The Shelley Memorial at University College, Oxford. The memorial consists of a white marble sculpture of a reclining nude and dead Shelley washed up on the shore at Viareggio in Italy after his drowning, sculpted by Edward Onslow Ford, associated with the New Sculpture movement
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—
See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
The last four lines of this poem figure prominently in a rather amazing episode of “Lewis”, which, although on the surface a police procedural, is also a kind of meditation on giftedness and creativity, humor and seriousness, genuineness and falseness, and, of course, like all good cop shows everywhere, life and death. Here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNPkZ229RUc
Plus also, there’s great casting, acting, direction, pacing, and photography of Oxford and its environs – a strong candidate for being the most beautiful place on Earth – including a final scene at the Shelley Memorial.
Well worth a viewing…
Thanks. I watched it. I had seen it before but appreciated it more this time.
Yeah. I thought the part about J. R. R. Tolkein playing banjo in a Trad band (the Thames Valley Cotton Pickers) was particularly choice…