Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1827)
Percy Bysshe Shelley was an English Romantic poet who rebelled against English politics and conservative values. Shelley drew no essential distinction between poetry and politics, and his work reflected the radical ideas and revolutionary optimism of the era.
Shelley was born on August 4, 1792, at Field Place, in Sussex, into an aristocratic family. His father, Timothy Shelley, was a Sussex squire (i.e. a man of high social class who owned land in the countryside) and a member of Parliament. Shelley attended Syon House Academy and Eton and in 1810 he entered the Oxford University College.
In 1811 Shelley was expelled from the college for publishing The Necessity Of Atheism, which he wrote with Thomas Jefferson Hogg. Shelley’s father withdrew his inheritance in favor of a small annuity, after he eloped with the 16-year old Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a London tavern owner. The pair spent the following two years traveling in England and Ireland, distributing pamphlets and speaking against political injustice. In 1813 Shelley published his first important poem, the atheistic Queen Mab.
The poet’s marriage to Harriet was a failure. In 1814 Shelley traveled abroad with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of the philosopher and anarchist William Godwin (1756-1836). During this journey Shelley wrote an unfinished novella, The Assassins (1814). Their combined journal, Six Weeks’ Tour, reworked by Mary Shelley, appeared in 1817. After their return to London, Shelley came into an annual income under his grandfather’s will. Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine in 1816. Shelley then married Mary Wollstonecraft.
Shelley spent the summer of 1816 with Lord Byron at Lake Geneva. There Shelley composed the “Hymn To Intellectual Beauty” and “Mont Blanc”. In 1817 Shelley published The Revolt Of Islam and the much anthologized “Ozymandias” appeared in 1818. Among Shelley’s popular poems are the Odes “To the West Wind” and “To a Skylark” and Adonais, an elegy for John Keats.
In 1818 the Shelleys moved to Italy, where Byron was residing. In 1819 they went to Rome and in 1820 to Pisa. Shelley’s works from this period include Julian and Maddalo, an exploration of his relations with Byron and Prometheus Unbound, a lyrical drama. The Cenci was a five-act tragedy based on the history of a 16th-century Roman family, and The Mask Of Anarchy was a political protest which was written after the Peterloo massacre of 1819, when government soldiers attacked a large group of protesters, killing eleven people and injuring another four hundred. In 1822 the Shelley household moved to the Bay of Lerici. There Shelley began to write The Triumph Of Life.
To welcome his friend Leigh Hunt, he sailed to Leghorn. During the stormy return voyage to Lerici, his small schooner the Ariel sank and Shelley drowned with Edward Williams on July 8, 1822. The bodies were washed ashore at Viareggio, where, in the presence of Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt, they were burned on the beach. Shelley was later buried in Rome.
Adapted from <http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_percy/> Retrieved Aug. 3, 2005.
Shelley was born on August 4, 1792, at Field Place, in Sussex, into an aristocratic family. His father, Timothy Shelley, was a Sussex squire (i.e. a man of high social class who owned land in the countryside) and a member of Parliament. Shelley attended Syon House Academy and Eton and in 1810 he entered the Oxford University College.
In 1811 Shelley was expelled from the college for publishing The Necessity Of Atheism, which he wrote with Thomas Jefferson Hogg. Shelley’s father withdrew his inheritance in favor of a small annuity, after he eloped with the 16-year old Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a London tavern owner. The pair spent the following two years traveling in England and Ireland, distributing pamphlets and speaking against political injustice. In 1813 Shelley published his first important poem, the atheistic Queen Mab.
The poet’s marriage to Harriet was a failure. In 1814 Shelley traveled abroad with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of the philosopher and anarchist William Godwin (1756-1836). During this journey Shelley wrote an unfinished novella, The Assassins (1814). Their combined journal, Six Weeks’ Tour, reworked by Mary Shelley, appeared in 1817. After their return to London, Shelley came into an annual income under his grandfather’s will. Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine in 1816. Shelley then married Mary Wollstonecraft.
Shelley spent the summer of 1816 with Lord Byron at Lake Geneva. There Shelley composed the “Hymn To Intellectual Beauty” and “Mont Blanc”. In 1817 Shelley published The Revolt Of Islam and the much anthologized “Ozymandias” appeared in 1818. Among Shelley’s popular poems are the Odes “To the West Wind” and “To a Skylark” and Adonais, an elegy for John Keats.
In 1818 the Shelleys moved to Italy, where Byron was residing. In 1819 they went to Rome and in 1820 to Pisa. Shelley’s works from this period include Julian and Maddalo, an exploration of his relations with Byron and Prometheus Unbound, a lyrical drama. The Cenci was a five-act tragedy based on the history of a 16th-century Roman family, and The Mask Of Anarchy was a political protest which was written after the Peterloo massacre of 1819, when government soldiers attacked a large group of protesters, killing eleven people and injuring another four hundred. In 1822 the Shelley household moved to the Bay of Lerici. There Shelley began to write The Triumph Of Life.
To welcome his friend Leigh Hunt, he sailed to Leghorn. During the stormy return voyage to Lerici, his small schooner the Ariel sank and Shelley drowned with Edward Williams on July 8, 1822. The bodies were washed ashore at Viareggio, where, in the presence of Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt, they were burned on the beach. Shelley was later buried in Rome.
Adapted from <http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_percy/> Retrieved Aug. 3, 2005.
Love’s Philosophy
I
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single; 5
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?[1] –
II
See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp[2] one another; 10
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the mountains kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth 15
If thou[3] kiss not me?
A Widow Bird
A widow bird sat mourning[4] for her love
Upon a wintry[5] bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.
There was no leaf upon the forest bare, 5
No flower upon the ground,
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel’s[6] sound.
[1] Thine (pron): yours.
[2] Clasp (v): to hold tightly.
[3] Thou (pron): you as the subject of a sentence.
[4] Mourn (v): to lament someone’s death.
[5] Wintry (adj): cold like in winter.
[6] See picture of a mill on p. 4.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
William Wordsworth was a British poet, credited with ushering in the English Romantic Movement with the publication of Lyrical Ballads (1798) in collaboration with Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
William Wordsworth was born on April 17, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District. The magnificent landscape deeply affected Wordsworth’s imagination and gave him a love of nature. He lost his mother when he was eight and five years later his father. The domestic problems separated Wordsworth from his beloved and neurotic sister Dorothy, who was a very important person in his life.
With the help of his two uncles, Wordsworth entered a local school and continued his studies at Cambridge University. Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787, when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine. In that same year he entered Cambridge, from where he took his B.A. in 1791.
During a summer vacation in 1790 Wordsworth went on a walking tour through revolutionary France and also traveled in Switzerland. On his second journey in France, Wordsworth had an affair with a French girl, Annette Vallon, a daughter of a barber-surgeon, by whom he had an illegitimate daughter Anne Caroline. The affair was basis of the poem “Vaudracour and Julia”, but otherwise Wordsworth did his best to hide the affair from posterity.
In 1795 he met Coleridge. Wordsworth’s financial situation became better in 1795 when he received a legacy and was able to settle at Racedown, Dorset, with his sister Dorothy.
Encouraged by Coleridge and stimulated by the close contact with nature, Wordsworth composed his first masterwork, Lyrical Ballads, which opened with Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner.” About 1798 he started to write a large and philosophical autobiographical poem, completed in 1805, and published posthumously in 1850 under the title The Prelude.
Wordsworth spent the winter of 1798-99 with his sister and Coleridge in Germany, where he wrote several poems, including the enigmatic ‘Lucy’ poems. After return he moved Dove Cottage, Grasmere, and in 1802 married Mary Hutchinson. They cared for Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy for the last 20 years of her life.
Wordsworths second verse collection, Poems, In Two Volumes, appeared in 1807. Wordsworth’s central works were produced between 1797 and 1808. His poems written during middle and late years have not gained similar critical approval. Wordsworth’s Grasmere period ended in 1813. He was appointed official distributor of stamps for Westmoreland. He moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside, where he spent the rest of his life. In later life Wordsworth abandoned his radical ideas and became a patriotic, conservative public man.
In 1843 he became England’s poet laureate. Wordsworth died on April 23, 1850.
Adapted from: <http://www.online-literature.com/wordsworth/> Retrieved March 9, 2005.
William Wordsworth was born on April 17, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District. The magnificent landscape deeply affected Wordsworth’s imagination and gave him a love of nature. He lost his mother when he was eight and five years later his father. The domestic problems separated Wordsworth from his beloved and neurotic sister Dorothy, who was a very important person in his life.
With the help of his two uncles, Wordsworth entered a local school and continued his studies at Cambridge University. Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787, when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine. In that same year he entered Cambridge, from where he took his B.A. in 1791.
During a summer vacation in 1790 Wordsworth went on a walking tour through revolutionary France and also traveled in Switzerland. On his second journey in France, Wordsworth had an affair with a French girl, Annette Vallon, a daughter of a barber-surgeon, by whom he had an illegitimate daughter Anne Caroline. The affair was basis of the poem “Vaudracour and Julia”, but otherwise Wordsworth did his best to hide the affair from posterity.
In 1795 he met Coleridge. Wordsworth’s financial situation became better in 1795 when he received a legacy and was able to settle at Racedown, Dorset, with his sister Dorothy.
Encouraged by Coleridge and stimulated by the close contact with nature, Wordsworth composed his first masterwork, Lyrical Ballads, which opened with Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner.” About 1798 he started to write a large and philosophical autobiographical poem, completed in 1805, and published posthumously in 1850 under the title The Prelude.
Wordsworth spent the winter of 1798-99 with his sister and Coleridge in Germany, where he wrote several poems, including the enigmatic ‘Lucy’ poems. After return he moved Dove Cottage, Grasmere, and in 1802 married Mary Hutchinson. They cared for Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy for the last 20 years of her life.
Wordsworths second verse collection, Poems, In Two Volumes, appeared in 1807. Wordsworth’s central works were produced between 1797 and 1808. His poems written during middle and late years have not gained similar critical approval. Wordsworth’s Grasmere period ended in 1813. He was appointed official distributor of stamps for Westmoreland. He moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside, where he spent the rest of his life. In later life Wordsworth abandoned his radical ideas and became a patriotic, conservative public man.
In 1843 he became England’s poet laureate. Wordsworth died on April 23, 1850.
Adapted from: <http://www.online-literature.com/wordsworth/> Retrieved March 9, 2005.
My Heart Leaps Up (1802)
My heart leaps up[1] when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man,
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.[2]
[1] Leap up (v): to jump (with excitement).
[2] Natural piety: a strong reverence or feeling of worship for nature.
My heart leaps up[1] when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man,
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.[2]
[1] Leap up (v): to jump (with excitement).
[2] Natural piety: a strong reverence or feeling of worship for nature.
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788 – 1824)
George Gordon Byron, later Noel, 6th Baron Byron was a British poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. Amongst Byron's best-known works are the brief poems “She Walks in Beauty”, “When We Two Parted”, and “So, we'll go no more a-roving”, in addition to the narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan. He is regarded as one of the greatest European poets and remains widely read and influential, both in the English-speaking world and beyond.
Byron's fame rests not only on his writings but also on his life, which featured extravagant living, numerous love affairs, debts, separation, and marital exploits. Byron served as a regional leader of Italy's revolutionary organization, the Carbonary, in its struggle against Austria. He later traveled to fight against the Ottoman Empirein the Greek War of Independence, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died from a fever contracted while in Greece.
When a Man Hath No Freedom to Fight For at Home
When a man hath[1] no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbors;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,
And get knocked on his head for his labors.
To do good to mankind is the chivalrous[2] plan, 5
And is always as nobly requited[3];
Then battle for freedom wherever you can,
And, if not shot or hanged, you’ll get knighted.
1824
[1] Hath: has.
[2] Chivalrous (ad): showing the qualities of a perfect medieval knight.
[3] Requite (v): to repay.
When a man hath[1] no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbors;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,
And get knocked on his head for his labors.
To do good to mankind is the chivalrous[2] plan, 5
And is always as nobly requited[3];
Then battle for freedom wherever you can,
And, if not shot or hanged, you’ll get knighted.
1824
[1] Hath: has.
[2] Chivalrous (ad): showing the qualities of a perfect medieval knight.
[3] Requite (v): to repay.
