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Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822), a romantic English poet and critic, considered by
many to be among the greatest, and one of the most influential leaders of the romantic
movement. He was born on August 4, 1792, at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex,
educated at Eton College and, until his expulsion at the end of one year, the University
of Oxford. Throughout his life, Shelley lived by a radically nonconformist moral code.
His beliefs concerning love, marriage, revolution, and politics caused him to be
considered a dangerous immoralist by some.

Many critics regarded Shelley as one of the greatest of all English poets. They point
especially to his lyrics, including the familiar short odes "To a Skylark" (1820), "To The
West Wind" (1819), and "The Cloud" (1820). Also greatly admired are the shorter love
lyrics, including "I Arise from Dreams of The" and "To Costantia Singing"; the sonnet
"Ozymandias"(1818); and "Adonais" (1821), an elegy for the British poet John Keats,
written informal Spenserian stanzas. The effortless lyricism of these works is also
evident in Shelley's verse dramas, The Cenci (1819) and Prometheus Unbound (1820);
his prose, including a translation (1818) of the Symposium by Plato and the unfinished
critical work A Defense of Poetry (written 1821; published 1840), is equally skillful.
Other critics, particularly antiromantics who object to the prettiness and sentimentality
of much of his work, maintain that Shelley was not as influential as the other British
romantic poets Byron, Keats, or William Wordsworth.

According to Shelley, poetry is the expression of imagination. It is not subject to the

control of the active powers of the mind, and its birth and recurrence have no necessary
connection with the consciousness or the will. One cannot create poetry unless one is
inspired. To him, the poet must be inspired and his poetry is addressed to an audience,
so the target of poetry is social, thus the poem is the image of life. If the poet is not
inspired, then he will write bad poetry. His consciousness and will are not important.
He adds, a poet can't say I am going to write a poem because he is to be inspired by the
Muse or madness first. The poet does not know the ideal object imitated, only
philosophers do. In addition, the poet has to keep a certain rhythm or order; otherwise,
the image would be deformed. His minimum task is to keep the image acceptable since
it is of an object which already has less harmony and order than the ideal one.The poet
is a writer and he has to imitate otherwise he will not write poetry. This is automatically
done since he uses language, and language itself is poetry. Language is conventional
and it is a medium for poetry. The poet creates new combinations of the language.

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Poetry is an achievement in language. Thus, language is a tool. It is not a poets task to

create a language, but he has to create his own combination. Therefore, Shelley states
that there is no abstract poetry because the tool which the poet uses is conventional
(language). There is no poetry outside language which is concrete. The poet can know
that his poem is about something which is to imitate an object conceived by him (that is
why he can foretell). "Inspiration" according to Shelley is an external catalyst that
provokes poetry (muse). So, when the poet writes poetry, he does not create since he is
inspired. Moreover, he has a message to convey.

The creative work of art (poetry) has a poetic process:

1) Work of art (poem).
2) Artist (poet).
3) Subject (world).
4) Audience (target).

This is Shelley's theory, so the poet can't miss any element of these four elements, because
poetry has a target that is ethical, moral, and social one since it depends on the
audience. His most thoughtful poetry expresses his two main ideas, that the external
tyranny of rulers, customs, or superstitions is the main enemy, and that inherent human
goodness will, sooner or later, eliminate evil from the world and usher in an external
reign of transcendent love. Shelley felt the magic touch of liberty. He addressed the
common people of his country saying "Rise like lions after slumber". He laments the
good old days before industrialization.

"O word! O life!O time!

When will return the glory of our prime"

Shelley: A Revolutionary Poet

Shelley was a true-born child of the French Revolution. The spirits of that revolution
found its expression in Shelley’s poetry. But as a critic observes:

“The greater rigour of his nature begot in him a passion for reform and a habit for
rebellion which are the inspiration of his longer poems.”

Throughout his life he dreamt of a new society, a new world, absolutely free from
tyranny and exploration. He was a dreamer of dreams and was always at war with

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the existing world of complete chaos and confusion. He led a ceaseless war against the
existing political, social and economic institutions.

The Age of Romanticism is one of great turmoil in which Europe faced the greatest and
frightful uprising – the French Revolution. The watchwords of the Revolution were
Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. It stood for the natural rights of man and total
abolition of class distinctions. Its impact on the civilized world was unimaginable. The
English people, embarked on an age long struggle monarchy, found in the watchwords
a reflection of their own ideas and ideals.

In spite of the failure of the French Revolution, the social and political upheaval in
France played a great part in influencing English Romantic Movement. The
Revolution was characterized by three phases which affected English romanticism.
These are:

1.The Doctrinaire Phase – The Age of Rousseau

2.The Political Phase – The Age of Robespierre and Danton
3.The Military Phase – The Age of Napoleon

These phases had a deep impact on Shelley’s mind. Shelley was the only passionate
singer of the Revolution. This was not because he looked beyond the instant disaster to
a future reconstruction, but because his imagination was far less concrete than those
of his great contemporaries. Ideas inspired him, not episodes. So he drank in the
doctrines of Godwin, and ignored the tragic perplexities of the actual situations.
Compton Rickett is of the view:

“Widely divergent in temperamental and genius as Shelley and his mentor were, they
had this in common – a passion for abstract speculation. Only Godwin expressed them
in ‘Pedestrian’, Shelley gave to them music and colour.”

Shelley’s revolutionary attitude was constructive in the long run. In his preface to “The
Revolt of Islam”, he pointed out that the wanted to kindle in the bottom of his readers a
virtuous enthusiasm for liberty and justice, that faith and hope in something good,
which neither violence nor prejudice, can ever wholly extinguish among mankind. In
another work “Prometheus Unbound” Shelley made his hero arch-rebel and compared

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him with Satan of “Paradise Lost”. In the concluding stanza of the song there is a
return of belief that Earth shall share in the Emancipation of man:

Where morning dyes her golden tresses,

Shall soon partake our high emotions;
Kings shall turn pale!

In “Queen Mab”, he propagated the necessity of reform. As a poet, Shelley conceived to

become the inspirer and judge of men. He had a passion for reforming the world which
was the direct outcome of that attitude of mind which the French Revolution had
inculcated in him.

A third idea contained in the original conception of the Revolution was ‘The Return of
Nature’. It held that the essential happiness of man consisted in a simple life in
accordance with Nature. Not that it was peculiar to the Revolution; but that it came as
a logical result from the first idea. It is a well-known fact that when man groans under
the heels of tyranny, corruption, selfish interest and social conventions; when he “lives
like worms wriggling in a dish, away from the torment of intelligence and the
uselessness of culture”; he cries, almost unwillingly:

“Let me go back to the breast of Mother Earth where my own hands can win my own
bread from woods and fields.”

Shelley found in Skylark a symbol of the ideal poet who lives in isolation. He appeals to
the bird:

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.

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“Ode to the West Wind”, was also written by the poet under the direct influence of the
times. The moral, social and political regeneration seemed to Shelley possible in the
atmosphere of Nature. The ‘West Wind’ seemed to be an expression of this background.
Finding his life miserable, he implores the wind:

Oh, life me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

Shelley’s revolutionary passion flows from his idealism. All his life he dreamed of an
ideal world without evil, suffering and misery. It would be a world where reason
would rule supreme, and Equality, Liberty and Fraternity wound be no empty words.
“Ode to West Wind” expresses the poet’s intense suffering at the tyranny of life and his
great hope in the bright future of humanity. The poem symbolizes three things;
freedom, power and change. Clutton Brock, his great critic says:

“For Shelley, the forces of nature have as much reality as human beings have for most
of us, and he found the same kind of beauty that we find in the beauty of human beings
in the great works of art.”

Thus the poet finds the “West Wind” a fit symbol to raise and enliven his spirit out of
the depths of desolation, dejection and weariness. Moreover the ‘Wind’ should scatter
his thoughts among the universe:

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of his verse,
Scatter, as form an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

It may be said that the Revolution to Shelley was a spiritual awakening, the beginning
of a new life. He traced all evil in life to slavery. Free and natural development is only

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possible when he enjoy liberty. And liberty in his opinion was freedom from external
restraints. Freedom was the first watchword of the French Revolution. Thus the
Revolution kindled the imaginative life of Shelley as it did that of Wordsworth. But the
fire in Wordsworth extinguished before long; whereas in Shelley it kept burning all
through his brief career and permeated all through is poetic work. Cazamian said:

“Shelley belongs to that rare species of mankind whom reason and feeling convert
revolutionaries in the flush of youth an who remain so for the rest of their life.”

Shelley's Abstractness & Visionary Idealism

Shelley’s poetry is regarded as abstract, lacking the note of high seriousness and
having nothing solid and substantial. That’s why Mathew Arnold referred to Shelley as
“a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain”. It is
alleged that he cherishes fanciful ideals, weaves dreams and does not deal with real
life.

In fact, Shelley does not get raw material from the day to day experiences of life as
Byron or Wordsworth does, rather he obtains it from:

i- Mental process (Idealistic revolution)

ii- Wide study (Plato, Greek, Latin)
iii- Visions of future (The time of change)
iv- Dreams of the past (Past memories)

Primarily, he draws his raw material from these four sources and not from the rest
world around. That’s why he is called a visionary idealist. Unmindful of the bitter
realities of the woeful world, he dreams of a heavenly world, free from all evil. Arnold
thinks, “Shelley is a vision of beauty, availing nothing and affecting nothing”.

It is true that Shelley’s poetry relating to love, beauty, nature and human life is very
much near visionary picture. The reason is that throughout his life he remained in the
grip of such visions. This affected his poetry as well. It is said that Shelley’s poetry is
substanceless and almost a fabric of vision. He has ghostly and dreamy imagery in his
poems. Despite this, no vagueness of effect or intellectual mistakenness involve his
poetry. Outlines may be faint, but they are unmistakable.

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We may not shun from the fact that Shelley was an idealist and a prophet. He conjured
up idealistic pictures of the gracious future of mankind. He was a pessimist, rather he
believed in the regeneration and reconstruction of mankind with equality, justice,
peace and social brotherhood. He had a dream that the present odd world would
disappear and a new world of glory would dawn. “Ode to the West Wind” is both
idealistic and prophetic in which he is confident that, “If Winter comes, can Spring be
far behind”. In “Queen Mab” he hopes for new world and desires change. In
“Prometheus Unbound” the poet hopes that humanity will rise from the stage of
sufferings and miseries. Needless to mention, that the hope of the poet has gradually
been realized. His ideals, which once looked visionary, now do have a practical shape.
Many of his dreams have either come true or are in the process of being realized.

Visionary idealist, he was, yes to say, that he as ineffectual, divorced from reality,
would be doing injustice to him. Though some of his visions were phantoms, yet he
dealt with democracy, science and spirituality. He presented the struggle of the
miserable and the downtrodden in hostile world. He was a revolutionary poet. He
revolted against prejudices, customs, ignorance, even against dogmatic religion. He
found religion in many cases, serving as an instrument of suppressing Man’s freedom
and as an alloy of political despotism. Being a lover of liberty and freedom, he was a
conformed rebel against all the existing institutions, conventions and traditions. The
love of liberty and hatred of oppression made him to revolt against all the established
institutions, political, moral, social etc. “Queen Mab”, “The Revolt of Islam”,
“Prometheus Unbound” etc. stand testimony to it.

So, we cannot say that Shelley’s poetry was without substance. His visions were not of
a mad man rather that of a person, devoted to the regeneration of mankind in a better
world to come. His visions are of a sane and right minded person who thought good of
mankind at heart. His visions are those of an idealist and a prophet, dissatisfied with
the real world. In “Prometheus Unbound” this vision is paramount. In “Ode to the West
Wind” he is optimistic about future. In “Hellas” he hopes that humanity will rise from
the shape of suffering and miseries.

To Byron, Shelley was the best and the least selfish man he ever came across. He is not
ineffectual, for he broke away from customs, traditions, conventions, sham morality
and religion. He was a rebel and a reformer. He tried to reform by giving an idealized
picture of the world. The conservative readers of his age could not accept his reform,
however, today he is considered as a prophet and idealist – a man for advance of his
time. Shelley interprets the longings and aspirations of his age. He reflects strive for
freedom and justice. His prophecies are coming true. Arnold’s estimation is, therefore,

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unjust. He is, no doubt, beautiful, but not “ineffectual”. He is, in fact, a prophet of a
new faith. Eliot has leveled upon him the charge of adolescence and Lewis and Tate,
that of defective workmanship. Both are extreme views.

Daiches, giving a balanced view, points pout that the charge of adolescence cannot be
completely ruled out because of hysteria, self-pity and emotionally, but there is poet of
conviction in his best work. Byron preached liberty, but his approach was emotional.
Wordsworth was a thinker, but lacked passion and Shelley, however, was that great
poet who combined passion with intellect.

Shelley: A Poet Of Love

Shelley is primarily a poet of love, as Keats is of beauty. The story of his life is, in fact,
a story of love. But it has to be remembered that Shelley as a love poet is a complex
phenomenon. For him love, is not the name of one particular feeling or thing. It is
tinged with many colours. It is sexual love, Platonic love, cosmic energy and love of
humanity. Shelley devoted his brief life to the pursuit of love. Yearning for perfect
Love, Beauty and Liberty is keynote of Shelley’s poetry. He considers love a
regenerating power, which is closely bound up with his conception of human
perfectibility.

Shelley’s attitude of love was greatly influence by the teachings of Plato. According to
Plato, beauty has such as enormous power over men because they have previously
beheld it in a heaven and since, sight is the keenest of bodily senses. Shelley looked
upon love that is, by no means, a simple phenomenon. In his essay, ‘A Defense of
Poetry’, he has defended this concept as:

“This is the bond and connection and the sanction that connects not only man with
man, but with everything, which exists in man.”

Shelley’s concept of ideal love finds it best expression in “Epipsychidion”. No poet felt
deeply the dynamic influence of love in moulding human destiny; none realized utterly
the triviality of life devoid of love; yet Shelley’s women are merely lovely wraiths that
greet us to the strains of delicious music.

“See where she stands! A mortal shape induced

With love and life and light and deity,”

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From love as sexual passion, Shelley proceeds to look at love as Plato looked at it. Here
his concept of love is mainly Platonic, though the view of Godwin on free love also had
a profound influence on him. In “Phaedrus”, Plato observes that Love and Beauty are
nothing concrete but abstract and ideal. Thus love is regarded as a kind of madness.

Plato further held that every object of Nature is governed by love and are forever
trying to unite them with the spirit of divine love diffused through the universe.
Shelley’s conception of Platonic idealism finds its vent in the following verses.
“Nothing in world is single;
All things by a law divine;
In one spirit meet and mingle,
Why not I with thine?”

Shelley devoted his whole life not to the pursuit of physical but to the ideal Love and
Beauty which he yeaned for all his life. In this respect, he has beautifully described in
“Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”:

“Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon”

Love to Plato is also an aspiration towards the good and the beautiful. In “Prometheus
Unbound”, Shelley comes very close to the thinking of Plato. Prometheus exercised the
freedom of the pursuit of good. And Demogorgan’s statement that Love is free is the
only most philosophic statement. Only Love is exempt. Only love is free. Thus, love in
Prometheus represents the more general Platonic notion, the notion of all things good
and beautiful:

“How glorious art though Earth! And if thou be

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I could fall down and worship that and thee.”

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In his later years Shelley seems to have been moving away from the way of
Affirmation towards of Rejection, towards the Rejection of the Image of Woman. He
never lost his basic faith, but he laid more stress that before on the transcendent of that
which he sought. His desire is:

“The desire of the moth for the star,

Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion of something afar,
From the sphere of our sorrow.”

Like Plato Shelley believes that Love is the source of the greatest benefits for both the
lover and the beloved since they encouraged each other in the practice of virtue. Love
implants the sense of honour and dishonour and therefore impels to all noble deeds.

This is how Shelley looked at love. Though his concept of love is severely criticized by
so many critics who contend that though intellectually mature, Shelley remained
perhaps in some ways emotionally adolescent. His whole approach to love is not only
unhealthy but his ideals, his visions, are only whims conceived in his own mind. But we
should not forget that Shelley has his won philosophy of love, which was, to him,
something higher and nobler than a mere sexual feeling, for him it was a perfection of
all that is good and noble in the world.

Shelley's Love For Nature

Love for Nature is one of the prerequisites of all the Romantics and Shelley is no
exception. Love for Nature is one of the key-notes of his poetry. His poetry abounds in
Nature imagery. ‘On Love’ reflects colourful Nature imagery and glorification of
Nature. He shows fruition and fulfillment in his poems. Other poems e.g. ‘A Dream of
the Unknown’, ‘Ode to the Westwind’, ‘The Cloud’, ‘To Skylark’, ‘To the Moon’, etc. are
remarkable poems of Nature in which we find a profusion of Nature.

Like Wordsworth, Shelley believes that Nature exercises a healing influence on man’s
personality. He finds solace and comfort in Nature and feels its soothing influence on
his heart.

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Shelley, in his poetry, appears as a pantheist too. In fact, his attitude towards Nature
is analogous to that of Wordsworth, who, greatly influenced Shelly. However, as
against Wordsworth, who linked the spirit in Nature with God, Shelley, on the other
hand, linked it and identified it with love, for he was an atheist and a skeptic. He
believes that this spirit ‘wields the world with never wearied love’.

“Adonais” reflects the most striking examples of Shelley’s pantheism. At an occasion, he

thinks that Keats ‘is made one with Nature’ for the power, moving in Nature. Nature’s
spirit is eternal. ‘The one remains, many change and pass’. He agrees that there is
some intelligence controlling Nature. In fact, he fuses the platonic philosophy of love
with pantheism. He finds Nature alive, capable of feeling and thinking like a human
organism. Wordsworth equates it with God, Shelley with love.

Shelley loved the indefinite and the changeful in Nature. He presents the changing and
indefinite moods of Nature e.g. clouds, wind, lightening etc. ‘Ode to the Westwind’
reflects this particular trend of Shelley, wherein, he shows the West Wind driving the
dead leaves, scattering the living seeds, awakening the Mediterranean and making the
sea-plants feel its force. His poetry lacks pictorial definiteness and, often, his Nature
description is clothed in mist. As compared with Coleridge, Wordsworth etc. he is the
least pictorial. It is partly due to the abstract imagery and partly, owing to swift
succession of similes which blur the picture. Yet, sometimes, his image is definitely
concrete. The picture of the blue Mediterranean, lulled to sleep by his crystalline
streams and awakened by Westwind is virtually remarkable and substantial.

Despite his pantheistic attitude, Shelley conceives every object of Nature as possessing
a distinct individuality of its own, too, though he believes that the spirit of love unites
the whole universe, including Nature, yet he treats all the natural objects as
distinguishable entities. The sun, the moon, the stars, the rainbow – all have been
treated as separate beings. This capacity of individualizing the separate forces for
Nature is termed as Shelley’s myth making power which is best illustrated in “Ode to
the Westwind”. He gives the West Wind, the ocean an independent life and
personalities. He presents the Mediterranean sleeping and then being awakened by the
West Wind, just like a human body.

The ancient Greek gave human attributes to the natural objects whom they
personified. Shelley, too, personifies them, but he retains their true characteristics. He
personifies the West wind ad the Mediterranean, but both remains wind and ocean.
They have not been endowed with human qualities. He has almost scientific attitude
towards the objects of Nature. Whatever he says is scientifically true. The Westwind

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virtually drives the dead leaves and scatters the seeds to be grown in this wind; the sea
plants undoubtedly feel the destructive effects of the strong Westwind. Likewise, clouds
do bring rain, dew-drops, snow, lightening, thunder etc. He observes the natural
phenomenon with a scientific eye, though the description remains highly imaginative.

Time and again, Shelley’s Nature description has a touch of optimism having all the
sufferings, tortures, miseries of the world. In “Ode to the Westwind”, he hopes for the
best and is confident that “If Winter comes, can spring be far behind?” His nature
treatment is multidimensional; scientific, philosophic, intellectual, mythical and of
course human. He is a marvelous poet of Nature.

P.B Shelley as a Lyrical Poet

Cazamian detects: “Shelley’s lyricism is incomparable. In no other, do we find the
perfect sureness, the triumphant rapidity of this upward flight, this soaring height, the
super terrestrial quality as well as poignant intensity of the sounds which fall from
these aerial regions. Truly, never was the soul of a poet so spontaneously lyrical”.

Shelley lyrics reflect upon the highest achievement of romantic poetry. The beauty and
charm of his lyric have hardly been surpassed by any English poet. “Ode to the
Westwind”, “To a Skylark”, “To Night” and a number of other lyrics of Shelley are the
treasure of English literature.

Shelley was highly sensitive and imaginative, especially responsive to lyrical impulses.
His poetic genius was lyrical. Milton, Wordsworth, Keats were lyrical too, but Shelley’s
lyrical faculty was paramount. His lyrics are personal as well as impersonal. He deals
with love, nature, future life, regeneration of mankind, etc. His technique is lively and
fresh and he revels in it. The perfection lies in the fusion of imagery and rhythm in a
diction.

Spontaneity is one of the remarkable features of Shelley’s lyrical poetry. His lyrics
seem to have been written without the least effort, arising directly from his heart. To
Morgan, his lyrics burst from the nature, the sunshine, the air. Nothing can be more
spontaneous than the following lines, addressed to Skylark.

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Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poets were, thou scorner of ground!

In “Adonais”, he calls himself ‘a dying lamp’, ‘a falling shower’, ‘a breaking billow’

which indicates the spontaneity of feelings.
There is a great intensity of feelings in Shelley’s lyrics. Emotions, with him, exceed the
normal taints. Normally, he reaches the stage of emotional ecstasy.

A note of sadness runs through most of his lyrics. His best lyrics are cries of pain and
anguish. He appears to be crying like ‘a tired child’, weeping away his life. ‘Our
sweetest songs’, to him, ‘are those that tell of saddest thought’.

Sometimes, he is just melancholic. He discloses his hidden miseries, distractions,

sufferings, tortures in a very painful manner.

Despair is one of the keynotes of his lyrical poetry. He is always longing and craving
for the impossible. There is little peace in his lyrics. ‘To Night’ reflects his crave and
longing and sigh for the night. This longing can also be found in the ‘Song’, in which he
calls it the ‘Spirit of Delight’.

Shelley’s lyrics are absolutely simple, smooth and fluent. This note of simplicity adds to
their beauty. How simple he is in the following lines, taken from “Ode to the
Westwind”:

“The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Shelley’s lyrics are surpassingly musical and sweet. Granted that his lyrics are cries of
pain, but these cries are beautifully transformed into loveliness by sweet music. Even
his most pessimistic lyrics produce a sense of delight. It is the sadness of these lyrics

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which makes them melodious. ‘To Night’, ‘Ode to the Westwind’, etc. are masterpieces
of musical lyricism.

Many of Shelley’s lyrics are ethereal and abstract. They seem to have been attempted
by an inhabitant of the aerial regions. ‘The Cloud’ and ‘Ode to the Westwind’
particularly illustrate this ethereal temper. In ‘Ode to the Westwind’, he compares
‘loose clouds’ to ‘earth’s decaying leaves’, ‘shook from the boughs of Heaven and
Ocean’. It is this kind of poetry which justifies the criticism of Shelley as “an ineffectual
angel, beating in the void on luminous wings in vain”.

Shelley’s lyrics are highly embellished compositions. They abound in ornamental

imagery. ‘The Cloud’, and ‘To a Skylark’ are the most striking examples. He paints a
beautiful picture of the moon, calling it a ‘silver sphere’, its rays ‘beam arrows’ and its
light, ‘intense lamp’.

We find wonderful similes decorating his lyrical poetry. He compares the skylark to a
‘poet hidden in the light of thought’ and moon to an ‘orbed maiden with white fire
laden’.

Shelley’s lyrical poetry has a prophetic note soaked with humanism. In ‘Ode to the
Westwind’ he gives a memorable message of hope to humanity; ‘If Winter comes, can
Spring be far behind?

Though some critics accuse Shelley of ineffectuality due to his ethereality and
abstractness, yet most of the critics are all praise for him on account of his lyricism.
Saintbury ranks Shelley as ‘one of the two or three major lyrical poets in the English
tradition’. ‘There is no poet’, observes Morgan, ‘not even Shakespeare in his lyrics, who
has Shelley’s effect of bird-song pouring and pouring out’.

Shelley’s more sentimental lyrics are not much appreciated today and perhaps he
himself didn’t like them, for none of them was published in his life time. This flaw mars
few of his poems. In majority of poems, he is unsentimental and reasonably careful;
rather he combines passion with intellect.

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Shelley was a remarkable lyrical poet. ‘The Cloud’, ‘To a Skylark’, and ‘Ode to the
Westwind’ as lyrical poems are still ‘unsurpassed and almost unchallenged – the
supreme lyrics – of the sky’.

Summary and Analysis of "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"

In seven stanzas, a first-person poetic persona turns inward to appreciate the power of
knowledge and wonders how to recapture it. In the first stanza, he describes the spirit of
natural beauty with awe; it is a power that can hardly be grasped. He addresses that spirit in
the second stanza; it seems to be gone, leaving humans in gloom. People have tried to name it,
but they have made it something supernatural, like a ghost; instead of superstition, people
should focus on the graceful light of reality and truth. In the fourth stanza, knowledge
appears to be more enduring than emotions such as love; it lights up the heart.

The persona then recalls his youth, when he used to seek passing or imaginary things like
“ghosts” and love, but then the deep shadow of nature’s reality fell upon him, and he felt the
ecstasy of the possibility of intellectual knowledge. He vowed to dedicate his powers to
knowledge and study. He also has always hoped that knowledge “wouldst free / This world
from its dark slavery” to superstition. In the final stanza, he adds that he has worshiped
knowledge of nature, which provides calm love and conquers fear.

Analysis
“Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” makes much reference to a key poet among the first generation
of Romantics, William Blake. The speaker begins by drawing attention to “the awful shadow
of some unseen Power.” Here, “awful” means full of awe, like the modern term “awesome.” The
“power” is the human intellect, something beyond access by the senses, which must be
beautiful in a way different from the things that are beautiful directly to the eyes. This is a
quite Blakeian way of viewing the human mind in relation to the natural world, while it also
draws on a long Platonic tradition of seeing beauty in abstract concepts. The overarching
theme of the poem, according to one critic, is to recognize the “awareness which lends
splendor, grace, and truth both to the experience itself and to the natural world” (Abrams
1744) in which the experience takes place. In other words, Shelley argues that the real beauty
of nature and experience lies in the human exploration of creativity and imagination, the
ability to “perceive” beauty and truth in experience, going beyond the experience itself.

Stanza one begins with the speaker in a state of rapture, relating the invisible power to the
pleasant things of nature: “summer winds,” “flowers,” “moonbeams,” “harmonies of evening,”
and “starlight. Yet it is more than these things; these are mere similes (note the frequent use
of “like”). As mysterious as its appearance, the invisible power too easily abandons him, and
the speaker complains about its disappearance, especially in the first two stanzas. The once
enchanted setting becomes, without intellectual virtue, “dim,” full of “tears,” “vacant,” and
“desolate.”

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Each stanza employs an iambic rhythm, suitable for song. Poetically, a hymn is “a song of
praise, thanksgiving, or devotion” (Frye 232). Shelley thus gives high praise to the human
intellect, since hymns are traditionally reserved for worship of God. For Shelley (being an
atheist), in the absence of God the highest thing to praise is the human spirit, specifically the
intellectual spirit, which the poet directly addresses as a real being. Stanzas five to seven
illustrate this devotion to this mysterious “beauty,” especially when the poet rhetorically asks,
“I vowed that I would dedicate my powers / To thee and thine—have I not kept thy vow?” In
contrast, the poet does not put faith in religion, putting “Ghost” and “Heaven” in the same
category, and suggesting that it is useless to try to pray to saints, the “departed dead.”

Yet, since intellectual beauty is so fleeting, the poet argues, many people have turned to
religion to make sense of the difficulty of understanding the world. People are “vain” in this
endeavor, and in the third stanza the speaker attacks what he sees as religious superstition. In
contrast, the light of the intellect is what brings “grace and truth” to life. “Love, Hope, and
Self-esteem” are not much better, for these emotions also pass back and forth like clouds. In
contrast, man would be “immortal and omnipotent” if only he were able to “keep thy glorious
train within his heart.”

The fifth stanza continues the atheist and philosophical critique. Shelley refers to his youthful
experiences with religion, which now seem like useless prayers or even magic (denouncing the
“poisonous names” of saints who ignored his prayers). The “listening chamber” of a church
building is compared with Plato’s “cave” in the Republic, the place where people learn the
names of things by identifying their shadows, without ever gazing on the real things
themselves. In contrast, when the “shadow” of true knowledge starts to come across him, he
realizes what he has been missing, and he “vows” to “dedicate his powers” to intellectual
beauty. Whereas religious ways of knowing lead to “dark slavery,” the poet hopes that true
understanding of the natural world will lift us out of darkness, even beyond what the poet can
express in words.
The poem concludes with the speaker recognizing the “serenity” of the day after the “noon”
has past and “autumn” approaches. This is a metaphor for the poet’s life; he thinks he is past
the dawn of youthful misunderstanding and is even past the midpoint of realizing the
difference between superstition and knowledge. He thus has entered a new age of
understanding. Superstition works people up unnecessarily, while knowledge is “solemn” and
calming. The final two lines define intellectual beauty for the reader as a “spirit” with
spellbinding powers. Knowledge is awesome and fearsome, yet humans are by nature able to
know, which makes each person lovable for his or her intellectual potential.

Images in the poem range from the dark and dreary moments when intellectual beauty is
absent, to the joyous and rapture of the speaker in its presence. Shelley also incorporates
numerous references to nature as well as gothic semi-realities and superstitions (“demon,”
“ghost,” “poisonous,” “spells”). These references underscore the contrast between “reality” and
the false images of the human imagination.

As stated earlier, a hymn is a song of praise, and here Shelley’s mood is one of joy and
countenance for this “unseen power.” Shelley uses parallelism to substantiate his argument,
recalling stories of his youth when religion failed him, pairing them with this moment of

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rapture when the “air spirit” of truth is by his side. Rather than being caught up with beauty
as viewed in the natural world, however, Shelley chooses to focus on the aesthetic of
knowledge of the natural world, a deeper kind of beauty. By loading metaphor and simile
early on in the poem, the poet gives life beyond the senses to this “spirit of beauty.” It must be
remembered that in addressing the intellectual spirit in this way, the poet is not making up
yet another fake spirit; for him, this is the true intellectual spirit of the human mind.

Summary and Analysis of "Ozymandias"

The first-person poetic persona states that he met a traveler who had been to “an
antique land.” The traveler told him that he had seen a vast but ruined statue, where
only the legs remained standing. The face was sunk in the sand, frowning and
sneering. The sculptor interpreted his subject well. There also was a pedestal at the
statue, where the traveler read that the statue was of “Ozymandias, King of Kings.”
Although the pedestal told “mighty” onlookers that they should look out at the King’s
works and thus despair at his greatness, the whole area was just covered with flat
sand. All that is left is the wrecked statue.

Analysis
"Ozymandias" is a fourteen-line, iambic pentameter sonnet. It is not a traditional one,
however. Although it is neither a Petrarchan sonnet nor a Shakespearean sonnet, the
rhyming scheme and style resemble a Petrarchan sonnet more, particularly with its 8-
6 structure rather than 4-4-4-2.

Here we have a speaker learning from a traveler about a giant, ruined statue that lay
broken and eroded in the desert. The title of the poem informs the reader that the
subject is the 13th-century B.C. Egyptian King Ramses II, whom the Greeks called
“Ozymandias.” The traveler describes the great work of the sculptor, who was able to
capture the king’s “passions” and give meaningful expression to the stone, an
otherwise “lifeless thing.” The “mocking hand” in line 8 is that of the sculptor, who had
the artistic ability to “mock” (that is, both imitate and deride) the passions of the king.
The “heart” is first of all the king’s, which “fed” the sculptor’s passions, and in turn the
sculptor’s, sympathetically recapturing the king’s passions in the stone.

The final five lines mock the inscription hammered into the pedestal of the statue. The
original inscription read “I am Ozymandias, King of Kings; if anyone wishes to know
what I am and where I lie, let him surpass me in some of my exploits.” The idea was
that he was too powerful for even the common king to relate to him; even a mighty
king should despair at matching his power. That principle may well remain valid, but
it is undercut by the plain fact that even an empire is a human creation that will one
day pass away. The statue and surrounding desert constitute a metaphor for invented
power in the face of natural power. By Shelley’s time, nothing remains but a shattered
bust, eroded “visage,” and “trunkless legs” surrounded with “nothing” but “level sands”
that “stretch far away.” Shelley thus points out human mortality and the fate of
artificial things.

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The lesson is important in Europe: France’s hegemony has ended, and England’s will
end sooner or later. Everything about the king’s “exploits” is now gone, and all that
remains of the dominating civilization are shattered “stones” alone in the desert. Note
the use of alliteration to emphasize the point: “boundless and bare”; “lone and level.”

It is important to keep in mind the point of view of “Ozymandias.” The perspective on

the statue is coming from an unknown traveler who is telling the speaker about the
scene. This helps create a sense of the mystery of history and legend: we are getting
the story from a poet who heard it from a traveler who might or might not have
actually seen the statue. The statue itself is an expression of the sculptor, who might or
might not have truly captured the passions of the king. Our best access to the king
himself is not the statue, not anything physical, but the king’s own words.

Poetry might last in a way that other human creations cannot. Yet, communicating
words presents a different set of problems. For one thing, there are problems of
translation, for the king did not write in English. More seriously, there are problems of
transcription, for apparently Shelley’s poem does not even accurately reproduce the
words of the inscription.

Finally, we cannot miss the general comment on human vanity in the poem. It is not
just the “mighty” who desire to withstand time; it is common for people to seek
immortality and to resist death and decay. Furthermore, the sculptor himself gets
attention and praise that used to be deserved by the king, for all that Ozymandias
achieved has now “decayed” into almost nothing, while the sculpture has lasted long
enough to make it into poetry. In a way, the artist has become more powerful than the
king. The only things that “survive” are the artist’s records of the king’s passion, carved
into the stone.

Perhaps Shelley chose the medium of poetry in order to create something more
powerful and lasting than what politics could achieve, all the while understanding that
words too will eventually pass away. Unlike many of his poems, “Ozymandias” does
not end on a note of hope. There is no extra stanza or concluding couplet to honor the
fleeting joys of knowledge or to hope in human progress. Instead, the traveler has
nothing more to say, and the persona draws no conclusions of his own.

Summary and Analysis of "Ode to the West Wind"

A first-person persona addresses the west wind in five stanzas. It is strong and fearsome.
In the first stanza, the wind blows the leaves of autumn. In the second stanza, the wind
blows the clouds in the sky. In the third stanza, the wind blows across an island and the
waves of the sea. In the fourth stanza, the persona imagines being the leaf, cloud, or
wave, sharing in the wind’s strength. He desires to be lifted up rather than caught low on
“the thorns of life,” for he sees himself as like the wind: “tameless, and swift, and
proud.” In the final stanza, he asks the wind to play upon him like a lyre; he wants to
share the wind’s fierce spirit. In turn, he would have the power to spread his verse
throughout the world, reawakening it.

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Analysis
The poet is directing his speech to the wind and all that it has the power to do as it takes
charge of the rest of nature and blows across the earth and through the seasons, able
both to preserve and to destroy all in its path. The wind takes control over clouds, seas,
weather, and more. The poet offers that the wind over the Mediterranean Sea was an
inspiration for the poem. Recognizing its power, the wind becomes a metaphor for
nature’s awe-inspiring spirit. By the final stanza, the speaker has come to terms with the
wind’s power over him, and he requests inspiration and subjectivity. He looks to
nature’s power to assist him in his work of poetry and prays that the wind will deliver
his words across the land and through time as it does with all other objects in nature.

The form of the poem is consistent in pattern. Each stanza is fourteen lines in length,
using the rhyming pattern of aba bcb cdc ded ee. This is called terza rima, the form used
by Dante in his Divine Comedy.
Keeping in mind that this is an ode, a choral celebration, the tone of the speaker
understandably includes excitement, pleasure, joy, and hope. Shelley draws a parallel
between the seasonal cycles of the wind and that of his ever-changing spirit. Here,
nature, in the form of the wind, is presented, according to Abrams “as the outer
correspondent to an inner change from apathy to spiritual vitality, and from imaginative
sterility to a burst of creative power.”

Thematically, then, this poem is about the inspiration Shelley draws from nature. The
“breath of autumn being” is Shelley’s atheistic version of the Christian Holy Spirit.
Instead of relying on traditional religion, Shelley focuses his praise around the wind’s
role in the various cycles in nature—death, regeneration, “preservation,” and
“destruction.” The speaker begins by praising the wind, using anthropomorphic
techniques (wintry bed, chariots, corpses, and clarions) to personalize the great natural
spirit in hopes that it will somehow heed his plea. The speaker is aware of his own
mortality and the immortality of his subject. This drives him to beg that he too can be
inspired (“make me thy lyre”) and carried (“be through my lips to unawakened earth”)
through land and time.

The first two stanzas are mere praise for the wind’s power, covered in simile and
allusion to all that which the wind has the power to do: “loosen,” “spread,” “shed,” and
“burst.” In the fourth and fifth stanzas, the speaker enters into the poem, seeking
(hoping) for equal treatment along with all other objects in nature, at least on the
productive side. The poet offers humility in the hope that the wind will assist him in
achieving his quest to “drive [his] dead thoughts over the universe.” Ultimately, the poet
is thankful for the inspiration he is able to draw from nature’s spirit, and he hopes that it
will also be the same spirit that carries his words across the land where he also can be a
source of inspiration.

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Summary and Analysis of "To a Skylark"

The persona extols the virtues of the skylark, a bird that soars and sings high in the
air. It flies too high to see, but it can be heard, making it like a spirit, or a maiden in a
tower, or a glow-worm hidden in the grass, or the scent of a rose. The skylark’s song is
better than the sound of rain and better than human poetry. What is the subject of the
bird’s song, so free of the pains of love? Perhaps it sings because it knows that the
alternative is death. The bird does not have the same longings and cares that interfere
with human happiness. Yet, it is these things that help us appreciate the pure beauty of
the birdsong; perhaps the skylark’s song could become the persona’s muse.

Analysis
The speaker seems a bit jealous of the freedom of the skylark, which travels where it
pleases. It doesn’t matter when or where—whether it is dusk (“the sunken sun”) or
morning (“the silver sphere” refers to the morning star)—the speaker feels that the
skylark is always flying high above. Even if we do not see it, or even hear it, “we feel it
is there.”

The speaker admits to not knowing whether the bird is happy, however, or from where
it receives its joy. He puts five stanzas in the middle of the poem in metaphors,
comparing the skylark to other living objects in nature (poets, a maiden, worms, and
roses), which express love, pain, and sorrow. None of them, however, has the
expressive ability of the singing bird. The poet hopes to learn about the realm of spirit
from the bird, plainly asking to teach him how it manages to continue on with its
“rapture so divine” without ever wavering in pain or sorrow. Even the happiest of
human songs, like a wedding song (“Chorus hymeneal”), does not compare to the song
of a skylark.

The song of the skylark, rather than the skylark itself, is what holds all the power. It is
the song that can have the “light of thought” of “the poet,” the “soothing love” of the
maiden, invisible existence as the “glow-worm golden,” and the aura of “a rose.” It is
this power to awaken so many different parts in nature, and make them aware to the
human mind, that Shelley wants to “be taught.”

Eventually, the speaker seems to come to terms with the idea that in some ways,
ignorance can be bliss. Yet, this makes the skylark’s joy inhuman. “We look before and
after, and pine for what is not,” but a bird lives in the moment. Nevertheless,
recognizing the beauty in the simple brain of this skylark, the speaker would be happy
to know only “half its gladness,” seeking the ability to inspire others the way he was
inspired by the bird.

This poem goes hand-in-hand with “Ode to the West Wind” in that Shelley uses
objects in nature as a catalyst for both inspiration and introspection as to what his
own purpose is as poet. Immediately referring to the skylark as a “blithe spirit” makes
the bird a supernatural object Shelley is doting upon. As he watches the bird climb

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higher and higher into the sky, he begins to employ natural metaphors commonly
found in religion and mythology to describe the aesthetic beauty and poetic devotion
he has for this “unbodied joy.”
The bird continues its upward flight until it is no longer visible, turning its song into
climatic-like events in nature: “like a cloud of fire,” “like the golden lightning,” “like a
star in heaven,” and “keen as the arrows from the morning star.” These metaphoric
elements help create the myth and power of the skylark, and represent it as a kind of
celestial being.

“What thou art we know not; What is most like thee?” is Shelley showing his
vulnerability as a poet and his jealousy of the blithe ignorance of the bird. Setting up
the closing stanzas, where he admits to wanting only “half of its gladness,” the
redirection of the poem into the mind of the poet rather than a description of its subject
reflects the struggle Shelley has with the intellectual side of experience. Like Keats’
nightingale, Shelley’s skylark is a window into the poet’s understanding of the
relationship between sadness and joy, experience and knowledge, and his desire to
only be under the influence of joy and knowledge, even though he knows that is not
possible. Finally, beyond recognizing the difference between himself and the glorious
song of the skylark, Shelley keeps the hope that someday his words will be heard and
heeded the way he is listening to and being inspired by his avian muse.

The fifteenth stanza, the question stanza, marks the beginning of Shelley’s separation
of the “mortal” from the “spiritual.” Asking questions creates room for the poet to
provide answers. The answer he comes up with is that we, unlike the song of the
skylark, are “mortals” capable of “dreaming” sweet melodies. It is not good enough to
have unreflective joy, and thus even our “sincerest laughter” is often accompanied with
“our saddest thought,” yet this is the reality we must acknowledge.

Themes
The Power of Nature
Shelley discusses the power of both seen and unseen nature throughout his entire
canon. This is primarily how critics have come to classify the bard as a "Romantic."
Due to Shelley's fervid defense of a godless universe, he often turned to the sheer
majestic power of the natural world. In the place of religious doctrine he wanted
substantiated evidence of reality.

Related Poems:

• "Mutability"

• "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"

• "Mont Blanc"

• "Ozymandias"

• "Ode to the West Wind"

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• "To a Skylark"

• "Adonais"

Atheism
The theme of a godless universe cannot be separated from Shelley’s continuous
reference to the inspiration he received from Nature. As with his Romantic
contemporary poets (of both of the first two generations), Shelley maintained a
philosophy that looked to the unfolding of our universe as a natural progress of time.
Because of Shelley’s early convictions and his expulsion as a result of his inexorable
atheistic views, he learned how unpopular atheism was in his society. As he matured,
he became much better job at hiding his religious doubt and masking it in references to
mythologies, biblical absurdity, and the comfort of self-admitted ignorance of the
world’s greatest mysteries.

Related Poems:

• "Mutability"

• "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"

• "Mont Blanc"

• "The Mask of Anarchy"

• "England in 1819"

• "Ode to the West Wind"

• "The Indian Serenade"

• "To a Skylark"

• "Adonais"

• "A Dirge"

Oppression/Injustice/Tyranny/Power
Although Shelley expresses it in many different ways, the idea of a majority being
unjustly ruled by an oppressive few (with sometimes the few being unjustly persecuted
by the many) is perhaps the most common theme in Shelley’s work. If there is one
element of social theory to take from Shelley's poetry, it should be his determination to
inspire the oppressed classes to engage in revolution against the tyranny of wicked
institutions (the royal court, legal courts, other government systems, and churches).
The upheaval in France during his lifetime, with the motions of the French Revolution
fresh in the minds of many in Europe, was a strong influence on him (see, for example,
his political pamphlet asserting a "Declaration of Rights").

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Atheism is one example of this frequent theme. Yet, beyond his outcry against the
oppressive elements of religion, Shelley saw himself as a radical voice for the people of
his time in the broad fight against unjust governments and laws.

Social tyranny, however, involved personal injustices directed at Shelley. He was

never able to come to terms with society's rejection of his unconventionality, especially
in his romantic life. Although he was standing up against the wickedness of authority
in the name of free people, he was outcast by the very people he sought to encourage,
for they disapproved of his unconventional lifestyle in love and marriage in addition to
his personal godlessness.

Related Poems:

• "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"

• "Ozymandias"

• "The Mask of Anarchy"

• "Song to the Men of England"

• "England in 1819"

• "Ode to the West Wind"

• "To a Skylark"

• "Adonais"

Revolution/Mutation/Change/Cycle
Given Shelley's general discontent, it is no surprise to see Shelley frequently
considering the theme of “change.” In Shelley and Byron’s own beliefs, this is what
separated them from their first-generation Romantic counterparts. While Blake,
Wordsworth, and Coleridge merely worked to define and express the injustices of
various powers in the years leading up to (and then during) the French Revolution,
Shelley and Byron took more of a call-to-arms approach. Shelley was never content
with just discussing the issues of state tyranny. Living by example and principle, even
if it meant expulsion from Oxford, exile from London society, and being disowned by
his family, like it or not, Shelley used his poetry to dare his readers to act upon the
ideas he was promoting. Philosophically, recognizing that nothing in this world,
whether natural or manmade, is constant, Shelley believed in a cyclical nature of our
universe and of humanity and argued that man had the right and duty to live actively.
Shelley was always on the move.

Related Poems:

• "Mutability"

• "Mont Blanc"

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• "Ozymandias"

• "The Mask of Anarchy"

• "Song to the Men of England"

• "England in 1819"

• "Ode to the West Wind"

Inspiration
Shelley never stopped believing in the changes that could end all oppression in this
world (in the Western world in particular). Wearing a bracelet inscribed with the
verse of Milton, “il buon tempo verrà”—(“the good time will come”),, Shelley held firm
to the conviction that the turn of the nineteenth century had been a pivotal point in the
way human beings interacted with one another. Without doubt, there are examples of
Shelley's times of pessimism and cynicism about the contemporary state of affairs. Yet,
behind all of the skepticism and scorn lies a determined voice, full of hope, believing
that people will eventually gather to overthrow various kinds of despotism.

Related Poems:

• "Mutability"

• "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"

• "Song to the Men of England"

• "England in 1819"

• "Ode to the West Wind"

• "To a Skylark"

• "Adonais"

Narcissism/Vanity/Self
Richard Holmes’ biography, Shelley: The Pursuit, strongly suggests that as
motivated as Shelley was to inspire social and political change and overcome
oppression, the changes he advocated hardly went beyond changes that would benefit
himself.
Arguments can be made for either side of the coin: On the one hand, Shelley can be
viewed as a selfish and adulterous lover, an absentee father, and a disloyal
countryman. On the other hand, he is a bard devoted to altruistic goals and especially
freedom--calling upon a revolutionary voice much greater than his own--and a radical
willing to sacrifice his own reputation for the betterment of mankind. Upon Shelley's
death, Byron, in reply to a somewhat unkind elegy on Shelley by John Murray, wrote:

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“You are brutally mistaken about Shelley, who was without exception, the best and
least selfish man I ever knew. I never knew one who was not a beast in comparison.”

The ambiguity is hard to escape in Shelley's poetry. Is he, as speaker, a metaphor for
the voice of everyman? Or does Shelley see himself as a superior being, primarily
pompous and condescending with his vigilante tone?

Poems to Consider:

• "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"

• "Ode to the West Wind"

• "The Indian Serenade"

• "A Dirge"

Immortality vs. Mortality

Shelley did not really challenge the apparently scientific proof of mortality, but he did
struggle with the notion of death in spirit. Death, represented often through water and
reference to Greek mythology in his works, is a common occurrence in Shelley's canon.
He is often found questioning both the future of the Romantic voice and the
immortality of other voices (Plato, Milton, Dante, Greek and Roman myths, and so
on).

Related Poems:

• "Mutability"

• "Mont Blanc"

• "Ozymandias"

• "Ode to the West Wind"

• "Adonais"

• "A Dirge"

The Heroic, Visionary Role of the Poet

In Shelley’s poetry, the figure of the poet (and, to some extent, the figure of Shelley
himself) is not simply a talented entertainer or even a perceptive moralist but a grand,
tragic, prophetic hero. The poet has a deep, mystic appreciation for nature, as in the
poem “To Wordsworth” (1816), and this intense connection with the natural world
gives him access to profound cosmic truths, as in “Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude”

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(1816). He has the power—and the duty—to translate these truths, through the use of
his imagination, into poetry, but only a kind of poetry that the public can understand.
Thus, his poetry becomes a kind of prophecy, and through his words, a poet has the
ability to change the world for the better and to bring about political, social, and
spiritual change. Shelley’s poet is a near-divine savior, comparable to Prometheus,
who stole divine fire and gave it to humans in Greek mythology, and to Christ. Like
Prometheus and Christ, figures of the poets in Shelley’s work are often doomed to
suffer: because their visionary power isolates them from other men, because they are
misunderstood by critics, because they are persecuted by a tyrannical government, or
because they are suffocated by conventional religion and middle-class values. In the
end, however, the poet triumphs because his art is immortal, outlasting the tyranny of
government, religion, and society and living on to inspire new generations.

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