’cars drawn by rainbow-winged steeds
Which trample the dim winds:  in each there stands
A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight. 
Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there,
And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars: 
Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink
With eager lips the wind of their own speed,
As if the thing they loved fled on before,
And now, even now, they clasped it.  Their bright locks
Stream like a comet’s flashing hair:  they all
Sweep onward.’

Through the whole poem there reigns a sort of calm and holy spirit of love; it soothes the tortured, and is hope to the expectant, till the prophecy is fulfilled, and Love, untainted by any evil, becomes the law of the world.

England had been rendered a painful residence to Shelley, as much by the sort of persecution with which in those days all men of liberal opinions were visited, and by the injustice he had lately endured in the Court of Chancery, as by the symptoms of disease which made him regard a visit to Italy as necessary to prolong his life.  An exile, and strongly impressed with the feeling that the majority of his countrymen regarded him with sentiments of aversion such as his own heart could experience towards none, he sheltered himself from such disgusting and painful thoughts in the calm retreats of poetry, and built up a world of his own—­with the more pleasure, since he hoped to induce some one or two to believe that the earth might become such, did mankind themselves consent.  The charm of the Roman climate helped to clothe his thoughts in greater beauty than they had ever worn before.  And, as he wandered among the ruins made one with Nature in their decay, or gazed on the Praxitelean shapes that throng the Vatican, the Capitol, and the palaces of Rome, his soul imbibed forms of loveliness which became a portion of itself.  There are many passages in the “Prometheus” which show the intense delight he received from such studies, and give back the impression with a beauty of poetical description peculiarly his own.  He felt this, as a poet must feel when he satisfies himself by the result of his labours; and he wrote from Rome, ’My “Prometheus Unbound” is just finished, and in a month or two I shall send it.  It is a drama, with characters and mechanism of a kind yet unattempted; and I think the execution is better than any of my former attempts.’

I may mention, for the information of the more critical reader, that the verbal alterations in this edition of “Prometheus” are made from a list of errata written by Shelley himself.

***

THE CENCI.

A TRAGEDY IN FIVE ACTS.