Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poems are a powerful blend of lyric beauty, political passion, and idealistic imagination. His work often explores the struggle for human freedom, the corruption of power, and the transformative force of love and nature. Shelley believed deeply in the potential of the human spirit, and his poetry reflects a desire to break the chains of tyranny—both political and emotional. In poems like “Ode to the West Wind,” the wind becomes a symbol of revolution and renewal, expressing his hope that new ideas could sweep away injustice. Shelley’s language is musical, full of vivid imagery and emotional intensity, which gives his poems a dreamlike yet deeply urgent quality.
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| Percy bysshe shelley |
He also wrote tender, philosophical pieces such as “To a Skylark,” where he praises the purity of the bird’s song as an ideal beyond human sorrow. In “Adonais,” his elegy for Keats, Shelley meditates on death, immortality, and the enduring power of art. His love poems—gentle yet passionate—reveal his belief that love can elevate the soul and reshape the world. Overall, Shelley’s poetry remains a timeless call for beauty, justice, and spiritual awakening, leaving a lasting influence on Romantic literature.
A Hate-Song
A hater he came and sat by a ditch,
And he took an old cracked lute;
And he sang a song which was more of a screech
'Gainst a woman that was a brute.
Beauty's Halo
Thy beauty hangs around thee like
Splendour around the moon--
Thy voice, as silver bells that strike
Upon...
Death In Life
My head is heavy, my limbs are weary,
And it is not life that makes me move.
An Allegory
I.
A portal as of shadowy adamant
Stands yawning on the highway of the life
Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt;
Around it rages an unceasing strife
Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt
The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high
Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky.
II.
And many pass it by with careless tread,
Not knowing that a shadowy...
Tracks every traveller even to where the dead
Wait peacefully for their companion new;
But others, by more curious humour led,
Pause to examine;—these are very few,
And they learn little there, except to know
That shadows follow them where’er they go.
A Roman's Chamber
I.
In the cave which wild weeds cover
Wait for thine aethereal lover;
For the pallid moon is waning,
O'er the spiral cypress hanging
And the moon no cloud is staining.
II.
It was once a Roman’s chamber,
Where he kept his darkest revels,
And the wild weeds twine and clamber;
It was then a chasm for devils.
A Widow Bird Sate Mourning For Her Love
A widow bird sate mourning for her Love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.
There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
No flower upon the ground,
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel's sound.
Despair
And canst thou mock mine agony, thus calm
In cloudless radiance, Queen of silver night?
Can you, ye flow'rets, spread your perfumed balm
Mid pearly gems of dew that shine so bright?
And you wild winds, thus can you sleep so still
Whilst throbs the tempest of my breast so high?
Can the fierce night-fiends rest on yonder hill,
And, in the eternal mansions of the sky,
Can the directors of the storm in powerless silence lie?
Hark! I hear music on the zephyr’s wing,
Louder it floats along the unruffled sky;
Some fairy sure has touched the viewless string--
Now faint in distant air the murmurs die.
Awhile it stills the tide of agony.
Now--now it loftier swells--again stern woe
Arises with the awakening melody.
Again fierce torments, such as demons know,
In bitterer, feller tide, on this torn bosom flow.
Arise ye sightless spirits of the storm,
Ye unseen minstrels of the aereal song,
Pour the fierce tide around this lonely form,
And roll the tempest's wildest swell along.
Dart the red lightning, wing the forked flash,
Pour from thy cloud-formed hills the thunder’s roar;
Arouse the whirlwind--and let ocean dash
In fiercest tumult on the rocking shore,--
Destroy this life or let earth's fabric be no more.
Yes! every tie that links me here is dead;
Mysterious Fate, thy mandate I obey,
Since hope and peace, and joy, for aye are fled,
I come, terrific power, I come away.
Then o'er this ruined soul let spirits of Hell,
In triumph, laughing wildly, mock its pain;
And though with direst pangs mine heart-strings swell,
I’ll echo back their deadly yells again,
Cursing the power that ne’er made aught in vain.
Good night
THE.
'Good night, good night!' - How come
Will the night be good without you?
Don't tell me good night, - that you know,
The night knows how to be good by itself.
II.
Solinga, dark, gloomy, without hope,
The night when Lila abandons me;
For the hearts of those who beat together
Every night, without saying it, will be good.
III.
How bad good night sounds to us
With sighs and broken words! -
The way to have a good night
And never don't say good night.
Bereavement
I.
How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner
As he bends in still grief o'er the hallowed bier,
As enanguished he turns from the laugh of the scorner,
And drops to perfection's remembrance a tear;
When floods of despair down his pale cheeks are streaming,
When no blissful hope on his bosom is beaming,
Or, if lulled for a while, soon he starts from his dreaming,
And finds torn the soft ties to affection so dear.
II.
Ah! when shall day dawn on the night of the grave,
Or summer succeed to the winter of death?
Rest awhle, hapless victim! and Heaven will save
The spirit that hath faded away with the breath.
Eternity points, in its amaranth bower
Where no clouds of fate o'er the sweet prospect lour,
Unspeakable pleasure, of goodness the dower,
When woe fades away like the mist of the heath.
