In 1822, when only thirty years of age, Shelley was drowned while sailing in a small boat off the Italian coast.  His body was washed ashore several days later, and was cremated, near Viareggio, by his friends, Byron, Hunt, and Trelawney.  His ashes might, with all reverence, have been given to the winds that he loved and that were a symbol of his restless spirit; instead, they found a resting place near the grave of Keats, in the English cemetery at Rome.  One rarely visits the spot now without finding English and American visitors standing in silence before the significant inscription, Cor Cordium.

WORKS OF SHELLEY.  As a lyric poet, Shelley is one of the supreme geniuses of our literature; and the reader will do well to begin with the poems which show him at his very best.  “The Cloud,” “To a Skylark,” “Ode to the West Wind,” “To Night,”—­poems like these must surely set the reader to searching among Shelley’s miscellaneous works, to find for himself the things “worthy to be remembered.”

In reading Shelley’s longer poems one must remember that there are in this poet two distinct men:  one, the wanderer, seeking ideal beauty and forever unsatisfied; the other, the unbalanced reformer, seeking the overthrow of present institutions and the establishment of universal happiness. Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude (1816) is by far the best expression of Shelley’s greater mood.  Here we see him wandering restlessly through the vast silences of nature, in search of a loved dream-maiden who shall satisfy his love of beauty.  Here Shelley is the poet of the moonrise, and of the tender exquisite fancies that can never be expressed.  The charm of the poem lies in its succession of dreamlike pictures; but it gives absolutely no impressions of reality.  It was written when Shelley, after his long struggle, had begun to realize that the world was too strong for him. Alastor is therefore the poet’s confession, not simply of failure, but of undying hope in some better thing that is to come.

Prometheus Unbound (1818-1820), a lyrical drama, is the best work of Shelley’s revolutionary enthusiasm, and the most characteristic of all his poems.  Shelley’s philosophy (if one may dignify a hopeless dream by such a name) was a curious aftergrowth of the French Revolution, namely, that it is only the existing tyranny of State, Church, and society which keeps man from growth into perfect happiness.  Naturally Shelley forgot, like many other enthusiasts, that Church and State and social laws were not imposed upon man from without, but were created by himself to minister to his necessities.  In Shelley’s poem the hero, Prometheus, represents mankind itself,—­a just and noble humanity, chained and tortured by Jove, who is here the personification of human institutions.[228] In due time Demogorgon (which is Shelley’s name for Necessity) overthrows the tyrant Jove and releases Prometheus (Mankind), who is presently united to Asia, the spirit of love and goodness in nature, while the earth and the moon join in a wedding song, and everything gives promise that they shall live together happy ever afterwards.