11. 4, 5. _Could nourish in the sun's domain Her mighty youth with morning._ This phrase seems to have some analogy to that of Milton in his _Areopagitica_: 'Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam--purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance.' 11. 7, 8. _The curse of Cain Light on his head_, &c. An imprecation against the critic of Keats's _Endymion_ in the _Quarterly Review_: see especially p. 39, &c. The curse of Cain was that he should be 'a fugitive and a vagabond,' as well as unsuccessful in tilling the soil. Shelley probably pays no attention to these details, but simply means 'the curse of murder.' +Stanza 18,+ 11. 1, 2. _Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone, But grief returns with the revolving year_, &c. See the passage in Moschus (p. 65): 'Ah me! when the mallows wither,' &c. The phrase in Bion has also a certain but restricted analogy to this stanza: 'Thou must again bewail him, again must weep for him another year' (p. 65). As to the phrase 'Winter is come and gone,' see the note (p. 111) on 'Grief made the young Spring wild.' 1. 5. _Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons' bier._ This phrase is barely consistent with the statement (st. 16) as to Spring throwing down her kindling buds. Perhaps, moreover, it was an error of print to give 'Seasons' in the plural: 'Season's' (meaning winter) would seem more accurate. A somewhat similar idea is conveyed in one of Shelley's lyrics, _Autumn, a Dirge_, written in 1820:-- 'And the Year On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying.' 1. 7. _Brere._ An antiquated form of the word briar. 1. 9. _Like unimprisoned flames._ Flames which, after being pent up within some substance or space, finally find a vent. +Stanza 19,+ 1. 2. _A quickening life_, &c. The present stanza is generally descriptive of the effects of Springtime upon the earth. This reawakening of Nature (Shelley says) has always taken place, in annual recurrence, since 'the great morning of the world when first God dawned on chaos.' This last expression must be construed with a certain latitude. The change from an imagined chaos into a divinely-ordered cosmos is not necessarily coincident with the interchange of seasons, and especially the transition from Winter to Spring, upon the planet Earth. All that can be safely propounded on such a subject is that the sequence of seasons is a constant and infallible phenomenon of Nature in that condition of our planet with which alone we have, or can have, any acquaintance. 1. 5. _In its steam immersed_: i.e. in the steam--or vapour or exhalation--of the 'quickening life.'