BACHELOR OF SECONDARY EDUCATION MAJOR IN ENGLISH

A POEM ANALYSIS USING THE LENS OF POST – STRUCTURALISM

EL 117: LITERARY CRITICISM

EDUCATION PROGRAM

DAVAO DOCTORS COLLEGE, INC

GEN. MALVAR STREET DAVAO CITY

SUBMITTED BY:

LYSA KARYLLE U. VILLANUEVA

SUBMITTED TO:

RENNEK GERG DELA CRUZ

EMMAN CLARK NAPARAN

OCTOBER 2022
Post Structuralism Lens Analysis: Music When Soft Voices Dies by
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry is a form of creative writing and language, like all other forms, is its tool, but there are
implicit relationships when a researcher tries to interpret a poem in a creative manner. These
are of language and the poet’s experience, the vision and perception of the poetic mind, his
imagination and the reality around him. The post-structuralist interpretations fall short of the
drive for comprehensiveness, universal acceptance, and intensely personal meanings found in
much poetry because these elements cannot be ignored. Thus, this paper will use the post –
structuralism lens in analyzing the notable poem of Percy Bysshe Shelly, “Music When Soft
Voices Dies”

The poem of Shelly, these principles can be understood in many ways. “Music When Soft
Voices Dies” is a title – a structure of four codes or symbols. These four words respectively
indicate the four elements – sounds, texture, melody and termination. Music is generally
defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody,
rhythm or otherwise expressive content. The music symbol meditates the way love lingers on
even when beloved is gone. Just as “music” continues to echo through one’s mind after it’s
stopped playing The speaker's loving "thoughts" of their beloved will endure no matter where
the beloved is, just as the recollection of a violet's scent stays in memory after the flower has
withered.

Music is a sound and its texture is soft – musical things such as musical instrument create
sounds by making something to vibrate. Vibration is a mechanical phenomenon whereby
oscillations occur about an equilibrium point. The speaker notes that pleasant memories
endure long after the events that gave rise to them. For example, even after "when soft voices
dies”, the "Music" they sang "Vibrate in the mind" of those who heard it. On the other hand,
Voices symbolizes the melody – it is a sound which was produced by vertebrates by means of
lungs, larynx or syrinx especially produced by human beings. In phrase, “Odours when sweet
violet sickens” the speaker described the voice as “sweet violets” the eventually “sicken” and
“dies”, the scent which they once emitted still “Live within the sense they quicken”. In simple
terms, the scent of the flower last until the flower has shriveled.

The melody of this vibrations combined with the sense of termination in the word die has been
emphasized in the first phrase of the second stanza. Dead is an adjective which devoid of
physical sensation or no longer showing human feeling or sensitivity. In Shelly poem conveys
the term dead as a frequent image that love will persist past the final destination and
separation of the grave. The speaker claims that in a same sense, their beloved will endure in
their memories regardless of where the beloved is. Just as a dead rose’s “leaves” (that is,
petals) can form a “bed” for a “beloved” to lie on, the speaker’s “thoughts” of the beloved
when they’re gone will form a bed for “Love itself to slumber on.” For this sense, the speaker’s
love for this person won’t wither and die while the sweetheart is away: it will only rest gently
on a bed of memories. The central theme of the poem is that love never dies and people can
carry their beloved with them as long as they live even with their thoughts. In the broad sense,
Percy Bysshe Shelly poem, “Music When Soft Voice Dies” centralized the Romanticism major
themes which key points are love, death and memory that love can be restlessness and
brooding, rebellion against authority, interchange with nature, the power of the visionary
imagination and of poetry, the pursuit of ideal.