It keeps its highest, holiest tone For our beloved Jane alone.1 TO JANE.2 I. THE keen stars were twinkling, And the fair moon was rising among them, The guitar was tinkling, But the notes were not sweet till you sung them Again. 90 II. As the moon's soft splendour O'er the faint cold starlight of heaven Is thrown, So your voice most tender To the strings without soul had then given In The Shelley Papers and the collected editions from 1839 onwards the final line is For our beloved friend alone. Mr. Palgrave, in The Golden Treasury, altered our to one, an ingenious but wholly fallacious change, as the MS. shews the line given in the text. 2 This poem, wanting the first stanza, first appeared in The Athenæum among The Shelley Papers, under the title An Ariette for Music. To a Lady Singing to her Accompaniment on the Guitar. In reprinting the Papers in book form, Medwin added a note to the effect that this Ariette had been "very beautifully set to Music by Mr. Henry Lincoln." In the first edition of 1839 Mrs. Shelley reproduced Med win's imperfect version, under his title. In the second she added the first stanza and gave the simple title To omitting the name in the third line. The name Jane, however, occurs both in title and in text, in the MS. in Shelley's writing which Mr. Trelawny placed at the disposal of Mr. Rossetti for the purposes of that gentleman's edition. 3 In Medwin's version and the first edition of 1839 we read So thy voice most tender Similarly in the next stanza we read thy for your in the 5th line; and in stanza IV thy sweet voice instead of your dear voice. III. The stars will awaken, Though the moon sleep a full hour later, To-night; No leaf will be shaken Whilst the dews of your melody scatter Delight. IV. Though the sound overpowers, Of some world far from ours, LINES WRITTEN IN THE BAY OF LERICI.1 SHE left me at the silent time The azure path of Heaven's steep, Thinking over every tone Which, though silent to the ear, The inchanted heart could hear, Like notes which die when born, but still 10 And feeling ever-O too much!- 1 This is one of the many treasures unearthed by Mr. Garnett and published in the Relics of Shelley; but before these lines appeared in that volume, they were published in Macmillan's Magazine for June, 1862, with a preliminary note by Mr. Garnett, stating that they were written at Lerici during the last few weeks of the author's life, as appears from the character of the scenery described as well as from the correspondence of the paper with that on which The Triumph of Life is written." Mr. Garnett adds "The exact date of composition may, perhaps, be inferred from the description of the moon, as Balanced on her wings of light, 15 which seems to imply that she was then near the full, with little or no declination. These circumstances concurred on the 1st and 2nd of May, 1822, but at no other period during Shelley's residence at Lerici." There are two verbal variations between the Magazine and the Relics. I have given the readings of the Relics in the text, and recorded the variations, assuming that Mr. Garnett had authority for everything, but had, as every editor of a draft of Shelley's is pretty sure to have, to decide in many instances between two words both remaining uncancelled. In the Magazine the word now occurs between though and silent. 5 Memory gave me all of her That even Fancy dares to claim : Her presence had made weak and tame In the time which is our own; As they had been, and would be, not. Sailed for drink to medicine Such sweet and bitter pain as mine. And the coolness of the hours Of dew, and sweet warmth left by day, And spear about the low rocks damp Too happy they, whose pleasure sought 1 In the Magazine we read watched for saw. 2 Mr. Rossetti reads They sailed; but without authority. THE ISLE.1 THERE was a little lawny islet Like mosaic, paven: And its roof was flowers and leaves Where nor sun nor showers nor breeze Each a gem engraven. Girt by many an azure wave With which the clouds and mountains pave LINES.2 I. WE meet not as we parted, We feel more than all may see, My bosom is heavy-hearted, And thine full of doubt for me. One moment has bound the free. II. That moment is gone for ever, Like lightning that flashed and died, 1 First given by Mrs. Shelley in the Posthumous Poems. 2 From Relics of Shelley, as is also the next fragment. |