![]() Among much other commentary, no one remarked that the ecstatic cloud of butterflies had slowly drifted across the adjacent Serpentine, where Shelley’s first wife had also drowned. The next day a British newspaper, grudgingly impressed but slightly misunderstanding Jagger’s pronunciation of “Shelley,” duly reported a memorable reading from the works of the Cuban revolutionary “Che” Guevara, and ironically praised Mick for his political correctness. Mick read it rather well in his South London drawl, holding an astonished crowd silent and sprawling on the summer grass, and then suddenly released thousands of multicolored butterflies-“Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!”-and burst into a rendition of “Sympathy for the Devil.” ![]() ![]() ‘Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep. ![]() The posy was announced as a stanza of Shelley’s “Adonais”. ![]() Mick Jagger, wearing a white skirt, read out some “posy” for his guitarist, Brian Jones, who had recently been drowned (not in the Gulf of Spezia but in his Surrey swimming pool). The occasion of Shelley’s two hundredth birthday (August 4) reminds me of an open-air rock concert once given by the Rolling Stones in Hyde Park, London. ![]()
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