Being a selection of the poems and letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley which have to do with His Life in Italy from 1818-1822
“I still inhabit this divine bay, reading Spanish dramas, and sailing and listening to the most enchanting music. My only regret is that the summer must ever pass.” -Shelley, in one of his last letters, p. 279.
Self-exiled from England at the age of twenty-six, Percy Bysshe Shelley spent the remainder of his life, four years, in Italy. To many, these are the years that brought his genius to maturity. "Prometheus Unbound" and "The Cenci" were two of the pieces written during this period from 1818 to 1822.
WITH SHELLEY IN ITALY includes letters, essays, poetry and fragments written in Italy. Anne Benneson McMahan selected and arranged these writings to set them in the context of their original environment and to reveal the Italian atmosphere in which they were conceived.This book was originally published in 1905. It is lavishly illustrated with full page black & white illustrations from photographs. McMahan was also the editor of FLORENCE IN THE POETRY OF THE BROWNINGS.
With Shelley in Italy
is available NOW on Amazon! WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES
I
THE sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon's transparent nlight,
The breath of the moist earth is light,
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The City's voice itself is soft like Solitude's.
II
I see the Deep's untrampled floor
With green and purple seaweeds strawn;
I see the waves upon the shore,
Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:
I sit upon the sands alone,
The lightning of the noontide ocean
Is flashing round me, and a tone
Arises from its measured motion,
How sweet t did any heart now share in my emotion.
III
Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace \lrithin nor calm around,
N or that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,
And walked with inw~rd
glory crowned
N or fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround Smiling
they live, and call life pleasure; To
me that cup has been dealt in another measure.
IV
Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the ,vinds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borhe and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.
V
Some might lament that I were cold,
As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan;
They might lament -for I am one
Whom men love not, -and yet regret,
Unlike this day, which, when the sun
Shall on its stainless glory set,
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.
NAPLES, December 22, 1818.
