Eternity: Byron (alluding to "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage").

268. Ierne: Ireland; the reference is to Thomas Moore.

271. one frail form: In this and the three following stanzas, Shelley pre- the sents the spirit of his own poetry, poetry of one ardently thirsting for beauty, yet "Girt round with weakness," a phantom in his solitude and unrelation with actual life.

(223.) 276. Acta on-like: As Acteon, having seen the goddess Diana in her bath, was turned into a stag and torn by his own dogs, so Shelley had seen the "awful Loveliness" and had spent his life in a self-consuming pursuit of it.

280. pard-like: leopard-like. (224.) 298. partial moan: affectionate sorrow for one in whose fate he wept his own (line 300).

312. he: Leigh Hunt, who early befriended Keats. In some respects the passage fits better Joseph Severn, whose self-sacrificing attendance upon the stricken poet was, however, unknown to Shelley when he wrote this poem.

319. nameless worm: See note to line 152, above.

(225.) 345-351. 'Tis we etc.: We sleep, because we fight madly, as in nightmare, with ills that are spiritually unreal; we decay, because we are ever consumed by strong passions or numberless yearnings.

362-387. Thou young Dawn etc.: This passage gives the antithesis for lines 120-180, and repeats a number of details, with change of form and purport.

366. Cease, ye faint flowers: Cf. lines 140-144.

375-387. where'er that Power may move etc.: For previous passages concerning this all-embracing power or spirit, see note to page 217, line 538, above. (226.) 392-396. When lofty thought etc.: Cf. "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," lines 49-52, page 175, above.

399. Chatterton: See note to page 30, lines 43-44, above.

401. Sidney: Sir Philip Sidney, who, fatally wounded on the field of battle, died at the age of thirty-two.

404. Lucan: the Roman poet, who, condemned to death, ended his own life at the age of twenty-six.

406-409. And many more dazzling immortality: Though the world scarcely remembers them, the good that was in them lives on, in the depths of the Spirit beyond the reach of thought (line 398), and thence exerts a continual effect upon the world: "transmitted effluence" recalls and epitomizes the thought of lines 380-396.

418-421. As from a centre etc.:

Realize the comprehensiveness of the spirit that lives in you and nature (cf. lines 380 ff.), in contrast with the smallness of your everyday personality.

424-495. Or go to Rome etc.: If you cannot live in hopeful thought (see the preceding stanza), seek death with Adonais (lines 457-459). For death means a complete union with the Spirit (lines 460-465) of which Adonais is now a part (lines 476, 494).

425. 'Tis naught: It is no added glory to him.

(227.) 444. one keen pyramid: the tomb of Cestius, under which, as Shelley says in the preface, Keats was buried, "in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants" of Rome. - The grave of Shelley's child, William, was also there, and perhaps is alluded to in lines 453-455

460-464. The One - to fragments: For "the One" and "the many' stanzas XLII-XLIII and LIV. But the poet emphasizes, exceptionally, peace and elevation of the One, inste its "plastic stress" (line 381).

(228.) 488-490. my spirit's bark the tempest given: Shelley means that both his aspirations and his troubles have been beyond the experience of the conventional crowd; cf. Byron's "Childe Harold," Canto Third, lines 710-715 (page 113).

Choruses from HELLAS

Somewhat as the earlier poets-Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey had heralded the French Revolution as the beginning of a new era in civilization, Shelley regarded the Greek war of independence from the Turks as prophetic of a Golden Age of freedom and love. Byron's enthusiasm for the cause of freedom (without emphasis on love) and his connection with the Greek war, have already been made clear (biography, page 675; and his poems. "The Prisoner of Chillon," "Isles of Greece," etc.).

38, 40, 41. were: would be.

41-45. If Liberty etc.: Supply "to" before "life," "hope," "truth," "love." The idea is similar to that of "Political Greatness," lines 1-6 (page 207).

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