HKB
[Sidenote: Shelley's threnody]
Shelley's poetry belongs primarily to the Revolutionary epoch in modern history. Though he wrote several long narrative poems and one great tragedy, he was above all a lyric poet--according to some the greatest lyric poet of England. His life, like his poetry, was almost untrammelled by convention. Both gave great offence to the stricter elements of English society. In some respects Shelley was peculiarly unfortunate. At the age of eighteen, after his expulsion from Oxford University, he married Harriet Westbrook, a girl of sixteen, and then found himself unable to support her. Later he abandoned her and eloped with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. Within a year his first wife committed suicide, and, three weeks later, Shelley married Mary Godwin. The tragedy stirred up much feeling among his friends. Among others the poet-laureate, Southey, remonstrated with Shelley. Shelley replied: "I take God to witness, if such a Being is now regarding both you and me, and I pledge myself, if we meet, as perhaps you expect, before Him after death, to repeat the same in His presence--that you accuse me wrongfully. I am innocent of ill, either done or intended." Next came Shelley's trouble with the Chancery. Lord-Chancellor Elden refused to give to Shelley the custody of his own children on the ground that Shelley's professed opinions and conduct were such as the law pronounced immoral. Shelley replied with his famous poetical curse "To the Lord Chancellor." While the poem stands as a masterpiece of lyric invective it did not mend matters for Shelley in England. In many of his other poems his detractors saw nothing but the glorification of revolution, incest, and atheism. When he wrote a satirical drama on so delicate a subject as the unhappy affairs of Queen Caroline, even his publisher turned against him. Yet the charm and beauty of Shelley's purely lyric pieces was such that he must ever stand as one of the foremost poets of England. Either his "Adonais" or the beautiful "Ode to the West Wind," would alone have perpetuated his name in English letters. One of Shelley's most exquisite pieces, written shortly before his death, has come to stand as the poet's own threnody:
"When the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies dead-- When the cloud is scattered The rainbow's glory is shed. When the lute is broken, Sweet tones are remembered not; When the lips have spoken, Loved accents are soon forgot.
As music and splendor Survive not the lamp and the lute, The heart's echoes render No song when the spirit is mute, No song but sad dirges, Like the wind through a ruined cell, Or the mournful surges That ring the dead seaman's knell."
[Sidenote: Revival of letters]
[Sidenote: Golden age of music]