Notes

1] Begun in the spring of 1822, unfinished at the time of Shelley's death on July 8, and first published in Posthumous Poems (1824) from a MS. (now in the Bodleian library), whose corrections, omitted words, passages of unrevised improvisation, difficult hand, and long inaccessibility have so far prevented much certainty in the establishment of a text. The reference to Dante's Divine Comedy in lines 471-76 and to Petrarch's Triumphs in the title (both of which, like The Triumph of Life, are written in terza rima stanzas) suggests two probable models for the poem.

132-34] Mary Shelley's text seems impossible, but no textual authority has been adduced for amending it. Misreading or miswriting of some kind must be responsible for that apparently parallel, but conflicting, pair, "were there" and "were neither." W. M. Rossetti makes some sense out of the passage by amending "or" in 132 to "for" and "were there" in 134 to "whether", and by placing a semi-colon at the end of 131.

134] Of Athens or Jerusalem. Commentators assume that the renouncing figures of which Shelley is thinking are Socrates in Athens and Jesus in Jerusalem. But the corruption of the text here makes any interpretation doubtful.

190] Grim Feature: a reminiscence of Paradise Lost, X, 279, where it represents Death and carries the Latin meaning of "factura" or "creature."

204] Rousseau. Compare Byron's portrait of Rousseau in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, III, lxxvii-lxxxii.

236] Frederick and Paul, Catherine and Leopold: Frederick the Great of Prussia, Czar Paul and Catherine the Great of Russia, and Leopold II of the Holy Roman Empire.

254] Plato. In the lines which follow, Shelley refers to the legend that Plato in his old age fell in love with a boy, whose name, Aster, is Greek for a star as well as for a particular (and short-lived) flower.

261] The tutor and his pupil: Aristotle and Alexander the Great.

283-84] The heirs of Caesar's crime from him to Constantine. Julius Caesar's crime was to undermine the Roman republic and prepare the way for the Roman emperors ("anarch chiefs" in 286), a procession of which up to Constantine Shelley now observes.

288] Gregory and John. "Gregory the Great is appropriate, as the true founder of the independent political power of the papacy. Which of many Johns is involved, there is no way of telling" (H. Bloom).

414] Lucifer: the Morning Star.

421-22] The soft note in which his dear lament the Brescian shepherd breathes. "The favourite song, 'Stanco di pascolar le peccorelle, [being weary of pasturing the little sheep], is a Brescian national air" (Mrs. Shelley's note).

439] Iris: classical goddess of the rainbow.

472] Him: Dante in The Divine Comedy.

544] Here the MS. breaks off.

Other poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley