Upon that mountain

Shelley Memorial Project secretary Carol Hayton explains why Shelley’s Mont Blanc has such resonance for her:

I know you should never judge a book by it's cover, but one of my favourite things about my heavy, paperback, Penguin Classics, volume of Percy Bysshe Shelley's selected Poems and Prose is the reproduction of the painting of the Mont Blanc Massif on the front of it.

I have holidayed in the Alps several times and hauled myself to the top of a few peaks in the slipstream of my mountain-obsessed partner. The drama and beauty of these mountains is hard to match anywhere in the world, in my view, and I fully understand how Shelley would have found the inspiration to write one of his greatest poems, ' Mont Blanc' in this place.

It is a fantastic poem which I only fully appreciated when I heard it read out loud, twice, at the Shelleython this year, once by Chris Aldridge and a second time by the students from Tanbridge school. It is a really accessible poem that conveys the majesty and solitude of the landscape brilliantly. I particularly like the lines;

In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
or the lone light of day the snows descend
upon that mountain - none behold them there. '

If there is a Shelley poem that holds a special significance for you, please tell us about it at shelleymemorialproject@btinternet.com