ABSTRACT
Orally improvised 30 March 1818 during the crossing of the Alps. Claire Clairmont recorded in her jnl for 8 April: ‘Next Morning we begin the ascent of Mont Cenis and Shelley sung all the way [his lines quoted] and asserted that the Mountains are God’s Corps de Ballet of which the Jung fraue is Mademoiselle Milanie’ (Ashley MS 2819 (1), f. llv). Shelley’s epigram is a parody of Love’s words in Peacock’s Rhododaphne (1818) which Shelley had read in manuscript before leaving England (L i 569): Flowers may die on many a stem; Fruits may fall from many a tree; Not the more for loss of them Shall this fair world a desert be: (Canto i 182-5) – conflated with Orlando’s lines to Rosalind in As You Like It: Why should this a desert be? For it is unpeopled? No; Tongues I’ll hang on every tree, That shall civil sayings show. (Ill ii 125-8). Text from British Museum Ashley MS 2819 (1), f. llv (in Claire C’s hand).
