_Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound."_--Can any of your correspondents, by
conjecture or reference to the original MS., elucidate the meaning of the
following passage, which occurs in Act II. Sc. 4. of this extraordinary
poem? It sounds so sweetly that one cannot but wish it were possible to
understand it.
"_Asia._ Who made that sense which, when the winds of spring
In rarest visitation, or the voice
Of one beloved heard in youth alone,
Fills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim
The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers,
And leaves this peopled world a solitude
When it returns no more?"
Shelley's mysticism is very often such as to render him unintelligible to
ordinary readers, but it is combined here with a want of grammatical {352}
connexion that makes obscurity ten times more obscure. I have not the least
idea whether "fills" refers to "sense which," or to "voice;" but
whichsoever it may belong to, it is evident that the other nominative
singular, as also the plural "winds of spring," have no verbs, either
expressed or understood, to govern. A line or two may have dropped out; but
all editions as far as I am aware, give the passage as above. In Act I., at
p. 195. line 7 of the edition of 1853, occurs a curious error (I presume of
the press); Mercury, addressing the Furies, says:
"Back to your towers of iron,
And gnash beside the streams of fire, and wail
Your foodless teeth."
The having no food to put between one's teeth is no doubt a very sufficient
cause for wailing, but still I think the passage would run better if
"gnash" and "wail" exchanged places. How do other editions give it?