ABSTRACT
This fragment is drafted legibly in ink with a few cancellations on p. 170 of Nbk 11. At the top of the page are two lines, ‘Gather from the uttermost/Ends of our nation’ (see no. 245), which also appear on p. 129 of the nbk—where they face S.’s fair copy of the first two stanzas of An Ode (‘Arise, arise, arise!’) (no. 244) on p. 130. The two lines on p. 129 seem to be a draft which was later transcribed on p. 170. Below the six lines of the present fragment is a draft in a different pen-point of SP ii 70–3. The facing verso page 169 is taken up with draft lines that appear to be related to Liberty (no. 300) and with the continuation of SP (no. 296) iii 70–73 which begins on the succeeding page and is carried over to this one. Because both SP and Liberty are very likely to have been written in March 1820, it is probable that O thou power, the swiftest was also written in that month. The proximity of the draft that is related to Liberty, the similarity between Gather from the uttermost and MA 270ȓ1 as well as between An Ode (‘Arise, arise, arise!’) Text B 36 might appear to suggest that these six lines were intended as a summons to a personified power such as Liberty itself. While this is possible, the language of the fragment suggests instead an invocation (rather than a summons) to a power of mind, such as memory. The image in ll. 5–6 S. may well have been adapted from the first choral song of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in which the elders of Argos lament the state of man in old age as that of one who ‘wanders like a dream in daylight’. Probably in late 1819/early 1820, S. adapted the line from Aeschylus in the first line of his quatrain He wanders, like a day-appearing dream (no. 279; see headnote). The strange power of memory to people our experience with ghostly presences is a mental phenomenon that S. variously invokes, for example in Ode to Naples ((no. 343); A Text) 1–3: I stood within the City disinterred And heard the autumnal leaves like light foot-falls Of spirits passing through the streets …
