The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone To his dwelling; Come, months, come away; Put on white, black, and grey; Let your light sisters play- Of the dead cold year, And make her grave green with tear on tear. [The Mask of Anarchy was written in 1819 on the occasion of the infamous Peterloo affair, and was sent to Leigh Hunt, for publication in The Examiner, before November, 1819. Hunt did not publish it then, but issued it in 1832 in a little volume, with a preface of considerable interest, reprinted in the appendix to the present volume. The title of this volume runs as follows: "The Masque of Anarchy. A Poem. By Percy Bysshe Shelley. Now first published, with a Preface by Leigh Hunt." There is a motto from Laon and Cythna,— Hope is strong; Justice and Truth their winged child have found. The imprint is "London: Edward Moxon, 64, New Bond Street, 1832." The MS. from which the poem is now given is that sent to Leigh Hunt; and it is headed, in Shelley's writing, The Mask of Anarchy written on the occasion of the Massacre at Manchester. It is mainly in Mrs. Shelley's handwriting; and I am strongly under the impression that it was dictated by Shelley from his rough notes;-for there are lines filled in in his writing, as if he had, in the ardour of recomposition, told his amanuensis not to wait when there was any hitch, but to go on and leave blanks for him to fill. The insertions and corrections in his writing are made with a much broader pen (or heavier pressure) than was used by Mrs. Shelley; and this fact is valuable in proving that he went over the whole MS. very carefully after her. The corrections in punctuation and minor detail, with the heavier pen, are very numerous. Some of them are specified in my notes; and Mr. G. I. F. Tupper has produced a fac-simile (inserted opposite) of some of the altered stanzas. I am indebted to Mr. Townshend Mayer for the use of this most valuable MS.-H. B. F.] 15. For with pompy "To meet him came Elothed in arms like Good & flames See hired hunderers, who diding "Thow art for, & Law; & Kind":" 2 ontled pest w then one from a mamac maid, And her name was Hope, the But she looked more like . Despair, And she cried out in the air: as 33 And Anarchy, the Ghaith birth, Loy, dead earth upon the earth The Horse of Death tamelch. Fled, & with his hoops dis wind To dust, the murderers thronged grind behind. |