The Complete Poetical Works, vol 2 | Page 5

[Published in Hunt's "Literary Pocket-Book", 1823, where it is headed
"November, 1815". Reprinted in the "Posthumous Poems", 1824. See
Editor's Note.]
1.
The cold earth slept below,
Above the cold sky shone;
And all
around, with a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow,

The breath of night like death did flow _5 Beneath the sinking moon.

2.
The wintry hedge was black,
The green grass was not seen,
The
birds did rest on the bare thorn's breast,
Whose roots, beside the
pathway track, _10 Had bound their folds o'er many a crack
Which
the frost had made between.
3.
Thine eyes glowed in the glare
Of the moon's dying light;
As a
fen-fire's beam on a sluggish stream _15 Gleams dimly, so the moon
shone there,
And it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair,
That
shook in the wind of night.
4.
The moon made thy lips pale, beloved--
The wind made thy
bosom chill-- _20 The night did shed on thy dear head
Its frozen dew,
and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might
visit thee at will.
NOTE:
_17 raven 1823; tangled 1824.
***
NOTE ON THE EARLY POEMS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
The remainder of Shelley's Poems will be arranged in the order in
which they were written. Of course, mistakes will occur in placing
some of the shorter ones; for, as I have said, many of these were thrown
aside, and I never saw them till I had the misery of looking over his
writings after the hand that traced them was dust; and some were in the
hands of others, and I never saw them till now. The subjects of the
poems are often to me an unerring guide; but on other occasions I can
only guess, by finding them in the pages of the same manuscript book
that contains poems with the date of whose composition I am fully
conversant. In the present arrangement all his poetical translations will
be placed together at the end.
The loss of his early papers prevents my being able to give any of the
poetry of his boyhood. Of the few I give as "Early Poems", the greater
part were published with "Alastor"; some of them were written
previously, some at the same period. The poem beginning 'Oh, there are

spirits in the air' was addressed in idea to Coleridge, whom he never
knew; and at whose character he could only guess imperfectly, through
his writings, and accounts he heard of him from some who knew him
well. He regarded his change of opinions as rather an act of will than
conviction, and believed that in his inner heart he would be haunted by
what Shelley considered the better and holier aspirations of his youth.
The summer evening that suggested to him the poem written in the
churchyard of Lechlade occurred during his voyage up the Thames in
1815. He had been advised by a physician to live as much as possible
in the open air; and a fortnight of a bright warm July was spent in
tracing the Thames to its source. He never spent a season more
tranquilly than the summer of 1815. He had just recovered from a
severe pulmonary attack; the weather was warm and pleasant. He lived
near Windsor Forest; and his life was spent under its shades or on the
water, meditating subjects for verse. Hitherto, he had chiefly aimed at
extending his political doctrines, and attempted so to do by appeals in
prose essays to the people, exhorting them to claim their rights; but he
had now begun to feel that the time for action was not ripe in England,
and that the pen was the only instrument wherewith to prepare the way
for better things.
In the scanty journals kept during those years I find a record of the
books that Shelley read during several years. During the years of 1814
and 1815 the list is extensive. It includes, in Greek, Homer, Hesiod,
Theocritus, the histories of Thucydides and Herodotus, and Diogenes
Laertius. In Latin, Petronius, Suetonius, some of the works of Cicero, a
large proportion of those of Seneca and Livy. In English, Milton's
poems, Wordsworth's "Excursion", Southey's "Madoc" and "Thalaba",
Locke "On the Human Understanding", Bacon's "Novum Organum". In
Italian, Ariosto, Tasso, and Alfieri. In French, the "Reveries d'un
Solitaire" of Rousseau. To these may be added several modern books of
travel. He read few novels.
***
POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816.
THE SUNSET.

[Written at Bishopsgate, 1816 (spring). Published in full in the
"Posthumous Poems", 1824. Lines 9-20, and 28-42, appeared in Hunt's
"Literary Pocket-Book", 1823, under the titles, respectively, of "Sunset.
From an Unpublished Poem", And "Grief. A Fragment".]
There late was One within whose subtle being,
As light and wind
within some delicate cloud
That fades amid the blue noon's burning
sky,
Genius and death contended. None may know
The sweetness
of the joy which