Republican News · Thursday 10 October 2002

Shelley and Revolutionary Ireland

BY PAUL O'BRIEN

The life and times of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley has been raked over and analysed a thousand times. But the story of his interest and intervention in Irish politics has been either ignored or downplayed by his countless biographers.

Shelley, with his wife Harriet, came to Ireland in 1812 when he was 19 and threw himself wholeheartedly into the struggle for Irish freedom and justice. He had put together a collection of poems to celebrate the cause of liberty and Dublin seemed the obvious place to have them published.

Shelley launched his career as a political activist with a pamphlet, An Address to the Irish People, which he distributed around the pubs and coffee houses in Dublin. The Address was aimed at the masses, with the intention of stirring them up to take action on their own behalf. But the failure of the revolution in 1798 and again in 1803 meant that the Dublin masses were in no mood for instant solutions. To his credit, Shelley quickly realised the political mistakes of the Address and set about a new pamphlet, Proposals for an Association, which was a direct attempt to influence the campaign for Catholic Emancipation and Repeal of the Union in a more radical direction. His aim now was to build a political party based around those elements of the old United Irishmen who were still active, but he met with little response.

Shortly after his arrival in Dublin he made the acquaintance of Catherine Nugent. Her involvement in the rebellion of 1798 was such that if she had been a man she certainly would have been executed. Their friendship was based on mutual respect and admiration and it was on her account that the Shelleys moved to rooms at 17 Grafton Street, opposite the house where she lived. Unlike any of Shelley's other acquaintances, she was working class; she sewed furs for the rich in the shop of John Newman in Grafton Street. In Catherine Nugent he encountered for the first time a working class women not as a victim of society, but as an individual who was fighting for what she believed to be her right. She met Shelley as an equal, as he acknowledged in a letter to her that May. From her, Shelley derived a more detailed understanding of the situation in Ireland and also, I suspect, of the reality of working class life. He learnt more in those short few months than many do in a lifetime.

Shelley was a great admirer of Robert Emmet. Many of the Romantic poets were drawn in guilty fascination to Emmet's tragic life. Coleridge described him as "A mad Raphael, painting ideals of beauty on the walls of a cell". While in Dublin, Shelley made a political pilgrimage to St. Michan's Church, where tradition has it that Emmet was buried in an unmarked grave. Shelley was inspired by Emmet's sacrifice and his admiration shines through in his poem, On Robert Emmet's Tomb:

"May the tempests of Winter that sweep o'er thy tomb
Disturb not a slumber so sacred as thine;
May the breezes of summer that breathe of perfume
Waft their balmiest dews to so hallowed a shrine."

Shelley made no attempt to hide the fact that he wrote for a purpose and he battled against the world with what he did best - writing poetry that blazed with anger at injustice and intolerance. His poetry is "the trumpet of a prophecy" that rings down the ages to give utterance to the inhumanity we see all around us and to the need for change.

Paul O'Brien's Shelley and Revolutionary Ireland, published by Redwords, Dublin & London, is available in bookshops, priced ¤16.50 (p/back)/¤30 (h/back)

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Call to Freedom (1819)

From the workhouse and the prison
Where pale as corpses newly risen,
Women, children, young and old
Groan for pain, and weep for cold -

From the haunts of daily life
Where is waged the daily strife
With common wants and common cares
Which sows the human heart with tares -

Lastly from the palaces
Where the murmur of distress
Echoes, like the distant sound
Of a wind alive around

Those prison halls of wealth and fashion
Where some few feel such compassion
For those who groan, and toil, and wail
As must make their brethren pale -

Ye who suffer woes untold,
Or to feel, or to be behold
Your lost country bought and sold
With a price of blood and gold -

Let a vast assembly be,
d with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God has made ye, free -

d these words shall then become
Like Oppression's thunder doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again - again - again

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.