 The NBC University of the Air presents We Came This Way, a new historical series for our listeners at home and overseas. With Clifton Utley as narrator, we present Chapter 15, Poet of Liberty, in We Came This Way. England, the beginning of the 19th century. Only a few short years ago, the idealists of England looked hopefully across the channel to France. They saw in the French Revolution a flame that would light the world. But now the French Republic has been betrayed, and a dictator named Napoleon grinds Europe under the boots of his marching armies. George III is on the throne in England. A tired old Tory. Frightened by the democratic movement in America and by the French revolt, he sternly suppresses liberty of thought at home and strives to keep England a right little, tight little island. But, as always, the idealists are on daunted. Tom Payne, Wordsworth, Corrid, Sothe still sing of an ideal republic. And in a shabby bedroom on Poland Street, London, young Percy Shelley, just expelled from Oxford, pounds the table with his fist. I tell you, Thomas, my pen shall be my sword. Splendid, Shelley, but if you... I shall use my pen to crush all the enemies of mankind. You'd better use it to write your paper for some money. You haven't a penny or no. Yes, I know. Now, intolerance, Thomas. Intolerance can wait till tomorrow. Write that letter, Shelley, or you don't eat. You got my letter, Father? Of course I got it. Why do you think I came down to London? I hope... Now, look here, Percy. You've certainly got yourself in a mess. Expelled from Oxford, you wrote. Yes, sir, I... Well, I... I'm prepared to help you if you'll be perfectly frank with me. What's her name, Percy? Her name? Yes, her name. Speak up. I'm your father, after all. Her name, sir? Her name is Truth. Truth? What are you talking about? Truth. There wasn't any woman, sir. It was something I wrote. Ah, Percy, I... I warned you when you were a child. I told you this writing nonsense would get you into trouble. You ought to give it up, you understand? Give it up? Remember, one day you will inherit a title. Have to take your rightful position in the country. You've got to think of your future. I am thinking of my future, sir. I mean to fight with my pen for a new kind of world. And what's wrong with this world? It's treated you well enough. What's wrong? Listen, sir. Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty are fled. To return not, until men shall know that they alone can give the bliss worthy a soul that claims its kindred with eternity. Oh, for heaven's sake. A brighter morn... Oh, Percy, Percy, stop. You don't like it? Of course I don't like it. But to tell you the truth, I'm vastly relieved. Why, you're not a poet at all, heaven be praised. Your stuff doesn't even rhyme. But, sir... Now, I want you to pack your things, march yourself up to Oxford and apologize. And forget poetry. I just soon forget to breathe. You define it? You and whatever stands between me and my rightful... Why, you young idiot? You will regret this, Percy. Mark my word. Not a penny will you get for me to support you and your folly. Not a penny. Poetry. If you could baron it of England. Poetry. I'm afraid, sir, that poetry sometimes happens even in the best of families. MUSIC Listen to this, Thomas. Fire away. January 3rd, 1812, to Mr. William Godwin, Skinner Street, London. Dear sir, you will no doubt be surprised at hearing from a stranger. No doubt. But I have read your book, Political Justice, and have been impressed by your ideas. It is my desire to meet with you and talk about how to educate and improve mankind. I shall earnestly await your answer, Percy B. Shelley. Do you think you'll see me, Thomas? Why not? But watch out. You don't fall in love with his daughter. The great William Godwin is a daughter. A very beautiful one. Dark affair. Fair, I believe. Fair. Oh, well, it makes no difference. My relations with the Godwins will be entirely on an intellectual plane. I was away in Scotland when Shelley first began coming to my father's house to talk about political justice. And then I came back and... He forgot political justice for a while. Shelley and I used to walk among the tombstones of the Chechard where my mother was buried. She had been Mary Wollstonecraft, the great champion of women's rights. We would read the epitaphs, munch raisins, and talk. I have a new poem, eh? Read it to me. Upon my heart, thy accent sweet of peace and pity fell like dew. Thy lips did meet mine tremblingly. Thy dark eyes through their soft persuasion on my brain, charming away its dream of pain. Gentle and good and mild thou art. Nor can I live if thou appear ought but thyself, or turn mine heart away from me. Does the poem have a name? Just too Mary. I love you, Mary. And I love you, Shelley. Well, then it's settled. Willy Lope, go to France. I've always wanted to see France. And you shall. We'll walk through France bareheaded like peasants. No, wait, I won't let you walk. I'll buy you a dunk. Oh, Shelley. You'll come, Mary. I'll come, Shelley, I'll come. I was 16, and I would have gone with him to the moon. So I put on my black silk dress, and we took the night boat to Calais. And France, who went to Switzerland, fed up housekeeping in a peasants' cottage. But it began to rain, and the roof started to leak. Shelley, get a pill. What for? It's raining in. Oh, wait. I'll fix that. There. I never thought it would wet me. I tell you, I wouldn't mind a little English weather for a change. I wouldn't even mind a little English fog. And English tea. And muffins. Oh, Mary, let's go back. Shelley, let's do. So that our next meal is coming from once we get there, I don't know. Who cares about food? You're a brave woman, darling. I'm afraid truth doesn't pay very well. You've picked yourself a poor provider. I've picked myself a genius. Back home, we scrimped, went hungry, borrowed. My dear Thomas, I shall have to trouble you once again for the loan of five pounds. I hate to make this. Then Shelley's grandfather was supposed to say the situation. By dying, the estate was to have been entailed to Shelley through his father. Shelley didn't want to be inherited nor all that money. So he settled for an allowance of 1,000 pounds a year. Then worried less, money would make us complacent. We won't spend it all on ourselves, Mary. Of course not. We give your father some for his young people's library. Of course. Oh, yes. And I want to send Lee Hunt some, too, along with a letter of congratulations. Lee Hunt, what's he done? He's been arrested for libel. Libel in who? The Prince Regent. You pay for speaking the truth in this world, my girl. I'll send Hunt some money by all means, but Shelley. Yes, Mary? Let's keep a little for ourselves. I'd like to take a house in the country before the baby comes. I want him to have a home like other people. The baby was born and died. Two other children had come to us before we settled in the country. Neymar Lord was in the Thames. There I wrote a novel about a scientist who brought a monster to life. I called it Frankenstein. And there Shelley made little boats of people. Sail them on the river and wrote his poetry. There is a people mighty in its youth, a land beyond the oceans of the West, where, though with rudest rights, freedom and truth are worshiped. That land is like an eagle whose young gaze feeds on the noontide beams. Whose golden plume floats moveless on the storm and in the blaze of sunrise gleams when earth is wrapped in gloom. Yes, in the desert, there is built a home for freedom. Genius is made strong to reel the monuments of man beneath the dome of a new heaven. Ney, start not at the name. America, the future weep not for the past. Oh, could I win your ears to dare be now glorious and great and calm that we would into the dust the symbols of your woe, purple and gold and steel that you would go proclaiming to the nations hence you came that want and plague and fear from slavery blow and that mankind is free. To defy power which seems omnipotent, to love and bear, to hope till hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates, neither to change nor falter nor repent. This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be good, great, and joyous, beautiful, and free. This is a long life. Rebundle Shelley's poetry up and send it to a publisher and wait in poetry by that wild young Shelley who wrote Queen Mad. Better not touch it. I don't think these are political. No, let me see. There is a people mighty in its youth land beyond the oceans of the West. Nay, start not at the name America. You think George III will make him Pert Laudiot for that? Hardly. Still I hate to turn him down. I think he has something. Remember what happened to the man who published Paine's Age of Reason? They sent him to Nougat for a year, didn't they? And to the pillory first. And Lee Hunt's just got two years and another libel charge. Perhaps you're right. It wouldn't be safe to handle Shelley's stuff. I'll send it back. Mary, the poems came back. They sent them back. Oh, Shelley. And I thought they were going to change the world. Help, at least. Shelley, don't let them stop you. What can I do? Publish them yourself. But won't that cost an awful lot? I don't know about such things. Perhaps not more than a carpet would cost. But you've wanted a carpet for years. Then it won't hurt me to want it a little longer. My dear, I'm afraid I have a shock for you. Oh, Timothy, what is it? Our son Percy, published with poems. Oh, does he still hold the same opinion? He does. And is the poetry in his usual style? It is. Does it rhyme? No. It doesn't even rhyme. Oh. Oh, my dear, I'm afraid we'd best give up any hope of Percy ever amounting to anything. Too bad about young Shelley. I know his father. Besides being a poet in a liberal, they say he's a vegetarian. And what he needs to cure him is a diet of roast beef. Oh, I don't know what the country's coming to. All our young men taking to poetry. It was that case of young Lord Barron, too. Did you hear his maiden speech in lords? Shocking. Why, he actually dared to take the part of those nuttingham weavers, the ones who smashed the machinery and the stocking mills up there. They'd done it because the new machines had put them out of work. Of course this new machine is going to throw some men out of work, but that's progress. Yes, that's progress. A man named Cartwright had invented a power loom and a man named Arkwright a frame for spinning. And the industrial revolution had begun in England. So wages dropped to starvation level. Men walked the streets and cursed. And sometimes they did more than curse. In nuttingham, they broke the new machinery Look at this morning's paper. Three Derbyshire weavers have been hanged. Then beheaded. Shelly, what was their crime? Poverty. The oldest crime of all. They were out of work, hungry, so they rioted and died for it. Mary. Yes, Shelly? I'm going to write a letter to the people of England calling for reform. They'll hate you for it. I'll say that our mechanical genius outstrips our humanity. They say it's progress. Progress? Does progress mean that we run the machine or that the machine runs us? Can't we think of ways to have progress without poverty? Did you see that blast of Shelly's about the Derbyshire weavers? He's gone too far this time. Who does he think he is that he can criticize the government? He's dangerous. A radical. A libertine. Free thinker. He ought to be run out of the country. I'm the most hated man in England, I think Mary. And all I ever wanted was for people to love each other a little more. Shelly, let's go away. Go? Where? Anywhere that's warm and friendly. There's Italy. Italy's warm. We could go there. I'd like Italy. We could take a place by the sea. Go barefoot and sail. And maybe I could have a boat. I've always wanted a boat. And we'll tell our friends to send only the reviews that praise you. Then we'll get no post at all. But we'll be happy. We sailed for Italy in March of the year 1818. I stood holding the baby Claire, Shelly holding little William, watching the chalk cliffs of Dover until they'd disappeared into the mist. Shelly, never saw England again. In Italy we discovered another exile, another rebel, Lord Byron. Byron and Shelly became friends. Yet never were two men more different. You're cynical Byron. And you're naive. I believe men may be all they dream of. Where is the love, beauty, truth we seek but in our own minds? You talk utopia. You've seen nothing of the world. And you've seen everything. Enough to know that there will always be evil to be overcome. And I rather like the prospect. But if we strive for perfection, we... Keep your perfect world, Shelly. Sounds a bit dull to me. I'm afraid I'd be bored. But another time Byron would read his poetry. We'd wonder if there weren't two of them. The scoffer and the romantic. The Isles of Greece. The Isles of Greece. Where burning Sappho loved and sung. Where grew the arts of war and peace. Where Daelus rose and Phoebus sprung. Eternal summer gills them yet. But all, except their sun, is set. The mountains look on Marathon and Marathon looks on the sea. Using there an hour alone, I dream that Greece might still be free. For standing on the Persian's grave, I could not deem myself a slave. We've been crushed at Waterloo. Now a great democratic fervor swept across southern Europe. We innately saw it happen with the beginning of a new Europe. And Shelly wrote Hellas to celebrate it. The world's great age begins anew. The golden years return. The earth does like a snake renew her winter weeds outworn. Oh cease, must hate and death return. Cease, must men kill and die. Cease, drain not to its dregs the urn of bitter prophecy. The world is weary of the past. Oh might it die or rest at last. We were living now in a villa by the sea near Naples. Children ran naked on the sands and turned pure gold. And hidden away behind the rocks, Shelly was writing what I think was some of his greatest poetry. Italy smiled on us. Then quite suddenly one day our baby Clare was taken sick. We sent for a doctor. I held her in my arms and waited, watching the hands of the clock crawl round. Will the doctor ever come Shelly? He'll come Mary. She's so ill. Look at her like, like marble. Mary, give me the baby. No, Shelly, no. You must. No, why do you... Mary, don't you understand? The baby. She's dead. I don't know why such things must be. But a few months later our little boy took Roman fever. And he died too. And now despair itself is mild. Even as the wind and waters are, I would lie down like a tired child and weep away this life of care that I have borne. And still must bear till death, like sleep, might steal all my... No, Shelly. No more, it's too sad. I don't think I shall ever write another line, Mary. But he did right. One day word came from England of the Manchester massacre. 60,000 men, women and children from the factories of Manchester had gathered to petition Parliament to better their condition. The cavalry was called out to ride them down. And 600 were killed or wounded. I saw the old look come into Shelly's face. And that afternoon I found him hidden away behind a rock on the beach, riding. Men of England, wherefore plough for the lords who lay low? Wherefore weave with toil and care the rich robes your tyrants wear? Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, shelter, food, love's gentle balm? Or what is it ye buy so dear with your pain? Shelly's song to the men of England wasn't a great poem. It wasn't even a very good poem, he was too angry. But when I read it, I knew he hadn't given up. But he'd keep on struggling for what he believed end to the end. We had a new friend now. His name was to Lorden. He was a sailor full of talk of ships and sea. And that made Shelly remember an old dream. You know the boat I've always talked about, Mary? Yes, Shelly. I'm going to have it built. Oh, why do you look like that? Right. I don't know. I just feel afraid. Afraid? Why? I can't explain it. Maybe because you'll get to writing, reading and forget to steer. No, I won't. Trelawney will teach me all about steering. I want the boat to be lean and graceful, Mary, with a great splendor of sail. And I think I'll call it the aerial. Yes, the aerial. I don't know why. But from the first moment, I was afraid of the aerial. She was a lovely boat. Yet I hated her. Summer passed. Shelly played with the aerial like a child with a toy. And in that autumn, he dreamed up one of his beautiful projects, a magazine in which anyone could say whatever he pleased. He persuaded Byron to put up the money, and Lee Hunt to come from England to edit it. When Hunt arrived in Genoa, Shelly went down to meet him. Sail down in the aerial. I stood on the terrace and watched him go. Saw the sail lift. The little boat quiver. Suddenly I don't know why I called out after him. Shelly! Shelly! Wind round up my voice. Three days later, the day Shelly was to sail home, there was a great storm. I told myself he would wait in Genoa until it was over. The storm was deciding. The harbor was dotted with small boats coming home. Every sail looked like the aerial. But the aerial did not come. One day passed, another. And another, I don't know how many. Then word came that a body had washed up on the beach. Byron went with me to see if it was Shelly. Well, Mary? It's Shelly. Are you sure, Mary? Can you be sure? The body, it isn't recognizable. I'm sure, Byron. What other man do we know but Shelly? Who would go sailing with volume of keats in one pocket? Suffer, please, and the other. The Greeks had done. It was a lovely place for the poets of Genoa. The sea in front, the mountains behind. After they'd gone away, I stayed alone on the beach. A wind had sprung up from the west. I thought of the lines he'd written. I said them, his epitome. Be thou spirit's fierce, my spirit. Be thou me impetuous one. Drive my dead thoughts over the universe like withered leaves to quicken a new birth. And by the incantation of this verse, scatters as from an unextinguished half, ashes and sparks, my word among men. Be through my lips to unawakened earth, the trumpet of a prophecy. O wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind? Percy Shelly died at the age of 34. Yet he died believing that men could and would build a just and democratic world upon this earth. Two years after Shelly, Byron, the man who liked to think of himself as a cynic, died. He died fighting for an ideal, Greek independence. But the poetry of these two men will never die. It is part of English literature, part of our heritage, the way we came. For as Shelly himself wrote in his defense of poetry, poets measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature. They are the mirrors of the gigantic shadows that fertility casts upon the presence, the trumpets which sing to battle, the influence which is move not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. The NBC University of the Air has brought you Chapter 15 of the new historical series, We Came This Way. Tonight's script was written by Frank and Virginia Wells and directed by Mr. Albert Cruz. Original music was composed by Dr. Roy Shield and the orchestra was conducted by Mr. Joseph Galicchio. Heard in tonight's cast were Mr. Clifton Utley as narrator, Mr. Wilms Herbert as Shelly and Ms. Betty Lou Gerson as Mary Shelly. Others in the cast were Mr. Sidney Breeze, Mr. Arthur Sedgwick, Ms. Hope Summers, Mr. Maurice Copeland, Mr. Sidney Elstrom and Mr. Murray Forbes. Next week, We Came This Way presents John Bright. This series is presented each week as a public service of the national broadcasting company and its affiliated independent stations, not only for listeners in this country, but also for our servicemen and women overseas to be transmitted to them wherever they are stationed through the Armed Forces Radio Service. This is the national broadcasting company.