'
11. 8, 9. _And some yet live, treading the thorny road Which leads,
through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode._ Byron must be supposed
to be the foremost among these; also Wordsworth and Coleridge; and
doubtless Shelley himself should not he omitted.
+Stanza 6,+ 1. 2. _The nursling of thy widowhood._ As to this expression
see p. 51. I was there speaking only of the Muse Urania; but the
observations are equally applicable to Aphrodite Urania, and I am unable
to carry the argument any further.
11. 3, 4. _Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished, And fed
with true love tears instead of dew._ It seems sufficiently clear that
Shelley is here glancing at a leading incident in Keats's poem of
_Isabella, or the Pot of Basil_, founded upon a story in Boccaccio's
_Decameron_. Isabella unburies her murdered lover Lorenzo;
preserves his head in a pot of basil; and (as expressed in st. 52
of the poem)
'Hung over her sweet basil evermore,
And moistened it with tears unto the core.'
I give Shelley's words 'true love tears' as they appear in the
Pisan edition: 'true-love tears' might be preferable.
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