The first is a description of Shelley himself following Byron and Moore—the “Pilgrim of Eternity,” and Ierne’s“sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong”—to the couch where Keats lies dead. There is both pathos and unconscious irony in his making these two poets the chief mourners, when we remember what Byron wrote about Keats inDon Juan, and what Moore afterwards recorded of Shelley; and when we think, moreover, how far both Keats and Shelley have outsoared Moore, and disputed with Byron his supreme place in the heaven of poetry.
Midst others of less note, came one frail Form,A phantom among men, companionlessAs the last cloud of an expiring storm,Whose thunder is its knell. He, as I guess,Had gazed on Nature’s naked loveliness,Actæon-like, and now he fled astrayWith feeble steps o’er the world’s wilderness,And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,Pursued like raging hounds their father and their prey.A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift—A Love in desolation masked—a PowerGirt round with weakness; it can scarce upliftThe weight of the superincumbent hour;It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,A breaking billow;—even whilst we speakIs it not broken? On the withering flowerThe killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheekThe life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.His head was bound with pansies over-blown,And faded violets, white and pied and blue;And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grewYet dripping with the forest’s noon-day dew,Vibrated, as the ever-beating heartShook the weak hand that grasped it. Of that crewHe came the last, neglected and apart;A herd-abandoned deer, struck by the hunter’s dart.
The second passage is the peroration of the poem. No where has Shelley expressed his philosophy of man’srelation to the universe with more sublimity and with a more imperial command of language than in these stanzas. If it were possible to identify that philosophy with any recognized system of thought, it might be called pantheism. But it is difficult to affix a name, stereotyped by the usage of the schools, to the aerial spiritualism of its ardent and impassioned poet’s creed.
The movement of the long melodious sorrow-song has just been interrupted by three stanzas, in which Shelley lashes the reviewer of Keats. He now bursts forth afresh into the music of consolation:—
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep!He hath awakened from the dream of life.’Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keepWith phantoms an unprofitable strife,And in mad trance strike with our spirit’s knifeInvulnerable nothings.WedecayLike corpses in a charnel; fear and griefConvulse us and consume us day by day,And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.He has outsoared the shadow of our night;Envy and calumny, and hate and pain,And that unrest which men miscall delight,Can touch him not and torture not again;From the contagion of the world’s slow stainHe is secure, and now can never mournA heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain;Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn,With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.He lives, he wakes—’tis Death is dead, not he;Mourn not for Adonais.—Thou young Dawn,Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from theeThe spirit thou lamentest is not gone;Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou AirWhich like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrownO’er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bareEven to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!He is made one with Nature: there is heardHis voice in all her music, from the moanOf thunder, to the song of night’s sweet bird;He is a presence to be felt and knownIn darkness and in light, from herb and stone,Spreading itself where’er that Power may moveWhich has withdrawn his being to its own;Which wields the world with never wearied love,Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.He is a portion of the lovelinessWhich once he made more lovely: he doth bearHis part, while the One Spirit’s plastic stressSweeps through the dull dense world, compelling thereAll new successions to the forms they wear;Torturing th’ unwilling dross that checks its flightTo its own likeness, as each mass may bear;And bursting in its beauty and its mightFrom trees and beasts and men into the Heaven’s light.
But the absorption of the human soul into primeval nature-forces, the blending of the principle of thought with the universal spirit of beauty, is not enough to satisfy man’s yearning after immortality. Therefore in the next three stanzas the indestructibility of the personal self is presented to us, as the soul of Adonais passes into the company of the illustrious dead who, like him, were untimely slain:—
The splendours of the firmament of timeMay be eclipsed, but are extinguished not:Like stars to their appointed height they climb,And death is a low mist which cannot blotThe brightness it may veil. When lofty thoughtLifts a young heart above its mortal lair,And love and life contend in it, for whatShall be its earthly doom, the dead live there,And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.The inheritors of unfulfilled renownRose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought,Far in the Unapparent. ChattertonRose pale, his solemn agony had notYet faded from him; Sidney, as he foughtAnd as he fell and as he lived and loved,Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot,Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved:—Oblivion as they rose, shrank like a thing reproved.And many more, whose names on Earth are dark,But whose transmitted effluence cannot dieSo long as fire outlives the parent spark,Rose, robed in dazzling immortality.“Thou art become as one of us,” they cry;“It was for thee yon kingless sphere has longSwung blind in unascended majesty,Silent alone amid an Heaven of song.Assume thy wingèd throne, thou Vesper of our throng!”
From the more universal and philosophical aspects of his theme, the poet once more turns to the special subject that had stirred him. Adonais lies dead; and those who mourn him, must seek his grave. He has escaped: to follow him is to die; and where should we learn to dote on death unterrified, if not in Rome? In this way the description of Keats’s resting-place beneath the pyramid of Cestius, which was also destined to be Shelley’s own, is introduced:—
Who mourns for Adonais? oh come forth,Fond wretch! and show thyself and him aright.Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth;As from a centre, dart thy spirit’s lightBeyond all worlds, until its spacious mightSatiate the void circumference: then shrinkEven to a point within our day and night;And keep thy heart light, let it make thee sinkWhen hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink.Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre,Oh, not of him, but of our joy: ’tis noughtThat ages, empires, and religions thereLie buried in the ravage they have wrought;For such as he can lend,—they borrow notGlory from those who made the world their prey;And he is gathered to the kings of thoughtWho waged contention with their time’s decay,And of the past are all that cannot pass away.Go thou to Rome,—at once the Paradise,The grave, the city, and the wilderness;And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,And flowering weeds and fragrant copses dressThe bones of Desolation’s nakedness,Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall leadThy footsteps to a slope of green access,Where, like an infant’s smile, over the deadA light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;And grey walls moulder round, on which dull TimeFeeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,Pavilioning the dust of him who plannedThis refuge for his memory, doth standLike flame transformed to marble; and beneath,A field is spread, on which a newer bandHave pitched in Heaven’s smile their camp of death,Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.Here pause: these graves are all too young as yetTo have outgrown the sorrow which consignedIts charge to each; and if the seal is set,Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind,Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou findThine own well full, if thou returnest home,Of tears and gall. From the world’s bitter windSeek shelter in the shadow of the tomb.What Adonais is, why fear we to become?
Yet again the thought of Death as the deliverer, the revealer, and the mystagogue, through whom the soul ofman is reunited to the spirit of the universe, returns; and on this solemn note the poem closes. The symphony of exultation which had greeted the passage of Adonais into the eternal world, is here subdued to a graver key, as befits the mood of one whom mystery and mourning still oppress on earth. Yet even in the somewhat less than jubilant conclusion we feel that highest of all Shelley’s qualities—the liberation of incalculable energies, the emancipation and expansion of a force within the soul, victorious over circumstance, exhilarated and elevated by contact with such hopes as make a feebler spirit tremble:
The One remains, the many change and pass;Heaven’s light for ever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,Stains the white radiance of Eternity,Until Death tramples it to fragments.—Die,If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!Follow where all is fled!—Rome’s azure sky,Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak.The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart?Thy hopes are gone before: from all things hereThey have departed; thou shouldst now depart!A light is past from the revolving year,And man and woman; and what still is dearAttracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near:’Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither!No more let Life divide what Death can join together.That light whose smile kindles the Universe,That beauty in which all things work and move,That benediction which the eclipsing curseOf birth can quench not, that sustaining LoveWhich through the web of being blindly woveBy man and beast and earth and air and sea,Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors ofThe fire for which all thirst, now beams on me,Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.The breath whose might I have invoked in songDescends on me; my spirit’s bark is drivenFar from the shore, far from the trembling throngWhose sails were never to the tempest given.The massy earth and spherèd 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.
It will be seen that whatever Shelley may from time to time have said about the immortality of the soul, he was no materialist, and no believer in the extinction of the spiritual element by death. Yet he was too wise to dogmatize upon a problem which by its very nature admits of no solution in this world. “I hope,” he said, “but my hopes are not unmixed with fear for what will befall this inestimable spirit when we appear to die.” On another occasion he told Trelawny: “I am content to see no farther into futurity than Plato and Bacon. My mind is tranquil; I have no fears and some hopes. In our present gross material state our faculties are clouded; when Death removes our clay coverings, the mystery will be solved.” How constantly the thought of death as the revealer was present to his mind, may be gathered from an incident related by Trelawny. They were bathing in the Arno, when Shelley, who could not swim, plunged into deep water, and “lay stretched out at the bottom like a conger eel, not making the least effort or struggle to save himself.” Trelawny fished him out, and when he had taken breath, he said: “I always find the bottom of the well,and they say Truth lies there. In another minute I should have found it, and you would have found an empty shell. Death is the veil which those who live call life; they sleep, and it is lifted.” Yet being pressed by his friend, he refused to acknowledge a formal and precise belief in the imperishability of the human soul. “We know nothing; we have no evidence; we cannot express our inmost thoughts. They are incomprehensible even to ourselves.” The clear insight into the conditions of the question conveyed by the last sentence is very characteristic of Shelley. It makes us regret the non-completion of his essay on aFuture Life, which would certainly have stated the problem with rare lucidity and candour, and would have illuminated the abyss of doubt with a sense of spiritual realities not often found in combination with wise suspension of judgment. What he clung to amid all perplexities, was the absolute and indestructible existence of the universal as perceived by us in love, beauty, and delight. Though the destiny of the personal self be obscure, these things cannot fail. The conclusion of theSensitive Plantmight be cited as conveying the quintessence of his hope upon this most intangible of riddles.
Whether the Sensitive Plant, or thatWhich within its boughs like a spirit sat,Ere its outward form had known decay,Now felt this change, I cannot say.I dare not guess; but in this lifeOf error, ignorance, and strife,Where nothing is, but all things seem,And we the shadows of the dream:It is a modest creed, and yetPleasant, if one considers it,To own that death itself must be,Like all the rest, a mockery.That garden sweet, that lady fair,And all sweet shapes and odours there,In truth have never passed away:’Tis we, ’tis ours, are changed; not they.For love, and beauty, and delight,There is no death nor change; their mightExceeds our organs, which endureNo light, being themselves obscure.
But it is now time to return from this digression to the poem which suggested it, and which, more than any other, serves to illustrate its author’s mood of feeling about the life beyond the grave. The last lines ofAdonaismight be read as a prophecy of his own death by drowning. The frequent recurrence of this thought in his poetry is, to say the least, singular. InAlastorwe read:—
A restless impulse urged him to embarkAnd meet lone Death on the drear ocean’s waste;For well he knew that mighty Shadow lovesThe slimy caverns of the populous deep.
TheOde to Libertycloses on the same note:—
As a far taper fades with fading night;As a brief insect dies with dying day,My song, its pinions disarrayed of might,Drooped. O’er it closed the echoes far awayOf the great voice which did its flight sustain,As waves which lately paved his watery wayHiss round a drowner’s head in their tempestuous play.
TheStanzas written in Dejection, near Naples, echo the thought with a slight variation:—
Yet now despair itself is mild,Even as the winds and waters are;I could lie down like a tired child,And weep away the life of careWhich I have borne, and yet must bear,—Till death like sleep might steal on me,And I might feel in the warm airMy cheek grow cold, and hear the seaBreathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony.
Trelawny tells a story of his friend’s life at Lerici, which further illustrates his preoccupation with the thought of death at sea. He took Mrs. Williams and her children out upon the bay in his little boat one afternoon, and starting suddenly from a deep reverie, into which he had fallen, exclaimed with a joyful and resolute voice, “Now let us together solve the great mystery!” Too much value must not be attached to what might have been a mere caprice of utterance. Yet the proposal not unreasonably frightened Mrs. Williams, for Shelley’s friends were accustomed to expect the realization of his wildest fancies. It may incidentally be mentioned that before the water finally claimed its victim, he had often been in peril of life upon his fatal element—during the first voyage to Ireland, while crossing the Channel with Mary in an open boat, again at Meillerie with Byron, and once at least with Williams.
A third composition of the year 1821 was inspired by the visit of Prince Mavrocordato to Pisa. He called on Shelley in April, showed him a copy of Prince Ipsilanti’s proclamation, and announced that Greece was determined to strike a blow for freedom. The news aroused all Shelley’s enthusiasm, and he began the lyrical drama ofHellas, which he has described as “a sort of imitation of thePersaeofÆschylus.” We find him at work upon it in October; and it must have been finished by the end of that month, since the dedication bears the date of November 1st, 1821. Shelley did not set great store by it.“It was written,” he says, “without much care, and in one of those few moments of enthusiasm which now seldom visit me, and which make me pay dear for their visits.” The preface might, if space permitted, be cited as a specimen of his sound and weighty judgment upon one of the greatest political questions of this century. What he says about the debt of the modern world to ancient Hellas, is no less pregnant than his severe strictures upon the part played by Russia in dealing with Eastern questions. For the rest, the poem is distinguished by passages of great lyrical beauty, rising at times to the sublimest raptures, and closing on the half-pathetic cadence of that well-known Chorus, “The world’s great age begins anew.” Of dramatic interest it has but little; nor is the play, as finished, equal to the promise held forth by the superb fragment of its so-called Prologue.[30]This truly magnificent torso must, I think, have been the commencement of the drama as conceived upon a different and more colossal plan, which Shelley rejected for some unknown reason. It shows the influence not only of the Book of Job, but also of the Prologue in Heaven to Faust, upon his mind.
The lyric movement of the Chorus fromHellas, which I propose to quote, marks the highest point of Shelley’s rhythmical invention. As for the matter expressed in it, we must not forget that these stanzas are written for a Chorus of Greek captive women, whose creed does not prevent their feeling a regret for the “mightier forms of an older, austerer worship.” Shelley’s note reminds the reader, with characteristic caution and frankness, that “the popular notions of Christianity are represented in this Chorus as true in their relation to the worship theysuperseded, and that which in all probability they will supersede, without considering their merits in a relation more universal.”
Worlds on worlds are rolling everFrom creation to decay,Like the bubbles on a riverSparkling, bursting, borne away.But they are still immortalWho, through birth’s orient portal,And death’s dark chasm hurrying to and fro,Clothe their unceasing flightIn the brief dust and lightGathered around their chariots as they go;New shapes they still may weave,New gods, new laws receive;Bright or dim are they, as the robes they lastOn Death’s bare ribs had cast.A power from the unknown God,A Promethean conqueror came;Like a triumphal path he trodThe thorns of death and shame.A mortal shape to himWas like the vapour dimWhich the orient planet animates with light.Hell, Sin, and Slavery came,Like bloodhounds mild and tame,Nor preyed until their Lord had taken flight.The moon of MahometArose, and it shall set:While blazoned as on heaven’s immortal noonThe cross leads generations on.Swift as the radiant shapes of sleepFrom one whose dreams are paradise,Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep,And day peers forth with her blank eyes;So fleet, so faint, so fair,The Powers of earth and airFled from the folding star of Bethlehem:Apollo, Pan, and Love,And even Olympian JoveGrew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them.Our hills, and seas, and streams,Dispeopled of their dreams,Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears,Wailed for the golden years.
In the autumn of this year Shelley paid Lord Byron a visit at Ravenna, where he made acquaintance with the Countess Guiccioli. It was then settled that Byron, who had formed the project of starting a journal to be calledThe Liberalin concert with Leigh Hunt, should himself settle in Pisa. Leigh Hunt was to join his brother poets in the same place. The prospect gave Shelley great pleasure, for he was sincerely attached to Hunt; and though he would not promise contributions to the journal, partly lest his name should bring discredit on it, and partly because he did not choose to appear before the world as a hanger-on of Byron’s, he thoroughly approved of a plan which would be profitable to his friend by bringing him into close relation with the most famous poet of the age.[31]That he was not without doubts as to Byron’s working easily in harness with Leigh Hunt, may be seen in his correspondence; and how fully these doubts were destined to be confirmed, is only too well known.
At Ravenna he was tormented by the report of some more than usually infamous calumny, concerning the position of Miss Clairmont in his household. That it made profound impression on his mind, appears from a remarkable letter addressed to his wife on the 16th and 17th of August from Ravenna. In it he repeats his growing weariness, and his wish to escapefrom society to solitude; the weariness of a nature wounded and disappointed by commerce with the world, but neither soured nor driven to fury by cruel wrongs. It is noticeable at the same time that he clings to his present place of residence:—“our roots never struck so deeply as at Pisa, and the transplanted tree flourishes not.” At Pisa he had found real rest and refreshment in the society of his two friends, the Williamses. Some of his saddest and most touching lyrics of this year are addressed to Jane—for so Mrs. Williams was called; and attentive students may perceive that the thought of Emilia was already blending by subtle transitions with the new thought of Jane. One poem, almost terrible in its intensity of melancholy, is hardly explicable on the supposition that Shelley was quite happy in his home.[32]These words must be taken as implying no reflection either upon Mary’s love for him, or upon his own power to bear the slighter troubles of domestic life. He was not a spoiled child of fortune, a weak egotist, or a querulous complainer. But he was always seeking and never finding the satisfaction of some deeper craving. In his own words, he had loved Antigone before he visited this earth: and no one woman could probably have made him happy, because he was for ever demanding more from love than it can give in the mixed circumstances of mortal life. Moreover, it must be remembered that his power of self-expression has bestowed permanent form on feelings which may have been but transitory; nor can we avoid the conclusion that, sincere as Shelley was, he, like all poets, made use of the emotion of the moment for purposes of art, converting an ephemeral mood into something typical and universal. This was almost certainly the case withEpipsychidion.
So much at any rate had to be said upon this subject; for careful readers of Shelley’s minor poems are forced to the conviction that during the last year of his life he often found relief from a wretchedness, which, however real, can hardly be defined, in the sympathy of this true-hearted woman. The affection he felt for Jane was beyond question pure and honourable. All the verses he addressed to her, passed through her husband’s hands without the slightest interruption to their intercourse; and Mrs. Shelley, who was not unpardonably jealous of her Ariel, continued to be Mrs. Williams’s warm friend. A passage from Shelley’s letter of June 18, 1822, expresses the plain prose of his relation to the Williamses:—“They are people who are very pleasing to me. But words are not the instruments of our intercourse. I like Jane more and more, and I find Williams the most amiable of companions. She has a taste for music, and an eloquence of form and motions that compensate in some degree for the lack of literary refinement.”
Two lyrics of this period may here be introduced, partly for the sake of their intrinsic beauty, and partly because they illustrate the fecundity of Shelley’s genius during the months of tranquil industry which he passed at Pisa. The first is an Invocation to Night:—
Swiftly walk over the western wave,Spirit of Night!Out of the misty eastern cave,Where all the long and lone daylight,Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,Which make thee terrible and dear,—Swift be thy flight!Wrap thy form in a mantle grey,Star-inwrought!Blind with thine hair the eyes of day,Kiss her until she be wearied out.Then wander o’er city, and sea, and land,Touching all with thine opiate wand—Come, long-sought!When I arose and saw the dawn,I sighed for thee;When light rode high, and the dew was gone,And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,And the weary Day turned to his rest,Lingering like an unloved guest,I sighed for thee.Thy brother Death came, and cried,“Wouldst thou me?”Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,Murmured like a noon-tide bee,“Shall I nestle near thy side?Wouldst thou me?”—And I replied,“No, not thee!”Death will come when thou art dead,Soon, too soon—Sleep will come when thou art fled;Of neither would I ask the boonI ask of thee, beloved Night—Swift be thine approaching flight,Come soon, soon!
The second is an Epithalamium composed for a drama which his friend Williams was writing. Students of the poetic art will find it not uninteresting to compare the three versions of this Bridal Song, given by Mr. Forman.[33]They prove that Shelley was no careless writer.
The golden gates of sleep unbarWhere strength and beauty, met together,Kindle their image like a starIn a sea of glassy weather!Night, with all thy stars look down—Darkness, weep thy holiest dew!Never smiled the inconstant moonOn a pair so true.Let eyes not see their own delight;Haste, swift Hour, and thy flightOft renew.Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!Holy stars, permit no wrong!And return to wake the sleeper,Dawn, ere it be long.O joy! O fear! what will be doneIn the absence of the sun!Come along!
Lyrics like these, delicate in thought and exquisitely finished in form, were produced with a truly wonderful profusion in this season of his happiest fertility. A glance at the last section of Mr. Palgrave’sGolden Treasuryshows how large a place they occupy among the permanent jewels of our literature.
The month of January added a new and most important member to the little Pisan circle. This was Captain Edward John Trelawny, to whom more than to any one else but Hogg and Mrs. Shelley, the students of the poet’s life are indebted for details at once accurate and characteristic. Trelawny had lived a free life in all quarters of the globe, far away from literary cliques and the society of cities, in contact with the sternest realities of existence, which had developed his self-reliance and his physical qualities to the utmost. The impression, therefore, made on him by Shelley has to be gravely estimated by all who still incline to treat the poet as a pathological specimen of humanity. This true child of nature recognized in his new friend far more than in Byron thestuff of a real man. “To form a just idea of his poetry, you should have witnessed his daily life; his words and actions best illustrated his writings.” “The cynic Byron acknowledged him to be the best and ablest man he had ever known. The truth was, Shelley loved everything better than himself.” “I have seen Shelley and Byron in society, and the contrast was as marked as their characters. The former, not thinking of himself, was as much at ease as in his own home, omitting no occasion of obliging those whom he came in contact with, readily conversing with all or any who addressed him, irrespective of age or rank, dress or address.” “All who heard him felt the charm of his simple, earnest manner: while Byron knew him to be exempt from the egotism, pedantry, coxcombry, and more than all the rivalry of authorship.” “Shelley’s mental activity was infectious; he kept your brain in constant action.” “He was always in earnest.” “He never laid aside his book and magic mantle; he waved his wand, and Byron, after a faint show of defiance, stood mute.... Shelley’s earnestness and just criticism held him captive.” These sentences, and many others, prove that Trelawny, himself somewhat of a cynic, cruelly exposing false pretensions, and detesting affectation in any form, paid unreserved homage to the heroic qualities this “dreamy bard,”—“uncommonly awkward,” as he also called him—bad rider and poor seaman as he was—“over-sensitive,” and “eternally brooding on his own thoughts,” who “had seen no more of the waking-day than a girl at a boarding-school.” True to himself, gentle, tender, with the courage of a lion, “frank and outspoken, like a well-conditioned boy, well-bred and considerate for others, because he was totally devoid of selfishness and vanity,” Shelley seemed to this unprejudiced companionof his last few months that very rare product for which Diogenes searched in vain—a man.
Their first meeting must be told in Trelawny’s own words—words no less certain of immortality than the fame of him they celebrate. “The Williamses received me in their earnest, cordial manner; we had a great deal to communicate to each other, and were in loud and animated conversation, when I was rather put out by observing in the passage near the open door, opposite to where I sat, a pair of glittering eyes steadily fixed on mine; it was too dark to make out whom they belonged to. With the acuteness of a woman, Mrs. Williams’s eyes followed the direction of mine, and going to the doorway she laughingly said, ‘Come in, Shelley, it’s only our friend Tre just arrived.’ Swiftly gliding in, blushing like a girl, a tall, thin stripling held out both his hands; and although I could hardly believe, as I looked at his flushed, feminine, and artless face, that it could be the poet, I returned his warm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and courtesies he sat down and listened. I was silent from astonishment: was it possible this mild-looking, beardless boy, could be the veritable monster at war with all the world?—excommunicated by the Fathers of the Church, deprived of his civil rights by the fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, discarded by every member of his family, and denounced by the rival sages of our literature as the founder of a Satanic school? I could not believe it; it must be a hoax. He was habited like a boy, in a black jacket and trousers, which he seemed to have outgrown, or his tailor, as is the custom, had most shamefully stinted him in his ‘sizings.’ Mrs. Williams saw my embarrassment, and to relieve me asked Shelley what book he had in his hand? His face brightened, and he answered briskly,—
“‘Calderon’sMagico Prodigioso—I am translating some passages in it.’
“‘Oh, read it to us.’
“Shoved off from the shore of commonplace incidents that could not interest him, and fairly launched on a theme that did, he instantly became oblivious of everything but the book in his hand. The masterly manner in which he analysed the genius of the author, his lucid interpretation of the story, and the ease with which he translated into our language the most subtle and imaginative passages of the Spanish poet, were marvellous, as was his command of the two languages. After this touch of his quality I no longer doubted his identity; a dead silence ensued; looking up, I asked,—
“‘Where is he?’
“Mrs. Williams said, ‘Who? Shelley? Oh, he comes and goes like a spirit, no one knows when or where.’”
Two little incidents which happened in the winter of 1821-2 deserve to be recorded. News reached the Pisan circle early in December that a man who had insulted the Host at Lucca, was sentenced to be burned. Shelley proposed that the English—himself, Byron, Medwin, and their friend Mr. Taafe—should immediately arm and ride off to rescue him. The scheme took Byron’s fancy; but they agreed to try less Quixotic measures before they had recourse to force, and their excitement was calmed by hearing that the man’s sentence had been commuted to the galleys. The other affair brought them less agreeably into contact with the Tuscan police. The party were riding home one afternoon in March, when a mounted dragoon came rushing by, breaking their ranks and nearly unhorsing Mr. Taafe. Byron and Shelley rode after him to remonstrate; but the man struck Shelley from his saddle witha sabre blow. The English then pursued him into Pisa, making such a clatter that one of Byron’s servants issued with a pitchfork from the Casa Lanfranchi, and wounded the fellow somewhat seriously, under the impression that it was necessary to defend his master. Shelley called the whole matter “a trifling piece of business;” but it was strictly investigated by the authorities; and though the dragoon was found to have been in the wrong, Byron had to retire for a season to Leghorn. Another consequence was the exile of Count Gamba and his father from Tuscany, which led to Byron’s final departure from Pisa.
The even current of Shelley’s life was not often broken by such adventures. Trelawny gives the following account of how he passed his days: he “was up at six or seven, reading Plato, Sophocles, or Spinoza, with the accompaniment of a hunch of dry bread; then he joined Williams in a sail on the Arno, in a flat-bottomed skiff, book in hand, and from thence he went to the pine-forest, or some out-of-the-way place. When the birds went to roost he returned home, and talked and read until midnight.” The great wood of stone pines on the Pisan Maremma was his favourite study. Trelawny tells us how he found him there alone one day, and in what state was the MS. of that prettiest lyric,Ariel, to Miranda take. “It was a frightful scrawl; words smeared out with his finger, and one upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all run together in most ‘admired disorder;’ it might have been taken for a sketch of a marsh overgrown with bulrushes, and the blots for wild ducks; such a dashed-off daub as self-conceited artists mistake for a manifestation of genius. On my observing this to him, he answered, ‘When my brain gets heated with thought, it soon boils, and throws off images and words faster than I can skim them off. In themorning, when cooled down, out of the rude sketch as you justly call it, I shall attempt a drawing.’”
A daily visit to Byron diversified existence. Byron talked more sensibly with Shelley than with his commonplace acquaintances; and when he began to gossip, Shelley retired into his own thoughts. Then they would go pistol-shooting, Byron’s trembling hand contrasting with his friend’s firmness. They had invented a “little language” for this sport: firing was calledtiring; hitting,colping; missing,mancating, &c. It was in fact a kind of pigeon Italian. Shelley acquired two nick-names in the circle of his Pisan friends, both highly descriptive. He was Ariel and the Snake. The latter suited him because of his noiseless gliding movement, bright eyes and ethereal diet. It was first given to him by Byron during a reading ofFaust. When he came to the line of Mephistophiles, “Wie meine Muhme, die berühmte Schlange” and translated it, “My aunt, the renowned Snake,” Byron cried, “Then you are her nephew.” Shelley by no means resented the epithet. Indeed he alludes to it in his letters and in a poem already referred to above.
Soon after Trelawny’s arrival the party turned their thoughts to nautical affairs. Shelley had already done a good deal of boating with Williams on the Arno and the Serchio, and had on one occasion nearly lost his life by the capsizing of their tiny craft. They now determined to build a larger yacht for excursions on the sea; while Byron, liking the project of a summer residence upon the Bay of Spezia, made up his mind to have one too. Shelley’s was to be an open boat carrying sail, Byron’s, a large decked schooner. The construction of both was entrusted to a Genoese builder, under the direction ofTrelawny’s friend, Captain Roberts. Such was the birth of the ill-fatedDon Juan, which cost the lives of Shelley and Williams, and of theBolivar, which carried Byron off to Genoa before he finally set sail for Greece. Captain Roberts was allowed to have his own way about the latter; but Shelley and Williams had set their hearts upon a model for their little yacht, which did not suit the Captain’s notions of sea-worthiness. Williams overruled his objections, and theDon Juanwas built according to his cherished fancy. “When it was finished,” says Trelawny, “it took two tons of iron ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and then she was very crank in a breeze, though not deficient in beam. She was fast, strongly built, and Torbay rigged.” She was christened by Lord Byron, not wholly with Shelley’s approval; and one young English sailor, Charles Vivian, in addition to Williams and Shelley, formed her crew. “It was great fun,” says Trelawny, “to witness Williams teaching the poet how to steer, and other points of seamanship. As usual, Shelley had a book in hand, saying he could read and steer at the same time, as one was mental, the other mechanical.” “The boy was quick and handy, and used to boats. Williams was not as deficient as I anticipated, but over-anxious, and wanted practice, which alone makes a man prompt in emergency. Shelley was intent on catching images from the ever-changing sea and sky, he heeded not the boat.” It ought finally to be added that Shelley and Williams re-christened the yacht, more to their liking, theAriel.
LAST DAYS.
The advance of spring made the climate of Pisa too hot for comfort; and early in April Trelawny and Williams rode off to find a suitable lodging for themselves and the Shelleys on the Gulf of Spezia. They pitched upon a house called the Villa Magni, between Lerici and San Terenzio, which “looked more like a boat or bathing-house than a place to live in. It consisted of a terrace or ground-floor un-paved, and used for storing boat-gear and fishing-tackle, and of a single storey over it, divided into a hall or saloon and four small rooms, which had once been white-washed; there was one chimney for cooking. This place we thought the Shelleys might put up with for the summer. The only good thing about it was a verandah facing the sea, and almost over it.” When it came to be inhabited, the 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, though covered in his retreat by the clever Italianhandmaiden, through a luncheon party assembled in the dining-room. The horror of the ladies at the poet’s unexpected apparition and his innocent self-defence are well described by Trelawny. Life in the villa was of the simplest description. To get food was no easy matter; and the style of the furniture may be guessed by Trelawny’s laconic remark that the sea was his only washing-basin.
They settled at Villa Magni on the 1st of May, and began a course of life which was not interrupted till the final catastrophe of July 8. These few weeks were in many respects the happiest of Shelley’s life. We seem to discern in his last letter of importance, recently edited by Dr. Garnett, that he was now conscious of having reached a platform from which he could survey his past achievement, and whence he would probably have risen to a loftier altitude, by the firmer and more equable exercise of powers 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 with nature, and toiled with hardy perseverance on the element he loved so well. His company was thoroughly congenial and well mixed. He spent his days in excursions on the water with Williams, or in solitary musings in his cranky little skiff, floating upon the shallows in shore, or putting out to sea and waiting for the landward breeze to bring him home. The evenings were passed upon the terrace, listening to Jane’s guitar, conversingwith Trelawny, or reading his favourite poets aloud to the assembled party.
In this delightful solitude, this round of simple occupations, this uninterrupted communion with nature, Shelley’s enthusiasms and inspirations revived with their old strength. He began a poem, which, if we may judge of its scale by the fragment we possess, ought to have been one of the longest, as it certainly is one of the loftiest of his masterpieces. TheTriumph of Lifeis composed in no strain of compliment to the powers of this world, which quell untameable spirits, and enslave the noblest by the operation of blind passions and inordinate ambitions. It is rather a pageant of the spirit dragged in chains, led captive to the world, the flesh, and the devil. The sonorous march and 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 dæmonic fascinations of this solemn mystery. Some have compared theTriumph of Lifeto 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 Revolution passes by: Napoleon is there, and Rousseau serves for guide. The great of all ages are arraigned, and the spirit of the world is brought before us, while its heroes pass, unveil their faces for a moment, and are swallowed in the throng that has no ending. But how Shelley meant to solve the problems he has raised, by what sublime philosophy he purposed to resolve the discords of this revelationmore soul-shattering than Daniel’sMene, we cannot even guess. The poem, as we have it, breaks abruptly with these words: “Then what is Life? I cried”—a sentence of profoundest import, when we remember that the questioner was now about to seek its answer in the halls of Death.
To separate any single passage from a poem which owes so much of its splendour to the continuity of music and the succession of visionary images, does it cruel wrong. Yet this must be attempted; for Shelley is the only English poet who has 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 literature, and even in Italian used with perfect mastery by none but Dante. To select the introduction and part of the first paragraph will inflict less violence upon theTriumph of Lifeas a whole, than to detach one of its episodes.
Swift as a spirit hastening to his taskOf glory and of good, the Sun sprang forthRejoicing in his splendour, and the maskOf darkness fell from the awakened Earth.The smokeless altars of the mountain snowsFlamed above crimson clouds, and at the birthOf light, the Ocean’s orison arose,To which the birds tempered their matin lay.All flowers in field or forest which uncloseTheir trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,Swinging their censers in the element,With orient incense lit by the new rayBurned slow and inconsumably, and sentTheir odorous sighs up to the smiling air;And, in succession due, did continent,Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wearThe form and character of mortal mould,Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bearTheir portion of the toil, which he of oldTook as his own, and then imposed on them.But I, whom thoughts which must remain untoldHad kept as wakeful as the stars that gemThe cone of night, now they were laid asleep,Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stemWhich an old chesnut flung athwart the steepOf a green Apennine. Before me fledThe night; behind me rose the day; the deepWas at my feet, and Heaven above my head,—When a strange trance over my fancy grewWhich was not slumber, for the shade it spreadWas so transparent that the scene came throughAs clear as, when a veil of light is drawnO’er evening hills, they glimmer; and I knewThat I had felt the freshness of that dawnBathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair,And sate as thus upon that slope of lawnUnder the self-same bough, and heard as thereThe birds, the fountains, and the ocean, holdSweet talk in music through the enamoured air.And then a vision on my brain was rolled.
Such is the exordium of the poem. It will be noticed that at this point one series of the interwoven triplets is concluded. TheTriumph of Lifeitself begins with a new series of rhymes, describing the vision for which preparation has been made in the preceding prelude. It is not without perplexity that an ear unaccustomed to the windings of theterza rima, feels its way among them. Entangled and impeded by the labyrinthine sounds, thereader might be compared to one who, swimming in his dreams, is carried down the course of a swift river clogged with clinging and retarding water-weeds. He moves; but not without labour: yet after a while the very obstacles add fascination to his movement.
As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay,This was the tenour of my waking dream:—Methought I sate beside a public wayThick strewn with summer dust, and a great streamOf people there was hurrying to and fro,Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,All hastening onward, yet none seemed to knowWhither he went, or whence he came, or whyHe made one of the multitude, and soWas borne amid the crowd, as through the skyOne of the million leaves of summer’s bier;Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear:Some flying from the thing they feared, and someSeeking the object, of another’s fear;And others, as with steps towards the tomb,Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,And others mournfully within the gloomOf their own shadow walked and called it death;And some fled from it as it were a ghost,Half fainting in the affliction of vain breathBut more, with motions which each other crossed,Pursued or spurned the shadows the clouds threw,Or birds within the noon-day ether lost,Upon that path where flowers never grew,—And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst,Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dewOut of their mossy cells for ever burst;Nor felt the breeze which from the forest toldOf grassy paths, and wood lawn-interspersed,With over-arching elms, and caverns cold,And violet banks where sweet dreams brood;—but theyPursued their serious folly as of old.
Here let us break the chain of rhymes that are unbroken in the text, to notice the extraordinary skill with which the rhythm has been woven in one paragraph, suggesting by recurrences of sound 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. Students of Petrarch’sTrionfiwill not fail to note what Shelley owes to that poet, and how he has transmuted the definite imagery of mediæval symbolism into something metaphysical and mystic.
And as I gazed, methought that in the wayThe throng grew wilder, as the woods of JuneWhen the south wind shakes the extinguished day;And a cold glare, intenser than the noonBut icy cold, obscured with blinding lightThe sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon—When on the sunlit limits of the nightHer white shell trembles amid crimson air,And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might,—Doth, as the herald of its coming, bearThe ghost of its dead mother, whose dim formBends in dark ether from her infant’s chair;So came a chariot on the silent stormOf its own rushing splendour, and a ShapeSo sate within, as one whom years deform,Beneath a dusky hood and double cape,Crouching within the shadow of a tomb.And o’er what seemed the head a cloud-like crapeWas bent, a dun and faint ethereal gloomTempering the light. Upon the chariot beamA Janus-visaged Shadow did assumeThe guidance of that wonder-wingèd team;The shapes which drew it in thick lightningsWere lost:—I heard alone on the air’s soft streamThe music of their ever-moving wings.All the four faces of that charioteerHad their eyes banded; little profit bringsSpeed in the van and blindness in the rear,Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun,Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphereOf all that is, has been, or will be done.So ill was the car guided—but it pastWith solemn speed majestically on.
The intense stirring of his imagination implied by this supreme poetic effort, the solitude of Villa Magni, and the elemental fervour of Italian heat to which he recklessly exposed himself, contributed to make Shelley more than usually nervous. His somnambulism returned, and he saw visions. 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 communicated, in some measure, to his friends. One of them saw what she afterwards believed to have been his phantom, and another dreamed that he was dead. They talked much of death, and it is noticeable that thelast words written to him by Jane were these:—“Are you going to join your friend Plato?”
The Leigh Hunts at last arrived in Genoa, whence they again sailed for Leghorn. Shelley heard the news upon the 20th of June. He immediately prepared to join them; and on the 1st of July set off with Williams in theDon Juan, for Leghorn, where he rushed into the arms of his old friend. Leigh Hunt, in his autobiography, writes, “I will not dwell upon the moment.” From Leghorn he drove with the Hunts to Pisa, and established them in the ground-floor of Byron’s Palazzo Lanfranchi, as comfortably as was consistent with his lordship’s variable moods. The negotiations which had preceded Hunt’s visit to Italy, 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, unselfish Shelley, for the smaller, harmlessly conceited Hunt, is pathetic. They spent a pleasant day or two together, Shelley showing the Campo Santo and other sights of Pisa to his English friend. Hunt thought him somewhat less hopeful than he used to be, but improved in health and strength and spirits. One little touch relating to their last conversation, deserves to be recorded:—“He assented warmly to an opinion I expressed in the cathedral at Pisa, while the organ wasplaying, that a truly divine religion might yet be established, if charity were really made the principle of it, instead of faith.”
On the night following that day of rest, Shelley took a postchaise for Leghorn; and early in the afternoon of the next day he set sail, with Williams, on his return voyage to Lerici. The sailor-boy, Charles Vivian, was their only companion. Trelawny, who was detained on board theBolivar, in the Leghorn harbour, watched them start. The weather for some time had been unusually hot and dry. “Processions of priests and religiosi have been for several days past praying for rain;” so runs the last entry in Williams’s diary: “but the gods are either angry or nature too powerful.” Trelawny’s Genoese mate observed, as theDon Juanstood 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 theDon Juanfrom 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 all ready for a gale. In a short time the tempest was upon them, with wind, rain, and thunder. It did not last more than twenty minutes; and at its end Trelawny looked out anxiously for Shelley’s boat. She was nowhere to be seen, and nothing could be heard of her. In fact, though Trelawny could not then be absolutely sure of the catastrophe, she had sunk, struck in all probability by the prow of a felucca, but whether by accident or with the intention of running her down, is still uncertain.
On the morning of the third day alter the storm, Trelawny rode to Pisa, and communicated his tears to Hunt. “I then went upstairs to Byron. When I told him, his lipquivered, and his voice faltered as he questioned me.” Couriers were despatched to search the sea coast, and to bring theBolivarfrom Leghorn. Trelawny rode in person toward Via Reggio, and there 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 Via Reggio, on the 18th of July, was Shelley’s. It had his jacket, “with the volume of Sophocles in one pocket, and Keats’s poems in the other, doubled back, as if the reader, in the act of reading, had hastily thrust it away.” The other, found near the tower of Migliarino, at about four miles’ distance, was that of Williams. The sailor-boy, Charles Vivian, though cast up on the same day, the 18th of July, near Massa, was not heard of by Trelawny till the 29th.
Nothing now remained but to tell the whole dreadful truth to the two widowed women, who had spent the last days in an agony of alternate despair and hope at Villa Magni. This duty Trelawny discharged faithfully and firmly. “The next day I prevailed on them,” he 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 William, and that Williams’s remains should be taken to England. But first the bodies had to be burned; and for permission to do this, Trelawny, who all through had taken the lead, applied to the English Embassy at Florence. After some difficulty it was granted.
What remains to be said concerning the cremation of Shelley’s body on the 16th of August, must be told inTrelawny’s own words. Williams, it may be stated, had been burned on the preceding day.
“Three white wands had been stuck in the sand to mark the poet’s grave, but as they were at some distance from each other, we had to cut a trench thirty yards in length, in the line of the sticks, to ascertain the exact spot, and it was nearly an hour before we came upon the grave.
“In the meantime Byron and Leigh Hunt arrived in the carriage, attended by soldiers, and the Health Officer, as before. The lonely and grand scenery that surrounded us, so exactly 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-towers stretched along the coast, backed by the marble-crested Apennines glistening in the sun, picturesque from their diversified outlines, and not a human dwelling was in sight.
“As I thought of the delight Shelley felt in such scenes of loneliness and grandeur whilst living, I felt we were no better than a herd of wolves or a pack of wild dogs, in tearing out his battered and naked body from the pure yellow sand that lay so lightly over it, to drag him back to the light of day; but the dead have no voice, nor had I power to check the sacrilege—the work went on silently in the deep and unresisting sand, not a word was spoken, for the Italians have a touch of sentiment, 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 morewine 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 from the sun and fire was so intense that the atmosphere was tremulous and wavy.... The fire was so fierce as to produce a white heat on the iron, and to reduce its contents to grey ashes. The only portions that were not consumed were some fragments of bones, the jaw, and the skull; but what surprised us all was that the heart remained entire. In snatching this relic from the fiery furnace, my hand was severely burnt; and had any one seen me do the act, I should have been put into quarantine.”
Shelley’s heart was given to Hunt, who subsequently, not without reluctance and unseemly dispute, resigned it to Mrs. Shelley. It is now at Boscombe. His ashes were sent by Trelawny to Rome and buried in the Protestant cemetery, so touchingly described by him in his letter to Peacock, and afterwards so sublimely inAdonais. The epitaph, composed by Hunt, ran thus: “Percy Bysshe Shelley, Cor Cordium, Natus iv. Aug.MDCCXCII. ObiitVIIIJul.MDCCCXXII.” To the Latin words Trelawny, faithfullest and most devoted of friends, added three lines from Ariel’s song, much loved in life by Shelley:
Nothing of him that doth fade,But doth suffer a sea-changeInto something rich and strange.
“And so,” writes Lady Shelley, “the sea and the earth closed over one who was great as a poet, and still greater as a philanthropist; and of whom it may be said, that his wild spiritual character seems to have prepared himfor being thus snatched from life under circumstances of mingled terror and beauty, while his powers were yet in their spring freshness, and age had not come to render the ethereal body decrepit, or to wither the heart which could not be consumed by fire.”