Lecture 3 of Book Two Percy Bysshe Shelley

I. Life: born in 1792, at Fieldplace near-Horsham in Sussex;, Shelley was gentle and kind by nature, but he had a stout heart. He could not stand any injustice. At Eton he was known as" Mad Shelley. At this time he was much influenced by the utopian-socialist doctrines of William Godwin.

 Then he went to Oxford, where he took part in progressive activities and soon came into sharp conflict with the university authorities. In 1811 Shelley published an anti-religious pamphlet ' The Necessity of Atheism', believing that religion was an instrument of oppression. For this he was promptly expelled from the university and disowned by his father. While living alone in London at the age of 19, he made acquaintance with and married, out of sympathy, a school-girl of 16, Harriet Westbrook. For two years the young couple wandered about England, Ireland and Scotland.

 Shelley's marriage with Harriet had proved hasty and unsuitable, because she could not share his ideas. The unhappy union was dissolved in 1814. In 1816, Shelley married Mary Godwin, the daughter of William Godwin, the radical philosopher, and Mary Wollstonecraft, the authoress of the famous ' Vindication of the Rights of Women'. Shelley's second marriage was a happy one.

 He was compelled to leave England in 1818 and spent all the rest of his life in Italy. As early as 1816 began Shelley's friendship with Byron. While in Italy Shelley and Byron formed a closer connection with each other and from then on the names of the two poets have been linked up for ever. the English people have ever cherished his memory and poetry with love. Mary Shelley did a good job in collecting and editing his poems, and her explanatory notes have been helpful to all editors and readers of Shelley's works.

II . Major Works
"Queen Mab", Shelley's first long poem of importance, written in 1813. contains almost all his major social and political ideas. It is written in the form of a fairy-tale dream. The fairy Queen Mab carries oil in her celestial chariot a beautiful and pure maiden Lanthe, and shows her the past, present and future of mankind. Through the mouth of the fairy queen the poet presents his own views on philosophy, religion, morality, and social problems. The poem has 9 cantos. The first two cantos deal with a vision of the past; the last two with an ideal view of the future, while the five central cantos are devoted to a fierce attack on the social evils of the day.

The Revolt of Islam':

"The Revolt of Islam', another important long poem of Shelley's, was Written in 1818. A brother and a sister. Laon and Cythna are united in their common ideal of liberty, equality and fraternity and they rouse the spirit of revolt among their Islam people against their tyrants. Heroic struggle for the liberation of mankind and union with a sister-comrade were inseparable elements of Shelley's ideal, and the love between Laon and Cythna was but the symbol of their common devotion to a lofty cause. Besides the theme of revolution the poem shows Shelley's attitude towards the position of woman in society. Cythna the woman warrior seeks the intellectual liberation of her sex.

" Prometheus Unbound"

Shelley's masterpiece is "Prometheus Unbound' (1820), a lyrical drama in 4 acts. According to Greek myth, Prometheus stole fire from heaven and taught men how to use it. For this he was punished by Zeus, the supreme god, who chained him to a rock on Mt.Caucasus, where during the daytime a vulture fed on his liver, which was restored each succeeding night. So the figure of Prometheus has been 'symbolic of those noble-hearted revolutionaries, who devote themselves to the just cause of the people and suffer great pains at the hands of tyrants'.

 Though chained to the rock, Prometheus has "great allies' in the World: He is supported by innumerable forces; Mother Earth gives him strength to endure all sufferings and sends the spirits of heroes and martyrs to cheer him. Lovely shapes of Faith and Hope hover around him. His bride Asia, the spirit of love and goodness. He knows the reign of Zeus is but a passing period in the life of the universe, so to the last he refuses to yield to the tyrant in heaven. Finally, in spite of desperate resistance, Zeus is overthrown by the huge spirit Demogorgon, the symbol of change and revolution. Prometheus is released by Hercules the hero of great strength.

Lyrics on Nature and Love

Shelley's short poems on nature and love occupy a very important place in his literary career. To him, nature exists as an unseen Life of the Universe, and his love of nature is almost boundless. In Shelley's lyrics, nature is endowed with life, and the poet merges himself with it. This gives an exquisite beauty to these lyrics on nature. This passionate love of nature is but an expression of the poet's eager aspiration for something free from the care and misery of real life.

A Defence of Poetry"
In 1821, T.L.Peacock, one of Shelley's friends, published The Four Ages of Poetry", in which he asserted that poetry taking its origin in relatively primitive and simple modes of thought must inevitably decline with the progress of civilization, and in an age of rationality, such as the 19th century, it can only be an anachronism, i.e. something out of its proper time, which is barbaric and absurd. Shelley's essay' A Defence of Poetry' was written as a refutation of Peacock's view. Shelley maintained that poetry, so far from being deteriorated and made powerless by the advance of civilization is actually the indispensable agent of civilization. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world', and poetry can play a very important part in the spiritual life of society.

III. Points of view

(1) Politically Shelley was a revolutionary and a democrat. He was fighting all his life against cruelty, injustice, authority, institutional religion and the format shams of respectable society. He thought that his age was one of the war between the oppressed and the oppressors. And he believed that in spite of the defeat of the revolution, France would rise again, that the forces of liberty would again triumph in Europe.

 Literarily Shelley, with a triumphant praise of the imagination, highly exalted the role of poetry, thinking that poetry alone could free man and offer the mind a wider view of its powers. Poetry "is a more direct representation of the actions and passions, of our internal being". It is through language that the imagination most readily apprehends the ideal order of truth.

"Ode to the West Wind" (1819)

1 O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, 2 Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead 3 Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
4 Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 5 Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, 6 Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 7 The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, 8 Each like a corpse within its grave, until 9 Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow 10 Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill 11 (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) 12 With living hues and odours plain and hill: 13 Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; 14 Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

 15 Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion, 16 Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, 17 Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, 18 Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread 19 On the blue surface of thine aiery surge, 20 Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 21 Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge 22 Of the horizon to the zenith's height, 23 The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge 24 Of the dying year, to which this closing night 25 Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, 26 Vaulted with all thy congregated might 27 Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere 28 Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!

 29 Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams 30 The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 31 Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams, 32 Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, 33 And saw in sleep old palaces and towers 34 Quivering within the wave's intenser day, 35 All overgrown with azure moss and flowers 36 So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou 37 For whose path the Atlantic's level powers 38 Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below 39 The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear 40 The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 41 Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, 42 And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!

 43 If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; 44 If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; 45 A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 46 The impulse of thy strength, only less free 47 Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even 48 I were as in my boyhood, and could be 49 The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, 50 As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed 51 Scarce seem'd a vision; I would ne'er have striven 52 As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. 53 Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! 54 I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! 55 A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd 56 One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

 57 Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: 58 What if my leaves are falling like its own! 59 The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 60 Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, 61 Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, 62 My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
63 Drive my dead thoughts over the universe 64 Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth! 65 And, by the incantation of this verse, 66 Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth 67 Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! 68 Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth 69 The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, 70 If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

 Summary The speaker invokes the wild West Wind of autumn, which scatters the dead leaves and spreads seeds so that they may be nurtured by the spring, and asks that the wind, a destroyer and preserver, hear him. The speaker calls the wind the dirge / Of the dying year, and describes how it stirs up violent storms, and again implores it to hear him. The speaker says that the wind stirs the Mediterranean from his summer dreams, and cleaves the Atlantic into choppy chasms, making the sapless foliage of the ocean tremble, and asks for a third time that it hear him. The speaker says that if he were a dead leaf that the wind could bear, or a cloud it could carry, or a wave it could push, or even if he were, as a boy, the comrade of the winds wandering over heaven, then he would never have needed to pray to the wind and invoke its powers. He pleads with the wind to lift him as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!for though he is like the wind at heart, untamable and proudhe is now chained and bowed with the weight of his hours upon the earth.

 The speaker asks the wind to make me thy lyre, to be his own Spirit, and to drive his thoughts across the universe, like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth. He asks the wind, by the incantation of this verse, to scatter his words among mankind, to be the trumpet of a prophecy. Speaking both in regard to the season and in regard to the effect upon mankind that he hopes his words to have, the speaker asks: If winter comes, can spring be far behind? Form Each of the seven parts of Ode to the West Wind contains five stanzasfour three-line stanzas and a two-line couplet, all metered in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme in each part follows a pattern known as terza rima, the three-line rhyme scheme employed by Dante in his Divine Comedy. In the three-line terza rima stanza, the first and third lines rhyme, and the middle line does not; then the end sound of that middle line is employed as the rhyme for the first and third lines in the next stanza. The final couplet rhymes with the middle line of the last three-line stanza. Thus each of the seven parts of Ode to the West Wind follows this scheme: ABA BCB CDC DED EE.

 Commentary The wispy, fluid terza rima of Ode to the West Wind finds Shelley taking a long thematic leap beyond the scope of Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, and incorporating his own art into his meditation on beauty and the natural world. Shelley invokes the wind magically, describing its power and its role as both destroyer and preserver, and asks the wind to sweep him out of his torpor as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! In the fifth section, the poet then takes a remarkable turn, transforming the wind into a metaphor for his own art, the expressive capacity that drives dead thoughts like withered leaves over the universe, to quicken a new birththat is, to quicken the coming of the spring. Here the spring season is a metaphor for a spring of human consciousness, imagination, liberty, or moralityall the things Shelley hoped his art could help to bring about in the human mind. Shelley asks the wind to be his spirit, and in the same movement he makes it his metaphorical spirit, his poetic faculty, which will play him like a musical instrument, the way the wind strums the leaves of the trees. The thematic implication is significant: whereas the older generation of Romantic poets viewed nature as a source of truth and authentic experience, the younger generation largely viewed nature as a source of beauty and aesthetic experience. In this poem, Shelley explicitly links nature with art by finding powerful natural metaphors with which to express his ideas about the power, import, quality, and ultimate effect of aesthetic expression.

 Detailed Study Summary, Stanza 1 Addressing the west wind as a human, the poet describes its activities: It drives dead leaves away as if they were ghosts fleeing a wizard. The leaves are yellow and black, pale and red, as if they had died of an infectious disease. The west wind carries seeds in its chariot and deposits them in the earth, where they lie until the spring wind awakens them by blowing on a trumpet (clarion). When they form buds, the spring wind spreads them over plains and on hills. In a paradox, the poet addresses the west wind as a destroyer and a preserver, then asks it to listen to what he says. Notes, Stanza 1 1. The accent over the e in wingd (line 7) causes the word to be pronounced in two syllablesthe first stressed ....and the second unstressedenabling the poet to maintain the metric scheme (iambic pentameter). 2. clarion: Trumpet.

 Summary, Stanza 2 The poet says the west wind drives clouds along just as it does dead leaves after it shakes the clouds free of the sky and the oceans. These clouds erupt with rain and lightning. Against the sky, the lightning appears as a bright shaft of hair from the head of a Mnad. The poet compares the west wind to a funeral song sung at the death of a year and says the night will become a dome erected over the year's tomb with all of the wind's gathered might. From that dome will come black rain, fire, and hail. Again the poet asks the west wind to continue to listen to what he has to say. Notes, Stanza 2 3. Mnad: Wildly emotional woman who took part in the orgies of ....Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and revelry. 4. dirge: Funeral song. 5. congregated: Gathered, mustered.

 Summary, Stanza 3 At the beginning of autumn, the poet says, the the west wind awakened the Mediterranean Sealulled by the sound of the clear streams flowing into itfrom summer slumber near an island formed from pumice (hardened lava). The island is in a bay at Baiae, a city in western Italy about ten miles west of Naples. While sleeping at this locale, the Mediterranean saw old palaces and towers that had collapsed into the sea during an earthquake and became overgrown with moss and flowers. To create a path for the west wind, the powers of the mighty Atlantic Ocean divide (cleave) themselves and flow through chasms. Deep beneath the ocean surface, flowers and foliage, upon hearing the west wind, quake in fear and despoil themselves. (In autumn, ocean plants decay like land plants. See Shelley's note on this subject.) Once more, the poet asks the west wind to continue to listen to what he has to say. Notes, Stanza 3 6. The accent over the a in crystlline shifts the stress to the second syllable, making crystl an iamb. 7. In his notes, Shelley commented on lines 38-42:

 Summary, Stanza 4 The poet says that if he were a dead leaf (like the ones in the first stanza) or a cloud (like the ones in the second stanza) or an ocean wave that rides the power of the Atlantic but is less free than the uncontrollable west windor if even he were as strong and vigorous as he was when he was a boy and could accompany the wandering wind in the heavens and could only dream of traveling fasterwell, then, he would never have prayed to the west wind as he is doing now in his hour of need. .......Referring again to imagery in the first three stanzas, the poet asks the wind to lift him as it would a wave, a leaf, or a cloud; for here on earth he is experiencing troubles that prick him like thorns and cause him to bleed. He is now carrying a heavy burden that though he is proud and tameless and swift like the west windhas immobilized him in chains and bowed him down. Notes, Stanza 4 8. Skiey is a neologism (coined word) whose two syllables maintain iambic pentameter. The s in skiey alliterates with the s in speed, ....scarce, seem'd, and striven.

 Summary, Stanza 5 The poet asks the west wind to turn him into a lyre (a stringed instrument) in the same way that the west wind's mighty currents turn the forest into a lyre. And if the poet's leaves blow in the wind like those from the forest trees, there will be heard a deep autumnal tone that is both sweet and sad. Be "my spirit," the poet implores the wind. "Be thou me" and drive my dead thoughts (like the dead leaves) across the universe in order to prepare the way for new birth in the spring. The poet asks the wind to scatter his words around the world, as if they were ashes from a burning fire. To the unawakened earth, they will become blasts from a trumpet of prophecy. In other words, the poet wants the wind to help him disseminate his views on politics, philosophy, literature, and so on. The poet is encouraged that, although winter will soon arrive, spring and rebirth will follow it.

 Examples of Figures of Speech and Rhetorical Devices Stanza 1 Alliteration: wild West Wind (line 1). Apostrophe, Personification: Throughout the poem, the poet addresses the west wind as if it were a person. Metaphor: Comparison of the west wind to breath of Autumn's being (line 1). Metaphor: Comparison of autumn to a living, breathing creature (line 1). Anastrophe: leaves dead (line 2). Anastrophe is inversion of the normal word order, as in a man forgotten (instead of a forgotten man) or as in the opening lines of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Kahn": In Xanada did Kubla Kahn / A stately pleasure dome decree (instead of In Xanadu, Kubla Kahn decreed a stately pleasure dome). Here is another example, made up to demonstrate the inverted word order of anastrophe:

In the garden green and dewy A rose I plucked for Huey Simile: Comparison of dead leaves to ghosts. Anastrophe: enchanter fleeing (line 3). Alliteration: Pestilence-stricken multitudes (line 5). Alliteration: Pestilence-stricken multitudes (line 5). Alliteration: chariotest to (line 6). Alliteration: The wingd seeds, where they (line 7). Metaphor: Comparison of seeds to flying creatures (line 7). Simile: Comparison of each seed to a corpse (lines 7-8). Alliteration: sister of the Spring (line 9). Personification: Comparison of spring wind to a person (lines 9-10). Metaphor, Personification: Comparison of earth to a dreamer (line 10). Alliteration: flocks to feed Simile: Comparison of buds to flocks (line 11). Anastrophe: fill / . . . With living hues and odours plain and hill (lines 10, 12). Alliteration: Wild Spirit, which (line 13). Paradox: Destroyer and preserver (line 14). Alliteration: hear, O hear (line 14).

 Stanza 8 Apostrophe, Personification: The poet addresses the west wind as if it were a person. Metaphor: Comparison of the poet and the forest to a lyre, a stringed musical instrument (line 57). Metaphor: Comparison of the poet to a forest (line 58). Alliteration: The tumult of thy mighty harmonies (line 59). Alliteration: Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, (line 61). Metaphor: Comparison of the poet to the wind (line 62). Alliteration: Drive my dead thoughts over the universe (line 63). Simile: Comparison of thoughts to withered leaves (lines 63-64). Alliteration: the incantation of this (line 65). Simile: Comparison of words to ashes and sparks (66-67). Alliteration: my words among mankind (67). Metaphor: Comparison of the poet's voice to the wind as a trumpet of a prophecy (lines 68-69). Alliteration: trumpet of a prophecy (lines 68-69). Alliteration: O Wind, / If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

 Structure and Rhyme Scheme The poem contains five stanzas of fourteen lines each. Each stanza has three tercets and a closing couplet. In poetry, a tercet is a unit of three lines that usually contain end rhyme; a couplet is a two-line unit that usually contains end rhyme. Shelley wrote the tercets in a verse form called terza rima, invented by Dante Alighieri. In this format, line 2 of one tercet rhymes with lines 1 and 3 of the next tercet. In regard to the latter, consider the first three tercets of the second stanza of "Ode to the West Wind." Notice that shed (second line, first tercet) rhymes with spread and head (first and third lines, second tercet) and that surge (second line, second tercet) rhymes with verge and dirge (first and third lines, third tercet). All of the couplets in the poem rhyme, but the last couplet (lines 6970) is an imperfect rhyme called eye rhyme. Eye rhyme occurs when the pronunciation of the last syllable of one line is different from the pronunciation of the last syllable of another line even though both syllables are identical in spelling except for a preceding consonant. For example, the following end-of-line word pairs would constitute eye rhyme: cough, rough; cow, mow; daughter, laughter; rummaging, raging. In Shelley's poem, wind and behind form eye rhyme. Shelley unifies the content of the poem by focusing the first three stanzas on the powers of the wind and the last two stanzas on the poet's desire to use these powers to spread his words throughout the world.

 Meter .......Most of the lines in the poem are in iambic pentameter, although some of the pentameter lines have an extra syllable (catalexis). The following tercet from the first stanza demonstrates the iambic-pentameter format, with the stressed syllables in capitals: ..........1................2..................3.................4.............5 The WING.|.d SEEDS,.|.where THEY.|.lie COLD.|.and LOW, ..........1................2..............3..............4.............5 Each LIKE.|.a CORPSE.|.with IN.|.its GRAVE,.|.un TIL .......1............2..........3..............4..................5 Thine AZ.|.ure SIS.|.ter OF.|.the SPRING.|.shall BLOW Here is a line with catalexis: ........1...............2.............3..............4.............5............ Of SOME.|.fierce MAE.|.nad, E.|.ven FROM.|.the DIM.|.verge ....... And here is a line that does not follow the format. It is in iambic hexameter: ..........1................2..................3.................4.............5............6 Shook FROM.|.the TANG.|.gled BOUGHS.|.of HEA.|.ven AND.|.o CEAN

 Theme Irresistible Power The poet desires the irresistible power of the wind to scatter the words he has written about his ideals and causes, one of which was opposition to Britains monarchical government as a form of tyranny. Believing firmly in democracy and individual rights, he supported movements to reform government. In 1819, Englands nobility feared that working-class citizensbesieged by economic problems, including high food priceswould imitate the rebels of the French Revolution and attempt to overthrow the established order. On August 16, agitators attracted tens of thousands of people to a rally in St. Peters Field, Manchester, to urge parliamentary reform and to protest laws designed to inflate the cost of corn and wheat. Nervous public officials mismanaged the unarmed crowd and ended up killing 11 protesters and injuring more than 500 others. In reaction to this incident, Shelley wrote The Masque of Anarchy in the fall of 1819 to urge further nonviolent action against the government. This work was not published during his lifetime. However, "Ode to the West Wind," also written in the fall of 1819, was published a year later. The poem obliquely refers to his desire to spread his reformist ideas when it says, "Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth / Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!" Shelley believed that the poetry he wrote had the power bring about political reform: "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World," he wrote in another work, A Defence of Poetry.

 Study Questions and Essay Topics 1. Write an essay that attempts to answer whether Shelley succeeded in his goal to "scatter . . . my words among mankind"? The essay will ....require you to read other works by him and to research sources evaluating the impact of these works. 2. Shelley's poem uses nature imagery to convey his theme. Write a poem of your own that uses nature imagery to convey a theme. 3. To whom does line 56 refer? 4. In line 62 (Be thou me, impetuous one! ) is Shelley describing himself as impetuous? 5. What is an ode? In what ways does Shelley's poem fit the definition of an ode?

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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.

 Summary The speaker recalls having met a traveler from an antique land, who told him a story about the ruins of a statue in the desert of his native country. Two vast legs of stone stand without a body, and near them a massive, crumbling stone head lies half sunk in the sand. The traveler told the speaker that the frown and sneer of cold command on the statues face indicate that the sculptor understood well the passions of the statues subject, a man who sneered with contempt for those weaker than himself, yet fed his people because of something in his heart (The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed). On the pedestal of the statue appear the words: My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! But around the decaying ruin of the statue, nothing remains, only the lone and level sands, which stretch out around it, far away. Form Ozymandias is a sonnet, a fourteen-line poem metered in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is somewhat unusual for a sonnet of this era; it does not fit a conventional Petrarchan pattern, but instead interlinks the octave (a term for the first eight lines of a sonnet) with the sestet (a term for the last six lines), by gradually replacing old rhymes with new ones in the form ABABACDCEDEFEF.

 Commentary This sonnet from 1817 is probably Shelleys most famous and most anthologized poemwhich is somewhat strange, considering that it is in many ways an atypical poem for Shelley, and that it touches little upon the most important themes in his oeuvre at large (beauty, expression, love, imagination). Still, Ozymandias is a masterful sonnet. Essentially it is devoted to a single metaphor: the shattered, ruined statue in the desert wasteland, with its arrogant, passionate face and monomaniacal inscription (Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!). The once-great kings proud boast has been ironically disproved; Ozymandiass works have crumbled and disappeared, his civilization is gone, all has been turned to dust by the impersonal, indiscriminate, destructive power of history. The ruined statue is now merely a monument to one mans hubris, and a powerful statement about the insignificance of human beings to the passage of time. Ozymandias is first and foremost a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of political power, and in that sense the poem is Shelleys most outstanding political sonnet, trading the specific rage of a poem like England in 1819 for the crushing impersonal metaphor of the statue. But Ozymandias symbolizes not only political powerthe statue can be a metaphor for the pride and hubris of all of humanity, in any of its manifestations. It is significant that all that remains of Ozymandias is a work of art and a group of words; as Shakespeare does in the sonnets, Shelley demonstrates that art and language long outlast the other legacies of power.

 Of course, it is Shelleys brilliant poetic rendering of the story, and not the subject of the story itself, which makes the poem so memorable. Framing the sonnet as a story told to the speaker by a traveller from an antique land enables Shelley to add another level of obscurity to Ozymandiass position with regard to the readerrather than seeing the statue with our own eyes, so to speak, we hear about it from someone who heard about it from someone who has seen it. Thus the ancient king is rendered even less commanding; the distancing of the narrative serves to undermine his power over us just as completely as has the passage of time. Shelleys description of the statue works to reconstruct, gradually, the figure of the king of kings: first we see merely the shattered visage, then the face itself, with its frown / And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command; then we are introduced to the figure of the sculptor, and are able to imagine the living man sculpting the living king, whose face wore the expression of the passions now inferable; then we are introduced to the kings people in the line, the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. The kingdom is now imaginatively complete, and we are introduced to the extraordinary, prideful boast of the king: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! With that, the poet demolishes our imaginary picture of the king, and interposes centuries of ruin between it and us: 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.

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Song-To the Men of England Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay ye low? Wherefore weave with toil and care The rich robes your tyrants wear?
Wherefore feed and clothe and save, From the cradle to the grave, Those ungrateful drones who would Drain your sweat -nay, drink your blood? Wherefore, Bees of England, forge Many a weapon, chain, and scourge, That these stingless drones may spoil The forced produce of your toil? Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, Shelter, food, love's gentle balm? Or what is it ye buy so dear With your pain and with your fear?

The seed ye sow another reaps; The wealth ye find another keeps; The robes ye weave another wears; The arms ye forge another bears. Sow seed, -but let no tyrant reap; Find wealth, -let no imposter heap; Weave robes, -let not the idle wear; Forge arms, in your defence to bear.
Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells; In halls ye deck another dwells. Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see The steel ye tempered glance on ye. With plough and spade and hoe and loom, Trace your grave, and build your tomb, And weave your winding-sheet, till fair England be your sepulchre! Meet us on Facebook

 TO A SKYLARK Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun O'er which clouds are bright'ning, Thou dost float and run, Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

 The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of Heaven In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight:
Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear Until we hardly see--we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air With thy voice is loud. As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

 What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

 Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aerial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:
Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves. Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

 Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
Chorus hymeneal Or triumphal chaunt Matched with thine, would be all But an empty vaunt- A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

 With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be: Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

 Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

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!

 Summary The speaker, addressing a skylark, says that it is a blithe Spirit rather than a bird, for its song comes from Heaven, and from its full heart pours profuse strains of unpremeditated art. The skylark flies higher and higher, like a cloud of fire in the blue sky, singing as it flies. In the golden lightning of the sun, it floats and runs, like an unbodied joy. As the skylark flies higher and higher, the speaker loses sight of it, but is still able to hear its shrill delight, which comes down as keenly as moonbeams in the white dawn, which can be felt even when they are not seen. The earth and air ring with the skylarks voice, just as Heaven overflows with moonbeams when the moon shines out from behind a lonely cloud. The speaker says that no one knows what the skylark is, for it is unique: even rainbow clouds do not rain as brightly as the shower of melody that pours from the skylark. The bird is like a poet hidden / In the light of thought, able to make the world experience sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. It is like a lonely maiden in a palace tower, who uses her song to soothe her lovelorn soul. It is like a golden glow-worm, scattering light among the flowers and grass in which it is hidden. It is like a rose embowered in its own green leaves, whose scent is blown by the wind until the bees are faint with too much sweet. The skylarks song surpasses all that ever was, / Joyous and clear and fresh, whether the rain falling on the twinkling grass or the flowers the rain awakens.

 Calling the skylark Sprite or Bird, the speaker asks it to tell him its sweet thoughts, for he has never heard anyone or anything call up a flood of rapture so divine. Compared to the skylarks, any music would seem lacking. What objects, the speaker asks, are the fountains of thy happy strain? Is it fields, waves, mountains, the sky, the plain, or love of thine own kind or ignorance or pain? Pain and languor, the speaker says, never came near the skylark: it loves, but has never known loves sad satiety. Of death, the skylark must know things more true and deep than mortals could dream; otherwise, the speaker asks, how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? For mortals, the experience of happiness is bound inextricably with the experience of sadness: dwelling upon memories and hopes for the future, mortal men pine for what is not; their laughter is fraught with some pain; their sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. But, the speaker says, even if men could scorn / Hate and pride and fear, and were born without the capacity to weep, he still does not know how they could ever approximate the joy expressed by the skylark. Calling the bird a scorner of the ground, he says that its music is better than all music and all poetry. He asks the bird to teach him half the gladness / That thy brain must know, for then he would overflow with harmonious madness, and his song would be so beautiful that the world would listen to him, even as he is now listening to the skylark.

 Form The eccentric, songlike, five-line stanzas of To a Skylarkall twenty-one of themfollow the same pattern: the first four lines are metered in trochaic trimeter, the fifth in iambic hexameter (a line which can also be called an Alexandrine). The rhyme scheme of each stanza is extremely simple: ABABB.

 Commentary If the West Wind was Shelleys first convincing attempt to articulate an aesthetic philosophy through metaphors of nature, the skylark is his greatest natural metaphor for pure poetic expression, the harmonious madness of pure inspiration. The skylarks song issues from a state of purified existence, a Wordsworthian notion of complete unity with Heaven through nature; its song is motivated by the joy of that uncomplicated purity of being, and is unmixed with any hint of melancholy or of the bittersweet, as human joy so often is. The skylarks unimpeded song rains down upon the world, surpassing every other beauty, inspiring metaphor and making the speaker believe that the bird is not a mortal bird at all, but a Spirit, a sprite, a poet hidden / In the light of thought.

 In that sense, the skylark is almost an exact twin of the bird in Keatss Ode to a Nightingale; both represent pure expression through their songs, and like the skylark, the nightingale wast not born for death. But while the nightingale is a bird of darkness, invisible in the shadowy forest glades, the skylark is a bird of daylight, invisible in the deep bright blue of the sky. The nightingale inspires Keats to feel a drowsy numbness of happiness that is also like pain, and that makes him think of death; the skylark inspires Shelley to feel a frantic, rapturous joy that has no part of pain. To Keats, human joy and sadness are inextricably linked, as he explains at length in the final stanza of the Ode on Melancholy. But the skylark sings free of all human error and complexity, and while listening to his song, the poet feels free of those things, too. Structurally and linguistically, this poem is almost unique among Shelleys works; its strange form of stanza, with four compact lines and one very long line, and its lilting, songlike diction (profuse strains of unpremeditated art) work to create the effect of spontaneous poetic expression flowing musically and naturally from the poets mind. Structurally, each stanza tends to make a single, quick point about the skylark, or to look at it in a sudden, brief new light; still, the poem does flow, and gradually advances the mininarrative of the speaker watching the skylark flying higher and higher into the sky, and envying its untrammeled inspirationwhich, if he were to capture it in words, would cause the world to listen.

The Cloud I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noon-day dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the Sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.

10

I sift the snow on the mountains below, And their great pines groan aghast; And all the night 'tis my pillow white, While I sleep in the arms of the blast. Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers, Lightning my pilot sits; In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, It struggles and howls at fits; Over Earth and Ocean, with gentle motion, This pilot is guiding me, Lured by the love of the genii that move In the depths of the purple sea; Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Over the lakes and the plains, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, The Spirit he loves remains; And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

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The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes, And his burning plumes outspread, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, When the morning star shines dead; As on the jag of a mountain crag, Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit In the light of its golden wings. And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit Sea beneath, Its ardours of rest and of love, 40 And the crimson pall of eve may fall From the depth of Heaven above, With wings folded I rest, on mine ery nest, As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden with white fire laden Whom mortals call the Moon, Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor By the midnight breezes strewn; And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, Which only the angels hear, May have broken the woof, of my tent's thin roof, The stars peep behind her, and peer; And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, Are each paved with the moon and these.

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I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl; 60 The volcanos are dim and the stars reel and swim When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof -The mountains its columns be! The triumphal arch, through which I march With hurricane, fire, and snow, When the Powers of the Air, are chained to my chair, Is the million-coloured Bow; 70 The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove While the moist Earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores, of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die -For after the rain, when with never a stain The pavilion of Heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams, Build up the blue dome of Air -80 I silently laugh at my own cenotaph And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, live a ghost from the tomb, I arise, and unbuild it again. --

 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL "The Cloud" brings out the ethereal quality of Shelly's poetry. Often the mysteries of life and death have fascinated the poet and he has dealt with this mystery in his various poems. This poem is no exception. The Poem contains subtle hints about the eternal cycle of life and death. In this poem we see the never ending water cycle and the transfer of water from liquid to vapour and again to the liquid form, that the formation of the cloud and its subsequent transfer into rain and again its reformation. This in fact is an allegorical hint towards the eternal cycle of life and death. According to the belief death is not the full stop to life but the beginning of a new life and the preparation of rebirth. This belief is again at par with our oriental school of thought.