Percy Bysshe Shelley (Born on 4 the August 1792 –Died on 8th July 1822)
Apart from Wordsworth, Coleridge, John Keats and Lord Byron; P B Shelly was also a major English Romantic poets
The novelist Mary Shelley was his second wife.
He is most famous for such classic verse works as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, Music, When Soft Voices Die, The Cloud
The Masque of Anarchy, Queen Mab (it is also named as The Daemon of the World),
Alastor, The Revolt of Islam, Adonaïs
The Triumph of Life – it is a unfinished work.
Famous dramatic plays areThe Cenci (1819) – it is with five acts and Prometheus Unbound (1820)- it is with four acts..
He wrote the Gothic novels Zastrozzi (1810) and St. Irvyne (1811) and the short prose works "The Assassins" (1814), "The Coliseum" (1817) and "Una Favola" (1819). In 2008, he was credited as the co-author of the novel Frankenstein (1818) in a new edition by the Bodleian Library in Oxford and Random House in the U.S. entitled The Original Frankenstein, edited by Charles E. Robinson.[3][4][5]
Radical nature of Shelly and his idealism made mark Twain write ‘in Defense of Harriet Shelly attacking him for abondoning his pregnant wife and eloping iwth 16 year old Mary Gadwin.
He became a mentor to many Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets. He was admired by Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, , William Butler Yeats,
Shelly’s non violence resistance and his political thought is said to have influenced Mahatma Gandhi.
Apart from Wordsworth, Coleridge, John Keats and Lord Byron; P B Shelly was also a major English Romantic poets
The novelist Mary Shelley was his second wife.
He is most famous for such classic verse works as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, Music, When Soft Voices Die, The Cloud
The Masque of Anarchy, Queen Mab (it is also named as The Daemon of the World),
Alastor, The Revolt of Islam, Adonaïs
The Triumph of Life – it is a unfinished work.
Famous dramatic plays areThe Cenci (1819) – it is with five acts and Prometheus Unbound (1820)- it is with four acts..
He wrote the Gothic novels Zastrozzi (1810) and St. Irvyne (1811) and the short prose works "The Assassins" (1814), "The Coliseum" (1817) and "Una Favola" (1819). In 2008, he was credited as the co-author of the novel Frankenstein (1818) in a new edition by the Bodleian Library in Oxford and Random House in the U.S. entitled The Original Frankenstein, edited by Charles E. Robinson.[3][4][5]
Radical nature of Shelly and his idealism made mark Twain write ‘in Defense of Harriet Shelly attacking him for abondoning his pregnant wife and eloping iwth 16 year old Mary Gadwin.
He became a mentor to many Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets. He was admired by Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, , William Butler Yeats,
Shelly’s non violence resistance and his political thought is said to have influenced Mahatma Gandhi.
Major works
Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson1810: Being Poems Found Amongst the Papers of That Noted Female Who Attempted the Life of the King in 1786
History of a Six Weeks' Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland (with Mary Shelley)1817
Oedipus Tyrannus; Or, Swellfoot The Tyrant: A Tragedy in Two Acts(1820)
Prose
"The Assassins, A Fragment of a Romance" (1814)
"The Coliseum, A Fragment" (1817)
"The Elysian Fields: A Lucianic Fragment"
Essays
· Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things (1811)
· Declaration of Rights (1812)
· On the Vegetable System of Diet (1814–1815)
· On Love (1818)
· On Life (1815)
· On a Future State (1815)
· On The Punishment of Death
· Speculations on Metaphysics
· Speculations on Morals
· On Christianity
· On the Literature, the Arts and the Manners of the Athenians
· On The Symposium, or Preface to The Banquet Of Plato
· On Friendship
· On Frankenstein
Collaborations with Mary Shelley
Poem – The Cloud
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noon-day dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the Sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under, 10
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits; 20
Over Earth and Ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile, 30
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.
The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit Sea beneath,
Its ardours of rest and of love, 40
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine äery nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbed maiden with white fire laden
Whom mortals call the Moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear, 50
May have broken the woof, of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her, and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone
And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl; 60
The volcanos are dim and the stars reel and swim
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof --
The mountains its columns be!
The triumphal arch, through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the Air, are chained to my chair,
Is the million-coloured Bow; 70
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove
While the moist Earth was laughing below.
I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores, of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die --
For after the rain, when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,
Build up the blue dome of Air -- 80
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, live a ghost from the tomb,
I arise, and unbuild it again. --
Meanings :
Stream : A continous flow of water
Wield : Handle
Flail: To wave or swing vigorously
Lashing : slapping forcefully
Hail : To precipitate in pellets of ice and hard snow.
Pines : Pine trees
Groan : Murmur in pain
Aghast : Struck by shock, terror, or amazement.
Sublime : of high moral order
Blast : lightining
Bowers: holding
Cavern : cave
Fettered : chained, restricted
howls : cry, scream
Lured : attract, trmpt
Genii: plural form of genius
Rill: stream, channel
Bask : Lie around
Whilst : even as
Sanguine : Confident, optimistic, cheerful
plume : Spiral, cloud
Jag: A sharp projection; a barb
Crag : Rock face
Alight : illuminated, to get down
Ardors : Passion, love, zeal
Crimson: Pink
Orbed: globe, sphere, planet
Glides glimmering: Moving smoothly with shining
Woof: bark, bark of a tree
Girdle: belt
Whirlwind : Hurricane, cyclone
Torrent sea, : violent sea
Triumphal: Victory
Arch: Curve, bend
Sunbeams: Sun rays
Convex gleams: slant sun rays
Cenotaph: Monument, commemoration
APPRECIATION
The cloud is an autobiographical and a lyrical poem.
Here the cloud has been personified and it speaks about its own self.
Various images, personification, metaphors and allusions are used to describe nature in cloud
the poem contains fine examples of figures of speech.
Poem starts by metaphorically comparing cloud with a flying bird which has just had its bath and droplets of water are dripping from its wings.
"From my wings are shaken the dews that waken/ The sweet buds everyone.."
The revolution of the earth round the sun is metaphorically compared to a mother rocking her baby to sleep.
The lashing down of the hails on the earth compared to the whipping movement of the flail is again appreciable.
The comparison of the lightening with the captain and its movement lured by the love of the nymph of the water is again an example of deft artistic skill.
a fine example of simile
"like child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb..."
The sudden emergence of the cloud is compared with the emergence of the child mother’s womb or of a ghost from its tomb
The poem has examples of imagery. There is a picture of the sanguine sunrise with meteor eyes and outspread burning plumes.
There is also the image of an eagle sitting on a mountain crag with its golden wings spread out. The stars are described as "whirling and fleeing like a swarm of golden bees".
The image of the multicolored rainbow is highly appealing to the visual sense.
The beautiful image of the moon is described as "That orbed maiden with white fire laden/ whom mortals called the Moon/ Glides glimmering o'ver my fleece like floor/ By the midnight breezes strewn."
The movement of earth around the sun and the nourishment provided by the Sun si depicted in, "When rocked to rest in their mother's breast, / As she dances about the sun".
The water cycle can be compared allusively to the never ending cycle of life and death.
Rhyme scheme:
This poem does not have a regular rhyming scheme or a particular regular metre.
It is more of a free verse poem.
Internal rhyme is present.
The Cloud has the melodic soul.
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