Shelley and it is widely regarded as his greatest work. Death is the veil which those who live call life:. They sleep, and it is lifted: and meanwhile. In mild variety the seasons mild. With rainbow-skirted showers, and odorous winds,. And long blue meteors cleansing the dull night,. All-piercing bow, and the dew-mingled rain.
Of the calm moonbeams, a soft influence mild,. Shall clothe the forests and the fields, aye, even. The crag-built desarts of the barren deep,. With ever-living leaves, and fruits, and flowers. 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 most influential works of Shelley but also one of the most famous odes ever written. Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,. If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? The sculptor of the work had captured the pride of his subject. The poem focuses on the momentary nature of power with its central theme being the inevitable decline of all leaders , no matter how great they consider themselves.
Ozymandias is the most famous poem written by Percy Bysshe Shelley and one of the best known sonnets in English literature. I met a traveller from an antique land,. 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:. 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. Ozyamandias is a poem I have studied in school. Shelley is the second best after Shakespeare!
Excellent work. Thanks for your appreciation. We use our own and third party cookies to improve your experience and our services; and to analyze your use of our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you accept their use. OK Privacy policy. My poems Titles list. Percy Bysshe Shelley Follow. Love's Philosophy. The Fountains mingle with the river And the rivers with the ocean, The winds of heaven mix for ever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single, All things by a law devine In one another's being mingle— Why not I with thine?
Like Inspired! Great poem Great Like 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 odors plain and hill: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
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! 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!
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. 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. In his dejected or miserable state, Shelley reviews his life, muses about death, and thinks about what sort of poetic reputation he has carved out for himself.
Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:—the power is there, The still and solemn power of many sights, And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights, In the lone glare of day, the snows descend Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there, Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun, Or the star-beams dart through them …. 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 ….
Shelley completed this, one of his most famous poems, in June The inspiration for the poem was an evening walk Shelley took with his wife, Mary, in Livorno, in north-west Italy. The flower that smiles to-day To-morrow dies; All that we wish to stay Tempts and then flies. Lightning that mocks the night, Brief even as bright …. The west wind is the wind that would carry Shelley back from Florence where he was living at the time to England, where he wanted to help fight for reform and revolution.
I met Murder on the way— He had a mask like Castlereagh— Very smooth he looked, yet grim; Seven blood-hounds followed him:. All were fat; and well they might Be in admirable plight, For one by one, and two by two, He tossed them human hearts to chew Which from his wide cloak he drew …. The crowd were protesting over famine and poor economic conditions in the north of England in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. 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?
We think this little poem is a homage to, or recasting of, a sonnet by the Elizabethan poet Sir Philip Sidney , who wrote a famous poem addressed to the moon.
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