Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in suffering what they teach in song."
The reader may think that it is utterly insignificant whether the Julian poem was written about the first Harriet instead of the second, but this is just as important as to know that, let us say, Arthur Hallam, and not some one else, is the person mourned by Tennyson in In Memoriam. And we are enabled to learn the influence upon his work and ideas when we understand the nature of the earliest sex repression in the poet's life. This affair in Shelley's nineteenth year was of vast import; it made the Shelley we know, the enemy of society and the reformer.
He hated intolerance, religion and monarchy because by his heterodoxy and the offence it gave to Harriet Grove's parents, he lost her; not to mention that he also lost his mother's love for his radical views. He saw the world steeped in error, and he believed this condition made him lose the love of his betrothed and of his mother. He wrote to Hogg that he would never forgive intolerance. "It is the only point on which I allow myself to encourage revenge; every moment shall be devoted to my object which I am able to spare." Here in the words of this youth we see the main factor which led to writing Prometheus Unbound and The Revolt of Islam. His plans shaped themselves at the time of the jilting, and he never swerved from them. And in the opening stanzas of the eleventh canto of the Islam poem he again describes the agonies of his lost love, with Harriet Grove in mind, no doubt. This poem was written in the summer of 1817. Shelley then became an uncompromising reformer because he had suffered in love for his radical ideas; hence he would make it his aim to spread the views which he held so that in the future other lovers should not lose their sweethearts because of liberal notions. And in the Ode to the West Wind Shelley's prayer is to spread his ideas over the universe.
Though the poet wrote a few good poems to Harriet Westbrook and dedicated Queen Mab to her, she had little or no influence on his life except to bring him sorrow because of her suicide. One of the few references to her in his later work is in the Epipsychidion, "And one was true—oh! why not true to me?" Stopford Brooke thinks this refers to Harriet Grove, but this is not likely, as Shelley continues, "there shone again deliverance," and he speaks of one who was to him like the Moon. The Moon was, of course, his second wife, Mary Godwin, who immediately succeeded Harriet Westbrook.
II
The Epipsychidion tells us of the poet's love adventures and gives us his beautiful dream of love. In Alastor he had depicted his longing for love; the poem was written in 1815 at the time he was living with Harriet Westbrook; it shows how lonely he felt and how he longed for love. In Epipsychidion, where he speaks of his lying "within a chaste, cold bed," he says that he had not the full measure of love from his second wife. Hence he took refuge in building a fanciful isle where he satisfies his love with Emilia Viviani. In this great poem Shelley gives us a glimpse into his polygamously inclined unconscious. He states his philosophy of free love in the poem. As physical desire was a strong factor in Keats's one solitary love, the trait most characteristic of Shelley was his polygamous instinct. This is present in the unconscious of the male, and society has tried to eradicate it by marriage. We all know that there has never been complete success in this direction. The instinct which is repressed bursts forth especially when the marriage has not been successful, or when the man does not love his wife in full measure, though as the world is aware it breaks out even in cases where he does love. Neither of Shelley's two marriages gave him the real love he sought. He wanted other women to live in his household. He invited Miss Titchener to live with him and Harriet Westbrook, and he had Jane Clairmont, his wife's half sister, who fell in love with him, live with them. He thought he would be happy with Miss Viviani, but was disillusioned with her soon, and then his polygamous instinct made Mrs. Jane Williams the object of his affections. Yet Shelley led a chaste, upright life and did not satisfy his instincts for polygamy; instead, he wrote poetry. He created fantasies because of his repressions, and gave us the beautiful day dream closing the Epipsychidion.
Mrs. Williams inspired some of the greatest lyrics in the language. The painful poem to her husband beginning with the words, "The serpent is shut out from paradise," tells how he flies because Mrs. Williams's looks stir griefs that should sleep and hopes that cannot die. The world owes to Shelley's attachment for Mrs. Williams such poems as, Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou, Spirit of Delight, One Word Is too Often Profaned, When the Lamp is Shattered, Oh, World! Oh, Hope! Oh, Time! Rough Wind, That Moanest Loud, With a Guitar, To Jane, To Jane—the Invitation, To Jane—the Recollection, Remembrance, Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici, and The Magnetic Lady to Her Patient. Here are a dozen poems that every lover of Shelley knows, yet they are the outpourings of the poet's love for another man's wife, written because he could not attain that love and satisfy his polygamous instincts. Had these instincts been satisfied, these beautiful poems would have been lost to the world.
We now come to two of his greatest odes, To the Wild West Wind and To the Skylark. Here, as in the case of Keats's two great odes, the critics have feared to trace the poems to a love repression on the part of the poet. In fact, most criticisms of the poems treat them as alien to the subject of love. And yet unconsciously Shelley is here voicing his longing for love and giving vent to his unconscious polygamous instinct. Mr. Gribble, in his Romantic Life of Shelley, surmises that the poet is really unconsciously expressing dissatisfaction with his married life. When Shelley wrote these poems he was still groping for love; he lived with his second wife, and as far as we know had no love affair. He had not yet fallen in love with either Miss Viviani or Mrs. Williams.
The Ode to the West Wind was written in the fall of 1819. The poet at the time was unhappy; a child of his had died, and his wife was suffering great depression. When the poet was complaining that he was falling on the thorns of life and bleeding, and speaking of the "autumnal tone" in his life, he was referring to the repression of his love life. He lived with Mary whom he did not love passionately. If he concludes his poem with the prayer that the wind drive his dead thoughts over the universe to quicken a new birth, he wants to profit by this in love. He unconsciously meant that if his ideas on free love should prevail, he would be able to take a new love without reproach and without suffering such misfortunes as he did when he deserted his first wife. He had been deprived of his children and was driven to exile from his native land a year and a half previously, March, 1818. It has been one of the ironies of Shelley's fate that the world has admired this West Wind ode greatly, and tabooed the most important idea Shelley wanted spread, that of free love. So if we read between the lines in this great ode pleading for the dissemination of his idea, we find the poet's unconscious stating he is unhappy and is longing for another love than that of his wife. He pleads for a satisfaction of his polygamous instincts. Should the reader think this conclusion untenable, I can reply that the facts we have of the poet's life give it unqualified support. Let us also remember that the fructifying wind was always a sex symbol.