Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SHELLEY AND TRELAWNEY, by JULIA COOLEY ALTROCCHI


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SHELLEY AND TRELAWNEY, by                    
First Line: Beyond the walls of rome
Last Line: Trelawney, the corsair!
Subject(s): Cemeteries; Poetry & Poets; Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822); Trelawney, Edward John (1792-1881); Graveyards


(In the beautiful Protestant Cemetery outside of Rome, lie, under two neighboring slabs, the
heart of Shelley, who died at twenty-nine, and the bones of the friend of his youth,
Trelawney, who died in England at eighty -- the two friends reunited in the contem poraneous
and eternal dust.)

Beyond the walls of Rome,
Within that shadowy niche of Paradise
Which makes eternal home

For certain English dead,
Lie two, a youth, and one grown old and wise,
Whose disparate dust is wed

After a death apart,
By half a life, -- Trelawney's aged bones
And Shelley's youthful heart.

One strode the solid earth
With gripping feet, sensing the brittle stones,
The slant of decks, the girth

Of ships and the great sea.
The other floated over fact, on wings
Or winged heels, as free

As wind and cloud and lark!
But the grey dust has drawn them, feet and wings,
Into the starless dark.

Together, friend by friend,
Among the cypresses and purple streams
And flowers, that they shall blend

With beauty, lying there, --
Shelley, the poet, the shadowy man of dreams,
Trelawney, the corsair!





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