B.A. (Hons.) III YEAR ENGLISH PAPER VI : ENGLISH LITERATURE 3

Graduate Course B.A. (Hons.) III YEAR ENGLISH PAPER VI : ENGLISH LITERATURE 3 P. B. Shelly Ode to the West Wind Hymn to Intellectual Beauty Ode to Li...
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B.A. (Hons.) III YEAR ENGLISH PAPER VI : ENGLISH LITERATURE 3 P. B. Shelly Ode to the West Wind Hymn to Intellectual Beauty Ode to Liberty Study Material : 6.04 B

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P. B. Shelley 1. Shelley’s Life and Works “P. B. Shelley—the man and the poet-has been a very controversial figure in English Literature. Both his life and personality have provoked endless interests and discussions, issuing (according to age and taste) in hero-worship, moral condemnation or amateur psychiatric diagnosis. ..some aspects of his personality have literary significance through the expression they find in Ms poetry and the limiting effect they sometimes have on its appeal for the adult reader” (Shelley’s Poetry:D.W. Harding). P.B. Shelley was born on August 4,1792 at Horsham in Sussex. He was the eldest son of a country squire. Sir Timothy Shelley, a man of ancient and distinguished race. John Drink water in his The Outline of Literature writes: From the first the boy. beautiful as an angel and as tender-hearted, trembling alive in every fibre, strung like a w ind-harp to the breath of every breeze, seemed like a being from another sphere. The sight of pain or sorrow turned him sick with rage and pity. Shelley was the darling of his parents and his grand-father Sir Bysshe Shelley, a fabulously rich landlord, a high class gentleman. All of them had great expectations from the young boy. His father started teaching him at an early age and his mother read poetry to him. He also began to study Latin from the curate at Wamham a Welshman named Evan Edwards. Shelley became an exceedingly good scholar. His parents wanted him to follow his father’s footsteps as a politician, as a man of time, as a landowner and also as a practical agriculturist in short, as a capable Sussex squire. Shelley was sent to Sion House Academy, where he was bullied and tortured by his seniors. He did not like the oppressive atmosphere of the Academy and pre-occupied himself with stories dealing with supernatural ism and avoided the company of other boys. He also read science books and spent time in experiments. At Eton he was known as “Mad Shelley” because he could not put up with “a world of tyrants and of foes” and struck a penknife through a bully’s hand. There he studied classics, wrote verses and ghost stories. His Gothic romance Zasrrozzi appeared in print in 1809. In due course he went to Oxford and befriended Hogg. He studied among ether subjects books on Radicalism, on Logic, on Philosophy, and also new romantic and libertine writings. Hogg and Shelley began to write poems, articles etc. They put forth a pamphlet of two pages on the Necessity of Atheism. The Pamphlet created an uproar in the University. The clergymen were enraged, the authorities, without argument, expelled both Hogg and Shelley. Shelley was at that time in love with his cousin Harriet Grove. But her father broke off the engagement because of Shelley’s views on religion and God. Shelley and Hogg came to London, they lived in poverty. Shelley met his sister’s friend Harriet Westbrook He began to covert her to Ms ideas. They fell in love; they eloped together and got married. Shelley and Harriet went to Ireland to help the Irish revolutionaries in their struggle for freedom from England’s domination. Shelley wrote pamphlets in support of the Irish cause. He was tremendously influenced by Godwin’s political thought. He read avidly and became a radical, who believed that all religious, social, political and cultural institutions were redundant and corrupt. They crushed man’s individuality and liberty. Society needed an overhauling. He continued to write pamphlets against oppressive laws and suffocating social values. His ideas were not acceptable to the conservative authorities, and created problems for the Shelleys. ‘Law-Keepers’ were after him. He could not live in peace. His family life was made miserable by his wife, the pretty, empty-headed Harriet, and dominating sister-in-law Eliza. Shelley and Harriet separated. Harriet remarried but later became morbid and insane. Ultimately she committed suicide. Shelley married Mary, Godwin’s daughter from his first wife. His

children from Harriet were taken away by law and were entrusted to Harriet’s father. Harriet’s death and then the separation from his children were great blows to Shelley. Shelley’s personal life remained disturbed even after his second marriage. Shelley was always hardpressed for money. He did inherit some amount of money, but he could not live comfortably. His fatherin-law, Godwin, kept on pestering him for money. During all this time he had been writing. But, strange to say, his early poems and his wild romances showed, not only no distinction, but no promise. Queen Mob was something better; Alastor, better still: and in the long poem The Revolt of Islam, and above all in the Dedication to his wife, we hear the Shelley note in its perfection. (The Outline of Literature: John Drinkwater). Michael Henry Scrivener considers Quee Mab ‘a work of lasting importance to the 19th century socialist movement’. In his book Radical Shelley he writes: Shelley relies on conventional literary devices to communicate his unorthodox message. Alternating between lyrical forms borrowed from Robert Southey’s escapist romances and the more traditional blank verse of Milton, Shelley constructs a dream allegory in which lanthe, who is sleeping, is visited by the Fairy, Queen Mab. The Queen discloses the evils of the present and the past, and reveals a portrait of the Utopian future, when full Godwinian equality has replaced the evils of war, competition, greed and superstition.....The attentive student of Godwin’s philosophy will notice that the poem has an un-Godwinian emphasis on “nature”, which comes from Holbach. Although Shelley derived the idea of using nature from Holbach, he used it to propagate Godwin’s theory of rationality. The rationality of nature was used as an ideological weapon by the phisosophes and French revolutionists to dislodge and deiegitimate monarchy, aristocracy, and the Catholic Church. ‘God is dislodged as the center of the universe, so too, at the secular level, are kings, the bishops and the nobles’. For these and other political reasons Shelley turns to nature in Queen Mab. “The anthropomorphic God of Christianity” is “the prototype of human misrule” (VI, 105), the spiritual image of monarchical despotism. By substituting nature for God, Shelley offers an alternative to “human misrule”. (Michael Henry Scrivener). From Zastrozzi to Queen Mab, Shelley developed into a writer and social theorist of remarkable maturity. He dedicated himself to the task of establishing the ethical ideals so that Utopia might be created. In his A Refutation of Deism Shelley uses biblical quotations against Christian institutions. In Alastor; or The spirit of solitude, one Shelleyan solitary, the Visionary, is destroyed, in an attempt to personalise the Absolute. It shows the death of a beautiful soul. He is destroyed because of his misguided quest for the Absolute. Alastor also shows the influence of Wordsworth and Coleridge, it ‘reviews that the pantheistic spirit of nature is a consolation for failures of existence and polities’. In Alastor Shelley showed how and why Alastor the visionary could not adjust to the ‘natural world”, and condemned himself to a premature death. Alastor remained an aristocrat, who spurned egalitarian relationships. There is a tone of deep sadness running through Alastor for it was wirtten at a time when Shelley was very sick and believed that he would not live long because he was suffering from phthisis. But he gradually recovered and in 1817 the Shelleys with their infant son moved to Marlow, where the The Revolt of Mam was written. The Revolt of Islam is actually the revised version of Laon and Cythna published earlier. In spite of its passeges of magnificence and poetic beauty The Revolt of Islam won for its author only scorn and disgust because the morality was aggressively unconventional. It presented ‘an uncompromising vision of the Ideal.’ In 1818 the Shelleys shifted to Italy.

Shelly was utterly out of sympathy with the England of his days-he could not live within the constraints laid down by the conventional thinkers and administrators in learning, religion and morality. He wrote articles, pamphlets, and poems ciriticising and condemning soical and political laws, striving at reforming the society, creating a Utopian world, based on liberty, fraternity, love and equality, a world where there will be no oppression, no exploiter, no cares and no anxieties. His unorthodox views were not acceptable and he created hostility everywhere. Before settling in Italy, the Shelleys visited Naples and travelled in the Italian lakes. He described his journey in his letters to Peacock. These letters are ‘the most perfect specimen of descriptive prose in the English language’. (Mr. Symonds) At Venice he met Byron. In the splendid poem Julian and Maddalo (who are actually Shelley and Byron) he threw a vivid light upon his brother-poet. The poem is remarkable for the poetical treatment of ordinary things. Prometheus Unbound and his great tragedy The Cenci were published in 1819. “In sheer lyric power and splendour– Pmmetheiis Unbound-has no parallel in any lanugage.” Before the publication of Promethus Unbound a number of poems were written by Shelley. They were Lines written among the Euganean Hills, The Mask of Anarchy. Peter Bell the Third, Popular songs, Rosalind and Helen. “These poems directly or overtly redefine and reassert Utopian ideals despite accumulating disappointments, personal and political’. In Rosalind and Helen. Shelley uses ‘nature’ as an ethical standard to highlight the antagonism between the town and the country and the corrupt urban world’; ‘nature’ in these poems is presented as ‘regenerative power capable of healing the damaged spirit.’ In ‘Lines written .Among ther Euganean Hills’ the mariner-voyager continues from a ‘sunless’ sky to a “tempest” which capsizes the vessel. The Mariner is thrown into the sea and he finds himself in a dilemma-is it better to drown and end this death-in life or is it better to hope and survive by swimming towards the dry land? The Mariner understands what death-in-life is, because of the absence of love and friendship. Then he realises the redemptive power of liberty. Life without liberty is life-in death. The poem deals with the theme of life and death in the present society. Once again Shelley establishes a Utopian world when one breaks away from the fetters of slavery (social and moral). The Utopian retreat into nature leads to social reconstruction. Prometheus Unbound symbolically shows the dire calamities which have been faced by human beings throughout the ages. The indomitable spirit of Prometheus triumphs over sufferings. The Cenci is ‘a drama of real life’. Peter Bell the Third is apolitical satire. Prometheus Unbound, The Cenci, Peter Bell The Third, and a host of poems which appeared between 1816-1820 were a remarkable testimony to the many-sideness and versatily of the poet’s genius. Another calamity fell on Shelley in 1819 when he lost the only surviving child, William. He was left practically childless. Yet he continued to write poems some of his best songs and Odes-’To the Sky lark”. “To Naples” and To Liberty “-appeared in 1820. These odes and songs won for the poet the highest rank among English lyricists. Then followed The Witch of Atlas-an. enchanted fairy tale. Epipsychidion is based on Shelley’ s love for Emilia Viviani. John Drink water writes: She was a lovely girl, with the shape of a Greek statue, and with its marble pallor, her dark hair wreathed in Greek fashion, and with large sleepy eyes that could awake to fiery passion. She had been shut up in a convent by her father until she would consent to wed a suitor of his choice. There Shelley saw her, pitied her sad lot, and made unavailing efforts to secure her freedom. A wild, electric,yet ideal passion sprang up between them-a passion which in Epipsychidion –’ a poem on the soul’ - he enshrined as if in syllables of imperishable fire. In the year following 1821, Keats died and Shelley wrote the great zlegy-Adonais. Adonais not only mourns the death of Keats but also establishes the supremacy of death which liberates human soul from chains of sufferings and humiliation. Adonais was followed by Hellas which was inspired by the keen

interest Shelley took in the then raging war of Greek independence, and The Defence of Poetry. an eassy dealing with Shelley’s concept of poetry and the role of the poets. In 1822 the Shelleys, with their friends Mr. and Mrs. Williams, spent the summer at Lerici, on the Gulf of Genoa. Shelly enjoyed yatching in his yatch Don Juan. He also began writing The Triumph of Life and a tragedy, Charles I, which he could not complete. Accompanied by Mr. Williams and a sailor Shelley set sail for Lerici. On his way back to Leghorn, on July 7 a great storm arose and the yatch was capsized. After eleven days the poet’s body was found near Via Reggio and later the bodies of his companions. After cremation, the poet’s ashes were buried in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome, so beautifully described by himself in Adonais as the burial place of Keats, and his own son, William. Agnes Ramsey writes: though he was snatched from life “while his powers were yet in their spring freshness, Shelley holds a very high place among English poets”. “His poetical productiveness’”. says Mr. Stopford Brooke, “would have been admirable as the result of a long life, as the work, in the main, of little more than five years it is one of the greatest marvels of the human mind”. Not only is he, as Swinburne has said, “the master singer’ but he stands unequalled in the 19th century in his great dramatic power, as in the exquisite beauty and charm of his poems on familiar subjects. His verstality and many sidedness is astonishing. “He was not only the “most divine” of our poets, living in an ethereal and spiritual world made real to him by the powerful grasp of a most vivid imagination, but he was at the same time the true hearted philanthropist, deeply interested in all that affected his fellow men, and in their interests of waging war on all conventional shams that clouded truth.’

2. Ode to the West Wind (The Poem) “In Shelley’s notebook, presented by Sir John Shelley-Rolls to the Bodleian Library, this Ode begins under the simple heading ‘October 2’. His own published note on it amounts to an instance of his success as a weather-prophet (and Mary She! ley thought him a good one) with a word on marine botany. In the draft the much-quoted final line was in the form of an assertion; as a question it is far superior. If any literary model was in Shelley’s mind as he wrote, it will have been Coleridge’s Ode on the Departing Year, which ‘however’ is largely inspired by the political upheavals of Europe. Shelley’s is so much of a personal ‘confession’ that even the withered leaves round him are compared with his own early grey hairs.” O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’ s being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The wing’ ed seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her clarion o ‘er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion, Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heavan mid Ocean, Angles of rain and lightning: there are spread On the blue surface of thine: aery surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from me head Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the Zenith’s height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear! Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’ s bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave’s intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear! If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant bebeath thy power, and share The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh, lift 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

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy ! O Wind, If Winter conies, can Spring he far behind?

2.1 ODE TO THE WEST WIND Introduction ‘

Ode To The West Wind’ is one of the best lyrics written by Shelley. It was written at Florence in the autumn of 1819. According to Shelley’ s own notes the poem “was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Anio, near Florence and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once wild and animating, was col lecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains. They began as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, and attended by that magnificent thunder and lighting peculiar to the Cisapline regions”. The poet addresses the wild west wind of autumn and identifies his spirit with its spirit. Donald H. Reiman in his book Percy Bysshe Shelley (Twayne Publishers Inc. New York, 1969) writes “the ode embodies the conflicting themes of the poet’s personal despair and his hopes for social renewal in the images drawn from the seasonal cycle”. Ode to the West Wind consists of five stanzas. In the first three stanzas the speaker invokes the spirit of the west wind, which is the ruler of the vegetation of the earth (stanza I) of air (stanza II) and water (stanza III) and highlights its inevitability—its unconquerable force. He appeals to this wild spiritimpetuous spirit- to use him as a lyre. Irene H.Chayes points out that in the concluding stanza the speaker does not ask the wind to enable him to merge his character with its own, and become its instrument, rather he wants the wind to become him. ‘Be thou. Spirit fierce, My spirit! be”thou me. impetuous one’ He would like “Demogorgon to fight his battles (which are those of Prometheus) destroy the old order, and carry (not seeds of the vegetation of earth, air, water, but) sparks of spiritual fire. Though the fire of his individual thoughts may be dead and though his physical life is dying, (stanza IV) he prays thewind to Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! “In the climactic position, however, stands a metaphor not of natural force but of artistic inspiration” (Reiman)

If in stanza four the speaker draws the attention of the unconqerable wind to his miserable plight and tries to convince it that he himself was once uncontrollable, the next stanza he begins with an appeal to the v\ind to make the speaker its lyre. And immediately after, true to the dramatic inversion of lines 61 62 he demands that the wind should shape its power to his will: Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy The choice of words in the concluding lines is very significant. The question begins-if winter comes, not when winter comes. The words imply that “the analogy between the seasonal cycle and human affairs is not a perfect one. It is because the cycle of mortal mutability can be stopped in its course. What Shelley intends to convey is that with the conscious efforts the men of vision can re-tum ‘the wheel of past winter to spring’. In Prometheus Unbound Shelley has exhibited that it is possible to maintain moral spring time longer than has been customary in most of human history.” What surprises critics at times is the poet’s indulging in self-pity in many lyrics, particularly in Ode to the West Wind, The Sky Lark, and his elegiac poem Adonais. In stanza four in this Ode the speaker (the poet) dwells on his weakness. He says, if he had retained the enthusiasm and illusion of his bodyhood, when ‘to outstirp thy skiey speed/Scarce seemed a vision’, he would not have’ striven/As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.’ The lines (50-52) remind us of Dante. The poet here like Dante, is perhaps ‘lost in the dark wood of our life’ and is ‘tangled in the vegetation governed by the force of necessity. (Stanza 1-3). He has fallen ‘upon the thorns of life” and is bleeding. According to Reiman “The fires of imagination sometimes consume thoms. but only (as Shelley was to declare in A Defence of Poetry) during a relatively few brief moments of inspiration. During the reflux of imagination, a poet is, like other men, subject to mortal limitations, and it is the poet’s realisation of this condition that impels him to pray to the wind to stir his ashes and fading coal of imagination. “Shelley believed that only when revolutionary efforts are truly radical (striking at the roots of human evil) by reorienting human drives from egotism to altruism and from hate and pride to love and justice can there be meaningful progress.” In Ode to the West Wind Shelley uses the West Wind as a vehicle of his message to the suffering humanity, the destruction of obsolete, unwanted, dead institutions and beliefs are required in order to regenerate the world.The poem ends on a note of hope. If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

2.2 A Detailed study of the Ideas implied in the poem Harold Bloom describes Ode to the West Wind as a poem about ‘the process of mythmaking’. Its subject is ‘the nature and function of the nabi’ and ‘his relation to his prophesies.’ The Ode incorporates many conventions of prophetic literature and particularly in the Hebrew tradition. Shelley focuses on himself as a poet-propheti at the end of the Ode. Be thou, spirit-fierce, The trumpet of my prophecy! He dramatically presents himself as an unheeded prophet and the neglected poet. M..H. Abrams in The Mirror and Lamp: Romantic Theory and Critical Tradition writes that the Ode ‘weaves around the central image of the destroying and preserving wind; the full cycle of the myth i s of death, and regeneration, vegetational, human and divine’.

Stanza I Shelley invokes the Spirit of the Wild West Wind and treats nature as something “redundant with life, and life has its individuality in man, beast and plant.” “When in stanza-1, the poet addresses ‘the Wild West Wind; as the breath of Autumn’s being’, the poet is doing what Job does in the Book of Job. The God of Job is not the God of Whirlwind or in the Whirlwind but he is God of the Whirlwind also......’, Similarly the spirit that moves in the west wind need not be a spirit that moves in the west wind only. One aspect is revealed, but others are hinted at, and the treatment, precise but extraordinarily suggestive can accommodate the beliefs of any one of us.” (Harold Bloom). In Stanza one the west wind is a magician, an enchanter, he is unseen but his presence is felt all through the poem. Like a magician/an enchanter he drives away the dead and dry leaves the leaves fly away like ghosts. The wind is thus ‘a necromence who also exorcises’. The dead leaves are driven to destruction but the winged seeds (live seeds) are charioted with full protection to their dark wintry bed. The wild west wind-the tempestuous powerful wind- is not an indiscriminate destroyer. He is a protector, a preserver also. The first five lines of the stanza one concentrate on the theme of destruction. The wind destroys whatever is useless and dead. The leaves are dead, they are sapped of all life, they are ‘yellow, black, pale and hectic red’ (the colours indicate they are dying) and they are also compared to ‘the pestilence-stricken multitudes’ they are like diseased human beings who are on the verge of death. The breath of autumnal tempestuous wind, with its thunder and lightning frightens the decaying leaves (leaves dead) and they flee like ghosts-they are driven to their death-beds. Very skillfully the poet introduces another theme-man and Ms relationship with nature, by comparing the dying leaves with pestilence-stricken multitudes. The same wind gently chariots the winged seeds to their wintry bed, in the bowels of the earth. These seeds allow themselves to be carried. They have a full potentiality for more abundant life so they are well-protected in the bowels of the earth. They sleep peacefully in the earth-thus they escape ‘the grounding mutable death of everything taking place on the surface of the earth during the autumn and winter season.’ Each seed lies like ‘a corpse’ within its grave - so long the seeds don’t germinate, they are almost dead. The west wind protects them from sure death. In the first five lines the wind’s awesomeness and wrath have been highlighted. But when Shelley uses ‘chariotest’ the wind’s new aspect is revealed. The word ‘choriotest’ suggests ‘the divine impulsiveness of the force that drives the seeds, that moves the cycle of life, that destroys and preserves, inexorably’ (H. Bloom) The second part of the stanza (line six onwards) projects the image of the preserver and the creator. The tempestuous wind preserves the seeds (which have full potentiality of life encased within themselves) so that his azure sister, the harbinger of spring, may help them to germinate. The useless, the dead, the unwanted, the diseased are completely destroyed, The west wind’s azure sister will, then, usher in a new living world. She will blow her clarion. At the call of the clarion the soundly sleeping winged seeds will wake up, will get out of their earthly bed and appear on the surface to have fresh air and then the ‘frosty’ earth will be covered with ‘living hues’ and ‘odors’. The lines suggest ‘a submerged image of human, of quasi-christian resurrection.’ The clarion here is not merely the clarion of judgement (reference to The Day of Judgement), but also of a shepherdess (or a shepherd). The azure sister (of the spring) is a shepherdess at whose call the seeds come out like the flocks’ of sheep to feed in the air. The clarion will not only proclaim the end of temporal, annual winter but also the end of the eternal winter, on the Day of Judgement, “The image is religious pastoral”. When Shelley refers to the flocks he has perhaps Jesus

Christ in mind. Jesus is the harbinger of peace and love. ‘The sweet buds driven over the landscape prophesy a finally redeemed nature (by implication the world) which will accompany the last change of season’. The final couplet joins the two parts of the first stanza:, the wind is both the preserver and the destroyerthe emphasis is on the present, the wind is moving ‘everywhere’ implying the prophetic call to the individual to turn now. Shelley thus presents the wind as Shiva-Rudra (destroyer of the evil) and Vishnu (the protector) or Shiva in his two aspects-Shiva (the well wisher) and Rudra (The destroyer). The second and third stanzas follow the pattern of the first. Remember” repetition is a binding and pointing device in prophetic poetry’ (H.B.) Each stanza ends with an appeal “oh, hear! “-a prayer of the I of the poet to the Thou q/the wind. The poet describes the impact of the wind on the earth, air and water with great precision. But the focal point of the poem, according to Harold Bloom is Thou I relationship-the mythmaking and the prophetic voice.

Stanza 2 In the second stanza the sky is likened to a stream or an ocean (deep), thus the word deep connects the stanza with the next one (3rd) and when the poet talks of “the tangled boughs’ the 1. Some critics interpret ‘flocks’ as the flocks of birds who soar high in the sky and feed on insects, which are not visible to naked human eyes, so they (birds) seem to feed in air (Pirie)

stanza automatically gets linked with the first one. Deep also means that the sky looks like a bowl. Exploiting the natural-phenomena of the evaporation, Shelley creates an image of destruction and preservation. The water of the ocean evaporating, rising up, forming clouds in the sky is skillfully presented. Shelley is describing natural pheomena through a poetic imagery. Thick water vapours are rising from the ocean, going up, higher and higher, and then spreading in the sky, forming dense solid clouds. It appears that a tree has grown out of the ocean and its boughs and leaves have spread in the sky. The wind blows fiercely and seems to shake “the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean” consequently the clouds are scattered in the deep sky from horizon to the zenith’s height like the ‘decaying leaves’s. But the clouds are not dead sky leaves’ they are angels of rain and lightning. Why angels? They will revive life (natural) and give sustenance to the earth, Angels thus are associated with the winged seeds; destruction and regeneration occur simultaneously. Commenting on the second stanza Pottle writes. “The second stanza presents the action of the wind in the sky. The poet’s eye goes up, and he sees there something like the scene in the forest. High up is the canopy of solid, relatively stationary clouds, below are smaller ‘loose’ clouds driven swiftly along by the wind. Shelley calls the upper stationary cloud formations the ‘boughs of Heaven and Ocean, because it consists of condensed water vapour drawn up from the ocean by the heat of the sun (The Case of Shelley) The formation of the clouds from the’ dim verge of the horizon to the Zenith’s height’ is presented through the image of frenzied Maenad’s scattered, uplifted hair. The dark clouds with accompanying storms are as terrifying as the frightening appearance of Maenad with her loose uplifted hair. Maenad symbolises the destructive force here. Shelley through the image of Maenad is once again presenting the wind as a destroyer. The west wind here’ prophesies a storm (a revolution) which tears down kingdoms human lives as well as trees and leaves’

The sound of the wind moving through the forest is dirge like, commemorating the death of the year. ‘The year and all that lived are sepulchered by the blackening dome of the storm-driven sky, the association being political mainly” (H. Bloom).

Stanza 3 The impact of the wind is felt both by the peaceful Mediterranean and the vast Atlantic, The Mediterranean is lulled by the gentle waves and is dreaming of the glory of the ancient Greece and Rome. ‘The calm of the Mediterranean idealises the best of the past’. The outward appearance of the sea is the reminder of’ a graciousness and peace that is Elysian and that can be found in this life at its best movements.’ The reflection of old palaces and towers in the crystal clear calm water of the sea are his summer dreams. The old palaces and towers are the emblems of once despotic power, but now they have been subdued and mellowed, have become ‘that regret for what has passed and is passing’. The Mediterranean is rudely awakened by the west wind from its dreams. Even the great Atlantic is terrified. The waves of the Ocean cleave themselves into chasms to allow the wind to move without any hindrance. The sapless foliage, plants, flowers and woods, growing inside the ocean, on hearing the thune’drous voice of the wind, grow gray and shake with fear and drop themselves - they surrender to the might of the wind. The poet appeals to the wind to hear him. But the wind is so much engrossed in its’ activities that the poet’s appeal goes unheeded. Reference to die summer is significant in this stanza. Summer is over, it is autumn which will soon be followed by spring. The present is thus linked with the past as in the first stanza. The present autumn also refers to the future spring when all the gloom will disappear and there will be resurrection, rejuvenation of life. By implication (in the first three stanzas) Shelley asserts that only a radical revolution can destroy the values, ideas, institutions and beliefs which have, become useless and which have chained human beings. This revolution will be a blessing for it will lay down the foundations of a Utopian world. The wind-the uncontrollable, powerful and fierce wind - becomes the symbol of the revolution, Shelley, the visionary, had always dreamt of it. In these stanzas “Shelley has also established the supremacy of the wind over the earth, the sky and the ocean and highlighted the ferocious and destructive nature of the wind as well as its power of preserving life.” He concentrates on 7"hou-Irelationship and realizes that Thou is both a destroyer (Rudra) and the preserver (Vishnu-Shiva). It is omnipresent and omnipotent. Shelley’s I has been persistently appealing to the thou of the wind,’ Oh, hear!1 In the next stanza-he has to make a choice-cither he should surrender himself to the wind as an object for it to experience (like a leaf, a cloud or a wave) or to command the wind to be one with him.

Stanza 4 He realises that his enthusiasm for a change in the world for the welfare of mankind has been subdued by the adverse circumstances, yet he is not fully ‘dead’. The ‘spark’ is still there-it only needs to be enkindled. The poet, the reformer, the dreamer in him is still alive. He continues to address the wind as thou (in stanzas 4+5) and also recognizes his human situation. He cannot be it like the leaf, the wave and the cloud to be carried away by the wind-his ‘I’ needs the wind’s protection. The poet asserts that he is not an object - a thing without emotions, feelings, intellect, understanding and imagination. If he were a dead leaf, a swift cloud or a wave, he would have surrendered himself to the powerful wind and allowed it to lift him up, throw him around and share its might. But he belongs to human speeies-hence he has been an active participant in humanity’ s successes

and failures. As a young boy he has been as uncontrollable as the tempestuous wind and had always challenged it, tried to outstrip it, but now he has fallen on the thorns of life and is bleeding. Is Shelley indulging in self-pity here? Or is he drawing our attention to the failure of the French Revolution, to the set backs received by the freedom fighters in Europe and also the mass movement of the workers of the Peterloo which ended in a massacre? Being a radical, a rebel, a visionary, and a fighter for human liberty, he is upset at the sufferings of human beings at the hands of anarchists, tyrants and tyrannical institutions (religious, political, social and educational). Out of disgust and despair he appeals to the wind. Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf and a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! A heavy chain of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee...... The tone of the stanza is a little bit subdued. Shelley the poet-who was “once like thee’uncontrollable-and who often competed with the ‘speed’ of the wind in his boyhood days has been ‘chained’ and ‘bowed’ by hours, has fallen upon the thorns of life and is bleeding-the “ depth of the protagonist’s alienatron ‘from the indomitable spirit of the wind is highlighted”. When Shelley says that he has fallen upon the thorns of life and is bleeding, he is presenting himself as a Prometheus, Orpheus and Jesus figure. ‘In this Ode the song that breaks in the fourth stanza has lost in tamelessness, swiftness, pride, when it rises again in the final stanza, but it has gained ‘a deep autumnal tone sweet though in sadness’. (H. Bloom). Shelley’s appeal to the wind is similar to the laments of Job. (The Bible) Job prays for his natural destruction either in the same way as his own children who were swept away by ‘the great wind from across the wilderness or else to be again as he was in the days of his youth..... When the Almighty was yet with me’. Job is reconciled to the voice speaking out of the wind. No voice consoles Shelley in the ‘’Ode”.

Stanza 5 The myth-making (that is Thou-I relationship between the west wind and the poet) takes a newshape in the final stanza. In this stanza the wind is still thou for the poet, but the poet’s / has almost changed into it and so in the concluding stanza he first indenti fies himself with the forest trees. What Shelley implies here is that the dead thoughts (despondent thoughts) have crippled him and symbolically he has become ‘useless’ or ‘dead’ like a leaf, a wave, and a cloud. He desires the wind to destroy all that is not required, remove this despondency so that his prophetic voice is not subdued. Harold Bloom explains the stanza five thus: “The thoughts are dead only in that they have also become it, they are poems already written. But the l (spirit) of the poet is not yet dead, nor is it to be submerged in the wind... when the poet says ‘Let your spirit be my spirit’, he implies that the impetuosity, and energy of the wind may be his, and ‘my message may be your message’. As the Prophet needs God and God also needs the Prophet, the poet needs the wind as the latter needs the Poet. No mystical merging into a larger Identity but mutual confrontation of two realities is what is involved here”’. (H. Bloom) Let the aeolian harp (lyre) of the forest be combined with the ‘mighty harmonies’ of the wind’s spirit for producing ‘the deep autumnal tone’. Both the Poet’s spirit and the spirit of the wind must join together to sound ‘the trumpet of prophecy,” before the clarion is blown by the spring. What’s the prophecy? If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

And thus Shelley in his “Ode” has achieved his goal - he has made the thou of the wind, / of the poet. .......Be thou. spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one. The Oneness has been achieved. The visionary poet in Shelley has established a rapport with the Spirit of the Wild West Wind/This coming togetherness will sound ‘the trumpet of the prophecy’, the poet’s words will be scattered among mankind. The voice of the wind will be the voice of the poet himself and the unawakeneed earth (not yet aware of its liberating power) will wake up and then winter would disappear forever and spring-joy, happiness, liberty, love, equality and brother-hood will reign the earth.

Summing up “In Ode lo the West Wind the natural power that transforms autumn into winter, and winter into spring is a revolutionary force..... in the ‘Ode’ Shelley offers himself as a fiery inspiration movement ....inspiration entails destruction of the poet’s merely humanself so that in ‘Ode to the West Wind’ he becomes a fiery apocalypse and in To a Skylark’ he achieves madness.” (Scrivener) The ‘Ode” ends on a note of hope.

2.3 What is Shelley doing in the “Ode to the West Wind”? The “Ode to the West Wind” has many dimensions. It is a poem which highlights the relationship of man with nature. It is a prophetic poem, it reveals Shelley’s superb power of myth-making. The West Wind is a force of revolution and change, it is a spirit which crushes the obsolete, the useless, the dead leaves (used symbolically) decaying human beings, dead ideas and dying institutions and helps in the regeneration. So the wind is both the Destroyer and the Preserver and it is also the poet’s messenger to the universe, to the sleeping humanity-it echoes the poet’s prophecy to the unawakened earth “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” The “Ode” is also a poem about the desirability of movement and change. To some extent it is a political poem. The poem begins with alliteration and avocative phrase-O Wild West Wind! The invigorating sound is immediately followed by “the more sinister and morbid elements of the ensuing lines” (Pirie). The inversion in Line 2 leaves dead implies fatality because dead has been used as a rhyme word at the end of tile line, but the sentence continues, ‘leaves dead’ become ‘ghosts’ and “are driven by the tempestuous wind. Being dead, they are swept away like ‘ghosts’ ‘fleeing from an enchanter’ (the west wind) and these’ ghosts’ get associated with the pestilence stricken multitudes since’ leaves dead’ are’ yellow and black, and pale and hectic red’ “Shelley has used the traditional epic similes found in Homer, Virgil, Dante and Milton in which souls of the dead are compared to fallen ‘leaves driven by the wind’ whether the four colours-yellow, black, pale and red-stand for four races of man–Mongoloid, Negroid, Caucasian and Amercian Indian (as advocated by G.M. Matthews), is not clear from the Ode, If they do refer to the races, then perhaps Shelley is talking about the sufferings of all human beings and the wind’s impact is felt every where’, (Pirie) ‘Yellow’ and ‘pale’ are associated with “the pestilence stricken multitudes’” the sickly people. Also the word-pestilence stricken and hectic red evoke the pace of the wind as well as the pace of death-killing and destruction of millions of leaves as well as millions of human beings. But the contradictor’ words-

pale and black have sinister implication since they may refer to the darkly funeral yoked to pallidly dying, -they refer to death because of sickness. (Pirie) In the ensuing lines no qualifying adjective dresses the ‘corpse within its grave” (Line 8) and the “exposed” corpse is “juxtaposed with the lyrically azure sister of the spring” (Pirie) Wind is traditionally used as a masculine being but Shelley makes” the restorative force of the spring mildly feminine.” (DRSP). The living hues are contrasted with the death evoking colour - ‘yellow, pale, black and hectic red’. Pirie writes “Opposing moods and different conventions of language seem to be in potentially dizzling collision’ Shelley makes us aware of the paradox and realise that this wild west wind is much more than its ‘“literal self we are swept away with its uncontrollable, unceasing power. We are pushed from the morbid (Lines 2-5) to the vivacious (Lines 6 to 16) in the fourteen line stanza, “which remains a single, ever-elaborating vocative until its last three words”. And then the grammar changes from invocative to imperative. The imperative seems to be an appeal to the wind but by implication it is an appeal to the reader, “hear, oh hear!” Shelley’ s poems pose a challenge to the reader. He would like the reader to apply his mind and find connections between various images, similes, and ideas. For example as already mentioned we have to decipher the relationship between “yellow, pale, black and hectic red” and “pestilence-stricken multitudes” between “leaves dead” and “ghosts fleeing from an enchanter”. Once again he desires us to discover the similarity of “buds” to “flocks” and how they can feed in air. According to Pirie “flocks” can be applied both to birds and sheep. The buds, when stirred by wind, may become blossoms and their fluttering may be compared with the fluttering of the flocks of birds. Flying birds feed on insect life, invisible to the human eye. So their nourishment, seems to be like the unseen presence (Line 2) of an ecosystem. It implies both the preserver and the destroyer. This could be one interpretation of the word flocks’”. The alternative explanation could be the birds blossom like the flocks of sheep, in spring the sheep go higher and higher on the mountain side and they, standing on the topmost ridge, may appear to “feed in air”. The “buds” and “flocks” juxtaposition is very significant, “the pastoral analogy buds like flocks is very appropriate because the spring flowers bloom and the flocks of sheep ramble about in the fields and on mountains. The assure sister of the spring is likened to a shepherd shepherdess feeding her flock of sheep and lambs in fresh air. Jesus is also described as a shepherd. Thus Shelley has combined the biblical concept of Judgment, with the pastoral life and Jesus. The theme of regeneration and rebirth is underlined. The wind is both the destroyer and the preserver. The force, which, in spring season, with a benign protectiveness of a shepherd (shepherdess) will be “driving ......flocks to feed” is the same force of the cycling season as appears in Autumn by whose breath, the dead leaves “Are driven” to helpless flight (Line 3). ‘That one verb of motion -to drivemoves us to see sustaining aspiration in one context, folorn impotence in the other. It thus invites us to discover the dynamic emotiveness of force which is “moving every where’” (Pine). In stanza two ‘the poem’s topography is more challenging and fluid’. The clouds remind us of the Earth’s decaying leaves, and thus they recall the landscape of the stanza one. But these clouds are shaken

from the tangled boughs of both the Heaven and Ocean (line 17). And remember ‘Ocean is the setting of the stanza three,’(Pine) The clouds are also Angels who are the messengers heralding rain and lighting ‘whose fertilizing and illuminating power guarantees change’ a change for a better world. Perhaps Shelley is anticipating (what in his later poems is described, as) an’ approaching storm’ which will bring about apolitical change. The wind is both the dirge/of the dying year (Lines 23-4) and a prophet of tumult whose prediction is ruthlessly decisive—Black rain, fire and hail will burst. (Line 28). ‘The Vast sepulchre is once again related to the past and the future times-it is the burial ground of the past and is also the pregnantly congregated might of the future. (Lines 25-6)’ (Pirie) The wild west wind is so much preoccupied with creating commotion all around, with destruction and recreation that it has no time to listen to the prayer of the poet. The appeal seems to be a feeble one since in the next stanza the wind continues its activities, Another important aspect of the stanza two is biblical allusions. Angels, (a biblical word) has not been used in the biblical sense-clouds are merely the messengers (Angels), But when he describes the sepulchre of the dying year-the word sepulchre reminds us of the corpse in their wintry bed (used for the winged seeds in the stanza one). By implication Shelley moves from death to rebirth. Reference is made to Mary Magdalene discovering (on the third day after Jesus’s crucifixion) an Angel sitting at the gate of his sepulchre and this Angel informed her of Jesus’s resurrection. Very skillfully Shelley has used the story of Jesus here. The stanza abounds in the images of death-dying year, dirge closing night, vast sepulchre. Shelley has used Oxymoron in this poem-the wind possesses diamatically opposite Characteristics it is both the Destroyer and the Preserver. The bursting of “rain is like the erruption of a volcano which showers black rain and fire.” Stanza three begins with the Wind waking up the sleeping and dreaming Mediterranean. The sea and the ocean both are personified. The sea has been sleeping and is perhaps dreaming of the history of Greece and Rome. Why does Shelley use summer dreams? The Ode deals with the cycle of the season. Winter and spring have already been mentioned in the earlier stanzas. It is winter time and the spring refers to the future, spring will soon follow the winter. In this stanza summer refers to the past-the period already gone. Summer is also associated with dream and sleep. The gentle waves of the sea have lulled the Mediterranean to sleep and in the crystal clear blue water of the sea we see the reflections of the palaces and huge buildings. These reflections are quiveing because of the movement of the waves. But the poet has something more in his mind. The Mediterranean dreams of the past glory and tyranny of the nations situated on its shores; these dreams make him shiver. It reminds him of what he had earlier seen from an island beside the island of pumice. “Shelley is also referring to the overgrown villas from the days of the imperial Rome underneath the waters of the Bay of Baiae”. (DRSP). The sea is awakened from the imperial dream, reminded of the present slavery of Greece and Rome and exhorted to fight for liberty. The message of revolution is implicit in the description. Shelley5 s knowledge of science is once again revealed. The clear water of the sea intensifies the rays of the sun. The poet thus creates a dream like picture in the first eight lines of the stanza- ‘dream Mediterranean, its quivering palaces and towers, /Overgrown/with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.’

‘Azure’ and ‘flowers’ the two words once again refer back to ‘azure’ sister of spring and ‘buds’ and ‘odour’ of the sea. From a peaceful picture we move on to the terrified Atlantic. The Atlantic, on hearing the thunderous sound of the tempestuous west wind immediately makes way for it to move fast and move on.’ Cleave themselves into chasms’ Shelley very precisely describes the changes which occur in the water of the Atlantic and the vegetation growing inside the sea. ‘The vegetation at the bottom of sea sympathies with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced with the winds that announce it’ (Shelley’s Note). The voice is associated with prophecy. This truth the Atlantic reads sympathetically and fearfully. The seaflowers, oozy woods, sapless foliage all grow gray with fear and deflower themselves. Shelley wants the change to come from within. The wind is only a prophet, a mere agent of change, revolution and regeneration but the rapid change has to be brought about by the seeds, the clouds, the sea and human beings themselves. Let us once again examine this stanza. What is the subject of the verb saw in line 33 ? Of course it is used for the Mediterranean introspectively meditating on its own depths. The syntactical movement initiated in line 3 0 continues -he’ lay’, he saw. Can we use saw for the wind? “Thou who didst waken-And saw” According to Pirie “Whoever saw the underwater city, it is itself equivocal. Is it a real city: whether on the ocean floor, or reflected from its position on the coast? Or is it only an optical illusion: a creative interpretation of the billowing seaweed; or of the glimmering sky reflected on the surface? Such illusions will be the product of the wind. Its presence would ‘waken’ the appearance of city quivering within its waves.” The wind is by implication a Muse also-it is a creator, a model to be emulated. Is the description of the city, palaces and towers real or mere illusion? These are the questions which may baffle the reader since the poem celebrates “a power that can conjure vibrant life out of apparently sterile materials.” (Pirie) In stanza four the poet no more deals with the impact of the tremendously forceful wind on various objects of nature. The /of the speaker or the poet becomes more significant. The first person pronouns-/, me and my appear nine times in the stanza. The poet dramatizes the speaker’s situation, contrasting it with the earlier sections in which the wind plays” “theatrical games on world-scale stage. The stanza begins with conditional clauses-without the main clause of course. He refers to himself as a dead leaf, a swift cloud, a wave, recalling the sequence of setting in the first three stanzas. The first three stanzas are characterized by an alternation between vocative description and the prayer. So there is the powerful west wind (Almighty, omnipotent and omnipresent) and there is a supplicant, who prays for its support.” The conditional sentences indicate that the poet or the speaker is not a dead leaf, a swift cloud or a wave for he belongs to homo sapiens. Therefore he is a part of the history of mankind with its failures and successes, its hopes and disappointments. This is what he has mentioned in the Hymn to the Intellectual Beauty When he talks about his boyhood, he is relating “a phase of widely shared optimism about the chance of radical transformation for European societies. It made the poet ‘comrade’ of all that seemed most dynamic in the natural world. Like other radicals of the period Shelley could have the glimpse of a vision of humanity as actually surpassing the most inspiring models of freedom and energy amongst the earthly forces”.(Lines 48-51) (Pirie).

When Shelley says ‘a heavy chain of weight’ has chained and bowed him, he is not talking about his advancing age (he was only 27 when he wrote the Ode). He is reminding us not only of his personal life but also of the voice of hope and liberty which was literally imprisoned and humiliated by the reactionary forces (conservative, tyrannical monarchs, autocrate authorities dogmatic, orthodox and traditional forces) which prevailed in Europe and were powerful in England. Across Europe the reactionary forces had demonstrated that even though the revolutionary forces (for example French revolution, Napolean) might appear to be as powerful and as uncontrollable as the west wind, they could be easily suppresed, the libertines can be crushed and tamed. The taming or the crushing of libertine forces forced each comrade to realise his precise positon-he could understand the facts of human existence- each reformer has to be crucified. Perhaps Shelley is here thinking of Jesus, Prometheus and Orpheus. Each lonely ego is doomed to fall on the thorns of life and bleed. The poet must fall on the thorns of life to create beauty; blood is the creative power. In the “Ode” Shelley emerges as the libertarian poet. In this poem the violent transition to winter is celebrated as a revolutionary energy ultimately beneficial. In stanza four we notice that the recollection of the former vigour which is perhaps now dwindling distracts the poet into talking more about himself at the same time he wants to establish a rapport with the spirit of the wind -for both are uncontrollable-are equals though at present he is weak. The poet still retains his faith in liberty and rejuvenation. When he appeals to the wind to lift him as a wave, a leaf, a cloud, he is thinking of the wingled seeds perhaps. He is like the wind tameless, swift and proud and these three characteristics need to be preserved and protected, so that once again he may like the sky lark shower his message of joy on the earth. Shelley emerges out of the gloomy thoughts in the next stanza. He concentrates on the purpose of poetry. His plea to the wind to make him a; lyre’ (a traditional symbol of poetry) reveals that he has once again regained his confidence. The transition from stanza four to five can be compared with the transition from destruction to preservation and regeneration in the stanza one. The poet feels that the reactionary forces have chained and bowed all the poets and intellectuals who exhorted people to break off the shackles of slavery and tyranny. Like Orpheus or Prometheus they have been chained. The tempestuous wind is a power which will help him to preserve his faith in the change. This is evidence in the drawing of spring after the dark days of winter. (Both spring and winter are symbolically used). The wind with its harmonies is a creator like the poet. The wind can spread the words of the poet through its lyre (the forests) and produce a deep autumnal tone. The sadness of the nature and the poet will be harmonised in a deep autumnal tone which will be sweet even in sadness. The lines remind us of Shelley’ s Sky lark where he says that our sweetest songs are those that tell of sadness. In the first three stanzas the wind’s influences on the land, the air (the sky) and the water (ocean) has been established. In the fifth (the concluding stanza) the fourth element fire is introduced. “Once again in the “Ode” as in other poems of Shelley we see the Prometheus image specifying the fiery power of words among mankind” Shelley thus generalises that poetry can change minds, bring about revolution and also refers to his prophetic power the incantation of this verse (Lines 65) As Bloom has pointed out the “Ode” exhibits the mythmaking process-the relationship between the poet’s / and the west wind’s Thou that is the reason the first person pronouns are more positively

connected with those second person pronouns that invoke the larger forces to which the poem addresses itself. Me thy (line 57) and thou me (Line 62) indicate the poet’s “restored confidence” in the ability or “capacity to communicate with and draw strength from the wind”, (Pirie) My appears five times in this stanza as l is used six times in the previous one. In the stanza four the poet is more concerned with himself (I) a leaf, a wave, a cloud, or me too like thee “The singulars a and me highlight the vulnerability and self doubt of the individual - the apprehension that once he was tameless, swift and proud like thee (wind ) and perhaps he may remain chained and bowed forever (if the wind does not sustain the /of the poet)” (Pirie) The poet recovers his freedom and pride through a redefinition of his self—my-thoughts, my-wordsthe poet desires to start a mass movement by spreading his thoughts through words and poems. His leaves must merge with those of the entire forest (Line 58) and he is hopeful that they will become components of a “tumult-of mighty harmonies” the verb will at first affirms that like many poems of Shelley this “Ode” is indeed a prophecy. (Line 62).(Pirie) The subject of its thought and the object of its address is the “winds of change”, which can turn each seed, which now lies ‘cold and low’ in the ‘grave’ of its dark ‘wintry bed’ (Line 6-8) into a ‘new birth’. (Line 64). To Shelley the Europe of 1819 is still an ‘unawakened earth’. But he is not disappointed. He can look beyond “the present stuper of humanity” to ‘the trumpet of prophecy’- “syntactically the present winter is followed by future spring” (Pirie) The future rests with the people, who at the time of writing of the poem are “yet unborn” “The poem attempts to scatter its words among the distant generation of mankind”. Through the incantation of this verse, the withered leaves (perhaps referring to the pages of a book) will be read as winged seeds or fertile seeds which will quicken new birth (Line 64). The poet exhorts the wind’s spirit to be his spirit and drive away his dead thoughts like leaves dead or perhaps change them into an energy of a ‘new birth and also stir the ashes of past into the sparks of our future’. The prophecy comes in the form, of a question-posing a challenge to each generation of mankind. Mankind must find an answer to the question, The “Ode” is both aperhecy and a political poem. The poet’s objective seems to force the reader to comprehend (1) the politics of England in 1819 and (2) what poetry’s purpose is. Poetry can present the natural world in various ways and for various purposes. It enables us to understand the poet’s thought process and can interpret the poet’s obligations to the future. Is Ode to the West Wind a political poem only? or How far is it a political poem? According to a critic “The answer is that it is a political poem in the sense that all Shelley’ s poems are seeking a better world, a new life to replace the old systems and old corruptions. The wind of autumn is a perfect symbol of a moving and cleansing power, evidence in natural world of what was so poignantly missing in the human”. (Based on Pine’s essay on Shelley’s Ode)

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY I The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats though unseen amongst us,–visiting This various world with as inconstant wing As summer Winds that creep from flower to flower.– Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower, It visits with inconstant glance Each human heart and countenance; Like hues and harmonies of evening,– Like clouds in starlight widely spread,– Like memory of music fled,– Like aught that for its grace may be Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery II Spirit of BEAUTY That doth1 consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form,—where art thou gone? Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate? Ask why the sunlight not forever Weaves rainbows o’er yon mountain river, Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown, Why fear and dream and death and birth Cast on daylight of his earth Such gloom, - why man has such a hope? For love and hate, despondency and hope? III No vice from some sublimer world hath ever To sage or poet these reponses given Therefore the name of God, and Ghost, and Heaven, Remain the records of their vain endeavour, Frail spells - whose uttered charm might not avail to sever, From all we hear and all we see. Doubt, chance, and mutability. They light alone - like mist o’ er mountains driven, Or music by the night wind sent Through strings of some still instrument, Or moonlight on a midnight stream, Gives grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream. IV Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart And come, for uncertain moments lent.

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Man were immortal, and Omnipotent, Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart. Thou messenger of sympathies That wax and wane in lovers’ eyes Thou-That to human thought art nourishment, Like darkness to a dying frame! Depart not as thy shadow came, Depart not-less the grave should be, Like life and fear, a dark reality. V While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, And starlight wood, with the departed dead. Hope of high talk with the departed dead, I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed; I was not heard–I saw them not When musing deeply on the lot. Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing All vital things that wake to bring News of buds and blossoming,4– Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;5 I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy! VI I vowed that I would dedicate my powers To thee and thine-have I not kept the vow? . With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now I call the phantoms of a thousand hours Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers Of studious zeal or love’s delight Outwatched with me the envious night— They know that never joy illumed my brow Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery, That thou-O awful LOVELINESS. Wouldst give whate’er these words cannot express. VII The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past- there is a harmony In autumn, and lustre in its sky, Which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been! Thus let thy power, which like the truth Of nature on my passive youth Descended, to my onword life supply Its calm-to one who worships thee,

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And ever’ form containing thee, Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all human kind.

3.01 Background Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’’ was written in 1816 in Switzerland, where Shelley had met Byron for the first time in the spring of 1816. They became great friends and often spent the summer together, visiting surrounding cities, places and particularly historical places. ‘They also visited the grim chateau de chillon, explored its dangerous and torturous chambers’. Switzerland at that time was under the control of the Austrian soldiers. “Byron and Shelley were disappointed by the re-establishment of the reactionary empires during the post-Waterloo period. The French Revolution had already failed thirty years ago. Its failure belied the hopes and dreams of the common man. The era of Liberty, Fraternity and Equality had not yet dawned and Chillon was yet another monument to centimes of virtually uninterrupted dictatorship and cruelty” (Pine-Shelley) Byron did not discrn any evidence in the cantemporary Europe which could indicate that the revolutionary hopes articulated by the French Revolution could become real activities. Shelley was hostile. to all man made institutions particularly monarchy and priesthood. ‘“He was grieved to learn that many of the torturers and executioners, in the dungeons of chillon, believed that their heinous work was really a pious defence of the true faith and their victims were not political prisoners rather they were blaspheming heretics” (Pine-Shelley) Both the poets were disgusted at the hypocrises of the Anglican Church in England which supported the Tory government. Shelley condemned all institutions and wanted them to be completely demolished for he believed that they deprived man of his liberty. Byron was more tolerant towards priestsod and believed in the original sin. He believed that man suffered because of his own fate and the concept of the original sin gave man power to bear hardships. He found stupidity, greed and cruelty all pervasive in all societies and times and they could not be eradicated by destroying priesthood. Shelley, the visionary and radical did not accept the argument of Byron. In his “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” he seems to respond to Byron’s scepticism. Fie describes an external power which is omnipresent and immortal, is ‘unseen’and inconstant, is short lived and fleeting. It casts its awful shadow on all and it can be comprehended by our intellectual ‘attentiveness’. We are’not guided by this power because we are unable to realise it and see it. We blindly adhere to the conventional religious beliefs and so we are unable to see the real light - the Spirit of the Intellectual Beauty.

3.02 Introduction to the poem “Hymn to the Intellectual Beauty” is a product and address to a culture which in its own way is religious. It defines its own faith in terms which parallels the rituals and vocabulary of Christianity. It condemns Orthodox religion, its beliefs and rituals as a dangerous fraud, “false spells” and ‘poisonous words’. Its rival is the Intellectual Beauty. The poet defines the Spirit of Intellectual Beauty which encompasses within itself three triads Hope, Love and Self-esteem and reveals to theinspired persons the reality of existence. The poem deals with the “prismatic human imagination”, which reflects and refracts ‘The cold blank colours of rainbow, giving joy to men during their lives and hope for a survival beyond the grave” in Mont Blanc The “Hymn” is a formal ode written in the 18th century tradition. It shows the influence of Wordsworth’s attitude to Nature and also the impact of Plato’s Symposium and the Republic. It consists of

seven twelve lined stanzas and can be divided into three sections or parts according to the development of the theme. The first stanza forms the first part. The main theme - the Intellectual Beauty- has been introduced in this stanza. We are told that the ‘awful shadow of some unseen power’visits man. It is an inconstant power; the shadow comes and goes. It brings moments of inspiration and then suddenly vanishes. Shelley does not say that this power visits man. rather its shadow falls on man. Both the shadow and the power are inconstant and unseen. The narrator has great reverence for this power- the unknown and unseen deity. The subsequents stanzas (2 to 4) form the second section of the “Hymn”. Here the narrator addresses the spirit (as “Spirit of BEAUTY”) and stresses its function. The spirit is still unknown and invisible, but it is essential for human life (it is distinguished from “merely natural and animal existence”). It is this spirit’s relationship with man which makes him • immortal and omnipotent” like “an anthoromorphic god”. The speaker appeals to the spirit not to depart’ lest the grave should be /Like life and fear, a dark reality” (lines 47-48). In the last three stanzas the narrator, the poet records the various stages of his Hie. The fifth stanza deals with his boyhood quest for knowledge and his dedication to the spirit of BEAUTY. The next stanza informs us that he has fulfilled his vow in young manhood and the cancluding stanza records his appeal to the intellectual Loveliness to bless his maturer years with its continued inspiration. The poem thus describes the nature of the spirit of the Intellectual Beauty, its relation to mankind in general and then its relation to one individual “‘one representative man” the poet-through three stages of life. The three stages are quite similar to Wordsworth” s three stages described in “Tintem Abbey” and “Ode to the Immortality Ode”. Shelley has been obsessed with 1 ntel lectual Beauty and we have references to it in many of his poetic works. In Revolt of Islam can IV intellectual Beauty is described almost in the similar fashion. “A lop the Pyramid we observe a mysterious maiden.high priestess of the new religion of light and love, singing a hymn celebrating these symbols of. first, powerful wisdom, second, the eternal spirit, who is like the Spirit of Intellectual Beauty, a loving mother of all living creatures, third the ‘eldest of things, divine Equality’ represented by the winged youth, who responds to both the sun’s light (wisdom) and its warmth (love), thus epitomizing the brotherly non-dogmatic religion (similar to that’ faith so mild’ taught by Mont Blanc)” The theme of the “Hymn” is repeated in later poems also. Asia, Panthea and lone of Pro/net hens Unboundlo a great extent correspond to the wise, great and good in Mont Blanc and they strikingly look forward to the roles played by the Sun, the Moon and the Comet in Epipsychidion. Asia is in away the Spirit of Intellectual Beauty. The shadow of the Spirit is invoked in the “Hymn” and this Spirit (Asia) corresponds to the sun in later poems. It is assoicated with the power of imagination (inspiration) and compasses both love and reason. In the central scene (IIV) of ‘Prometheus Unbound the Spirit of Intellectual Beauty is transfigured to reveal itself to men and to dwell among them.Once again Shelley describes this spirit (in the last episode of Ode to Naples) as greatest spirit, deepest love. “It is this spirit of Beauty that infuses Italy and is identical with the Spirit of Intellectual Beauty that undergirds both nature and man”.

3.02 A detailed study of the poem

Although the “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” is not an address to any Christian deity or belief, the word ‘Hymn’ itself suggests that the poem has a religious fervour. The deity worshipped is a pagan one, but is in no way inferior to Christian God. Commenting on the use of Hymn (in the title) David P. Pirie in his book Shelley (Open Guides to Listerature Series) writes: “ ‘Hymn’ at the time (during the late 18th century) had the potential to mean two different things. Shelley could he asserting belief in some divinity which exists outside of the human mind. One that is no more dependent on the poet’s own moods or on his creative verbal imagination than the Christian deity, whom Thomson prays in his ‘Hymn to God’ s Power’. On the other hand Shelley’s ‘Hymn’, like Thomson’s ‘To Solitude’ or Akenside’s To Cheerfulness. could he invoking a mere personification addressing itself to what is no more than a way of speaking about the writer’s own essentially human experiences and aspirations “. Why does Shelley describe Beauty as Intellectual Beauty ? Earlier critics have defined intellectual as non-material, spiritual, beyond the senses, incorporeal as opposed to physical but here Shelley’ s intellectual implies the powers of the mind. Some of the words used to describe the Beauty (Spirit faire, awful Lovelines) are essentially faminine. But we should not forget that Shelley did not make any distinction between man and woman. Shelley’s Intellectual Beauty is ‘mental energy’ or intellectual Loveliness, which can change man’s personality with its powerful grace. This Beauty is an integral part of the ecosystem. It seems to be inspired by the external world but actually ‘it is the beauty of things of the mind’. According to H.N. Cameron “It is the beauty of the things of poetic inspiration.” In his Defence of Poetry Shelley has co-related politics and poetry. The poet is a prophet and a legislator. He can bring about a revolutionary change in the universe. The mind, at its best constructive, can build a better society. As Cameron puts it,” Intellectual Beauty is a power which stimulates the mind to a creation of new objects.’ This is why the title is ‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’. In the first stanza the poet attempts to define Intellectual Beauty, It is an unseen Power and its awsome shadow floats among nature and human beings. Both the power and the shadow are invisible, since the Power is unseen, its shadow also can’t be seen, even though it is pervasive and present among us. // is because “Our minds arc too lazy to notice it” The shadow floats with its inconstant wings. It is not static, it is all the time moving, from object to object and it comes and goes. It is fleeting. The shadowy manifestations of this Power can be deduced from the close observation of external objects or natural objects, through which it floats. Shelley establishes the ephemeral quality of this Power. He twice uses the word unseen and inconstant in this stanza. And yet he emphasises that the invisible shadow of this Power can be felt or noticed if we observe the landscape attentively. The first concrete manifestation is the swaying flowers in the summer. During the summer season gentle winds blow through flowers or creep stealthily among them making them sway or move to and fro with pleasure. The invisible movement of the shadow is likened to the mobility of the gentle summer winds. Summer symbolically means the joyous period (time) when nature is at its abundance, it is associated with life, warmth, joy and love. The repetitition of inconstant may also imply that the reader will have to make intellectual effort to comprehend the latent meaning of the poem-the meaning can be elusive and fleeting but once one is able to grasp the meaning he will be swaying with pleasure like the flowers. The meanings are as inconstant as the summer winds and inconstant wing of the shadow.

In the next line we have moonbeams as the subject, the verb used with it is shower, At first instant we may interpret the line to mean that moonbeams are not clearly visible because of the pines covering the mountains. Moonbeams is used for comparison. The line may mean that the moonbeams showering in the valley are not clearly visible because the piny mountains are obstructing the view. “They (moonbeams) in their descent from the sky. eventually disappear behind the piny mountians”. The inconstant movement of the unseen shadow of the unseen power is compared to the moonbeams. The moonbeams are showering (falling like rain drops) on the earth, but we are not able to see them because of the obstructing pine covered mountains. Similarly the Power is present around us but we cannot comprehend it. In the next three lines Shelley uses three different similes one after another to underline the mobility, inconsistancy and beauty of the Power/Shadow. All the similes are associated with inconstant glance. Here inconstant differs from the inconstant wing in meaning in the sense that it implies ‘stealthily act’ or hasitant act as well fleeting glance. The Power gently or stealthily looks at the face and heart of man and its secretive glance has a visible effect on man. Ecstasy and joy are then visible in the face. They also thrill human heart. The fleeting glance effects a complete transformation in man” s behaviour and thinking. This inconstant glance is like the evening time when the landscape i s fused with harmoniously blended colours. Though this period lasts for a short time, it fills us with great joy. The glance is also likened to the clouds which spread in the sky and try to cover the brightness of the starlight. Thus the whole scene looks beautiful and mysterious. And the third comparison is with the memory of the music fled. The music may fade away but its memory haunts us for a long time, giving us great pleasure. Its thrill and melody lingers in our mind for a long time. By using a variety of similes Shelley is trying to define Intellectual Beauty, its eolourfuiness and harmony (evening sky) its mystery (starlight covered by clouds), thrill, joy and melody (memory of the music). The Power is not static, it is moving but even its fleeting glance has tremendous influence on us. In the concluding lines Shelley tells us that this power should be ‘dear” to us for it gives ‘grace’ (a sort of serenity and sublimity) and it should be all the more “dearer” because it is ‘mysterious’ also. Thus we observe that final similes (lines 8to 12) intensity the mystery, grace, eolourfuiness, harmony, thrill and joy associated with the shadow of the unseen Power. The sentence beginning in line 5 and lingering indecisively till the end, once again underlines the ‘inconstancy’ and ‘fleeting’ character of the Power. The Power is compared to a number of elusive beauties existing in nature or echo system. We also observe that the flow of the stanza one is obstructed/interrupted by dashes ending five lines. But the stanzas’ grammatical structure remains essentially assertive. The shadow.... .floats,.... among its. It visits/Each human mind and heart. The next stanza abounds in interrogatives. All the three sentences end in question mark. On close examination we find the first two questions are addressed to the Spirit of BEAUTY, name given to the Power, This spirit is described in religious terms. It consecrates (purifies) human mind (thought) and form. Where has the spirit, which sanctifies human thought and form, disappeared? In stanza one the invisible and inconstant Power’s temporariness has been stressed. In this stanza the Power is a holy spirit. The poet appears to be in a complaining mood-in a melancholic mood-when he asks the spirit why it has deserted human beings, why it no more purifies his mind and body. The next question is addressed

perhaps to human beings? As the spirit has forsaken mankind, the whole earth has become a waste land. The poet in a wistful mood is perhaps complaining that the spirit has betrayed mankind. The third question addressed to human beings is a rhetorical one. Perhaps Shelley is trying to console man by reminding him of’”the Power’s inconstant visitings. adding a sombre element to the description initiated in stanza one. We are made to understand Intellectual Beauty in the context of its grace...... /Dear and yet dearer for its mystery”. In this stanza it is related to ought that tends to fail and fade. The image of the Power emerging from the first two stanzas is “that of a Janus like deity whose flickering effect is both to arrive and to depart. In the first stanza this power floats and creeps among us, but it arrives as a fleeting visitor (it visits with inconstant wing). In this stanza the Power is christianed as the spirit of’BEA IJTY, which has the characteristic of coming and going and has already gone. (Where art thou gone?y (line 15) The poet is consoling human beings by reminding them of the bitter realities. After all nothing is permanent in this world. Who should ask? You ask (of course the human beings should ask or find out). They should observe and understand their surroundings or predicament. If you observe the landscape, you discover that the sunlight does not always fall on the water rivers and does not weave rainbows.’ (Shelley is perhaps recollecting the waterfull he had seen at Chida on June 21,1816. about which he writes “... .in the midst of which hung a multitude of sunbows, which faded or became unspeakably vivid as the inconstant sun shown through the clouds’”.) Man should not forget that appearance (shown) and disappearance (fail and fade) are permanent features of existence. They co-exist. The flowers which bloom and glow are bound to fade, wither and die. What does his refer to? (Iine22). His is used for man (line 23). The daylight is contrasted with glooms, death with birth, light with darkness. Life and death are the conditions of mortality. Fear and dream correspond to despondency and hope respectively. What has happened in man’s world, after the departure of the Spirit of Beauty? Fear, dream, death, birth, daylight, darkness, love, hate, despondency and hope are intergrat part of his existence. The world is now a dim vast vale of tears, vacant, and desolate. And the answers to all the whys (?) addressed to man is - we suffer because the Spirit has passed away. All these evils could be annihilated when the Spirit would return to us. After lamenting the’ loss’ of the Spirit and the fate of humanity, Shelley focusses his attention on some of the conventional religious terms-God, ghost and Heaven, and the ‘responses’ of rituals like catechism. He tries to ‘foster’ reverence for an alternative deity, (introduced in the first two stanzas). These responses What or which responses Shelley is referring to? The poet elicits the responses to the questions raised in the second stanza. The sublimer world stands for the other world, the Heaven,the World of God, the world different from our vale of tears (the earth). In his Essay on Christianity (1812-1815) Shelley writes. We live and move and think, but we are not the creators of our own ori gin and existence. We are not the masters of our imaginations and moods of mental being. There is a Power by which we are surrounded .........Our most imperial and stupendous qualities are those on which the majesty and power of humanity are erect - we are the passive slaves of some high and more omnipotent power.

Shelley rejects the concept that man has to live on the earth and God lives in Heaven. His deity-the Spirit of Beauty or Power-does not exist in a sublimer world or a Heaven. The Power exists with us and among us. It surrounds us, makes us breath and live. The poet warns human beings. All their prayers and efforts to find the answers to the questions raised in the previous stanza are useless for “God, ghosts and Heaven’’ are nonexistent. They may try to appease the power believed to live in Heaven, but no blessing will be showered on them. Shelley distinguishes between the Power (God) prayed by the orthodox Christians and the Power (Spirit of Intellectual Beauty) created or imagined by him. The orthodox ritualistic Christian prayers are useless (vain), they are ‘frail spells’-they are self deluding, lead us to ‘no where’ and darkness, light, death, birth, fear, dream, love, hate, despondency and hope remain with us. Intellectual Beauty is an active deity which gives grace to us. The prayers of sages and poets have not been granted, these prayers to God, ghost, and Heaven have not been heeded, because they (God, ghost and Heaven) are false-they have nothing to do with the human lot. The prayers, spells or charms cannot remove doubt, chance and mutability, nor can they allay our fears. Shelley is trying to establish the superiority of Intellectual Beauty, only it can give us’ grace’-all the blessings and dignity which man deserves. Once again he addresses the Spirit-”Thy light alone .....Gives grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream.” Remember “Shelley’ s Power is no silent absentee in some sublimer world; but one that surrounds us in this one. Indeed it gives life to us as intimately, as invisibly as does the air that enters our lungs.” (Pine) Shelley, once again, uses a group of three similes and they echo the images in the first two stanzas, for example line 35’s “moonlight.....on a stream” reminds us of line5’s “moonbeams that....shower” The light of the Power is compared to the mist over the mountain, to music (heard at night) produced by night (playing on “some still instrument” or an Aeolian harp or wind lyre.) and to the moonlight reflected in the stream at midnight. All these natural scenes are the manifestations of the light of the Power. And only this light gives grace and ‘truth to life’s unquiet dream’. Is Shelley referring to all the contrasting experiences (mentioned in stanza 2) and doubt, chance and mutability (stanza 3) ? Moonlight..... stream (line 35)–The image may have had some private associations with Mary Godwin (Shelley’s letter to Mary of October 28,1814...”.... My mind without yours is dead and is cold as the dark mid night river when the moon is down.” GMKE) In stanza three Shelley has ridiculed some conventional religious terms- God, ghost and Heaven, in the next stanza he revises Chritianity’s conventional triad - faith, Hope and Charity. Shelley has always praised optimism, so he accepts I lope for it contains Optimism in itself He has already condemned world of God which in unable to eradiate doubt, chance and mutability, which he sees and hears. So faith in God is replaced by self-esteem and charity is substituted by love. Love. Hope and Self esteem are essentially human-centered values, Love (Later in the stanza) is linked with lines 42-3, which suggest “the connection between generalised benevolence and those more specifically sexual ‘sympathies/Thai wax and wane in lover’s eyes’” (Pirie). Love, Hope and Self esteem (affection, optimism and self respect) do not originate within human beings. They are ‘lent’ to us ‘for some uncertain moments’. Once human heart and mind are stirred by the light or Power (stanza one) or once man becomes aware of the three values, he may realise the truth (Stanza 3) that man is immortal and omnipotent like the Power itself. “Shelley is not concerned with the chronological time, his hyperbole (line 37-43) is derived from his belief in the primary importance of

psychological time. In his note to Queen Mab III 203-207 he asserts the perfectibility of the human sensibility and therefore theposibiJity of virtual (not literal) immortality”. (DRSP). What is this truth? Why has this truth remained unknown to man? Man is immortal and omnipotent. This is the truth that is embedded in his heart and thought and lying dormant. This truth will be revealed only when this Power -the external Power or the Intellectual Beauty stirs man ? Since tin’s Power is 6othawful and unknown (and inconstant), man has not been able to comprehend it and has not been inspired for many years. The power has already been compared to the clouds, which gather (come) and then depart. They are as fleeting and mysterious as the Power itself. Affection, optimism and self-respect are present in a firm state within human heart, they need an outlet and this outlet can be porvided by this power only. Can man change his own mind, since all the three traits are human - centered Or must he passively await a transformation which can be imposed only by an external Power ? Shelley perhaps implies here that the external Power can inspire man and then only with his own efforts he would be able to realise the inherent affection, optimism and self respect. The Power is also described as The messenger of sympathies’. Sympathies implies ‘love’ mentioned at the beginning of the stanza and also sexual love or feeling of love discemable in the eyes of the lover but even this passion undergoes alternation, it increases and decreases. The Intellectual Beauty inspires as well as nourishes human mind. It was generally believed that a strong light stifles a flame, which was nourished by darkness. The Spirit of Intellectual Beauty nourishes human thought as darkness nourishes a dying flame. The spirit of darkness does not enkindle the flame but it “sets off and calls attention to it because of its opposite antithetical nature”. (DRSP). “In lines 44-5 light is equated with the internalized world of human, thought’ which is a ‘flame’ threatened with extinction; and darkness, which makes even the feeblest flame seem to shine brighter, represents the rescuing deity”. (Pirie) In lines 21 -3 Shelley uses ‘daylight’, earlier he had referred to sunlight. Here the daylight and sunlight are associated with ‘gloom’, ‘darkness’ and despair. Human ‘fear and dream’ are like clouds, their shadows “cast on the daylight..,..gloom”. According to Pirie “The fourth stanza, as the pivotal centre of the seven stanza sequence has used the hopes of immortality and the fears of death to prepare the way for a more personal concern with his own life span:from boyhood (in stanza 5) through subsequent years (stanza 6) and finally the anticipation of his future (stanza 7)”. The opening line of the stanza five ‘while yet a boy.,.’ suggests that Shalley is now going to tell us about his personal experiences and reactions. The stanza describes how Shelley developed into a mature thinker poet. His memories are recorded. Shelley, the adult poet, now knows that ‘uttered charms’ or’ spells’ used for invoking God or raising ‘ghosts’ or the ‘dead’ are of no consequence. They are ‘false’ and ‘vain’ endeavours, they are “frail spells’. As a boy, when he was immature, he believed in magic, spells, supernatural elements and ghosts. He was keenly interested in knowing about the macabre, and whatever he learnt about them, he tried to practise and experiment. He frequented ‘a listening chamber, cave and ruin/And starlight wood’ in order to meet and converse with ‘the departed dead’.

Hogg has written about Shelley’s early experiments in the supernatural (Hogg 1-33-34) and Shelley has mentioned them in Alaslor (23-9) also. In fact Wordsworth (in Excursion iii 686-95) and Thomson (in his seasons, ‘winter”) have also described their pursuit of the supernatural and macabre. Shelley emerges as an atheist when he writes T called on poisonous names, with which our youth is fed’ (lines 53 onwards). He has already criticised religious conventions particularly the priests who force people to believe in God, ghost and Heaven and make them blindly adhere to rituals, (in stanza three.) His own experience has also proved that the conventional beliefs lead us no where. He asserts “I was not heard”’ Earlier (stanza 3) other people were not heard and now the individual man (the poet) is not heard by God who resides in the sublimer world. When he was a very young man he was asked ‘to try the effects of prayer’ and he actually prayed for two months, till finding....that .....no effect followed, he gave up the course’ (Southey to Danveres Jan. 13,1812). ‘I was not heard’ echoes lines 25-26 “No voice from heaven ....responses given” (stanza 3). As a young boy he realised the futility of parroting ‘The poisonous names’ with which the Church of England addressed its deity. “The self indulgent melodramatics (lines 49-54) is in fact a carefully prepared contrast with what follows, the truly passionate moment that is recalled with pride in line 55-60”. (Pirie) To describe his pursuit for the supernatural and the macabre, Shelley has consistently used active constructive grammar, I sought ,1 called, I saw them not. But when he describes his ‘adult’ experiences. he seems to be in a passive frame of mind. I (used in the earlier part of the stanza) becomes me on whom the shadow falls. The hyperactive boy grows into a mature thoughtful adult. One day as he was quietly meditating on human life, he had a thinking experience. The setting of this experience is contrasted with that of the earlier part of this stanza. It’s sweet time, peaceful, cheerful and pleasant, perhaps spring or summer when the winds gently blow, befriend and wake up all living forms and also scatter all around the sweet fragrance of buds and blossoms. The gentle breeze (wind) brings good tiding-the vanishment of winter and advent of new season. The setting is bothfertile and visible. In this setting the ‘shadow of the Power fell on me’, on the poet. What is remarkable here is that the Intellectual Beauty affects the mind of the poet when his own intellect is at work -when he was ‘musing deeply’; and when he became “aware of the larger energies of the eco-system, the beauties of the interactive relationaships. These relationships succinctly evoke a model for the poet’s own work”. (Pirie) The blossoming is the product of the wind’s erotic relationship and is the harbinger of future growth. Nature’s regenerative power is emphasised and Shelley uses poetry as a vehicle of’ propogation’. It is the riews to the world. The T who shrieks is not merely Shelley the poet but it stands for all poets also. It is “an archetype for all true poets” who are “the humble mouth pieces of vaster forces”. (Pirie) In his Defence of Poetry Shelley says that the poets are ‘ hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present’. When Shelley puts the word news at the beginning of the line 58, perhaps he is thinking of poetrythrough the ‘unapprhended inspiration’ poetry grows prophetic, assertive and aggressive. Shelley’s story continues in stanza six. The shadow fell on the poet (stanza 5) and he vowed to devote himself sincerely to serve ‘thee’ and ‘thine’ (power). Since then he has been dedicated to it. Stanza

six ends with ‘clasped my hands in ecstasy” ‘Clasped my hands’ expresses the poet’s great joy and ‘gratitude’ to this Power-his ‘intense emotion and fierce resolve’. The stanza seems to be as a prayer to the Spirit of Intellectual Beauty. In stanza five he had prayed to the unreal god of conventional religion and his prayers were not heard. Shelley (in stanza six) prays to the Spirit of Intellectual Beauty. He has served it with full and sincere devotion through many a sleepless nights. He has realised that only this Power can liberate human beings. ‘With beating heart and streaming eyes’ ‘allude to the poet’s staiggle for liberating himself and others from the clutches of slavery’. Shelley and his comrade radicals had been advocating the couse of liberty in their works. With studious zeal and love’s delight he has learnt with others the benign influence of the Power on human thought and heart. The deity accepts as appropriate homage all those activities which lead to liberty and love. “Whether the poet has been absorbed in the studious zeal that produces his verse or has he been practising those exercises in affection that constitute the delight of making love, these moments of joy have always been linked to a prayer that the whole world should be released ‘from all its dark slavery’ (lines 64-70) (Pirie). Shelley would like men to ‘set free’ their hearts from all types of fear (including ‘political forces of fear and bitterness’) and be led by the Power only. Stanza seven reveals the influence of Wordsworth” s “Tintern Abbey” (lines 88-102) and “Ode on the Intimations of Immortality” (lines 179-99). Wordsworth differentiates his earlier response to Nature from his awareness of the ‘presence’ pervading Nature. But Shelley makes no such distinction. In the earlier stanzas Shelley stresses the ‘fleeting’ aspect of the Power. For instance the moonbeams shower light on the earth but they are partially (inconstantly) seen because they are blocked by the piny mountains. ‘The moonlight on a midnight stream’ is a short lived vision. The light upon the landscape appears and departs. There is so much of uncertainty inherent in them, (line 37-8) Remember these are not literal sights. They are used as similes for a specific purpose. But lines 73-6 are noteworthy for their grammar of assertion.The poet observes everything with ‘a steady glance’ (contrasted with the inconstant glance of stanza one). By focussing attention on the changes occuring in the landscape -in the natural surrounding one can easily predict the future. When noon is over the day becomes quieter and solemn (by evening). Summer is followed by autumn. What makes the description of the seasonal cycle so unique is the poet’s own approach and interpretation when he talks about noon and then the day becoming solemm and serene we are compelled to think of summer (hot) noons followed by the calm and serene evening. We have to be alert and attentive when the poet talks about the harmony of autumn followed by lustre in sky. Can we apply harmony and lustre to summer? But Shelley does - this may not have happened earlier, but this is possible. The arrival of autumn is equated with the movement from morning (noon) to afternoon. Shelley welcomes autumn for its harmony (refer to the “Ode to the West Wind” stanza 5) and lustre in the sky. Shelley is never disappointed with autumn.” If winter comes can spring be far behind’’. In the’ ‘Hymn’’ also Shelley’ s optimism surfaces when he welcomes, the future as a warming afternoon promising ‘onward life’. Wordsworth’s “Immortality Ode” expresses his melancholy, but Shelley’s “Hymn” sounds a note of hope for it treats growth as progress. The poet grows out of the boyish self- indulgence because of a moment of inspiration (stanza 5), moves to a life of dedication to the Intellectual Beauty or Live lines (stanza 6) and then attains faith in an ultimate liberty, (stanza 7).

It is the spirit fair which has enabled him to realise and appreciate solemnity and serenity of the day (when noon is past), the ‘harmony of autumn’ and ‘lustre in the sky’ - all these beautiful aspects of landscape had remained ‘unseen’ and ‘unheard’ earlier. He hopes that in his onward life this fair Spirit will “supply its calm”. He loves natural forms which manifest this spirit. The Spirit has made him a’ selfless’ lover of humanity and the ‘spells’ of this Power have made him aware of self-esteem and love. He expresses his sincere thankfulness to the Spirit because “whom (the poet).... they spell bind/To fear himself, and love all human kind”. Like Wordsworth Shelley stresses the compensating and compassionate characteristic of’ a presence that pervades Nature’ and also highlights the ennobling effect of this Power or presence. Commenting on the “Hymn” Micheal Henry Scrivener writes: The Alastor breaks through in late 1815 and leads to the Genevan summer of 1816, the height of Shelley’s worship of Rousseaue Wordsworth and Coleridge. Romantic naturalism opens an exit to political reaction and merely private consolation for the tragedies of history and existence. In Alastor, “Mont Blanc”, “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” and the so called Essay on Christianity, Shelley makes a unique synthesis of the rationalist and romantic strains of radicalism. Pantheistic spirit and ecstatic communion with nature do not lead to quietism but to an insurrectionary demand for destroying the old world and building a new one’. (Refer to Pierie’s Shelley and M. Henry Scrivener’s Radical Shelley)

ODE TO LIBERTY 4.00. The Poem Yet, Freedom, yet thy banner torn but flying, Streams like a thunder-storm against the Wind. BYRON The Voice Speaks.

1. A glorious people vibrated again The lightning of the nations. Liberty From heart to heart, from tower to tower,o’ er Spain, Scattering contagious fire into the sky, Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay, And in the rapid plumes of song Clothed itself, sublime and strong; As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among, Havering in verse o’ er its accustomed prey; Till from its station in the heaven of fame The Spirit’s whirlwind rapt it, and the ray Of the remotest sphere of living flame Which paves the void was from behind it flung, As foam from a ship’s swiftness, when there came A voice out of the deep: I will record the same. 2. The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth: The burning stars of the abyss were hurled Into the depth of heaven. The daedal’ earth. That island in the ocean of the world, Hung in its cloud of sustaining air: But this divinest universe Was yet a chaos and a curse, For thou wert not: but power from worst producing worse, The spirit of the beasts was kindled there, And of the birds, and of the watery forms, And there was war among them, and despair Within them, raging without truce or terms: The bosom of their violated nurse

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1. Reference is to the Spanish resistance to the French domination of Europe. (1807-1809). The British also fought the Portugal and Spain and waves after waves of revolutionary wars followed, in 1820-1 Spain succeeded in its mission. But this new Spanish region was overthrown by the french invasion which was supported by the European reactionan forces.

Groan’d, for beasts warr’d on beasts, and worms on worms,

And men on men; each heart was a hell of storms. Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied His generations under the pavilion Of the Sun’s throne: place and pyramid, Temple and prison, to many a swarming million Were, as to ragged wolves their mountain caves. This human living multitude Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude. For thou wert not; but o’er the populous solitude, Like one fierce cloud over the waste of waves Hung tyranny; beneath, sate deified The sister-pest, congregator of slaves; Into the shadow of her pinions wide Anarchs and priests, who feed on gold and blood Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed, Drove the astonished herds of men from every side.

Greece

Athens

4. The nodding promontories, and blue isles, And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles Of favouring heaven: from their enchanted caves Prophetic echoes flung dim melody On the unapprehensive wild. The vine, the corn, the olive mild, Grew savage yet, to human” use unreconciled; And, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea. Like the man’ s thought dark in the infant’ s brain, Like aught that is which wraps what is to be, Art’s deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein Of Parian stone; and,yet a speechless child, Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain Her lidless eyes for thee; when o ‘er the Aegean main 5. Athens arose: a city such as vision Builds from the purple crags and silver towers Of battlemented clouds, as in derision Of kingliest masonry: the ocean-floors Pave it; the evening sky pavilions it; Its portals are inhabited By thunder-zoned Winds, each head Within its cloudy wings with sunfire garlanded– A divine work! Athens diviner yet Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set;

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For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill Peopled with forms that mock the eternal dead In marble immortality that hill Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle. 6. Within the surface of Time’s fleeting river Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay Immovably unquiet, and for ever It trembles, but it cannot pass away! The voices of its bards and sages thunder With an earth-awakening blast Through the caverns of the past; Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast: A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder, Which soars where Expectation never flew, Rending the veil of space and time asunder! One sun illumines heaven; one spirit vast With life and love makes chaos ever new, As Athens doth, the world with thy delight renew.

Rome

7. Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest, Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmean Maenad, She drew milk of greatness, though thy dearest From that Elysian food was yet unweaned; And many a deed of terrible uprightness By thy sweet love was sanctified; And in thy smile, and by thy side, Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died. But when tears stained thy robe of vestal whiteness, And gold prophaned thy Capitolian throne, Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness, The senate of the tyrants: they sank prone Slaves of one tyrant: Palatinus sighed Faint echoes of Ionian song: that tone Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting disown.

8. Tyrannical From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill, Rule of Or piny promontory of the Arctic main. and kings Or utmost islet inaccessible, Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign, Teaching the woods and waves, and desert rocks, And every Naiad’s ice-cold urn. To talk in echoes sad and stem

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Of that subiimest lore which man hath dared unlearn? For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks Of the Scald’s dreams, nor haunt the Druid’s sleep. What if the tears rained through thy scattered locks Were quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not weep, When from its sea of death, to kill and bum, The Galilean serpent forth did creep, And made thy world an undistinguishable heap 9. Saxon A thousand years the Earth cried, Where art thou? Alfred And then the shadow of thy coming fell as a On Saxon Alfred’s olive-cinctured brow: liberator And many a warrior-peopled citadel. Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep, Arose insacred Italy, Frowning o ‘er the tempestuous sea Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty; That multitudinous anarchy did sweep And burst around their wails, like idle foam, Whilst from the human spirit’s deepest deep Strange melody with awe and love struck dumb Dissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die, With divine wand traced on our earthly home Fit imagery to pave heaven’s everlasting dome. 10. Luther Thou huntress swifter than the moon! Thou terror and the British Of the world’s wolves! thou bearer of the quiver. Poets Whose sun like shafts pierce tempest-winged Error, celebrated As light may pierce the clouds when they dissever In the calm region of the orient day! Luther caught thy wakening glance, Like lightning, from his leaden lance Reflected, it dessolved the visions of the trance In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay; And England’s prophets hailed thee as their queen, In songs whose music cannot pass away, Though it must flow for ever: not unseen Before the spirit-sighted countenance Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene Beyond whose night he saw, with dejected mien. 11. The eager hours and unreluctant years As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood. Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears,

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Darkening each other with their multitide, And cried aloud, Liberty! Indignation Answered Pity from her cave; Death grew pale within the grave, And desolation howled to the destroyer. Save ! When like heaven’s sun girt by the exhalation Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise, Chasing thy foes form nation unto nation Like shadows; as if day had cloven the skies At dreaming midnight o’er the western wave, Men started, staggering with glad surprise, Under lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes. 12. Thou heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee then In omimous eclipse? a thousands years Bred from the slime of deep oppression’s den, Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears, Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away; How like Bacchanals of blood Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood Destruction’s sceptred slaves, and Folly’s mitred brood! When one, like them, but mightier far than they, The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers. Rose: armies mingled in obscure array, Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowers Of serene heaven. He, by the past pursued, Rests with those dead, but forgotten hours, Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers. 13. Spain England yet sleeps: was she not called of old? and Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder England Vesuvius wakens Aetna, and the cold Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder: O’er the lit waves every Aeolian isle From Pithecusa to Pelorus Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus: They cry, Be dim; ye lamps of heaven suspended o ‘er us. Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile And they dissolve’but Spain’s were links of steel, Till bit to dust with virtue’s keenest file. Twins of a single destiny! appeal To the eternal years enthroned before us In the dim West; impress us from a seal All ye have thought and done! Time cannot dare conceal.

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14. Germany Tomb of Arminius! render up thy dead. Till, like a standard from a watch-tower’s staff, His soul may stream over the tyrant’s head; Thy victory shall be his epitaph, Wild Bacchanal of truth’s mysterious wine, King-deluded Germany, His dead spirit lives in thee. Why do we fear or hope? thou art already free! And thou, lost Paradise of this divine And glorious world! thou flowery wildeness! Thou island of eternity! thou shrine Where desolation, clothed with loveliness, Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy, Gather thy blood into thy heart: repress The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces. 15. Attack O, that free would stamp the impious name on Of KING into the dust! or write it there, Kingship So that this blot upon the page of fame Were as a serpent’s path, which the light air Erases, and the flat sands close behind! Ye the oracle have heard: Lift the victory-flashing sword, And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word, Which weak itself as stubble, yet can bind Into a mass, irrefragably firm, The axes and the rods which awe mankind; The sound has poison in it’s the sperm Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred; Disdain not thou, at thine appointed term, To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm. 16. Attack O, that the wise from their bright minds could kindle on Such lamps within the dome of this dim world, Priesthood That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle Into the hell from which if first was hurled, A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure; Till human thoughts might kneel alone. Each before the judgement-throne Of its own aweless soul, or of the power unknown ! O, that the words that make the thoughts obscure From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew

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From a white lake blot heaven’s blue portraiture, Were stript of their thin masks and various hue And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own. Till in the nakedness of false and true They stand before their Lord, each to receive its due!

The Role of Man

17. He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever Can be between the cradle and the grave Crowned him the King of Life. Oh, vain endeavour! If on his own high will, a willing slave, He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor. What if earth can clothe and feed Amplest millions at their need, And power in thought be as the tree within the seed? Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor, Diving on fiery wings to Nature’s throne, Checks the great mother stooping to caress her, And cries: Give me, thy child, dominion Over all height and depth? if Life can breed New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan Rend of thy gifts and her a thousand fold for one!

18. Liberty Come Thou, but lead out of the inmost cave must emerge Of man’s deep spirit, as the morning-star from Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave, man’s mind Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car and Self-moving, like the cloud charioted by flame; heart. Comes she not, and come ye not, Rulers of eternal thought, To judge with solemn truth, life’s ill-apportioned lot? Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame Of what has been, the Hope of what will be? O, Liberty! if such could be thy name Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee: If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought By blood or tears, have not the wise and free Wept tears, and blood like tears?-The solemn harmony 19. The Paused, and the spirit of that mighty singing Voice is To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn; silent Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging now Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn, Sinks headlong through the aerial golden light On the heavy-sounding plain,

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When the bolt has pierced its brain; As summer clouds dissolve, unburthened of their rain; As a far taper fades with the fading night, As a brief insect dies with dying day,My song, its pinions disarrayed of might, Drooped: o’er it closed the echoes far away Of the great voice which did its flight sustain, As waves which lately paved his watery way Hiss round a drowner’s head in their tempestuous play.

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ODE TO LIBERTY 4.01: An Introduction: “In Shelley’s poems on the theme of liberty it is the process of creation, not the created products themselves, that are exemplary in a libertarian way. The process of making and unmaking is illustrated in the beginning and ending of “Ode To Liberty” The first stanza describes how aw Voice”- not the poet’s own-emerges from a process of inspiration ignited by the Spanish Revolution. The poet merely “records” what the voice says. At the end of the poem the voice ceases, giving rise to images and metaphors of sudden extinction. The inspired poet depends on ephemeral moments of rapture which cannot be willed into being and which point toward a Utopian potentiality. The poem is an ambitious tracing of liberty from its origins to the present, a philosophical view of Reform in verse. The Spanish Revolution which inspires the poem and which is aleuded’ to in the title of the Peterloo “Ode” was carefully followed in the Examiner, which kept an attentive eye on all international events, from the revolutions in south America to the student movement in Germany. Although the Spanish Revolution did not bring about Utopia, it did effect radical changes without much violence, suffrage for all literate males, biennial parliaments; no representative was allowed to serve two consecutive terms: representation by population; freedom of the press; abolition of the Inquisition. Precisely such a liberal evolution was needed in England, Shelley believed, if violent revolution or a far worse tyrannical stagnation were to be avoided. Even the Peterloo did not result in sweeping reforms; the Spaniards demonstrated for Shelley that liberty can indeed be wrested from a tyrant. The evolution of liberty sketched in the poem “Ode to Liberty” is a familiar trajectory: from Athenian democracy to the Roman republic; the catastrophe of the “Galilean serpent”; institutionalised Christianity; the emergence of Saxon liberty and the Italian communes and city states; the Reformation and Enlightment; the French Revolution; the Jacobean Terror, Napoleon and the Bourbon. The attack on religion in stanza xvi is not simply anticlerical, but anarchist.because the goal of overcoming superstition is the complete liberation of mind, until “human thoughts might kneel alone/ Each before the judgement throne/ Of its own aweless soul or of the power unknown” (231 -33) No longer breathing life into kings, priests - or other Jupiterian fictions. Promethean mind can recover its power, assume responsbility for its deeds, and determine its own destiny. Stanza xvii echoing Asia’s speech in Demogorgon’s cave, devalues the achievements of technology, art and science, if these other aspects of progress do not co-exist with liberty. The burden for overcoming the tyrannical principle rests with the individual who has willed the master - slave relationship into existence and can therefore abolish it”. (Michael Henry Scrivener)

4.02 The Poem: Ode to Liberty (written between March and July 1820) celebrates the Spanish liberal revolution of 1820. It was published with Prometheus Unbound, It traces the progress o {‘liberty. The poem begins with an Epigraph from Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage iv-98-1-2. The two lines, quoted, begin the last of twenty- one stanzas tracing the struggle between tyranny and liberty. The Nepoleonic wars were over, the Bourbon dynasty was restored in Spain. Ferdinand vii, the king of Spain ruled despotically. His suppressive policy resulted in a revolution in 1820. The king was compelled to accept a liberal government. Shelley rejoices over the victory of the revolutionaries. He describes the Spanish people as “a glorious people” whose thunderous vibrations have suppressed the

tyrannical Rile and now serve as the lightning-guiding light to those nations who are still under the despotic rulers. The passion of liberty has been aroused “from heart to heart’, ‘tower to tower’-it spreads all over Spain and the ‘contagious fire’ expands far and wide, reaches the sky- the heaven-liberty shines brightly. The poem begins dramatically, setting the background. The voice narrates the whole history of the world from its beginning, In the beginning out of chaos or darkness emerged the sun and the moon. Then the stars were hurled into the space. The poet uses serene/ for the moon-since the moon is the calmest planet. Contrasted with the moon are the burning stars. It is believed (mythological!}’) that the earth has been, intricately and skillfully made. ‘Daedal1 is derived from Daedal us, the Greek Craftsman. The whole universe is like a vast ocean and in this void or ocean the intricately wrung earth is hanging like an island, suspended or chained by air- that is, the atmosphere is a girdle or belt which tightly holds the earth and does not allow it to fall into the deep ocean. This earth or universe with its moon, sun and stars and atmosphere is the divinest creation and yet the eartblings in the beginning of the creation were living in a chaotic situation. They did not enjoy liberty, they were cursed beings. It was because liberty had nod descended upon the earth. Power ruled this world - power here does not mean divine power or ‘spiritual’ power-rather it implies anarchy and aggrersion -the law of the jungle. Beastliness was the master and consequently all the Jiving beings-animals, human beings all forms of life on the earth, in water and in the sky were ‘barbarous’ ‘savages’, and ‘wild”. Birds, beasts and other living beings fought among themselves. Even man was no exception. Men fought with men, and each heart was a hell of storms. For they (men) wanted to rule, were filled with despair and hatred, did not know peace and did not want to compromise. Defeat and despair made their life miserable - “”the bosom of their violated nurse/Groaned”. Man was the most powerful creature. Man, royal in form, multiplied his generations and began to construct a variety of habitats-palaces, pyramids, temples and prisons. Under the protection of the sun man’s tribe increased. The houses/homes were like the mountain caves. The swarming millions of people enjoyed staying in them as wolves live in mountain caves. Shelley thus compares the teeming humanity with wild wolves. And he later elaborates tin’s idea-these living human beings were ‘savage. Cunning, blind and rude, because they had never seen and known liberty. The voice laments that the earlier civilization lived in a barbarous state because ‘thou (liberty) were not there”. Tyranny is now described as “a fierce cloud’. A powerful, dark cloud hangs over the restless waves forboding a violent thunder. Similarly tyranny hung over people. Beneath this cloud-like tyranny sat his sister-pest- ‘sister; pest’refers to the dogmatic religion which controlled and bound human beings -they were her slaves. Thus kingship and religion worked hand in hand to torment and torture human beings. Corrupt religion and impervious royalty bewildered people and they lived in a state of confusion. Kings were anarchs and priests were corrupt-they were avarious. cruel and mean. They indulged in ‘gold” and ‘blood” and consequently their souls were ‘dyed’ with their stain and the bewildered human beings lived in terror and led the nomads’ life. Priests and despotic rulers drove the masses in whichever direction they wanted. Shelley in stanza 4 deals with Greece and describes its beauties- the nodding promontories (the high lands julting into the sea appears to be nodding heads), blue islands the high mountains touching the clouds, and the waves (dashing against the shores and splitting)- all these add to its glory. The bright

glorius land gives the impression that heaven is smiling on it. It is a favourite of heaven. Even its caves are charming-they seem to be mysterious and magical-enchanting (thrilling) prophetic and soft music emanates from these caves, spreads around’ on the unapprehensive ‘wild’. Why does the poet describe the wild as unapprehensive. Shelley by implication tell;s us that the natural surrounding was untouched by man’s tyranny - nature grew ‘wildly’, freely. The vine, the olive and the corn grew wild-they were not yet trampled and tamed by human beings. The poet stresses the virginity of nature and how liberty ruled nature. Read the lines 54 to 60 carefully. Three similes have neen used. What for the Similes have been used? Shelley here tells us that the marble of Paros, an Island in the Aegean sea, was not yet touched by sculptors. Later great Roman and Greek sculptors made many sculptures from this marble. Art thus lay hidden in the marble as the buds (unblooming flowers) lay hidden in the surface of the sea, (ii) thoughts (of man) secretly lie in the mind of an infant (iii) and many things which ought to remain “unknown” and undiscovered remain so for a longtime.The poet is here presenting a landscape which abounded in beauty, was pure and innocent and had hidden potentiality for growth. At that time poetry was in its infancy and philosophy was making an effort to discover the spirit of liberty, when over the Aegean land arose Athens. The stanza 4 is linked with stanza 5, which describes the appearance of Athens. The emergence of the city of Athens has been beautifully described. To Shelley ancient Athens (a limited democracy) was a milestone in political liberty. The city was not an ordinary city it was a dream come true. It was a divine city built by some divine power, a city which only our imagination can create. The divine power is equated with the power of imagination. It seemed to be built from purple crags and its silver towers and parapets were made of clouds- so enchanting, delicate and ethereal the city was. It (Athens) seemed to mock the best palaces (where kings resided) built by great masons. It was a perfect piece of beauty. Its floors were paved with the ocean and its pavilions were of the evening sky. Its portals were occupied by thunderous winds, portals were so high that they seemed to be encircled by ‘cloudy wings’and shone brilliantly in the sunlight. It appeared the portals were garlanded by sunfire. Thus Athens was’ a divine work’. Athens became diviner because it produced great artists and sculptors, whose beautifully carved and decorated marble pillars, immortalised beauty and life and thus mimicked man’s mortality, mocked death. The city with its glory was imprinted on the will of man. The city was set like a mount of ‘diamond’ on the mind and imagination of mankind. People were charmed with Athens because Liberty resided there. It was Liberty which inspired the creative skill of artists to build immortal buildings and columns. Acropolis, with the Parthian, became the earliest throne of Liberty. Once again after centuries, Liberty’ is speaking (through oracle) from Athens (during Shelley’s time) in the form of Greek revolt againt the Turkish rulers. The lines remind us of Byron’s Childe Harold m which Byron exhorts Greece to take up arms against the tyrannical Turkish rulers and fight for their independence. Later oracle refers to this incidentthe Greek’s uprising against the foreign rulers. Although the ancient Athens is in ruins - its glorious past is reflected in the Time’s fleeting river. Since ancient Althens symbolised the Spirit of Liberty to Shelley here Athens can be interpreted as the Spirit of Liberty itself. This spirit cannot be crushed or destroyed for ever. Its image can be seen reflected in the river of Time. Time changes, nothing remains permanent but the Spirit of Liberty is immortal. As long as Athens is there, its glorious past will always instil new life in people. Even today we can hear the

echoes of the voice of its great poets and thinkers who praised Liberty. Their voice resounds and reawakens the people - the earth. And at its thunderous sound, Religion and Tyranny are terrified. Religion is trying to ‘hide’ and Tyranny (despotic rulers) is shivering. Shelley praises Liberty. He says that Liberty’s sound is the winged sound of joy, love and wonder. The sound soars high and flies all around spreading its message of joy, wonder and love. It penetrates all obstacles, all boundaries, space and time. lt reaches the height which even Expectation can never reach. Liberty is personified in the poem. Here Expectation is also personified. Shelley stresses the Oneness of spirit. There is only one Spirit which animates all nature. There is one sun which gives light, and warmth to the heaven and the earth, to the whole universe. It is this one Spirit which is all pervasive and renews the whole creation. Out of chaos it creates a new world. It is this Spirit immortalised in Athens which is once again beckoning the world and the manifestation of this Spirit can be seen in Greek’s struggle for freedom. In the six stanza Shelley asserts that man can set himself free from ‘the tyranny of history through the exercise of love, hope and patience etc’ and suggests that “the positive achievements of the past remain endlessly potential”. After Athens Rome arose. Shelley compares Rome to a wolfcub of the Maenads. Maenads were the worshippers of Dionysus (Bacchus). After the invasion of Bacchus, the Maenads, led by Cadmus’s daughter, Agave went out from Thebes to worship the god in the hills and woods. Some of these Maenads fed wolf-cubs. Liberty gave suck to Rome as Maenad fed a wolf-cub. Rome drank the milk of greatness, attained greatness. Liberty encouraged and pampered Rome, although she was still attached to Athens (Greece). Athens was not yet unweaned from Liberty and still ate the Elysian food. Perhaps Liberty was over indulgent with Rome. Consequently many tyrannical deeds done in the name of Liberty were sanctified. Liberty is supposed to be sternly upright, but she perhaps did not realise how Romans were “misusing” their Liberty. It is because of her leniency Camillus was treated with respect while Atilius had to die. Marcus Favious Camillus was the second founder of Rome. He captured Veii but after two years of siege in 369 BC, he was banished for sharing the spoils unjustly. He was recalled when Gauls attacked Rome and was made a dictator. Shelley uses saintly for Camillus as a satire. Camillus later became a dictator and thus the Roman’s Liberty was curtailed. Yet people tolerated and worshipped him. Shelley expresses his deep sorrow for Liberty’s wrong judgement. Marcus Atilius Regulus (300 BC) commanded the Roman armies against the Carthagians. He was captured by the enemy and sent to Rome to arrange peace terms. He advised the Senate to reject the peace terms and returned to the Carthagians to die under torture. Camillus, who became a despot, lived for a long time while Atilius, who was faithful to his country, was killed by the enemy. Liberty had closed her eyes to the deterioration which had set in Rome, people suffered incessantly and their tears of helplessness dirtied the pure white robe of Liberty. Gold (greed and wealth) made the throne of Rome ugly. Liberty forsook the city. Liberty gently, slowly and quietly flew away leaving the throne vacant and deserting the Senate of tyrants. Liberty first left Capitolion *Rome and then the imperial (Palatmus) Rome. Palatinus Rome craved for Liberty and when faint echoes of the Ionian song could be heard, Liberty forsook Rome finally. Shelley laments the loss of liberty. Where did the bird (Liberty) fly to? Perhaps Liberty flew to the wild landscape of the North, the Arctic Pole. It expressed its sorrow from the narrow valley of Hyrcania, (a Province of Persia near the Caspian sea) or from the snow covered hills or pine covered promontory of the Arctic land or from the

remotest island - far away from human beings. Shelley imagines that Liberty took refuge in the north and in the wilds; it taught the woods , the waves, the desert rocks and water’ to echo the loss of ‘liberty which human beings had forgotten. According to Shelley Liberty could not thrive in war-like Scandanavian Civilisation among the Druid dominated Celtic people. Soon Liberty’s tears dried for she could not weep she only groaned. Things became worse for the European people when their nations were united under the banner of the Galilean serpent- Christianity. Snake in the Bible is used for Satan who revolted against the authority of God. Serpent or Snake here stands for evil. Christian religion is equated with the serpent for it deprived mankind of their Liberty. Priesthood dominated Europe. Shelley does not accept the Christian ideology taught by the priests. The Earth searched for Liberty for almost thousand years but all its efforts proved fultile. And then the shadow of the Spirit of Liberty fell on saxon Alfred the great, who advocated peace in Europe. He made peace with the invading Danes, united the English people and encouraged the intellectual growth of his nation. Alfred is described as a king wearing the Crown of Olive leaves symbolising peace. Here Shelley has paid the highest tribute to Alfred the great for his peace talks and his sincere efforts to develop the nation intelleclually. At the same time (During the time of Alfred the Great) Italy was aroused by the Spirit of Liberty. The Italians rose against theirs kings and priests who had forcibly enslaved them. Shelley describes how the masses frowned over the tyrannical authorities of their Kings and Priests and slaves who lived in huge protected majestic tower-crowned palaces. The tyranny of the kings and the priests is compared to the tempestuous sea which causes destruction and death. There was a mass upsurge (the multitudinous anarchy) which like the tempestuous storm swept all around, the stronger towers and walls of the palaces and the churches were surrounded by the rebels like idle foams. Consequently a new voice of joy could be heard. People could hear the strange malodious notes emanating from human heart which filled them (people) with awe and love and the fighting fractions were struck dumb. There was arise of the communes, independent city states, republics in the middle ages in Italy. And this led to the revival of arts. According to Shelley art is immortal, Liberty - a divine deity - with the spell of its wand inspired all types of artists. * The Capitolione and Palataine are the names of two of Rome’s senen hills. The capitation represented the republican Rome while the other story for imperial Rome.

Shelley uses a metaphor in lines 10-12 of this stanza. Art (liberty) uses its divine wand and traces on our earth beautiful buildings, scluptures etc, develops all sorts of arts. These artistic creations are actually the heavenly images, they are heavens’ everlasting dome. Shelley is perhaps thinking of Plato’s concept of art. There is an ideal image of everything (which may be termed as the divine image) and the artist with his imagination imitates that ideal. So the development of art in Italy was a blessing from Liberty. The voice, which Shelley heard and recorded in this ‘Ode’ is addressing the Spirit of Liberty all through and also narrating the history of mankind, particularly of Europe. Once again this voice addresses the Spirit as huntress swifter than the Moon. The Moon, according to the mythologies, is the goddess Diana, virgin huntress. This huntress is a terror for the avaricous and rapacious wolves (priests, tyrants etc) who torture and exploit people. It is also a light (the sun) with its strong quivering beams (arrow like beams). Error is described as tempest-winged (symbolising ‘sweeping destruction’-like the storm. Error moves very fast causing all round devastation.) Tempest is also

associated with darkness, ignorace. grief, suffering, death and annihilation. But once the sun-like light of Liberty shines upon the earth tyranny is completely destroyed. Liberty carries sunlike arrows which pierce and penetrate through illusions created by Error, just as the light (sun’s light) pierces the clouds and disintergrates them on a bright sunny day. Luther was awakened from ignorance by the Spirit of Liberty and he aroused the ‘sleeping’ nations. Shelley describes the lance of Luther as the ‘leaden lance’ when the light of the Spirit fell on the sword of Luther he was awakened, he realised what the priests were doing and made the people rise against the tyrannical papal system. In his Defence of Poetry Shelley writes “Dante was the first religious reformer and Luther surpassed him rather in the rudeness and acrimony than in the boldness of his censors of Papal usurption”. Lines 141-144 can be interpreted thus: when the light of the Spirit fell on the leaden sword of Luther, he was awakened from stupor and he realised how the darkness of ignorance had enwrapped the nations. Once he was roused, he started a revolution against the papacy and the nations which were in a state of trance, in ignorance and gloom as if they were in a tomb, woke up and thus Luther once again enlightened them. And even the English poets (prophets) accepted Liberty as their queen. Liberty stimulated their imaginations. They celebrated Liberty in their songs. And these messages of Liberty spread through their unending eternal songs-once they were inspired by Liberty, they continued to sing about it. Shelley believed that the poets were prophets of Liberty - it is they who can bring about a revolutionary change in the attitudes and thinking of the masses and thus banish slavery, tyranny, death, ignorance etc for ever. This poetry1 is immortal and flows for ever. Milton, (whom Shelley respected and considered a great poet after Daunte and Homer) was blind but he was a visionary. He had the vision of Liberty. Although he suffered ‘slavery’ in his times, but he wrote about Liberty. He could visualise the dawn of Liberty in the future with his “spirit-sighted countenance”. (He was physically handicapped but he had a vision of the spirit of liberty.) In stanza 11 Shelley writes about the Reformation, and the Revolution in Europe. In the period between the Reformation and the Revolution the hours and the eager years (time) stood-waiting for the dawn of Liberty. Shelley compares Time (hours and years) and its waiting to a dawn-illumined mountain pressing forward waiting for the event to take place, that is, time hoped for the evolution and eagerly awaited its arrival. Hours and years (Time) tried to silence their loud hopes and tears. From time to time people raised their voice against suppression but they were silenced and their dreams of freedom lay hidden in their thoughts and heart, for the ‘opportune’ time had not yet arrived. They (the multitudes) suppressed their hopes and tears till the French Revolution came and then they could not control them selves, they shouted Liberty-hailed Liberty. (Shelley is obliquely referring 15 the radicals whose voice was suppressed by the authorities.) The Revolution came with anger and bloodshed. ‘Pity’ was thrown out of her abode (her cave) and Anger ruled the world. There was so much of bloodshed during the French Revolution that even Death was terrified in his grave, pale with fear. The mass movement led to murder and bloodshed, as if it was accompanied by Death and Destruction - the tyrannts were killed - this continued till the spirit of Liberty dawned. The darkenss of death and devastation was replaced by the light of the Liberty. All the Romantic poets had hailed the French Revolution, Wordsworth was later disllusioned, when the Revolution became bloody. Shelley believed that to enjoy Liberty the destruction of the evil is necessary.

Look at the beautiful description of the dawning of Liberty in lines “when .....eyes.” The arrival of the Spirit of Liberty is described with the help of similes. Liberty is compared to the heaven’s sun surrounded by its own glorious light. Liberty with its halo of brilliance and light arose and at its appearance the foes of Liberty ran away from nation to nation, they tried to hide themselves for safety. They were like ‘shadows’ they disappeared or died at the rise of Liberty. The light of Liberty spread far and wide as if the day had split (divided) the sky at midnight dreaming over the western wave. The sun sets in the west. The whole Europe was in darkness for years and the sudden dawn of Liberty surprised them, they were awakened out of their gloomy dreams, they staggered (dazed and amazed) to see the lightning of Liberty within their unfamiliar eyes. The masses had forgotten Liberty and her arrival surprised them, and they were filled with joy and wonder. They welcomed it. The Western Wave perhaps refers to American Independence. Liberty is the heaven on earth. Earth became a Heaven when Liberty came there. Liberty makes the earth a heaven. Remember in the’ Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’ Shelley establishes the reign of the spirit of Intellectual Beauty on the earth - its shadow falls on man and it manifests itself in nature. It does not exist in a sublimer world-the Heaven-as the priests believe God to live in Heaven away from the earth. Similarly Liberty’s abode is the earth-it is her heaven. The poet (rather the voice) wants to know why was it not visible to man for thousand years. What ‘spells’ (refer to spells used in “Hymn”) had made her brilliance ‘disappear’ - what sort of gloomy eclipse had surrounded it? He answers the question himself For thousand years oppression had been reigning over the earth-tyranny indulged in bloodshed and tears people suffered and cried in agony - blood and tears hid the brilliant light of Liberty. The liquid bright light of Liberty was discoloured with slime, blood and tears caused by Oppression. The civil war between the Conservative forces and the Revolutionaries in France was like a Bacchanal orgy of blood. There was chaos all around. Amidst this chaos arose Napoleon whom people hailed as a liberator-for some time Napoleon became a symbol of Liberty. But later he himself became an anarch, a tyrant. This shift in his character led to utter confusion and the opposing forces clashed with each other as clouds clash clouds and darken the sky. Napolean was chased and defeated by those reactionary forces whom he had overpowered and crushed earlier. The lines remind us of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Cantos III stanzas 36-45. Napoleon is now dead and rests with the dead, the wars are over, But the memory of these ghastly wars still terrifies the dead kings lying in their ancestral tombs. Shelley now moves from France to England. He laments that England has not yet been awakened. He once again refers to Spain’s fight for independence. Once the call for Liberty was given by the French Revolution. Now Spain is calling England. The call is likened to the thrilling thunder of Mt. Vesuvius as it erupts it awakens Mt. Aetna. Volcanoes near Naples erupt and stir Mt. Aetna (in eastern Sicily). Similarly Spain is inviting England. As the volcanoes erupt the snow covering the crags begins to melt and thunderous shaking of the mountains spilts the crags apart - they break into pieces. The burning lavafalls on the waves of the sea surrounding the Aeolian islands, spreads from island of Ischia (west of Naples and Cumae) to cape Faro, the northeast point in Italy. Similarly the call of Liberty is echoed from Pithecusa (on the Bay of Naples) to Pelorus in Sicily. Shelley now compares Spain with England. England’s chains are made of the threads of gold, while Spain’s chains are made of steel.The English people can easily liberate themselves from the institutional slavery (England is a free nation). Spain was ruled by a dictatorial power. So she had to break each chain forcibly-cut each one of them. These links of steel were cut into pieces by Liberty’s sharp file. Spain had

to overthrow dictatorship. Both England and Spain are ‘the twins of a single destiny’ - both the countries need the blessing of Liberty. The revolutionaries of Spain and (Shelley’s) hopes of England will appeal to those who have already earned out the revolution in America. The voice now appeals to Germany to rise against the despotic rulers and fight for Liberty.Shelley reminds them to evoke the Spirit of Arminius. Arminius in the 9th century AD led the German tribes to victory over the Romans. The Spirit of Arminius should inspire the Germans to take up amis against tyranny and liberate themselves. Shelley exhorts the Spirit of Amiinius, to rise from the tomb. Let the dead Arminius rise from his tomb as a flag waves from a watch-tower’s staff his soul may move over the despot’s head, that is his soul may crush tyranny. Germany’s victory over tyranny will be the epitaph of Arminius. Let present Germany be inspired by their dead saviour- Anninius and once again taste freedom - Germany is ruled by a monarch but still the}’ should not forget that the Spirit of Anninius exists in them. Once again they should taste the sacred drink of truth (mysterious wine) (Liberty). Shelley assoicated Bacchus with regeneration and rebirth -social regeneration also. Wild Bacchanal of truth ‘s mysterious wine here refers to the Bacchanal celebration of the world that has been regenerated by the triumph of Libeity over tyranny - the wine of victory is really the wine of truth - it is a mysterious wine. Shelley is hopeful of the the world joining other Liberators. Germany need not fear or doubt its strength. Liberty exists with themthey are already free for they are guided by the Spirit of Arminius. Now the voice addresses Italy \yliich is the lost Paradise of this divine Power, Liberty. It is the glorious world’/’ It is the most heavenly beautiful country in this beautiful world. Why does Shelley use lost word for Italy. Italy was at that time under Austria. Shelley addresses Italy as the Paradies on the earth which is both divine and glorious. Italy is a flowery wilderness (May be Shelley is referring to those days when Italians were closer to nature and worshipped nature. They believed like the Romans and the Greeks that all the gods and goddesses resided (in nature) on this earth only. Shelley’s deity is always a pagan deity - a deity different from other religious God who is supposed to stay in Heaven- his deity is of this world. (The Paradise exists on the earth) And Italy is the Paradise- the most beautiful country. But unfortunately this beautiful scenic country is now a slave of a foreign power. Italy is an island ofetemitythe shrine of Italy is no w occupied by Desolation, (nature weeps for the lost glory of Italy) and the voice recalls Italy as she (Italy) was in the past. Even in the desolate state Italy has not lost its natural beauty. The voice (or Shelley) evokes Italy-exhorts it to gather all its strength, and supress the foreign rulers (the beasts) who have made its sacred palaces their dens. Thus Shelley considers the oppressors (tyrants, foreign rulers), beastly beings - barbarous people, savages. It the next stanza Shelley condemns the institution of kingship. He hopes for the day when free people of the world would completely stamp the unholy name of king into the dust. That is the institution of monarchy will be completely destroyed. Either the impious name of king be stamped into the dust or be written in dust. The kingship is a blot upon the page of fame-it is like a serpent’s path on the sandwhen the air blows the path is completely erased and the imprint is flattened by the sand - no trace of the path is left. Similarly no trace of Kingship should remain. The free people have already heard the voice of the oracle - Liberty has arrived. The voice appeals to the freedom loving people to lift their victoryflashing sword (take up arms against tyranny, victory is certain) and cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word (King) into pieces. Shelley has changed the myth of gordius to suit his purpose. He uses the story to describe contemporary history. The serpentine knots of monarchy has been cut into pieces by the single stroke of revolution. (Refers to French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars). Alexander the Great cut

the Gordion knot with his sword and became the lord of Asia. Shelley hopes that the revol ution would soon spread over the European and other countries and monarchy will be abolished forever. Although the monarchical knots are becoming weaker as stubbie, yet they can enslave masses. If you tie stubbles-they become a sort of staff - which can hurt people. Similary the arms and weapons like axes and rods (which are firmly tied together and once carried before Roman magistrates as a symbol of authority) are still a source of fear for the freedom loving people. The sound of kingship is poisonous. It is the sperm of this poisonous position (kingship) which makes life hateful, diseased, and rotten. Kingship deprives people of their liberty, they succumb to the authoritartian, tyrannical power and thus they suffer incessantly. This poisonous snake has to be crushed. Liberty should stimulate people to take up arms against kingship, when the opportune time comes.. In stanza 16 Shelley denounces Priesthood. He hopes that the wise will kindle the minds of people with wisdom and light. The beautiful bright and wonderful world has become dim, dark because of ignorance spread by priesthood. The intellectual people, the wise human beings would light the lamps of knowledge in this dark world and thus the brilliance of their minds will make the pale name of Priest hood shrink and dwindle. Priesthood will be completely wiped out, it would be thrown back into the hell, from which it had sprung up. Priest is “a scoff of impious pride from fiends impure”. Shelley associates priesthood with ignorance, ‘unholyness’ and impure fiends. Once ‘Priesthood” disappears from the worldeach human mind will be rid of ignorance, each human being will be responsible for his act and kneel before his OWTI awless (fearless) soul or the unknown power. Instead of being judged by a God or priest human beings will kneel before the judgement of their own soul or the unknown power. Shelley is deliberately ambiguous here. Words, according to Shelley, obscure the thoughts which give them birth, as the clouds of shining dew emanating from a white lake covers the heaven’s blue reflection in the water. If words could be stripped off their various nuances and meanings, colours and shades (thin masks and varions hues) emotions and sentiments, then the pure thoughts would stand before their Lord or the mind and would be justly rewarded. ‘He’ in the next stanza refers to their Lord (the previous stanza). It is this Lord who has empowered man to conquer everything in his life (between the cradle and the grave). It is the Greater who has made man the king of life. If man uses this power wrongly, it will be a ‘vain endeavor’. Man is born free. But if man himself becomes a slave by perpetuating tyranny and enthrones the oppressor of people, he himself is to blame. Shelley wants us to observe and understand nature’s laws. The earth has enough to feed and clothe millions and fulfill their needs. Man has the power hidden in his mind as a tree is hidden in a seed. With the power of mind man can enlighten and enrich the world. Art intercedes between man and nature. If Art (artist) on the wings of imagination tries to capture nature, or control nature, and does not allow nature, the great mother, to embrace her (Art) (wants to severe all relationship with nature), and instead tries to dominate all her heights and depths that Art is useless. Art draws inspiration from nature, from the earth. If Art tries to dominate nature, it is something tyrannical. If some person’s desires and wants grow faster and they want to have more and more power and wealth by making others (the masses) work hard, it is again a ‘tragedy’. Such oppressors deprive the workers of their Liberty, (freedom is a divine gift to man) they take away all the gifts of nature, Liberty and Art. Shelley envisions Art as moldings nature. If all the gifts of life and Liberty are taken away from those who toil and groan to produce wealth it is tyranny. All the artistic creations and nature’s gifts are useless if man is forced to live in a tyrannical atmosphere.

The voice appeals to Liberty to come and asks her to bring to light the wisdom lying dormant or hidden in the deep spirit of man. As the morning star (venus) calls the sun from the waves of Eoan - from Aurora, the goddess of the dawn, Liberty should bring the wisdom into light from the dormant spirit of man. The voice can hear the wheels of Liberty’s car moving by themselves like the cloud earned by flame. The voice laments that neither wisdom nor Liberty (light) has come. The spirit of man is still in the mental cave, and Liberty’s sun has not yet arrived. The spirit of man and Liberty (sun) are the rulers of eternal thought - till mind is stimulated and man begins to envision Liberty and Liberty stimulates imagination, truth can’t be realised and understood. There has to be a proportionate relationship between man’s imagination and Liberty. So long as people try to attain freedom by means offeree - ruthless forces, and bloodshed. Liberty can not be attained permanently. Liberty will remain elusive. Liberty can come, of its own when it is joined to ‘blind love’ (love for everyone without any distinction), love which is independent of individuals and hence more heroic, to ‘equal justice’ and to the ‘fame’ of the past good (good deeds done in the past) and also to ‘Hope of what will be’, Liberty according to Shelley can be fully achieved if it is related to unselfish love and equal justice, when it draws inspiration from the “fame; attained in the past (that is lives of famous freedom lovers should be an inspiration) And only then it is hoped that it can be attained. If man wants to enjoy Liberty for ever he has to fight for it, he must be impelled by blind love and equal justice, must draw inspiration from the deeds of famous freedom fighters of the past and must be optimistic in this outlook. Liberty will then shine upon them. Hope, Love, optimism and equal justice are associated with Liberty. “If Liberty could be bought by blood or tears independent of love, Hope and Justice, it would have been established a long time ago because the wise and the free have wept for it with tears of blood”. The solemn harmony Paused’. The voice suddenly stopped. The spirit of the power singing (recorded by Shelley or the narrator of the “Ode” suddenly disappeared in its ‘abyss’. The song came to an end. The spirit withdrew. The song drooped like a wild swan, (flying the dusky dawn, hit by a bullet) which sinks in the golden light of the morning sun and falls with a heavy sound on the earth (heavy -sounding plain is an example of transferred epithet.) The sudden stoppage of the song is compared to summar clouds, which suddenly dissolve, when they have rained, to a candle - kept at a far distance which fades with the fading night (early dawn), to the insect which dies when the day is dying (when evening is nearby). My song (the voice’s song or the narrator’s song) is like a bird. As the feathers were disheveled, the bird song drooped. Gradually the echoes of the song (or the voice) “faded away just as the waters close Over the head of a drowning man”, and all is as before. The poem ends abruptly.

4.03 A critical study of the poem ‘Ode to Liberty’ was written in 3 820. ft was inspired by the rising in Spain. The people of Spain revolted against the tyranny of King Ferdinand VII. Shelley places the Spanish rising in the context of world history and sees it as a recurring struggle between Liberty and tyranny. Shelley observed the revolt against authorities raising its head in many European countries and he was delighted with the French and American Revolutions. Shelley traces the history of mankind- how man emerged from a state of barbarism to the age of peace and joy. He tells us how the ancient Greece, Rome and Athens had enjoyed the blessings of Liberty - how they prospered intellectually, how there was all round development, all varieties of art -sculpture, painting, architecture, poetry, philosophy developed. He also tells us how many countries lost their Liberty, how they were oppressed and enslaved, how humanity suffered. Tracing the history of man’s

struggle against tyranny, Shelley highlights the truth that Liberty, attained through bloodshed and tears, did not last long for many a time. The liberator himself became a dictator for example, Napoleon. The French revolution had raised great hopes in people, but all those hopes were nipped in the bud. The Spanish revolution filled Shelley with the hope that many European countries which were under oppression can become free if they raise their voice and arms against the tyrants. He exhorts Greece, Italy and Germany to wake up and listen to the call of Liberty. They must fight for their rights. Shelley would like England to get rid of all oppressive institutions. Shelley the radical would like Kingship and Priesthood to be completely crushed and destroyed. Man should enjoy the blessings of Liberty and be free from all sorts of oppressions kings, tyrants and illusions and ignorance perpetuated by the priesthood. Language, and thought should become pure, should be freed from all sorts of nuances and hues (abuses of language which support tyranny and priest craft). In stanza 16 he writes O, that the words that makes the thoughts obscure *

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They stand before their Lord, each to receive its due! Man is born free. Once he is freed from the clutches of priests, his mind is enlightened, he does not have to kneel before the God created and preached by the priests but before its own aweless soul or the Power unknown. Once the words are stripped of their thin masks and various hues /And frowns and similes and splendours not their own’ they will “stand before their Lord, each to receive its due!” In stanzas 16-17 Shelley describes God as man’s “Own aweless soul’ or the Power unknown” and ‘King’ as man himself “The king of life” Lightning of love is given to people. ❐❐❐