" Sonnet [The poem with which this group opens is of some importance historically, because it fills a gap that has hitherto been filled in a very doubtful and unsatisfactory manner. It has already been hinted (at p. 376 of Vol. I) that the Ozymandias Sonnet could not well be Shelley's share in the friendly competition with Keats and Leigh Hunt, referred to in Keats's letter to his brothers, printed in Vol. I of the Life and Letters of John Keats (1848), pp. 98 and 99. In this letter, dated "February 16th [1818]", we read, "The Wednesday before last, Shelley, Hunt, and I, wrote each a sonnet on the river Nile: some day you shall read them all." Lord Houghton gave Ozymandias as Shelley's part in this strife; but, beside not being a on the river Nile," that is classed by Mrs. Shelley among the poems written in 1817. I know of no reason for doubting that classification, which is also preserved by Mr. Rossetti; and there can, I think, be no possible doubt that Shelley's Nile Sonnet is the one found by Mr. Townshend Mayer among the papers of Leigh Hunt, published in the St. James's Magazine for March 1876, and now first included among Shelley's poetical works. The facsimile of the MS., facing this page, has been made by Mr. G. I. F. Tupper. On the same sheet of paper with this Sonnet is a very interesting autograph of Keats, the poem to Robin Hood, shewing many variations from the published text. The fact that the writing of two of the competi tors is on this paper, found among the MSS. of the third competitor, leaves, I think, no room for doubting that this Sonnet should take the place heretofore assigned to Ozymandias. It is curious, and worth recording, that another friend of Shelley's wrote an Ozymandias Sonnet. In Horace Smith's volume, Amarynthus, the Nympholept: a Pastoral Drama, in Three Acts, with other Poems (1821), p. 213 consists of a Sonnet "On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, discovered standing by itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription inserted below.' This originally appeared, headed Ozymandias, in The Examiner for the 1st of February 1818, with the following prefatory letter to the Editor: "Sir,--The subject which suggested the beautiful sonnet, in a late number, signed 'Glirastes,' produced also the enclosed from another pen, which, if you deem it worthy insertion, is at your service." Shelley's Ozymandias had appeared in the issue of the 11th of the previous month. The inscription, according to Smith, is "I am great Ozymandias, the King of Kings: this mighty city shews the wonders of my hand." One cannot help suspecting that here was another friendly competi tion, though it is possible that Shelley and Smith wrote independently, both reading the account of the leg in some contemporary newspaper. Or it may be that Smith's Sonnet was meant to set Shelley right as to his facts. There is an air of literality about Smith's that convinces us he gave the inscription correctly; and it is more than likely that he was right in recording one leg instead of two legs and a face. Shelley's Ozymandias is, however, as far above Smith's, poetically, as his Nile Sonnet is below both Keats's and Leigh Hunt's. In the Appendix to the present volume will be found the Nile Sonnets of Keats and Hunt, and also Horace Smith's Ozymandias Sonnet, as of decided collateral interest. In The Examiner for the 8th of February 1818, is a sonnet of Smith's "To the Author of The Revolt of Islam," a poem which Hunt reviewed in that paper for the 1st and 22nd of February and 1st of March. That sonnet was also reprinted with Amarynthus, headed "To Percy Bysshe Shelley, Esq., on his Poems." The most interesting and important of Shelley's poems of 1818 have already appeared in this edition, Rosalind and Helen and the Lines Written among the Euganean Hills in Vol. I, Julian and Maddalo and the Stanzas Written in Dejection near Naples in the present volume.-H. B. F.] thonth after month the gathered rains descen fully of loosening snow On Athas, for lessons that notion depend half Gist them with stablante & meters Jemput duen By Miles aerial wom, with exford shells With the water to this mighty and Wiring thou Oir Egypti land of Memory stoods are leve well And they are thin & Mike _ & whether then moving That sont-sustaining airs & task of soil And frith it prisons spring when them то Mowest Bewan & Man - for kimledge must to the Like the gruent that to Saight, sverbe. _ POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. SONNET, TO THE NILE.1 MONTH after month the gathered rains descend And from the desart's ice-girt pinnacles Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend Urging those waters to their mighty end. O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level And they are thine O Nile-and well thou knowest And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest. 1 A comparison of this Sonnet with the fac-simile of the MS. will shew that it has been necessary to supply some few stops. The insertion of the fac-simile makes it unnecessary to give the cancelled MS. readings. 2 There is a reminiscence here of Shelley's work of the previous summer. In Laon and Cythna, Canto VI, stanzas XL and XLI, we find a much more beautifully expressed thought on knowledge feeding "human wants, as the great Nile feeds Egypt." See Vol. I, p. 211. PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES.1 LISTEN, listen, Mary mine, To the whisper of the Apennine, It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar, Or like the sea on a northern shore, Heard in its raging ebb and flow By the captives pent in the cave below. Is a mighty mountain dim and grey, Which between the earth and sky doth lay; On the dim starlight then is spread, And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm. THE PAST.2 I. WILT thou forget the happy hours Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers, Heaping over their corpses cold Blossoms and leaves, instead of mould? Blossoms which were the joys that fell, And leaves, the hopes that yet remain. II. Forget the dead, the past? O yet There are ghosts that may take revenge for it, Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom, 1 These lines were first given by Mrs. Shelley in the Posthumous Poems, 1824, with the date May 4th, 1818. 2 This and the next poem were first given by Mrs. Shelley in the Posthi mous Poems, 1824, without a dat but they are classed among poems 1818 in the collected editions. |