The remaining four years of Shelley's life may be conveniently divided into two periods: the first year and a half, during which his places of residence were numerous and unsettled; and the two years and a half at Pisa and Lerici. He and his party arrived at Milan early in April, and, after a few weeks at Como and a month's visit to the Gisbornes at Leghorn, took up summer residence at the Bagni di Lucca. During the fall they occupied, at Byron's invitation, his vacant villa at Este in the Euganean Hills, overlooking Padua, Venice, and "the waveless plain of Lombardy." Since the severity of a winter in North Italy was feared, on account of Shelley's poor health, he and his wife journeyed via Rome to Naples. Though he shunned crowds or strangers, Shelley depended for cheerfulness on two or three companions; and the lack thereof at Naples, together with continued illness, threw him into low spirits. Only occasional moments such as visits to Pæstum or Pompeii, where he heard The mountain's slumberous voice at intervals relieved the monotony of his loneliness. "I could," he says in the Stanzas written in Dejection, ❝lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear." Spring in Rome was a much happier time. Antiquity spoke eloquently to Shelley's heart; sitting among the ruined baths of Caracalla, wandering about the Colosseum, or treading the spring flowers of the Campagna, he fashioned some of his greatest verse, Prometheus and The Cenci. The following summer was spent at Leghorn, and the fall at Florence, where the son who inherited the family estates, Sir Percy Florence Shelley, was born. Finally he took up residence early in 1820 at Pisa. Under the sunny Italian sky Shelley soon grew stronger, and with his strength came his best literary work. First, at Lucca he finished Rosalind and Helen, at his wife's request, and translated Plato's Banquet. A visit to Venice in August, 1818, inspired Julian and Madallo, in which are given portraits of the author and Byron. At Este he wrote those melodious octosyllabics, Among the Euganean Hills, and began Prometheus Unbound; and Naples at least inspired the immortal Stanzas. But the year 1819 was his banner-year. In it at Rome, Leghorn, and Florence he finished The Cenci, nearly completed Prometheus, wrote the Mask of Anarchy, translated Euripides's The Cyclops, and sang many of his incomparable lyrics, chief of which are the Indian Serenade and the Ode to the West Wind. His manner of composition, usually in the open air, was truly poetical. We remember Alastor, written under the great trees of Windsor Park, and the Revolt of Islam, in a boat on the Thames; we have seen him among the ruins of Rome and on the Bay of Naples; at Pisa he did most of his work on the roof, with only a glass covering between him and the scorching Italian sun. The Ode to the West Wind was "conceived and chiefly written," he says in the introductory note, "in a wood that skirts the Arno," in communion with the whirling leaves and tempestuous gusts from the "windgrieved Apennine." In it is expressed especially the poet's vague, insubstantial being, like a cloud or a leaf at play with the wind — the intangible, Ariel-like Shel ley, unknown to the other self throbbing with sympathy for mankind. If there is something inspiring about the warm affection and high ideals of the human Shelley of Hampstead Heath, there is at the same time something perhaps greater, certainly rarer, about the fancyflights of the child of nature a purer, freer spirituality than can be met in any other poet. To the West Wind he says: "Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is : At Pisa Shelley was happy among friends. His schoolfellow and cousin, Thomas Medwin, joined him; and Captain and Mrs. Edward Williams, Mrs. Wil liams was the "Jane" of some of his later poems, charmed by Medwin's tales of Shelley, came from Switzerland and soon took пр their abode in the same house with him and Mary. Captain Edward Trelawny, the friend of the Williamses and faithful to the poet unto death, followed not long after. Of greater significance, Lord Byron quitted his Ravenna home for a palace in Pisa. Shelley, who was always a little silenced by Byron's fame and a wistful boyish admiration for his genius, saw clearly enough, however, to write to Hunt: "He has many generous and exalted qualities, but the canker of aristocracy wants to be cut out." The two great poets were nevertheless very close companions; Shelley gradually overcame his shyness, and Byron said that his friend was the most truly noble spirit he had known. Shelley always charmed his listeners with his manner and his abundant conversation. His voice, very shrill, was eager and piercing rather than discordant. During Pisan days Shelley's genius continued to thrive. In the first year, 1820, he wrote the charming Letter to Maria Gisborne, the Witch of Atlas, The Sensitive Plant, and his fanciful version of Edipus. The following year produced some of his best work: Epipsychidion, inspired by Emilia Viviani, a beautiful Italian girl cloistered against her will, a girl into whose clear spirit he read his intellectual, unattainable ideal of woman; Adonais, the surpassing elegy on John Keats, by far the most completely finished of Shelley's poems; Hellas, an imaginative "improvise," he calls it, in celebration of Liberty; and an essay, the Defence of Poetry, in which he showed his power of writing noble prose. During the first six months of 1822, the last of his life, he wrote three fragments: An Unfinished Drama; Charles the First, a drama; and The Triumph of Life, in terza rima, a poem which gives presage of a clearer, more tranquil maturity. Sprinkled through the three years are many fragmentary translations from Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, and German, and a host of shorter pieces such as The Cloud, The Skylark, Arethusa, Ode to Liberty, Hymn to Pan, and Ode to Naples, poems full of his "lyrical cry." The last days were now at hand. In the summer of 1822 the Shelleys and the Williamses took a small house, the Casa Magni, near Lerici, on the Gulf of Spezia. They procured a sailing skiff, which they dubbed Don Juan, and Shelley, ignorant of seamanship but enthusiastic over sailing, spent most of his time on the water with Williams, who knew something of naviga tion. One day, early in July, they put forth, Williams at the helm and Shelley with his book, for Leghorn, where Leigh Hunt had just arrived. On the 8th, after happy days with Hunt, the two set sail again for Lerici into the teeth of a storm. Through days of misery Mary and Jane watched and waited. Finally, on July 19, the ill news was brought them by Trelawny; the bodies had been washed ashore Shelley with a manuscript of the Indian Serenade and two volumes in his pocket, Sophocles and Keats, the latter turned back as in the act of reading. The bodies were burned, Hunt, Byron, and Trelawny attending. Shelley's heart, however, withstood the flames, and the intrepid Trelawny snatched it unconsumed from the pyre. The poet's ashes were then collected and buried at Rome, near the grave of Keats. The epitaph, composed by Leigh Hunt, had at first the two simple words, Cor Cordium, but Trelawny added those lines so indelibly characteristic of Shelley and his watery grave: "Nothing of him that doth fade, |