I have always found the month of February full of the surprise of growth and the return of hope.When the beginning of the month saw Ashraf Fayadh's death sentence commuted to eight years in prison and eight hundred lashes I knew February had once again gifted a special treasure..Only time will tell if his appeal will be successful. I hope it will. It is impossible not to be reminded of Shelley, when contemplating poets, assassination attempts and the interest those in power take in silencing them forever.
Of all the Romantic poets, Shelley's major creative efforts were concentrated on producing a series of long poems and poetic dramas aimed at the main political and spiritual problems of his age and society. Although better remembered for his late Italian lyrics-'To a Skylark', 'The Cloud', or even the well worn school renditions of 'Ozymandias' there was an early Shelley who is still the prototype of today's political activist, and whose ties with Ireland and its fight for emancipation cannot be written without reading him, in particular his infamous 'Declaration of Rights'.
Right 27-
'No man has a right to be respected for any other possessions but those of virtue and talents. Titles are tinsel,
power a corrupter, glory a bubble, and excessive wealth a libel on its possessor.'
Even in his prose there is leaning to the lilt and beat of rhythm.
I decided to write this blog using the stanza of 'The Revolt of Islam' which Shelley took from Spenser's 'The Faeire Queene', without the rhyme scheme. There are two reasons for this. The first is that in 'The Revolt of Islam' learning is passed on by the learned philosopher to the youthful activist. Shelley wrote this after he had abandoned political activism, and I would suggest that were Fayadh to be freed what he would next write could be of great interest to all readers everywhere. If Shelley had been killed in Tan-yr-allt we would never have had one of my favourite poems. Secondly, this is a blog about poets and poetry, and I thought it would be fun to write it in verse. It did take longer than I had planned running to 243 lines, and I hope, that you the reader enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.Finally his atheism is misunderstood and ill defined, a commonality he shares with some of those facing death for similar accusations, and I thought it high time to stop shying away from the difficult.
The Mysterious Case of Tan-yr-allt and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
And through his westward facing windows
beyond the wide lawn those enormous
cedars,rook resting elms, American reds
doorways to deeper, darker shading firs,
and joined by a stone bridge those two ponds
the bigger of which they called Warnham Pond
whose Great Tortoise rose out at night from pool
he'd dug three hundred years ago
to trundle into the Great Snake's monster lair.
Each childhood has its world, a flagless land,
where what is seen and heard and done and felt
sketches out a pattern -his was Field Place
Beauty there was his mother giving alms
A father who never mentioned God made them
all go to Church, servants too as he sat
beneath a print of Vesuvius and Christ
crucified when he came down from Parliament
to hear Shelley say Gray's " Nor all that glisters gold".
Under its roof the home of the Alchemist
entered by removing one board of floor
was brought to eternal life by tales
told by lamplight in his sisters thrilling
ears, and an orchard cave was dug for
the arrival of Cornelius Agrippa,
but pegtop, leap-frog, marbles, cricket
the charades he couldn't play made school
the place his inner monster temper took root and grew.
Each night the monsters of dark Syon days
awoke the daemon sleepwalker from dream
frightful and strange that followed him to
the end of his days as 'fire-tailed stars'-
All the old orders of the past gave way
to Paine, rural pace to cotton machine
infernal, revolutionary image,
discovery of electricity,
William Pitt's brainchild the Home Office's surveillance system.
In exchange for cheese, bread, fruit a grocer
gave old books, battered dictionaries-
blue paper Minervas were doors to haunt
the gothic horrors of fantasies
that blew the boundaries of his playground
with more than gunpowder in those nightly
friendship kisses until occult Walker
opened up his mind to other worlds
showed this son Saturns through solar microscope.
They called him 'mad Shelley' but what was sane
in Etonian fagging he fought not
to join. Like all caged spirits everywhere
his rages erupted volcanically
in fire balloons, grave wanderings,until
from Lind hermetic lore ,daemon raising
and the art of postal debate disguised
as distressed sender became a way
to turn authority inside out and roundabout.
His gothic novel, Zastrozzi A Romance
brought him into the fold of eccentric
with his high sharp laughter at strange moments
and an allowance to continue 'pranking'-
'Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire'
written with his sister brings his exile
cursed to eternal wandering as
omened premonition the summer before
he left for Oxford's fortressed and hallowed halls.
All youth delights in desire and love
forbidden by foreboding redwoods that
cast their fearful shadows on new growth
so that all change becomes a type of war
waged in 1810 by Hogg and Shelley
in pistol shot at parliamentary
franking, paper sailing boats, Voltaire
Godwin, Paine and Franklin,dreams of Venus
played out in all her different starring guises.
I see him now illumined by ideal
waging a secret war against warfare
monarchs private and public, poverty,
and all the igions that are or were-
The windows of Slatter and Munday's
brought Mrs. Nicholson and Bedlam to
Oxford in Posthumous Poems,but chance
footfall brought Necessity of Atheism
into Reverend Walker's hands and infamy.
Had he not mailed all the bishops
all college heads copies of his pamphlet,
or pledged support for Finnerty in the Herald,
would it have become a party affair?
Or behind it all was it Hunt's attack
on military flogging? Or was it his
refusal to acknowledge his authorship
before the assembled authorities
on the grounds of Anonymous publication?
Not belief nor allegiance nor inquiry
expelled him from Oxford but rule breaking
at the age of eighteen barred from family
an outcast in exile. Fiction was now
fact born with fiend of solitude in cave
of Fancy by dream mists within dream
of soul that terrified and mesmerised
the pillars of his disbelief in Xt,
chasing after his chase of commune with Venus.
There is nothing quite as Shelleyan as
an August coffee shop lurk on Sunday
in an enchanted 1811,
Nothing spells romantic more than elope
in a night train from Green Dragon Inn bound
for Edinburgh with Harriet Westgrove.
There is a rescue urge chasing Shelley
along the rushing river and rocky
heights below the wooded valleys of losses.
After wedlock his wolf would prowl the price
of forbidden match. His pack gathered
first from Hogg, Harriet and he was lost
in York to his wife's sister's scheme
of proper and Hogg's improper lust,
So Eliza, Harriet and he were
the three that ran to Keswick leaving Hogg
his first proper friend, his first forbidden,
where he wrote 'An Address to the Irish People'.
Pattern of myth making key events,
Pattern of three in free love households
occlude easy tale but occult had lit
a spark that fanned to flame in his time
of occupying army in an
England that was hungry, discontent, angry,
and those strange lights and noises at his
cottage brought out an atheist in all
believers in non-believers in gang attack.
Is there a myth more mythical than that
of son falling from his father in faith
and art? In his search for meaning he met
his double future in Southey who met
his past self in Shelley. Misunderstood
is his disbelief. God's will as tool
to justify the ways of Man to men
defined God for him as mass of infinite
intelligence bringing his heart to all he saw.
There is something braver in cowardice
that stands its ground despite its fear.There was
something stronger in them now after this.
They left Whitehaven in the rain for Dublin.
The echoes of their pamphlet throwing
ghost chase the wind when papers blow about
Fishamble Street in February rush.
His speech was heard and noted by special
agents and his name was filed away in Whitehall.
In letters he sent to his soul sister
Miss Hitchener tales of human despair
replaced theory, but in letters sent to
Godwin he tempered down as he wrote his
Declaration of Rights he sent on to Devon
in a large deal box. The Irish mission
was a defeat but they had made a friend
Mrs. Nugent and swallowed the truth
of doormen guarding bigotry by keeping out.
The wolf that snapped at his heels gave
him reason not to always pay his bills
and gave customs reason to open up
the deal box to see what it hid within.
A watch was set upon Miss Hitchener
by Sidmouth's network of informers
and spies that followed her to Lynmouth
fished 'vessels of heavenly medicine'
boats and bottles as fire balloons floated above.
Only Dan Healy, their Irish convert
was caught in Barnstaple by covert spies
pinning up hated Rights to barnyard doors
and sentenced to six months for subversive.
The watch that was set up to observe him
lost him to Tremadoc, wonder of Wales
in Tan-yr-allt with Godwin's household
his centre of gravity that led him
to throw Portia to Propriety's gaping maws.
If his soul sister Portia had fallen
from favour the Embankment project was
vision of reform in earthly surround-
As he followed promised payments
did he see the irony? If all hunted
accept the role of hunter what do they
reflect but wolf? All packs have alpha males
that maintain the social order with force
but Shelley threw caution to February winds.
If the Embankment was to survive work
unrest could let high spring tides fatally
breach all. Perhaps the future that he saw
blinded him as he displayed again his
sympathies for fourteen executed
frame workers for Luddite activities.
When the Honourable Robert Leeson
was given the Irish pamphlet he sent
it on to London and the wolves picked up his scent.
If storm can be read as future portent
or warning that third February week
blew dark and stormy gales across rivers
of roaring roads and notice of rewards
were posted for breaking and entering
felons as Dan Healy returned from six
months gaol as rumour blew into true fact
about an ex-con to abet dissent
from Tan-yr-allt the house that means 'Under the Hill'.
Saturday 26 February
saw that sabre wielding poet retire
with his pair of pistols. Perhaps he wrote
some more of Queen Mab or perhaps he spoke
to Harriet of their child that was due
in June. Some like to say the house that night
was visited by a haunting ghostly,
others that his doppelganger was who
he wrestled with that night after shots were fired.
One thing is sure his nightgown was shot through
and in the only note he wrote he said
'I have just escaped ( read how sure he is)
an atrocious assassination' but there
was not one word in all local papers.
The conspiracy of silence he thought
was built against him carried him across
the waves to an island in Killarney
never to be the sword of prophecy again.
As in every mystery the theories
that emerge say more about the teller
than any tale. The hallucination
tale centres on absent footprints on ground
wet from torrential and paved with stones on
all three sides of verandah. The impression
of ball on wainscot spoke of shot fired towards
the window not from but trajectory
of downward from east holed gown before wainscot rest.
Behind deleted and obscured lies
Lady Truth written down as letter by
Harriet which finds intruder quitting
office through shrubbery window who missed
his shot at S who fired before struggle
on wet ground found target on villainous
who swore revenge by God on wife and sister
before he fled .The clock chimed four to sound
of pistol shot then broken glass by death struggle.
That they had heard it said Leeson had sworn
to drive them out of that country is fact,
or was it 'a contemptible trick' as
Madock's manager Williams wrote?
Was Mr. S taunted by gothic tale
made real to terrorize their terror?
Or was it done on Sidmouth's orders
or was this a practice run by Shadow
shadowing agents before Perceval in May?
I leave this biographical mystery with you to ponder, or to wonder, or to even dismiss out of hand. One thing is certain. Shelley is one poet whose biography and work is peppered with signposts that signal the future that we are living now.
