Aleister Crowley and Percy Bysshe Shelley

A Joseph Severn painting of Shelley in Italy. 

I have started reading Perdurabo, Richard Kaczynski's biography of Aleister Crowley, as preparation for reading Lion of Light. A passage describes how Crowley, while attending Cambridge, suddenly was introduced to the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley. "For Crowley, the budding poet, Shelley's lyrical style and unique expressive language represented the perfect marriage of poetry and music .... Shelley ... remained Crowley's lifelong favorite."

This may be the only thing I have in common with Aleister Crowley, but I discovered Shelley in college, too, and while I liked all of the English Romantic poets, Shelley was my favorite and I read a great deal of him. 

Here is a famous Shelley poem: 
 

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”