Notes to The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley | Page 9

from Lucerne, by the Reuss and the Rhine. The
river-navigation enchanted him. In his favourite poem of "Thalaba", his
imagination had been excited by a description of such a voyage. In the
summer of 1815, after a tour along the southern coast of Devonshire
and a visit to Clifton, he rented a house on Bishopsgate Heath, on the
borders of Windsor Forest, where he enjoyed several months of
comparative health and tranquil happiness. The later summer months
were warm and dry. Accompanied by a few friends, he visited the
source of the Thames, making a voyage in a wherry from Windsor to
Crichlade. His beautiful stanzas in the churchyard of Lechlade were
written on that occasion. "Alastor" was composed on his return. He
spent his days under the oak-shades of Windsor Great Park; and the
magnificent woodland was a fitting study to inspire the various
descriptions of forest scenery we find in the poem.
None of Shelley's poems is more characteristic than this. The solemn
spirit that reigns throughout, the worship of the majesty of nature, the
broodings of a poet's heart in solitude--the mingling of the exulting joy
which the various aspects of the visible universe inspires with the sad
and struggling pangs which human passion imparts--give a touching
interest to the whole. The death which he had often contemplated
during the last months as certain and near he here represented in such

colours as had, in his lonely musings, soothed his soul to peace. The
versification sustains the solemn spirit which breathes throughout: it is
peculiarly melodious. The poem ought rather to be considered didactic
than narrative: it was the outpouring of his own emotions, embodied in
the purest form he could conceive, painted in the ideal hues which his
brilliant imagination inspired, and softened by the recent anticipation of
death.
NOTE ON THE "REVOLT OF ISLAM", BY MRS. SHELLEY.
Shelley possessed two remarkable qualities of intellect--a brilliant
imagination, and a logical exactness of reason. His inclinations led him
(he fancied) almost alike to poetry and metaphysical discussions. I say
'he fancied,' because I believe the former to have been paramount, and
that it would have gained the mastery even had he struggled against it.
However, he said that he deliberated at one time whether he should
dedicate himself to poetry or metaphysics; and, resolving on the former,
he educated himself for it, discarding in a great measure his
philosophical pursuits, and engaging himself in the study of the poets
of Greece, Italy, and England. To these may be added a constant
perusal of portions of the old Testament--the Psalms, the Book of Job,
the Prophet Isaiah, and others, the sublime poetry of which filled him
with delight.
As a poet, his intellect and compositions were powerfully influenced by
exterior circumstances, and especially by his place of abode. He was
very fond of travelling, and ill-health increased this restlessness. The
sufferings occasioned by a cold English winter made him pine,
especially when our colder spring arrived, for a more genial climate. In
1816 he again visited Switzerland, and rented a house on the banks of
the Lake of Geneva; and many a day, in cloud or sunshine, was passed
alone in his boat--sailing as the wind listed, or weltering on the calm
waters. The majestic aspect of Nature ministered such thoughts as he
afterwards enwove in verse. His lines on the Bridge of the Arve, and
his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty", were written at this time. Perhaps
during this summer his genius was checked by association with another
poet whose nature was utterly dissimilar to his own, yet who, in the

poem he wrote at that time, gave tokens that he shared for a period the
more abstract and etherealised inspiration of Shelley. The saddest
events awaited his return to England; but such was his fear to wound
the feelings of others that he never expressed the anguish he felt, and
seldom gave vent to the indignation roused by the persecutions he
underwent; while the course of deep unexpressed passion, and the sense
of injury, engendered the desire to embody themselves in forms
defecated of all the weakness and evil which cling to real life.
He chose therefore for his hero a youth nourished in dreams of liberty,
some of whose actions are in direct opposition to the opinions of the
world; but who is animated throughout by an ardent love of virtue, and
a resolution to confer the boons of political and intellectual freedom on
his fellow-creatures. He created for this youth a woman such as he
delighted to imagine--full of enthusiasm for the same objects; and they
both, with will unvanquished, and the deepest sense of the justice of
their cause, met adversity and death. There exists in this poem a
memorial of a friend of his youth.