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Jun 12, 2017 · 1. ‘ Ozymandias ’. Published in The Examiner on 11 January 1818, ‘Ozymandias’ is perhaps Percy Bysshe Shelley’s most celebrated and best-known poem, concluding with the haunting and resounding lines: ‘“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”. Nothing beside remains. Round the decay.
- Music, When Soft Voices Die
- England in 1819
- The Cloud
- Mont Blanc
- To A Skylark
- The Masque of Anarchy
- Adonaïs
- Prometheus Unbound
- Ode to The West Wind
- Ozymandias
Synopsis:-
Comprising of justtwo stanzas of four lines, Music, When Soft Voices Die is one of the most anthologized and influence poems of Shelley. It was first published in Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley with the title “To—“. The theme of the poem is the endurance of the memories of events and of sensations. The poem has been set to music by numerous composers. Its opening and closing couplets are especially renowned and often appear in popular culture.
Synopsis:-
England in 1819 is a political sonnet, a fourteen line poem. The poem passionately attacks the ruling class of England, its king, its army, its nobility, its senate, etc. George III of the United Kingdom is referred to as “old, mad, blind, despised, and dying”; the army is described as corrupt and dangerous to liberty; the laws as “tempt and slay”; and religion as Christless and Godless. The people of England are thus starved, oppressed and hopeless. A splendid expression of anger against the...
Synopsis:-
This poem is written in first person with ”The Cloud” speaking throughout the poem. ”The Cloud” can be seen as a personification and a metaphor for the perpetual cycle of transformation and change in nature. Shelley has endowed it with powers and attributes that personify the forces of nature and can be compared to that of an immortal divine being. The Cloud was noted for its originality on first being published and in 1880, Irish writer John Todhunter called it the most popular poem of Shell...
Synopsis:-
This poem was written by Shelley during his tour to the Chamonix Valley, from where one has a wonderful view of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps with a height of 4,808m. The poem Mont Blanc is primarily about an interaction between nature and the mind. In it, the speaker compares the power of the mountain against the power of the human imagination. The main focus of the poem is the relationship between the human mind and the universe. Mont Blanc is one of the most famous odesof Pe...
Synopsis:-
This poem was inspired by song of a skylark Percy heard while taking an evening walk with his wife Mary Shelley in the country near Livorno, Italy. The speaker of the poem tells the bird how much he loves its singing. He compares it to a number of things including a star, a poet and a worm. He then states that nothing human beings can make can ever compare with the beautiful song of this bird. He concludes by saying that how he wishes he could sing with as much joy and freedom as this bird.
Synopsis:-
The Peterloo Massacre occurred at St Peter’s Field, Manchester, England, on 16 August 1819. During the incident, the English cavalry charged into a crowd gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation. 15 people were killed and more than 400 were injured. Shelley wrote this poem of 91 stanzas in response to the Peterloo Massacre. In it, he calls on the people to meet unjust forms of authority in a radically different way, through non-violent resistance. The Masque of Anarchy ha...
Synopsis:-
Famous English writer John Keats was a friend of P. B. Shelley and they often corresponded. This poem was written by Shelley seven weeks after the funeral of Keats, who died at the age of 25 in 1821. In it, Shelley uses the untimely death of the Greek god of fertility, Adonis, as an extended metaphor for the death of Keats. The poem initially describes the mourning due to the death of Adonais before the speaker urges the mourners to stop weeping as Adonais is now one with nature. He has gone...
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Prometheus is a deity in Greek mythology who stole fire from Mount Olympus and gave it to humankind. For this deed he is subjected to eternal punishment and suffering at the hands of Zeus, the King of Gods. Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound is a four act lyrical drama based on this myth. Filled with suspense, mystery and other dramatic effects, it is considered a poetic masterpiece that combines supple blank verse with a variety of complex lyric measures. Prometheus Unbound is one of the best know...
Synopsis:-
Ode to the West Wind consists of five cantos or sections. In the first part of three cantos, Shelley talks about the great powers that the west wind possesses. In the second part, comprising of the last two cantos, he concentrates on the relationship between the wind and the narrator. Shelley believed that a poet could be instrumental in bringing social and political change and this ode personifies the west wind as an agent to spread that change. Ode to the West Wind is not only one of the mo...
Synopsis:-
Ozymandias was the Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II, perhaps the most powerful king of Ancient Egypt. In Percy’s poem the speaker recalls meeting a traveller who tells him about two huge stone legs and a damaged head of a statue. The sculptor of the work had captured the pride of his subject. On the pedestal of the statue appear the words, “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” However around the ruin is nothing but “lone and level san...
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The life and works of Percy Bysshe Shelley exemplify English Romanticism in both its extremes of joyous ecstasy and brooding despair. Romanticism’s major themes—restlessness and brooding, rebellion against authority, interchange with nature, the power of the visionary imagination and of poetry, the pursuit of ideal love, and the untamed spirit ever in search of freedom—all of these ...
In 1817 Shelley published The Revolt Of Islam and the much anthologized Ozymandias appeared in 1818. Among Shelley's popular poems are the Odes To the West Wind and To a Skylark and Adonais, an elegy for Keats. In 1818 the Shelleys moved to Italy, where Byron was residing. In 1819 they went to Rome and in 1820 to Pisa.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
- 1824
The life and works of Percy Bysshe Shelley exemplify English Romanticism in both its extremes of joyous ecstasy and brooding despair. Romanticism’s major themes—restlessness and brooding, rebellion against authority, interchange with nature, the power of the visionary imagination and of poetry, the pursuit of ideal...
Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Ozymandias”. A poem to outlast empires. A painting of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822), in Rome, by Joseph Severn. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Shelley’s friend the banker Horace Smith stayed with the poet and his wife Mary (author of Frankenstein) in the Christmas season of 1817. One evening ...
‘The Cloud’ is one of the famous poems of Shelly. Shelly personifies the cloud. In other words, he gives it life and a personality.Furthermore, the poet makes the cloud tell its own life-story so that the poem becomes an autobiography of the cloud Shelly conceives of the cloud as a separate, living entity.
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