Percy Bysshe Shelley, Letters from Naples

The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, never returned to England after his second visit to Italy in  1818, which he travelled extensively and where he wrote several of his important poetical works (Ode to the West Wind). Here you can read a more detailed biography.

By Amelia Curran (1775-1847)

As every traveller in that time, P. B. Shelley has left a number of letters to friends, telling his experiences and thoughts in the places which he visited - Bologna, Ravenna, Florence, Pisa, Rome, Naples, and others. In a letter from Naples to a friend, he explained that "I keep no journal, and the only records of my voyage will be the letters I send you".

The poet wrote an  Ode to Naples, while these verses from the Ode to the West Wind

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,	30
Lull'd by the coil of his crystàlline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay...

hint to the Gulf of Pozzuoli and its islands.

Bacchus and Agathodaemon with Mount Vesuvius, Pompeii, House of the Centenary.

Now at Napoli, Museo Archeologico Nazionale

To have an idea of Shelley's impressions on the places, the people, the cultures he met in our region,  read both the letters from Naples - here and here -, where he tells of his visits to Pompeii, Paestum and the Vesuvius.