SHELLEY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 160, 8 July 1922, Page 17

SHELLEY.

A CENTURY AFTERWARD 0

(By CYRANO.)

Early in the afternoon of July 8, in the year 1822, Shelley and his companion Y\ illiams set sail from Leghorn to return to their seaside home in the

Bay of Sprzzia. which is aiout half-day between Leghorn and Genoa. Shelley, using the vessel that had recently been ■huiit for him, had gone down to Leghorn to welcome Leigh Hunt. The craft was fast but "cranky," and with only Williams, Shelley, and a boy on board, seriously under-manned> The poet was worse than useless in a sailing boat. He knew nothing of seamanship, and declared that he could read and steer at the same time, as one operation was mental and the other mechanical. Shortly before this h e had taken out Jane Williams and her children in a light skiff into deep water, and after resting- on his oars in deep reverie, had exclaimed joyfully, "Now let us together solve the great mystery." Jane had the presence of mind to break the spell with a joke, and Shelley paddled back to shore. It may be added that he could not swim. Williams" had been in the Navy, but according to Trelawney, who had seen him handling the craft, he was "over-anxiou3 and wanted practice." The July afternoon when the two friends left Leghorn was hot and sultry, with very little wind, and Nature was Banging out signs of bad weather. Shelley had been advised to wait till next day, fbut Williams was eager to return. From his own vessel Trelawney watched the boat disappear in the seamist, and then went below. At halfpast six he was aroused by a noise overhead, and found the sea being swept by gusts of wind, and a general stir i amongrst the shipping. Then "a thunder i squall' , burst right overhead, and for some twenty minutes nothing was to be heard but thunder, wind and rain. When the weather 'became clearer, Tre-' lawney looked anxiously for Shelley's I 'boat, but could not see it, nor could he ! get any news of it from returning yes- j sels. A period of agonising suspense followed; then Williams' body was cast lip on the 17th of the month) and Shelley's the next day. In one of Shelley's pockets was a volume of Sophocles, and in another, doubled back as if it had been put away in haste, a volume of Keats —the poet whose death only the year before had inspired him to write one of the supreme elegies of the j world's literature. Under the super- j vision of Trelawney, and in the presence '. of Byron and Hunt, the bodies were.*' burnt fay the sea shore. "The lonely I and grand ecenery that surrounded : us," says Trelawney, "so exactly harmonised with Shelley's genius, that I could imagine his spirit soaring over us. j The sea, with the islands of Gorgona, i Capraji, and Elba, was before us; old battiemented watehtowers stretched j along the coast, backed by the marble-1 crested Appenines glistening in the sun, I ue from their diversified out- i' lines, and not a human dwelling was in : sight." The element of fire invested •with vivid propriety the end of a great ' poet whose*genftis is a Came that is < kindled on earth and mounts in ecstasy . until it loses itself in the heavens. "I ; am fire and air; my other elements 1 give to baser life." To no other English \ poet could Cleopatra's words toe so aptly applied. His ashes were buried ' in Rome, and nothing could -be more i fitting than the two tributes written on the stone—"Cor CoTdium" and the j •words of magic from "The Tempest": Nothing of Him tliat doth fade, , But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. When he died he was not quite thirty. If Brownina had been so out off we should have no "Men and Women"; f if Shakespeare had died at twenty-nine ( we would be without "Hamlet," "Mac- j beth" and "Lear." , Jeffrey, one of the leading critics of that time, judged Shelley, with Keats j and Wordsworth, to be "melting fastj ( from the fields of vieion," and Rogers and Campbell to be the only poets with, any "promise of immortality." Byron , placed Crabbe first among living poets. r Critics and public alike preferred "Moore to Shelley and Keats. Alas for the value of contemporary criticism!. Who reads Rogers to-day? Shelley's fame, on the other hand, has been mounting sTeadily, until it stands as high and clear and unchallengeable as a star. He is the greatest lyrical poet in the language. The world's estimate of the . man has also undergone a change. To people of his time, suffering from the 0 chock of the French Revolution, he j eeemed a personification of evil—an avowed atheist, a political rebel, and one a who practiced free love. "What, are j you that damned atheist Shelley?" ex- - claimed an Englishman on meeting the s poet in Italy, and knocked him down. ( "] The abundant material relating to c Snelley's life has been thoroughly sifted r "and examined by generations more tolerant of the spirit of revolt, and fl Shelley is now recognised to have been a noble man, who erred through the de- ' fects of those qualities that helped to < make him a great poet. He was an idealist and a child, and pursued the ' Kingdom of Heaven with a child's unquestioning ardour and directness. He I s loathed evil and worshipped good, but r understood neither, and it followed that a he did not understand men or women. •! What he wanted <he must have, and he I so deceived himself that it was always I from the highest motive. He saw nothing « wrong in leaving his wife and going off.c with Mary; why, he wrote to ,his wife in 11 most affectionate terms while he was on j<; ■his unofficial honeymoon, and said he I was looking forward to her joining him! t iHe saw nothing objectionable in the idea. that he and the two women should live C together. He was essentialy pure- 1 hearted, and though difficult to live with, r because lie could not understand that j woman was built differently from man j ("Most geniuses," says Mr. Dooley, "are s unhappily married, and I guess it's thrue ( of their* wives, too"') he was unselfish t and generous. Byron, with his cynicism c and his cool, deliberate, calculating use p of women for bis pleasure, was a very! jdifferent sort of man. Of English poets Shelley flies highest above the earth and furthest from the haunts of men. Like Tennyson's lark, i lie becomes "a sightless song." The name! of Shelley at once suggests clouds andjl storms, mountain tops and ocean caves— ] a sublimated fairyland of tremendous j \ forces and ethereal beauty. You do not ] go to him for the warn and woof of J human life, for those intimate touche3 c which other poets give us for oiir 1 refreshment and solace. He has none f of the magic of the hearth or of the t ploughed field. He is the inspired I prophet of idealism, who rides on clouds 4 and strides over mountain peaks. i "Then, what is life? 1 cried," were E the lact words Phelley wrote. For him it 2 was an immortality of fame. 1 4 I -1 Tb<? soul of Adonnis like a sfsr I , Beacons from the abode where the y mrnal. si*, i