ABSTRACT

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. This is the second volume of the five-volume The Poems of Shelley, which presents all of Shelley’s poems in chronological order and with full annotation. Date and circumstances of composition are provided for each poem and all manuscript and printed sources relevant to establishing an authoritative text are freshly examined and assessed. Headnotes and footnotes furnish the personal, literary, historical and scientific information necessary to an informed reading of Shelley’s varied and allusive verse.

This volume makes extensive use of the Shelley manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and draws on the substantial recent research which has appeared on Shelley's text and contexts, and on members of his circle such as Mary Shelley, Byron, Godwin and others. It offers significant new datings and contextual exposition of major works including Prometheus Unbound, Laon and Cythna, 'Julian and Maddalo', The Cenci, and Shelley's translations from the Greek, notably his highly original translation of Euripides' The Cyclops. There are also comprehensive treatments of some of Shelley's best known shorter poems, such as 'Lines written among the Euganean Hills' and 'Ozymandias'.

The annotation demonstrates the extraordinary range and richness of Shelley's literary intelligence, and situates his work in the revolutionary politics and social upheavals of the early nineteenth century. The text and annotation are supported by an extensive bibliography, a chronology, indexes, and appendices which include a detailed examination of the history of the Cenci story. The volumes of The Poems of Shelley form the most comprehensive edition of Shelley's poetry available to students and scholars.

part |863 pages

The Poems

chapter 143|251 pages

Laon and Cythna*

chapter 143|5 pages

Appendix

Fragments from the L&C Notebooks

chapter 145|5 pages

Ozymandias

chapter 146|18 pages

Athanase

chapter 147|2 pages

To Constantia

(‘The red Rose that drinks the fountain dew’)

chapter 148|1 pages

‘arise sweet Mary rise’

chapter 151|2 pages

Address to the Human Mind

chapter 155|4 pages

To Constantia

(‘Thy voice, slow rising like a Spirit, lingers’)

chapter 156–161|2 pages

Translations of the Homeric Hymns

chapter 157|2 pages

To the Moon

chapter 158|2 pages

To the Sun

chapter 160|1 pages

To Minerva

chapter 161|3 pages

Hymn to Venus

chapter 162|2 pages

Lament for Bion

chapter 163|2 pages

To the Nile

chapter 166|10 pages

Mazenghi

chapter 170|5 pages

Scene for Tasso

chapter 172|42 pages

The Cyclops

chapter 173|3 pages

Sonnet

(‘Lift not the painted veil which those who live’)

chapter 182|4 pages

The Two Spirits. An Allegory

chapter 186|3 pages

Song for Tasso

chapter 194|1 pages

‘Hold – divine image’

chapter 195|4 pages

Appendix

Fragments connected with Prometheus Unbound

chapter 196|1 pages

‘the weeping willows’

chapter 200|3 pages

Retribution: from Moschus

chapter 202|5 pages

Misery. – A Fragment

chapter 202|2 pages

Appendix

Unused stanzas for ‘Misery. – A Fragment’

chapter 203|2 pages

‘The world is dreary’

chapter 209|151 pages

The Cenci

A Tragedy in Five Acts