The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 200

3 1 1: What thoughts had sway over my sister's slumber

3 1 3: As if they did ten thousand years outnumber

4 30 6: And left it vacant--'twas her brother's face--

5 47 5: I had a brother once, but he is dead!--

6 24 8: My own sweet sister looked), with joy did quail,

6 31 6: The common blood which ran within our frames,

6 39 6-9: With such close sympathies, for to each other Had high and solemn hopes, the gentle might Of earliest love, and all the thoughts which smother Cold Evil's power, now linked a sister and a brother.

6 40 1: And such is Nature's modesty, that those

8 4 9: Dream ye that G.o.d thus builds for man in solitude?

8 5 1: What then is G.o.d? Ye mock yourselves and give

8 6 1: What then is G.o.d? Some moonstruck sophist stood

8 6 8, 9: And that men say G.o.d has appointed Death On all who scorn his will to wreak immortal wrath.

8 7 1-4: Men say they have seen G.o.d, and heard from G.o.d, Or known from others who have known such things, And that his will is all our law, a rod To scourge us into slaves--that Priests and Kings

8 8 1: And it is said, that G.o.d will punish wrong;

8 8 3, 4: And his red h.e.l.l's undying snakes among Will bind the wretch on whom he fixed a stain

8 13 3, 4: For it is said G.o.d rules both high and low, And man is made the captive of his brother;

9 13 8: To curse the rebels. To their G.o.d did they

9 14 6: By G.o.d, and Nature, and Necessity.

9 15. The stanza contains ten lines--lines 4-7 as follows: There was one teacher, and must ever be, They said, even G.o.d, who, the necessity Of rule and wrong had armed against mankind, His slave and his avenger there to be;

9 18 3-6: And h.e.l.l and Awe, which in the heart of man Is G.o.d itself; the Priests its downfall knew, As day by day their altars lovelier grew, Till they were left alone within the fane;

10 22 9: On fire! Almighty G.o.d his h.e.l.l on earth has spread!

10 26 7, 8: Of their Almighty G.o.d, the armies wind In sad procession: each among the train

10 28 1: O G.o.d Almighty! thou alone hast power.

10 31 1: And Oromaze, and Christ, and Mahomet,

10 32 1: He was a Christian Priest from whom it came

10 32 4: To quell the rebel Atheists; a dire guest

10 32 9: To wreak his fear of G.o.d in vengeance on mankind

10 34 5, 6: His cradled Idol, and the sacrifice Of G.o.d to G.o.d's own wrath--that Islam's creed

10 35 9: And thrones, which rest on faith in G.o.d, nigh overturned.

10 39 4: Of G.o.d may be appeased. He ceased, and they

10 40 5: With storms and shadows girt, sate G.o.d, alone,

10 44 9: As 'hus.h.!.+ hark! Come they yet?

G.o.d, G.o.d, thine hour is near!'

10 45 8: Men brought their atheist kindred to appease

10 47 6: The threshold of G.o.d's throne, and it was she!

11 16 1: Ye turn to G.o.d for aid in your distress;

11 25 7: Swear by your dreadful G.o.d.'--'We swear, we swear!'

12 10 9: Truly for self, thus thought that Christian Priest indeed,

12 11 9: A woman? G.o.d has sent his other victim here.

12 12 6-8: Will I stand up before G.o.d's golden throne, And cry, 'O Lord, to thee did I betray An Atheist; but for me she would have known

12 29 4: In torment and in fire have Atheists gone;

12 30 4: How Atheists and Republicans can die;

2.

Aught but a lifeless clod, until revived by thee (Dedic. 6 9).

So Rossetti; the Sh.e.l.ley editions, 1818 and 1839, read clog, which is retained by Forman, Dowden, and Woodberry. Rossetti's happy conjecture, clod, seems to Forman 'a doubtful emendation, as Sh.e.l.ley may have used clog in its [figurative] sense of weight, enc.u.mbrance.'--Hardly, as here, in a poetical figure: that would be to use a metaphor within a metaphor. Sh.e.l.ley compares his heart to a concrete object: if clog is right, the word must be taken in one or other of its two recognized LITERAL senses--'a wooden shoe,' or 'a block of wood tied round the neck or to the leg of a horse or a dog.' Again, it is of others' hearts, not of his own, that Sh.e.l.ley here deplores the icy coldness and weight; besides, how could he appropriately describe his heart as a weight or enc.u.mbrance upon the free play of impulse and emotion, seeing that for Sh.e.l.ley, above all men, the heart was itself the main source and spring of all feeling and action? That source, he complains, has been dried up--its emotions desiccated--by the crus.h.i.+ng impact of other hearts, heavy, hard and cold as stone. His heart has become withered and barren, like a lump of earth parched with frost--'a lifeless clod.' Compare "Summer and Winter", lines 11-15:-- 'It was a winter such as when birds die In the deep forests; and the fishes lie Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes A wrinkled clod as hard as brick;' etc., etc.

The word revived suits well with clod; but what is a revived clog?

Finally, the first two lines of the following stanza (7) seem decisive in favour of Roseetti's word.

If any one wonders how a misprint overlooked in 1818 could, after twenty-one years, still remain undiscovered in 1839, let him consider the case of clog in Lamb's parody on Southey's and Coleridge's "Dactyls"

(Lamb, "Letter to Coleridge", July 1, 1796):-- Sorely your Dactyls do drag along limp-footed; Sad is the measure that hangs a clog round 'em so, etc., etc.

Here the misprint, clod, which in 1868 appeared in Moxon's edition of the "Letters of Charles Lamb", has through five successive editions and under many editors--including Fitzgerald, Ainger, and Macdonald--held its ground even to the present day; and this, notwithstanding the preservation of the true reading, clog, in the texts of Talfourd and Carew Hazlitt. Here then is the case of a palpable misprint surviving, despite positive external evidence of its falsity, over a period of thirty-six years.

3.

And walked as free, etc. (Ded. 7 6).

Walked is one of Sh.e.l.ley's occasional grammatical laxities. Forman well observes that walkedst, the right word here, would naturally seem to Sh.e.l.ley more heinous than a breach of syntactic rule. Rossetti and, after him, Dowden print walk. Forman and Woodberry follow the early texts.