NOTE ON POEMS OF 1817, BY MRS. SHELLEY.

The very illness that oppressed, and the aspect of death which had
approached so near Shelley, appear to have kindled to yet keener life
the Spirit of Poetry in his heart. The restless thoughts kept awake by
pain clothed themselves in verse. Much was composed during this year.
The "Revolt of Islam", written and printed, was a great
effort--"Rosalind and Helen" was begun--and the fragments and poems I
can trace to the same period show how full of passion and reflection
were his solitary hours.

In addition to such poems as have an intelligible aim and shape, many a
stray idea and transitory emotion found imperfect and abrupt expression,
and then again lost themselves in silence. As he never wandered without
a book and without implements of writing, I find many such, in his
manuscript books, that scarcely bear record; while some of them, broken
and vague as they are, will appear valuable to those who love Shelley's
mind, and desire to trace its workings.

He projected also translating the "Hymns" of Homer; his version of
several of the shorter ones remains, as well as that to Mercury already
published in the "Posthumous Poems". His readings this year were chiefly
Greek. Besides the "Hymns" of Homer and the "Iliad", he read the dramas
of Aeschylus and Sophocles, the "Symposium" of Plato, and Arrian's
"Historia Indica". In Latin, Apuleius alone is named. In English, the
Bible was his constant study; he read a great portion of it aloud in the
evening. Among these evening readings I find also mentioned the "Faerie
Queen"; and other modern works, the production of his contemporaries,
Coleridge, Wordsworth, Moore and Byron.