Percy Bysshe Shelley

o find a suitable lodging for themselves and the Shelleys on the Gulf of Spezia. They pitched upon a house called the V

e central hall was used for the living and eating room of the whole party. The Shelleys occupied two rooms facing each other; the Williamses had one of the remaining chambers, and Trelawny another. Access to these smaller apartments could only be got through the saloon; and this circumstance once gave rise to a ludicrous incident, when Shelley, having lost his clothes out bathing, had to cross, in puris naturalibus, not undetected, t

which had been ripening during the last three years of life in Italy. Meanwhile, "I am content," he writes, "if the heaven above me is calm for the passing moment." And this tranquillity was perfect, with none of the oppressive sense of coming danger, which distinguishes the calm before a storm. He was far away from the distractions of the world he hated, in a scene of indescribable beauty, among a population little removed from the state of savages, who enjoyed the primitive pleasures of a race at one wit

sultry splendour of the terza rima stanzas, bearing on their tide of song those multitudes of forms, processionally grand, yet misty with the dust of their own tramplings, and half-shrouded in a lurid robe of light, affect the imagination so powerfully that we are fain to abandon criticism and acknowledge only the daemonic fascinations of this solemn mystery. Some have compared the "Triumph of Life" to a Panathenaic pomp: others have found in it a reflex of the burning summer heat, and blazing sea, and onward undulations of interminable waves, which were the cradle of its maker as he wrote. The imagery of Dante plays a part, and Dante has controlled the structure. The genius of the

as successfully handled that most difficult of metres, terza rima. His power over complicated versification cannot be appreciated except by duly noticing the method he employed in treating a structure alien, perhaps, to the genius of our

irit hastenin

f good, the Su

his splendour

ell from the

altars of the

imson clouds, a

he Ocean's

irds tempered

field or fore

g eyelids to t

ir censers i

ncense lit by

and inconsum

sighs up to th

ession due,

d all things th

character of

n their father

of the toil, w

n, and then im

ughts which mus

akeful as the

ht, now they we

int limbs benea

estnut flung at

Apennine. B

ind me rose th

, and Heaven a

e trance over

lumber, for the

ent that the sc

hen a veil of

ills, they gli

t the freshnes

ame cold dew m

hus upon that

same bough, and

fountains, and

usic through th

sion on my br

has been made in the preceding prelude. It is not without perplexity that an ear unaccustomed to the windings of the terza rima, feels its way among them. Entangled and impeded by the labyrinthine sounds, the reader might be compared

nce of wondrou

tenour of my

sate beside

h summer dust, a

re was hurryi

nats upon the

nward, yet none

t, or whence h

of the multi

the crowd, as

lion leaves of

outh, manhood

mighty torren

the thing they

object of an

with steps to

dden worms that

ournfully wi

adow walked and

from it as i

n the afflictio

otions which eac

ed the shadows t

in the noon-d

h where flowe

vain toil and f

fountains, who

mossy cells f

eeze which from

s, and wood-la

hing elms, an

where sweet dream

r serious fo

und the passing of a multitude, which is presented at the same time to the eye of fancy by accumulated images. The next eleven triplets introduce the presiding genius of the pageant. Studen

d, methought

w wilder, as t

ind shakes the e

are, intenser

obscured with

the stars. Like

sunlit limit

l trembles ami

sleeping tempes

herald of its

ts dead mother

ether from her

ariot on the

shing splendo

n, as one who

sky hood and

thin the sha

emed the head a

un and faint

light. Upon th

aged Shadow

of that wonde

ch drew it in

rd alone on the

their ever-

faces of th

banded; littl

an and blindne

the beams that

ded eyes could p

, has been, or

he car guide

speed maje

ions. On one occasion he thought that the dead Allegra rose from the sea, and clapped her hands, and laughed, and beckoned to him. On another he roused the whole house at night by his screams, and remained terror-frozen in the trance produced by an appalling vision. This mood he communicat

aly, raised forebodings in Shelley's mind as to the reception he would meet from Byron; nor were these destined to be unfulfilled. Trelawny tells us how irksome the poet found it to have "a man with a sick wife, and seven disorderly children," established in his palace. To Mrs. Hunt he was positively brutal; nor could he tolerate her self-complacent husband, who, while he had voyaged far and wide in literature, had never wholly cast the slough of Cockneyism. Hunt was himself hardly powerful enough to understand the true magnitude of Shelley, though he loved him; and the tender solicitude of the great,

last entry in Williams's diary; "but the gods are either angry or nature too powerful." Trelawny's Genoese mate observed, as the "Don Juan" stood out to sea, that they ought to have started at three a.m. instead of twelve hours later; adding "the devil is brewing mischief." Then a sea-fog withdrew the "Don Juan" from their sight. It was an oppressively sultry afternoon. Trelawny went down into his cabin, and slept; but was soon roused by the noise of the ships' crews in the harbour making

ere found a punt, a water-keg, and some bottles, which had been in Shelley's boat. A week passed, Trelawny patrolling the shore with the coast-guardsmen, but hearing of no new discovery, until at last two bodies were cast upon the sand. One found near the Via Reggio, on the 18th of July, was Shelley's. It had his jacket, "with the volume of Aeschylus in one

e says, "to return with me to Pisa. The misery of that night and the journey of the next day, and of many days and nights that followed, I can neither describe nor forget." It was decided that Shelley should be buried at Rome, near his friend Keats and his son

dy on the 6th of August, must be told in Trelawny's own words. W

me distance from each other, we had to cut a trench thirty yards in length, in the line of the

harmonized with Shelley's genius, that I could imagine his spirit soaring over us. The sea, with the islands of Gorgona, Capraja, and Elba, was before us; old battlemented watch-

t, and their feelings are easily excited into sympathy. Byron was silent and thoughtful. We were startled and drawn together by a dull, hollow sound that followed the blow of a mattock; the iron had struck a skull, and the body was soon uncovered.... After the fire was well kindled we repeated the ceremony of the previous day; and more wine was poured over Shelley's dead body than he had consumed during his life. This with the oil and salt made the yellow flames glisten and quiver. The heat f

ied in the Protestant cemetery, so touchingly described by him in his letter to Peacock, and afterwards so sublimely in "Adonais". The epitaph, composed by Hunt, ran thus: "Percy Bysshe Shelley, Cor C

him that

suffer a

hing rich

d, that his wild spiritual character seems to have prepared him for being thus snatched from life under circumstances of mingled terror and beauty, while his p