“My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, And left me in this dreary world alone? Thy form is here indeed—a lovely one— But _thou_ art fled, gone down the dreary road That leads to Sorrow’s most obscure abode.”
As for him, he had his aërial refuges, and once safely shut therein the lugubrious tragedies of his life seemed like absurd nightmares. He occupied himself with _Prometheus_, a new presentation of the one and only theme of his genius: the war of the Spirit against Matter, the war of Free Man against the World. In it Jupiter becomes a sort of Lord Castlereagh, the Titan another Shelley, a victim filled with hope and confident in the ultimate triumph of Good. The cloudless skies, the eddyings of the wild west wind, each and all were a pretext for singing his faith filled with the optimism of despair, and which no misfortune could quell.
When the moment for Mary’s confinement was near, they went on to Florence, in order to be within reach of a good doctor. But the best doctor was Florence herself, a city in which solitude has no bitterness. At Florence one lives with Dante; one sits by the side of Savonarola; one watches Giotto pass by. In the churches Brunelleschi and Donatello are still in friendly rivalry. The statues in the streets live with a more intense life than anywhere else. On the Piazza di San Miniato, Michael Angelo’s _David_ triumphantly challenges Bandinelli’s silly _Neptune_ and clumsy _Hercules_. One suffers less from not knowing the children who play near one, because one possesses the children of Della Robbia.
From the hill of San Miniato Shelley loved to gaze over the city. The red roofs stood out sharply, the Arno rolled its yellow, rain-swollen waters between the old houses, which seemed to huddle along the quays and bridges like a crowd of human beings; in the distance the valley touched a horizon of bluish hills.
In the intellectual atmosphere of Florence, Mary began to take a new interest in life. At the boarding-house she “mixed a little with the people downstairs.” She got through the birth-time quickly and well. When once more she found herself with a baby in her arms, she smiled for the first time since the death of William.
She had her son christened Percy Florence.