PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

FROM SAMPATH’S DESK:

 

 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

(4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822)

 ( (p)பெர்ஸி (b)பிஷ் ஷெல்லி )

 

 

The name and fame of one of the greatest English poets of the world PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY can well be gauged by the fact that India’s Mahakavi Subramania Bharathy (மகாகவி சுப்ரமணிய பாரதியார்) did his work with the pen-name SHELLY DAASAN (ஷெல்லிதாசன்). He was a radical in his poetry, and in his political and social views – the like of whom could only be found in George Gordon Byron - 6^th Baron Byron - in short LORD BYRON (22 January 1788-19 April 1824) and, JOHN KEATS (31 October 1795-23 February 1821). Ironically, Shelly didn’t achieve popularity during his lifetime.

 

Shelly’s first major poem ‘Queen Mab’ (1813), was a utopian political epic revealing his progressive social ideals. In 1818, he moved to Italy. Away from British politics, he became less intent on social reforms and more inclined towards expressing his ideals in poetry. In 1819, he wrote the verse tragedy ‘The Cenci’, and in 1820 his masterpiece, the lyric drama ‘Prometheus Unbound’.

 

Some of his mind-blowing poetic pieces revolved around:

 

• Poetry and Poets

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. (A Defense of Poetry)

• Seasons

O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

• Sky and Space

Heaven's ebon vault,
Studded with stars unutterably bright,
Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy which love has spread
To curtain her sleeping world.

• Power

Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches.
(Queen Mab)

• Death

Death is the veil which those who live call life;
They sleep, and it is lifted.

Some of his golden and soul-stirring sayings are:

	Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts.
	Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.
	O world! O life! O time! On whose last steps I climb.
	History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.
	When the lamp is shattered, The Light in the dust lies dead. When the cloud is scattered The Rainbow’s glory is shed.
	Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
	The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.
	No more let life divide what death can join together.
	Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
	The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea; what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?
	Can man be free if woman be a slave?
	A single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable thought.
	For love and beauty and delight, there is no death nor change.
	Nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon.
	Deep truth is imageless.
	A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his specie must become his own.

A couple of his simple poems are :

Music, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory –

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,

Live within the sense they quicken.

 

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

And heap’d for the beloved’s bed;

And so thy thoughts, when Thou art gone,

Love itself shall slumber on.

 

There is hardly any subject/topic which he hadn’t touched upon.

 

At a young age 29, Shelly was drowned while sailing in a storm off the Italian coast, leaving unfinished his last and possibly the greatest visionary poem ‘The Triumph of Life’.

 

Needless to say, his poetic pieces have immortalized him. One is rather wonder-stricken how could a person shoot into limelight and reach the pinnacle of glory with his literary and poetic fragrance continuing to waft through and inspire generations, although he lived in this world for just 29 years. It was unfortunate that he was cruelly snatched away from this world at a young age.

 

 

His Grave contains all that was mortal, of a Young English Poet, who on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his heart, at the Malicious Power of his enemies, desired these words to be Engraven on his Tomb Stone: Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water.

 

Nothing of him that doth fade;

But doth suffer a sea-change;

Into something rich and strange.

 

 

(R.SAMPATH)

18/2/2022