The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe; Reiman, Donald H.; Fraistat, Neil

• ISBN13: 9780801861192
• ISBN10: 0801861195
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-12-14
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

A milestone in literary scholarship, the publication of the Johns Hopkins edition of "The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley" makes available for the first time critically edited clear texts of all poems and translations that Shelley published or circulated among friends, as well as diplomatic texts of his significant incomplete poetic drafts and fragments. Edited upon historical principles by Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, the multi volume edition will offer more poems and fragments than any previous collective edition, arranged in the order of their first circulation. These texts are followed by the most extensive collations hitherto available and detailed commentaries that describe their contextual origins and subsequent reception. Rejected passages of released poems appear as supplements to those poems, while other poetic drafts that Shelley rejected or left incomplete at his death will be grouped according to either their publication histories or the notebooks in which they survive. "Volume One" includes Shelley's first four works containing poetry (all prepared for publication before his expulsion from Oxford), as well as "The Devil's Walk" (circulated in August 1812), and a series of short poems that he sent to friends between 1809 and 1814, including a bawdy satire on his parents and "Oh wretched mortal," a poem never before published. An appendix discusses poems lost or erroneously attributed to the young Shelley."These early poems are important not only biographically but also aesthetically, for they provide detailed evidence of how Shelley went about learning his craft as a poet, and the differences between their tone and that of his mature short poetryindex a radical change in his self-image... The poems in Volume I, then, demonstrate Shelley's capacity to write verse in a range of stylistic registers. This early verse, even in its most abandoned forays into Sensibility, the Go

Author Biography

Donald H. Reiman is the co-editor of Shelley and his Circle, a catalogue edition of relevant manuscripts in the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection at the New York Public Library, and an adjunct professor of English at the University of Delaware. Neil Fraistat is a professor of English at the University of Maryland. He is a founder and general editor of the "Romantic Circles" website, published by the University of Maryland.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	xi
Acknowledgments	xiii
Editorial Overview	xix
Abbreviations	xli
TEXTS
Original Poetry:	3	(36)
Victor
Cazire
Letter [1] (``Here I sit with my paper, my pen and my ink'')	7	(2)
Letter [2] (To Miss----- ----- From Miss ----- -----)	9	(2)
(``Cold, cold is the blast when December is howling'')	11	(2)
(``Come -----! sweet is the hour'')	13	(1)
Despair.	14	(1)
Sorrow.	15	(1)
Hope.	16	(1)
Translated from the Italian	17	(1)
Translated from the German	18	(1)
The Irishman's Song	18	(1)
(``Fierce roars the midnight storm'')	19	(1)
To -----(``Ah! sweet is the moonbeam that sleeps on yon fountain'')	20	(1)
To-----(``Stern, stern is the voice of fate's fearfull command'')	21	(1)
Saint Edmond's Eve.	22	(6)
Revenge.	28	(2)
Ghasta; or, The Avenging Demon!!!	30	(7)
Fragment, or The Triumph of Conscience	37	(2)
The Wandering Jew; or, The Victim of the Eternal Avenger	39	(50)
Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson; Being Poems Found Amongst the Papers of that Noted Female who Attempted the Life of the King in 1786. Edited	89	(16)
John Fitzvictor
Advertisement	92	(1)
``Ambition, power, and avarie, now have hurl'd''	93	(2)
Fragment. Supposed to be an Epithalamium of Francis Ravaillac and Charlotte Corde	95	(4)
Despair	99	(1)
Fragment. (``Yes! all is past---swift time has fled away'')	100	(1)
The Spectral Horseman	101	(1)
Melody to a Scene of Former Times	102	(3)
Poems from St. Iruyne; or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance	105	(14)
`` 'T was dead of the night, when I sat in my dwelling''	109	(1)
``Ghosts of the dead! have I not heard your yelling''	110	(1)
Ballad. (``The death-bell beats!-----'')	111	(3)
(``How swiftly through heaven's wide expanse'')	114	(1)
(``How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner'')	115	(1)
(``Ah! faint are her limbs, and her footstep is weary'')	116	(3)
The Devil's Walk	119	(12)
The Devil's Walk, a Ballad.	123	(5)
Supplement: Letter Version of the Devil's Walk	128	(3)
Ten Early Poems (1809-1814)	131	(18)
``A Cat in distress''	135	(1)
``How swiftly through Heaven's wide expanse''	136	(2)
``Oh wretched mortal, hard thy fate!''	138	(1)
To Mary who died in this opinion	138	(1)
``Why is it said thou canst but live''	139	(1)
``As you will see I wrote to you'' [1st letter to E. F. Graham]	140	(2)
``Dear dear dear dear dear dear Græme!'' [2nd letter to E. F. Graham]	142	(2)
``Sweet star! which gleaming oer the darksome scene''	144	(1)
``Bear witness Erin! when thine injured isle''	145	(1)
``Thy dewy looks sink in my breast''	145	(4)
COMMENTARIES
Original Poetry	149	(40)
Victor
Cazire
The Wandering Jew; or, The Victim of the Eternal Avenger	189	(46)
Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson	235	(26)
Poems from St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian	261	(20)
The Devil's Walk	281	(14)
Ten Early Poems (1809-1814)	295	(38)
HISTORICAL COLLATIONS
Introduction	333	(2)
Original Poetry	335	(20)
Victor
Cazire
The Wandering Jew; or, The Victim of the Eternal Avenger	355	(20)
Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nichlson	375	(12)
Poems from St. Irvyne; or, the Rosicucian	387	(16)
The Devil's Walk	403	(8)
Ten Early Poems (1809-1814)	411	(76)
APPENDIXES
Introduction	433	(2)
A. Latin School Exercises	435	(3)
Epitaphium	435	(2)
In Horologium	437	(1)
B. Prose Treated as Poems	438	(4)
``The Ocean rolls between us''	438	(3)
``Oh Ireland!''	441	(1)
C. Lost Works	442	(11)
Satirical Poem on ``L'infame''	443	(1)
Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things	444	(4)
On a Fete at Carlton House	448	(3)
Essay on War	451	(1)
God Save the King	452	(1)
D. Dubia	453	(16)
Poems in the Oxford University and City Herald	453	(2)
Ode, to the Breath of Summer	455	(1)
The Grape. From the Greek Anthologia	455	(1)
Epigram, from the Greek Anthologia. (``We that were wont'')	456	(1)
Translation of an Epigram of Vincent Bourne's	457	(1)
On Old Age, from the Greek Anthology	458	(1)
Venus and the Muses, from the Same	458	(1)
Unattributed Epigraphs to St. Iruyne	458	(2)
Sadak the Wanderer. A Fragment	460	(9)
E. Misattributions	469	(18)
Epigraph: ``If Satan had never fallen''	469	(1)
Lines, Addressed to His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, on His Being Appointed Regent	469	(9)
The Modern Minerva; or, the Bat's Seminary for Young Ladies. A Satire on Female Education.	478	(2)
Queen Mab
Anecdotes of Father Murdo	480	(2)
To the Queen of My Heart	482	(5)
Index of Titles	487	(4)
Index of First Lines	491