Gandhi's Non-Violent Protests were inspired by Shelley's Political Poem, 'The Masque of Anarchy'!

It seems the Poet/Essayist/Novelist Shelley was one of those rare intellectuals- radical reformist and philosopher.. who had a wide sphere of influence.. but did not live to experience his influence- he died aged 29.

Probably because of his anti-monarchy and anti-war views and political writings and poems, "although some of his works were published, they were often suppressed upon publication." 
[All the information below are Extracted from Wiki] 

On PB Shelley's radical reformist ideals:

• As an 18-year old, he was expelled from Oxford University in 1811, for publishing a palmphlet "The Necessity of Atheism", and for refusing to repudiate its authorship..Shelley was given the choice to be reinstated after his father intervened, on the condition that he would have to recant his avowed views. His refusal to do so led to a falling-out with his father.
• The rediscovery in mid-2006 of Shelley's long-lost 'Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things' — a long, strident anti-monarchical and anti-war poem printed in 1811 in London by Crosby and Company as "by a gentleman of the University of Oxford" — gives a new dimension to the expulsion
• Four months after being expelled, the 19-year-old Shelley eloped to Scotland with the 16-year-old schoolgirl Harriet Westbrook and got married.
• Shelley's works played a pivotal rol in the genesis of British radicalism. While living in the Lake District after his marriage, he got distracted from his writings by political events and he visited Ireland as 19-year old in order to engage in radical pamphleteering. Here he wrote his Address to the Irish People and was seen at several nationalist rallies (against the ruling British). His activities earned him the unfavourable attention of the British government
• Shelley was a strong advocate for social justice for the 'lower classes'. He witnessed many of the same mistreatments occurring in the domestication and slaughtering of animals, and he became a fighter for the rights of all living creatures that he saw being treated unjustly.
• Shelley wrote several essays on the subject of vegetarianism, the most prominent of which were "A Vindication of Natural Diet" (1813) and "On the Vegetable System of Diet"

On PB Shelley's influence:

• Apparently even Gandhi was influenced and inspired by Shelley's nonviolence in protest and political action.. It is known that Gandhi would often quote (even to vast audiences during the campaign for a free India) Shelley's best-known political poem The Masque of Anarchy, which has been called "perhaps the first modern statement of the principle of nonviolent resistance."
• He was "admired by Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, William Butler Yeats, etc.
• (The American thinker/philosopher/reformist) Henry David Thoreau's civil disobedience and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's passive resistance were apparently influenced and inspired by Shelley's nonviolence in protest and political action, although Gandhi does not include him in his list of mentors"

Shelley's Political Poem 'The Masque of Anarchy' (1819)  :

•  Written on the occasion of the massacre carried out by the British Government at Peterloo, Manchester 1819, Shelley begins his poem with the powerful images of the unjust forms of authority of his time "God, and King, and Law" - and he then imagines the stirrings of a radically new form of social action: "Let a great assembley be, of the feerless and the free". The crowd at this gathering is met by armed soldiers, but the protestors do not raise an arm against their assailants:

"Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war.

And if then the tyrants dare,
Let them ride among you there,
Slash, and stab, and maim and hew,
What they like, that let them do.

With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise
Look upon them as they slay
Till their rage has died away

Then they will return with shame
To the place from which they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek.

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you-
Ye are many — they are few"

• A version was taken up by Henry David Thoreau in his essay Civil Disobedience, and later by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in his doctrine of Satyagraha.Gandhi's passive resistance was influenced and inspired by Shelley's nonviolence in protest and political action. It is known that Gandhi would often quote Shelley's Masque of Anarchy to vast audiences during the campaign for a free India.
  
• Some political authors and campaigners described it as "the greatest political poem ever written in English".
• introduction:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Masque_of_Anarchy
• Complete 91 stanzas, with preview, as a book, first published in London, 1832:

More From the Wiki Introduction:

•  The poem also mentions several members of the British government by name: the Foreign Secretary, who appears as a mask worn by Murder, the Home Secretary, whose guise is taken by Hypocrisy, and the Lord Chancellor, whose ermine gown is worn by Fraud. Led by Anarchy, a skeleton with a crown, they try to take over England, but are slain by a mysterious armored figure who arises from a mist. The maiden Hope, revived, then calls to the people of England:
  "Men of England, heirs of Glory,
  Heroes of unwritten story,
  Nurslings of one mighty Mother,
  Hopes of her, and one another;
  
  What is Freedom? Ye can tell
  That which Slavery is too well,
  For its very name has grown
  To an echo of your own
  
  Let a vast assembly be,
  And with great solemnity
  Declare with measured words, that ye
  Are, as God has made ye, free!
  
  The old laws of England--they
  Whose reverend heads with age are grey,
  Children of a wiser day;
  And whose solemn voice must be
  Thine own echo--Liberty!
  
  Rise like Lions after slumber
  In unvanquishable number,
  Shake your chains to earth like dew
  Which in sleep had fallen on you-
  Ye are many — they are few"

Notes on Mary Shelly:

• (PB Shelley's second wife) Mary Shelley is author of Frankenstein- The Modern Prometheus, The story of the  scientist who created life and horrified by this own creations. Published when she was only 21!..after eloping as a 16year old lover of the already married 21year old Percy Shelly who left his first wife after 3years.
• In 2008, Percy Bysshe Shelley was credited as the co-author of Frankenstein .Charles E. Robinson determined that Percy Bysshe Shelley was the co-author of the novel: "He made very significant changes in words, themes and style. The book should now be credited as 'by Mary Shelley with Percy Shelley'."

Celebrating The Skylark!- Shelley's Ode,'To A Skylark'.., poems, classical music and songs inspired by the Bird

Spotted! : A Skylark, dust-bathing! @Titchwell Marsh, Norfolk coast, 4-June-2011

Skylark :
Throughout its range ( Europe, Asia and North Africa) it is renowned for the song of the male, while in 'display flight', hovering, ascending vertically.. from heights of ~50 to 100 m, when the singing bird may appear as just a dot in the sky from the ground..

Songs lasting 2-3 minutes, and longer, later in the mating season..

Apparently, female Skylarks prefer males that sing and hover for longer periods (and so more likely to have good overall fitness! )

For a bird with such a lofty name, it might look rather dull and brown on the ground.

You might pass it for a dull-sparrow-next-door until you hear it sing from the sky! ;) 

It spends most of the time on the ground- including nesting

and foraging for seeds and insects.

Its recent and dramatic population declines locally make it a Red List species within Britain.

(In Britain, only 10% remain, of the numbers that were present 30 years ago, due to changes in farming practices and pesticides. English farmers are now encouraged and even paid, through wildlife-friendly farming subsidies, to maintain and create biodiversity for improving the habitats, including for Skylarks. See this for details of how agricultural practices are affecting these birds in particular, and some conservation measures are explained here. But with the economic turmoil and budget squeezes, it remains to be seen whether the governments will keep supporting wildlife friendly farming.)


Percy Shelley's Ode, 'To a Skylark' :

The famous poet Percy Bysshe Shelley waxed lyrical about their song,

in his poem "To a Skylark" (1820). It was inspired by an evening walk in the country near Livorno, Italy, with his wife Mary Shelley and describes the appearance and song of a skylark they come upon.

Here is a reading of the poem, and below it are some excerpted stanzas and comments from Shelley's Ode, "To a Skylark". 
Some stanzas mention about the behaviour mentioned above, while in 'display-flight'.
For the complete poem, click here.  

 [ It starts:

 Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert-
That from heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

..

The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven,
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight-

..

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd.

What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see,
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:-

..Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: 
 ..
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awaken'd flowers-
All that ever was
Joyous and clear and fresh-thy music doth surpass.
 
Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
..
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
..
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. 


Yet, if we could scorn
Hate and pride and fear,
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 


Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
 
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.
--x--

 That's quite ethereal expressions of his experiencing the bird song!.. Even 'rainbow clouds' do not rain as brightly as the shower of melody that pours from the skylark..

   its music is better than all music and all poetry..

  He asks the bird to teach him "half the gladness / That thy brain must know",

  for then he would overflow with "harmonious madness",

  and his song would be so beautiful that the world would listen to him,

  even as he is now listening to the skylark!!. ]

George Meredith's poem, The Lark Ascending, and the popular classical music composition by the same name, inspired by the poem:

George Meredith (1828–1909) , English novelist and poet, studied law and became a solicitor, but abandoned that profession for journalism and poetry in 1849, shortly after marrying Mary Ellen Nicolls, a widowed daughter of Thomas Love Peacock [what a name!! ;) Interestingly, Mr Peacock, English satirist and author, "was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and they influenced each other's work."]


Meredith wrote novels and poetry, often inspired by nature. His writing was characterized by a fascination with imagery and indirect references. He had a keen understanding of comedy and his Essay on Comedy (1877) is still quoted in most discussions of the history of comic theory.
George Meredith's 122-line poem about the Skylark,  The Lark Ascending inspired the English composer Ralph Vaughan William
 to compose classical music by the same name.. "The work was written in two versions: violin and piano, written in 1914; and violin and orchestra, written in 1920. The orchestral version is the one that is almost always heard now. It is one of the most popular pieces in the Classical repertoire among British listeners.".


Here, is a performance of 'The Lark Ascending' at Royal Albert Hall in London, by Dutch solo violinist Janine Jansen and the BBC Concert Orchestra -This was part of the annual 'BBC Proms' festival, promoted as 'The World's Greatest Classical Music Festival': This is an exquisitely beautiful piece.. very light, delicate,breezy, uplifting..
[Total 15 minutes, available in 2 parts on youtube. Can find 2nd part from this link ]




..and.. a Malayalam Song featuring Skylark:
Closer home, a Malayalam song featuring Skylark (Vaanampaadi) ,
by Jnanpeeth award winning poet and lyricist ONV Kurup
Music Director: Raveendran
Raaga: Mohanam (Those in the know, verify this. I don't know about the classical bit;)
Singer: Yesudas
[from the 1986 movie, Deshaadanakkili karayaarilla, directed by Padmarajan]:



Info about the Bird:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylark

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/s/skylark/index.aspx

Birds of Britain: Album