Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
( 1792 – 1822 )
One of the major English Romantic Poets, and is considered one of the finest lyric poets in the English language, and talk about a free thinker…….. One of his first published works was “The Necessity of Atheism” (and this was 200 years ago!), and it got him expelled from school at 18. He believed in free love, as in living together and all that, again, in an era when you could get in trouble for blasphemy and sedition. Evidently he was way ahead of his time.
His works are too many to list, but try these, if you want to read some of his genius:
Queen Maab
When Soft Voices Die
Prometheus Unbound
Ozymandias
Adonais
His body is buried in Campo Cestio , Rome.
John Keats and Edward Trelawny are buried there too……. Keats being another, along with Byron, of the great Romantic Poets of the Era. Trelawny was an adventurer and friend, whose lived his life as if he stepped out of their poems.
Trivia:
His Heart is buried close to his wife in St. Peter Churchyard, Bournemouth, Dorset, England, and she was Mary Shelley, the Author of “Frankenstein”.