Percy Shelley Stands Out Among Romantic Poets

The Romantic poets are known for their poetry about love, life and nature. They focus on different aspects of life, but don't normally tread into the death and despairing aspect of daily life. For that reason Percy Bysshe Shelley stands out. His strong disapproving voice made him one of the major poets in the era. He is probably most known for his poem "Ozymandias." Through his poetry the reader gets a feeling that he is bitter towards life, which is a different feel that we get from reading other romantic poets like William Wordsworth. Shelley's descriptions help give the reader a look into what he was feeling and seeing.

In his poem Mutability, Shelley discusses that we are like the clouds at night; we don't last forever. In the second line of the first stanza Shelley states "How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver." We go throughout life with speed; we don't take time to stop and just rest. The clouds speed across the sky almost with no place to go, and in a sense that is what we are doing. In the fourth line he says "night closes round, they are lost forever." He is telling us that once death comes and we're taken from this earth; we will be lost forever. There is no coming back from being dead. The third line of the second stanza says "To whose frail frame no second motion brings."

Shelley is even saying our bodies are frail no matter how strong we may feel. These images gives the reader the opinion that he sees nothing good within life. Everything is never what it appears to be.

The entire third stanza made me think he sees nothing pleasing in life. When we rest our dreams poison our sleep, when we are awake out thoughts pollute the day. He also states that we laugh and weep for no reason. We embrace our foes and and try to cast or cares away, but is that something we really can do, or are they always going to be there. As he goes on, he talks about nothing ever being the same: "Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow" (line 15). The last line of this piece says "Nought may endure but Mutability." I think he is telling us that nothing in life will ever last except for change itself. Change is always inevitable, and there is nothing we can do about it no matter how hard we try.

When we look at other poems by Percy Shelley we see more of the despair within his writing. It makes one wonder if the despair he writes about comes from his own life. In his poem Dejection we feel his low spirits as the title suggest. It is the piece that gices the feeling of despair the most. Throughout the poem he seems to be completely bitter towards life and what it has dealt him. He wrote this poem through his failing health and failed marriage. The first few stanzas he talks about the things we see in life like the sun shining or the purple moon, but once readers get to the third stanza his true feelings emerge.

He says there is no hope left in his life he has no health, no hope, no peace. Lines 24 to 27 Shelley says: "Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. Others I see whom these surround. smiling they live, and call life pleasure, to me that cup has been dealt in another measure." While he sees everyone around him getting the things in life like fame, power, love etc. he sees himself as getting nothing. He thinks while everyone else gets dealt the good things in life, he gets dealt the bad things in life like bad health, failing marriage, lose and more. By the time you get to the end of the poem he just wants death to come and take him away from the cares of life.

In many of Shelley's other works we see him telling the reader that we cannot let other people take our work because then we might as well dig our own graves. The reader begines to wonder after reading so many works from Percy Shelley, if he believes that all people are innately evil, and that there is no good within the human race. When we read poetry of any poet, we learn a little bit about their lives and who the poet is. Percy Shelley is one of the poets that puts a little bit of himself into his poetry. He stood out among other poets because he did not write about life and love, but rather being bitter and spiteful. He sees despair in everything instead of joy and love. Reading Percy Shelley can actually put a new spin on poetry and what it is like.