Percy Bysshe Shelley

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in Beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o'er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express,

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

A thorough rebel in every aspect of his short life, Percy Bysshe Shelley (Aug. 4, 1792, Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex — July 8, 1822, at sea off Livorno, Italy) came from a conservative family. His forefathers had been Sussex aristocrats since the 17^th century, his grandfather was the richest man in Horsham and his father was Member of Parliament. So young Shelley was duly sent to Eton and Oxford, and being slender from birth early felt the tyranny of both the schoolmasters and his mates. Such harsh beginnings caused his firm position against every injustice and oppression.

While at Oxford, Shelley and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg wrote a pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism (1810), a shocking incident for both their teachers and their families. In the same year Shelley also published a pamphlet of burlesque verse, Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson. As a result, he was expelled after just six month at university and estranged from his father.

Shelley moved to London and got close to Harriet Westbrook, the pretty and warmhearted daughter of a tavern keeper, who was on tense terms with her father, too. They fell in love and fled to Edinburgh and married there, even as Shelley undervalued marriage as a social institution. The young couple, aged 18 and 16, constantly changed places, living on a small grant from their families.

On their return to London, Shelley became a supporter of the radical social philosopher William Godwin (1756-1836), under whose influence he further developed his radical views and exposed them in his first significant poem, Queen Mab (1813), showing the sorrowful human evolution and a Utopian future.

The next year Shelley fell in love with Godwin's daughter Mary Wollstonecraft, left with her for France, taking along Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont. His family and the general public were horrified, the estranged Harriet drowned herself in despair. Mary was a competent writer and her novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818) proved to be very popular among the general readers. The Shelleys roamed from place to place, his health slowly deteriorating. During a brief visit to the Continent in 1816, they met Lord Byron. Among the short poems from this time are Hymn to Intellectual Beauty and Mont Blanc.

The death of Shelley's grandfather in 1815 provided enough money, but he gave it away in support of William Godwin and others, so that he never recovered from financial troubles. Another tragedy befell the Shelleys when their two children died in 1818 and 1819.

In 1819, Shelley finished his masterpiece, Prometheus Unbound, and a tragedy, The Cenci. Besides, he created a revolutionary poem, The Mask of Anarchy; a witty satire on Wordsworth, Peter Bell the Third; also a political essay, A Philosophical View of Reform, and most of the hopeful shorter poems, such as Ode to Liberty, Ode to the West Wind, The Cloud, and To a Sky-Lark.

Shelley's time at Pisa in 1820 became the peaceful paradise of his adult life. But the end came suddenly, though earlier foreseen in the last stanza of Adonais, where his spirit was described as a storm-beaten ship out in the dark. On July 8, 1822, Shelley and his friend Edward Williams were sailing their open boat and a violent squall drowned the boat. On cremation, Shelley's ashes were buried in Rome, near the grave of John Keats.

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