One Mad Summer...

 

On the shores of Lake Geneva

Stood a carriage, black, japanned,

Bearing symbols of the lineage

Of the owner's ancient lands,

To the Villa Deodati

He had fled, without his books,

To avoid the literati

And their disapproving looks.

 

From a humble, fraught beginning

And a mother he despised

He'd succeeded to the title

When his wicked Uncle died,

And he'd scribbled in his youth a tract

That caught the public eye,

Full of rant and young bravura

That had made the women sigh.

 

But an overnight sensation hadn't

Helped defeat his gloom,

He rode on the horse 'Disaster',

It was written on his tomb,

For the women came and flaunted,

Rushed unheeding to despair,

At his cheek, like alabaster,

At his limp, his curling hair.

 

There was only one who could inspire

His love, philanthropy,

To his shame, she was his sister

He adored Augusta Leigh,

And his main inheritance, he'd found

About his name was gloom,

As he rushed to his undoing in

Augusta's scented room.

 

He had fathered them a daughter

To the horror of his friends,

While the Lady Melbourne told him:

'Much too late to make amends!'

While the rumours gathered force, and daily

Threatened his disgrace,

And the bailiffs took possession,

He would have to leave that place.

 

In the yawning jaws of peril he

Attempted one last throw,

He would marry for convenience,

Would marry, just for show,

But he chose a moral tartar who

Took on her to reform

The rake that was within him...

(As well tame a thunderstorm!)

 

Anna Milbanke, the blue-stocking

Who, she vowed, was always right,

Promised him moral redemption

From his moods, his dreams at night,

For his nightmares saw him crying out

In terror from his bed

As his sense of doom had gathered

Like dark clouds around his head.

 

She was very soon enceinte and

He had visions of a son,

Though he hated being married and

She'd wondered what she'd done,

For his moods and storms and tempests

Clashed and clattered at her feet,

He made hell a living province,

Hinted things she'd not repeat.

 

She would barely last a year and then

Be heading out the door,

Her moral compass shattered by

Confessions, by the score,

She threatened to confound him

If he'd not do as she'd ask

Leave their child to ministrations

Of her mother's moral class.

 

So it was he left in exile from

His country and his friends,

Said goodbye to his sweet sister

In his way, to make amends,

Took his carriage to Geneva,

And his lodgings by the lake

Where he'd brood on his disasters

And his one, most foul mistake.

 

He was followed by the party of

Another, who was lost,

By elopement with the daughters

Of a Godwin, to his cost,

Who had written wretched poems

And believed there was no God,

For 'free love' was all the mantra

That had shamed his father's blood.

 

So they sat there, in the Villa, this

Odd, strangely sorted crew,

Mary Godwin looking pensive

At her lover's strange to do,

With Claire Clairmont determined

To be mistress to the Lord

Who by now was more than sated

With the pain of love's reward.

 

So they drank, were strangely merry

Spoke of terrors in the night,

Read each other ghostly stories

In the gloom, to give each fright,

And those lines from 'Christabel' had sent

Him screaming from the room,

This love of Mary Godwin who

Would find an early tomb.

 

They conjured up the demons that

Assailed their sleeping hours,

Made more menacing in shadows

By the pillars, in the towers,

And a dreadful fate seemed poised

To burst on each within the gloom,

When Shelley screamed, and Claire had fits,

Hysterics in the room.

 

And Shelley seemed to feel the pull

Of seaweed in his hair,

While Byron took a fever, moaned aloud

In his despair,

And Claire had watched as Byron turned

And left her far behind,

While Mary caught a vision that

She wrote as... 'Frankenstein!'

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Linda Marie Van Tassell]

I love it, and your timing is impeccable. Over the last two days, I have been reading about Percy Bysshe Shelley and his circle of friends (Lord Byron, John Keats, Edward Trelawny) and was contemplating writing a poem myself.

I am particularly fascinated with the drowning of Shelley less than a month before his 30th birthday while sailing back from Livorno to Lerici in his schooner, the Don Juan, named after one of Lord Byron's poems. His body was cremated on the beach near Viareggio. It is said that Edward Trelawny reached into the fire and snatched Shelley's heart from the funeral pyre, which Mary Shelley kept until her death. Also fascinating is that someone shot at Shelley twice two days prior and tried to kill him. The conspiracy theories abound about how he really died, who killed him, etc.

I love the following lines of the last stanza:

"And Shelley seemed to feel the pull
Of seaweed in his hair,
While Byron took a fever,
moaned aloud In his despair,"

Isn't it tragic how two poets, such as Shelley and Byron, should both die so young?

The fact that Byron had a club foot undeniably had a profound impact on him his whole life. I like that you incorporated this fact when writing:

"For the women came and flaunted,
Rushed unheeding to despair,
At his cheek, like alabaster,
At his limp, his curling hair."

I am just absolutely floored at the timing of your poem. You must have osmosis or something. :o)

Great, great, great job!

Linda Marie Van Tassell

[Valentine]

Your brain must be awfully huge to retain all of the knowledge you remember from things read so long ago..then to come up with something amazing like this is astonishing..David..my Aussir Mate..you continue to amaze me..great writing my friend..God bless..Kathie

[Nathan Noble]

i love your style. this was an amazing piece of work...simply amazing and very well written. great read.