Essays on Percy Bysshe Shelley

4 August 1792

8 July 1822

Poet, dramatist, essayist, novelist

Romanticism

• “Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.”
• “The more we study, the more we discover our ignorance”
• “No more let life divide what death can join together.”
• “Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822

Percy Bysshe Shelley was an 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.

Among his best-known works are "Ozymandias" (1818), "Ode to the West Wind" (1819), "To a Skylark" (1820), and the political ballad "The Mask of Anarchy" (1819). His other major works include the verse drama The Cenci (1819) and long poems such as Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude (1815), Julian and Maddalo (1819), Adonais (1821), Prometheus Unbound (1820), Hellas (1822), and his final, unfinished work, The Triumph of Life (1822).

Shelley in his poems deals primarily with the themes like free love, atheism, Christianity and vegetarianism. Romanticism's major themes — restlessness and brooding, rebellion against authority, interchange with nature, the power of the visionary imagination and of poetry, the pursuit of ideal love, and the untamed spirit ever in search of freedom — are also exemplified in his poetry.

Percy Bysshe Shelly is one of the leading romantic poets. The poetic style of Shelley resembles the style of Romantic poets. To very extend, Shelly has imitated the style of William Wordsworth. Shelly employed powerful imagery and symbolism in his poetry.

A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets including Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, and W. B. Yeats.

“I have drunken deep of joy,
And I will taste no other wine tonight.”
“Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.”
“Soul meets soul on lovers lips.”
“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”