ABSTRACT
Probably composed just after the first declaration of love between S. and Mary Godwin on 26 June 1814, although mid-July is also possible. The poem exists only as a chaotic pencilled draft in Nbk 11, embedded in material of widely differing dates. When after S.’s death his widow worked through his notebooks for 1824 she headed her transcription of this poem into Bod. MS Shelley d.9 ‘To MWG’ and dated it ‘June. 1814.’ (see Massey 70–6). Her transcript was presumably Garnett’s ‘unexpected discovery’ that the poem ‘hitherto referred to the date of 1821, was in fact written in June, 1814, and addressed to Mary’ (Relics 161). Copying beyond the first few pages of Nbk 11, Mary had evidently lost confidence in her ascription because the accompanying materials all seemed much later in date, cancelled the initials ‘MWG’ and printed the title 443simply as ‘To——’ in 1824 (211). In 1839 the non-committal title was retained, and the lyric placed among the ‘Poems written in 1821’ (iv 115–16), apparently as referring to Emilia Viviani (Mary had found a fragment, six pages earlier in Nbk 11, which seemed to begin ‘Thy gentle voice Emilia dear’). She would not necessarily have seen a poem written to her in June 1814, because of difficulties which the poem itself explains, and unless S. made a copy he could hardly have expected her to read it. Yet unless dramatic in conception (see notes to lines 10–12, 21–4 below) the poem is, as Rossetti said, unintelligible if it does not address Mary Godwin. On 26 June S. and Mary confessed their love for each other: ‘I disguised from myself the true nature of [my] affection. I endeavoured also to conceal it from Mary: but without success… No expressions can convey the remotest conception of the manner in which she dispelled my delusions. The sublime & rapturous moment when she confessed herself mine, who had so long been her’s in secret cannot be painted to mortal imaginations … Tho’ striktly watched, & regarded with a suspicious eye, opportunities of frequent intercourse were not wanting.-When we meet, I will give you a more explicit detail of the progress of our intercourse: How in opposition to her fathers will, to Harriet’s exertions we still continued to meet.-How Godwin’s distress induced us to prolong the period of our departure. How the cruelty & injustice with which we were treated, compelled us to disregard, all consideration but that of the happiness of each other’ (S. to Hogg, 4 October 1814, L i 403). Godwin was told on 6 July, and the elopement took place on the 28th after three weeks of miserable indecision. For accounts of this confused period see Dowden Life i 418–38, ii 541–5; White i 334–46. The poem describes periods of frustration and pretence (stanzas 1–2, 5–6) before and after an avowal (4–5), and ends with a plea for open sincerity as the only defence of ‘sacred friendship’ against a corrupting world. See also ‘When passion’s trance is overpast’ andlieadnote. The draft, obscure in places, was originally in the 2nd person singular; S. then altered most but not all these pronouns to the plural, and any attempt to methodize them is both impractical and destructive.
