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For a time he lived at Marlow, where he wrote or began Prince Athanase, Rosalind and Helen, and above all Laon and Cythna, called later and permanently The Revolt of Islam. In April 1818 he left England for Italy, and never returned.
Before quitting the first period of Shelley's development, it may be well to set before the reader a specimen of that self-delineative poetry which characterized it; and since it is difficult to detach a single passage from the continuous stanzas of "Laon and Cythna", I have chosen the lines in "Rosalind and Helen" which describe young Lionel: To Lionel, Though of great wealth and lineage high, Yet through those dungeon walls there came Thy thrilling light, O Liberty!
I found from their manner that an extraordinary affinity, or sympathy, entered into their attachment, which somehow took away all flavour of grossness. Their supreme desire is to be together to share each other's emotions, and fancies, and dreams." "Platonic!" "Well no. Shelleyan would be nearer to it. They remind me of what are their names Laon and Cythna. Also of Paul and Virginia a little.
"He used to sit in a study adorned with casts, as large as life, of the Vatican Apollo and the celestial Venus." Fancy Shelley with his bright eyes and elf-locks in a tiny, low-roofed room, correcting proofs of "Laon and Cythna", between the Apollo of the Belvedere and Venus de' Medici, life-sized, and as crude as casts by Shout could make them!
Returning to England in 1815 he wrote his first really great poem, Alastor , followed by the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, Prince Athanase, Rosalind and Helen, and Laon and Cythna, afterwards called the Revolt of Islam . In 1818 he left England never to return, and went to Italy, and in the next two years while at Rome produced his two greatest works, the tragedy of The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound . He removed to Venice in 1820 in the company of Byron, and there wrote Julian and Maddalo, a poetic record of discussions between them.
There is also a letter from Keats to his two brothers, 22nd December, 1817, saying: 'Shelley's poem Laon and Cythna is out, and there are words about its being objected to as much as Queen Mab was. Soon after their marriage, Shelley and his second wife settled at Great Marlow, in Buckinghamshire. They were shortly disturbed by a Chancery suit, whereby Mr.
The loves and the virtues of Laon and Cythna, the gifted beings who overthrow the tyrant and perish tragically in a counter-revolution, are too bright against a background that is too black; but even so they were a good opportunity for displaying the various phases through which humanitarian passion may run the first whispers of hope, the devotion of the pioneer, the joy of freedom and love, in triumph exultation tempered by clemency, in defeat despair ennobled by firmness.
Another summer excursion was a visit to Chamouni, of which he has left memorable descriptions in his letters to Peacock, and in the somewhat Coleridgian verses on Mont Blanc. The preface to "Laon and Cythna" shows what a powerful impression had been made upon him by the glaciers, and how he delighted in the element of peril.
In the first edition of the poem he made Laon and Cythna brother and sister, not because he believed in the desirability of incest, but because he wished to throw a glove down to society, and to attack the intolerance of custom in its stronghold.
Look here, child," and, to Olive's astonishment, he snatched up one of her drawings, and began lecturing thereupon "here you have made a design of some originality. I hate your young lady copyists of landscapes and flowers, and Jullien's paltry heads. Come, let us see this epigraph, 'Laon's Vision of Cythna, Upon the mountain's dizzy brink she stood. Good! Bold enough, too!"
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