[The poem with which this group opens is of some importance historically, because it fills a gap that has hitherto been filled in a very doubtful and unsatisfactory manner. It has already been hinted (at p. 376 of Vol. I) that the Ozymandias Sonnet could not well be Shelley's share of the friendly competition with Keats and Leigh Hunt, referred to in Keats's letter to his brothers, printed in Vol. I of the Life and Letters of John Keats (1848), pp. 98 and 99. In this letter, dated "February 16th [1818]", we read, "The Wednesday before last, Shelley, Hunt, and I, wrote each a sonnet on the river Nile some day you shall read them all." Lord Houghton gives Ozymandias as Shelley's part in this strife; but beside not being a " Sonnet on the river Nile," that is classed by Mrs. Shelley among the poems written in 1817. I know of no reason for doubting that classification, which is also preserved by Mr. Rossetti; and there can, I think, be no possible doubt that Shelley's Nile Sonnet is the one found by Mr. Townshend Mayer among the papers of Leigh Hunt, published in the St. James's Magazine for March, 1876, and now first included among Shelley's poetical works. The facsimile of the MS., facing this page, has been made by Mr. G. I. F. Tupper. On the same sheet of paper with this Sonnet is a very interesting autograph of Keats,-the poem to Robin Hood, shewing slight variations from the published text. The fact that the writing of two of the competi tors is on this paper, found among the MSS. of the third competitor, leaves, I think, no room for doubting that this Sonnet should take the place heretofore assigned to Ozymandias. It is curious, and worth recording, that another friend of Shelley's wrote an Ozymandias Sonnet. In Horace Smith's volume, Amarynthus, the Nympholept: a Pastoral Drama, in Three Acts, with other Poems (1821), p. 213 consists of a Sonnet "On a Stupend ous Leg of Granite, discovered standing by itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription inserted below." The inscription, according to Smith, is "I am great Ozymandias, the King of Kings: this mighty city shews the wonders of my hand." On the next page, we find a Sonnet "To Percy Bysshe Shelley, Esq., on his Poems." One cannot help suspecting that here was another friendly competition,-though it is possible that Shelley and Smith wrote independently, both reading the account of the leg in some contemporary newspaper. Or it may be that Smith's Sonnet, published two years later than Shelley's, was meant to set Shelley right as to his facts. There is an air of literality about Smith's that convinces us he gave the inscription correctly; and it is more than likely that he was right in recording one leg instead of two legs and a face. Shelley's Ozymandias is, however, as far above Smith's, poetically, as his Nile Sonnet is below both Keats's and Leigh Hunt's. In the Appendix to the present volume will be found the Nile Sonnets of Keats and Hunt, and also Horace Smith's Ozymandias Sonnet, as of decided collateral interest. The most interesting and important of Shelley's poems of 1818 have already appeared in this edition, Rosalind and Helen and the Lines Written among the Euganean Hills in Vol. I, Julian and Maddalo and the Stanzas Written in Dejection near Naples in the present volume.-H. B. F.] 5. To the Mil north after month the gathered rains dessen Drenching you secret Athiopian dells And from the desants ice gust pinnacles When brost & Wheat in shange, embrag tend of loosening Oir Egypti land of Memory Hood and level woll And they are thin & Mike _ & more than having That sont-sustaining airs & task if evil And finit & puis ons spring whwer them Bewan & Man- for knowledge must to the Like the great third to light, sverbe. Howest POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. SONNET, TO THE NILE.1 MONTH after month the gathered rains descend And from the desart's ice-girt pinnacles Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend Urging those waters to their mighty end. O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level And they are thine O Nile-and well thou knowest And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest. 1 A comparison of this Sonnet with the fac-simile of the MS. will shew that it has been necessary to supply some few stops. The insertion of the fac-simile makes it unnecessary to give the cancelled MS. readings. There is a reminiscence here of mer. Shelley's work of the previous sumIn Laon and Cythna, Canto VI, stanzas XL and XLI, we find a much more beautifully expressed thought on knowledge feeding" human wants, as the great Nile feeds Egypt." See Vol. I, p. 211. |