I Fear Thy Kisses, Gentle Maiden -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Guest poem sent in by Anagha Bhat

(Poem #1946) I Fear Thy Kisses, Gentle Maiden I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden; Thou needest not fear mine; My spirit is too deeply laden Ever to burden thine. I fear thy mien, thy tone, thy motion; Thou needest not fear mine; Innocent is the heart's devotion With which I worship thine. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Today, I came to ministrels looking for one of my favourit-est-est poems
ever, and was shocked to not find it there. Had to dig out my paperback
book... in this day and age... *sigh*

The reason I love this poem is that I love the knight-in-shining-armour
spirit of the poet. A perfect gentleman, and every woman's dream man! That's
on the surface... Lemme not go deeper!

Anagha

[Links]

Biography:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley

To the Moon -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Guest poem sent in by Aseem

(Poem #1741) To the Moon Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth,— And ever-changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy? -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Every time I look through the Minstrels archive, I'm always saddened to see
how poorly represented Shelley is on the site (yes, Martin, I know you don't
much care for him, but still). All right, so he tends to get a little
carried away; yes, he doesn't have quite the ear that Keats does, or Byron;
fine, his images tend to pile one upon the other until they become
suffocating, almost annoying (What was it Shakespeare said: "give me excess
of it, that surfeiting / The appetite may sicken and so die."); true, he
could have used a good editor. All of that does not detract from the fact
that Shelley is, IMHO, one of the most visionary and passionate of poets to
grace the English language, one of its most strident and lyrical voices; a
young man capable, at his best, of such burning purity of image that few
poets before or since could match him.  Certainly a poet who deserves to be
better represented on the site than he currently is.

This poem is the first step towards achieving that representation. It's a
brilliant little gem of a poem, a glorious example of just how stunning
Shelley could be when he didn't overdo it. The double image of the moon
roaming disconsolate through the night sky and Youth searching restlessly
for spiritual beauty is both crystal clear and oddly compelling. To read
this poem aloud is to experience the sadness and the despair of the speaker
- no mean feat for a poem that is all of six lines long. This is a
quintessentially romantic poem: it combines a sense of haunting lyricism
with one of the most spectacularly visual closing lines in all of poetry:
'Ever changing like a joyless eye / That finds no object worth its
constancy'. (The failure of the last line to rhyme only heightens the
overall impact of the stanza in my view - it sharpens the ending, makes it,
somehow, more fragile).

It's always seemed to me that Shelley, with his restless, tormented, uneven
poems, with his visions of political and lyrical grandeur combined with
periods of dark depression, is truly a poet of a 'different birth'. The
least we can do is make sure he has all his best poems with him, to keep him
company.

Aseem

[Martin adds]

While it is true that I dislike the majority of Shelley's work, I have never
denied his essential genius, and I have ever urged readers who *are* fans of
his poetry to fill up the lacuna. I heartily agree that he deserves to be
better represented in the archives, but my primary criterion for selecting a
poem has always been my enjoyment of said poem; therefore, I leave the
Shelley poems to people like Aseem, who has done a far better job of writing
about him than I could have. (I believe that I speak for Thomas too in this
regard.)

martin

The Masque of Anarchy (extract) -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

We don't often run two consecutive poems by the same poet, but after my
commentary yestarday, Amulya was moved to offer this in
defense of Shelley:

(Poem #1605) The Masque of Anarchy (extract) XXXVII. "Men of England, Heirs of Glory, Heroes of unwritten story, Nurslings of one mighty mother, Hopes of her, and one another, XXXVIII. "Rise, like lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fall'n on you. XXXIX. "What is Freedom? Ye can tell That which Slavery is too well, For its very name has grown To an echo of your own. XL. "'Tis to work, and have such pay, As just keeps life from day to day In your limbs, as in a cell For the tyrants' use to dwell: XLI. "So that ye for them are made, Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade; With or without your own will, bent To their defense and nourishment. XLII. "'Tis to see your children weak With their mothers pine and peak; When the winter winds are bleak: They are dying whilst I speak. XLIII. "'Tis to hunger for such diet, As the rich man in his riot Casts to the fat dogs that lie Surfeiting beneath his eye. XLIV. "'Tis to let the Ghost of Gold Take from toil a thousand fold, More than e'er its substance could In the tyrannies of old: XLV. "Paper coin--that forgery Of the title deeds, which ye Hold to something of the worth Of the inheritance of Earth. E XLVI. "'Tis to be a slave in Soul, And to bold no strong controul. Over your own wills, but be All that others make of ye. XLVII. "And at length when ye complain, With a murmur weak and vain, 'Tis to see the tyrant's crew Ride over your wives and you: Blood is on the grass like dew. XLVIII. "Then it is to feel revenge, Fiercely thirsting to exchange Blood for blood-and wrong for wrong: DO NOT THUS, WHEN YE ARE STRONG. XLIX. "Birds find rest in narrow nest, When-weary of the winged quest; Beasts find fare in woody lair, When storm and snow are in the air. E 2 L. "Asses, swine, have litter spread, And with fitting food are fed; All things have a home but one: Thou, oh Englishman, hast none! LI. "This is Slavery-savage men, Or wild beasts within a den, Would endure not as ye do: But such ills they never knew. LII. "What art thou, Freedom? Oh! could Slaves Answer from their living graves This demand, tyrants would flee Like a dream's dim imagery. LIII. Thou art not, as impostors say, A shadow soon to pass away, A superstition, and a name Echoing from the eaves of Fame. LIV. "For the labourer thou art bread, And a comely table spread, From his daily labour come, In a neat and happy home. LV. "Thou art clothes, and fire, and food For the trampled multitude: NO-in countries that are free Stich starvation cannot be, As in England now we see. LVI. "To the rich thou art. a check; When his foot is on the neck Of his victim; thou dost make That he treads upon a snake. LVII. "Thou art Justice--ne'er for gold May thy righteous laws be sold, As laws are in England:--thou Sheild'st alike the high and low. "Thou art Wisdom-Freedom never Dreams that God will damn for ever All who think those things untrue, Of which priests make such ado LIX. "Thou art Peace-never by thee Would blood and treasure wasted be, As tyrants wasted them, when all Leagued to quench thy flame in Gaul, LX. "What if English toil and blood Was poured forth-, even as a flood! It availed,--oh Liberty! To dim --- but not extinguish thee. LXI. "Thou art Love--the rich have kist Thy feet, and like him following Christ, Give their substance to the free, And through the rough world follow thee. LXII. "Oh turn their wealth to arms, and make War for thy beloved sake, On wealth and war and fraud: whence they Drew the power which is their prey. LXIII. "Science, and Poetry, and Thought, Are thy lamps; they make the lot Of the dwellers in a cot So serene, they curse it not. LXIV. "Spirit, Patience, Gentleness, All that can adorn and bless, Art thou: let deeds, not words, express Thine exceeding loveliness. LXV. "Let a great assembly be Of the fearless, of the free, On some spot of English ground, Where the plains stretch wide around. LXVI. "Let the blue sky overhead, The green earth, on which ye tread, All that must eternal be, Witness the solemnity. LXVII. "From the corners uttermost Of the bounds of English coast; From every but, village, and town, Where those who live and suffer, moan For others' misery and their own: LXVIII. "From the workhouse and the prison, Where pale as corpses newly risen, Women, children, young, and old, Groan for pain, and weep for cold; LXIX. "From the haunts of daily life, Where is waged the daily strife With common wants and common cares, Which sow the human heart with tares; LXX. "Lastly, from the palaces, Where the murmur of distress Echoes, like the distant sound Of a wind alive around; LXXI. "Those prison-halls of wealth and fashion, Where some few feel such compassion For those who groan, and toil, and wait, As must make their brethren pale; LXXII. "Ye who suffer woes untold, Or to feel, or to behold Your lost country bought and sold With a price of blood and gold; LXXIII. "Let a vast assembly be, And with great solemnity Declare with measured words, that ye Are, as God has made ye, free! LXXIV. "Be your strong and simple words Keen to wound as sharpened swords, And wide as targes let them be, With their shade to cover ye. LXXV. Let the tyrants pour around With a quick and startling sound, Like the loosening of a sea, Troops of armed emblazonry. LXXVI. "Let the charged artillery drive, Till the dead air seems alive With the clash of clanging wheels, And the tramp of horses' heels. LXXVII. "Let the fixed bayonet Gleam with sharp desire to wet Its bright point in English blood, Looking keen as one for food. F LXXVIII. "Let the horsemen's scimitars Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars, Thirsting to eclipse their burning In a sea of death and mourning. LXXIX. "Stand ye calm and resolute, Like a forest close and mute, With folded arms, and looks which are Weapons of an unvanquished war. LXXX. "And let Panic, who outspeeds The career of armed steeds, Pass, a disregarded shade, Thro' your phalanx indismay'd. [The next three stanzas are italicised] LXXXI. "Let the laws of your own land, Good or ill, between ye stand, Hand to hand, and foot to foot, Arbiters of the dispute. LXXXII. "The old laws of England--they Whose reverend heads with age are grey, Children of a wiser day; And whose solemn voice must be Thine own echo--Liberty! LXXXIII. "On those who first should violate Such sacred heralds in their state, Rest the blood that must ensue, And it will not rest on you. LXXXIV. "And if then the tyrants dare, Let them ride among you there; Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew; What they like, that let them do. LXXXV. "With folded arms and steady eyes, And little fear and less surprise, Look upon them as they stay Till their rage hasdied away: LXXXVI. "Then they will return with shame, To the place from which they came, And the blood thus shed will speak In hot blushes on their cheek, LXXXVII. "Every woman in the land Will point at them as they stand They will hardly dare to greet Their acquaintance in the street: LXXXVIII. "And the bold, true warriors, Who have hugged Danger in wars, Will turn to those who would be free Ashamed of such base company: LXXXIX. "And that slaughter to the nation Shall steam up like inspiration, Eloquent, oracular, A volcano heard afar: XC. "And these words shall then become Like Oppressions thundered doom, Ringing through each heart and brain, Heard again--again--again. XCI. Rise like lions after slumber In unvanquishable NUMBER! Shake your chains to earth, like dew Which in sleep had fall'n on you: YE ARE MANY-THEY ARE FEW. THE END -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

This is an extract from The Masque of Anarchy, Percy Bysshe Shelley's
response to the Peterloo massacre of English workers.  Just offering the
obvious balance to the fey Shelley stuff so far [1] - because I think it's
rather unfair to a poet who (along with Blake), exemplified the defiant,
incendiary spirit of the Romantics.  A poet who 'erred on the side of the
profane'[2] , an aristocrat who dreamt of a day when people would be 'equal,
unclassed, tribeless, and nationless' [3], a writer who saw art as a hammer
to legislate change.  As Richard Holmes writes, Shelley possessed 'a sense
of greater design, an acute feeling for the historical moment and an
overwhelming consciousness of his duty as an artist...' Hard finding a poem
of comparable moral weight (Pablo Neruda's The People?).

I agree that his work is extremely erratic, like many other writers whose
reach exceeds their grasp.  He's produced some highly sappy,
self-dramatizing stuff... 'I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!'[4] .

But sometimes he is the poetic equivalent of lightning.

        Rise like Lions after slumber
        In unvanquishable number.
        Shake your chains to earth like dew
        Which in sleep had fallen on you:
        Ye are many -- they are few.

Is that not truly tremendous?

-Amulya

[1] In Matthew Arnold's withering, and ass-backwards assessment - 'a
    beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous
    wings in vain'.
[2] Borrowing Rushdie's wonderful phrase
[3] From Prometheus Unbound.
[4] A bit of fine frenzy from Ode To The West Wind

[Links]

The entire poem is available, complete with historical notes, at
  [broken link] http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/terrace/adw03/c-eight/distress/masque.htm

One Sung of Thee who Left the Tale Untold -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Rounding out Parker's "Trio of Lyrical Treats"

(Poem #1604) One Sung of Thee who Left the Tale Untold One sung of thee who left the tale untold, Like the false dawns which perish in the bursting; Like empty cups of wrought and daedal gold, Which mock the lips with air, when they are thirsting. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

       from "Percy Bysshe Shelley, Posthumous Poems", ed. Mary Shelley (1824)

Note:
  daedal:
   1. Ingenious and complex in design or function; intricate.
   2. Finely or skillfully made or employed; artistic.
         (after Daedalus, who "gave his name eponymously to any Greek artificer
   and to many Greek contraptions that represented dextrous skill."
(Wikipedia))

This is one of the "many short fragments from Shelley's MSS. published by
Mary Shelley, his wife, in her editions of 1824 and 1839", says
Representative Poetry Online, going on to note that she entitles this poem "A
Tale Untold". To my mind, these short fragments are some of the best, or at
least the most enjoyable stuff that Shelley produced, little gems that
reveal his genius for imagery without being dragged down to earth by his
rather uncertain ear for euphony.[1]

Too, I enjoy the "fragment" as a poetic form in its own right - a little
snatch of verse that is patently not a complete poem, but which nevertheless
stands very well on its own - often so well that an attempt to "complete" it
or work it into a larger poem would only dilute its impact. (See Tennyson's
"The Eagle" [Poem #15] for the best example I can think of). All in all, I
am distinctly grateful to Mary Shelley for preserving these gems of
Shelley's - Shelley is so widely acclaimed a poet that I always feel that I
am missing out on something in my dislike for the majority of his work.

martin

[1] to see what I mean, try reading "The Cloud"
[http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem1884.html] - there were
several wonderful bits in there, but the poem as a whole I had to force
myself to finish

To a Skylark -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Guest poem submitted by Firdaus Janoos:

(Poem #1495) To a Skylark Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert- That from heaven or near it Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest, Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. In the golden light'ning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are bright'ning, Thou dost float and run, Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven, In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight- Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd. What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see, As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:- Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aërial hue Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view: Like a rose embower'd In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflower'd, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-wingèd thieves. Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awaken'd flowers- All that ever was Joyous and clear and fresh-thy music doth surpass. Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Chorus hymeneal, Or triumphal chant, Match'd with thine would be all But an empty vaunt- A thin wherein we feel there is some hidden want. What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be: Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Yet, if we could scorn Hate and pride and fear, If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! 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. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

The best poetry is what Shelley terms "unpremeditated art". This is
almost in line with the Zen philosophy of effortless achievement. This,
perhaps the loveliest of Shelley's poems, is a tribute of art born of
pure understanding. But there is also an acknowledgement that the
frailties of humans -- hate, pride, fear, sorrow -- are essential
ingredients of the human experience, however flawed that might be. Quite
paradoxical.

The 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.

are some of the best lines in English poetry -- a tribute to his muse,
something like Kubla Khan, or Wordsworth's 'Highland lass' -- inspiring
them to heights of poetry.

Sonnet: England in 1819 -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

(Poem #592) Sonnet: England in 1819 An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, -- Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn, -- mud from a muddy spring, -- Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling, Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, -- A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field, -- An army, which liberticide and prey Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield, -- Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay; Religion Christless, Godless -- a book sealed; A Senate, -- Time's worst statute unrepealed, -- Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may Burst, to illumine our tempestous day. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

A nicely vitriolic sonnet - Shelley seems to have warmed to his theme and
produced an uncharacteristically[1] good poem. The tirade is delivered with
a sure touch, verging on the heavy-handed, but never going overboard, and
ending with a very appropriate image - indeed, one that blends the twin
messages of decay and hope almost perfectly.

In form, this is a Shakespearean sonnet (12+2 rather than 8+6), though the
rhyme scheme doesn't follow that of either the traditional Shakespearean or
the Spenserean sonnet.

[1] strictly IMHO, I hasten to add, but I do not in general care for
Shelley.

Notes:

Well, it looks like matters still hadn't improved since Wordsworth's "London
1802" <g>. England in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars was apparently a
hotbed of discontent:

  The end of the long wars against Napoleon did not usher in a period of
  peace and contentment. Although both agricultural and industrial
  production had greatly, if unevenly, increased during the wars, the total
  national debt had nearly quadrupled since 1793. Of the total annual public
  revenue after 1815, more than half had to be employed to pay interest on
  this debt. Furthermore, the abolition of Pitt's income tax in 1816 meant
  that the debt burden fell on consumers--many of them with low incomes--and
  on industrialists. The archaic and regressive nature of the national
  taxation system, along with a mounting scale of locally levied poor-law
  rates, which fell heavily on middle-income groups, provoked widespread
  anxiety and criticism.

        -- EB

The king in the opening line was George III.

Links:

For a biography and assessment see the notes on Ozymandias: poem #22

Some more annotations:
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/shelley8.html

Another annotated version, in hypertext:
http://www.mindspring.com/~ttrigilio/intro-poetry/england1819.html

[The above site seems to have been developed as a teaching aid - the
hyperlinked pages are highly interesting]

More on the Peterloo massacre:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRpeterloo.htm

And Wordsworth's London 1802 can be found at poem #128

-martin

Love's Philosophy -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Guest poem submitted by Divya Sampath:

(Poem #531) Love's Philosophy The fountains mingle with the river, And the rivers with the ocean; The winds of heaven mix forever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single; All things by a law divine In another's being mingle-- Why not I with thine? See, the mountains kiss high heaven, And the waves clasp one another; No sister flower could be forgiven If it disdained its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea;-- What is all this sweet work worth, If thou kiss not me? -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

I always did like "Love's Philosophy". It's fluff, but enjoyable fluff.

This is Shelley in a rare, whimsical mood. It's fairly unusual to find the poet
speaking in this voice. Shelley can be difficult to appreciate, especially when
he's being thrust down one's throat in high school (there was a point when "To a
Skylark"  made me want to throw things around the classroom), but I've since
discovered he can be quite bearable.

Divya.

A Dirge -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Guest poem submitted by Cristina Gazzieri:

(Poem #500) A Dirge Rough Wind, that moanest loud Grief too sad for song; Wild wind, when sullen cloud Knells all the night long; Sad storm, whose tears are vain, Bare woods, whose branches strain, Deep caves and dreary main, _ Wail, for the world's wrong! -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

For those who like Romanticism,  Shelley's 'Dirge' has incredible appeal.

The natural elements (wind, storm, wood, caves, main) are presented alongside
with a series of adjectives of an indisputably Romantic nature, suggesting utter
desolation and dark melancholy (rough, sullen, sad, vain). The few verbs
(moanest, knells, wail) also reinforce the idea of deep grief and wasting
sorrow.

The word "wind" is repeated twice in this short poem and as in the more famous
'Ode to the West Wind' it stands out as the central element of the composition.
As in the 'Ode...' the wind is connected with the tree - note the analogues
sky=cloud, Earth=wood caves, Sea=main - in a poetic structure which is yet much
more compressed than the long, complex and repetitive composition of the former
poem. Moreover, the parallel structure of lines 1-3-5-6 gives the poem a
strongly marked rhythm which adds to the intensity, especially thanks to the
fact that there is only one final verb that supports the whole poem: wail.
Natural elements are constantly personified in the poem (the wind moans, the
clouds are sullen, the storm is sad and sheds tears) so that the poet
establishes a connection between natural elements and human feelings, which,
being attributed to the different natural backgrounds of the earth become
somewhat universal. I also think that in the poem there are traces of the
ancient topos of man as a tree in the use of the words "whose brances strain",
but I admit, I could be forcing the interpretation here.

Though I do not like all Romantic poetry I find in this poem by Shelley a force
and greatness I could not disregard.

Cristina.

The Fitful Alternations of the Rain -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

(Poem #416) The Fitful Alternations of the Rain The fitful alternations of the rain, When the chill wind, languid as with pain Of its own heavy moisture, here and there Drives through the gray and beamless atmosphere -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

A nice if somewhat bleak little fragment - I've always felt that if one must
endure bad weather, the thing to do is to endure it in style :) And there
does seem to be something about wind and rain that has inspired countless
fits of prose and poetry - whether due to the profound effect the weather
has on one's moods and emotions, or simply as an omnipresent reminder of the
sheer uncontrolled scale of nature (see links).

Though I do have to wonder why he rhymed 'there' with 'atmosphere' -
nice as Shelley's imagery may have been, the sound of his verse was
frequently less than perfect. (Of course, one could always argue that this
is better than technically perfect but not very poetic verse, and that
Shelley has quite rightly chosen the words he wanted to use to convey his
imagery first, and bothered about the form later; my point is that it's
perfectly possible to have both, and that someone writing structured verse
has an obligation to his readers to get it right).

Notes:

 These are among the many short fragments from Shelley's MSS. published by
 Mary Shelley, the poet's wife, in her editions of 1824 and 1839. There she
 entitles this poem Rain

        -- http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/shelley15.html

Links:

As promised, no shortage of poems about wind and rain:
  poem #226, poem #96, poem #117, poem #200.

There is, unsurprisingly, an overlap with sea poetry (one of my favourite
genres) - here are a couple of examples:
  poem #326, poem #27 (the excerpt at the end).

And what catalogue of gales and dark clouds would be complete without the
following poem? poem #343

- martin

The Indian Serenade -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

And now for something completely different...

(Poem #399) The Indian Serenade I arise from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, When the winds are breathing low, And the stars are shining bright I arise from dreams of thee, And a spirit in my feet Hath led me -- who knows how? -- To thy chamber window, Sweet! The wandering airs they faint On the dark, the silent stream -- The champak odors fail Like sweet thoughts in a dream; The nightingale's complaint, It dies upon her heart; As I must on thine, Oh, beloved as thou art! O lift me from the grass! I die! I faint! I fail! Let thy love in kisses rain On my lips and eyelids pale. My cheek is cold and white, alas! My heart beats loud and fast;-- Oh! press it to thine own again, Where it will break at last. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

I really dislike this poem.

I don't care much for Percy Shelley at the best of times - I find his philosophy
irritatingly vague, his verse overly melodramatic, and his politics utterly
naive. The second complaint is the most telling - it's hard to take a poet
seriously if he tries to cultivate his image at the expense of his art. Of
course, Shelley has written some good poems ('Ozymandias' springs to mind), but
he's also written some shockers. In that respect he reminds of Belloc's Jemima:
'When she was good, she was very very good, but when she was bad she was
DREADFUL'. And today's poem is one of the dreadful ones.

Hmm, how do I loathe it? Let me count the ways:

The verse is trite. Technically sound, but utterly unmemorable - the last thing
I'd expect from a self-professed champion of individual expression and poetic
inspiration. The gratuitous insertion of 'local colour' in the form of the
champak and the nightingale makes me wince. As do the frequent apostrophes - "Oh
beloved as thou art!", "Oh lift me from the grass!", "Oh press it to thine own
again" - which sound like a bad actor hamming it up for the pits.

The sentiments are... well, sentimental. Verses like this one:
        "My cheek is cold and white, alas!
         My heart beats loud and fast; --
         Oh! press it to thine own again,
         Where it will break at last. "
seem to embody the worst excesses of Romanticism - specifically, the
substitution of indiscriminate tearjerking for genuine emotion. And it's not as
if any of it were true, is it?

Most of all, though, I'm irritated by the sheer melodrama of the whole thing.
It's as if Shelley were consciously playing to the galleries of his reading
public (a reading public completely sold on the entire phenomenon of the
Romantic Image), shamelessly tugging at their heartstrings. This one line says
it all:
        "I die! I faint! I fail!"

Ugh.

thomas.

PS. To be taken with a pinch of salt <grin>. But boy, that was fun - maybe I
should run poems I dislike more often... what do you say?

Ode to the West Wind -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

I'm stepping out of chronological order to bring you today's poem, which
is a special birthday request from one of our subscribers.

(Poem #329) Ode to the West Wind I 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 odors 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 aery 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 vapors, 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, Lulled 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 seemed 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 chained and bowed 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 withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poor Percy Shelley. A revolutionary who wanted to change the world
through his poetry, he has been dismissed far too often as being all
style and no substance, an artist whose life was more colourful than his
art and (worst of all) the archetype of half a century of lush Victorian
sentimentality. Never mind that he was sent down from Cambridge for
advocating atheism, that he renounced his inheritance to marry a
tavern-keeper's daughter, that he left England to seek artistic
salvation in Italy: the popular image of Shelley is of a figure of high
tragedy, Romantic with a capital R. A characterization that is as unfair
to Shelley as it is to Keats or Coleridge or any of their generation:
sure they had interesting lives, but they also produced lasting art.

(Which is not to say I like Shelley's poetry. To be frank, I don't).

'Ode to the West Wind' is one of Shelley's most celebrated works, and
justly so. In it, finally, we see Shelley fusing the airy imagery, the
interplay of colour and light and shadow which are his poetic forte,
with the philosophical and moral concerns that tinged his political
life. A bold and sweeping poem, it almost falls to ground under the
weight of its own presumption - almost, but not quite.And in that
avoidance of pomposity lies its greatness.

thomas.

[Structure]

'Ode to the West Wind' is written in terza rima [1]. Shelley uses a
three-line unit, a tercet, rhyming aba; the 'b' rhyme is carried into
the next tercet, bcb. Each stanza has four tercets of interlocking
rhyme, and ends in a couplet using the middle rhyme of the last tercet;
thus the rhyme scheme is aba bcb cdc ded ee. The lines themselves are in
a (not very rigorous) pentameter.

[1] The same metre that Dante uses in the Divine Comedy; perhaps this
was Shelley's way of paying homage to that great humanist. (Keep in mind
that the Ode was written in Italy).

[The Romantic Image]

The Romantics, more than most, have suffered (some would say
'benefited') from the problem of 'image'. As Adrian Mitchell puts it in
'The Oxford Hysteria of English Poetry' (the source of most, if not all,
of my poetic education - you can read it at poem #211),

    Then suddenly --- WOOMF ---
    It was the Ro-man-tic Re-viv-al
    And it didn't matter how you wrote,
    All the public wanted was a hairy great image.
    Before they'd even print you
    You had to smoke opium, die of consumption,
    Fall in love with your sister
    Or drown in the Mediterranean (not at Brighton).

(Coleridge smoked opium, Keats died of consumption, Byron had a
scandalous affair with his half-sister, and Shelley drowned in the
Mediterranean).

Another, equally tongue-in-cheek view of the Romantics is Dorothy
Parker's:

    Byron and Shelley and Keats
    Were a trio of lyrical treats.
    The forehead of Shelley was cluttered with curls,
    And Keats never was a descendant of earls,
    And Byron walked out with a number of girls,
    But it didn't impair the poetical feats
    Of Byron and Shelley,
    Of Byron and Shelley,
    Of Byron and Shelley and Keats.
        -- Dorothy Parker, 'A pig's eye view of literature'

Ironically enough, Shelley always saw himself as a social reformer
first, and a poet second; to him, poets were 'the unacknowledged
legislators of the world', and his published writings all had an
explicitly political agenda.

More about the Romantics in general and Shelley in particular can be
found in Brittanica; here are some generous extracts:

[Romanticism]

Romanticism, an amorphous movement that began in Germany and England at
the turn of the 19th century, and somewhat later in France, Italy, and
the United States, found spokesmen as diverse as Goethe and August and
Friedrich von Schlegel in Germany, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge in England, Madame de Staël and Victor Hugo in France,
Alessandro Manzoni in Italy, and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edgar Allan Poe
in the United States. Romantics tended to regard the writing of poetry
as a transcendentally important activity, closely related to the
creative perception of meaning in the world. The poet was credited with
the godlike power that Plato had feared in him; Transcendental
philosophy was, indeed, a derivative of Plato's metaphysical Idealism.
In the typical view of Percy Bysshe Shelley, poetry "strips the veil of
familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty,
which is the spirit of its forms."

Wordsworth's preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800), with its definition of
poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and its attack
on Neoclassical diction, is regarded as the opening statement of English
Romanticism. In England, however, only Coleridge in his Biographia
Literaria (1817) embraced the whole complex of Romantic doctrines
emanating from Germany; the British empiricist tradition was too firmly
rooted to be totally washed aside by the new metaphysics. Most of those
who were later called Romantics did share an emphasis on individual
passion and inspiration, a taste for symbolism and historical awareness,
and a conception of art works as internally whole structures in which
feelings are dialectically merged with their contraries. Romantic
criticism coincided with the emergence of aesthetics as a separate
branch of philosophy, and both signalled a weakening in ethical demands
upon literature. The lasting achievement of Romantic theory is its
recognition that artistic creations are justified, not by their
promotion of virtue, but by their own coherence and intensity.

[The Later Romantics]

... [Shelley, Keats and Byron] shared their predecessors' passion for
liberty (now set in a new perspective by the Napoleonic wars) and were
in a position to learn from their experiments. Percy Bysshe Shelley in
particular was deeply interested in politics, coming early under the
spell of the anarchistic views of William Godwin, whose Enquiry
Concerning Political Justice had appeared in 1793. Shelley's
revolutionary ardour, coupled with a zeal for the liberation of mankind
and a passion for poetry, caused him to claim in his critical essay A
Defence of Poetry (1821, published 1840) that "the most unfailing
herald, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to
work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is poetry," and that
poets are "the unacknowledged legislators of the world." This fervour
burns throughout the early Queen Mab (1813), the long Laon and Cythna
(retitled The Revolt of Islam, 1818), and the lyrical drama Prometheus
Unbound (1820). Shelley saw himself at once as poet and prophet, as the
fine "Ode to the West Wind" (1819) makes clear. Despite his firm grasp
of practical politics, however, it is a mistake to look for concreteness
in his poetry, where his concern is with subtleties of perception and
with the underlying forces of nature: his most characteristic image is
of sky and weather, of lights and fires. His poetic stance invites the
reader to respond with similar outgoing aspiration. It adheres to the
Rousseauistic belief in an underlying spirit in individuals, one truer
to human nature itself than the behaviour evinced and approved by
society. In that sense his material is transcendental and cosmic and his
expression thoroughly appropriate. Possessed of great technical
brilliance, he is, at his best, a poet of excitement and power.

[More on Shelley]

Shelley's [early] literary career [was] politically oriented. Queen Mab,
the early poems first published in 1964 as The Esdaile Notebook, Laon
and Cythna, and most of his prose works were devoted to reforming
society; and even Alastor, Rosalind and Helen, and the personal lyrics
voiced the concerns of an idealistic reformer who is disappointed or
persecuted by an unreceptive society. But in Italy, far from the daily
irritations of British politics, Shelley deepened his understanding of
art and literature  and, unable to reshape the world to conform to his
vision, he concentrated on embodying his ideals within his poems. His
aim became, as he wrote in "Ode to the West Wind," to make his words
"Ashes and sparks" as from "an unextinguished hearth," thereby
transforming subsequent generations and, through them, the world. Later,
as he became estranged from Mary Shelley, he portrayed even love in
terms of aspiration, rather than fulfillment: "The desire of the moth
for the star,/ Of the night for the morrow,/ The devotion to something
afar/ From the sphere of our sorrow."

The careful study of Shelley's publications and manuscripts has since
elucidated his deep learning, clear thought, and subtle artistry.
Shelley was a passionate idealist and consummate artist who, while
developing rational themes within traditional poetic forms, stretched
language to its limits in articulating both personal desire and social
altruism.

    -- all the above from the EB

Ozymandias -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

(Poem #22) Ozymandias I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert ... Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works ye mighty and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Love poems are all very well, but my two favourite sonnets have got to be
Keats' "Chapman's Homer" and this one. Note the sheer perfection of the line
"look on my works ye mighty and despair", and the wonderful imagery in the
last line.

On a side note, this doesn't seem to fit into any of the traditional sonnet
forms, the rhyme scheme being ababa cdcdc efef, though structurally it
divides into the 8 and 6 of the Petrarchan pattern.

Ozymandias, incidentally, was Rameses II, who was survived by his pyramid if
nothing else. The poem itself was inspired by a shattered colossus in the
Ramesseum, his funeral temple, of which the EB says 'This temple is
identified with the "Tomb of Osymandias" (a corruption of Ramses II's
prenomen) described by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus in the 1st
century BC' - an inscription on the statue's base read

      I am Ozymandias, King of kings.
      If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie,
      let him surpass any of my works.

There's a nice writeup on 'The Real Ozymandias' at
<http://www.savagenet.com/oz/Oz/real.htm> which you are encouraged to read.

Biographical Note:

Shelley was, along with Byron and Keats, one of the major poets of the Later
Romantic period. They built upon the Early Romantic movement dominated by
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Blake. The Romantic movement produced, IMHO, some
of the finest poetry ever written in the English language, as poets embraced
the new ideals of freedom and individualism sweeping Europe, and thrilled to
the vibrant sense of change accompanying them. The poetic ideals of the time
are perhaps best expressed in Wordsworth's "Spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings".

Of the romantic movement, the EB has this to say:

  As a term to cover the most distinctive writers who flourished in the last
  years of the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th, "Romantic" is
  indispensable but also a little misleading: there was no self-styled
  "Romantic movement" at the time, and the great writers of the period did not
  call themselves Romantics.

and later

  Poetry was regarded as conveying its own truth; sincerity was the criterion
  by which it was to be judged. Provided the feeling behind it was genuine,
  the resulting creation must be valuable.

And of Shelley himself:

  Percy Bysshe (pronounced 'Bish') Shelley, English Romantic poet whose
  passionate search for personal love and social justice was gradually
  channeled from overt actions into poems that rank with the greatest in the
  English language.

  [..]

  Thus far, Shelley's literary career had been politically oriented. Queen
  Mab, the early poems first published in 1964 as The Esdaile Notebook, Laon
  and Cythna, and most of his prose works were devoted to reforming society;
  and even Alastor, Rosalind and Helen, and the personal lyrics voiced the
  concerns of an idealistic reformer who is disappointed or persecuted by an
  unreceptive society. But in Italy, far from the daily irritations of
  British politics, Shelley deepened his understanding of art and literature
  and, unable to reshape the world to conform to his vision, he concentrated
  on embodying his ideals within his poems. His aim became, as he wrote in
  "Ode to the West Wind," to make his words "Ashes and sparks" as from "an
  unextinguished hearth," thereby transforming subsequent generations and,
  through them, the world. Later, as he became estranged from Mary Shelley,
  he portrayed even love in terms of aspiration, rather than fulfillment:
  "The desire of the moth for the star,/ Of the night for the morrow,/ The
  devotion to something afar/ From the sphere of our sorrow."

        -- EB

Criticism:

  Shelley saw himself at once as poet and prophet, as the fine "Ode to the
  West Wind" (1819) makes clear. Despite his firm grasp of practical politics,
  however, it is a mistake to look for concreteness in his poetry, where his
  concern is with subtleties of perception and with the underlying forces of
  nature: his most characteristic image is of sky and weather, of lights and
  fires. His poetic stance invites the reader to respond with similar outgoing
  aspiration. It adheres to the Rousseauistic belief in an underlying spirit
  in individuals, one truer to human nature itself than the behaviour evinced
  and approved by society. In that sense his material is transcendental and
  cosmic and his expression thoroughly appropriate. Possessed of great
  technical brilliance, he is, at his best, a poet of excitement and power.

        -- EB again

And letting Dorothy Parker have the last word (since she does it so well)

Byron and Shelley and Keats
Were a trio of lyrical treats.
The forehead of Shelley was cluttered with curls,
And Keats never was a descendant of earls,
And Byron walked out with a number of girls,
But it didn't impair the poetical feats
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley and Keats.
        -- Dorothy Parker, 'A pig's eye view of literature'

m.