in the churchyard of Lechlade were written on that occasion. Alastor was composed on his return. He spent his days under the oak-shades of Windsor Great Park; and the magnificent woodland was a fitting study to inspire the various descriptions of forest-scenery we find in the poem.
None of Shelley's poems is more characteristic than this. The solemn spirit that reigns throughout, the worship of the majesty of nature, the broodings of a poet's heart in solitude—the mingling of the exulting joy which the various aspects of the visible universe inspires with the sad and struggling pangs which human passion imparts—give a touching interest to the whole. The death which he had often contemplated during the last months as certain and near he here represented in such colours as had, in his lonely musings, soothed his soul to peace. The versification sustains the solemn spirit which breathes throughout: it is peculiarly melodious. The poem ought rather to be considered didactic than narrative: it was the outpouring of his own emotions, embodied in the purest form he could conceive, painted in the ideal hues which his brilliant imagination inspired, and softened by the recent anticipation of death.
THE REVOLT OF ISLAM
A POEM IN TWELVE CANTOS
Ὅσαις δὲ βροτὸν ἔθνος ἀγλαίαις ἁπτόμεσθα περαίνει πρὸσ ἔσχατον
πλόον ναυσὶ δ’ οὔτε πεζὸς ἰὼν ἄν εὕροις
ἐς Ὑπερβορέων ἀγῶνα θαυματὰν ὁδόν.
[Composed in the neighbourhood of Bisham Wood, near Great Marlow, Bucks, 1817 (April—Sept. 23); printed, with title (dated 1818), Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nineteenth Century, Oct., Nov., 1817, but suppressed, pending revision, by the publishers, C. & J. Ollier. (A few copies had got out, but these were recalled, and some recovered.) Published, with a fresh title-page and twenty-seven cancel-leaves, as The Revolt of Islam, Jan. 10, 1818. Sources of the text are (1) Laon and Cythna, 1818; (2) The Revolt of Islam, 1818; (3) Poetical Works, 1839, edd. 1st and 2nd—both edited by Mrs. Shelley. A copy, with several pages missing, of the Preface, the Dedication, and Canto I of Laon and Cythna is amongst the Shelley MSS. at the Bodleian. For a full collation of this MS. see Mr. C. D. Locock's Examination of the Shelley MSS. at the Bodleian Library. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903. Two MS. fragments from the Hunt papers are also extant: one (twenty-four lines) in the possession of Mr. W. M. Rossetti, another (IX. xxiii. 9—xxix. 6) in that of Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B. See The Shelley Library, pp. 83-86, for an account of the copy of Laon upon which Shelley worked in revising for publication.]
