WHOSE is the love that gleaming through the world, Wards off the poisonous arrow of its scorn?

Whose is the warm and partial praise,

Virtue's most sweet reward?

Beneath whose looks did my reviving soul
Riper in truth and virtuous daring grow?
Whose eyes have I gazed fondly on,
And loved mankind the more?

HARRIET! on thine:-thou wert my purer mind;
Thou wert the inspiration of my song;
Thine are these early wilding flowers,
Though garlanded by me.

Then press into thy breast this pledge of love;
And know, though time may change and years may roll,
Each floweret gathered in my heart

It consecrates to thine.

1 Medwin says in his Life of Shelley, Vol. I, p. 68, after mentioning the poet's becoming enamoured of Harriet Grove in the summer of 1809, "Shelley's love, however, had taken deep root, as proved by the dedication to Queen Mab, written in the following year." Shelley on the other hand distinctly affirms that the dedication was to his first wife (Letter to Mr. Ollier, quoted in Shelley Memorials, p. 54). Still it is rash to assume hastily that Medwin's statement is baseless; and it

seems to me far from improbable that Medwin actually saw a dedication to Harriet Grove affixed to the first sketch of the poem in 1810, and that Shelley left it standing as a dedication to his first wife, when he rewrote the poem. The number of asterisks, it will be observed, corresponds with the name of Grove; and they might have been left simply by oversight when the dedication went to press as for Harriett Shelley.

Hath then the gloomy Power1 Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres Seized on her sinless soul?

Must then that peerless form

Which love and admiration cannot view

1 From this and the following section Shelley produced the revised fragment issued as The Damon of the World in the Alastor volume. The fragment having been reprinted (Vol. I, p. 61 et seq.), there is no need to shew the variations between it and the sections on which it is based; but any MS. variations from both Shelley's printed texts, shewn by the copy of Queen Mab in which the revision was made (see Vol. III, pp. 362, 367 et seq., VOL. IV.

CC

5

10

and 459 et seq.), I have of course noted.

MS. reading, day for morn.

3 Cancelled MS. reading, dark for strange, in the Damon version of this line, which is

Yet both so passing strange and wonderful!

4 In the revised copy, Power is altered to Shadow and the words finally adopted in The Damon (ironsceptred Skeleton) do not appear.