20:27...wooded valley seat... the trees below, and those overhanging this seat, are now in full leaf, the grass is long, the mosquitos are attentive, there are swallows or swifts meandering in the sky (a layer of soft grey cloud, creamy yellow in places) and in all there is stillness, absence of people, and the shadows of evening...
...a large crow flies horizontally across the scene and disappears behind the trees...and the cloud-cover moves slowly southwards...
...this afternoon i was reading about Percy Bysshe Shelley*, his so active life, so inspiring writings and ideas, so sudden end...
... a kestrel ascends from the valley to the tree-tops...
...a man and a woman (both in black and white) walk the path that runs along the upper edge of the valley... she holds a black garment to her mouth as if listening to him while considering what he says.
...but my thoughts return to Shelley, the expansiveness of his thought, its evident rightness, the catastrophic daring of his actions...
...another couple walk by, also walking slowly... she turns to look at something i cannot see... and he turns and looks also...
i decide to walk on
Parliament Hill... a cool dry evening, quite a strong wind, several kites are flying, couples are sitting and talking... it's a very ordinary day...
*for instance these pencilled quotations now transcribed from my copy of The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley, edited by Harold Bloom, Signet Classic, New American Library, New York 1966:
The imagery which I have employed will be found, in many instances, to have been drawn from the operations of the human mind, or from those external actions by which they are expressed...
...The great writers of our own age are, we have reason to suppose, the companions and forerunners of some unimagined change in our social condition or the opinions which cement it. The cloud of mind is discharging its collective lightning, and the equilibrium between institutions and opinions is now restoring, or is about to be restored.(from pages 121 and 123-124 of the preface to Prometheus Unbound)
...these so extensive thoughts, so trustful of people, seem to me more timely now than they were when Shelley was writing - because survival no longer depends upon narrow thinking...
...I was also reading:
The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley, with notes by Mary Shelley, originally published in 1824, second edition 1839, The Modern Library, Random House, New York 1994.
Richard Holmes, Shelley, the pursuit, Penguin Books, London, Viking Penguin, New York 1975.
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