Shelley as a revolutionary poet

Shelley was a true-born child of the French Revolution. The spirits of that revolution found
its expression in Shelley’s poetry. But as a critic observes:

“The greater rigour of his nature begot in him a passion for reform and a habit for
rebellion which are the inspiration of his longer poems.”

Throughout his life he dreamt of a new society, a new world, absolutely free from tyranny
and exploration. He was a dreamer of dreams and was always at war with the existing world
of complete chaos and confusion. He led a ceaseless war against the existing political, social
and economic institutions.
The Age of Romanticism is one of great turmoil in which Europe faced the greatest and
frightful uprising – the French Revolution. The watchwords of the Revolution were Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity. It stood for the natural rights of man and total abolition of class
distinctions. Its impact on the civilized world was unimaginable. The English people,
embarked on an age long struggle monarchy, found in the watchwords a reflection of their
own ideas and ideals.

In spite of the failure of the French Revolution, the social and political upheaval in France
played a great part in influencing English Romantic Movement. The Revolution was
characterized by three phases which affected English romanticism. These are:

1. The Doctrinaire Phase – The Age of Rousseau

2. The Political Phase – The Age of Robespierre and Danton
3. The Military Phase – The Age of Napoleon

These phases had a deep impact on Shelley’s mind. Shelley was the only passionate singer of
the Revolution. This was not because he looked beyond the instant disaster to a future
reconstruction, but because his imagination was far less concrete than those of his great
contemporaries. Ideas inspired him, not episodes. So he drank in the doctrines of Godwin,
and ignored the tragic perplexities of the actual situations. Compton Rickett is of the view:

“Widely divergent in temperamental and genius as Shelley and his mentor were, they
had this in common – a passion for abstract speculation. Only Godwin expressed them
in ‘Pedestrian’, Shelley gave to them music and colour.”

Shelley’s revolutionary attitude was constructive in the long run. In his preface to “The
Revolt of Islam”, he pointed out that the wanted to kindle in the bottom of his readers a
virtuous enthusiasm for liberty and justice, that faith and hope in something good, which
neither violence nor prejudice, can ever wholly extinguish among mankind. In another work
“Prometheus Unbound” Shelley made his hero arch-rebel and compared him with Satan of
“Paradise Lost”. In the concluding stanza of the song there is a return of belief that Earth
shall share in the Emancipation of man:

Where morning dyes her golden tresses,

Shall soon partake our high emotions;
Kings shall turn pale!

In “Queen Mab”, he propagated the necessity of reform. As a poet, Shelley conceived to

become the inspirer and judge of men. He had a passion for reforming the world which was
the direct outcome of that attitude of mind which the French Revolution had inculcated in
him.

A third idea contained in the original conception of the Revolution was ‘The Return of
Nature’. It held that the essential happiness of man consisted in a simple life in accordance
with Nature. Not that it was peculiar to the Revolution; but that it came as a logical result
from the first idea. It is a well-known fact that when man groans under the heels of tyranny,
corruption, selfish interest and social conventions; when he “lives like worms wriggling in a
dish, away from the torment of intelligence and the uselessness of culture”; he cries, almost
unwillingly:

“Let me go back to the breast of Mother Earth where my own hands can win my own
bread from woods and fields.”

Shelley found in Skylark a symbol of the ideal poet who lives in isolation. He appeals to the
bird:

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then – as I am listening now.

“Ode to the West Wind”, was also written by the poet under the direct influence of the times.
The moral, social and political regeneration seemed to Shelley possible in the atmosphere of
Nature. The ‘West Wind’ seemed to be an expression of this background. Finding his life
miserable, he implores the wind:

Oh, life me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

Shelley’s revolutionary passion flows from his idealism. All his life he dreamed of an ideal
world without evil, suffering and misery. It would be a world where reason would rule
supreme, and Equality, Liberty and Fraternity wound be no empty words. “Ode to West
Wind” expresses the poet’s intense suffering at the tyranny of life and his great hope in the
bright future of humanity. The poem symbolizes three things; freedom, power and change.
Clutton Brock, his great critic says:

“For Shelley, the forces of nature have as much reality as human beings have for most
of us, and he found the same kind of beauty that we find in the beauty of human beings
in the great works of art.”

Thus the poet finds the “West Wind” a fit symbol to raise and enliven his spirit out of the
depths of desolation, dejection and weariness. Moreover the ‘Wind’ should scatter his
thoughts among the universe:

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of his verse,
Scatter, as form an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

It may be said that the Revolution to Shelley was a spiritual awakening, the beginning of a
new life. He traced all evil in life to slavery. Free and natural development is only possible
when he enjoy liberty. And liberty in his opinion was freedom from external restraints.
Freedom was the first watchword of the French Revolution. Thus the Revolution kindled the
imaginative life of Shelley as it did that of Wordsworth. But the fire in Wordsworth
extinguished before long; whereas in Shelley it kept burning all through his brief career and
permeated all through is poetic work. Cazamian said:

“Shelley belongs to that rare species of mankind whom reason and feeling convert
revolutionaries in the flush of youth an who remain so for the rest of their life.”
Shelley's Lyricism
Cazamian detects: “Shelley’s lyricism is incomparable. In no other, do we find the perfect
sureness, the triumphant rapidity of this upward flight, this soaring height, the super
terrestrial quality as well as poignant intensity of the sounds which fall from these aerial
regions. Truly, never was the soul of a poet so spontaneously lyrical”.

Shelley lyrics reflect upon the highest achievement of romantic poetry. The beauty and charm
of his lyric have hardly been surpassed by any English poet. “Ode to the Westwind”, “To a
Skylark”, “To Night” and a number of other lyrics of Shelley are the treasure of English
literature.

Shelley was highly sensitive and imaginative, especially responsive to lyrical impulses. His
poetic genius was lyrical. Milton, Wordsworth, Keats were lyrical too, but Shelley’s lyrical
faculty was paramount. His lyrics are personal as well as impersonal. He deals with love,
nature, future life, regeneration of mankind, etc. His technique is lively and fresh and he
revels in it. The perfection lies in the fusion of imagery and rhythm in a diction.

Spontaneity is one of the remarkable features of Shelley’s lyrical poetry. His lyrics seem to
have been written without the least effort, arising directly from his heart. To Morgan, his
lyrics burst from the nature, the sunshine, the air. Nothing can be more spontaneous than the
following lines, addressed to Skylark.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poets were, thou scorner of ground!

In “Adonais”, he calls himself ‘a dying lamp’, ‘a falling shower’, ‘a breaking

billow’ which indicates the spontaneity of feelings.
There is a great intensity of feelings in Shelley’s lyrics. Emotions, with him, exceed the
normal taints. Normally, he reaches the stage of emotional ecstasy.

A note of sadness runs through most of his lyrics. His best lyrics are cries of pain and
anguish. He appears to be crying like ‘a tired child’, weeping away his life. ‘Our sweetest
songs’, to him, ‘are those that tell of saddest thought’.

Sometimes, he is just melancholic. He discloses his hidden miseries, distractions, sufferings,

tortures in a very painful manner.

Despair is one of the keynotes of his lyrical poetry. He is always longing and craving for the
impossible. There is little peace in his lyrics. ‘To Night’ reflects his crave and longing and
sigh for the night. This longing can also be found in the ‘Song’, in which he calls it
the ‘Spirit of Delight’.

Shelley’s lyrics are absolutely simple, smooth and fluent. This note of simplicity adds to
their beauty. How simple he is in the following lines, taken from “Ode to the Westwind”:

“The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Shelley’s lyrics are surpassingly musical and sweet. Granted that his lyrics are cries of pain,
but these cries are beautifully transformed into loveliness by sweet music. Even his most
pessimistic lyrics produce a sense of delight. It is the sadness of these lyrics which makes
them melodious. ‘To Night’, ‘Ode to the Westwind’, etc. are masterpieces of musical
lyricism.

Many of Shelley’s lyrics are ethereal and abstract. They seem to have been attempted by an
inhabitant of the aerial regions. ‘The Cloud’ and ‘Ode to the Westwind’ particularly
illustrate this ethereal temper. In ‘Ode to the Westwind’, he compares ‘loose
clouds’ to ‘earth’s decaying leaves’, ‘shook from the boughs of Heaven and Ocean’. It is
this kind of poetry which justifies the criticism of Shelley as “an ineffectual angel, beating
in the void on luminous wings in vain”.

Shelley’s lyrics are highly embellished compositions. They abound in ornamental

imagery. ‘The Cloud’, and ‘To a Skylark’ are the most striking examples. He paints a
beautiful picture of the moon, calling it a ‘silver sphere’, its rays ‘beam arrows’ and its
light, ‘intense lamp’.

We find wonderful similes decorating his lyrical poetry. He compares the skylark to a ‘poet
hidden in the light of thought’ and moon to an ‘orbed maiden with white fire laden’.

Shelley’s lyrical poetry has a prophetic note soaked with humanism. In ‘Ode to the
Westwind’ he gives a memorable message of hope to humanity; ‘If Winter comes, can
Spring be far behind?

Though some critics accuse Shelley of ineffectuality due to his ethereality and abstractness,
yet most of the critics are all praise for him on account of his lyricism. Saintbury ranks
Shelley as ‘one of the two or three major lyrical poets in the English tradition’. ‘There is
no poet’, observes Morgan, ‘not even Shakespeare in his lyrics, who has Shelley’s effect of
bird-song pouring and pouring out’.

Shelley’s more sentimental lyrics are not much appreciated today and perhaps he himself
didn’t like them, for none of them was published in his life time. This flaw mars few of his
poems. In majority of poems, he is unsentimental and reasonably careful; rather he combines
passion with intellect.

Shelley was a remarkable lyrical poet. ‘The Cloud’, ‘To a Skylark’, and ‘Ode to the
Westwind’ as lyrical poems are still ‘unsurpassed and almost unchallenged – the supreme
lyrics – of the sky’.
Shelley's Abstractness & Visionary Idealism
Shelley’s poetry is regarded as abstract, lacking the note of high seriousness and having
nothing solid and substantial. That’s why Mathew Arnold referred to Shelley as “a beautiful
and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain”. It is alleged that he
cherishes fanciful ideals, weaves dreams and does not deal with real life.

In fact, Shelley does not get raw material from the day to day experiences of life as Byron or
Wordsworth does, rather he obtains it from:

i- Mental process (Idealistic revolution)

ii- Wide study (Plato, Greek, Latin)
iii- Visions of future (The time of change)
iv- Dreams of the past (Past memories)

Primarily, he draws his raw material from these four sources and not from the rest world
around. That’s why he is called a visionary idealist. Unmindful of the bitter realities of the
woeful world, he dreams of a heavenly world, free from all evil. Arnold thinks, “Shelley is a
vision of beauty, availing nothing and affecting nothing”.

It is true that Shelley’s poetry relating to love, beauty, nature and human life is very much
near visionary picture. The reason is that throughout his life he remained in the grip of such
visions. This affected his poetry as well. It is said that Shelley’s poetry is substanceless and
almost a fabric of vision. He has ghostly and dreamy imagery in his poems. Despite this, no
vagueness of effect or intellectual mistakenness involve his poetry. Outlines may be faint, but
they are unmistakable.

We may not shun from the fact that Shelley was an idealist and a prophet. He conjured up
idealistic pictures of the gracious future of mankind. He was a pessimist, rather he believed in
the regeneration and reconstruction of mankind with equality, justice, peace and social
brotherhood. He had a dream that the present odd world would disappear and a new world of
glory would dawn. “Ode to the West Wind” is both idealistic and prophetic in which he is
confident that, “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind”. In “Queen Mab” he hopes
for new world and desires change. In “Prometheus Unbound” the poet hopes that humanity
will rise from the stage of sufferings and miseries. Needless to mention, that the hope of the
poet has gradually been realized. His ideals, which once looked visionary, now do have a
practical shape. Many of his dreams have either come true or are in the process of being
realized.

Visionary idealist, he was, yes to say, that he as ineffectual, divorced from reality, would be
doing injustice to him. Though some of his visions were phantoms, yet he dealt with
democracy, science and spirituality. He presented the struggle of the miserable and the
downtrodden in hostile world. He was a revolutionary poet. He revolted against prejudices,
customs, ignorance, even against dogmatic religion. He found religion in many cases, serving
as an instrument of suppressing Man’s freedom and as an alloy of political despotism. Being
a lover of liberty and freedom, he was a conformed rebel against all the existing institutions,
conventions and traditions. The love of liberty and hatred of oppression made him to revolt
against all the established institutions, political, moral, social etc. “Queen Mab”, “The
Revolt of Islam”, “Prometheus Unbound” etc. stand testimony to it.
So, we cannot say that Shelley’s poetry was without substance. His visions were not of a mad
man rather that of a person, devoted to the regeneration of mankind in a better world to come.
His visions are of a sane and right minded person who thought good of mankind at heart. His
visions are those of an idealist and a prophet, dissatisfied with the real world.
In “Prometheus Unbound” this vision is paramount. In “Ode to the West Wind” he is
optimistic about future. In “Hellas” he hopes that humanity will rise from the shape of
suffering and miseries.

To Byron, Shelley was the best and the least selfish man he ever came across. He is not
ineffectual, for he broke away from customs, traditions, conventions, sham morality and
religion. He was a rebel and a reformer. He tried to reform by giving an idealized picture of
the world. The conservative readers of his age could not accept his reform, however, today he
is considered as a prophet and idealist – a man for advance of his time. Shelley interprets the
longings and aspirations of his age. He reflects strive for freedom and justice. His prophecies
are coming true. Arnold’s estimation is, therefore, unjust. He is, no doubt, beautiful, but
not “ineffectual”. He is, in fact, a prophet of a new faith. Eliot has leveled upon him the
charge of adolescence and Lewis and Tate, that of defective workmanship. Both are extreme
views.

Daiches, giving a balanced view, points pout that the charge of adolescence cannot be
completely ruled out because of hysteria, self-pity and emotionally, but there is poet of
conviction in his best work. Byron preached liberty, but his approach was emotional.
Wordsworth was a thinker, but lacked passion and Shelley, however, was that great poet who
combined passion with intellect
Shelley's Love For Nature
Love for Nature is one of the prerequisites of all the Romantics and Shelley is no exception.
Love for Nature is one of the key-notes of his poetry. His poetry abounds in Nature
imagery. ‘On Love’ reflects colourful Nature imagery and glorification of Nature. He shows
fruition and fulfillment in his poems. Other poems e.g. ‘A Dream of the Unknown’, ‘Ode to
the Westwind’, ‘The Cloud’, ‘To Skylark’, ‘To the Moon’, etc. are remarkable poems of
Nature in which we find a profusion of Nature.

Like Wordsworth, Shelley believes that Nature exercises a healing influence on man’s
personality. He finds solace and comfort in Nature and feels its soothing influence on his
heart.

Shelley, in his poetry, appears as a pantheist too. In fact, his attitude towards Nature is
analogous to that of Wordsworth, who, greatly influenced Shelly. However, as against
Wordsworth, who linked the spirit in Nature with God, Shelley, on the other hand, linked it
and identified it with love, for he was an atheist and a skeptic. He believes that this
spirit ‘wields the world with never wearied love’.

“Adonais” reflects the most striking examples of Shelley’s pantheism. At an occasion, he

thinks that Keats ‘is made one with Nature’ for the power, moving in Nature. Nature’s spirit
is eternal. ‘The one remains, many change and pass’. He agrees that there is some
intelligence controlling Nature. In fact, he fuses the platonic philosophy of love with
pantheism. He finds Nature alive, capable of feeling and thinking like a human organism.
Wordsworth equates it with God, Shelley with love.

Shelley loved the indefinite and the changeful in Nature. He presents the changing and
indefinite moods of Nature e.g. clouds, wind, lightening etc. ‘Ode to the Westwind’ reflects
this particular trend of Shelley, wherein, he shows the West Wind driving the dead leaves,
scattering the living seeds, awakening the Mediterranean and making the sea-plants feel its
force. His poetry lacks pictorial definiteness and, often, his Nature description is clothed in
mist. As compared with Coleridge, Wordsworth etc. he is the least pictorial. It is partly due to
the abstract imagery and partly, owing to swift succession of similes which blur the picture.
Yet, sometimes, his image is definitely concrete. The picture of the blue Mediterranean,
lulled to sleep by his crystalline streams and awakened by Westwind is virtually remarkable
and substantial.

Despite his pantheistic attitude, Shelley conceives every object of Nature as possessing
a distinct individuality of its own, too, though he believes that the spirit of love unites the
whole universe, including Nature, yet he treats all the natural objects as distinguishable
entities. The sun, the moon, the stars, the rainbow – all have been treated as separate beings.
This capacity of individualizing the separate forces for Nature is termed as Shelley’s myth
making power which is best illustrated in “Ode to the Westwind”. He gives the West Wind,
the ocean an independent life and personalities. He presents the Mediterranean sleeping and
then being awakened by the West Wind, just like a human body.

The ancient Greek gave human attributes to the natural objects whom they personified.
Shelley, too, personifies them, but he retains their true characteristics. He personifies the
West wind ad the Mediterranean, but both remains wind and ocean. They have not been
endowed with human qualities. He has almost scientific attitude towards the objects of
Nature. Whatever he says is scientifically true. The Westwind virtually drives the dead leaves
and scatters the seeds to be grown in this wind; the sea plants undoubtedly feel the destructive
effects of the strong Westwind. Likewise, clouds do bring rain, dew-drops, snow, lightening,
thunder etc. He observes the natural phenomenon with a scientific eye, though the description
remains highly imaginative.

Time and again, Shelley’s Nature description has a touch of optimism having all the
sufferings, tortures, miseries of the world. In “Ode to the Westwind”, he hopes for the best
and is confident that “If Winter comes, can spring be far behind?” His nature treatment is
multidimensional; scientific, philosophic, intellectual, mythical and of course human. He is a
marvelous poet of Nature.
Shelley: A Poet Of Love
Shelley is primarily a poet of love, as Keats is of beauty. The story of his life is, in fact, a
story of love. But it has to be remembered that Shelley as a love poet is a complex
phenomenon. For him love, is not the name of one particular feeling or thing. It is tinged with
many colours. It is sexual love, Platonic love, cosmic energy and love of humanity. Shelley
devoted his brief life to the pursuit of love. Yearning for perfect Love, Beauty and Liberty is
keynote of Shelley’s poetry. He considers love a regenerating power, which is closely bound
up with his conception of human perfectibility.

Shelley’s attitude of love was greatly influence by the teachings of Plato. According to Plato,
beauty has such as enormous power over men because they have previously beheld it in a
heaven and since, sight is the keenest of bodily senses. Shelley looked upon love that is, by
no means, a simple phenomenon. In his essay, ‘A Defense of Poetry’, he has defended this
concept as:

“This is the bond and connection and the sanction that connects not only man with man,
but with everything, which exists in man.”

Shelley’s concept of ideal love finds it best expression in “Epipsychidion”. No poet felt
deeply the dynamic influence of love in moulding human destiny; none realized utterly the
triviality of life devoid of love; yet Shelley’s women are merely lovely wraiths that greet us
to the strains of delicious music.

“See where she stands! A mortal shape induced

With love and life and light and deity,”

From love as sexual passion, Shelley proceeds to look at love as Plato looked at it. Here his
concept of love is mainly Platonic, though the view of Godwin on free love also had a
profound influence on him. In “Phaedrus”, Plato observes that Love and Beauty are nothing
concrete but abstract and ideal. Thus love is regarded as a kind of madness.

Plato further held that every object of Nature is governed by love and are forever trying to
unite them with the spirit of divine love diffused through the universe. Shelley’s conception
of Platonic idealism finds its vent in the following verses.

“Nothing in world is single;

All things by a law divine;
In one spirit meet and mingle,
Why not I with thine?”

Shelley devoted his whole life not to the pursuit of physical but to the ideal Love and Beauty
which he yeaned for all his life. In this respect, he has beautifully described in “Hymn to
Intellectual Beauty”:

“Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon”

Love to Plato is also an aspiration towards the good and the beautiful. In “Prometheus
Unbound”, Shelley comes very close to the thinking of Plato. Prometheus exercised the
freedom of the pursuit of good. And Demogorgan’s statement that Love is free is the only
most philosophic statement. Only Love is exempt. Only love is free. Thus, love in
Prometheus represents the more general Platonic notion, the notion of all things good and
beautiful:

“How glorious art though Earth! And if thou be

---------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------
I could fall down and worship that and thee.”

In his later years Shelley seems to have been moving away from the way of Affirmation
towards of Rejection, towards the Rejection of the Image of Woman. He never lost his basic
faith, but he laid more stress that before on the transcendent of that which he sought. His
desire is:

“The desire of the moth for the star,

Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion of something afar,
From the sphere of our sorrow.”

Like Plato Shelley believes that Love is the source of the greatest benefits for both the lover
and the beloved since they encouraged each other in the practice of virtue. Love implants the
sense of honour and dishonour and therefore impels to all noble deeds.

This is how Shelley looked at love. Though his concept of love is severely criticized by so
many critics who contend that though intellectually mature, Shelley remained perhaps in
some ways emotionally adolescent. His whole approach to love is not only unhealthy but his
ideals, his visions, are only whims conceived in his own mind. But we should not forget that
Shelley has his won philosophy of love, which was, to him, something higher and nobler than
a mere sexual feeling, for him it was a perfection of all that is good and noble in the world.
Shelley: A Revolutionary Poet
Shelley was a true-born child of the French Revolution. The spirits of that revolution found
its expression in Shelley’s poetry. But as a critic observes:

“The greater rigour of his nature begot in him a passion for reform and a habit for
rebellion which are the inspiration of his longer poems.”

Throughout his life he dreamt of a new society, a new world, absolutely free from tyranny
and exploration. He was a dreamer of dreams and was always at war with the existing world
of complete chaos and confusion. He led a ceaseless war against the existing political, social
and economic institutions.

The Age of Romanticism is one of great turmoil in which Europe faced the greatest and
frightful uprising – the French Revolution. The watchwords of the Revolution were Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity. It stood for the natural rights of man and total abolition of class
distinctions. Its impact on the civilized world was unimaginable. The English people,
embarked on an age long struggle monarchy, found in the watchwords a reflection of their
own ideas and ideals.

In spite of the failure of the French Revolution, the social and political upheaval in France
played a great part in influencing English Romantic Movement. The Revolution was
characterized by three phases which affected English romanticism. These are:

1.The Doctrinaire Phase – The Age of Rousseau

2.The Political Phase – The Age of Robespierre and Danton
3.The Military Phase – The Age of Napoleon

These phases had a deep impact on Shelley’s mind. Shelley was the only passionate singer of
the Revolution. This was not because he looked beyond the instant disaster to a future
reconstruction, but because his imagination was far less concrete than those of his great
contemporaries. Ideas inspired him, not episodes. So he drank in the doctrines of Godwin,
and ignored the tragic perplexities of the actual situations. Compton Rickett is of the view:

“Widely divergent in temperamental and genius as Shelley and his mentor were, they
had this in common – a passion for abstract speculation. Only Godwin expressed them
in ‘Pedestrian’, Shelley gave to them music and colour.”

Shelley’s revolutionary attitude was constructive in the long run. In his preface to “The
Revolt of Islam”, he pointed out that the wanted to kindle in the bottom of his readers a
virtuous enthusiasm for liberty and justice, that faith and hope in something good, which
neither violence nor prejudice, can ever wholly extinguish among mankind. In another
work “Prometheus Unbound” Shelley made his hero arch-rebel and compared him with
Satan of “Paradise Lost”. In the concluding stanza of the song there is a return of belief that
Earth shall share in the Emancipation of man:

Where morning dyes her golden tresses,

Shall soon partake our high emotions;
Kings shall turn pale!
In “Queen Mab”, he propagated the necessity of reform. As a poet, Shelley conceived to
become the inspirer and judge of men. He had a passion for reforming the world which was
the direct outcome of that attitude of mind which the French Revolution had inculcated in
him.

A third idea contained in the original conception of the Revolution was ‘The Return of
Nature’. It held that the essential happiness of man consisted in a simple life in accordance
with Nature. Not that it was peculiar to the Revolution; but that it came as a logical result
from the first idea. It is a well-known fact that when man groans under the heels of tyranny,
corruption, selfish interest and social conventions; when he “lives like worms wriggling in a
dish, away from the torment of intelligence and the uselessness of culture”; he cries,
almost unwillingly:

“Let me go back to the breast of Mother Earth where my own hands can win my own
bread from woods and fields.”

Shelley found in Skylark a symbol of the ideal poet who lives in isolation. He appeals to the
bird:

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then – as I am listening now.

“Ode to the West Wind”, was also written by the poet under the direct influence of the
times. The moral, social and political regeneration seemed to Shelley possible in the
atmosphere of Nature. The ‘West Wind’ seemed to be an expression of this background.
Finding his life miserable, he implores the wind:

Oh, life me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

Shelley’s revolutionary passion flows from his idealism. All his life he dreamed of an ideal
world without evil, suffering and misery. It would be a world where reason would rule
supreme, and Equality, Liberty and Fraternity wound be no empty words. “Ode to West
Wind” expresses the poet’s intense suffering at the tyranny of life and his great hope in the
bright future of humanity. The poem symbolizes three things; freedom, power and change.
Clutton Brock, his great critic says:

“For Shelley, the forces of nature have as much reality as human beings have for most
of us, and he found the same kind of beauty that we find in the beauty of human beings
in the great works of art.”

Thus the poet finds the “West Wind” a fit symbol to raise and enliven his spirit out of the
depths of desolation, dejection and weariness. Moreover the ‘Wind’ should scatter his
thoughts among the universe:
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of his verse,
Scatter, as form an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

It may be said that the Revolution to Shelley was a spiritual awakening, the beginning of a
new life. He traced all evil in life to slavery. Free and natural development is only possible
when he enjoy liberty. And liberty in his opinion was freedom from external restraints.
Freedom was the first watchword of the French Revolution. Thus the Revolution kindled the
imaginative life of Shelley as it did that of Wordsworth. But the fire in Wordsworth
extinguished before long; whereas in Shelley it kept burning all through his brief career and
permeated all through is poetic work. Cazamian said:

“Shelley belongs to that rare species of mankind whom reason and feeling convert
revolutionaries in the flush of youth an who remain so for the rest of their life.”