Books: Notes to The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Mary W. Shelley >> Notes to The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley
NOTE ON POEMS OF 1821, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
My task becomes inexpressibly painful as the year draws near that which
sealed our earthly fate, and each poem, and each event it records, has a
real or mysterious connection with the fatal catastrophe. I feel that I
am incapable of putting on paper the history of those times. The heart
of the man, abhorred of the poet, who could
'peep and botanize
Upon his mother's grave,'
does not appear to me more inexplicably framed than that of one who can
dissect and probe past woes, and repeat to the public ear the groans
drawn from them in the throes of their agony.
The year 1821 was spent in Pisa, or at the Baths of San Giuliano. We
were not, as our wont had been, alone; friends had gathered round us.
Nearly all are dead, and, when Memory recurs to the past, she wanders
among tombs. The genius, with all his blighting errors and mighty
powers; the companion of Shelley's ocean-wanderings, and the sharer of
his fate, than whom no man ever existed more gentle, generous, and
fearless; and others, who found in Shelley's society, and in his great
knowledge and warm sympathy, delight, instruction, and solace; have
joined him beyond the grave. A few survive who have felt life a desert
since he left it. What misfortune can equal death? Change can convert
every other into a blessing, or heal its sting--death alone has no cure.
It shakes the foundations of the earth on which we tread; it destroys
its beauty; it casts down our shelter; it exposes us bare to desolation.
When those we love have passed into eternity, 'life is the desert and
the solitude' in which we are forced to linger--but never find comfort
more.
There is much in the "Adonais" which seems now more applicable to
Shelley himself than to the young and gifted poet whom he mourned. The
poetic view he takes of death, and the lofty scorn he displays towards
his calumniators, are as a prophecy on his own destiny when received
among immortal names, and the poisonous breath of critics has vanished
into emptiness before the fame he inherits.
Shelley's favourite taste was boating; when living near the Thames or by
the Lake of Geneva, much of his life was spent on the water. On the
shore of every lake or stream or sea near which he dwelt, he had a boat
moored. He had latterly enjoyed this pleasure again. There are no
pleasure-boats on the Arno; and the shallowness of its waters (except in
winter-time, when the stream is too turbid and impetuous for boating)
rendered it difficult to get any skiff light enough to float. Shelley,
however, overcame the difficulty; he, together with a friend, contrived
a boat such as the huntsmen carry about with them in the Maremma, to
cross the sluggish but deep streams that intersect the forests,--a boat
of laths and pitched canvas. It held three persons; and he was often
seen on the Arno in it, to the horror of the Italians, who remonstrated
on the danger, and could not understand how anyone could take pleasure
in an exercise that risked life. 'Ma va per la vita!' they exclaimed. I
little thought how true their words would prove. He once ventured, with
a friend, on the glassy sea of a calm day, down the Arno and round the
coast to Leghorn, which, by keeping close in shore, was very
practicable. They returned to Pisa by the canal, when, missing the
direct cut, they got entangled among weeds, and the boat upset; a
wetting was all the harm done, except that the intense cold of his
drenched clothes made Shelley faint. Once I went down with him to the
mouth of the Arno, where the stream, then high and swift, met the
tideless sea, and disturbed its sluggish waters. It was a waste and
dreary scene; the desert sand stretched into a point surrounded by waves
that broke idly though perpetually around; it was a scene very similar
to Lido, of which he had said--
'I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:
And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
More barren than its billows.'
Our little boat was of greater use, unaccompanied by any danger, when we
removed to the Baths. Some friends lived at the village of Pugnano, four
miles off, and we went to and fro to see them, in our boat, by the
canal; which, fed by the Serchio, was, though an artificial, a full and
picturesque stream, making its way under verdant banks, sheltered by
trees that dipped their boughs into the murmuring waters. By day,
multitudes of Ephemera darted to and fro on the surface; at night, the
fireflies came out among the shrubs on the banks; the cicale at noon-day
kept up their hum; the aziola cooed in the quiet evening. It was a
pleasant summer, bright in all but Shelley's health and inconstant
spirits; yet he enjoyed himself greatly, and became more and more
attached to the part of the country were chance appeared to cast us.
Sometimes he projected taking a farm situated on the height of one of
the near hills, surrounded by chestnut and pine woods, and overlooking a
wide extent of country: or settling still farther in the maritime
Apennines, at Massa. Several of his slighter and unfinished poems were
inspired by these scenes, and by the companions around us. It is the
nature of that poetry, however, which overflows from the soul oftener to
express sorrow and regret than joy; for it is when oppressed by the
weight of life, and away from those he loves, that the poet has recourse
to the solace of expression in verse.
Still, Shelley's passion was the ocean; and he wished that our summers,
instead of being passed among the hills near Pisa, should be spent on
the shores of the sea. It was very difficult to find a spot. We shrank
from Naples from a fear that the heats would disagree with Percy:
Leghorn had lost its only attraction, since our friends who had resided
there were returned to England; and, Monte Nero being the resort of many
English, we did not wish to find ourselves in the midst of a colony of
chance travellers. No one then thought it possible to reside at Via
Reggio, which latterly has become a summer resort. The low lands and bad
air of Maremma stretch the whole length of the western shores of the
Mediterranean, till broken by the rocks and hills of Spezia. It was a
vague idea, but Shelley suggested an excursion to Spezia, to see whether
it would be feasible to spend a summer there. The beauty of the bay
enchanted him. We saw no house to suit us; but the notion took root, and
many circumstances, enchained as by fatality, occurred to urge him to
execute it.
He looked forward this autumn with great pleasure to the prospect of a
visit from Leigh Hunt. When Shelley visited Lord Byron at Ravenna, the
latter had suggested his coming out, together with the plan of a
periodical work in which they should all join. Shelley saw a prospect of
good for the fortunes of his friend, and pleasure in his society; and
instantly exerted himself to have the plan executed. He did not intend
himself joining in the work: partly from pride, not wishing to have the
air of acquiring readers for his poetry by associating it with the
compositions of more popular writers; and also because he might feel
shackled in the free expression of his opinions, if any friends were to
be compromised. By those opinions, carried even to their outermost
extent, he wished to live and die, as being in his conviction not only
true, but such as alone would conduce to the moral improvement and
happiness of mankind. The sale of the work might meanwhile, either
really or supposedly, be injured by the free expression of his thoughts;
and this evil he resolved to avoid.
NOTE ON POEMS OF 1822, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
This morn thy gallant bark
Sailed on a sunny sea:
'Tis noon, and tempests dark
Have wrecked it on the lee.
Ah woe! ah woe!
By Spirits of the deep
Thou'rt cradled on the billow
To thy eternal sleep.
Thou sleep'st upon the shore
Beside the knelling surge,
And Sea-nymphs evermore
Shall sadly chant thy dirge.
They come, they come,
The Spirits of the deep,--
While near thy seaweed pillow
My lonely watch I keep.
From far across the sea
I hear a loud lament,
By Echo's voice for thee
From Ocean's caverns sent.
O list! O list!
The Spirits of the deep!
They raise a wail of sorrow,
While I forever weep.
With this last year of the life of Shelley these Notes end. They are not
what I intended them to be. I began with energy, and a burning desire to
impart to the world, in worthy language, the sense I have of the virtues
and genius of the beloved and the lost; my strength has failed under the
task. Recurrence to the past, full of its own deep and unforgotten joys
and sorrows, contrasted with succeeding years of painful and solitary
struggle, has shaken my health. Days of great suffering have followed my
attempts to write, and these again produced a weakness and languor that
spread their sinister influence over these notes. I dislike speaking of
myself, but cannot help apologizing to the dead, and to the public, for
not having executed in the manner I desired the history I engaged to
give of Shelley's writings. (I at one time feared that the correction of
the press might be less exact through my illness; but I believe that it
is nearly free from error. Some asterisks occur in a few pages, as they
did in the volume of "Posthumous Poems", either because they refer to
private concerns, or because the original manuscript was left imperfect.
Did any one see the papers from which I drew that volume, the wonder
would be how any eyes or patience were capable of extracting it from so
confused a mass, interlined and broken into fragments, so that the sense
could only be deciphered and joined by guesses which might seem rather
intuitive than founded on reasoning. Yet I believe no mistake was made.
)
The winter of 1822 was passed in Pisa, if we might call that season
winter in which autumn merged into spring after the interval of but few
days of bleaker weather. Spring sprang up early, and with extreme
beauty. Shelley had conceived the idea of writing a tragedy on the
subject of Charles I. It was one that he believed adapted for a drama;
full of intense interest, contrasted character, and busy passion. He had
recommended it long before, when he encouraged me to attempt a play.
Whether the subject proved more difficult than he anticipated, or
whether in fact he could not bend his mind away from the broodings and
wanderings of thought, divested from human interest, which he best
loved, I cannot tell; but he proceeded slowly, and threw it aside for
one of the most mystical of his poems, the "Triumph of Life", on which
he was employed at the last.
His passion for boating was fostered at this time by having among our
friends several sailors. His favourite companion, Edward Ellerker
Williams, of the 8th Light Dragoons, had begun his life in the navy, and
had afterwards entered the army; he had spent several years in India,
and his love for adventure and manly exercises accorded with Shelley's
taste. It was their favourite plan to build a boat such as they could
manage themselves, and, living on the sea-coast, to enjoy at every hour
and season the pleasure they loved best. Captain Roberts, R.N.,
undertook to build the boat at Genoa, where he was also occupied in
building the "Bolivar" for Lord Byron. Ours was to be an open boat, on a
model taken from one of the royal dockyards. I have since heard that
there was a defect in this model, and that it was never seaworthy. In
the month of February, Shelley and his friend went to Spezia to seek for
houses for us. Only one was to be found at all suitable; however, a
trifle such as not finding a house could not stop Shelley; the one found
was to serve for all. It was unfurnished; we sent our furniture by sea,
and with a good deal of precipitation, arising from his impatience, made
our removal. We left Pisa on the 26th of April.
The Bay of Spezia is of considerable extent, and divided by a rocky
promontory into a larger and smaller one. The town of Lerici is situated
on the eastern point, and in the depth of the smaller bay, which bears
the name of this town, is the village of San Terenzo. Our house, Casa
Magni, was close to this village; the sea came up to the door, a steep
hill sheltered it behind. The proprietor of the estate on which it was
situated was insane; he had begun to erect a large house at the summit
of the hill behind, but his malady prevented its being finished, and it
was falling into ruin. He had (and this to the Italians had seemed a
glaring symptom of very decided madness) rooted up the olives on the
hillside, and planted forest trees. These were mostly young, but the
plantation was more in English taste than I ever elsewhere saw in Italy;
some fine walnut and ilex trees intermingled their dark massy foliage,
and formed groups which still haunt my memory, as then they satiated the
eye with a sense of loveliness. The scene was indeed of unimaginable
beauty. The blue extent of waters, the almost landlocked bay, the near
castle of Lerici shutting it in to the east, and distant Porto Venere to
the west; the varied forms of the precipitous rocks that bound in the
beach, over which there was only a winding rugged footpath towards
Lerici, and none on the other side; the tideless sea leaving no sands
nor shingle, formed a picture such as one sees in Salvator Rosa's
landscapes only. Sometimes the sunshine vanished when the sirocco
raged--the 'ponente' the wind was called on that shore. The gales and
squalls that hailed our first arrival surrounded the bay with foam; the
howling wind swept round our exposed house, and the sea roared
unremittingly, so that we almost fancied ourselves on board ship. At
other times sunshine and calm invested sea and sky, and the rich tints
of Italian heaven bathed the scene in bright and ever-varying tints.
The natives were wilder than the place. Our near neighbours of San
Terenzo were more like savages than any people I ever before lived
among. Many a night they passed on the beach, singing, or rather
howling; the women dancing about among the waves that broke at their
feet, the men leaning against the rocks and joining in their loud wild
chorus. We could get no provisions nearer than Sarzana, at a distance of
three miles and a half off, with the torrent of the Magra between; and
even there the supply was very deficient. Had we been wrecked on an
island of the South Seas, we could scarcely have felt ourselves farther
from civilisation and comfort; but, where the sun shines, the latter
becomes an unnecessary luxury, and we had enough society among
ourselves. Yet I confess housekeeping became rather a toilsome task,
especially as I was suffering in my health, and could not exert myself
actively.
At first the fatal boat had not arrived, and was expected with great
impatience. On Monday, 12th May, it came. Williams records the
long-wished-for fact in his journal: 'Cloudy and threatening weather. M.
Maglian called; and after dinner, and while walking with him on the
terrace, we discovered a strange sail coming round the point of Porto
Venere, which proved at length to be Shelley's boat. She had left Genoa
on Thursday last, but had been driven back by the prevailing bad winds.
A Mr. Heslop and two English seamen brought her round, and they speak
most highly of her performances. She does indeed excite my surprise and
admiration. Shelley and I walked to Lerici, and made a stretch off the
land to try her: and I find she fetches whatever she looks at. In short,
we have now a perfect plaything for the summer.'--It was thus that
short-sighted mortals welcomed Death, he having disguised his grim form
in a pleasing mask! The time of the friends was now spent on the sea;
the weather became fine, and our whole party often passed the evenings
on the water when the wind promised pleasant sailing. Shelley and
Williams made longer excursions; they sailed several times to Massa.
They had engaged one of the seamen who brought her round, a boy, by name
Charles Vivian; and they had not the slightest apprehension of danger.
When the weather was unfavourable, they employed themselves with
alterations in the rigging, and by building a boat of canvas and reeds,
as light as possible, to have on board the other for the convenience of
landing in waters too shallow for the larger vessel. When Shelley was on
board, he had his papers with him; and much of the "Triumph of Life" was
written as he sailed or weltered on that sea which was soon to engulf
him.
The heats set in in the middle of June; the days became excessively hot.
But the sea-breeze cooled the air at noon, and extreme heat always put
Shelley in spirits. A long drought had preceded the heat; and prayers
for rain were being put up in the churches, and processions of relics
for the same effect took place in every town. At this time we received
letters announcing the arrival of Leigh Hunt at Genoa. Shelley was very
eager to see him. I was confined to my room by severe illness, and could
not move; it was agreed that Shelley and Williams should go to Leghorn
in the boat. Strange that no fear of danger crossed our minds! Living on
the sea-shore, the ocean became as a plaything: as a child may sport
with a lighted stick, till a spark inflames a forest, and spreads
destruction over all, so did we fearlessly and blindly tamper with
danger, and make a game of the terrors of the ocean. Our Italian
neighbours, even, trusted themselves as far as Massa in the skiff; and
the running down the line of coast to Leghorn gave no more notion of
peril than a fair-weather inland navigation would have done to those who
had never seen the sea. Once, some months before, Trelawny had raised a
warning voice as to the difference of our calm bay and the open sea
beyond; but Shelley and his friend, with their one sailor-boy, thought
themselves a match for the storms of the Mediterranean, in a boat which
they looked upon as equal to all it was put to do.
On the 1st of July they left us. If ever shadow of future ill darkened
the present hour, such was over my mind when they went. During the whole
of our stay at Lerici, an intense presentiment of coming evil brooded
over my mind, and covered this beautiful place and genial summer with
the shadow of coming misery. I had vainly struggled with these
emotions--they seemed accounted for by my illness; but at this hour of
separation they recurred with renewed violence. I did not anticipate
danger for them, but a vague expectation of evil shook me to agony, and
I could scarcely bring myself to let them go. The day was calm and
clear; and, a fine breeze rising at twelve, they weighed for Leghorn.
They made the run of about fifty miles in seven hours and a half. The
"Bolivar" was in port; and, the regulations of the Health-office not
permitting them to go on shore after sunset, they borrowed cushions from
the larger vessel, and slept on board their boat.
They spent a week at Pisa and Leghorn. The want of rain was severely
felt in the country. The weather continued sultry and fine. I have heard
that Shelley all this time was in brilliant spirits. Not long before,
talking of presentiment, he had said the only one that he ever found
infallible was the certain advent of some evil fortune when he felt
peculiarly joyous. Yet, if ever fate whispered of coming disaster, such
inaudible but not unfelt prognostics hovered around us. The beauty of
the place seemed unearthly in its excess: the distance we were at from
all signs of civilization, the sea at our feet, its murmurs or its
roaring for ever in our ears,--all these things led the mind to brood
over strange thoughts, and, lifting it from everyday life, caused it to
be familiar with the unreal. A sort of spell surrounded us; and each
day, as the voyagers did not return, we grew restless and disquieted,
and yet, strange to say, we were not fearful of the most apparent
danger.
The spell snapped; it was all over; an interval of agonizing doubt--of
days passed in miserable journeys to gain tidings, of hopes that took
firmer root even as they were more baseless--was changed to the
certainty of the death that eclipsed all happiness for the survivors for
evermore.
There was something in our fate peculiarly harrowing. The remains of
those we lost were cast on shore; but, by the quarantine-laws of the
coast, we were not permitted to have possession of them--the law with
respect to everything cast on land by the sea being that such should be
burned, to prevent the possibility of any remnant bringing the plague
into Italy; and no representation could alter the law. At length,
through the kind and unwearied exertions of Mr. Dawkins, our Charge
d'Affaires at Florence, we gained permission to receive the ashes after
the bodies were consumed. Nothing could equal the zeal of Trelawny in
carrying our wishes into effect. He was indefatigable in his exertions,
and full of forethought and sagacity in his arrangements. It was a
fearful task; he stood before us at last, his hands scorched and
blistered by the flames of the funeral-pyre, and by touching the burnt
relics as he placed them in the receptacles prepared for the purpose.
And there, in compass of that small case, was gathered all that remained
on earth of him whose genius and virtue were a crown of glory to the
world--whose love had been the source of happiness, peace, and good,--to
be buried with him!
The concluding stanzas of the "Adonais" pointed out where the remains
ought to be deposited; in addition to which our beloved child lay buried
in the cemetery at Rome. Thither Shelley's ashes were conveyed; and they
rest beneath one of the antique weed-grown towers that recur at
intervals in the circuit of the massy ancient wall of Rome. He selected
the hallowed place himself; there is
'the sepulchre,
Oh, not of him, but of our joy!--
...
And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time
Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;
And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned
This refuge for his memory, doth stand
Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath,
A field is spread, on which a newer band
Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death,
Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.'
Could sorrow for the lost, and shuddering anguish at the vacancy left
behind, be soothed by poetic imaginations, there was something in
Shelley's fate to mitigate pangs which yet, alas! could not be so
mitigated; for hard reality brings too miserably home to the mourner all
that is lost of happiness, all of lonely unsolaced struggle that
remains. Still, though dreams and hues of poetry cannot blunt grief, it
invests his fate with a sublime fitness, which those less nearly allied
may regard with complacency. A year before he had poured into verse all
such ideas about death as give it a glory of its own. He had, as it now
seems, almost anticipated his own destiny; and, when the mind figures
his skiff wrapped from sight by the thunder-storm, as it was last seen
upon the purple sea, and then, as the cloud of the tempest passed away,
no sign remained of where it had been (Captain Roberts watched the
vessel with his glass from the top of the lighthouse of Leghorn, on its
homeward track. They were off Via Reggio, at some distance from shore,
when a storm was driven over the sea. It enveloped them and several
larger vessels in darkness. When the cloud passed onwards, Roberts
looked again, and saw every other vessel sailing on the ocean except
their little schooner, which had vanished. From that time he could
scarcely doubt the fatal truth; yet we fancied that they might have been
driven towards Elba or Corsica, and so be saved. The observation made as
to the spot where the boat disappeared caused it to be found, through
the exertions of Trelawny for that effect. It had gone down in ten
fathom water; it had not capsized, and, except such things as had
floated from her, everything was found on board exactly as it had been
placed when they sailed. The boat itself was uninjured. Roberts
possessed himself of her, and decked her; but she proved not seaworthy,
and her shattered planks now lie rotting on the shore of one of the
Ionian islands, on which she was wrecked.)--who but will regard as a
prophecy the last stanza of the "Adonais"?
'The breath whose might I have invoked in song
Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven,
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given;
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;
Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.'
Putney, May 1, 1839.