Byron's representation of the Rhine landscape as a point in nature where one might
observe a symbolic reconciliation of opposite powers in harmonious symmetry (see Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto 3, stanzas 59-61) seems to touch her conception here. That
representation, in any case, would not be far from her mind, since it was written
in the summer of 1816 and, indeed, when the Shelleys returned to England they carried
the manuscript of the poem with them.