"Rosalind and Helen" was begun at Marlow, and thrown aside--till I found
it; and, at my request, it was completed. Shelley had no care for any of
his poems that did not emanate from the depths of his mind, and develop
some high or abstruse truth. When he does touch on human life and the
human heart, no pictures can be more faithful, more delicate, more
subtle, or more pathetic. He never mentioned Love but he shed a grace
borrowed from his own nature, that scarcely any other poet has bestowed
on that passion. When he spoke of it as the law of life, which inasmuch
as we rebel against we err and injure ourselves and others, he
promulgated that which he considered an irrefragable truth. In his eyes
it was the essence of our being, and all woe and pain arose from the war
made against it by selfishness, or insensibility, or mistake. By
reverting in his mind to this first principle, he discovered the source
of many emotions, and could disclose the secrets of all hearts, and his
delineations of passion and emotion touch the finest chords of our
nature.
"Rosalind and Helen" was finished during the summer of 1818, while we
were at the Baths of Lucca.