Percy Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Percy Bysshe Shelley was born August 4, 1792, at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England. The eldest son of Timothy and Elizabeth Shelley, with one brother and four sisters, he stood in line to inherit not only his grandfather's considerable estate but also a seat in Parliament. He attended Eton College for six years beginning in 1804, and then went on to Oxford University. He began writing poetry while at Eton, but his first publication was a Gothic novel, Zastrozzi (1810), in which he voiced his own heretical and atheistic opinions through the villain Zastrozzi. That same year, Shelley and another student, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, published a pamphlet of burlesque verse, "Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson," and with his sister Elizabeth, Shelley published Original Poetry; by Victor and Cazire. In 1811, Shelley continued this prolific outpouring with more publications, including another pamphlet that he wrote and circulated with Hogg titled "The Necessity of Atheism," which got him expelled from Oxford after less than a year's enrollment. Shelley could have been reinstated if his father had intervened, but this would have required his disavowing the pamphlet and declaring himself Christian. Shelley refused, which led to a complete break between Shelley and his father. This left him in dire financial straits for the next two years, until he came of age. That same year, at age nineteen, Shelley eloped to Scotland with sixteen-year-old Harriet Westbrook. Once married, Shelley moved to the Lake District of England to study and write. Two years later he published his first long serious work, Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem. The poem emerged from Shelley's friendship with the British philosopher William Godwin, and it expressed Godwin's freethinking Socialist philosophy. Shelley also became enamored of Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter, Mary, and in 1814 they eloped to Europe. After six weeks, out of money, they returned to England. In November 1814 Harriet Shelley bore a son, and in February 1815 Mary Godwin gave birth prematurely to a child who died two weeks later. The following January, Mary bore another son, named William after her father. In May the couple went to Lake Geneva, where Shelley spent a great deal of time with George Gordon, Lord Byron, sailing on Lake Geneva and discussing poetry and other topics, including ghosts and spirits, into the night. During one of these ghostly "seances," Byron proposed that each person present should write a ghost story. Mary's contribution to the contest became the novel Frankenstein. That same year, Shelley produced the verse allegory Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude. In December 1816, Harriet Shelley apparently committed suicide. Three weeks after her body was recovered from a lake in a London park, Shelley and Mary Godwin officially were married. Shelley lost custody of his two children by Harriet because of his adherence to the notion of free love. In 1817, Shelley produced Laon and Cythna, a long narrative poem that, because it contained references to incest as well as attacks on religion, was withdrawn after only a few copies were published. It was later edited and reissued as The Revolt of Islam (1818). At this time, he also wrote revolutionary political tracts signed "The Hermit of Marlow." Then, early in 1818, he and his new wife left England for the last time. During the remaining four years of his life, Shelley produced all his major works, including [what is generally considered his masterpiece] Prometheus Unbound (1820). Traveling and living in various Italian cities, the Shelleys were friendly with the British poet Leigh Hunt and his family as well as with Byron. On July 8, 1822, shortly before his thirtieth birthday, Shelley was drowned in a storm while attempting to sail from Leghorn to La Spezia, Italy, in his schooner, the Don Juan.
I encourage you to read George Reiman’s biography on the Britannica site or the thorough biography on the Poetry Foundations site. BRITANNICA: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Percy-Bysshe-Shelley POETRY FOUNDATION: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/percy-bysshe-shelley
Percy Shelley
Bay of Naples

Web Resources

Percy Shelley
Mary Shelley

Selected Poems

Prometheus Unbound

(excerpt)
SCENE.—A Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. Prometheus is discovered bound to the Precipice. Panthea and Ione are seated at his feet. Time, night. During the Scene, morning slowly breaks.Prometheus speaks: Monarch of Gods and Dæmons, and all SpiritsBut One, who throng those bright and rolling worldsWhich Thou and I alone of living thingsBehold with sleepless eyes! regard this EarthMade multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thouRequitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate,Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn,O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge.Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,And moments aye divided by keen pangsTill they seemed years, torture and solitude,Scorn and despair,—these are mine empire:—More glorious far than that which thou surveyestFrom thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God!Almighty, had I deigned to share the shameOf thine ill tyranny, and hung not hereNailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!
 No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,Heaven's ever-changing Shadow, spread below,Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!
 The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spearsOf their moon-freezing crystals, the bright chainsEat with their burning cold into my bones.Heaven's wingèd hound, polluting from thy lipsHis beak in poison not his own, tears upMy heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by,The ghastly people of the realm of dream,Mocking me: and the Earthquake-fiends are chargedTo wrench the rivets from my quivering woundsWhen the rocks split and close again behind:While from their loud abysses howling throngThe genii of the storm, urging the rageOf whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail.And yet to me welcome is day and night,Whether one breaks the hoar frost of the morn,Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbsThe leaden-coloured east; for then they leadThe wingless, crawling hours, one among whom—As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim—Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the bloodFrom these pale feet, which then might trample theeIf they disdained not such a prostrate slave.Disdain! Ah no! I pity thee. What ruinWill hunt thee undefended through wide Heaven!How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror,Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief,Not exultation, for I hate no more,As then ere misery made me wise. The curseOnce breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains,Whose many-voicèd Echoes, through the mistOf cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell!Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost,Which vibrated to hear me, and then creptShuddering through India! Thou serenest Air,Through which the Sun walks burning without beams!And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poisèd wingsHung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss,As thunder, louder than your own, made rockThe orbèd world! If then my words had power,Though I am changed so that aught evil wishIs dead within; although no memory beOf what is hate, let them not lose it now!What was that curse? for ye all heard me speak.
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