Thank you #PBShelley
#RiseLikeLions

This cathedral is a most astonishing work of art. It is built of white marble, and cut into pinnacles of immense height, and the utmost delicacy of workmanship, and loaded with sculpture. The effect of it, piercing the solid blue, with those groups of dazzling spires, relieved by the serene depth of this Italian heaven, or by moonlight when the stars seem gathered among those clustered shapes, is beyond anything I had imagined architecture capable of producing. The interior, though very sublime, is of a more earthly character, and with its stained glass and massy granite columns overloaded with antique figures, and the silver lamps, that burn for ever under the canopy of black cloth beside the brazen altar and the marble fretwork of the dome, give it the aspect of some gorgeous sepulchre. There is one solitary spot among these aisles, behind the altar, where the light of day is dime and yellow under the storied window, which I have chosen to visit, and read Dante there. Letter to Thomas Love Peacock from Milan April 20, 1818 Source: https://archive.org/details/lettersofpercyby0000shel/page/595/mode/1up

19th century painting of the Duomo of Milano at night by Angelo Inganni (1807 - 1881). Sparse light, but s forest of white marble spires contrasting with the black-blue sky. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Angelo_Inganni_-_Notturno_di_Piazza_del_Duomo_a_Milano.jpg

19th century painting of the very populated interior of the Duomo of Milano by David Roberts (1796 - 1864). Dark massive columns, yellow light from the stained glass windows. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:David_Roberts_(1796-1864)_-_Milan_Cathedral,_Italy_-_121_-_Touchstones_Rochdale.jpg

Romantic Landscapes (29.1)
#Cathedrals #Milan #PBShelley #RomanticLandscapes

Percy Bysshe Shelley writes about the Duomo Milano in 1818 and finds a quiet corner for reading.

This shore of the lake is one continued village, and the Milanese nobility have their villas here. The union of culture and the untameable profusion and loveliness of nature is here so close, that the line where they are divided can hardly be discovered. But the finest scenery is that of the Villa Pliniana ; so called from a fountain which ebbs and flows every three hours, described by the younger Pliny, which is in the courtyard. This house, which was once a magnificent palace, and is now half in ruins, we are endeavouring to procure. It is built upon terraces raised from the bottom of the lake, together with its garden, at the foot of a semicircular precipice, overshadowed by profound forests of chestnut. The scene from the colonnade is the most extraordinary, at once, and the most lovely that eye ever beheld. On one side is the mountain, and immediately over you are clusters of cypress-trees, of an astonishing height, which seem to pierce the sky. Above you, from among the clouds, as it were, descends a waterfall of immense size, broken by the woody rocks into a thousand channels to the lake. On the other side is seen the blue extent of the lake and the mountains, speckled with sails and spires. The apartments of the Pliniana are immensely large, but ill furnished and antique. The terraces, which overlook the lake, and conduct under the shade of such immense laurel-trees as deserve the epithet of Pythian, are most delightful. Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley April 20 294. To Thomas Love Peacock Milan, April 20, 1818. https://archive.org/details/lettersofpercyby0000shel/page/594/mode/1up

Colored print from early 19th century. The building of the renaissance Villa Pliniana at the shore of Lake Como. The lake is quiet, a pleasure boat and a few other small vessels are seen in front of the building. Behind the villa, the hills rise with chestnuts and cypress trees, to the left, half hidden behind dark trees in the foreground, a white foam of the cataract falling down the steep slope, just as in Percy Bysshe Shelley's description. from "Picturesque Tour from Geneva to Milan, by way of the Simplon: illustrated with thirty six coloured views ... engraved from designs by J. and J [or rather, G. and G.] Lory ... and accompanied with particulars historical and descriptive by Frederic Schoberl [With a map.]" Author(s): Shoberl, Frederick [person] ; Lory, Gabriel, the Elder [person] ; Lory, Gabriel, the Younger [person] British Library shelfmark: "Digital Store 10195.f.20" Page: 216 (scanned page number - not necessarily the actual page number in the publication) Place of publication: London (England) Date of publication: 1820 https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/11005175743/in/photostream/

Romantic Landscapes (32)
#LociAmoeni #Villas #PBShelley #RomanticLandscapes

1818 Shelley stays a short time at the Villa Pliniana at the shore of #LakeComo - the place has the allure of a locus amoenus: fountain, waterfall & special trees. But house & garden mark it as a place of leisure.

… We sailed from the town of Como to a tract of country called the Tremezina, and saw the various aspects presented by that part of the lake. The mountains between Como and that village, or rather cluster of villages, are covered on high with chestnut forests (the eating chestnuts, on which the inhabitants of the country subsist in time of scarcity), which sometimes descend to the very verge of the lake, overhanging it with their hoary branches. But usually the immediate border of this shore is composed of laurel-trees, and bay, and myrtle, and wild fig-trees, and olives which grow in the crevices of the rocks, and overhang the caverns, and shadow the deep glens, which are filled with the flashing light of the waterfalls. Other flowering shrubs, which I cannot name, grow there also. On high, the towers of village churches are seen white among the dark forests. Beyond, on the opposite shore, which faces the south, the mountains descend less precipitously to the lake, and although they are much higher, and some covered with perpetual snow, there intervenes between them and the lake a range of lower hills, which have glens and rifts opening to the other, such as I should fancy the abysses of Ida or Parnassus. Here are plantations of olive, and orange, and lemon trees, which are now so loaded with fruit, that there is more fruit than leaves — and vineyards. Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley No. 294. To Thomas Love Peacock Milan, April 20, 1818. https://archive.org/details/lettersofpercyby0000shel/page/593/mode/1up

Vintage Postcard with photograph of 'Tremezzina Bay Como Lake'. From an elevated outlook, the view is down on the lake and towards high mountains beyond the blue and silvery water surface. In the foreground a green island and peninsula with small villages. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tremezzina_Bay_Como_Lake_of_Italy.jpg

Romantic Landscapes (31)
#PBShelley #TLPeacock #LakeComo #RomanticLandscapes

Visitors from the North reaching #Italy as place of longing likely first see the lakes of upper Italy, here Percy Bysshe Shelley describes the landscape of Lake Como during his travel 1818. It is spring in Lombardy.

#RomanticLandscapes #Colosseo 'changed by time into the image of an amphitheatre of rocky hills overgrown by the wild olive, the myrtle, and the fig-tree, and threaded by little paths, which wind among its ruined stairs and immeasurable galleries'
in Letter to #TLPeacock by #PBShelley Dec 22 1818

We have been living this last month near the little town from which I date this letter, in a very pleasant villa which has been lent to us, and we are now on the point of proceeding to Florence, Rome, and Naples — at which last city we shall spend the winter, and return northwards in the spring. Behind us here are the Euganean hills, not so beautiful as those of the Bagni di Lucca, with Arqua, where Petrarch’s house and tomb are religiously preserved and visited. At the end of our garden is an extensive Gothic castle, now the habitation of owls and bats, where the Medici family resided before they came to Florence. We see before us the wide flat plains of Lombardy, in which we see the sun and moon rise and set, and the evening star, and all the golden magnificence of autumnal clouds. But I reserve wonder for Naples. from a letter by Percy Bysshe Shelley to Thomas Love Peacock [I Cappuccini], Este, 1 October 8, 1818. Source: https://archive.org/details/lettersofpercyby0000shel/page/630/mode/1up

Romantic Landscapes (16.4/n)
#ColliEuganei #PBShelley #Naples #RomanticLandscapes

P.B.Shelley in a letter to T.L.Peacock looks forward to Naples - from the Euganean Hills. Nearby are a Gothic house for owls and bats and remembrance of a venerable poet.

From A Nature Poem for Every Day of the Year, ed. Jane McMorland Hunter

Sunday #morningread
#PbShelley

Thus thou, Ravine of Arve—dark, deep Ravine— Thou many-coloured, many-voicèd vale, Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene, Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne, Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame Of lightning through the tempest;—thou dost lie, Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging, Children of elder time, in whose devotion The chainless winds still come and ever came To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging To hear—an old and solemn harmony; Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep Of the aethereal waterfall, whose veil Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep Which when the voices of the desert fail Wraps all in its own deep eternity;—

Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion, A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame; Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion, Thou art the path of that unresting sound— Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee I seem as in a trance sublime and strange To muse on my own separate fantasy, My own, my human mind, which passively Now renders and receives fast influencings, Holding an unremitting interchange With the clear universe of things around; One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings Now float above thy darkness, and now rest Where that or thou art no unbidden guest, In the still cave of the witch Poesy, Seeking among the shadows that pass by Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee, Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast From which they fled recalls them, thou art there!

Romantic Landscapes (12.4)
#MontBlanc #PBShelley #RomanticLandscapes

P. B. Shelley from _Mont Blanc_ 1816 -

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3852 - On Life - by Percy Bysshe Shelley The Funeral of Shelley  Wikimedia A Sense of Doubt blog post #3852 - 100 DAYS - 100 Years - On Life - by Percy Bysshe Shelley Another post ...

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3852 - On Life - by Percy Bysshe Shelley. sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2020/06/a-se... #Literature #life #Romantics #PBShelley #beliefs

Ay, many flowering islands lie In the waters of wide Agony: To such a one this morn was led, My bark by soft winds piloted: 'Mid the mountains Euganean I stood listening to the paean With which the legioned rooks did hail The sun's uprise majestical; Gathering round with wings all hoar, Through the dewy mist they soar Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven Bursts, and then, as clouds of even, Flecked with fire and azure, lie In the unfathomable sky, So their plumes of purple grain, Starred with drops of golden rain, Gleam above the sunlight woods. As in silent multitudes On the morning's fitful gale Through the broken mist they sail, And the vapours cloven and gleaming Follow, down the dark steep streaming, Till all is bright, and clear, and still. Round the solitary hill. P.B.Shelley, from 'Lines written among the Euganean Hills', 1818

Black & white photograph, by Paolo Monti (1908-1982) entitled ' Teolo, dintorni. Colli Euganei: paesaggi e architetture rurali.', [Teolo, surroundings. Euganean Hills: landscape and rural architecture], dated 1973 Grey-scale picture shows dark volcanic mountains of the Euganean Hills under a cloudy sky with a partly hidden low sun in the left upper corner. In the foreground, nearly black rows of trees and some housings are hardly perceptible in fornt of the first mountain range. The atmosphere is between quiet and menacing, owing to the overall low level of illumination in the landscape. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paolo_Monti_-_Servizio_fotografico_(Teolo,_1973)_-_BEIC_6348659.jpg

Romantic Landscapes (16.3/n)
#ColliEuganei #PBShelley #RomanticLandscapes

XLIX. Go thou to Rome, — at once the Paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness; And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress The bones of Desolation’s nakedness Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead Thy footsteps to a slope of green access Where, like an infant’s smile over the dead A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread. L. 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.

'Nocturnial burial at the pyramid of Cestius' - a black, grey & brown drawing, partly lavished - by Bartolomeo Pinelli (1781 - 1835) Mourners are gathering on the Protestant cemetery in Rome. They stand in several groups, between some gravestones, illuminated by torches, near the sublime wedge of the pyramid of Cestius on the right, which is part of the ancient fortification wall of Rome, visible on the left. Pyramid wall and some trees form a dark background. The nocturnal sky above is a bit brighter from an almost full moon that is partly hidden by large dark clouds. The original drawing is in the Collection of Schloss Weimar, Germany. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pinelli_-N%C3%A4chtliche_Bestattung_an_der_Cestiuspyramide_005.jpg

Romantic Landscapes (11/n)
#Rome #PBShelley #RomanticLandscapes

P.B. Shelley, from _Adonaïs_
An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, 1821

Thanks to @eleanorhooker.bsky.social for words many of us need right now!

#nokings #thelongview #pbshelley #💙📚🖋️

P. B. Shelley “Ode to the West Wind” Published 1820

Another poem for a season of storms 🍂 meteorological and political. 🍂 #PBShelley

ALWAYS WANTED TO USE THIS AS AN EPIGRAPH IN A NOVEL.
#pbshelley
#percybyssheshelley https://ift.tt/2GUu7VB