T o those whose hearts have thrilled over the pages of Trelavney
and the narratives of other witnesses to these facts, as well as
those of Pro- fessor Dowdens masterly biography of the poet,
related, as it is with the true insight of love it were idle once
more to recount the bare details of that dark catastrophe which
closed, tragically as an antique d-aina woven by inevitable Fate,
the life of Percy Bvsshe Shelley. Who, in truth, can remember
without profound sympathy, I had almost said, without tears, that
sorrow- ful letter which Mary Shelley, the desolate widow, wrote on
the 15th of August, 1822, to Mrs. Gisborne tel- ling the story of
those days of agony The terrible drama of which those two women,
Mrs. Shelley, and Mrs. Williams foresaw the end, is narrated with
so true, so natural a crescendo of horror and of pathos as might
move even the author of The Real Shelley, if certain critics conde-
scended to possess hearts. If no more were known of Shelleys
beloved com- panion, this letter would be enough to prove how
worthy she was to be invoked as Mine own hearts home, as he calls
her in the dedication of the Revolt of Islam, in which he says
through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see, A Lamp of vestal fire,
burning internally . The days pass, she writes after the terrible
event, pass one after another, and we still live. Adonais is not
Keats elegy, but his very own . Who knows how often she read, and
re-read it in those twentynine long years during which she outlived
him, widowed vestal of her one and only love The proof is found in
a copy of the Pisan edition of this poem, that she possessed, where
after her death a tiny silken sack was found among the pages,
containing ashes, taken by her from his funeral urn. 4 The last
days So is it in all which concerns the poet of the Liberated
World, there breathes the true and simple crandeur of the patltos
of the days b of old. w hoever thinks over this sorrowful story, to
which...
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