The Triumph of Life
The Triumph of Life
Original Text
The Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts, ed. Donald H. Reiman, Vol. I (New York: Garland, 1986); and Shelley's The Triumph of Life: A Critical Study (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965). Text courtesy of Donald H. Reiman. A corrupt version of the poem appears in Percy Bysshe Shelley, Posthumous Poems, ed. Mrs. Shelley (1824). Cf. Posthumous Poems of Shelley. Mary Shelley's Fair Copy Book, Bodleian MS. Shelley Adds. d. 9, Collated with the Holographs and the Printed Texts, ed. Irving Massey (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1969). PR 5403 M27 Robarts Library. Thanks to Professor Emerita Nora Crook for assistance in this note.
2Of glory & of good, the Sun sprang forth
3Rejoicing in his splendour, & the mask
4Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.
5The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
6Flamed above crimson clouds, & at the birth
7Of light, the Ocean's orison arose
8To which the birds tempered their matin lay,
9All flowers in field or forest which unclose
10Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
11Swinging their censers in the element,
12With orient incense lit by the new ray
13Burned slow & inconsumably, & sent
14Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,
15And in succession due, did Continent,
16Isle, Ocean, & all things that in them wear
17The form & character of mortal mould
18Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear
19Their portion of the toil which he of old
20Took as his own & then imposed on them;
21But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
22Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
23The cone of night, now they were laid asleep,
24Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
25Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep
26Of a green Apennine: before me fled
27The night; behind me rose the day; the Deep
28Was at my feet, & Heaven above my head
29When a strange trance over my fancy grew
30Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
31Was so transparent that the scene came through
32As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
33O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew
34That I had felt the freshness of that dawn,
35Bathed in the same cold dew my brow & hair
36And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
37Under the self same bough, & heard as there
38The birds, the fountains & the Ocean hold
39Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air.
40And then a Vision on my brain was rolled.
41As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay
42This was the tenour of my waking dream.
43Methought I sate beside a public way
44Thick strewn with summer dust, & a great stream
45Of people there was hurrying to & fro
46Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,
47All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
48Whither he went, or whence he came, or why
49He made one of the multitude, yet so
50Was borne amid the crowd as through the sky
51One of the million leaves of summer's bier.--
52Old age & youth, manhood & infancy,
53Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear,
54Some flying from the thing they feared & some
55Seeking the object of another's fear,
56And others as with steps towards the tomb
57Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,
58And others mournfully within the gloom
59Of their own shadow walked, and called it death ...
60And some fled from it as it were a ghost,
61Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath.
62But more with motions which each other crost
63Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw
64Or birds within the noonday ether lost,
65Upon that path where flowers never grew;
66And weary with vain toil & faint for thirst
67Heard not the fountains whose melodious dew
68Out of their mossy cells forever burst
69Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
70Of grassy paths, & wood lawns interspersed
71With overarching elms & caverns cold,
72And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they
73Pursued their serious folly as of old ....
74And as I gazed methought that in the way
75The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June
76When the South wind shakes the extinguished day.--
77And a cold glare, intenser than the noon
78But icy cold, obscured with [[blank]] light
79The Sun as he the stars. Like the young moon
80When on the sunlit limits of the night
81Her white shell trembles amid crimson air
82And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might
83Doth, as a herald of its coming, bear
84The ghost of her dead Mother, whose dim form
85Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair,
86So came a chariot on the silent storm
87Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape
88So sate within as one whom years deform
89Beneath a dusky hood & double cape
90Crouching within the shadow of a tomb,
91And o'er what seemed the head, a cloud like crape,
92Was bent a dun & faint etherial gloom
93Tempering the light; upon the chariot's beam
94A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume
95The guidance of that wonder-winged team.
96The Shapes which drew it in thick lightnings
97Were lost: I heard alone on the air's soft stream
98The music of their ever moving wings.
99All the four faces of that charioteer
100Had their eyes banded . . . little profit brings
101Speed in the van & blindness in the rear,
102Nor then avail the beams that quench the Sun
103Or that his banded eyes could pierce the sphere
104Of all that is, has been, or will be done.--
105So ill was the car guided, but it past
106With solemn speed majestically on . . .
107The crowd gave way, & I arose aghast,
108Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance,
109And saw like clouds upon the thunder blast
110The million with fierce song and maniac dance
111Raging around; such seemed the jubilee
112As when to greet some conqueror's advance
113Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea
114From senatehouse & prison & theatre
115When Freedom left those who upon the free
116Had bound a yoke which soon they stooped to bear.
117Nor wanted here the true similitude
118Of a triumphal pageant, for where'er
119The chariot rolled a captive multitude
120Was driven; althose who had grown old in power
121Or misery,--all who have their age subdued,
122By action or by suffering, and whose hour
123Was drained to its last sand in weal or woe,
124So that the trunk survived both fruit & flower;
125All those whose fame or infamy must grow
126Till the great winter lay the form & name
127Of their own earth with them forever low,
128All but the sacred few who could not tame
129Their spirits to the Conqueror, but as soon
130As they had touched the world with living flame
131Fled back like eagles to their native noon,
132Or those who put aside the diadem
133Of earthly thrones or gems, till the last one
135Were neither mid the mighty captives seen
136Nor mid the ribald crowd that followed them
137Or fled before . . Now swift, fierce & obscene
138The wild dance maddens in the van, & those
139Who lead it, fleet as shadows on the green,
140Outspeed the chariot & without repose
141Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
142To savage music .... Wilder as it grows,
143They, tortured by the agonizing pleasure,
144Convulsed & on the rapid whirlwinds spun
145Of that fierce spirit, whose unholy leisure
146Was soothed by mischief since the world begun,
147Throw back their heads & loose their streaming hair,
148And in their dance round her who dims the Sun
149Maidens & youths fling their wild arms in air
150As their feet twinkle; they recede, and now
151Bending within each other's atmosphere
152Kindle invisibly; and as they glow
153Like moths by light attracted & repelled,
154Oft to new bright destruction come & go.
155Till like two clouds into one vale impelled
156That shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle
157And die in rain,--the fiery band which held
158Their natures, snaps . . . ere the shock cease to tingle
159One falls and then another in the path
160Senseless, nor is the desolation single,
161Yet ere I can say where the chariot hath
162Past over them; nor other trace I find
163But as of foam after the Ocean's wrath
164Is spent upon the desert shore.--Behind,
165Old men, and women foully disarrayed
166Shake their grey hair in the insulting wind,
167Limp in the dance & strain, with limbs decayed,
168Seeking to reach the light which leaves them still
169Farther behind & deeper in the shade.
170But not the less with impotence of will
171They wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose
172Round them & round each other, and fulfill
173Their work and to the dust whence they arose
174Sink & corruption veils them as they lie
175And frost in these performs what fire in those.
176Struck to the heart by this sad pageantry,
177Half to myself I said, "And what is this?
178Whose shape is that within the car? & why"-
179I would have added--"is all here amiss?"
180But a voice answered . . "Life" . . . I turned & knew
181(O Heaven have mercy on such wretchedness!)
182That what I thought was an old root which grew
183To strange distortion out of the hill side
184Was indeed one of that deluded crew,
185And that the grass which methought hung so wide
186And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,
187And that the holes it vainly sought to hide
188Were or had been eyes.--"lf thou canst forbear
189To join the dance, which I had well forborne,"
191"I will now tell that which to this deep scorn
192Led me & my companions, and relate
193The progress of the pageant since the morn;
194"If thirst of knowledge doth not thus abate,
195Follow it even to the night, but I
196Am weary" . . . Then like one who with the weight
197Of his own words is staggered, wearily
198He paused, and ere he could resume, I cried,
199"First who art thou?" . . . "Before thy memory
200"I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did, & died,
201And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit
202Earth had with purer nutriment supplied
203"Corruption would not now thus much inherit
205Stained that within which still disdains to wear it.--
206"If I have been extinguished, yet there rise
207A thousand beacons from the spark I bore."--
208"And who are those chained to the car?" "The Wise,
209"The great, the unforgotten: they who wore
210Mitres & helms & crowns, or wreathes of light,
211Signs of thought's empire over thought; their lore
212"Taught them not this--to know themselves; their might
213Could not repress the mutiny within,
214And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night
215"Caught them ere evening." "Who is he with chin
216Upon his breast and hands crost on his chain?"
217"The Child of a fierce hour; he sought to win
218"The world, and lost all it did contain
219Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; & more
220Of fame & peace than Virtue's self can gain
221"Without the opportunity which bore
222Him on its eagle's pinion to the peak
223From which a thousand climbers have before
224"Fall'n as Napoleon fell."--I felt my cheek
225Alter to see the great form pass away
226Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak
227That every pigmy kicked it as it lay--
228And much I grieved to think how power & will
229In opposition rule our mortal day--
230And why God made irreconcilable
231Good & the means of good; and for despair
232I half disdained mine eye's desire to fill
233With the spent vision of the times that were
234And scarce have ceased to be . . . "Dost thou behold,"
235Said then my guide, "those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire,
237Chained hoary anarch, demagogue & sage
238Whose name the fresh world thinks already old--
239"For in the battle Life & they did wage
240She remained conqueror--I was overcome
241By my own heart alone, which neither age
242"Nor tears nor infamy nor now the tomb
243Could temper to its object."--"Let them pass"--
244I cried--"the world & its mysterious doom
245"Is not so much more glorious than it was
246That I desire to worship those who drew
247New figures on its false & fragile glass
248"As the old faded."--"Figures ever new
249Rise on the bubble, paint them how you may;
250We have but thrown, as those before us threw,
251"Our shadows on it as it past away.
252But mark, how chained to the triumphal chair
253The mighty phantoms of an elder day--
255Expiates the joy & woe his master knew not;
256That star that ruled his doom was far too fair--
257"And Life, where long that flower of Heaven grew not,
258Conquered the heart by love which gold or pain
259Or age or sloth or slavery could subdue not--
260"And near [[blank]] walk the [[blank]] twain,
262Followed as tame as vulture in a chain.--
263"The world was darkened beneath either pinion
264Of him whom from the flock of conquerors
265Fame singled as her thunderbearing minion;
266"The other long outlived both woes & wars,
267Throned in new thoughts of men, and still had kept
268The jealous keys of truth's eternal doors
269"If Bacon's spirit [[blank]] had not leapt
270Like lightning out of darkness; he compelled
271The Proteus shape of Nature's as it slept
272"To wake & to unbar the caves that held
273The treasure of the secrets of its reign--
274See the great bards of old who inly quelled
275"The passions which they sung, as by their strain
276May well be known: their living melody
277Tempers its own contagion to the vein
278"Of those who are infected with it--I
279Have suffered what I wrote, or viler pain!--
280"And so my words were seeds of misery--
281Even as the deeds of others."--"Not as theirs,"
282I said--he pointed to a company
284Of Caesar's crime from him to Constantine,
285The Anarchs old whose force & murderous snares
286Had founded many a sceptre bearing line
287And spread the plague of blood & gold abroad,
289Who rose like shadows between Man & god
290Till that eclipse, still hanging under Heaven,
291Was worshipped by the world o'er which they strode
292For the true Sun it quenched.--"Their power was given
293But to destroy," replied the leader--"I
294Am one of those who have created, even
295"If it be but a world of agony."--
296"Whence camest thou & whither goest thou?
297How did thy course begin," I said, "& why?
298"Mine eyes are sick of this perpetual flow
299Of people, & my heart of one sad thought.--
300Speak."--"Whence I came, partly I seem to know,
301"And how & by what paths I have been brought
302To this dread pass, methinks even thou mayst guess;
303Why this should be my mind can compass not;
304"Whither the conqueror hurries me still less.
305But follow thou, & from spectator turn
306Actor or victim in this wretchedness,
307"And what thou wouldst be taught I then may learn
308From thee.--Now listen . . . In the April prime
309When all the forest tops began to burn
310"With kindling green, touched by the azure clime
311Of the young year, I found myself asleep
312Under a mountain which from unknown time
313"Had yawned into a cavern high & deep,
314And from it came a gentle rivulet
315Whose water like clear air in its calm sweep
316"Bent the soft grass & kept for ever wet
317The stems of the sweet flowers, and filled the grove
318With sound which all who hear must needs forget
319"All pleasure & all pain, all hate & love,
320Which they had known before that hour of rest:
321A sleeping mother then would dream not of
322"The only child who died upon her breast
323At eventide, a king would mourn no more
324The crown of which his brow was dispossest
325"When the sun lingered o'er the Ocean floor
326To gild his rival's new prosperity.--
327Thou wouldst forget thus vainly to deplore
328"Ills, which if ills, can find no cure from thee,
329The thought of which no other sleep will quell
330Nor other music blot from memory--
331"So sweet & deep is the oblivious spell.--
332Whether my life had been before that sleep
333The Heaven which I imagine, or a Hell
334"Like this harsh world in which I wake to weep,
335I know not. I arose & for a space
336The scene of woods & waters seemed to keep,
337"Though it was now broad day, a gentle trace
338Of light diviner than the common Sun
339Sheds on the common Earth, but all the place
340"Was filled with many sounds woven into one
341Oblivious melody, confusing sense
342Amid the gliding waves & shadows dun;
343"And as I looked the bright omnipresence
344Of morning through the orient cavern flowed,
345And the Sun's image radiantly intense
346"Burned on the waters of the well that glowed
347Like gold, and threaded all the forest maze
348With winding paths of emerald fire--there stood
349"Amid the sun, as he amid the blaze
350Of his own glory, on the vibrating
351Floor of the fountain, paved with flashing rays,
352"A shape all light, which with one hand did fling
353Dew on the earth, as if she were the Dawn
354Whose invisible rain forever seemed to sing
355"A silver music on the mossy lawn,
356And still before her on the dusky grass
357Iris her many coloured scarf had drawn.--
358"In her right hand she bore a crystal glass
359Mantling with bright Nepenthe;--the fierce splendour
360Fell from her as she moved under the mass
361"Of the deep cavern, & with palms so tender
362Their tread broke not the mirror of its billow,
363Glided along the river, and did bend her
364"Head under the dark boughs, till like a willow
365Her fair hair swept the bosom of the stream
366That whispered with delight to be their pillow.--
367"As one enamoured is upborne in dream
368O'er lily-paven lakes mid silver mist
369To wondrous music, so this shape might seem
370"Partly to tread the waves with feet which kist
371The dancing foam, partly to glide along
372The airs that roughened the moist amethyst,
373"Or the slant morning beams that fell among
374The trees, or the soft shadows of the trees;
375And her feet ever to the ceaseless song
376"Of leaves & winds & waves & birds & bees
377And falling drops moved in a measure new
378Yet sweet, as on the summer evening breeze
379"Up from the lake a shape of golden dew
380Between two rocks, athwart the rising moon,
381Moves up the east, where eagle never flew.--
382"And still her feet, no less than the sweet tune
383To which they moved, seemed as they moved, to blot
384The thoughts of him who gazed on them, & soon
385"All that was seemed as if it had been not,
386As if the gazer's mind was strewn beneath
387Her feet like embers, & she, thought by thought,
388"Trampled its fires into the dust of death,
389As Day upon the threshold of the east
390Treads out the lamps of night, until the breath
391"Of darkness reillumines even the least
392Of heaven's living eyes--like day she came,
393Making the night a dream; and ere she ceased
394"To move, as one between desire and shame
395Suspended, I said--'If, as it doth seem,
396Thou comest from the realm without a name,
397" 'Into this valley of perpetual dream,
398Shew whence I came, and where I am, and why--
399Pass not away upon the passing stream.'
400" 'Arise and quench thy thirst,' was her reply,
401And as a shut lily, stricken by the wand
402Of dewy morning's vital alchemy,
403"I rose; and, bending at her sweet command,
404Touched with faint lips the cup she raised,
405And suddenly my brain became as sand
406"Where the first wave had more than half erased
407The track of deer on desert Labrador,
408Whilst the fierce wolf from which they fled amazed
409"Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore
410Until the second bursts--so on my sight
411Burst a new Vision never seen before.--
412"And the fair shape waned in the coming light
413As veil by veil the silent splendour drops
415"Of sunrise ere it strike the mountain tops--
416And as the presence of that fairest planet
417Although unseen is felt by one who hopes
418"That his day's path may end as he began it
419In that star's smile, whose light is like the scent
420Of a jonquil when evening breezes fan it,
422The Brescian shepherd breathes, or the caress
423That turned his weary slumber to content.--
424"So knew I in that light's severe excess
425The presence of that shape which on the stream
426Moved, as I moved along the wilderness,
427"More dimly than a day appearing dream,
428The ghost of a forgotten form of sleep
429A light from Heaven whose half extinguished beam
430"Through the sick day in which we wake to weep
431Glimmers, forever sought, forever lost.--
432So did that shape its obscure tenour keep
433"Beside my path, as silent as a ghost;
434But the new Vision, and its cold bright car,
435With savage music, stunning music, crost
436"The forest, and as if from some dread war
437Triumphantly returning, the loud million
438Fiercely extolled the fortune of her star.--
440And green & azure plumes of Iris had
441Built high over her wind-winged pavilion,
442"And underneath aetherial glory clad
443The wilderness, and far before her flew
444The tempest of the splendour which forbade
445Shadow to fall from leaf or stone;--the crew
446Seemed in that light like atomies that dance
447Within a sunbeam.--Some upon the new
448"Embroidery of flowers that did enhance
449The grassy vesture of the desart, played,
450Forgetful of the chariot's swift advance;
451"Others stood gazing till within the shade
452Of the great mountain its light left them dim.--
453Others outspeeded it, and others made
454"Circles around it like the clouds that swim
455Round the high moon in a bright sea of air,
456And more did follow, with exulting hymn,
457"The chariot & the captives fettered there,
458But all like bubbles on an eddying flood
459Fell into the same track at last & were
460"Borne onward.--I among the multitude
461Was swept; me sweetest flowers delayed not long,
462Me not the shadow nor the solitude,
463"Me not the falling stream's Lethean song,
464Me, not the phantom of that early form
465Which moved upon its motion,--but among
466"The thickest billows of the living storm
467I plunged, and bared my bosom to the clime
468Of that cold light, whose airs too soon deform.--
469"Before the chariot had begun to climb
470The opposing steep of that mysterious dell,
471Behold a wonder worthy of the rhyme
473Through every Paradise & through all glory
474Love led serene, & who returned to tell
475"In words of hate & awe the wondrous story
476How all things are transfigured, except Love;
477For deaf as is a sea which wrath makes hoary
478"The world can hear not the sweet notes that move
479The sphere whose light is melody to lovers---
480A wonder worthy of his rhyme--the grove
481"Grew dense with shadows to its inmost covers,
482The earth was grey with phantoms, & the air
483Was peopled with dim forms, as when there hovers
484"A flock of vampire-bats before the glare
485Of the tropic sun, bring ere evening
486Strange night upon some Indian isle,--thus were
487"Phantoms diffused around, & some did fling
488Shadows of shadows, yet unlike themselves,
489Behind them, some like eaglets on the wing
490"Were lost in the white blaze, others like elves
491Danced in a thousand unimagined shapes
492Upon the sunny streams & grassy shelves;
493"And others sate chattering like restless apes
494On vulgar paws and voluble like fire.
495Some made a cradle of the ermined capes
496"Of kingly mantles, some upon the tiar
497Of pontiffs sate like vultures, others played
498Within the crown which girt with empire
499"A baby's or an idiot's brow, & made
500Their nests in it; the old anatomies
501Sate hatching their bare brood under the shade
502"Of demon wings, and laughed from their dead eyes
503To reassume the delegated power
504Arrayed in which these worms did monarchize
505"Who make this earth their charnel.--Others more
506Humble, like falcons sate upon the fist
507Of common men, and round their heads did soar,
508"Or like small gnats & flies, as thick as mist
509On evening marshes, thronged about the brow
510Of lawyer, statesman, priest & theorist,
511"And others like discoloured flakes of snow
512On fairest bosoms & the sunniest hair
513Fell, and were melted by the youthful glow
514"Which they extinguished; for like tears, they were
515A veil to those from whose faint lids they rained
516In drops of sorrow.--I became aware
517"Of whence those forms proceeded which thus stained
518The track in which we moved; after brief space
519From every form the beauty slowly waned,
520"From every firmest limb & fairest face
521The strength & freshness fell like dust, & left
522The action & the shape without the grace
523"Of life; the marble brow of youth was cleft
524With care, and in the eyes where once hope shone
525Desire like a lioness bereft
526"Of its last cub, glared ere it died; each one
527Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly
528These shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown
529"In Autumn evening from a popular tree--
530Each, like himself & like each other were,
531At first, but soon distorted, seemed to be
532"Obscure clouds moulded by the casual air;
533And of this stuff the car's creative ray
534Wrought all the busy phantoms that were there
535"As the sun shapes the clouds--thus, on the way
536Mask after mask fell from the countenance
537And form of all, and long before the day
538"Was old, the joy which waked like Heaven's glance
539The sleepers in the oblivious valley, died,
540And some grew weary of the ghastly dance
541"And fell, as I have fallen by the way side,
542Those soonest from whose forms most shadows past
543And least of strength & beauty did abide."--
545His eye upon the car which now had rolled
546Onward, as if that look must be the last,
547And answered .... "Happy those for whom the fold
548Of ...
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 forestalled the establishment of an accurate text. Donald H. Reiman resolved these difficulties and accurately edited the poem from a Bodleian Library manuscript in 1965. Every authoritative text of this poem is owing to his edition since that time.
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. Back to Line
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. Back to Line
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. Back to Line
190] Grim Feature: a reminiscence of Paradise Lost, X, 279, where it represents Death and carries the Latin meaning of "factura" or "creature." Back to Line
204] Rousseau. Compare Byron's portrait of Rousseau in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, III, lxxvii-lxxxii. Back to Line
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. Back to Line
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. Back to Line
261] The tutor and his pupil: Aristotle and Alexander the Great. Back to Line
283] 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. Back to Line
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). Back to Line
414] Lucifer: the Morning Star. Back to Line
421] 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). Back to Line
439] Iris: classical goddess of the rainbow. Back to Line
472] Him: Dante in The Divine Comedy. Back to Line
544] Here the MS. breaks off. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1824
RPO poem Editors
M. T. Wilson
RPO Edition
3RP 2.604.
Rhyme
Form