Today, August 4, marks a new anniversary of the nacimiento of the english poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. And precisely this year the bicentenary of the publication of Frankenstein, of his wife Mary Shelley. This couple is a fundamental reference of European literary Romanticism. In his memory, I choose these poems to remember it.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
He was born in Field Place, England, in 1792. From a very wealthy family, he studied at the prestigious college of Eton and then at the University College of Oxford. He was expelled from there for having published a libel entitled The need for atheism. When i arrive to London, fell in love with a 16-year-old girl, Harriet westbrook, with whom he fled and married. He was living in York, in Ireland and in Wales. It was there that he wrote his first major poem entitled Queen Mab.
Harriet's marriage ended, she ended up committing suicide, and Shelley lost guardianship of the two children she had. Then he got sick of tuberculosis and he left for Italy in 1818. He had already met Mary Wollstonecraft, daughter of the philosopher William Godwin, and had also fled with her.
They lived in Milan, Venice, Naples and Florence. It was during the last four years of his life that he wrote his masterpieces: lyrical drama Prometheus freed, the tragedy The Cenci, various lyrical poems such as Ode to the West Wind, Ode to a lark o The mimosa, and also the elegy Adonai, Inspired after the death of John Keats.
Shelley is one of the leading English Romantic poets, along with John Keats and Lord Byron, friends of yours. In his work, the idealism and faith in the future of humanity, but it is also infused with melancholy.
Chosen poems
These are 6 of his shorter poems, precise examples of the essence of all his poetry.
Love, Honor, Trust
Love, Honor, Trust, like clouds
They leave and return, one day loan.
If the immortal man were, omnipotent,
You -ignoto and sublime as you are-
you would leave your entourage in his soul.
You, emissary of affections,
that you grow in the eyes of the lover;
You who nurture pure thought
which gloom to a dying flame!
Do not leave when your shadow finally arrives:
without you, like life and fear,
the grave is a dark reality.
***
As a child, I was looking for ghosts
As a child, I was looking for ghosts
in quiet rooms, caves, ruins
and starry forests; my fearful steps
they longed to converse with the dead.
He invoked those names that superstition
instills. In vain was that search.
As I pondered the meaning
of life, at the time when the wind woos
how much lives and fecund
new birds and plants,
suddenly your shadow fell on me.
My throat let out a cry of ecstasy.
***
I fear your kisses
Written in 1820, it was published posthumously in 1824.
I fear your kisses, gentle maiden.
You don't need to fear mine;
My spirit overwhelmed in the void,
It can't haunt yours.
I fear your bearing, your gestures, your reason.
You don't need to fear mine;
Devotion and meaning is innocent
with those that my heart adores you.
***
Came from the fairies
It was published posthumously in the 1839 anthology, Poetical Works, edited by Mary Shelley.
I got drunk on that honey wine
of the lunar cocoon that the fairies
collected in hyacinth glasses:
dormouse, bats and moles
they sleep in the crevices or in the grass,
in the deserted and sad courtyard of the castle;
when the wine spilled on the summer land
or amid the dew its vapors rise,
happy their blissful dreams become
and, asleep, they murmur their joy; well they are few
the fairies that carry those chalices so new.
***
When the soft voices die
This is possibly one of the best and it is also considered one of the most representative of romanticism. The eternal expression of how some facts and sensations are not forgotten and remain intact in the memory and the heart despite the passage of time.
When the soft voices die
his music still vibrates in the memory;
when sweet violets get sick,
its fragrance lingers on the senses.
The leaves of the rosebush, when the rose dies,
they are piled up for the lover's bed;
And so in your thoughts, when you're gone
love itself will sleep.
***
Philosophy of love
It was also composed in 1820 and published in the anthology of 1866: Selected poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
The fountains mix with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven blend forever,
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is unique
All things by divine law
They complete each other:
Why shouldn't I do it with you?
See the mountains kiss the high sky
And the waves caress on the shore;
No flower would be beautiful
If you disdain your siblings:
And the sunlight loves the earth,
And the reflections of the moon kiss the seas:
What is all this love worth
If you don't kiss me?