Study Notes

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Percy Bysshe Shelley Date: 5/16/2022 Biography: Percy Bysshe Shelley, (born Aug. 4, 1792, Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, Eng.—died July 8, 1822, at sea off Livorno, Tuscany), English Romantic poet.

The heir to rich estates, Shelley was a rebellious youth who was expelled from Oxford in 1811 for refusing to admit authorship of The Necessity of Atheism.

Later that year he eloped with Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a tavern owner.

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He gradually channeled his passionate pursuit of personal love and social justice into poetry.

His first major poem, Queen Mab (1813), is a utopian political epic revealing his progressive social ideals.

In 1814 he eloped to France with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (see Mary Shelley); in 1816, after Harriet drowned herself, they were married.

In 1818 the Shelleys moved to Italy. Away from British politics, he became less intent on social reform and more devoted to expressing his ideals in poetry.

He composed the verse tragedy The Cenci (1819) and his masterpiece, the lyric drama Prometheus Unbound (1820), which was published with some of his finest shorter poems, including “Ode to the West Wind” and “To a Skylark.”

Epipsychidion (1821) is a Dantean fable about the relationship of sexual desire to spiritual love and artistic creation.

Adonais (1821) commemorates the death of John Keats.

Shelley drowned at age 29 while sailing in a storm off the Italian coast, leaving unfinished his last and possibly greatest visionary poem, The Triumph of Life.

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Ode to West Wind: 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 wind’s “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 proud—he is now chained and bowed with the weight of his hours upon the earth.

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● 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 stanzas—four 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.

● n 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:

6 ● 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 birth”—that is, to quicken the coming of the spring.

● Here the spring season is a metaphor for a “spring” of human consciousness, imagination, liberty, or morality—all the things Shelley hoped his art could help to bring about in the human mind.

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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.

7 ● 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.

● Introduction: ● Ode to the West Wind" is an ode, written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1819 in Cascine wood near Florence, Italy. ● It was originally published in 1820 by Charles in London as part of the collection Prometheus Unbound, A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts, With Other Poems.[2] ● Perhaps more than anything else, Shelley wanted his message of reform and revolution spread, and the wind becomes the trope for spreading the word of change through the poet-prophet figure. ● Some also believe that the poem was written in response to the loss of his son, William (born to Mary Shelley) in 1819. ● The ensuing pain influenced Shelley. The poem allegorises the role of the poet as the voice of change and revolution. ● At the time of composing this poem, Shelley without doubt had the Peterloo Massacre of August 1819 in mind. His other poems written at the same time—"The Masque of Anarchy", Prometheus Unbound, and "England in

8 1819"—take up these same themes of political change, revolution, and role of the poet.

Indian Serenade: ● Summary ● Addressing his beloved, the speaker says that he arises from “dreams of thee / In the first sweet sleep of night, / When the winds are breathing low, / And the stars are shining bright.” He says that “a spirit in my feet” has led him—”who knows how?”—to his beloved’s chamber-window. Outside, in the night, the “wandering airs” faint upon the stream, “the Champak odours fail / Like sweet thoughts in a dream,” and the nightingale’s complaint” dies upon her heart—as the speaker says he must die upon his beloved’s heart. Overwhelmed with emotion, he falls to the ground (“I die, I faint, I fail!”), and implores his beloved to lift him from the grass, and to rain kisses upon his lips and eyelids. He says that his cheek is cold and white, and his heart is loud and fast: he pleads, “Oh! press it to thine own again, / Where it will break at last.”

● Form

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● The trancelike, enchanting rhythm of this lovely lyric results from the poet’s use of a loose pattern of regular dimeters that employ variously trochaic, anapestic, and iambic stresses. The rhyme scheme is tighter than the poem’s rhythm, forming a consistent ABCBADCD pattern in each of the three stanzas.

● Commentary ● This charming short lyric is one of Shelley’s finest, simplest, and most exemplary love poems. It tells a simple story of a speaker who wakes, walks through the beautiful Indian night to his beloved’s window, then falls to the ground, fainting and overcome with emotion. The lush sensual language of the poem evokes an atmosphere of nineteenth-century exoticism and Orientalism, with the “Champak odours” failing as “The wandering airs they faint / On the dark, the silent stream,” as “the winds are breathing low, / And the stars are shining bright.” The poet employs a subtle tension between the speaker’s world of inner feeling and the beautiful outside world; this tension serves to motivate the poem, as the inner dream gives way to the journey, imbuing “a spirit in my feet”; then the outer world becomes a mold or model for the speaker’s inner feeling (“The nightingale’s complaint / It dies upon her heart, / As I must die on thine...”), and at that moment the speaker is overwhelmed by his powerful emotions, which overcome his body: “My cheek is cold and white, alas! / My heart beats loud and fast...” ● In this sense “The Indian Serenade” mixes the sensuous, rapturous aestheticism of a certain kind of Romantic love poem (of Keats, for example) with the

10 transcendental emotionalism of another kind of Romantic love poem (often represented by Coleridge). The beautiful landscape of fainting airs and low-breathing winds acts upon the poet’s agitated, dreamy emotions to overwhelm him in both the aesthetic and emotional realm—both the physical, outer world and the spiritual, inner world—and his body is helpless to resist the resultant thunderclap: “I die! I faint! I fail!”

● Introduction: ● “The Indian Serenade” was first published in 1822 as the "Song written for an "Indian Air" but was republished by Mary Shelley in 1824 after Percy Shelley's death as "Lines to an Indian Air". ● The poem was published in the second issue of “The Liberal” on the 1st of January 1823. This issue contained "Song, Written for an Indian Air" by P.B. Shelley and "A Tale of the Passions, or, the Death of Despina" by Mary Shelley. ● The poem is currently included in the Harvard manuscript book and is recognised all around the world, for its lyrical language which is one of Shelley's simplest yet most beautiful poems.

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Lover’s Philosophy: ● Introduction: ● “Love’s Philosophy” is a poem by the British Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley first published in 1819. ●

The poem is a kind of seductive argument, offering proof of a “divine law” that the world is full of interconnectedness—and that therefore the speaker and the person whom the speaker is addressing should become "connected" too.

● Dominated by its central conceit—that love is a kind of union replicated in the natural and spiritual realms—the poem has more in common with works by 17th century Metaphysical poets such as John Donne ("The Flea") and Andrew Marvell ("To His Coy Mistress") than with works by the Romantic poets of Shelley’s day (and indeed to Shelley's other poems). ● Through ingeniously constructed images and metaphors, poets like Donne and Marvell sought to make the acceptance of an amorous proposal seem like the only logical response—the same approach adopted by Shelley here.

● Summary: ● The first stanza begins with descriptions of the natural world 'mixing' with itself and pushes this as a good example for the poet and their beloved. ●

This is addressed by the tender and slightly archaic 'thee'.

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What is then painted is a picture of an airy, nature-loving poet describing the scene in front of him and his fellow walker.

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He then draws a lesson from it, turning to speak to his silent beloved.

● In the second stanza of Love's Philosophy this address is intensified. ● The poet instructs the reader, in the position of the beloved, to look around and 'see the mountains kiss high heaven'. ● The genial, playful invitation of a 'kiss' is an easier finish that the hope to 'mingle' in each other's being. ● A rhetorical question at the end of each stanza begs a response of some sort surely, the poet hopes, a wordless one!

● Form and structure ● Love's Philosophy has a trochaic metre - a pattern of stressed, then unstressed syllables, with four beats in the first three lines of each quatrain and three in the fourth. The two stanzas are each a pair of alternately-rhymed quatrains, rhyming ababcdcd. There is a strong relationship with the archetypal ballad metre used by many romantic poets. The trochaic metre also gives the poem a slightly heavy, dreamy feel when read aloud, particularly since ten of the sixteen lines are full trochaic, disyllabic rhymes (like ocean/emotion or heaven/forgiven).

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● Several lines begin with an extra 'upbeat' (properly called an 'analectic' syllable as it extends the normal length of a line). This slight irregularity helps the poem feel spontaneous, despite the cleverness of its composition.

● Language ● The natural imagery in this poem is relatively simplistic and uncomplicated: 'fountains', 'rivers' and 'oceans' are all unmodified and free from descriptive clutter. The 'winds of heaven' and 'high heaven' can scarcely be called richly descriptive. 'moonbeams', 'mountains' and the 'sea' are also unmodified. ●

I think there is an innocence about this sort of language, fitting the scene of two lovers on a hilltop. He needn't describe what we can see with our own eyes, after all.

● This innocence continues in the description of a 'sister-flower' and its 'brother'.

The relationship the poet imagines between flowers is fraternal and childish, so the word 'disdain' feels out of place as the idea of aloofness between siblings. ● Perhaps the use of 'thine' and 'thou' rather than 'your' and 'you' also reinforces this. In Shelley's day, thee and thou were still in use, but less so among people of higher status. ● Repetitive uses of 'clasp' describing how the waves hold one another, and how the immaterial light of the sun seems to touch the earth, bring this very physical world to the fore.

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● It certainly has a sensual, if not sexual, connotation, but its effect is rather more repetition to persuade, rather than shock. ● After all, if everything in nature 'clasps' freely, and if the elements around 'mix' with one another so readily, even obeying the command of God (if, unlike Shelley, his reader still believes in God's command to procreate), then turning down the poet's request for a kiss is like disagreeing with the laws of nature and God, isn't it?