Under FRAGMENTS are included, with a few exceptions, incomplete poems, sketches and cancelled passages, and those more inchoate passages which have been recovered from Shelley's notebooks. The exceptions are the Prologue to Hellas, which has been put with that drama, A Vision of the Sea, published by Shelley with the poems accompanying Prometheus Unbound, and five pieces, To Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, 1814, Death, An Allegory, On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci, and Evening, Pisa, which, though lacking a word or a line, are in effect complete. The order of the FRAGMENTS is not strictly chronological in the first division, and is altogether arbitrary in the second. The dates assigned in the footnotes are those generally accepted, but, as a rule, they are conjectural and approximate only, not exact. The text is derived from the editions of Mrs. Shelley, the studies of Dr. Garnett in the Boscombe MSS., published by him mainly in Relics of Shelley, 1862, or by Rossetti, 1870, and Rossetti's own studies both in the same and other MSS. of which the results were given in his edition. A few pieces, originally published elsewhere, were also gathered by Rossetti and Forman in their editions, and Forman was enabled to add something more from independent MSS. The original publication of each piece is mentioned in the footnotes. THE DEMON OF THE WORLD Nec tantum prodere vati, Quantum scire licet. Venit ætas omnis in unam I How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep! One, pale as yonder wan and hornèd moon, The other, glowing like the vital morn It breathes over the world; Yet both so passing strange and wonderful! Hath then the iron-sceptred Skeleton, The Damon of the World. Published with Alastor, 1816. On which the lightest heart might moralize? Have charmed their nurse, coy Silence, near her lids To watch their own repose ? Will they, when morning's beam Flows through those wells of light, Seek far from noise and day some western cave, Where woods and streams with soft and pausing winds A lulling murmur weave? Ianthe doth not sleep The dreamless sleep of death; With interchange of hues mock the broad moon, Without assured reward. Her dewy eyes are closed; On their translucent lids, whose texture fine Scarce hides the dark blue orbs that burn below With unapparent fire, The baby Sleep is pillowed; Her golden tresses shade The bosom's stainless pride, Twining like tendrils of the parasite Hark! whence that rushing sound? When west winds sigh and evening waves respond In whispers from the shore: 'Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes Which from the unseen lyres of dells and The genii of the breezes sweep. Floating on waves of music and of light groves Its shape reposed within; slight as some cloud Bright as that fibrous woof when stars endue Four shapeless shadows bright and beautiful The Dæmon, leaning from the ethereal car, Human eye hath ne'er beheld A shape so wild, so bright, so beautiful, Waving a starry wand, Hung like a mist of light. Such sounds as breathed around like odorous winds Of wakening spring arose, Filling the chamber and the moonlight sky. "Maiden, the world's supremest spirit Folds all thy memory doth inherit |