1. art and entertainment
2. books and literature
3. poetry

Lecture 3 of Book Two
Percy Bysshe Shelley
• I. Life:
• born in 1792, at Fieldplace near-Horsham
in Sussex;,
• Shelley was gentle and kind by nature, but
he had a stout heart. He could not stand
any injustice.
• At Eton he was known as" Mad Shelley”.
At this time he was much influenced by the
utopian-socialist doctrines of William
Godwin.
• Then he went to Oxford, where he took part in
progressive activities and soon came into sharp
conflict with the university authorities. In 1811
Shelley published an anti-religious pamphlet '
The Necessity of Atheism', believing that religion
was an instrument of oppression. For this he
was promptly expelled from the university and
disowned by his father.
• While living alone in London at the age of 19, he
made acquaintance with and married, out of
sympathy, a school-girl of 16, Harriet Westbrook.
For two years the young couple wandered about
England, Ireland and Scotland.
• Shelley's marriage with Harriet had proved
hasty and unsuitable, because she could
not share his ideas.
• The unhappy union was dissolved in 1814.
In 1816, Shelley married Mary Godwin, the
daughter of William Godwin, the radical
philosopher, and Mary Wollstonecraft, the
authoress of the famous ' Vindication of
the Rights of Women'. Shelley's second
marriage was a happy one.
• He was compelled to leave England in 1818 and
spent all the rest of his life in Italy. As early as
1816 began Shelley's friendship with Byron.
While in Italy Shelley and Byron formed a closer
connection with each other and from then on the
names of the two poets have been linked up for
ever.
• the English people have ever cherished his
memory and poetry with love. Mary Shelley did a
good job in collecting and editing his poems, and
her explanatory notes have been helpful to all
editors and readers of Shelley's works.
II . Major Works
• "Queen Mab", Shelley's first long poem of importance,
written in 1813. contains almost all his major social and
political ideas.
• It is written in the form of a fairy-tale dream. The fairy
Queen Mab carries oil in her celestial chariot a beautiful
and pure maiden Lanthe, and shows her the past,
present and future of mankind. Through the mouth of the
fairy queen the poet presents his own views on
philosophy, religion, morality, and social problems.
• The poem has 9 cantos. The first two cantos deal with a
vision of the past; the last two with an ideal view of the
future, while the five central cantos are devoted to a
fierce attack on the social evils of the day.
The Revolt of Islam':
• "The Revolt of Islam', another important long
poem of Shelley's, was Written in 1818. A
brother and a sister. Laon and Cythna are united
in their common ideal of liberty, equality and
fraternity and they rouse the spirit of revolt
among their Islam people against their tyrants.
• Heroic struggle for the liberation of mankind and
union with a sister-comrade were inseparable
elements of Shelley's ideal, and the love
between Laon and Cythna was but the symbol of
their common devotion to a lofty cause.
• Besides the theme of revolution the poem
shows Shelley's attitude towards the position of
woman in society. Cythna the woman warrior
seeks the intellectual liberation of her sex.
" Prometheus Unbound"
• Shelley's masterpiece is "Prometheus Unbound'
(1820), a lyrical drama in 4 acts.
• According to Greek myth, Prometheus stole fire
from heaven and taught men how to use it. For
this he was punished by Zeus, the supreme god,
who chained him to a rock on Mt.Caucasus,
where during the daytime a vulture fed on his
liver, which was restored each succeeding night.
• So the figure of Prometheus has been 'symbolic
of those noble-hearted revolutionaries, who
devote themselves to the just cause of the
people and suffer great pains at the hands of
tyrants'.
• Though chained to the rock, Prometheus has
"great allies' in the World: He is supported by
innumerable forces; Mother Earth gives him
strength to endure all sufferings and sends the
spirits of heroes and martyrs to cheer him.
• Lovely shapes of Faith and Hope hover around
him. His bride Asia, the spirit of love and
goodness. He knows the reign of Zeus is but a
passing period in the life of the universe, so to
the last he refuses to yield to the tyrant in
heaven. Finally, in spite of desperate resistance,
Zeus is overthrown by the huge spirit
Demogorgon, the symbol of change and
revolution.
• Prometheus is released by Hercules the hero of
great strength.
Lyrics on Nature and Love
• Shelley's short poems on nature and love
occupy a very important place in his literary
career. To him, nature exists as an unseen Life
of the Universe, and his love of nature is almost
boundless.
• In Shelley's lyrics, nature is endowed with life,
and the poet merges himself with it. This gives
an exquisite beauty to these lyrics on nature.
• This passionate love of nature is but an
expression of the poet's eager aspiration for
something free from the care and misery of real
life.
“A Defence of Poetry"
• In 1821, T.L.Peacock, one of Shelley's friends, published
The Four Ages of Poetry", in which he asserted that
poetry taking its origin in relatively primitive and simple
modes of thought must inevitably decline with the
progress of civilization, and in an age of rationality, such
as the 19th century, it can only be an anachronism, i.e.
something out of its proper time, which is barbaric and
absurd.
• Shelley's essay' A Defence of Poetry' was written as a
refutation of Peacock's view. Shelley maintained that
poetry, so far from being deteriorated and made
powerless by the advance of civilization is actually the
indispensable agent of civilization. Poets are the
unacknowledged legislators of the world', and poetry can
play a very important part in the spiritual life of society.
III. Points of view
• (1) Politically Shelley was a revolutionary and a
democrat. He was fighting all his life against
cruelty, injustice, authority, institutional religion
and the format shams of respectable society.
• He thought that his age was one of the war
between the oppressed and the oppressors. And
he believed that in spite of the defeat of the
revolution, France would rise again, that the
forces of liberty would again triumph in Europe.
• Literarily Shelley, with a triumphant praise
of the imagination, highly exalted the role
of poetry, thinking that poetry alone could
free man and offer the mind a wider view
of its powers.
• Poetry "is a more direct representation of
the actions and passions, of our internal
being". It is through language that the
imagination most readily apprehends the
ideal order of truth.
"Ode to the West Wind" (1819)
• 1 O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
2 Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
3 Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
4 Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
5 Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
6 Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
7 The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
8 Each like a corpse within its grave, until
9 Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
10 Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
11 (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
12 With living hues and odours plain and hill:
13 Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
14 Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!
• 15 Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,
16 Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
17 Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
18 Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
19 On the blue surface of thine aiery surge,
20 Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
21 Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
22 Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
23 The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
24 Of the dying year, to which this closing night
25 Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
26 Vaulted with all thy congregated might
27 Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
28 Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!
• 29 Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
30 The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
31 Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams,
32 Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
33 And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
34 Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
35 All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
36 So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
37 For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
38 Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
39 The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
40 The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
41 Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
42 And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!
• 43 If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
44 If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
45 A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
46 The impulse of thy strength, only less free
47 Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
48 I were as in my boyhood, and could be
49 The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
50 As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
51 Scarce seem'd a vision; I would ne'er have striven
52 As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
53 Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
54 I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
55 A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd
56 One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
• 57 Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
58 What if my leaves are falling like its own!
59 The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
60 Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
61 Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
62 My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
63 Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
64 Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!
65 And, by the incantation of this verse,
66 Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
67 Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
68 Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
69 The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
• 70 If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
• Summary
• The speaker invokes the “wild West Wind” of autumn,
which scatters the dead leaves and spreads seeds so
that they may be nurtured by the spring, and asks that
the wind, a “destroyer and preserver,” hear him. The
speaker calls the wind the “dirge / Of the dying year,”
and describes how it stirs up violent storms, and again
implores it to hear him. The speaker says that the wind
stirs the Mediterranean from “his summer dreams,” and
cleaves the Atlantic into choppy chasms, making the
“sapless foliage” of the ocean tremble, and asks for a
third time that it hear him.
• The speaker says that if he were a dead leaf that the
wind could bear, or a cloud it could carry, or a wave it
could push, or even if he were, as a boy, “the comrade”
of the wind’s “wandering over heaven,” then he would
never have needed to pray to the wind and invoke its
powers. He pleads with the wind to lift him “as a wave, a
leaf, a cloud!”—for though he is like the wind at heart,
untamable and proud—he is now chained and bowed
with the weight of his hours upon the earth.
• The speaker asks the wind to “make me thy lyre,” to be his own
Spirit, and to drive his thoughts across the universe, “like withered
leaves, to quicken a new birth.” He asks the wind, by the incantation
of this verse, to scatter his words among mankind, to be the
“trumpet of a prophecy.” Speaking both in regard to the season and
in regard to the effect upon mankind that he hopes his words to
have, the speaker asks: “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
• Form
• Each of the seven parts of “Ode to the West Wind” contains five
stanzas—four three-line stanzas and a two-line couplet, all metered
in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme in each part follows a
pattern known as terza rima, the three-line rhyme scheme employed
by Dante in his Divine Comedy. In the three-line terza rima stanza,
the first and third lines rhyme, and the middle line does not; then the
end sound of that middle line is employed as the rhyme for the first
and third lines in the next stanza. The final couplet rhymes with the
middle line of the last three-line stanza. Thus each of the seven
parts of “Ode to the West Wind” follows this scheme: ABA BCB CDC
DED EE.
• Commentary
• The wispy, fluid terza rima of “Ode to the West Wind” finds Shelley
taking a long thematic leap beyond the scope of “Hymn to
Intellectual Beauty,” and incorporating his own art into his meditation
on beauty and the natural world. Shelley invokes the wind magically,
describing its power and its role as both “destroyer and preserver,”
and asks the wind to sweep him out of his torpor “as a wave, a leaf,
a cloud!” In the fifth section, the poet then takes a remarkable turn,
transforming the wind into a metaphor for his own art, the expressive
capacity that drives “dead thoughts” like “withered leaves” over the
universe, to “quicken a new birth”—that is, to quicken the coming of
the spring. Here the spring season is a metaphor for a “spring” of
human consciousness, imagination, liberty, or morality—all the
things Shelley hoped his art could help to bring about in the human
mind. Shelley asks the wind to be his spirit, and in the same
movement he makes it his metaphorical spirit, his poetic faculty,
which will play him like a musical instrument, the way the wind
strums the leaves of the trees. The thematic implication is significant:
whereas the older generation of Romantic poets viewed nature as a
source of truth and authentic experience, the younger generation
largely viewed nature as a source of beauty and aesthetic
experience. In this poem, Shelley explicitly links nature with art by
finding powerful natural metaphors with which to express his ideas
about the power, import, quality, and ultimate effect of aesthetic
expression.
• Detailed Study
• Summary, Stanza 1
• Addressing the west wind as a human, the poet
describes its activities: It drives dead leaves away as if
they were ghosts fleeing a wizard. The leaves are yellow
and black, pale and red, as if they had died of an
infectious disease. The west wind carries seeds in its
chariot and deposits them in the earth, where they lie
until the spring wind awakens them by blowing on a
trumpet (clarion). When they form buds, the spring wind
spreads them over plains and on hills. In a paradox, the
poet addresses the west wind as a destroyer and a
preserver, then asks it to listen to what he says.
• Notes, Stanza 1
• 1. The accent over the e in wingèd (line 7) causes the
word to be pronounced in two syllables—the first
stressed ....and the second unstressed—enabling the
poet to maintain the metric scheme (iambic pentameter).
• 2. clarion: Trumpet.
• Summary, Stanza 2
• The poet says the west wind drives clouds along just as
it does dead leaves after it shakes the clouds free of the
sky and the oceans. These clouds erupt with rain and
lightning. Against the sky, the lightning appears as a
bright shaft of hair from the head of a Mænad. The poet
compares the west wind to a funeral song sung at the
death of a year and says the night will become a dome
erected over the year's tomb with all of the wind's
gathered might. From that dome will come black rain, fire,
and hail. Again the poet asks the west wind to continue
to listen to what he has to say.
• Notes, Stanza 2
• 3. Mænad: Wildly emotional woman who took part in the
orgies of ....Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and revelry.
• 4. dirge: Funeral song.
• 5. congregated: Gathered, mustered.
• Summary, Stanza 3
• At the beginning of autumn, the poet says, the the west wind
awakened the Mediterranean Sea—lulled by the sound of the clear
streams flowing into it—from summer slumber near an island formed
from pumice (hardened lava). The island is in a bay at Baiae, a city
in western Italy about ten miles west of Naples. While sleeping at
this locale, the Mediterranean saw old palaces and towers that had
collapsed into the sea during an earthquake and became overgrown
with moss and flowers. To create a path for the west wind, the
powers of the mighty Atlantic Ocean divide (cleave) themselves and
flow through chasms. Deep beneath the ocean surface, flowers and
foliage, upon hearing the west wind, quake in fear and despoil
themselves. (In autumn, ocean plants decay like land plants. See
Shelley's note on this subject.) Once more, the poet asks the west
wind to continue to listen to what he has to say.
• Notes, Stanza 3
• 6. The accent over the a in crystàlline shifts the stress to the second
syllable, making crystàl an iamb.
• 7. In his notes, Shelley commented on lines 38-42:
• Summary, Stanza 4
• The poet says that if he were a dead leaf (like the ones in the first
stanza) or a cloud (like the ones in the second stanza) or an ocean
wave that rides the power of the Atlantic but is less free than the
uncontrollable west wind—or if even he were as strong and vigorous
as he was when he was a boy and could accompany the wandering
wind in the heavens and could only dream of traveling faster—well,
then, he would never have prayed to the west wind as he is doing
now in his hour of need.
• .......Referring again to imagery in the first three stanzas, the poet
asks the wind to lift him as it would a wave, a leaf, or a cloud; for
here on earth he is experiencing troubles that prick him like thorns
and cause him to bleed. He is now carrying a heavy burden that—
though he is proud and tameless and swift like the west wind—has
immobilized him in chains and bowed him down.
•
• Notes, Stanza 4
• 8. Skiey is a neologism (coined word) whose two syllables maintain
iambic pentameter. The s in skiey alliterates with the s in
speed, ....scarce, seem'd, and striven.
• Summary, Stanza 5
• The poet asks the west wind to turn him into a lyre (a
stringed instrument) in the same way that the west
wind's mighty currents turn the forest into a lyre. And if
the poet's leaves blow in the wind like those from the
forest trees, there will be heard a deep autumnal tone
that is both sweet and sad. Be "my spirit," the poet
implores the wind. "Be thou me" and drive my dead
thoughts (like the dead leaves) across the universe in
order to prepare the way for new birth in the spring. The
poet asks the wind to scatter his words around the world,
as if they were ashes from a burning fire. To the
unawakened earth, they will become blasts from a
trumpet of prophecy. In other words, the poet wants the
wind to help him disseminate his views on politics,
philosophy, literature, and so on. The poet is encouraged
that, although winter will soon arrive, spring and rebirth
will follow it.
• Examples of Figures of Speech and Rhetorical
Devices
• Stanza 1
• Alliteration: wild West Wind (line 1).
• Apostrophe, Personification: Throughout the poem, the
poet addresses the west wind as if it were a person.
• Metaphor: Comparison of the west wind to breath of
Autumn's being (line 1).
• Metaphor: Comparison of autumn to a living, breathing
creature (line 1).
• Anastrophe: leaves dead (line 2). Anastrophe is
inversion of the normal word order, as in a man forgotten
(instead of a forgotten man) or as in the opening lines of
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Kahn": In Xanada did
Kubla Kahn / A stately pleasure dome decree (instead of
In Xanadu, Kubla Kahn decreed a stately pleasure
dome). Here is another example, made up to
demonstrate the inverted word order of anastrophe:
•
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In the garden green and dewy
A rose I plucked for Huey
Simile: Comparison of dead leaves to ghosts.
Anastrophe: enchanter fleeing (line 3).
Alliteration: Pestilence-stricken multitudes (line 5).
Alliteration: Pestilence-stricken multitudes (line 5).
Alliteration: chariotest to (line 6).
Alliteration: The wingèd seeds, where they (line 7).
Metaphor: Comparison of seeds to flying creatures (line 7).
Simile: Comparison of each seed to a corpse (lines 7-8).
Alliteration: sister of the Spring (line 9).
Personification: Comparison of spring wind to a person (lines 9-10).
Metaphor, Personification: Comparison of earth to a dreamer (line
10).
Alliteration: flocks to feed
Simile: Comparison of buds to flocks (line 11).
Anastrophe: fill / . . . With living hues and odours plain and hill (lines
10, 12).
Alliteration: Wild Spirit, which (line 13).
Paradox: Destroyer and preserver (line 14).
Alliteration: hear, O hear (line 14).
• Stanza 8
• Apostrophe, Personification: The poet addresses the west wind as if
it were a person.
• Metaphor: Comparison of the poet and the forest to a lyre, a stringed
musical instrument (line 57).
• Metaphor: Comparison of the poet to a forest (line 58).
• Alliteration: The tumult of thy mighty harmonies (line 59).
• Alliteration: Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, (line 61).
• Metaphor: Comparison of the poet to the wind (line 62).
• Alliteration: Drive my dead thoughts over the universe (line 63).
• Simile: Comparison of thoughts to withered leaves (lines 63-64).
• Alliteration: the incantation of this (line 65).
• Simile: Comparison of words to ashes and sparks (66-67).
• Alliteration: my words among mankind (67).
• Metaphor: Comparison of the poet's voice to the wind as a trumpet
of a prophecy (lines 68-69).
• Alliteration: trumpet of a prophecy (lines 68-69).
• Alliteration: O Wind, / If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
• Structure and Rhyme Scheme
• The poem contains five stanzas of fourteen lines each. Each stanza
has three tercets and a closing couplet. In poetry, a tercet is a unit of
three lines that usually contain end rhyme; a couplet is a two-line
unit that usually contains end rhyme. Shelley wrote the tercets in a
verse form called terza rima, invented by Dante Alighieri. In this
format, line 2 of one tercet rhymes with lines 1 and 3 of the next
tercet. In regard to the latter, consider the first three tercets of the
second stanza of "Ode to the West Wind." Notice that shed (second
line, first tercet) rhymes with spread and head (first and third lines,
second tercet) and that surge (second line, second tercet) rhymes
with verge and dirge (first and third lines, third tercet).
• All of the couplets in the poem rhyme, but the last couplet (lines 6970) is an imperfect rhyme called eye rhyme. Eye rhyme occurs when
the pronunciation of the last syllable of one line is different from the
pronunciation of the last syllable of another line even though both
syllables are identical in spelling except for a preceding consonant.
For example, the following end-of-line word pairs would constitute
eye rhyme: cough, rough; cow, mow; daughter, laughter; rummaging,
raging. In Shelley's poem, wind and behind form eye rhyme.
• Shelley unifies the content of the poem by focusing the first three
stanzas on the powers of the wind and the last two stanzas on the
poet's desire to use these powers to spread his words throughout
the world.
• Meter
• .......Most of the lines in the poem are in iambic pentameter, although
some of the pentameter lines have an extra syllable (catalexis). The
following tercet from the first stanza demonstrates the iambicpentameter format, with the stressed syllables in capitals:
• ..........1................2..................3.................4.............5
• The WING.|.èd SEEDS,.|.where THEY.|.lie COLD.|.and LOW,
• ..........1................2..............3..............4.............5
•
Each LIKE.|.a CORPSE.|.with IN.|.its GRAVE,.|.un TIL
• .......1............2..........3..............4..................5
• Thine AZ.|.ure SIS.|.ter OF.|.the SPRING.|.shall BLOW
• Here is a line with catalexis:
• ........1...............2.............3..............4.............5............
• Of SOME.|.fierce MAE.|.nad, E.|.ven FROM.|.the DIM.|.verge
• .......
• And here is a line that does not follow the format. It is in iambic
hexameter:
• ..........1................2..................3.................4.............5............6
• Shook FROM.|.the TANG.|.gled BOUGHS.|.of HEA.|.ven AND.|.o
CEAN
• Theme
• Irresistible Power
• The poet desires the irresistible power of the wind to scatter the
words he has written about his ideals and causes, one of which was
opposition to Britain’s monarchical government as a form of tyranny.
Believing firmly in democracy and individual rights, he supported
movements to reform government. In 1819, England’s nobility feared
that working-class citizens—besieged by economic problems,
including high food prices—would imitate the rebels of the French
Revolution and attempt to overthrow the established order. On
August 16, agitators attracted tens of thousands of people to a rally
in St. Peter’s Field, Manchester, to urge parliamentary reform and to
protest laws designed to inflate the cost of corn and wheat. Nervous
public officials mismanaged the unarmed crowd and ended up killing
11 protesters and injuring more than 500 others. In reaction to this
incident, Shelley wrote The Masque of Anarchy in the fall of 1819 to
urge further nonviolent action against the government. This work
was not published during his lifetime. However, "Ode to the West
Wind," also written in the fall of 1819, was published a year later.
The poem obliquely refers to his desire to spread his reformist ideas
when it says, "Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth / Ashes and
sparks, my words among mankind!" Shelley believed that the poetry
he wrote had the power bring about political reform: "Poets are the
unacknowledged legislators of the World," he wrote in another work,
A Defence of Poetry.
• Study Questions and Essay Topics
• 1. Write an essay that attempts to answer whether
Shelley succeeded in his goal to "scatter . . . my words
among mankind"? The essay will ....require you to read
other works by him and to research sources evaluating
the impact of these works.
• 2. Shelley's poem uses nature imagery to convey his
theme. Write a poem of your own that uses nature
imagery to convey a theme.
• 3. To whom does line 56 refer?
• 4. In line 62 (Be thou me, impetuous one! ) is Shelley
describing himself as impetuous?
• 5. What is an ode? In what ways does Shelley's poem fit
the definition of an ode?
• 西风颂
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查良铮 译
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哦，狂暴的西风，秋之生命的呼吸！
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你无形，但枯死的落叶被你横扫，
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有如鬼魅碰到了巫师，纷纷逃避：
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黄的，黑的，灰的，红得像患肺痨，
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呵，重染疫疠的一群：西风呵，是你
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以车驾把有翼的种子催送到
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黑暗的冬床上，它们就躺在那里，
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像是墓中的死穴，冰冷，深藏，低贱，
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直等到春天，你碧空的姊妹吹起
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她的喇叭，在沉睡的大地上响遍，
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（唤出嫩芽，像羊群一样，觅食空中）
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将色和香充满了山峰和平原。
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不羁的精灵呵，你无处不远行；
•
破坏者兼保护者：听吧，你且聆听！
• 2
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没入你的急流，当高空一片混乱，
流云象大地的枯叶一样被撕扯
脱离天空和海洋的纠缠的枝干。
成为雨和电的使者：它们飘落
在你的磅礴之气的蔚蓝的波面，
有如狂女的飘扬的头发在闪烁，
从天穹的最遥远而模糊的边沿
直抵九霄的中天，到处都在摇曳
欲来雷雨的卷发，对濒死的一年
你唱出了葬歌，而这密集的黑夜
将成为它广大墓陵的一座圆顶，
里面正有你的万钧之力的凝结；
那是你的浑然之气，从它会迸涌
黑色的雨，冰雹和火焰：哦，你听！
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是你，你将蓝色的地中海唤醒，
而它曾经昏睡了一整个夏天，
被澄澈水流的回旋催眠入梦，
就在巴亚海湾的一个浮石岛边，
它梦见了古老的宫殿和楼阁
在水天辉映的波影里抖颤，
而且都生满青苔、开满花朵，
那芬芳真迷人欲醉！呵，为了给你
让一条路，大西洋的汹涌的浪波
把自己向两边劈开，而深在渊底
那海洋中的花草和泥污的森林
虽然枝叶扶疏，却没有精力；
听到你的声音，它们已吓得发青：
一边颤栗，一边自动萎缩：哦，你听！
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哎，假如我是一片枯叶被你浮起，
假如我是能和你飞跑的云雾，
是一个波浪，和你的威力同喘息，
假如我分有你的脉搏，仅仅不如
你那么自由，哦，无法约束的生命！
假如我能像在少年时，凌风而舞
便成了你的伴侣，悠游天空
（因为呵，那时候，要想追你上云霄，
似乎并非梦幻），我就不致像如今
这样焦躁地要和你争相祈祷。
哦，举起我吧，当我是水波、树叶、浮云！
我跌在生活底荆棘上，我流血了！
这被岁月的重轭所制服的生命
原是和你一样：骄傲、轻捷而不驯。
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把我当作你的竖琴吧，有如树林：
尽管我的叶落了，那有什么关系！
你巨大的合奏所振起的音乐
将染有树林和我的深邃的秋意：
虽忧伤而甜蜜。呵，但愿你给予我
狂暴的精神！奋勇者呵，让我们合一！
请把我枯死的思想向世界吹落，
让它像枯叶一样促成新的生命！
哦，请听从这一篇符咒似的诗歌，
就把我的话语，像是灰烬和火星
从还未熄灭的炉火向人间播散！
让预言的喇叭通过我的嘴唇
把昏睡的大地唤醒吧！西风呵，
如果冬天来了,春天还会远吗?
Ozymandias
• I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
• Summary
• The speaker recalls having met a traveler “from an antique land,” who
told him a story about the ruins of a statue in the desert of his native
country. Two vast legs of stone stand without a body, and near them a
massive, crumbling stone head lies “half sunk” in the sand. The
traveler told the speaker that the frown and “sneer of cold command”
on the statue’s face indicate that the sculptor understood well the
passions of the statue’s subject, a man who sneered with contempt for
those weaker than himself, yet fed his people because of something in
his heart (“The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed”). On the
pedestal of the statue appear the words: “My name is Ozymandias,
king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” But around
the decaying ruin of the statue, nothing remains, only the “lone and
level sands,” which stretch out around it, far away.
• Form
• “Ozymandias” is a sonnet, a fourteen-line poem metered in iambic
pentameter. The rhyme scheme is somewhat unusual for a sonnet of
this era; it does not fit a conventional Petrarchan pattern, but instead
interlinks the octave (a term for the first eight lines of a sonnet) with the
sestet (a term for the last six lines), by gradually replacing old rhymes
with new ones in the form ABABACDCEDEFEF.
• Commentary
• This sonnet from 1817 is probably Shelley’s most famous and most
anthologized poem—which is somewhat strange, considering that it
is in many ways an atypical poem for Shelley, and that it touches
little upon the most important themes in his oeuvre at large (beauty,
expression, love, imagination). Still, “Ozymandias” is a masterful
sonnet. Essentially it is devoted to a single metaphor: the shattered,
ruined statue in the desert wasteland, with its arrogant, passionate
face and monomaniacal inscription (“Look on my works, ye Mighty,
and despair!”). The once-great king’s proud boast has been
ironically disproved; Ozymandias’s works have crumbled and
disappeared, his civilization is gone, all has been turned to dust by
the impersonal, indiscriminate, destructive power of history. The
ruined statue is now merely a monument to one man’s hubris, and a
powerful statement about the insignificance of human beings to the
passage of time. Ozymandias is first and foremost a metaphor for
the ephemeral nature of political power, and in that sense the poem
is Shelley’s most outstanding political sonnet, trading the specific
rage of a poem like “England in 1819” for the crushing impersonal
metaphor of the statue. But Ozymandias symbolizes not only
political power—the statue can be a metaphor for the pride and
hubris of all of humanity, in any of its manifestations. It is significant
that all that remains of Ozymandias is a work of art and a group of
words; as Shakespeare does in the sonnets, Shelley demonstrates
that art and language long outlast the other legacies of power.
• Of course, it is Shelley’s brilliant poetic rendering of the story, and not
the subject of the story itself, which makes the poem so memorable.
Framing the sonnet as a story told to the speaker by “a traveller from an
antique land” enables Shelley to add another level of obscurity to
Ozymandias’s position with regard to the reader—rather than seeing the
statue with our own eyes, so to speak, we hear about it from someone
who heard about it from someone who has seen it. Thus the ancient
king is rendered even less commanding; the distancing of the narrative
serves to undermine his power over us just as completely as has the
passage of time. Shelley’s description of the statue works to reconstruct,
gradually, the figure of the “king of kings”: first we see merely the
“shattered visage,” then the face itself, with its “frown / And wrinkled lip
and sneer of cold command”; then we are introduced to the figure of the
sculptor, and are able to imagine the living man sculpting the living king,
whose face wore the expression of the passions now inferable; then we
are introduced to the king’s people in the line, “the hand that mocked
them and the heart that fed.” The kingdom is now imaginatively
complete, and we are introduced to the extraordinary, prideful boast of
the king: “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” With that, the poet
demolishes our imaginary picture of the king, and interposes centuries
of ruin between it and us: “ ‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ /
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck,
boundless and bare, / The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
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奥兹曼迪亚斯
我遇见一位来自古国的旅人
他说：有两条巨大的石腿
半掩于沙漠之间
近旁的沙土中，有一张破碎的石脸
抿着嘴，蹙着眉，面孔依旧威严
想那雕刻者，必定深谙其人情感
那神态还留在石头上
而私人已逝，化作尘烟
看那石座上刻着字句：
“我是万王之王,奥兹曼斯迪亚斯
功业盖物,强者折服”
此外，荡然无物
废墟四周，唯余黄沙莽莽
寂寞荒凉，伸展四方。
（杨绛译）
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奥西曼提斯①
客自海外归,曾见沙漠古国
有石像半毁,唯余巨腿
蹲立沙砾间。像头旁落,
半遭沙埋,但人面依然可畏,
那冷笑,那发号施令的高傲,
足见雕匠看透了主人的心,
才把那石头刻得神情唯肖,
而刻像的手和像主的心
早成灰烬。像座上大字在目:
“吾乃万王之王是也,
盖世功业,敢叫天公折服!”
此外无一物,但见废墟周围,
寂寞平沙空莽莽,
伸向荒凉的四方。
①奥西曼提斯即公元前十三世纪的埃及王雷米西斯二
世。他的坟墓在底比斯地方，形如一庞大的狮身人面像。
(王佐良译)
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Song-To the Men of England
Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?
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Wherefore feed and clothe and save,
From the cradle to the grave,
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat -nay, drink your blood?
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Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?
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Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
Shelter, food, love's gentle balm?
Or what is it ye buy so dear
With your pain and with your fear?
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The seed ye sow another reaps;
The wealth ye find another keeps;
The robes ye weave another wears;
The arms ye forge another bears.
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Sow seed, -but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth, -let no imposter heap;
Weave robes, -let not the idle wear;
Forge arms, in your defence to bear.
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Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;
In halls ye deck another dwells.
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.
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With plough and spade and hoe and loom,
Trace your grave, and build your tomb,
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
England be your sepulchre! Meet us on Facebook
• 给英格兰人的歌
一
英格兰的人们，凭什么要给
蹂躏你们的老爷们耕田种地？
凭什么要辛勤劳动纺织不息
用锦绣去打扮暴君们的身体？
二
凭什么，要从摇篮直到坟墓，
用衣食去供养，用生命去保卫
那一群忘恩负义的寄生虫类，
他们在榨你们的汗，喝你们的血？
三
凭什么，英格兰的工蜂，要制作
那么多的武器、锁链和刑具，
使不能自卫的寄生雄蜂竟能掠夺
用你们强制劳动创造的财富？
四
你们是有了舒适、安宁和闲暇，‘
还是有了粮食、家园和爱的慰抚？
否则，付出了这样昂贵的代价，
担惊受怕忍痛吃苦又换来了什么？
• 五
你们播下了种籽，别人来收割；
你们找到了财富，归别人占有；
你们织布成衣，穿在别人身上；
你们锻造武器，握在别人的手。
六
播种吧——但是不让暴君收；
发现财富——不准骗子占有；
制作衣袍——不许懒汉们穿；
锻造武器——为了自卫握在手！
七
你们装修的厅堂让别人住在里面，
自己却钻进地窖、牢房和洞穴去睡。
为什么要挣脱你们自己造的锁链？
瞧！你们炼就的钢铁在向你们逞威。
八
就用锄头和织机，耕犁和铁铲
构筑你们的坟，建造你们的墓，
织制你们的裹尸布吧，终有一天
美丽的英格兰成为你们的葬身窟。
（江枫译）
• TO A SKYLARK
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
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Bird thou never wert,
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That from Heaven, or near it,
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Pourest thy full heart
• In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
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Higher still and higher
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From the earth thou springest
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Like a cloud of fire;
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The blue deep thou wingest,
• And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
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In the golden lightning
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Of the sunken sun
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O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
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Thou dost float and run,
• Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
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The pale purple even
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Melts around thy flight;
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Like a star of Heaven
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In the broad daylight
• Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight:
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Keen as are the arrows
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Of that silver sphere,
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Whose intense lamp narrows
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In the white dawn clear
• Until we hardly see--we feel that it is there.
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All the earth and air
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With thy voice is loud.
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As, when night is bare,
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From one lonely cloud
• The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.
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What thou art we know not;
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What is most like thee?
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From rainbow clouds there flow not
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Drops so bright to see
• As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
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Like a poet hidden
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In the light of thought,
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Singing hymns unbidden,
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Till the world is wrought
• To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:
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Like a high-born maiden
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In a palace tower,
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Soothing her love-laden
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Soul in secret hour
• With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:
• Like a glow-worm golden
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In a dell of dew,
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Scattering unbeholden
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Its aerial hue
• Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:
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Like a rose embowered
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In its own green leaves,
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By warm winds deflowered,
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Till the scent it gives
• Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.
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Sound of vernal showers
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On the twinkling grass,
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Rain-awakened flowers,
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All that ever was
• Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.
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Teach us, sprite or bird,
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What sweet thoughts are thine:
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I have never heard
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Praise of love or wine
• That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
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Chorus hymeneal
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Or triumphal chaunt
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Matched with thine, would be all
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But an empty vaunt-• A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
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What objects are the fountains
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Of thy happy strain?
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What fields, or waves, or mountains?
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What shapes of sky or plain?
• What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
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With thy clear keen joyance
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Languor cannot be:
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Shadow of annoyance
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Never came near thee:
• Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
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Waking or asleep,
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Thou of death must deem
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Things more true and deep
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Than we mortals dream,
• Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
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We look before and after,
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And pine for what is not:
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Our sincerest laughter
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With some pain is fraught;
• Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
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Yet if we could scorn
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Hate, and pride, and fear;
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If we were things born
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Not to shed a tear,
• I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
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Better than all measures
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Of delightful sound,
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Better than all treasures
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That in books are found,
• Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
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Teach me half the gladness
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That thy brain must know,
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Such harmonious madness
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From my lips would flow
• The world should listen then, as I am listening now!
• Summary
• The speaker, addressing a skylark, says that it is a “blithe Spirit”
rather than a bird, for its song comes from Heaven, and from its full
heart pours “profuse strains of unpremeditated art.” The skylark flies
higher and higher, “like a cloud of fire” in the blue sky, singing as it
flies. In the “golden lightning” of the sun, it floats and runs, like “an
unbodied joy.” As the skylark flies higher and higher, the speaker
loses sight of it, but is still able to hear its “shrill delight,” which
comes down as keenly as moonbeams in the “white dawn,” which
can be felt even when they are not seen. The earth and air ring with
the skylark’s voice, just as Heaven overflows with moonbeams when
the moon shines out from behind “a lonely cloud.”
• The speaker says that no one knows what the skylark is, for it is
unique: even “rainbow clouds” do not rain as brightly as the shower
of melody that pours from the skylark. The bird is “like a poet hidden
/ In the light of thought,” able to make the world experience
“sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.” It is like a lonely
maiden in a palace tower, who uses her song to soothe her lovelorn
soul. It is like a golden glow-worm, scattering light among the
flowers and grass in which it is hidden. It is like a rose embowered in
its own green leaves, whose scent is blown by the wind until the
bees are faint with “too much sweet.” The skylark’s song surpasses
“all that ever was, / Joyous and clear and fresh,” whether the rain
falling on the “twinkling grass” or the flowers the rain awakens.
• Calling the skylark “Sprite or Bird,” the speaker asks it to tell him its
“sweet thoughts,” for he has never heard anyone or anything call up
“a flood of rapture so divine.” Compared to the skylark’s, any music
would seem lacking. What objects, the speaker asks, are “the
fountains of thy happy strain?” Is it fields, waves, mountains, the sky,
the plain, or “love of thine own kind” or “ignorance or pain”? Pain
and languor, the speaker says, “never came near” the skylark: it
loves, but has never known “love’s sad satiety.” Of death, the skylark
must know “things more true and deep” than mortals could dream;
otherwise, the speaker asks, “how could thy notes flow in such a
crystal stream?”
• For mortals, the experience of happiness is bound inextricably with
the experience of sadness: dwelling upon memories and hopes for
the future, mortal men “pine for what is not”; their laughter is “fraught”
with “some pain”; their “sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest
thought.” But, the speaker says, even if men could “scorn / Hate and
pride and fear,” and were born without the capacity to weep, he still
does not know how they could ever approximate the joy expressed
by the skylark. Calling the bird a “scorner of the ground,” he says
that its music is better than all music and all poetry. He asks the bird
to teach him “half the gladness / That thy brain must know,” for then
he would overflow with “harmonious madness,” and his song would
be so beautiful that the world would listen to him, even as he is now
listening to the skylark.
• Form
• The eccentric, songlike, five-line stanzas
of “To a Skylark”—all twenty-one of
them—follow the same pattern: the first
four lines are metered in trochaic trimeter,
the fifth in iambic hexameter (a line which
can also be called an Alexandrine). The
rhyme scheme of each stanza is extremely
simple: ABABB.
• Commentary
• If the West Wind was Shelley’s first convincing attempt to
articulate an aesthetic philosophy through metaphors of
nature, the skylark is his greatest natural metaphor for
pure poetic expression, the “harmonious madness” of
pure inspiration. The skylark’s song issues from a state
of purified existence, a Wordsworthian notion of
complete unity with Heaven through nature; its song is
motivated by the joy of that uncomplicated purity of being,
and is unmixed with any hint of melancholy or of the
bittersweet, as human joy so often is. The skylark’s
unimpeded song rains down upon the world, surpassing
every other beauty, inspiring metaphor and making the
speaker believe that the bird is not a mortal bird at all,
but a “Spirit,” a “sprite,” a “poet hidden / In the light of
thought.”
• In that sense, the skylark is almost an exact twin of the bird in
Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale”; both represent pure expression
through their songs, and like the skylark, the nightingale “wast not
born for death.” But while the nightingale is a bird of darkness,
invisible in the shadowy forest glades, the skylark is a bird of
daylight, invisible in the deep bright blue of the sky. The nightingale
inspires Keats to feel “a drowsy numbness” of happiness that is also
like pain, and that makes him think of death; the skylark inspires
Shelley to feel a frantic, rapturous joy that has no part of pain. To
Keats, human joy and sadness are inextricably linked, as he
explains at length in the final stanza of the “Ode on Melancholy.” But
the skylark sings free of all human error and complexity, and while
listening to his song, the poet feels free of those things, too.
• Structurally and linguistically, this poem is almost unique among
Shelley’s works; its strange form of stanza, with four compact lines
and one very long line, and its lilting, songlike diction (“profuse
strains of unpremeditated art”) work to create the effect of
spontaneous poetic expression flowing musically and naturally from
the poet’s mind. Structurally, each stanza tends to make a single,
quick point about the skylark, or to look at it in a sudden, brief new
light; still, the poem does flow, and gradually advances the mininarrative of the speaker watching the skylark flying higher and
higher into the sky, and envying its untrammeled inspiration—which,
if he were to capture it in words, would cause the world to listen.
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The Cloud
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noon-day dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the Sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
10
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I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;
Over Earth and Ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.
20
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The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit Sea beneath,
Its ardours of rest and of love,
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And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine äery nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
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That orbed maiden with white fire laden
Whom mortals call the Moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof, of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her, and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
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I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone
And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;
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The volcanos are dim and the stars reel and swim
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof -The mountains its columns be!
The triumphal arch, through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the Air, are chained to my chair,
Is the million-coloured Bow;
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The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove
While the moist Earth was laughing below.
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I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores, of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die -For after the rain, when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,
Build up the blue dome of Air -80
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, live a ghost from the tomb,
I arise, and unbuild it again. --
• IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
• "The Cloud" brings out the ethereal quality of Shelly's
poetry. Often the mysteries of life and death have
fascinated the poet and he has dealt with this mystery in
his various poems. This poem is no exception. The
Poem contains subtle hints about the eternal cycle of life
and death. In this poem we see the never ending water
cycle and the transfer of water from liquid to vapour and
again to the liquid form, that the formation of the cloud
and its subsequent transfer into rain and again its
reformation. This in fact is an allegorical hint towards the
eternal cycle of life and death. According to the belief
death is not the full stop to life but the beginning of a new
life and the preparation of rebirth. This belief is again at
par with our oriental school of thought.