The cotton poplar's down Like snowflakes strewing the dusk ground in which the adjective may with equal probability be meant for dusk or dark. Three lines first given by Rossetti in his edition of 1870 occur in a slightly different form on page II 7 г., and seem to be a part of an address to Knowledge. The final outcome of several lines of drafting and cancelling is as follows: O sudden & inconstant light which shinest Come thou Awakener of the spirits Ocean motion [. feed with thy gentle Before line 1, and cancelled all but the first word, is the imperfect line It is a dreadful thing to see mis [ 5 and beneath mis the piece of word est is crossed through. Then there is a false start-Whatwhich also is crossed through: next, the line was written with a gap, thus O thou inconstant light which shinest; then Gleam was substituted for light and in turn struck out, and sudden & was written above thou inconstant; so that line 1 has to be "restored" as above. Line 2 contains the accidental terminal light, struck out in favour of life. Next to O Knowledge the word As was written as a beginning for another line and cancelled. Line 6 seems to have begun at first thus,-Thou Zephyr, whom nor; but, Thou and nor being struck out, thy cavern & was added; then that was struck out and thy cave or hollow cloud written below the line and left standing: finally or cave was written above thy cavern &. The intention thus indicated was to reserve the question between cave or hollow cloud and hollow cloud or cave. Below this line is a cancelled opening for line 7, Leavest no trace. The three lines printed by Rossetti are Come, thou awakener of the spirit's ocean, Zephyr, whom to thy cloud or cave No thought can trace! speed with thy gentle motion! It can hardly have been from this Note Book that Rossetti took the lines, at all events directly; but perhaps Garnett furnished a selected "transcript" which his friend punctuated. Mr. Hutchinson has amused himself by supplying in the Oxford Shelley the title "Zephyrus the Awakener"; but it is clear that Shelley used Zephyr as a common noun, not a proper name. THE MASK OF ANARCHY Just as the most important single item in Note Book I is the series of drafts for Prometheus Unbound, so the most important in Note Book II is the draft of The Mask of Anarchy, of which the opening stanza is unceremoniously jotted down in ink-nearly all of it is in ink-immediately after the rejected fragment to Knowledge-so close to it as to look like a continuation. Stanza I came with reasonable fluency, almost in its final form, thus: I] As I was asleep in Italy There came a voice from over the sea And with great power it forth led me wherein the first and fourth lines are corrected to make the established version, lay being substituted for was and To walk in for In. There is a rejected reading As I was asleep from, which seems to indicate that the first thought was something like this: As I was asleep, from over the sea but that is mere speculation. Grievous to relate, stanza II is not here in any form; so that I cannot answer for Castlereagh having been employed from the first as the type of Murder; but it is fair to suppose that he or some other Minister of the Crown was, as we find, a long way off from stanza I, a whole page (II 23 r.) occupied by traces of Murder and his seven bloodhounds for which no other claimant, at all events, is forthcoming. The established text of stanza II is II] I met murder on the way- Seven bloodhounds followed him. Stanza III, relating to those creatures, is here in the Note Book: III] All were fat; & well they might For one by one & two by two He tossed them human hearts to chew The only cancellation in this actual stanza is that of the word he between For and one in line 3; but, before he had got his bloodhounds in to his satisfaction, the poet had written down and struck out the following lines and phrases And they frisked & leaped to view One by one & two by two Human something to [separately cancelled] Human hearts the which to chew From his mantle somethin Winning I have left uncancelled the trial stanza which I think he had shaped; but it is possible, from the position of to chew, that he had in his mind some such lines as Something to [the brutes] to chew, Beneath the finished stanza III, which is that of the established text, he wrote and did not cancelAs he passed the streets laughed And he made [the] walls howl after With the echo of his laughter As they leaped [. But this extension of the doings of Castlereagh in the rôle of Murder he necessarily rejected along with the ultra-friskiness of the bloodhounds. Before howl in line 2, la is cancelled. For line 4 of the rejected but unobliterated stanza there were two false starts, As he and When. To Fraud habited "Like Eldon" in "an ermined gown" we have not the pleasure of an introduction, though the gown appears in a cancelled passage belonging to a later part of the poem; nor do we |