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His famous critic writing
A Defence of Poetry, published in 1821, was written when he was in Pisa.
In 1822, Shelley moved to Italy with Leigh Hunt and Lord Byron where they
published the journal The Liberal. By publishing it in Italy, the
three men remained free from prosecution by the British authorities. The
first edition of The Liberal sold 4,000 copies. Soon after its
publication, Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned at sea on 8 July 1822, while
sailing to meet Leigh Hunt.
Shelley composed long poems such as Queen Mab（1813）which is
a revolutionary poem condemning tyranny and exploitation and the unjust war,
The Revolt of Islam deals with the topic of revolt spirit about
liberty, equality and fraternity; and short poems, such as the political
lyric Song to The Man of England; lyrics on nature and love: Ode
to The West Wind, To the Skylark.
Shelly can be considered as a political, philosophic
and lyric poet. He was regards as the first poet in Europe who wrote for the
working class. He urges on them “Forge arms in your defence to bear" (Song
to the Men of England) to rise against the oppressors and Blood-suckers
“like lions after slumber”, to “Shake your chains to earth like dew”.
To be a political poet, Shelley is extremely
successful, and as a philosophic poet, he is successful as well. Almost all
his poetry contains the philosophy thinking. For instance, in his To—:
“I can give not we man call love,
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not,--
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar,
From the sphere of our sorrow?”
This love is a kind of special. It transcends the usual
“love”, -- it is not only a love between man and woman, but also connects
with ideal, it is above human world and in human world. Then a love poem
becomes philosophical.
Besides a successful political and philosophic poet, Shelley
was also called “the most wonderful lyric poet England has ever produced”.
Shelley considered nature as an unseen life of the universe, and he love it
with a boundless heart:
“I love all that thou lovest,
Spirit of Delight!
The fresh earth in new leaves dressed,
And the starry night;
Autumn evening, and the morn
When the golden mists are born.
I love …
………
Everything almost……
Which is Nature’s, and may be
Untainted by man’s misery.”
And his most famous lyric Ode to West Wind,
because of its perfect combination of revolutionary spirit and artistic
skills, has well received by the poetry lover all over the world.
“Oh! Life 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.
……….
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 or over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of the verse,
……… O, Wind,
If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
Here, the speaker, the poet, is in a high spirit, who
appeals the violent change wildly. And through the use of rich metaphors,
Shelly humanizes nature as a destroyer and preserver. This humanization plus
the musical effect make Shelley’s strong passion pouring out as the sudden
coming of flood.
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