Stanza I appears to have opened originally with

the lines

The camelions live on light & air

Poets live on love & fame

and in substituting food for live in line 2 Shelley of course meant to alter on to is and read as in the volume of 1820

Poets' food is love and fame:

but he did not do so; nor did he, in the third line, substitute wide world for the choicer reading dark world. For that line there is a cancelled opening, Would that, and for line 4 They could give was rejected. Line 5 was begun with the words With all; but all was altered to as. The valuable line 8 seems to have been an afterthought; it is written very small between what are now 7 and 9.

In stanza II both earth and world are given as the last word of line 1, and both are struck out: earth is of course right; and in should be on as in the 1820 print. Line 3 at first began with In a sp; but that was struck out and the line made thus, unrhythmically,

Sent to nurse from their birth [.

Line 5 has What as a cancelled opening. In line 7 the fourth word is written hideously, disguished. Line 8 originally began with Find either, think instead of Find either, never think.

Stanza III seems to have given Shelley the most anxiety. After rejecting But Poets as a start, he wrote the first quatrain of it thus:

What is grandeur, wealth & power

To a Poet's heavenly mind [?
Force Camelions to devour

Any light but beams & wind [. . .

Here light in line 4 was a mere slip; and he wrote food upon it; but the next step was slightly damaging, because grandeur, wealth, and power would not be given to the poet's mind but to the poet. However, it was the slightly damaged quatrain that led the poet to write a new one for his book of 1820:

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
A poet's free and heavenly mind:
If bright chameleons should devour
Any food but beams and wind,

which is less agreeable than the first version, because less simple and flowing. In line 5 of the draft the adjectives dark and plain are rejected before earthly. After the long dash closing line 6, he had begun line 7 with They are; but there can be no doubt that it is to the Poets that the term Children of a distant star-in the established text sunnier star-was applied. The final line of the 1820 print

O refuse the boon

is a distinct improvement on our

O reject the boon.

There is much beside the last stanza of An Exhortation on page I* 48 r. In the top margin are pencilled the two lines

The vale is like a vast Metropolis

A Babylon of gardens, palaces [,

and below these are written, first in pencil and then in ink, the first two quatrains of Good Night, the third, with its third line unfinished being written in pencil only at the top of page II * 48 v.

[Good Night]

Good night? no love, the night is ill
Which severs those it should unite
Let us remain together still

Then it will be good night

I cannot call the lone night good

Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight

Be it not said, thought, understood,

Then it will be, good night

The hearts that rest beside each other
From evening close to morning light

Find peace

But never say good night [.

In line 2 of the first quatrain there is an uncancelled reading in pencil, parts two that wd unite. In the first line of the third quatrain beat beside is struck out in favour of rest beside. The third line was going to be

Beat with such worship on each other [,

but before each other was actually written the poet observed that this was not a rhyme but a repetition of the actual close of line I ; and that was one of the liberties he did not wittingly permit himself. Swinburne, who had less occasion than any man who ever lived to adopt that practice, defended it on the ground that the French do it; but I do not remember that he disfigured his own pages with such apologies for rhymes.

A VISION OF THE SEA

At the foot of the Good night page there is an overflow from page 1 of A Vision of the Sea, a single line furnishing the rhyme to line 7. That poem is begun in pencil on page II * 49 г. Above the title-Shelley has written a title to his draft for once-appear the lines

una vallata verde

Dentro la quale l'anima se perde

Come l'onde d'un bel rio

che non prenna star.

This draft of A Vision of the Sea is scattered through Note Book II on twenty-one pages. Only on the first page did Shelley attempt to write these long lines across from back-fold to fore-edge. All the rest are written up or down the page with the book placed horizontally. He changed his weapon from pencil to pen and from pen to pencil frequently, as occasion dictated.

A VISION OF THE SEA1 1

Tis the terror of tempest-the rags of the sail
Are flickering in ribbons within the mad gale

From the deep night of vapours the dim rain is driven s
And when lightning is loosed like a deluge from Heaven
She sees the black trunks of the water spouts spin
And bend as if Heaven was ruining in

Which they seemed to sustain with their terrible mass
And that Ocean had sunk from beneath them-they pass
To their graves in the deep with an earthquake of sound
And the waves & the thunders made silent around

10

1 The poem is of course given in the final state indicated by the Note Book. Below it are set out in two separate groups the variations shown by the Draft itself and the final revisions effected before publication. The references in figures within parentheses are to the lines as here numbered on the right.

VARIATIONS SHOWN WITHIN THE DRAFT

(3-4) From the

vault of vapours the black rain is driven And the lightning is poured like a deluge from Heaven (6) And lean with the- (9) a terrible sound- (10) rebel