Ode to a Skylark

The English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), thanks to the inheritance of his grandfather and to remedy the poor health due to the consumption that undermined him, chose to spend a large part of his life in Italy, places of choice were Naples, Pisa (where Byron joined him) and Livorno.

In Livorno he stayed three times, in 1918, in 19 and 22, the year of his tragic death at sea.

He was a guest of English friends but he also stayed at Villa Valsovano, where he composed the tragedy “The Cenci”, published in 1819 — which also drew on Guerrazzi — and the famous odes “To a Skylark” and “To Freedom”.

From June to September 1819 Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft settled in Villa Valsovano. Mary was very dejected, having seen two of her three children die in one year. Only the previous May had they come to Livorno with all three children and two servants but now the house was much sadder. Shelley sought refuge in his work and that summer, on the roof of the villa, he composed “The Cenci”, a tragedy with a gothic flavor, based on the story of a family that actually lived in the sixteenth century. 250 copies were printed in Livorno, then sent to London.

The following summer they were back in Livorno and Shelley composed the famous “Ode to a Skylark”, of which we report some particularly beautiful central verses, and already, in full first- order romanticism, precursors of what will be our decadent “Gelsomino Notturno” and some Wildian lyrics full of aestheticizing sensuality.