THE MAGNETIC LADY TO HER PATIENT.1 I. SLEEP, sleep on!2 forget thy pain; My hand is on thy brow, My spirit on thy brain; My pity on thy heart, poor friend; The powers of life, and like a sign, And brood on thee, but may not blend This poem was first published in The Shelley Papers; and Mrs. Shelley, in including it among her husband's collected works, assigned it to the year 1822. A copy of it in the autograph of Shelley, headed "For Jane and Williams only to see," is in the hands of Mr. Trelawny. Mr. Rossetti collated the printed text with that MS. In the ensuing notes the very few variations between Mr. Rossetti's text and that of Mrs. Shelley's second edition of 1839 are specified. Medwin, in the memoir prefixed to The Shelley Papers (pp. 63 et seq.), gives the following account of the circumstances dealt with in the poem : "Shelley was a martyr to a most painful complaint, which constantly menaced to terminate fatally, and was subject to violent paroxysms, which, to his irritable nerves, were each a separate death. I had seen magnetism practised in India and at Paris, and at his earnest request consented to try its efficacy. Mesmer himself could not have hoped for more complete success. The imposition of my hand on his forehead instantaneously put a stop to the spasm, and threw him into a magnetic sleep, which, for want of a better word, is called somnambulism. Mrs. Shelley and another lady were present. The experiment VOL. IV. K was repeated more than once. During his trances I put some questions to him. He always pitched his voice in the same tone as mine. I inquired about his complaint, and its curethe usual magnetic inquiries. His reply was- What would cure me, would kill me,' (alluding probably to lithotomy). I am sorry I did not note down some of his other answers... Shelley afterwards used to walk in his sleep; and Mrs. Shelley once found him getting up at night, and going to a window. It is remarkable, that in the case of the boy Matthew Schwir, recorded by Dr. Tritchler, the patient spoke in French, as Shelley in Italian. He improvised also verses in Italian, in which language he was never known to write poetry.... Shelley was afterwards magnetized by a lady, to whom he addressed some lines, of which I remember some of the stanzas." The statement that Shelley never wrote poetry in Italian may be profitably compared with the account of Buona Notte, in Medwin's Life, Vol. II, pp. 178-9. 2 In The Shelley Papers and in the first edition of 1839 we read Sleep on! Sleep on! here and in the first line of stanza II; but in the second edition of 1839 Sleep, sleep on !—as in the MS. II. Sleep, sleep on! I love thee not; But when I think that he As full of flowers as thine of weeds, For thine. 66 III. Sleep, sleep, and with the slumber of The dead and the unborn Forget thy life and love;2 Forget that thou must wake for ever; Forget the world's dull scorn ; Forget lost health, and the divine. Feelings which3 died in youth's brief morn; Be thine. IV. "Like a cloud big with a May shower, My soul weeps healing rain, Its light within thy gloomy breast. 1 In Medwin's and Mrs. Shelley's versions, chased; but charmed in the MS. 2 Medwin reads woes: so does Mrs. Shelley in the first edition of 1839; but in the second, she substitutes love. 3 So in the second edition of 1839; but that in the first and in The Shelley Papers. Spreads1 like a second youth again. Possest. V. "The spell is done. How feel you now?" Better Quite well," replied The sleeper. "What would do You good when suffering and awake? "What would cure, that would kill me, Jane: 2 Awhile, yet tempt me not to break II. As music and splendour No song when the spirit is mute:- Like the wind through a ruined cell, That ring the dead seaman's knell. III. When hearts have once mingled To endure what it once possest. The frailty of all things here, Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home and your bier? IV. Its passions will rock thee As the storms rock the ravens on high: Bright reason will mock thee, Like the sun from a wintry sky. From thy nest every rafter Will rot, and thine eagle home Leave thee1 naked to laughter, When leaves fall and cold winds come. 1 So in the second edition of 1839; Poems, we read the for thee. but in the first, and in the Posthumous TO JANE-THE INVITATION.1 BEST and brightest, come away! The brightest hour of unborn Spring, To hoar February born; Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth, 1 A part of this and a part of the next poem were published by Mrs. Shelley in the Posthumous Poems (1824), as one composition, under the single title of The Pine Forest of the Cascine near Pisa; and this arrangement was followed in the first edition of 1839; but in the second edition of that year the poem was divided into two, as in the text. and given in substantial accordance with the autograph copy in Mr. Trelawny's hands, consulted by Mr. Rossetti for his edition. Mrs. Shelley, however, only called these two poems The Invitation and The Recollection. To both versions of the composition she affixed the date 5 10 lity"; but there is much more than that Dearest, best and brightest, To the woods and to the fields! The eldest of the hours of spring, |