ABSTRACT

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was one of the major Romantic poets, and wrote what is critically recognised as some of the finest lyric poetry in the English language. This is the first volume of the five-volume The Poems of Shelley, which presents all of Shelley’s poems in chronological order and with full annotation. Date and circumstances of composition are provided for each poem and all manuscript and printed sources relevant to establishing an authoritative text are freshly examined and assessed. Headnotes and footnotes supply the personal, literary, historical and scientific information necessary to an informed reading of Shelley’s varied and allusive verse.

The present volume includes the 'Esdaile' poems, which only entered the public domain in the 1950s, printed in chronological order and integrated with the rest of Shelley's early output, and Queen Mab, the first of Shelley’s major poems, together with its extensive prose notes. The seminal Alastor volume is placed in the detailed context of Shelley’s overall poetic development. The ‘Scrope Davies’ notebook, only discovered in 1976, furnishes two otherwise unknown sonnets as well as alternative versions of ‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’ and ‘Mont Blanc’, which significantly influence our understanding of these important poems.

This first volume contains new datings, and makes numerous corrections to long-established errors and misunderstandings in the transmission of Shelley's work. Its annotations and headnotes provide new perspectives on Shelley's literary, philosophical and political development The volumes of The Poems of Shelley form the most comprehensive edition of Shelley's poetry available to students and scholars.

part |583 pages

The Poems

chapter 1|1 pages

‘A Cat in distress'

chapter 2|2 pages

Written in Very Early Youth

chapter 3|3 pages

Sadak the Wanderer. A Fragment

chapter 4|2 pages

To the Moonbeam

chapter 5|1 pages

Song. Translated from the German

chapter 6|2 pages

The Irishman's Song

chapter 7|13 pages

Henry and Louisa

chapter 8|3 pages

Revenge

chapter 9|1 pages

Song

chapter 10|8 pages

Ghasta; or the Avenging Demon!!!

chapter 12|1 pages

Olympia

chapter 13|1 pages

The Revenge

chapter 14|2 pages

February 28th 1805: To St Irvyne

chapter 15|1 pages

Song

chapter 17|2 pages

‘How eloquent are eyes!'

chapter 18|2 pages

‘Hopes that bud in youthful breasts'

chapter 19|1 pages

Song: Despair

chapter 20|3 pages

‘Cold are the blasts'

chapter 21|1 pages

Song. Translated from the Italian

chapter 22|1 pages

Fragment, or the Triumph of Conscience

chapter 23|1 pages

Song: Sorrow

chapter 24|1 pages

Song: Hope

chapter 25|1 pages

Song: To——

chapter 26|1 pages

Song: To ——

chapter 27|2 pages

Song: ‘How stern are the woes'

chapter 28|1 pages

Song: ‘Ah! faint are her limbs'

chapter 29|1 pages

‘Late was the night'

chapter 30|2 pages

‘Ghosts of the dead!'

chapter 31|3 pages

Ballad: ‘The death-bell beats!'

chapter 32|4 pages

‘Ambition, power, and avarice'

chapter 34|1 pages

Despair

chapter 35|2 pages

Fragment

chapter 36|2 pages

The Spectral Horseman

chapter 37|1 pages

Melody to a Scene of Former Times

chapter 38|2 pages

To Mary-I

chapter 39|1 pages

To Mary-II

chapter 40|1 pages

To Mary who died in this opinion

chapter 41|2 pages

To Mary-III

chapter 42|1 pages

To the Lover of Mary

chapter 43|3 pages

To Death

chapter 44|3 pages

To the Emperors of Russia and Austria

chapter 45|2 pages

To Liberty

chapter 46|1 pages

The Solitary

chapter 47|3 pages

The Monarch's Funeral: An Anticipation

chapter 48|3 pages

The Wandering Jew's Soliloquy

chapter 49|2 pages

‘I will kneel at thine altar'

chapter 51|3 pages

Fragment of a Poem

chapter 52|2 pages

A Translation of the Marseillaise Hymn

chapter 53|2 pages

‘Dares the llama'

chapter 54|3 pages

A Dialogue

chapter 55|1 pages

‘Why is it said thou canst but live'

chapter 56|3 pages

Letter to Edward Fergus Graham

chapter 57|2 pages

Second Letter to Edward Fergus Graham

chapter 58|6 pages

Zeinab and Kathema

chapter 59|2 pages

‘Sweet star!'

chapter 60|1 pages

On a Fête at Carlton House

chapter 61|2 pages

Written at Cwm Elan

chapter 62|2 pages

‘Death-spurning rocks!'

chapter 63|2 pages

To Harriet *********

chapter 64|2 pages

To November

chapter 66|2 pages

Passion: To the [Woody Nightshade]

chapter 67|2 pages

A Winter's Day

chapter 69|3 pages

A Sabbath Walk

chapter 70|1 pages

The Crisis

chapter 71|2 pages

The Tombs

chapter 72|2 pages

On Robert Emmet's Tomb

chapter 73|2 pages

To the Republicans of North America

chapter 74|2 pages

‘The Ocean rolls between us'

chapter 75|1 pages

‘Bear witness, Erin!'

chapter 76|5 pages

Falsehood and Vice: A Dialogue

chapter 77|2 pages

Written on a Beautiful Day in Spring

chapter 78|2 pages

‘Dark Spirit of the desert rude'

chapter 79|7 pages

The Retrospect: Cwm Elan 1812

chapter 80|1 pages

To Harriet

chapter 81|1 pages

Mary to the Sea-Wind

chapter 83|8 pages

The Devil's Walk: A Ballad

chapter 85|1 pages

Sonnet: To a Balloon, Laden with Knowledge

chapter 86|4 pages

A Retrospect of Times of Old

chapter 87|2 pages

To Harriet

chapter 90|4 pages

On Leaving London for Wales

chapter 91|4 pages

To Harriet

chapter 92|159 pages

Queen Mab

chapter 94|3 pages

To Harriet

chapter 95|1 pages

To Ianthe

chapter 96|2 pages

Evening: To Harriet

chapter 97|2 pages

To Harriet

chapter 98|1 pages

Stanza, written at Bracknell

chapter 99|3 pages

Lines: ‘That moment is gone for ever'

chapter 101|1 pages

Stanzas.-April, 1814

chapter 102|3 pages

‘Mine eyes were dim with tears unshed'

chapter 103|1 pages

‘Dear Home …'

chapter 104|1 pages

‘On her hind paws the Dormouse stood'

chapter 105|1 pages

‘What Mary is …'

chapter 106|6 pages

‘O! there are spirits of the air'

chapter 110|1 pages

Guido Cavalcanti to Dante Alighieri

chapter 111|1 pages

To Wordsworth

chapter 113|2 pages

Mutability

chapter 114|31 pages

114 Alas tor; or, The Spirit of Solitude

chapter 115|20 pages

The Daemon of the World

chapter 116|3 pages

The Sunset

chapter 117|4 pages

The Sunset

chapter 118|2 pages

Lines to Leigh Hunt

chapter 119|1 pages

‘A shovel of his ashes'

chapter 120|1 pages

To Laughter

chapter 121|1 pages

‘Upon the wandering winds'

chapter 122|1 pages

‘O that a chariot of cloud were mine'

chapter 123|10 pages

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

chapter 125|1 pages

‘My thoughts arise and fade in solitude'

chapter 126|3 pages

‘Her voice did quiver as we parted'

chapter 127|2 pages

To [ ]

chapter 128|2 pages

To[ ]

chapter 129|1 pages

‘They die-the dead return not'

chapter 130|1 pages

A Hate-Song (improvised)

chapter 131|4 pages

To the [Lord Chancellor]

chapter 132|2 pages

‘Maiden / Thy delightful eyne'

chapter 133|1 pages

‘In the yellow western sky'

chapter 134|1 pages

To Wilson S_____th

chapter 135|3 pages

Otho

chapter 136|2 pages

‘Mighty Eagle, thou that soarest'

chapter 137|2 pages

‘I visit thee but thou art sadly changed'

chapter 138|5 pages

Marianne's Dream

chapter 141|2 pages

‘Shapes about my steps assemble'