[Composed at Bishopsgate Heath, near Windsor Park, 1815 (autumn);
published, as the title-piece of a slender volume containing other
poems (see "Biographical List", by Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, London,
1816 (March). Reprinted--the first edition being sold out--amongst the
"Posthumous Poems", 1824. Sources of the text are (1) the editio
princeps, 1816; (2) "Posthumous Poems", 1824; (3) "Poetical Works",
1839, editions 1st and 2nd. For (2) and (3) Mrs. Shelley is
responsible.]

PREFACE.

The poem entitled "Alastor" may be considered as allegorical of one of
the most interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a
youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an
imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is
excellent and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He
drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The
magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into
the frame of his conceptions, and affords to their modifications at
variety not to be exhausted. so long as it is possible for his desires
to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous,
and tranquil, and self-possessed. But the period arrives when these
objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened and
thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He
images to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant with
speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in
which he embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or
wise, or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover
could depicture. The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the