Up the river

Read about the poet Shelley's trip up the river Thames with his wife Mary Shelley.




"The weeds above Lechlade became so thick that ...tugging and pulling [they] could not move the boat an inch..." They returned to Lechlade and stayed at the inn.

In Lechlade Shelley's thoughts turned to writing and the self-reflection that writing creates:

"A mirror would be held up to all men in which they might behold their own recollections, and in dim perspective - their shadowy hopes and fears, all that they dare not, or daring and desiring, they could not expose to the open eyes of day."

The writer's passage from sensation to reflection is sometimes so difficult and dizzying that one "dares not look behind".