Talk:Love's Philosophy

Comments
In the Shelley poem entitled "Love's Philosophy" the penultimate line is "what is all this sweet work worth." --see "The Poems of Percy Byssshe", at page 555--edited by Edmund Blundsen (Collins).

Please see also "A Treasury of great Poems", at page 725--edited by Louis Untermeyer (Galahad Books, New York)


 * Apparently both versions appeared in early manuscripts; see . I've posted a notice at WikiProject Poetry asking for advice on this matter. Dlabtot (talk) 15:08, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

comment
This is an Encyclopedia not a poetry book. It follows that we are concerned only with facts not aesthetic judgments. From this it follows that the poem should be given exactly as it was first published by Hunt in the Indicator 1819. Later manuscript emendations published posthumously, such as that in the Harvard manuscript, can be given in notes. The full story is given in the link cited on this page but we should do exactly the opposite to what they do when their main example is the [Stacey] one. Alf Heben (talk) 00:12, 19 December 2009 (UTC) Incidentally I notice with horror that the existing entry is actually false because it is headed "Original Text" when it relies on the 1820 versions. Please can someone fix this pronto.Alf Heben (talk) 00:21, 19 December 2009 (UTC) PS. My apologies for putting Harvard now corrected to Stacey. The entry uses the Stacey version also. This was presented to Mrs Stacey by Shelley in Dec 1820 so could have been written at any time before that. To claim this is the original text would require strong supporting evidence which does not appear on the current stub. The entry falsely state the poem was written in 1820 when it was published in 1819 it appears from the Hutchinson edition of 1904 so this needs correcting.Alf Heben (talk) 09:49, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

popularity
this has always been a favorite. In 1995 BBC Radio carried out a poll of listeners' favorite poems of all time. 'Love's Philosophy' was ranked 93rd. The same poet's Ozymandias was ranked 30th- see the collection "The Nation's Favourite Poems" BBC Books 1996. The version given appears to be the 1824 one with "all these kisses". Alf Heben (talk) 09:53, 19 December 2009 (UTC)Alf Heben (talk) 09:49, 19 December 2009 (UTC)