P. B. Shelley as a Romantic Poet | Shelley as a Revolutionary Poet | Romanticism English Literature

SHELLEY AS A LYRIC POET

SHELLEY AS A ROMANTIC POET

 

INTRODUCTION:

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) is one of the great Romantic poets in English literature. The beginning of the 19^th century was the period of Romanticism and lyricism and Shelley was the master of writing romantic lyrics in this period of Romantic Revival. He was a great lyricist who expresses his simplest thoughts in the most melodious manner in his poems. Commonly acclaimed as one of the supreme lyrical geniuses in English poetry, Shelley’s poetry is always pleasant reading because of the lyrical qualities it embodies. 

MAJOR WORKS OF P. B. SHELLEY:

Shelley is mostly known for his classic poems like

1.  Ozymandias,  

2.  Ode to the West Wind,  

3.  To a Skylark, 

4.  The cloud 

5.  The Mosque of Anarchy. 

 

His other major works include long, visionary poems such as: 

1.   Queen Mab , Alastor

2.  The Revolt of Islam, 

3.  Adonaïs,

4.  The Triumph of Life (Unfinished work)

 

His verse dramas:

1.   The Cenci (1819)

2.   Prometheus Unbound (1820)

 

SHELLEY AS A LYRICIST:

Lyric is a short, musical poem which expresses the personal emotions and experiences of the poet. Shelley is an intense lyricist. His poems are focusing on single subject matter, full of music and melody and are subjective by nature. His lyrical temper finds expression in flashes of imagination, emotional expression of ideas, lilting melody, splendor of imagery and subjective note. His “Ode to the West Wind” and “To a Skylark” are two of his most outstanding lyrics. They exhibit Shelley’s genius as a lyric poet.

SHELLEY’S LOVE OF NATURE:

Shelley was a passionate admirer of Nature, just like the other Romantic writers. Shelley, like Wordsworth, sees Nature as one spirit, the Supreme Power, acting upon everything. The majority of his poems, including The Cloud, To a Skylark, To the Moon, Ode to the West Wind, and A Dream of the Unknown, glorify nature as their central theme.

 

SPONTANEITY:

Spontaneity is one of the most striking features of Shelley’s lyrics. He followed John Keats’ ideology – “If poetry does not come as naturally as leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all.” His lyrics are the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” to use the words of Wordsworth. In “To a Skylark” he sings as naturally as the bird. The poet’s spontaneous expression is notable in the following lines:

“Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow

The world should listen then, as I am listening now”

SHELLEY – A VISIONARY POET

In Shelley’s most poems he has expressed his strong desire and longing for an ideal life and world. That is why he is also known as a visionary poet. He had a vision or dream for a better life which he has expressed in some of his poems.  He is always yearning for what is unattainable. In ‘Ode to the West Wind’ Shelley expresses his desire to be united with the force of the wind. He appeals to the wind to lift him like ‘a wave, a leaf, a cloud’. In the last section, he vehemently urges the west wind to infuse its power into him, so that he can play the “trumpet of prophecy” and render his massage to mankind. 

SHELLEY’S PESSIMISM AND OPTIMISM:

 

Shelley’s attitude towards life is immensely pessimistic on the one hand and extremely optimistic on the other. He is pessimistic about the present and bears optimistic hopes for the future. He is unhappy to see corruption, tyranny and social problems of his times and society. But he believes in the imminent dawning of a new era- a golden millennium- when all evils would disappear giving place to a reign of love, beauty and happiness.

Stanzas Written in Dejection near Naples illustrates a mood of extreme despair. Mark these lines:

 

“Alas! I have not hope nor health,

Nor peace within nor calm around,

Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.”

 

In the same manner, in his another poem ‘A Lament’, Shelley  writes that the feeling of joy has disappeared from his life. Read these lines:

 

“Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight,
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more — 0, never more!”

In ‘Ode to the West Wind’ he writes highly pessimistic lines:

“I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!”

 

But his melancholy into ecstatic pleasure and he ends the poem with one of the most optimistic and memorable lines:

“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

 

In Hellas, Shelley has a clear and sublime vision of the future of mankind. Here, he expresses his optimism:

“The world’s great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew”

 

MUSICAL QUALITY:

 

In his ‘Defence of Poetry’, Shelley has rightly said, “Poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness, and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.” Accordingly, his lyrics are highly musical and melodious. He has the gift of lending to his lyrics the sweetest and most liquid harmonies. “To a Skylark” and “Ode to the West Wind” are both musical triumphs. Let’s take an example of his melody found in ‘To a Skylark’:

“Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,

Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought”

CONCLUSION:

Hence, we may conclude that P. B. Shelley was indeed an outstanding romantic lyricist of the 19^th century English literature. His love for nature, his pessimism and optimism, his spontaneous expression of emotions and the element of music and melody in all his lyrics make him a lyricist in the real sense of the word. 

 

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