One Mad Summer... Poem by David Lewis Paget

One Mad Summer...



On the shores of Lake Geneva
Stood a carriage, black, japanned,
Bearing symbols of the lineage
Of the owner's ancient lands,
To the Villa Deodati
He had fled, without his books,
To avoid the literati
And their disapproving looks.

From a humble, fraught beginning
And a mother he despised
He'd succeeded to the title
When his wicked Uncle died,
And he'd scribbled in his youth a tract
That caught the public eye,
Full of rant and young bravura
That had made the women sigh.

But an overnight sensation hadn't
Helped defeat his gloom,
He rode on the horse 'Disaster',
It was written on his tomb,
For the women came and flaunted,
Rushed unheeding to despair,
At his cheek, like alabaster,
At his limp, his curling hair.

There was only one who could inspire
His love, philanthropy,
To his shame, she was his sister
He adored Augusta Leigh,
And his main inheritance, he'd found
About his name was gloom,
As he rushed to his undoing in
Augusta's scented room.

He had fathered them a daughter
To the horror of his friends,
While the Lady Melbourne told him:
'Much too late to make amends! '
While the rumours gathered force, and daily
Threatened his disgrace,
And the bailiffs took possession,
He would have to leave that place.

In the yawning jaws of peril he
Attempted one last throw,
He would marry for convenience,
Would marry, just for show,
But he chose a moral tartar who
Took on her to reform
The rake that was within him...
(As well tame a thunderstorm!)

Anna Milbanke, the blue-stocking
Who, she vowed, was always right,
Promised him moral redemption
From his moods, his dreams at night,
For his nightmares saw him crying out
In terror from his bed
As his sense of doom had gathered
Like dark clouds around his head.

She was very soon enceinte and
He had visions of a son,
Though he hated being married and
She'd wondered what she'd done,
For his moods and storms and tempests
Clashed and clattered at her feet,
He made hell a living province,
Hinted things she'd not repeat.

She would barely last a year and then
Be heading out the door,
Her moral compass shattered by
Confessions, by the score,
She threatened to confound him
If he'd not do as she'd ask
Leave their child to ministrations
Of her mother's moral class.

So it was he left in exile from
His country and his friends,
Said goodbye to his sweet sister
In his way, to make amends,
Took his carriage to Geneva,
And his lodgings by the lake
Where he'd brood on his disasters
And his one, most foul mistake.

He was followed by the party of
Another, who was lost,
By elopement with the daughters
Of a Godwin, to his cost,
Who had written wretched poems
And believed there was no God,
For 'free love' was all the mantra
That had shamed his father's blood.

So they sat there, in the Villa, this
Odd, strangely sorted crew,
Mary Godwin looking pensive
At her lover's strange to do,
With Claire Clairmont determined
To be mistress to the Lord
Who by now was more than sated
With the pain of love's reward.

So they drank, were strangely merry
Spoke of terrors in the night,
Read each other ghostly stories
In the gloom, to give each fright,
And those lines from 'Christabel' had sent
Him screaming from the room,
This love of Mary Godwin who
Would find an early tomb.

They conjured up the demons that
Assailed their sleeping hours,
Made more menacing in shadows
By the pillars, in the towers,
And a dreadful fate seemed poised
To burst on each within the gloom,
When Shelley screamed, and Claire had fits,
Hysterics in the room.

And Shelley seemed to feel the pull
Of seaweed in his hair,
While Byron took a fever, moaned aloud
In his despair,
And Claire had watched as Byron turned
And left her far behind,
While Mary caught a vision that
She wrote as... 'Frankenstein! '

23 May 2009

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David Lewis Paget

David Lewis Paget

Nottingham, England/live in Australia
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