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Where the pine its garland weaves
Of sapless green and ivy dun,
Round stems that never kiss the sun,
Where the lawns and pastures be
And the sand-hills of the sea.
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Byron’s literary was,
like Alexander’s military career, one great
triumph; but whilst he was at the zenith of his popularity, he railed against the
world’s injustice. Was this insanity, or what polite doctors now call a softening of
the brain? I suppose, by the ‘world’ he meant no more than the fashionable set
he had seen squeezed together in a drawing-room, and by all the press that attacked
him—the fraction of it which took its tone from some small but active clique: as to
friends deserting him, that could not be, for it was his boast that he never had attempted
to make any after his school hallucinations. But
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When the most worldly wise and unimpassioned marry, they take a leap in the dark, and can no more foresee the consequences, than poets,—owls blinded by the light of their vain imaginations. The worldly wise, not having risked or anticipated much, stand to their bargain “for better or worse,” and say nothing about it; but the irascible tribe of songsters, when they find that marriage is not exactly what they imagined it to be, “proclaim their griefs from the house-top,” as Byron did.
Very pretty books have been written on the ‘Loves of the Angels,’ and ‘Loves of the Poets,’ and Love
universal—but when lovers are paired and caged together in holy matrimony, the
curtain is dropped, and we hear no more of them. It may be, they moult their feathers and
lose their song.
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In all the transactions of his life, his intense
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Shelley had a far loftier spirit. His pride was
spiritual. When attacked, he neither fled nor stood at bay, nor altered his course, but
calmly went on with heart and mind intent on elevating his species. Whilst men tried to
force him down to their level, he toiled to draw their minds upwards. His words were,
“I always go on until I am stopped, and I never am stopped.” Like
the Indian palms, Shelley never flourished far from water. When
compelled to take up his quarters in a town, he every morning with the instinct that guides
the water-birds, fled to the nearest lake, river, or sea-shore, and only returned to roost
at night. If debarred from this, he sought out the most solitary places. Towns and crowds
distracted him. Even
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I accompanied Mrs. Shelley to this
wood in search of the Poet, on one of those brilliant spring mornings we on the wrong side
of the Alps are so rarely blessed with. A calêche took us out of Pisa through the gate
of the Cascine; we drove through the Cascine and onwards for two or three miles, traversing
the vineyards and farms, on the Grand Ducal estate. On approaching some farm buildings,
near which were a hunting-palace and chapel, we dismissed the carriage, directing the
driver to meet us at a certain spot in the afternoon. We then walked on, not exactly
knowing what course to take, and were exceedingly perplexed on coming to an open space,
from which four roads radiated. There we stopped until I learnt from a Contadino, that the
one before us led directly to the sea, which was two or three miles distant, the one on the
right, led to the Serchio, and that on the left, to the
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With no landmarks to guide me, nor sky to be seen above, I was bewildered in
this wilderness of pines and ponds; so I sat down, struck a light, and smoked a cigar. A
red man would have known his course by the trees themselves, their growth, form, and
colour; or if a footstep had passed that day,
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“L’Inglese malincolico haunts the wood maledetta. I will show you his nest.”
As we advanced, the ground swelled into mounds and hollows. By-and-by the old fellow pointed with his stick to a hat, books, and loose papers lying about, and then to a deep pool of dark glimmering water, saying “Eccolo!” I thought he meant that Shelley was in or under the water. The careless, not to say impatient, way in which the Poet bore his burden of life, caused a vague dread amongst his family and friends that he might lose or cast it away at any moment.
The strong light streamed through the opening of the trees. One of the
pines, undermined by the water, had fallen into it. Under its lee, and nearly hidden, sat
the Poet, gazing on the dark mirror beneath, so lost in his bardish reverie that he did not
hear my approach. There the trees were stunted and bent, and their crowns
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“Hollo, come in.”
“Is this your study?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered, “and these trees are my
books—they tell no lies. You are sitting on the stool of inspiration,”
he exclaimed. “In those three pines the weird sisters are imprisoned, and
this,” pointing to the water, “is their cauldron of black broth. The
Pythian priestesses uttered their oracles from below—now they are muttered from
above. Listen to the solemn music in the pine-tops—don’t you hear the
mournful murmurings of the sea? Sometimes they rave and roar, shriek and howl, like a
rabble of priests. In a tempest, when a ship sinks, they catch the despairing groans of
the drowning
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“They, like the world,” I observed, “seem to take no note of wretched women. The sighs and wailing you talk about are not those of wretched men afar off, but are breathed by a woman near at hand—not from the pine-tops, but by a forsaken lady.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Why, that an hour or two ago I left your wife, Mary Shelley, at the entrance of this grove, in despair at not finding you.”
He started up, snatched up his scattered books and papers, thrust them into his hat and jacket pockets, sighing “Poor Mary! her’s is a sad fate. Come along; she can’t bear solitude, nor I society—the quick coupled with the dead.”
He glided along with his usual swiftness, for nothing could make him pause for an instant when he had an object in view, until he had attained it. On hearing our voices, Mrs. Shelley joined us; her clear gray eyes and thoughtful brow expressing the love she could not speak. To stop Shelley’s self-reproaches, or to hide her own emotions, she began in a bantering tone, chiding and coaxing him:
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“What a wild-goose you are, Percy; if my thoughts have strayed from my book, it was to the opera, and my new dress from Florence—and especially the ivy wreath so much admired for my hair, and not to you, you silly fellow! When I left home, my satin slippers had not arrived. These are serious matters to gentlewomen, enough to ruffle the serenest tempered. As to you and your ungallant companion, I had forgotten that such things are; but as it is the ridiculous custom to have men at balls and operas, I must take you with me, though, from your uncouth ways, you will be taken for Valentine and he for Orson.”
Shelley, like other students, would, when the spell
that bound his faculties was broken, shut his books, and indulge in the wildest flights of
mirth and folly. As this is a sport all can join in, we talked and laughed, and shrieked,
and shouted, as we emerged from under the shadows of the melancholy pines and their nodding
plumes, into the now cool purple twilight and open country. The cheerful and graceful
peasant girls, returning home from the vineyards and olive groves, stopped to look at us.
The old man I had met in the morning gathering
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The day I found Shelley in the pine forest he was writing verses on a guitar. I picked up a fragment, but could only make out the first two lines:—
“Ariel, to Miranda take This slave of music” |
“When my brain gets heated with thought, it soon boils, and throws
off images and words faster than I can skim them off. In the morning, when cooled down,
out of the rude sketch as you justly call
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