Shelley As A Lyric Poet

Percy Bysshe Shelley, George Gordon Byron popularly known as Lord Byron and John Keats belonged to the younger group of English Romantic poets. Among them Shelley has been called ‘the most pessimistic of English poets’ as well as ‘the singer of endless sorrow’. His genius was essentially lyrical. In the realm of lyrical poetry, Shelley stands at the top. He was a perfect singing of God indeed. His chief characteristics of his poetry are lyrical poetry, visionary mysticism, platonic love, democratic idealism and love of nature.

The Romantic Movement was both a revolt and revival. Shelley represented the first aspect of the Romantic Movement. He was a poet of revolt. He stood for change. He sings–

His other poems like ‘Ode to the West Wind’, ‘To a Skylark’, and ‘One Word’ are too often profound. ‘The Cloud’ and ‘Love’s Philosophy’ are some of his best known lyrics. His ‘Adonais’ is an elegy written on the death of Keats. It is one of the best known lyrics in English literature.

Shelley was a man of ideas and impulses. He was great interested in abstractions. His truth was shifting, ever changing. It was like a mirage. He addresses the West Wind as ‘Destroyer and Preserver’. It is ‘unseen presence’. He invokes the West Wind–

Shelley does not believe in the general, mundane type of love. He says– “I can give not what men can love”. His love is platonic love. ‘Love’s Philosophy’ and ‘One Word’ are too often profound reflect his philosophy of love.

Shelley’s pantheism and his love of nature are closely alive together. He held nature to be the ‘life of life’, the embodiment of an eternal spirit. According to him, every single object of Nature could think, feel and experience. His most celebrated poems, ‘The Cloud’, ‘Ode to the West Wind’ and ‘The Sensitive Plant’ can be cited as the best specimen of his nature’s treatment and his philosophy of pantheism.

Besides ‘Ode to the West Wind’ Shelley’s another glaring exemplary poem is ‘Adonais’ which is an elegy. Melancholy pervades throughout Shelley’s lyric poetry. Sometimes he strikes a note of pessimism, but he does not loose his hope. He becomes quite optimistic that spring will come over bad days. Even in ‘Ode to the West Wind’ he is quite hopeful that bad days would follow by spring. In other words, he is hopeful that bad days would soon be over and good days would be come very soon with joy and happiness.

Shelley was influenced by the French Revolution. He believed in the doctrines of equality, liberty and fraternity. Even God became an object of contempt for him. In this context Shelley was rebel, a revolutionary and a reformer.

So we find that Shelley had been yearning after the mysterious, the unknown and the wonderful like the other romantic poets. His lyrics also reveal this aspect of his personality. Shelley is the prophet of change.

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