'Thou art not dead, but thou hast wanderèd,

Thou Soul of ours, who thyself dost fret,'

A Spirit gentle Love beside me said:

'For that fair Lady, whom thou dost regret,

Hath so transformed the life which thou hast led,

Thou scornest it, so worthless art thou made.

And see how meek, how pitiful, how staid, Yet courteous, in her majesty she is.

And still call thou her "Woman" in thy thought;

Her whom, if thou thyself deceivest not, Thou wilt behold decked with such loveliness,

That thou wilt cry: "[Love] only Lord, lo

My song, I fear that thou wilt find but few Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning, Of such hard matter dost thou entertain.

Whence, if by misadventure chance should bring

Thee to base company, as chance may do, Quite unaware of what thou dost contain,

I prithee comfort thy sweet self again, My last delight; tell them that they are dull,

And bid them own that thou art beautiful.

Published (i-iv) by Garnett, 1862, with date, 1820; v with Epipsychidion, 1821.

GATHERING FLOWERS

PURGATORIO, xxviii. 1-51

Published by Medwin, The Angler in Wales, 1834, and Life of Shelley, 1847, and completed by Garnett, 1862. Medwin describes how he obtained the copy: I had also the advantage of reading Dante with him; he lamented that no adequate translation existed of the Divina Commedia, and though he thought highly of Carey's work, with which he said he had for the first time studied the original, praising the fidelity of the version, it by no means satisfied him. What he meant by an adequate translation was one in terza rima; for, in Shelley's own words, he held it an essential justice to an author to render him in the same form. I asked him if he had never attempted this, and, looking among his papers, he showed, and gave me to copy, the following fragment from the Purgatorio, which leaves on the mind an inextinguishable regret that he had not completed - nay, more, that he did not employ himself in rendering other of the finest passages.'

'Thou seemest to my fancy, singing here And gathering flowers, as that fair maiden when

She lost the spring, and Ceres her, more dear.'

V

UGOLINO

INFERNO Xxxiii. 22-75 TRANSLATED BY MEDWIN AND CORRECTED BY SHELLEY

Medwin describes this joint composition: 'At Shelley's request and with his assistance, I attempted to give the Ugolino, which is valuable to the admirers of Shelley, on account of his numerous corrections, which almost indeed make it his own.'

The piece was first published in Medwin's Sketches in Hindoostan with other poems, 1821, and revised in the present form, with Shelley's part in italics, in Life of Shelley, 1847. Forman conjectures that he ascribes less to Shelley than was due. Shelley is said to have complained to Mrs. Shelley that Medwin had carried off some of his translations.

In all that day, and all the following night, I wept not, nor replied; but when to shine Upon the world, not us, came forth the light

Of the new sun, and thwart my prison thrown

Gleamed through its narrow chink, a doleful sight,

Three faces, each the reflex of my own,

Were imaged by its faint and ghastly ray; Then I, of either hand unto the bone, Gnawed, in my agony; and thinking they

'T was done from hunger pangs, in their

Of blind and madding men; I then loved thee

I loved thy lofty songs and that sweet mood

When thou wert faithful to thyself and me.

Shelley (from Leghorn) to Peacock, August 22 (?), 1819: 'I have been reading Calderon in Spanish [with Mrs. Gisborne]. A kind of Shakespeare is this Calderon; and I have some thoughts, if I find that I cannot do anything better, of translating some of his plays;' and again in September: Charles Clairmont is now with us on his way to Vienna. He has spent a year or more in Spain, where he has learned Spanish, and I make him read Spanish all day long. It is a most powerful and expressive language, and I have already learned sufficient to read with great ease their poet Calderon. I have read about twelve of his plays. Some of them certainly deserve to be ranked amongst the grandest and most perfect productions of the human mind. He exceeds all modern dramatists, with the exception of Shakespeare, whom he resembles, however, in the depth of thought and subtlety of imagination of his writings, and in the rare power of interweaving delicate and powerful comic traits with the most tragical situations, without diminishing their interest. I rate him far above Beaumont and Fletcher.' Shelley translated these scenes in March, 1822, and they had not received his final correction. They were published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.

And flowers and undergrowth of odorous plants,

Leave me; the books you brought out of the house

To me are ever best society.

And while with glorious festival and song,
Antioch now celebrates the consecration
Of a proud temple to great Jupiter,
And bears his image in loud jubilee
To its new shrine, I would consume what
still

Lives of the dying day in studious thought, Far from the throng and turmoil. You, my friends,

Go, and enjoy the festival; it will

Be worth your pains. You may return for

From first to last, Clarin, you are a temporizing flatterer; You praise not what you feel but what he does. Toadeater!

CLARIN

You lie under a mistake For this is the most civil sort of lie