ABSTRACT
These ten lines of blank verse are roughly drafted on f. 5r of Nbk 12. Noting resemblances to PU (no. 195) II iii 20–40, Forman thought that they might be a rejected draft for Asia's address to Panthea describing the volcanic landscape the sisters pass through before their descent to Demogorgon's cave (Huntington Nbks i 12). On this hypothesis, the ye of l. 1 would be Panthea. If the lines were indeed intended for PU, it appears somewhat more likely that S. meant to insert them into III iii 85 ff., the Earth's address to Prometheus and the assembled company as she experiences the transformation being wrought by the Titan's release; in which case her (ll. 2, 3) would designate the female Spirit of the Hour who has received the shell which will awaken the earth and who delivers the final speech of the scene from l. 98. There are also resemblances to IV 270–318. It is of course always possible that the lines represent a draft towards an independent poem in the apocalyptic idiom of PU II–IV. Acts II and III were finished by spring 1819 (headnote to no. 195, p. 458) but S. continued to alter and add to them until the end of the year and beyond. The present fragment may have been drafted as an addition some time between late spring and December 1819 (MYRS vi, pp. lii–iii) but not incorporated. An intriguing speculation would be that S. took his cue from a specific condition of weather. On 16 November 1819 he wrote from Florence to John Gisborne in Livorno: ‘last night we had a magnificent thunder storm, with claps which shook the house like an earthquake’ (L ii 157).
