The poem The Indian Serenade is written by Percy Bysshe Shelley early in the

nineteenth century. The poem is a Romantic love poem. But why do we call it
Romantic? Well, thats because of a few typical Romantic characteristics. One of
these Romantic characteristics is the emphasising of personal feelings. Instead of
the more rational periods, the Romantic period deals with the feeling as most
important and reliable thing in live. Another very obvious feature is the admiring
of nature. In the Romantic period nature became more and more important.
Poets discovered the beauty of it instead of writing about the organised cities.
Then there is the spiritual, unreal, fantasised side that became more and more
important. While you are reading the poem, these are the main things you will
notice.

The poem is written in an ABCBADCD, as I wrote next to the poem in the first
strophe. The metric foot is tetrameter. For example My heart beats loud and
fast. There are a lot of iambic and anapestic stresses in the poem, which causes
an enchanting rhythm. Strophe one has a dreamy ambiance, strophe two is a bit
mysterious and strophe three is full of powerful emotions.

In this poem Shelley writes about a lover who wakes up, and is somehow forced
to walk to her love. When the lover arrived at the chamber window, she
describes her flaming desire to see her love. But then, suddenly, the lover falls to
the ground, begging to see and feel her beloved.

In the first stanza, she arises from dreams of her beloved. It is quite interesting
that the word arise is used instead of the word awake, perhaps because the
poet wanted to make it look like sleep walking. Shelley describes the winds and
the stars. Accidently, inspired by the dreamy conditions, there comes a spirit in
her feet which forces the lover, she cant help it, to walk to the chamber door of
his/her beloved.

In the second, the champak odours fail and the nightingale complains. The
champak is an evergreen timber tree with yellow flowers, who yield a very strong
odour, which is often used in perfumes. The champak lives in the Orient. This is
the only Oriental element in the poem. The lover is compared to a nightingale,
dies upon her heart, perhaps this means the lover is a women.

In the third stanza the lover is rudely awakened. Let thy love in kisses rain
actually she wakes up, lying in the grass in the middle of the night, because of
the cold wet rain drops on her cheeks. The lover wants to hug with her beloved.

In the poem, the outside/nature is a model for the inside/the mental side. She is
overwhelmed by the dreamy emotions of the inner and outer world.

When I was reading the poem, there were a few things I noticed. There is a
comparison made between the real life and dreams. Because of this you can
read the poem in many different ways. There could also be a rather sexual
meaning in the poem. In this case I arise refers to the male anatomy, the
chamber window to the female anatomy, and the grass to the female anatomy
too.

I think Shelley wrote a very inspiring and amusing poem. Because of all its
metaphors it is interesting to read the poem over and over, again and again. I
think the poem has a rather amusing purpose. Actually the poem is just a short
love story. It is great fun to read the poem, because you have to read it a couple
of times, before you find out what the meaning is and what every word refers to.
You can compare it to a puzzle.
Addressing his beloved, the speaker says that he arises from dreams of thee / In
the first sweet sleep of night, / When the winds are breathing low, / And the stars
are shining bright. He says that a spirit in my feet has led himwho knows
how?to his beloveds chamber-window. Outside, in the night, the wandering
airs faint upon the stream, the Champak odours fail / Like sweet thoughts in a
dream, and the nightingales complaint dies upon her heartas the speaker
says he must die upon his beloveds heart. Overwhelmed with emotion, he falls
to the ground (I die, I faint, I fail!), and implores his beloved to lift him from the
grass, and to rain kisses upon his lips and eyelids. He says that his cheek is cold
and white, and his heart is loud and fast: he pleads, Oh! press it to thine own
again, / Where it will break at last.

Form
The trancelike, enchanting rhythm of this lovely lyric results from the poets use
of a loose pattern of regular dimeters that employ variously trochaic, anapestic,
and iambic stresses. The rhyme scheme is tighter than the poems rhythm,
forming a consistent ABCBADCD pattern in each of the three stanzas. The Indian
Serenade is a romantic hyperbole in the form of a song expressing
sensationalism depicted by a lovesick lover. Central to the vision is poetic
madness. Shelley uses the keyword serenade , a song rendered at night in the
open air for a beloved, in most cases, beneath the lovers window. Shelley turns
the serenaders forlorn feeling from the absence of his beloved into a melody
which, incidentally, has become his immortal song.

The romantic vision is brought into sharp perspective by the succession of

dreamlike images through the use of apostrophe. Apostrophizing the lady
conspires the illusion of night establishing a figurative contrast between the
nightingales complaint and the flaming heart desire, the longing to see the
beloved.

In the first stanza the poetic speaker narrates rather naively how he responds to
his dreams of his beloved in the first sweet sleep of night when the winds are
breathing low and the stars are shining bright. These dreams inspire the spirit
in his feet, an inexplicable magnetic force equivalent to I cant help it that
guides him to the beloveds chamber window.

Shelley uses the star as a visual symbol for joy which, with its quickening or
harmonizing light, is a source of delight. Intensifying the poetic ardor, Shelley
establishes a contrast between the brilliance of the stars and the dark, the
silent stream.

In the second stanza, one sees the night in bloom as the champak perfumes the
air with subtle seduction. Mother Earth gives birth to odors, colors, and sounds as
Shelley weaves a hypnotic poem, a mosaic of sense impressions enhanced by
the use of the word champak , a spicy Indian tree.

In the last stanza Shelley conjures a momentous spell from a psychic deep where
the human soul is taken to the brink of the incomprehensible as the singer
invokes an unseen beloved. To play up the erotic paradigm of the poem, Shelley
weaves the tapestry of confusion of feelings, through intentional juggling of the
human senses, the aim of which is actually to play up ecstasy and confusion
when a person is in love. Which comes first: the dying, the fainting, or the
failing? Shelley draws his romantic vision from the volcanic fires inside man, his
passion. His body on fire, the serenader explodes with uncontrollable pleasure, a
seeming firework no less sensational than the rush of a rocket or the whiz of a
local whistle bomb as he interjects in the last two lines: Oh, press it close to
thine own again, /Where it will break at last/. ###

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