Maglian called; and after dinner, and while walking with him on the by Percy Bysshe Shelley: Summary, Meaning & Analysis
This is Mary Shelley's prose preface to her late husband Percy Bysshe Shelley's final poems, written seventeen years after his drowning in the Gulf of Spezia in 1822.
The poem
terrace, we discovered a strange sail coming round the point of Porto Venere, which proved at length to be Shelley’s boat. She had left Genoa on Thursday last, but had been driven back by the prevailing bad winds. A Mr. Heslop and two English seamen brought her round, and they speak most highly of her performances. She does indeed excite my surprise and admiration. Shelley and I walked to Lerici, and made a stretch off the land to try her: and I find she fetches whatever she looks at. In short, we have now a perfect plaything for the summer.’—It was thus that short-sighted mortals welcomed Death, he having disguised his grim form in a pleasing mask! The time of the friends was now spent on the sea; the weather became fine, and our whole party often passed the evenings on the water when the wind promised pleasant sailing. Shelley and Williams made longer excursions; they sailed several times to Massa. They had engaged one of the seamen who brought her round, a boy, by name Charles Vivian; and they had not the slightest apprehension of danger. When the weather was unfavourable, they employed themselves with alterations in the rigging, and by building a boat of canvas and reeds, as light as possible, to have on board the other for the convenience of landing in waters too shallow for the larger vessel. When Shelley was on board, he had his papers with him; and much of the “Triumph of Life” was written as he sailed or weltered on that sea which was soon to engulf him. The heats set in in the middle of June; the days became excessively hot. But the sea-breeze cooled the air at noon, and extreme heat always put Shelley in spirits. A long drought had preceded the heat; and prayers for rain were being put up in the churches, and processions of relics for the same effect took place in every town. At this time we received letters announcing the arrival of Leigh Hunt at Genoa. Shelley was very eager to see him. I was confined to my room by severe illness, and could not move; it was agreed that Shelley and Williams should go to Leghorn in the boat. Strange that no fear of danger crossed our minds! Living on the sea-shore, the ocean became as a plaything: as a child may sport with a lighted stick, till a spark inflames a forest, and spreads destruction over all, so did we fearlessly and blindly tamper with danger, and make a game of the terrors of the ocean. Our Italian neighbours, even, trusted themselves as far as Massa in the skiff; and the running down the line of coast to Leghorn gave no more notion of peril than a fair-weather inland navigation would have done to those who had never seen the sea. Once, some months before, Trelawny had raised a warning voice as to the difference of our calm bay and the open sea beyond; but Shelley and his friend, with their one sailor-boy, thought themselves a match for the storms of the Mediterranean, in a boat which they looked upon as equal to all it was put to do. On the 1st of July they left us. If ever shadow of future ill darkened the present hour, such was over my mind when they went. During the whole of our stay at Lerici, an intense presentiment of coming evil brooded over my mind, and covered this beautiful place and genial summer with the shadow of coming misery. I had vainly struggled with these emotions—they seemed accounted for by my illness; but at this hour of separation they recurred with renewed violence. I did not anticipate danger for them, but a vague expectation of evil shook me to agony, and I could scarcely bring myself to let them go. The day was calm and clear; and, a fine breeze rising at twelve, they weighed for Leghorn. They made the run of about fifty miles in seven hours and a half. The “Bolivar” was in port; and, the regulations of the Health-office not permitting them to go on shore after sunset, they borrowed cushions from the larger vessel, and slept on board their boat. They spent a week at Pisa and Leghorn. The want of rain was severely felt in the country. The weather continued sultry and fine. I have heard that Shelley all this time was in brilliant spirits. Not long before, talking of presentiment, he had said the only one that he ever found infallible was the certain advent of some evil fortune when he felt peculiarly joyous. Yet, if ever fate whispered of coming disaster, such inaudible but not unfelt prognostics hovered around us. The beauty of the place seemed unearthly in its excess: the distance we were at from all signs of civilization, the sea at our feet, its murmurs or its roaring for ever in our ears,—all these things led the mind to brood over strange thoughts, and, lifting it from everyday life, caused it to be familiar with the unreal. A sort of spell surrounded us; and each day, as the voyagers did not return, we grew restless and disquieted, and yet, strange to say, we were not fearful of the most apparent danger. The spell snapped; it was all over; an interval of agonizing doubt—of days passed in miserable journeys to gain tidings, of hopes that took firmer root even as they were more baseless—was changed to the certainty of the death that eclipsed all happiness for the survivors for evermore. There was something in our fate peculiarly harrowing. The remains of those we lost were cast on shore; but, by the quarantine-laws of the coast, we were not permitted to have possession of them—the law with respect to everything cast on land by the sea being that such should be burned, to prevent the possibility of any remnant bringing the plague into Italy; and no representation could alter the law. At length, through the kind and unwearied exertions of Mr. Dawkins, our Charge d’Affaires at Florence, we gained permission to receive the ashes after the bodies were consumed. Nothing could equal the zeal of Trelawny in carrying our wishes into effect. He was indefatigable in his exertions, and full of forethought and sagacity in his arrangements. It was a fearful task; he stood before us at last, his hands scorched and blistered by the flames of the funeral-pyre, and by touching the burnt relics as he placed them in the receptacles prepared for the purpose. And there, in compass of that small case, was gathered all that remained on earth of him whose genius and virtue were a crown of glory to the world—whose love had been the source of happiness, peace, and good,—to be buried with him! The concluding stanzas of the “Adonais” pointed out where the remains ought to be deposited; in addition to which our beloved child lay buried in the cemetery at Rome. Thither Shelley’s ashes were conveyed; and they rest beneath one of the antique weed-grown towers that recur at intervals in the circuit of the massy ancient wall of Rome. He selected the hallowed place himself; there is ‘the sepulchre, Oh, not of him, but of our joy!— ... And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand; And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, Pavilioning the dust of him who planned This refuge for his memory, doth stand Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath, A field is spread, on which a newer band Have pitched in Heaven’s smile their camp of death, Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.’ Could sorrow for the lost, and shuddering anguish at the vacancy left behind, be soothed by poetic imaginations, there was something in Shelley’s fate to mitigate pangs which yet, alas! could not be so mitigated; for hard reality brings too miserably home to the mourner all that is lost of happiness, all of lonely unsolaced struggle that remains. Still, though dreams and hues of poetry cannot blunt grief, it invests his fate with a sublime fitness, which those less nearly allied may regard with complacency. A year before he had poured into verse all such ideas about death as give it a glory of its own. He had, as it now seems, almost anticipated his own destiny; and, when the mind figures his skiff wrapped from sight by the thunder-storm, as it was last seen upon the purple sea, and then, as the cloud of the tempest passed away, no sign remained of where it had been (Captain Roberts watched the vessel with his glass from the top of the lighthouse of Leghorn, on its homeward track. They were off Via Reggio, at some distance from shore, when a storm was driven over the sea. It enveloped them and several larger vessels in darkness. When the cloud passed onwards, Roberts looked again, and saw every other vessel sailing on the ocean except their little schooner, which had vanished. From that time he could scarcely doubt the fatal truth; yet we fancied that they might have been driven towards Elba or Corsica, and so be saved. The observation made as to the spot where the boat disappeared caused it to be found, through the exertions of Trelawny for that effect. It had gone down in ten fathom water; it had not capsized, and, except such things as had floated from her, everything was found on board exactly as it had been placed when they sailed. The boat itself was uninjured. Roberts possessed himself of her, and decked her; but she proved not seaworthy, and her shattered planks now lie rotting on the shore of one of the Ionian islands, on which she was wrecked.)—who but will regard as a prophecy the last stanza of the “Adonais”? ‘The breath whose might I have invoked in song Descends on me; my spirit’s bark is driven, Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given; The massy earth and sphered skies are riven! I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.’ Putney, May 1, 1839.
This is Mary Shelley's prose preface to her late husband Percy Bysshe Shelley's final poems, written seventeen years after his drowning in the Gulf of Spezia in 1822. She reflects on the last weeks of his life — the new boat, the summer sailing, the tragic voyage to Leghorn — and the painful aftermath of retrieving and cremating his remains. It concludes with the final stanza of Shelley's own "Adonais," which, with the benefit of hindsight, seems like a poet foreseeing his own death at sea.
Line-by-line
Maglian called; and after dinner, and while walking with him on the terrace, we discovered a strange sail coming round the point of Porto Venere...
The heats set in in the middle of June; the days became excessively hot...
On the 1st of July they left us. If ever shadow of future ill darkened the present hour, such was over my mind when they went.
They spent a week at Pisa and Leghorn. The want of rain was severely felt in the country.
The spell snapped; it was all over; an interval of agonizing doubt...
There was something in our fate peculiarly harrowing. The remains of those we lost were cast on shore...
The concluding stanzas of the 'Adonais' pointed out where the remains ought to be deposited...
Could sorrow for the lost, and shuddering anguish at the vacancy left behind, be soothed by poetic imaginations...
Tone & mood
The tone conveys a deep, controlled grief—one that has matured over seventeen years into something clear and enduring. Mary Shelley writes with the precision of someone who has recounted this story to herself countless times before sharing it with the world. There’s no hysteria here, yet she doesn’t maintain any emotional distance either. The sorrow lingers just below the surface, tempered by the careful structure of her prose. Moments of beauty—the sea breeze, the purple water, the summer heat—shine through, amplifying the sense of loss. The overall impact is elegiac: mournful, deliberate, and deeply affecting.
Symbols & metaphors
- The boat (the Don Juan) — The boat begins as a symbol of joy and freedom — a "perfect plaything for the summer" — but ultimately becomes an instrument of death. Mary's portrayal of it as Death in disguise emphasizes the central irony of the piece: the very object that brought Shelley the most happiness was also the one that led to his demise.
- The storm cloud — Captain Roberts watches the boat vanish behind a storm cloud from the lighthouse at Leghorn. Once the cloud moves on, the boat has simply vanished. This cloud acts as a barrier between the living world and death—a curtain that shields the survivors (and the reader) from experiencing the loss firsthand.
- The funeral pyre / ashes — Trelawny's burnt hands and the tiny container of ashes distill a remarkable life into a tangible remnant. The ashes represent both the physical and the symbolic: everything that was Shelley — his genius, love, and presence — fits into this small box. This image invites us to grapple with the contrast between the enormity of a person and the insignificance of what death leaves behind.
- The child with the lighted stick — Mary's simile for their recklessness — comparing it to a child playing with fire until it ignites a forest — frames the tragedy in terms of innocence rather than foolishness. They weren't careless out of arrogance; they were careless like children, simply because they had never faced real danger before.
- Shelley's spirit's bark — In the closing stanza of "Adonais," Shelley employs "bark"—an old term for a small sailing ship—as a metaphor for the soul. Mary references this, fully aware that his real bark went down in ten fathoms of water. The metaphor and the reality intertwine, making the poem a direct portrayal of his death.
- The Protestant Cemetery in Rome — The cemetery, with its ancient walls and pyramid, is where Shelley decided to be buried — and where he had previously laid his son William to rest. By quoting his own description from "Adonais," Mary illustrates that Shelley had, in a way, anticipated this conclusion. The location transforms into a symbol of the peculiar connection between his art and his life.
Historical context
Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned on July 8, 1822, when his schooner, the *Don Juan*, sank during a storm in the Gulf of Spezia, near Via Reggio. He was just twenty-nine years old. His friend Edward Williams and the young sailor Charles Vivian also lost their lives that day. Mary Shelley penned this preface in 1839 for the first collected edition of her husband’s *Poetical Works*, seventeen years after his passing. By then, she had survived not only Shelley but also three of their four children. This preface stands as one of the key biographical documents from the Romantic period, authored by someone who witnessed the events firsthand and was a significant literary figure herself. The summer in Lerici that she describes marked the end of the so-called Pisan Circle, a loose gathering of writers and radicals—including Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Edward Trelawny—who congregated in northern Italy in the early 1820s.
FAQ
It is prose — specifically, a preface that Mary Shelley wrote for the 1839 collected edition of her poems. This piece is regarded as a literary work in its own right due to its exceptional quality and significance as a biographical document. The final section includes direct quotes from Shelley's poem "Adonais," where the verse is found.
Leigh Hunt was a poet and journalist, and he was also a close friend of Shelley and Keats. He had recently traveled to Italy with his family, partly because Byron and Shelley invited him to help start a literary journal called *The Liberal*. It was Shelley's excitement to see him that led to the fateful trip to Leghorn.
"Adonais" is Shelley's tribute to John Keats, who passed away in Rome in 1821. Shelley crafted it as a powerful, mythological mourning for a fellow poet who died too young. Mary includes a quote from it at the end of the preface because the last stanza — where the speaker's soul is carried "far from the shore" on a spirit-bark — feels, in retrospect, like a foreshadowing of Shelley's own death. She's highlighting that he penned his own elegy without realizing it.
Italian quarantine law at the time mandated that anything washed ashore from the sea be burned right away to prevent the spread of plague, with no exceptions for human remains. This meant that the bodies of Shelley and Williams had to be cremated on the beach where they were discovered. Mary and the others were finally allowed to collect the ashes, but only after significant diplomatic effort.
The *Don Juan* was discovered on the seabed in ten fathoms of water, mostly intact — it hadn’t capsized, and everything on board was still in order. A man named Roberts salvaged and repaired her, but she turned out to be unseaworthy and eventually wrecked on one of the Ionian islands, where her decaying planks were still visible when Mary was writing.
She shares her experience thoughtfully—not as a claim of second sight, but as an honest account of her feelings. She acknowledges that her illness might explain her anxiety, and she didn't specifically fear drowning. However, the sensation was so intense that she could hardly let Shelley go. She also points out that Shelley believed his clearest sign of impending disaster was feeling unusually happy—and he was in great spirits that week. Mary leaves it unclear whether these were supernatural warnings or just the mind recognizing an unnamed danger.
Edward John Trelawny was an adventurer and writer associated with the Pisan Circle. He organized the recovery of the bodies and managed the cremations on the beach — a task Mary described as "fearful," pointing out that his hands were burned and blistered from the flames. Later, he penned his own memoir about his experiences with Shelley and Byron, titled *Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author*.
She refers to the word "spell" to capture the strange, suspended quality of that summer — the otherworldly beauty of the place, the separation from everyday life, the continuous sound of the sea, and how the mind wandered toward "the unreal." It felt like the usual rules and dangers had been paused for a while. When the news of the deaths came, she describes the spell as having "snapped" — a word that conveys both the suddenness of the end and the delicate nature of the enchantment that came before it.