Note 473 — 1827
Reading edition
The original title of this sonnet in MS. was Suggested by the same Incident (referring to the previous sonnet); and its original form, with one line awanting, was as follows:—
When Philoctetes, in the Lemnian Isle Reclined with shaggy forehead earthward bent, Lay silent like a weed-grown Monument, Such Friend, for such brief moment as a smile Asks to be born and die in, might beguile The wounded Chief of pining discontent From home affections, and heroic toil. Seen, or unseen, beneath us, or above, Are Powers that soften anguish, if not heal; And toads and spiders have sufficed to prove To fettered wretchedness that no Bastile Is deep enough to exclude the light of Love, Though man for Brother man have ceased to feel.
Philoctetes, one of the Argonauts, received from the dying Hercules his arrows. Called by Menelaus to go with the Greeks to the Trojan war, he was sent to the island of Lemnos, owing to a wound in his foot. There he remained for ten years, till the oracle informed the Greeks that Troy could not be taken without the arrows of Hercules. The sonnet refers to the legend of his life in Lemnos.—Ed.