 | Born: August 4, 1792 // Died: July 8, 1822
 Percy Bysshe Shelley was born 4 August 1792 at Field Place, near Horsham in Sussex, the eldest son of Sir Timothy and Elizabeth Shelley. His first two volumes of poetry were published at his fathers expense and co-authored with his sister Elizabeth.In August 1811, he eloped with Harriet Westbrook, who as the daughter of a coffee-house owner was of a decidedly inferior station to the aristocratic lineage the Shelley family claimed. Although Sir Timothy settled enough income on the young couple for their modest comfort, he refused ever to see his son again, instead handling all their relations through his London solicitor. By 1813, Shelley had settled in London, where he printed his first major poem, Queen Mab. In June of that year, Harriet gave birth to their daughter Ianthe. As the year wore on, however, relations between Harriet and Shelley deteriorated seriously, and Shelley came to regret the impulsiveness of his marriage. It was in this state of frustration and emotional duress early in 1814 that Shelley, on a visit to Godwin, became reacquainted with his sixteen-year old daughter Mary, herself just returned from a prolonged stay in Scotland. Soon the two of them had fallen in love. On 27 July 1814, they fled to the continent along with Mary's step-sister Claire Clairmont, and for the ensuing month-and-a half they traveled through France, Switzerland, and Germany in a journey later memorialized as a History of a Six Weeks' Tour.Upon their return in September harsh reality quickly intruded on the couple's idyll. Shelley found himself shunned by Godwin and dunned by creditors. With Mary now pregnant, Harriet Shelley gave birth to a second child, whom she named Charles, on 30 November 1814.In January of 1816 Mary gave birth to a son, whom she named William after her father. Later that spring Shelley, Mary, and Claire once more set out for the continent, this time rather from necessity.During March Claire, through an improbable but successful act of rivalry with Mary, had managed to seduce Lord Byron. Her liaison resulted in a pregnancy. This excursion to Geneva, then, was assumed so as to acquaint Byron first-hand with the necessity of providing for his future child.
Although Byron refused to meet with Claire, he readily gave assurance for this provision, and during the several months the party remained at Geneva, he and Shelley became close friends. During the summer of 1816, while Byron finished Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto 3, Mary set to work on Frankenstein. Shelley wrote surprisingly little, but in Byron's company seems to have discovered his own distinctive stylistic voice, which can be readily discerned in the two poems he then composed, the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" and "Mont Blanc." On 29 August, the day before Mary's nineteenth birthday, the Shelley party left for home, carrying the manuscript of Byron's poem for delivery in London.
Shelley drowned in the Mediterranean Sea on 8 July 1822. After his body washed ashore near Viareggio, it was cremated according to the dictates of Italian law. His ashes were buried in the Protestant Cemetery (actually, Cimitero Acattolico or non-Catholic Cemetery) in Rome. In 1854, three years after Mary's death a monument was erected in memory of both the Shelleys.
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Music When Soft Voices Die
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory--
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovиd's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Two Spirits
FIRST SPIRIT
O thou, who plum'd with strong desire
Wouldst float above the earth, beware!
A Shadow tracks thy flight of fire--
Night is coming!
Bright are the regions of the air,
And among the winds and beams
It were delight to wander there--
Night is coming!
SECOND SPIRIT
The deathless stars are bright above;
If I would cross the shade of night,
Within my heart is the lamp of love,
And that is day!
And the moon will smile with gentle light
On my golden plumes where'er they move;
The meteors will linger round my flight,
And make night day.
FIRST SPIRIT
But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken
Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain;
See, the bounds of the air are shaken--
Night is coming!
The red swift clouds of the hurricane
Yon declining sun have overtaken,
The clash of the hail sweeps over the plain--
Night is coming!
SECOND SPIRIT
I see the light, and I hear the sound;
I'll sail on the flood of the tempest dark,
With the calm within and the light around
Which makes night day:
And thou, when the gloom is deep and stark,
Look from thy dull earth, slumber-bound,
My moon-like flight thou then mayst mark
On high, far away.
----
Some say there is a precipice
Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin
O'er piles of snow and chasms of ice
Mid Alpine mountains;
And that the languid storm pursuing
That winged shape, for ever flies
Round those hoar branches, aye renewing
Its aлry fountains.
Some say when nights are dry and dear,
And the death-dews sleep on the morass,
Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller,
Which make night day:
And a silver shape like his early love doth pass
Upborne by her wild and glittering hair,
And when he awakes on the fragrant grass,
He finds night day.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Lines - The Cold Earth Slept Below
The cold earth slept below;
Above the cold sky shone;
And all around,
With a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow
The breath of night like death did flow
Beneath the sinking moon.
The wintry hedge was black;
The green grass was not seen;
The birds did rest
On the bare thorn's breast,
Whose roots, beside the pathway track,
Had bound their folds o'er many a crack
Which the frost had made between.
Thine eyes glow'd in the glare
Of the moon's dying light;
As a fen-fire's beam
On a sluggish stream
Gleams dimly--so the moon shone there,
And it yellow'd the strings of thy tangled hair,
That shook in the wind of night.
The moon made thy lips pale, belov{`e}d;
The wind made thy bosom chill;
The night did shed
On thy dear head
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Source:
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound (1820). First Publication Date: 1820
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Posthumous Poems, ed. Mary Shelley (1824). Cf. Posthumous Poems of Shelley. Mary Shelley's Fair Copy Book, Bodleian MS. Shelley Adds. d. 9, Collated with the Holographs and the Printed Texts, ed. Irving Massey (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1969). PR 5403 M27 ROBA. First Publication Date: 1824.
The Liberal, 1 (1822). Facs. edn. Menston: Scolar, 1973. PR 4370 A1 1973 ROBA. AP 4 L413 MICR mfm. First Publication Date: 1822.
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