Tra La - book arrived - Would you believe more rain again today -
"The" poem - someone said they ordered or downloaded on their kindle the complete works of Shelley - I wonder if it was the Cambridge edition, edited by George Edward Woodberry... That is the edition I have and what I love about this copy is within the pages of poetry are excerpt about his life at the time the poems were written.
On page 356 is the Sonnet
Ozymandias along with another sonnet from 1818
To The Nile that contains a similar message (
starts off as if he were writing from Austin today)
Month after month the gathered rains descend
Drenching you secret Æthiopian dells;
And from the desert's ice-girt pinnacles,
Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend
On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend;
Girt there with blasts and meteors, Tempest dwells
By Nile's aërial urn, with rapid spells
Urging those waters to their mighty end.
O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level,
And they are thine, O Nile ! - and well thou knowest
that soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil,
And fruits and poisons, spring where're though flowest.
Beware, O Man ! for knowledge must to thee
Like the great flood to Egypt ever be.
* Girt - to surround, hem in. -
Between these poems, both written in 1818 is a full page Bio of this time in Shelley's life
He was living his first year full time in Italy - I Capuccini, in Este, near Venice, named for the Capuchin monastery that no longer stands there. He had recently married, (after the suicide death of his first wife) Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley daughter of, philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft who died 11 days after the birth of this daughter, Mary.
A vine-trellised walk, a pergola led to a summer house at the end of the garden which was his study, where he was writing long poems
Prometheus and where he had finished
Julian and Maddalo Nearby is the ancient castle Este where owls and bats "flitted forth at night, as the crescent moon sunk behind the black and heavy battlements." During the day he looked over the wide plain of Lombardy with the Apennines to the West.
This idyllic setting is marked by misfortune and sadness bordering on depression for Shelly. Their infant daughter suffers, they thought from the heat. She was also teething - so sick they became alarmed and headed for Venice (this is before Italy is a nation as we know it today) He forgets his passport and only by cajoling the soldier at Fusina are they finally permitted to enter Laguna - by the time they reach the Doctor the child is dead. They "return to Este to weep" - After a few weeks they head south for Rome and spend the winter in Naples. Shelly's suffers from ill-health and the Doctors regimen is more painful than his illness - he suffers through recurring period with "bursts of discontent and sadness. One looks back with unspeakable regret and gnawing remorse to such periods;" - Mary is full of remorse that she was not as attentive to soothing his feelings. He was in constant pain.
They lived in "utter solitude - and such is often not the nurse of cheerfulness; for then, at least with those who have been exposed to adversity, the mind broods over its sorrow too intently; while the society of the enlightened, the witty, and the wise, enables us to forget ourselves by making us the sharers of the thoughts of others, which is a portion of the philosophy of happiness... He sheltered himself against memory and reflection, in a book. But with one or two whom he loved, he gave way to wild and joyous spirits, or in more serious conversation expounded his opinions with vivacity and eloquence."
In the early pages of this book, you learn that Shelley, upon the suicide death of Harriet was denied by the courts custody rights and access to his children, whom he loved dearly, by the Westbrook's, the family of Harriet. Until recently there was much slander against Shelly published by the Westbroooks that is only now being sorted out - Harriet and he were separated however, they continued to see each other - during this time he met Mary who is 15 and he is 20 - later when Mary is 17 and he is 22 - after the death of Harriet they elope and secretly leave for France, then on to Switzerland before retuning to England penniless where Mary, pregnant has a premature baby that dies. During Shelley's young years lots happen that includes Harriet, father's debts, spending his estate, that is not enough to pay his father's debts, separation from his children, death of children, Mary's father disowning her - lots and lots of memory that while in Italy seems to plague him and that is expressed in his work. Both these sonnets, from the crucial year 1818, are about loss.
