His Life and Literature
Percy Bysshe Shelley , the son of a baronet , was born at Field Place , Warnham in Sussex , on August 4 , 1792. He was educated at Eton . Afterwards he went to Oxford . He was rusticated from Oxford for publishing , at the tender age of nineteen , the pamphlet entitled " The Necessity of Atheism " . Shelley returned from Oxford and then , under a momentary impulse , married Harriet Westbrook . His conjugal life was unhappy , as Shelley had little mental affinity with Harriet . Shelley fell in love with Mary , the daughter of William Godwin , and eloped with her . Two years later , Harriet committed suicide . Shelley married Mary . But he became rather unpopular in his own land and society for the certain stories of his cruel behaviour with his deceased wife Harriet . In 1818 , he and Mary left England forever and went to Italy , living in Rome , Venice , Pisa and other places . On July 8 , 1822 , Shelley was drowned , when the boat carrying him capsized in the violent storm on the Mediterranean Sea .
Shelley's chief works are Queen Mab , Alastor , Revolt of Islam , Prometheus Unbound , The Mask of Anarchy , The Witch of Atlas , Hellas , Adonais , Ode to the West Wind , To a Skylark , and several other long and short poems .
Shelley died early . But he remains till now one of the greatest English poets of the world . His imaginative faculty , his exuberant emotional vivacity , his deep love and feeling for man and nature , and his prophetic hope for mankind mingle together to give his poetry a force that is at once enlivening , ennobling and enchanting . Shelley is an idealist - a reformer - a preacher . His feeling is the feeling of love for all the oppressed and enchained people . His voice is the voice of protest against the tyranny and exploitation of the bench of bishops and kings . His dream is the dream of the resurrection of this much worn out world . His hope is of the establishment of a realm of peace and progress where Man will be truly Man .
Shelley as a Poet
of the romantic poets , who graced English poetry in the first quarter of the nineteenth century , Shelley was , perhaps , most vitally inspired . He was essentially different from his great contemporaries . He stood rather alone in his age as a poet of a forlorn hope for mankind . At the same time , he has remained the most enchanting poet in the great age of romantic poetry and represented the essence of romance in poetry .
Wordsworth's poetry , though much conditioned by the French Revolution , hardly embodies any actual revolutionary spirit . It is , however , in Shelley , that the spirit of revolution is found manifested with zeal and depth . Liberty is the very breath of his
poetic spirit . Freedom from the tyranny of political despotism and religious dogmatism is the very ideal of his literary pursuits . His poetry is the voice of the revolution , rather the gospel of the children of the revolution - for a thorough change of the existing state of absolutism and repression all over Europe . His clarion call of revolution is distinct and inspired :
" Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many - they are few . " ( The Mask of Anarchy )
Shelley's revolutionary spirit , however , has an optimistic inspiration . An ideal of the social and political millennium to dawn on humanity animates his poetic vision and his poetry visualizes a world of all joy , love and hope :
............to hope till Hope creates From its own wrecks the thing it contemplates
..............
This is alone Life , Joy , Empire and Victory . ( Prometheus Unbound )
But Shelley's poetry is more than this . No other English poet , perhaps , has the Shelleyan pursuit of loveliness . In his language , ' poetry turns all things to loveliness ' . Shelley's poetry is all alive with loveliness in man and nature . His poetic imagination turns the little bird skylark into a ' blithe spirit ' , ' an unbodied joy ' , and ' the cloud ' into a romantic heroine . The skylark in its high station in the sky is described as all lovely
" Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought . "
His cloud basks , no doubt in a lovely setting , in ' Heaven's blue smile ' and rests on its ' airy nest as still as a brooding dove . The west wind , too , is presented with a romantic loveliness
' Before whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing .
" Again , of all English poets , Shelley is most completely lyrical . Lyricism is found triumphant in some of his illustrious poems , such as To a Skylark , To Night , Ode to the West Wind , The Cloud , Stanzas Written in Dejection , Lines Written on the Eugenean Hills , and so on . Of course , all of them are not of the equal standard or merit . Som of them , like Time , A Lament , When the Lamp is Shattered , One Word is too often Profaned , etc. , are nothing more than brief lyrical fragments . More characteristic of Shelley are some long and elaborate poems , which are lyrical in spirit , though not in form , like Adonais , Lines written in the Eugenean Hills , and a few others . Shelley's lyrical notes are , however , most perfect in some of his poems which are rather of a moderate length . Such poems are Ode to the West Wind , To a Skylark , The Cloud and Ode to Naples . To the Night is a short poem , but it retains well Shelley's characteristic lyricism in its content and form .
A lyrical poem is propelled by a single emotion . This emotion may have varied representations to elucidate its nature . But there is always a singleness of the poet's emotion . In his lyrics , like Ode to the West Wind , To a Skylark , To the Night and so on , Shelley's emotion is single , although it is modulated to enhance the effects of his poetic appeal .
Shelley's impulsiveness , again , is prompted by his idealism . His lyrics are full of his high ideals . His idealism is noted well in his celebrated lyrics , like Ode to the West Wind , To a Skylark , and Written among the Eugenean Hills . The highest point of Shelley's idealism is , perhaps , reached in his message of resurrection to the dark and heedless world in his great lyric Ode to the West Wind :
" If Winter comes , can Spring be far behind ? "
The process , in much of Shelley's lyrical poetry , lies in the poet's realisation of a and most symbol for his own emotional pattern in some natural objects . His be inspired lyrics arise , when his emotion finds an appropriate outlet through some natural object . This is particularly seen in Ode to the West Wind , where the wind adequately symbolizes the revolutionary zeal of the poet . In To a Skylark , again , there is felt much harmony between the bird and its creator , and the skylark seems to be Shelley's other self .
Shelley's poetry is intensely personal , although it is never like Byron's , an advocacy of his own self . His poems are found to echo his own joy , hope and sorrow in a profound measure .
A lyric proper must be simple in form and ornamental . Its emotion must be intense and genuine . Shelley's are the swift , yet simple forms of lyrics . They have the genuine warmth of the poet's feeling . Again , in a perfect lyric , there is a fine harmony between the poet's emotion and his music . Shelley's excellence is enchanting in this respect . The vibration of rhythms with the vibration of emotion is the chief loveliness of Shelley's lyrical music . In Ode to the West Wind , for instance , the poet's emotion communicates itself excellently to the very metre , and the enchanting melody of the poem runs in a grand harmony with the high current of the poet's thought .
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