LXV] Let a great Assembly be
Of the fearless & the free

On some spot of English ground
Where the plains stretch wide around

LXVI] Let the blue sky overhead

The green earth on which they tread
And all that must eternal be
Witness the solemnity

LXVII] From the corners uttermost

Of the bounds of English coast
From the hills & desart fields

Where his home the outcast builds

LXVIIa] From the cities, where, from caves
Like the dead from putrid graves

Hosts of starvelings gliding come
Tenants of a living tomb

LXVIII] From the workhouse & [the] prison
Where like spectres newly risen
Women, children, young & old
Groan for pain & weep for cold

LXIX] From the haunts of daily life
Where is waged the daily strife

With common wants & common cares
Which sows the barren heart with tares

LXX] And lastly from the palaces

Where the murmur of distress
Echoes, like the distant sound
Of a wind alive around-

LXXI] From the halls of wealth & fashion
Where some few feel such compassion
For those who groan who toil & wail
As must make their brethren pale.

LXXII] Ye who suffer woes untold
Or to feel or to behold

Your lost country bought & sold
With a price of blood & gold

LXXIII] Let a vast assembly be-
And with great solemnity

And declare with words, that ye
Will endure not more

LXXIV] Be your strong & simple words
Keen to wound as sharpened swords

Wide as targets let them be

With their shade to cover ye [.

Stanza LXV gives rise to no remark. In LXVI the opening And the is struck out in line 1, they stands in place of the established reading ye in line 2, and may was cancelled in favour of must in line 3. The initial And in that line was rejected in the Wise and Mary cum Shelley manuscripts. Stanza LXVII varies considerably from the established version in the second couplet, though the relative page in Note Book II (17 v.) has an uncompleted draft for the triplet which ultimately replaced the second couplet of our text. That triplet, supported

by the Wise holograph and also by the Mary cum Shelley manuscript, is,—

From every hut, village & town

Where those who live & suffer moan

For others' misery or their own,

a passage which clearly exercised Shelley considerably. Immediately after LXV, which is at the top of page II 17 v., he had begun drafting thus

And the Earth

Let the Laws

Let all come from the uttermost
Th

Let all

Let the poor & the oppressed [.

These six essays he struck out and wrote immediately below them our stanza LXVII, crossing through the line—

From the hills & desart fields [.

Next came our stanza LXVIIa, much laboured at the foot of 17 v. and the top of 18 r., thus:

in from caves

From the cities, where, sean Famine

Faint at Lux

Like the dead from putrid graves

Pale Gliding thro the yellow air

Of the smoky atmospher[c.

Pale seems to have been cancelled before Gliding was written; but the whole couplet was struck out before that of our text was composed; and the entire stanza, when transferred with a slight difference to the Wise holograph, was cancelled by Shelley, who no doubt found it too similar to stanza LXVIII. The Wise manuscript shows the readings Troops for Hosts, and

Living Tenants of a tomb.

It was immediately after our baser version of the line,

Tenants of a living tomb,

that stanza LXVI was written on page II 18 r. with marks showing that it was to be transferred. Immediately below LXVI comes LXVIII with line 1 of LXIX. For LXVIII, before we get the imperfect line

From the workhouse & prison [,

the having, I should say, been accidentally omitted before prison, we have some rejected phrases

From a palace & a prison

From the

And as spectres [. . .

and when these had been struck out in favour of

From the workhouse & [the] prison

Like pale spectres newly risen

Women, children, young & old
Wring [..

he struck out pale and inserted Where, substituted Weep for Wring, then struck out Weep in turn and began again with

Groan for pain &

added weep with cold above the line, next substituted for for with and wrote, at the bottom of the page, Lastly from for the beginning of stanza LXX; but, bethinking himself of stanza LXIX, he struck out Lastly from and wrote From the haunts &c. In the fourth line of stanza LXIX, the whole of which is fluently and clearly written, the word barren is indisputably plain and intentional; but the substitution of human for barren in the Wise holograph, followed once more by the Mary cum Shelley manuscript, was obviously judicious, as was the reading of the first line in stanza LXX,

Lastly from the palaces [,

without the intrusive And of our text, which, as we have seen, was not according to Shelley's first intention.

Stanza LXXI occurs on page II 19 r., between LXXIII and LXXIV, but with marks indicative of its intended transfer: its third line was originally of a rather fine and free redundancy