Dr. Masters - May 7, 2013

Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills, Percy Bysshe Shelley

In a country divided into regions with fighting factions devastating both earth and sentience, Shelley paints a bleak picture of the atrocities perpetrated on the inhabitants.  The remains appear as “One white skull and seven dry bones.”  The violent history seems to haunt the region like in a fog that clings to the landscape.  The past juxtaposed with the present point to loneliness and the anxiety associated with the questions one wonders about:  Will I find a friendly face or someone to love?  Will I always be as solitary as the haunted hills? 

Venice’s past glory is buried and only if freedom awakens will hope arise with it, like long awaited spring.  Peasants go about their business no matter the political climate: “A peopled solitude.”  The cycles of war, that reflects “[t]he despot’s rage, the slave’s revenge,” and peace where flowers bloom among the ancient stones that mingle with the bones, create this loneliness that hovers over the land.  Wars created many, many bones, but we get only one skull and the number seven bones strengthening the felling of loneliness.

Shelley uses the word peopling with solitude and “the lone universe.”  Loneliness swirls with violence as the spirits of the past affect the present and hope is a question, not a certainty.  Shelley seems to be praying “[t]hat the Spirits of the Air/Envying us, may even entice/To our healing Paradise.”  The ghosts of the past can become part of restoration, healing the rifts and peopling the solitude.  Hope and freedom can wake up and join the living.