WORLD FAMOUS WRITERS - PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Percy Bysshe Shelley is one of the epic poets of the 19th century and is best known for his classic anthology verse works such as Ode to the West Wind and The Masque of Anarchy. He is also well known for his long-form poetry, including Queen Mab and Alastor.

 

Percy Shelley believed that equality was the natural state. He was ahead of his time. And yet, in the twenty-first century we still labour in an unequal, class society, and we still live with racism, exploitation and sexism.

 Shelley is best known for classic poems such as "Ozymandias", "Ode to the West Wind", "To a Skylark", "Music, When Soft Voices Die", "The Cloud" and The Masque of Anarchy.

 Percy Bysshe Shelley was a Romantic writer who wrote at least 23 poems and some essays and novels.

 

Percy Bysshe Shelley  first wife,   was Harriet.She  was 'found drowned' in the Serpentine lake in Hyde Park.

 On 10 December 1816 the body of Shelley's estranged wife Harriet was found in an advanced state of pregnancy, drowned in the Serpentine in Hyde Park, London. Shelley had made generous provision for Harriet and their children in his will and had paid her a monthly allowance as had her father.

After  this   Mary Godwin, became his second wife.

 On 8 July 1822, less than a month before his 30th birthday, Shelley drowned in a sudden storm on the Gulf of La Spezia while returning from Leghorn (Livorno) to Lerici in his sailing boat, the Don Juan.

•  Best  poems   by   Shelley.

To  a  Skylark.

 
“To a Skylark” by Percy Bysshe Shelley is an ode to the “blithe” essence of a singing skylark and how human beings are unable to ever reach that same bliss. The poem begins with the speaker spotting a skylark flying above him. ... The bird represents pure, unbridled happiness that Shelley is desperately seeking.

  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.

The theme of Shelley's poem "To a Skylark" is the power of nature to transform men's lives, specifically through the medium of poetry.

 The skylark is a symbol of the joyous spirit of the divine; it cannot be understood by ordinary, empirical methods. The poet, longing to be a skylark, muses that the bird has never experienced the disappointments and disillusionments of human life, including the diminishment of passion. A Skylark flys freely between the earth and heaven.

•  ODE TO THE WEST WIND 

 "Ode to the West Wind" is an ode, written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1819 near Florence, Italy. ... 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.

 Major themes in “Ode to the West Wind”: Power, human limitations and the natural world are the major themes of this poem. The poet adores the power and grandeur of the west wind, and also wishes that revolutionary ideas could reach every corner of the universe.

 The poem is noted for its rich images, metaphors and lyrical quality. The poet wants the help of the west wind to spread his revolutionary message among mankind all over the world, so that a new society based on great ideals such as equality, liberty and fraternity can be created.The speaker prays to the west wind to make him its lyre.

 If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share. The impulse of thy strength, only less free. Than thou, O uncontrollable!

 Throughout “Ode to the West Wind,” the speaker describes the West Wind as a powerful and destructive force: it drives away the summer and brings instead winter storms, chaos, and even death. Yet the speaker celebrates the West Wind and welcomes the destruction that it causes because it leads to renewal and rebirth.

 

• Ode to the West Wind.

 

 

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

II

Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,

Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thine aëry surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith's height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!

III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seem'd a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

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

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

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