229. Advertizement: the poem was published anonymously, and the Advertizement is a description by Shelley of the imaginary writer. 229 15-18. The Italian quotation is from Dante's Vita Nuova, XXV, and is thus translated by Mr. Rossetti: "Great were his shame who should rhyme anything under a garb of metaphor or rhetorical colour, and then, being asked should be incapable of stripping his words of this garb so that they might have a veritable meaning.'

229 21. from Dante's famous Canzone: the stanza translated is the last verse of the first Canzone of Dante's Convito.

Epipsychidion: "Shelley translates his title in the line, –

'Whither 't was fled this soul out of my soul: '

and the word Epipsychidion is coined by him to express the idea of that line. It might mean 'something which is placed on the soul,' as if to complete or crown it. Or it might be, and more probably was, intended by Shelley to be a diminutive of endearment from Epipsyche. There is no such Greek word as ἐπι-ψυχή. But Epipsyche would mean 'a soul upon a soul,' just as Epicycle, in the Ptolemaic astronomy, meant a circle upon a circle.' Such a soul on a soul' might be paraphrased as a soul which is the complement of, or responsive to another soul,' i.e., to the soul of the poet, so that each soul seeks to be united with that other, to be in harmony wherewith it has been created. This idea, many suggestions of which may be found in Plato, seems most clearly expressed in the lines near the end of the poem beginning, 'One passion in two hearts'" (Stopford Brooke's Poems of Shelley, pp. 329-330). In his Essay on Love Shelley speaks of " a soul within our soul," whose "antitype" is described in the quotation, p. 356, above. 230 1. The poem opens with an address to Emilia.

230 1-2.

that orphan one, etc.: Emilia's spiritual sister is Mary Shelley, whose mother died in giving birth to her; the name is Shelley's own name. In many letters from Emilia to Mary, the latter is addressed as Cara Sorella (Dear Sister).

230 5. thy narrow cage: the convent of St. Anna, in which she was detained against her will.

230 21. The poet proceeds to identify Emilia with the Eternal Spirit of Beauty which rules the universe (cf. Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, the concluding stanzas of Adonais, etc.).

231 38. The soul is only dimly revealed through the eyes.

231 41-42.

The ideal which he had formed in his youth (cf.

Alastor).

231 43-44. The world will conceal by some gross name the true character of my love to you (see the Advertizement, and the extracts from Shelley's letters, p. 355).

231 48. Uniting two incarnations of the Eternal Beauty; cf. 1. 115. 231 49. one refers to ll. 46-48: if it were lawful that you should both be united to me by the same tie.

the other refers to 1. 45: if we had been sister and brother.

The passage gives a glimpse at the morbid aberration of Shelley's views in regard to the relations of the sexes which appears repeatedly both in his writings and his life.

231 55. should teach Time, in his own gray style: should express in the language of time, or the ordinary world, as distinguished from the language of the infinite and mystical world.

232 68. Wingless, and hence such as will not fly away.

232 71.

Mine own infirmity: viz., his inability to express what she is. 232 75. Note the correspondence of "light,” “life,” “peace,” respectively, with the three preceding comparisons (11. 73–74).

232 77 ff. "This is an extreme example of Shelley's attempt to clothe in some sensuous form his tenuous spiritual conceptions. The spiritual beauty of the woman is made to shed an actual halo, effluence, about her" (Professor Winchester).

an

232 86. planetary music: the fabulous music of the spheres. 232 87-89. In her eyes her emotions are seen, — the reflections of the changes which her soul undergoes.

233 100. morning quiver: Mr. Rossetti reads, morn may quiver. Mr. Forman considers this a case in which Shelley uses the subjunctive mood, and cites a similar case from the twenty-second stanza of Laon and Cythna. Mr. Alfred Forman suggests that Shelley felt "pulse" as a plural here.

233 117. In the ancient system of astronomy, the heavenly bodies were conceived as fastened in a series of transparent concentric spheres moving about the Earth. The sphere nearest the Earth was that of the Moon; the second, that of Mercury; the third, that of Venus; accordingly, Emilia is here identified with the goddess of love. The line is evidently suggested by the line of Dante quoted in the Advertizement, 1. 23.

233 122. Anatomy: used in the sense of a withered, lifeless form; Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors, V, i, 238-9:

A hungry lean-faced villain, a mere anatomy.

234 130. Fate: the poet's own fate.

234 142-6. For a similar conception of Love, see Shelley's Essay on Love, Prose Works, Forman's edition, Vol. II (quoted in part, p. 356). 234 148. Beacon set a beacon upon.

The ordinary

234 153. 'tis: the reading of the Boscombe MS. reading is it is. 235 160-173. This passage is especially characteristic of the poet's views and temperament. It may be compared with the mystical doctrines of Diotima in Plato's Symposium, for example, with the following passage as translated by Shelley himself (Prose Works, Vol. III, p. 219): "He who aspires to love rightly, ought from his earliest youth to seek an intercourse with beautiful forms, and first to make a single form the object of his love, and therein to generate intellectual excellences. He ought, then, to consider that beauty in whatever form it resides is the brother of that beauty which subsists in another form; and if he ought to pursue that which is beautiful in form, it would be absurd to imagine that beauty is not one and the same thing in all forms, and would therefore remit much of his ardent preferences towards one, through his perception of the multitude of claims upon his love. . . .” Diotima goes on to describe how one should then rise above mere beauty of form, to beauty of soul, thence to beauty of conduct, of knowledge, and of wisdom, until finally "he who has been disciplined to this point of Love, by contemplating beautiful objects gradually, and in their order, now arriving at the end of all that concerns Love, on a sudden beholds a beauty wonderful in its nature." This beauty she proceeds to describe in the passage quoted in the introductory note to the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, p. 309, above.

235 174. in this: viz., in what follows, ll. 178–183.

235 186-9. The 'world of life' is good and beautiful, yet marred by ugliness; a garden, yet ravaged; an Elysium, yet a wilderness.

236 190. a Being: the poet's ideal; with the whole passage cf. Alastor, especially 11. 150-180.

236 221. in the owlet light: this phrase refers to the flight of the 'dizzy moth,” not to that of the "dead leaf." The epithet "owlet" is used to suggest the dim, uncanny light which the moth seeks to exchange for that of the Evening Star.

237 228. cone: the word is suggested by the form of the shadow cast by heavenly bodies.

237 240. sightless: invisible; cf. Alastor, 1. 610.

237 253. those untaught foresters: "the dwellers in the wintry forest of our life" (1. 249).

237 256-266. Actual persons have been conjecturally mentioned as being in the poet's mind when writing the descriptions of those he encountered in his search for the ideal (see, for example, F. G. Fleay's article in Poet Lore, Vol. II, No. 5, and Dr. Ackermann's Quellen, etc.). Such identification, even when certain, is not needful for the understanding of the poem. Here we have a description of the merely sensual love. In Plato's Symposium, two Venuses and two kinds of love are spoken of (see Shelley's translation, Prose Works, Vol. III, pp. 176–7), the Uranian or Heavenly, and the Pandemian or Common. The latter sort of love does not elevate, but degrades, and is the species described in this passage.

238 262. honey-dew, though sweet, blights the leaves upon which it is formed.

238 271.

238 277.

Possibly Harriet may be referred to in this line.
One: Mary.

238 285-307. In metaphorical language Shelley describes Mary's influence upon him; she brought him peace, but at the expense of the highest ideals. He sank into a kind of apathy, and lost his ardor for the ideal. He lived neither in the commonplace nor in the ideal world. The difference between the highest life and spiritual death became imperceptible to him.

239 308-320. He is roused from his lethargy by some violent and painful experiences, - perhaps those connected with the death of Harriet. Again comes a period of deadness and coldness, followed by further stormy experiences, of which "the Moon" knew nothing. These may be the mysterious troubles at Naples towards the close of 1818, of which there are hints in his biography and writings (see Stanzas Written in Dejection, with notes). "The Planet of the hour " in that case would perhaps be the noble and infatuated lady who, according to Medwin, followed Shelley from England to Naples and there died (see Dowden's Life, Vol. II, p. 252).

240 345. Twin Spheres: Emilia the sun, and Mary the moon. 241 368. O Comet, etc.: probably the same as "the Planet of that hour" (1. 313); but, if this be so, the identification of "the Planet of the hour" with the noble lady must be incorrect, since she was already dead. Mr. Fleay identifies the "Comet " with the "Constantia addressed in several of the lyrical poems, and Constantia with Claire Clairmont (see Introduction, p. 1).

241 369. drew for drew'st; cf. To a Skylark, 1. 80.

241 372. that: "The heart of this frail universe" (1. 369), i.e., the poet's own heart.

241 374. On thy return take thy place among these other spheres, as the Evening Star.

folding-star: cf. Milton's Comus, ll. 93–94 :

The star that bids the shepherd fold

Now to the top of Heav'n doth hold.

66

'offerings," to

"sacri

241 381-3. heart is parallel to "World"; fice"; "Their" refers to "Hope and Fear." The offerings of Hope and Fear are piled upon the altar of the heart; the sacrifice divine, described in ll. 377-9, will be offered on the altar of the World.

242 388-393. The transcendental and mystical character of his feelings towards Emilia is emphasized in these lines.

242 392. Not mine but me: the body may be described as 'mine,' but 'me' is something deeper, my own personality, — it is to this that is used thou must be united.

242 400. continents: in the original sense, -'that which contains'; cf. Shakespeare, Midsummer-Night's Dream, II, ii, 92, where the word is used of the banks of a river.

242 405. it: Love.

242 408. Cf. the quotation from a letter, Introduction, p. lxviii. The voyage contemplated, however, is not a voyage in space, the scenes described are not intended to represent anything actual; description, as in Alastor, is employed to suggest conceptions of impalpable things, feelings, yearnings, ideal conditions.

243 454. The punctuation, which is that of the original, is peculiar. Mr. Rossetti and Professor Woodberry substitute a comma for the semicolon, a change which serves to make the meaning clearer. 244 459. Lucifer: the morning star; the word literally means 'lightbearer.'

247 557. 248 601.

kill thine, etc.: close thy eyes.

Marina was a pet name for Mary. "Vanna" may be Mrs. Williams, and "Primus," Edward Williams or Lord Byron. The name Vanna was probably suggested by Dante's Monna Vanna.

248 7. thoughts is governed by "on" in the next line.