Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire was a poetry collection written by Percy Bysshe Shelley and his sister Elizabeth.
Shelley contributed seven lyrical poems, four Gothic poems, and the political poem "The Irishman's Song". Elizabeth wrote three lyrical poems and two verse epistles. The collection included the early poems "Revenge", "Ghasta, Or, The Avenging Demon!!!", "Song: Sorrow", and "Song: Despair". The epigraph was from the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" by Sir Walter Scott: "Call it not vain:— they do not err, Who say, that, when the poet dies, Mute Nature mourns her worshipper."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
• Release date: Jul 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9780880038171

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was an English Romantic poet. Born into a prominent political family, Shelley enjoyed a quiet and happy childhood in West Sussex, developing a passion for nature and literature at a young age. He struggled in school, however, and was known by his colleagues at Eton College and University College, Oxford as an outsider and eccentric who spent more time acquainting himself with radical politics and the occult than with the requirements of academia. During his time at Oxford, he began his literary career in earnest, publishing Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire (1810) and St. Irvine; or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance (1811) In 1811, he married Harriet Westbrook, with whom he lived an itinerant lifestyle while pursuing affairs with other women. Through the poet Robert Southey, he fell under the influence of political philosopher William Godwin, whose daughter Mary soon fell in love with the precocious young poet. In the summer of 1814, Shelley eloped to France with Mary and her stepsister Claire Claremont, travelling to Holland, Germany, and Switzerland before returning to England in the fall. Desperately broke, Shelley struggled to provide for Mary through several pregnancies while balancing his financial obligations to Godwin, Harriet, and his own father. In 1816, Percy and Mary accepted an invitation to join Claremont and Lord Byron in Europe, spending a summer in Switzerland at a house on Lake Geneva. In 1818, following several years of unhappy life in England, the Shelleys—now married—moved to Italy, where Percy worked on The Masque of Anarchy (1819), Prometheus Unbound (1820), and Adonais (1821), now considered some of his most important works. In July of 1822, Shelley set sail on the Don Juan and was lost in a storm only hours later. His death at the age of 29 was met with despair and contempt throughout England and Europe, and he is now considered a leading poet and radical thinker of the Romantic era.

Book preview

UNTITLED.

A Person complained that whenever he began to write, he never could arrange his ideas in grammatical order. Which occasion suggested the idea of the following lines:

1.

Here I sit with my paper, my pen and my ink,

First of this thing, and that thing, and t’other thing think;

Then my thoughts come so pell-mell all into my mind,

That the sense or the subject I never can find:

This word is wrong placed, — no regard to the sense,

The present and future, instead of past tense,

Then my grammar I want; O dear! what a bore,

I think I shall never attempt to write more,

With patience I then my thoughts must arraign,

Have them all in due order like mutes in a train,

Like them too must wait in due patience and thought,

Or else my fine works will all come to nought.

My wit too’s so copious, it flows like a river,

But disperses its waters on black and white never;

Like smoke it appears independent and free,

But ah luckless smoke! it all passes like thee —

Then at length all my patience entirely lost,

My paper and pens in the fire are tossed;

But come, try again — you must never despair,

Our Murray’s or Entick’s are not all so rare,

Implore their assistance — they’ll come to your aid,

Perform all your business without being paid,

They’ll tell you the present tense, future and past,

Which should come first, and which should come last,

This Murray will do — then to Entick repair,

To find out the meaning of any word rare.

This they friendly will tell, and ne’er make you blush,

With a jeering look, taunt, or an O fie! tush!

Then straight all your thoughts in black and white put,

Not minding the if’s, the be’s, and the but,

Then read it all over, see how it will run,

How