itten 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.'

+Stanza 20,+ 11. 1, 2. _The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit
tender, Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath._ 'This spirit
tender' is the 'quickening life' of the renascent year; or briefly the
Spring. By 'the leprous corpse' Shelley may mean, not the corpse of an
actual leper, but any corpse in a loathsome state of decay. Even so
abhorrent an object avails to fertilize the soil, and thus promotes the
growth of odorous flowers.

1. 3. _Like incarnations of the stars_, &c. These flowers--star-like
blossoms--illumine death and the grave: the light which would belong to
them as stars is converted into the fragrance proper to them as flowers.
This image is rather confused, and I think rather stilted: moreover,
'incarnation' (or embodiment in _flesh_) is hardly the right word for
the vegetative nature of flowers. As forms of life, the flowers mock or
deride the grave-worm which battens or makes merry on corruption. The
appropriateness of the term 'merry worm' seems very disputable.

1. 6. _Nought we know dies._ This affirmation springs directly out
of the consideration just presented to us--that even the leprous
corpse does not, through various stages of decay, pass into absolute
nothingness: on the contrary, its constituents take