Poetry

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Byron and Shelley Excoriated from the Grave

Author Daisy Hay while

Claire Clairmont by Aemilia Curran, 1819

researching her book Young Romantics, about the Shelleys, Byron and their “tangled lives” found a fragment of a memoir by Claire Clairmont (1798-1879), Mary Shelley’s young, head-strong step-sister. Clairmont, perhaps most famous for describing Byron as “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know” was in her teens when Byron got her pregnant and then dumped her. Dr. Hay is including the fragment, written by Clairmont when she was in her seventies and looking back at her pursuit of Byron, and her journeys with the Shelleys. Clairmont says of her time with the two poets that “Under the influence of the doctrine and belief of free love, I saw the two first poets of England… become monsters.” You can read more here.

Filed under: There, History, literary history, Poetry

Winter Solstice, 2009

You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all,
Since she enjoys her long night’s festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year’s and the day’s deep midnight is.

John Donne “A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day” more . . .

Filed under: There, Poetry