From far across the sea
I hear a loud lament,
By Echo's voice for thee
From Ocean's caverns sent.
O list! O list!
The Spirits of the deep!
They raise a wail of sorrow,
While I forever weep.
With this last year of the life of Shelley these Notes end. They are not
what I intended them to be. I began with energy, and a burning desire to
impart to the world, in worthy language, the sense I have of the virtues
and genius of the beloved and the lost; my strength has failed under the
task. Recurrence to the past, full of its own deep and unforgotten joys
and sorrows, contrasted with succeeding years of painful and solitary
struggle, has shaken my health. Days of great suffering have followed my
attempts to write, and these again produced a weakness and languor that
spread their sinister influence over these notes. I dislike speaking of
myself, but cannot help apologizing to the dead, and to the public, for
not having executed in the manner I desired the history I engaged to
give of Shelley's writings. (I at one time feared that the correction of
the press might be less exact through my illness; but I believe that it
is nearly free from error. Some asterisks occur in a few pages, as they
did in the volume of "Posthumous Poems", either because they refer to
private concerns, or because the original manuscript was left imperfect.
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