Shelley: Selected Poems (Longman Annotated English Poets)

933 Pages·2023·6.605 MB·English

by  Kelvin Everest (editor)

Shelley: Selected Poems
‘This new Shelley: Selected Poems offers the outstanding editorial expertise and
critical acumen of the complete Longman Poems in a single judiciously organ-
ized volume. It will be of great interest to everyone who cares about one of the
most challenging of Romantic poets.’
Professor William Keach, Emeritus Professor, Brown University, USA
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. In this
volume, the editors have selected the most popular, significant and frequently taught poems
from the six-volume Longman Annotated edition of Shelley’s poems. Each poem is fully
annotated, explained and contextualised, along with a comprehensive list of abbreviations,
an inclusive bibliography of material relating to the text and interpretation of Shelley’s
poetry, plus an extensive chronology of Shelley’s life and works. Headnotes and footnotes
furnish the personal, literary, historical and scientific information necessary for an informed
reading of Shelley’s richly varied and densely allusive verse, making this an ideal anthology
for students, classroom use, and anyone approaching Shelley’s poetry for the first time;
however, the level and extent of commentary and annotation will also be of great value for
researchers and critics.
Kelvin Everest is Emeritus Bradley Professor of Modern Literature at the University of
Liverpool. He has published extensively on English Romantic poetry, including book-
length studies of Coleridge and Keats, several edited collections of essays, and numerous
articles and chapters. He is the co-editor of the Complete Poems of Shelley in the Longman
Annotated English Poets series. His most recent monograph is Keats and Shelley: Winds of
Light, published by Oxford University Press in 2021.
LONGMAN ANNOTATED ENGLISH POETS
General Editors: Paul Hammond, David Hopkins and Michael Rossington
Founding Editors: F. W. Bateson and John Barnard
Recent titles in the series include:
THE POEMS OF ALEXANDER POPE: VOLUME ONE
Edited by Julian Ferraro and Paul Baines (2019)
THE POEMS OF W. B. YEATS: VOLUME ONE: 1882–1889
Edited by Peter McDonald (2020)
THE POEMS OF W. B. YEATS: VOLUME TWO: 1890–1898
Edited by Peter McDonald (2020)
THE POEMS OF BEN JONSON
Edited by Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly (2021)
THE POEMS OF ROBERT BROWNING: VOLUME 5
The Ring and the Book, Books 1–6
Edited by John Woolford, Daniel Karlin and Joseph Phelan (2022)
THE POEMS OF ROBERT BROWNING: VOLUME 6
The Ring and the Book, Books 7–12
Edited by John Woolford, Daniel Karlin and Joseph Phelan (2022)
THE POEMS OF SHELLEY: VOLUME 5
Edited by Carlene Adamson, Will Bowers, Jack Donovan, Kelvin Everest, Mathelinda
Nabugodi and Michael Rossington (2023)
THE POEMS OF SHELLEY, VOLUME 6
Edited by Carlene Adamson, Will Bowers, Jack Donovan, Kelvin Everest, Mathelinda
Nabugodi and Michael Rossington (2023)
SHELLEY: SELECTED POEMS
Edited by Carlene Adamson, Will Bowers, Jack Donovan, Cian Duffy, Kelvin Everest,
Geoffrey Matthews, Mathelinda Nabugodi, Ralph Pite, and Michael Rossington.
Selected and Revised by Kelvin Everest (2023)
THE POEMS OF W. B. YEATS: VOLUME THREE: 1899–1910
Edited by Peter McDonald (2023)
For more information about the series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Longman-
Annotated-English-Poets/book-series/LAEP
SHELLEY:
Selected Poems
edited by
CARLENE ADAMSON, WILL BOWERS,
JACK DONOVAN, CIAN DUFFY, KELVIN EVEREST,
GEOFFREY MATTHEWS, MATHELINDA NABUGODI,
RALPH PITE, and MICHAEL ROSSINGTON
With the assistance of
LAURA BARLOW
and ANDREW LACEY
Selected and Revised by
KELVIN EVEREST
Founding Editor:
GEOFFREY MATTHEWS
Cover image: Percy Bysshe Shelley by Amelia Curran © National
Portrait Gallery, London
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2023 Kelvin Everest for the selection and the contributing editors for
the editorial material
The right of Kelvin Everest to be identified as the author of the editorial
material has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or repro-
duced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explana-
tion without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792–1822. | Adamson, Carlene A., editor. |
Bowers, Will, editor. | Donovan, Jack, editor. | Duffy, Cian, editor. |
Everest, Kelvin, editor. | Matthews, Geoffrey, 1920–1984, editor. |
Nabugodi, Mathelinda, editor. | Pite, Ralph, editor. | Rossington,
Michael, editor.
Title: Shelley : Selected Poems / edited by Carlene Adamson, Will
Bowers, Jack Donovan, Cian Duffy, Kelvin Everest, Geoffrey
Matthews, Mathelinda Nabugodi, Ralph Pite, and Michael
Rossington ; selected and revised by Kelvin Everest ; founding editor,
Geoffrey Matthews.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. | “This
volume presents a substantial selection from the complete Poems of
Shelley published in the Longman Annotated English Poets series in
six volumes (1989–2022).” | Includes bibliographical references and
index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022009797 (print)
Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.
Classification: LCC PR5403 .A33 2022 (print) | LCC PR5403 (ebook) |
DDC 821/.7—dc23/eng/20220422
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022009797
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022009798
ISBN: 978-0-415-74607-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-405-85819-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-17034-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781315170343
Typeset in Minion Pro
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Preface ix
Chronological Table of Shelley’s Life and Publications xiii
Abbreviations xix
The Poems
1 Stanzas. — April, 1814 3
2 ‘O! there are spirits of the air’ 4
3 To Wordsworth 6
4 Mutability 7
5 Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude 8
6 Verses written on receiving a Celandine in a letter from England 36
7 Hymn to Intellectual Beauty 39
8 Mont Blanc. Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni 47
9 Ozymandias 62
10 To Constantia (‘Thy voice, slow rising like a Spirit, lingers’) 66
11 Sonnet (‘Lift not the painted veil which those who live’) 69
12 The Two Spirits. An Allegory 72
13 Lines Written among the Euganean Hills, October, 1818 74
vi contents
14 Stanzas written in dejection — December 1818, near Naples 89
15 Prometheus Unbound 93
16 Julian and Maddalo: A Conversation 270
17 To Night 307
18 The Mask of Anarchy 310
19 Ode to Heaven 342
20 To S[idmouth] and C[astlereagh] 347
21 England in 1819 350
22 Ode to the West Wind 353
23 On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci, In the Florentine Gallery 364
24 Love’s Philosophy 368
25 ‘Thou art fair, and few are fairer’ 372
26 To —— (‘I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden’) 374
27 On a Dead Violet: To —— 376
28 Goodnight 379
29 ‘What men gain fairly, that should they possess’ 381
30 An Exhortation 383
31 Song: To the Men of England 385
32 To —— (‘Corpses are cold in the tomb’) 388
33 The Sensitive-Plant 391
34 To —— [Lines to a Reviewer] 418
35 ‘Arethusa arose’ 420
contents vii
36 ‘Arethusa was a maiden’ 425
37 ‘God save the Queen!’ [A New National Anthem] 427
38 Song (‘Rarely, rarely comest thou’) 431
39 Song of Apollo 433
40 Song of Pan 435
41 The Cloud 437
42 Evening. Ponte a Mare, Pisa 446
43 Letter to Maria Gisborne 449
44 To a Sky-Lark 482
45 To —— [the Lord Chancellor] 491
46 To —— [Lines to a Critic] 496
47 The Witch of Atlas 499
48 Sonnet: Political Greatness 559
49 ‘Ye hasten to the [grave]! What seek ye there’ 566
50 ‘Rose leaves, when the rose is dead’
[To —— (‘Music, when soft voices die’)] 567
51 Epipsychidion 571
52 A Lament (‘O World, O Life, O Time’) 623
53 ‘When passion’s trance is overpast’ 625
54 Adonais 628
55 The Aziola 717
56 Written on hearing the news of the death of Napoleon 720
viii contents
57 The Indian Girl’s Song 725
58 Autumn: a Dirge 730
59 ‘The flower that smiles today’ [Mutability] 734
60 ‘A widowed bird sate mourning for her love’ 736
61 ‘Art thou pale for weariness’ 739
62 To —— (‘The serpent is shut out from Paradise’) [To Edward Williams] 740
63 To Jane. The invitation 755
64 To Jane —— The Recollection 761
65 ‘Swifter far than summer’s flight’/Remembrance [A Lament] 766
66 ‘When the lamp is shattered’ [Lines] 771
67 ‘One word is too often profaned’ 777
68 With a Guitar. To Jane 779
69 The magnetic lady to her patient 790
70 The Triumph of Life 798
71 To Jane (‘The keen stars were twinkling’) 881
72 ‘Bright wanderer, fair coquette of heaven’
[Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici] 885
Index of Titles 897
Index of First Lines 899
Preface
This volume presents a substantial selection from the complete Poems of Shelley pub-
lished in the Longman Annotated English Poets series in six volumes (1989–2023). For a
detailed explanation of the genesis and editorial principles of the Longman Shelley, includ-
ing an overview of the history of Shelley editions up to the 1980s, the reader is directed
to the Introduction to Longman i, pages xii–xxxii, and to the Prefaces to volumes ii–vi.
The distinctive feature of the Longman Shelley is a presentation of the complete poems in
chronological order (insofar as that has proved possible, given the sometimes problematic
challenges of dating Shelley’s work). Each poem is preceded by a headnote offering detailed
commentary on manuscript and print sources, biographical, social and political circum-
stances of composition, and extended treatment of relevant literary contexts. The poems are
then given with comprehensive textual, literary and contextual annotation, presented on the
same page with Shelley’s text. There are some 460 poems in the complete Longman edition,
of which 72 have been selected for the present volume. It has been necessary to omit some
long poems, owing to simple constraints of space, but the Selected Shelley nevertheless
offers a comprehensive collection of Shelley’s major lyrics, together with fully annotated
texts of most of Shelley’s best-known major long poems, including ‘Alastor’, ‘Prometheus
Unbound’, ‘The Sensitive-Plant’, ‘The Mask of Anarchy’, ‘Letter to Maria Gisborne’, ‘The
Witch of Atlas’, ‘Epipsychidion’, ‘Adonais’ and ‘The Triumph of Life’. None of Shelley’s
extensive and significant verse translations have been included in the Selected Shelley, but
a companion volume drawn from the Longman edition provides for the first time a com-
plete edition of the translations, again arranged in chronological order with comprehensive
scholarly apparatus and annotation.
The poems in this selection have been revised to standardise presentation and layout, to
rectify typographical and other minor errors, to carry out some corrections to matters of fact,
to update references where necessary, and to facilitate cross reference to Shelley’s works in
the headnotes and notes. The poems here selected are numbered from 1 to 72, which means
their numbering differs from that of the complete Poems of Shelley. References in the head-
notes and annotation of the Selected Shelley to poems by Shelley which are included in the
Selected are by title of poem in italic; references to poems by Shelley which are not included
in the Selected are by page and poem number in the relevant Longman volume. Poem titles
are as in the Longman edition; where a poem has historically been referred to by a different
title, that title is given in square brackets beneath the editorial title, and these historic titles
are also given for convenience in the Index to Titles of the Selected Shelley.