Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley, from the early 19th century, was "the most determinedly professional writer of all the English Romantic poets" . This is seen in not only his symphonic poems like the Ode to the West Wind, his lyrical sonnets such as Lines written among the Euganean Hills amongst The Cloud, To a Skylark and many others, his political rhymes like The Revolt of Islam and Queen Mab and his narrative verses like Adonais, Alastor and Epipsychidion. It is also obvious in his poetic dramas with Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci as prime examples and his famous essay The Defense of Poetry. In Shelley's view, "the poet is a dreamer, a visionary" who must use these dreams and visions to "persuade men to shake off the chains of the past, of custom, of selfishness, and to press onward to the vital task of constructing a world characterized by kindness, generosity, and love." Shelley was born "the eldest son of a wealthy squire" on August 4th, 1792 at Field Place near Horsham. He attended Eton, "the most famous of the English public schools" , where he was bullied by older boys and resented their tyranny and became "determined to fight against all forms of tyranny" . At university, Shelley began reading books by radical political write
P who he met through his father and who really impressed him. He read the book Inquiry Concerning Political Justice, by William Godwin who was an atheist and anarchist. This daughter, after long and vain attempts to escape from what she considered a perpetual contamination both of body and mind, at length plotted with her mother-in-law and brother to kill their common tyrant. Thus poetry would be continuously revolutionized from generation to generation to have this continuing affect, yet will hopefully retain the traditions on which poetry was created and its power not be abused in the process: Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void for ever craves fresh food. The Cloud is another great lyrical poem which exhibits one of his boyhood interests, natural phenomena, which is especially obvious in this, the final stanza, of the poem:I am the daughter of Earth and Water,And the nursling of the sky;I pass through the pores of the oceans and shores; I change, but I cannot die. "This poem is impressive as a frieze in its development and execution, but, beautiful as it is, I find the materiel too heavily stylized to be entirely suited to the rapid shifts of Shelley's sensibility. He was restored to life by Proserpine on the condition that he spend six months of the year with her and the other six months with Aphrodite. "The poem shows how much the sensitive, well-meaning poet has been bruised by the world," the poet in the story not being Shelley himself but perhaps Shelley's feelings, ideas and works to this point in his life. The poetry in these systems of thought, is concealed by the accumulation of facts and calculating processes. " The poem is about the search of ideal beauty in the world and inability to find it while searching for it. Following the example of the master, Shelley became an atheist. Prometheus is victorious in the end:This, like the glory, Titan, is to beGood, great and joyous, beautiful and free;This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory. He hopes that poetry will become a meeting-place of the things that affect a modern society.
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Acceptance Essays
