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Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe
Shelley (1792-1827), English Romantic poet who
rebelled against English politics and
conservative values. Shelley drew no
essential distinction between poetry
and politics, and his work reflected the
radical ideas and revolutionary
optimism of the era.
Percy Bysshe
Shelley was born on August 4, 1792, at Field
Place, near
Horsham in Sussex, into an
aristocratic family. His father, Timothy Shelley,
was a Sussex squire and a Member of
Parliament. Shelley attended Syon
House
Academy and Eton and in 1810 he entered the Oxford
University
College.
In
1811 Shelley was expelled from the college for
publishing The
Necessity of Atheism,
which he wrote with Thomas Jefferson Hogg.
Shelley's
father withdrew his
inheritance in favor of a small annuity, after he
eloped with
the 16-year old Harriet
Westbrook, the daughter of a London tavern owner.
The pair spent the following two years
traveling in England and Ireland,
distributing pamphlets and speaking
against political injustice. In 1813 Shelley
published his first important poem, the
atheistic Queen Mab.
The poet's
marriage to Harriet was a failure. In 1814 Shelley
traveled
abroad with Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of the
philosopher and
anarchist William
Godwin (1756-1836). Mary's young stepsister Claire
Claremont was also in the company.
During this journey Shelley wrote an
unfinished novella, The Assassins
(1814). Their combined journal, Six Weeks'
Tour, reworked by Mary Shelley,
appeared in 1817. After their return to
London, Shelley came into an annual
income under his grandfather's will.
Harriet drowned herself in the
Serpentine in 1816. Shelley married Mary
Wollstonecraft and his favorite son
William was born in 1816.
Shelley spent the summer of
1816 with Lord Byron at Lake Geneva,
where Byron had an affair with Claire.
Shelley composed the
Intellectual
Beauty
Of Islam and the much
anthologized
Shelley's popular poems
are the Odes
and Adonis, an elegy for
Keats.
In 1818 the Shelleys moved to Italy,
where Byron was residing. In 1819
they
went to Rome and in 1820 to Pisa. Shelley's works
from this period
include Julian And
Maddalo, an exploration of his relations with
Byron and
Prometheus Unbound, a lyrical
drama. The Cenci was a five
-act tragedy
based
on the history of a 16th-century
Roman family, and The Mask of Anarchy was
a political protest which was written
after the Peterloo massacre. In 1822 the
Shelley household moved to the Bay of
Lerici. There Shelley began to write
The Triumph of Life.
To welcome
his friend Leigh Hunt, he sailed to Leghorn.
During
the stormy return voyage to
Lerici, his small schooner the Ariel sank
and Shelley drowned with Edward
Williams on July 8, 1822. The
bodies
were washed ashore at Viareggio, where, in the
presence of
Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt,
they were burned on the beach. Shelley
was later buried in Rome.
西风颂
O Wild West Wind, thou breathe of
autumn’s
being,
Thou, from
whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven,
like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and
black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-
stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest
to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where
they lie cold and low,
Each likes a corpse within
its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the
spring hall blow
Her clarion o’er the
dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like
flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours
plain and hill:
Wild
Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!
1
狂野
的秋风啊，你这秋的精气！
没看
见你出现，枯叶已被扫空，
像群群
鬼
魂没见法师就逃避
——
它们或枯
黄焦黑，或苍白潮红，
真是遭了
瘟灾的一大片；你呀，
你把迅飞
的种子载送去过冬，
让它们僵
睡在黑黢黢的地下，
就像尸体
在各自的墓里安躺，
直到你那
蔚蓝的春天妹妹呀
对梦乡中
的大地把号角吹响，
叫羊群般
的花苞把大气吸饮，
又让山野
充满了色彩和芳香。
狂野的精
灵，你正在四处巡行，
既拉朽摧枯又
保护。哦，你听！
II
Thou on whose stream, mid
the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose clouds like earth’s
decaying l
eaves are shed,
Shook from the
tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain
and lightning: there are spread
On the blue
surface of thane arty surge,
Like the bright
hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce
Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon
to the zenith’s height,
The locks of the
approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying
year, to which this closing night
Will be the
dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy
congregated might
Of vapours, from whose
solid atmosphere
Black
rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!
2
你呀，乱
云是雨和闪电的使者，
正是在你
震荡长空的激流上
闪电被冲
得像树上枯叶飘落，
也从天和
海错综的枝头骤降：
宛若有个
暴烈的酒神女祭司
把她银发
从幽暗的地平线上
直竖向中
天，只见相像的发丝
在你汹涌
的蓝莹莹表面四起，
宣告暴风
雨的逼近。残年濒死，
你是它挽
歌，而正在合拢的夜
便是它
上
接天穹的崇墓巨陵
——
笼着你聚
起的全部水汽之力，
而黑雨、
电火和冰雹也都将从
这浓云中迸发
而下。哦，你听！
III
Thou who didst waken from
his summer dreams