Percy Bysshe Shelley

The theme of "Men of England" is that the majority of the workforce in England is being exploited. The poem is a call to action to the ordinary worker to stop allowing himself to be exploited and...

This famous line from a poem by Percy B. Shelley is frequently quoted whenever a type of situation arises. Winter is considered the time of death. The trees have lost their greenery, and animals...

There are many poetic devices in this poem which add to its effect. In the opening line, we see an example of internal rhyme, where two words within the same line—here "showers" and "flowers"—rhyme...

The Romantics favored extreme emotion over logic and/or reason because they felt that there was simply something more natural about emotion. We come into the world knowing how to feel, how to feel...

The theme of Shelley's 1820 poem is the phenomenon of unrequited love. In the first stanza, the speaker observes that in the natural world, specifically in the elements of water and air, there is...

Like many of the great Romantic poems, "To a Skylark" possesses a remarkable coherence, by which we mean that all of its parts relate to the whole. One can take a single line, such as this one, and...

This poem is a homage to Wordsworth. To a great extent, the Romantic movement is seen in two phases. Wordsworth and Coleridge represented the first phase of the movement. Leaders and the voices...

In this first stanza of the poem, the speaker sets the scene. It is a beautiful day: the sun is "warm," the sky is cloudless, and the ocean's waves dance "fast" and bright. The mood is therefore...

The title of the poem "A Lament" suggests that Shelley is sad about something and grieving its loss. It is unclear though what exactly he is grieving about and for. It is possible that he is...

Rhyme schemes like AAAA and AABB are rather simple rhyme schemes. The scheme AABB is a particularly common one, sometimes seen in nursery rhymes or children's poems, even. Because of its...

Shelley saw his thoughts and philosophy as representing a kind of revolutionary ideal that he saw as being important for mankind to be seized and changed by. Contextually, he was a figure who, like...

Shelley's lyricism is a poetic expression of his innermost sensibility as a man deeply engaged in the numerous political struggles of his time. Shelley was very much a political animal, a man...

Percy Bysshe Shelley is one of the leading and most prolific of the English Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century. His contributions to English literature are substantial, beginning with...

This poem is written in iambic tetrameter: four feet/iambs and a rhyme scheme of ababcc. Written in 1820 or 1821, this was composed in one of the last years of Shelley's life. The poem discusses an...

“The Cloud” personifies a cloud, the narrator who explains her moods and abilities which correspond to weather patterns and the time of day and these also correspond to its life cycle. Since it is...

Both of the poems "To a Skylark" and Ode to the West Wind" are by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Both these poems celebrate an aspect of nature, a higher order of existence that the poet compares to man's...

Earlier Romantic poets were writing during the time of the American and French revolutions, as well as the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The tone of energy, transformation, renewal...

"The Moon" by Percy Bysshe Shelley is a complicated poem though short. It has both a poetic conceit (i.e., an extended comparison between two things) and an underlying metaphor, which is the...

The correct title of this poem is England in 1819. I tried to move this question to a different group- "England in 1819" -but was unable to do so for some reason. Nevertheless, there is such a...

In the briefest terms, the poem is saying that everything is connected; everything mingles with everything else. Nothing stands alone without a relation to something else. Like "no man is an...

A good place to look for a critical analysis of any literature or poem is in literary journals and scholarly websites. Enotes also has great commentary on many of Percy Bysshe Shelley's poems, and...

While Shelley was in Naples, he experienced one of the emotional lows of his life. His daughter Clara died, and his wife Mary blamed him indirectly, it is claimed, for insisting on moving the...

This is a fairly short poem of two stanzas, each with eight lines. It follows an ABAB, CDCD rhyme scheme, although in both stanzas, the "A" rhyme is only a pararhyme ("river"/"ever,"...

Try "In these three poems, the author expresses his fascination with, adoration for, and connection to different aspects of nature." Then you could go through and find quotes that show him...

Shelley's concept of "beauty" is a vigorously debated one with some scholars connecting it with metaphysical or mystical meaning and others connecting it with a rejection of knowing beauty through...

Shelly's "A Lament" is a poem of grief for the loss of life's prime. As such, the most powerful quotes would be the portions that elucidate the theme, the speaker's feelings, and the affects of...

Several poetic elements grab the attention of the reader in this poem. First, in the beginning two lines: O world! O life! O time!On whose last steps I climb, both a speaker and the intended...

It is somewhat difficult to identify the form of Shelley's "Love's Philosophy." It certainly is not a sonnet, because a sonnet has--by definition--14 lines, and Shelley's poem has 16. Is it an ode?...

"A Defence of Poetry" is an essay written by English dramatist and poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Although he wrote the essay in 1821, it was published posthumously in 1840 as a part of a collection...

With regard to Shelley's "Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte," I believe that the sentiment the author expresses is anything but cordial. Shelley's first line quite simply states, "I...

What is most notable about this excellent poem of love and how the speaker views the world and uses the way that all of nature mixes together to support his request that his beloved kiss him is the...

The concept of the sublime in Shelley's poetry refers to the way that nature is above and beyond man and represents concepts such as eternal beauty and also power that shows at once the frailty of...

Throughout "Love's Philosophy" Shelley personifies certain aspects of the natural world. The mountains "kiss high heaven" and the waves "clasp each other." And "no sister-flower would be forgiven...

Percy Bysshe Shelley can be described as revolutionary in several ways, namely in terms of his lifestyle and personal beliefs, in terms of the content of his poetry, in light of his notions of the...

The context for these words is as follows: a traveller tells the story of finding a broken statue amid a vast empty desert of sand. It is the statue of ancient king who has a sneer on his face. On...

The sublime is a concept in romantic poetry that applies to the description of nature and how man comprehends the realm of experience that cannot be easily defined or measured. The sublime in...

Shelley is referring here to the nature of mutability, or change. The central paradox at the heart of the poem is that the one thing that doesn't change is change itself. It's always there,...

In Shelley's poem, "England in 1819," the historical allusion he makes is to the "old, mad, blind, despised, dying king." This would refer to George III. Though it seems that George was...

The structure of this sonnet is a bit confusing because it does not fit exactly into the usual pattern of a sonnet. Traditionally there are two major types of sonnet: the Petrarchan/Italian, and...

In this quote from “In the Defence of Poetry,” poet Percy B. Shelley is commenting on the unrecognized level of influence that poets have in society. Consider how a legislator is someone who writes...

There are different ways to interpret any poem. And although some poems and literary texts have traditionally been explicated to illustrate one particular allegory, this is one such poem which...

Percy Bysshe Sheley's poem "To the Moon" contains many different literary techniques (also known as poetic or rhetorical devices). ART thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven, and gazing on...

The cloud, who is the speaker in Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "The Cloud," speaks about some of the benefits he/she provides to mankind in the first stanza. Beginning in the first line, the cloud...

The overarching theme of the poem "Ozymandias" is the transience of human life and its achievements. Ozymandias was a great Egyptian pharaoh, otherwise known as Ramasses II, who once built a huge...

In many respects, Shelley's writing is the result of his perception English society and politics. It is well documented that during his university studies, Shelley was the target of bullying and...

The poem 'Ode to the west wind' by Percy Bysshe Shelley demonstrates perfectly the poet's sharply observational style and it is hardly surprising, given the breath of nature that breezes through...

Assuming the format of this exercise is unspecified, I will eschew the poetic verses for simplification’s sake. For “Ode to the West Wind,” you could say something like the following. I Oh...

The statue of Ozymandias has words carved into its pedestal that express his position and authority: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! These...

The woman named Jane to whom Shelley addressed several poems was Jane Williams, the wife of British naval officer Edward Williams. The Williamses met Shelley and his wife, Mary, in Italy, and the...

Shelley uses personification in that last stanza. The Cloud is the child of both the Earth and Water. Then as the rain clears, the Cloud once again is reborn. But Shelley again uses the human...