"A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds."
Percy Bysshe Shelley 4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822 A son of Sir Timothy Shelley, a Whig Member of Parliament, and his wife, a Sussex landowner, Shelley was born at Field Place in Horsham, England. He received his early education at home, tutored by Reverend Evan Edwards of Warnham. In 1802, he entered the Syon House Academy of Brentford. In 1804, Shelley entered Eton College, where he fared poorly, subjected to an almost daily mob torment his classmates called "Shelley-baits". Surrounded, the young Shelley would have his books torn from his hands and his clothes pulled at and torn until he cried out madly in his high-pitched "cracked soprano" of a voice. On 10 April 1810, he was registered at University College, Oxford. Legend has it that Shelley attended only one lecture while at Oxford, but frequently read sixteen hours a day. Four months after being expelled, the 19-year-old Shelley eloped to Scotland with the 16-year-old schoolgirl Harriet Westbrook to get married. On 8 July 1822, less than a month before his 30th birthday, Shelley drowned in a sudden storm while sailing back from Livorno to Lerici in his schooner, Don Juan.
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Prometheus Unbound is a four-act play by Percy Shelley first published in 1820, concerned with the torments of the Greek mythological figure Prometheus and his suffering at the hands of Zeus. It is inspired by Aeschylus's Promethius Bound and concerns Prometheus' release from captivity. Unlike Aeschylus' version, however, there is no reconciliation between Prometheus and Zeus. Instead, Jupiter (Zeus) is overthrown, which allows Prometheus to be released. Shelley's play is closet drama, meaning it was not intended to be produced on the stage. In the tradition of Romantic Poetry, Shelley wrote for the imagination, intending his play's stage to reside in the imaginations of his readers.
