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Selected Poems
This selection of many of Shelley’s best-known and most representative poems will give readers an exciting encounter with one of the most original and stimulating figures in English poetry. Thirty-seven poems of varying lengths are included, among them such well-known verses as "Adonais," "Ode to the West Wind," "Ozymandias," "The Cloud," "To a Skylark" "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," and "Arethusa."
Reprint of poems from Shelley: Poetical Works, Oxford University Press, 1905.
Reprint of poems from Shelley: Poetical Works, Oxford University Press, 1905.
123 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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About the author
Percy Bysshe Shelley
1,614 books1,393 followersWorks of Percy Bysshe Shelley, British romantic poet, include "To a Skylark" in 1820;
Prometheus Unbound
, the lyric drama; and "Adonais," an elegy of 1821 to John Keats.
The Cenci , work of art or literature of Percy Bysshe Shelley of 1819, depicts Beatrice Cenci, Italian noblewoman.
People widely consider Percy Bysshe Shelley among the finest majors of the English language. He is perhaps most famous for such anthology pieces as Ozymandias , Ode to the West Wind , and The Masque of Anarchy . His major long visionary Alastor , The Revolt of Islam , and the unfinished The Triumph of Life .
Unconventional life and uncompromising idealism of Percy Bysshe Shelley combined with his strong skeptical voice to make an authoritative and much denigrated figure during his life. He became the idol of the next two or three generations, the major Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as William Butler Yeats and in other languages, such as Jibanananda Das and Subramanya Bharathy . Karl Marx, Henry Stephens Salt, and [authorm:Bertrand Russell] also admired him. Famous for his association with his contemporaries Lord Byron, he also married Mary Shelley, novelist.
The Cenci , work of art or literature of Percy Bysshe Shelley of 1819, depicts Beatrice Cenci, Italian noblewoman.
People widely consider Percy Bysshe Shelley among the finest majors of the English language. He is perhaps most famous for such anthology pieces as Ozymandias , Ode to the West Wind , and The Masque of Anarchy . His major long visionary Alastor , The Revolt of Islam , and the unfinished The Triumph of Life .
Unconventional life and uncompromising idealism of Percy Bysshe Shelley combined with his strong skeptical voice to make an authoritative and much denigrated figure during his life. He became the idol of the next two or three generations, the major Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as William Butler Yeats and in other languages, such as Jibanananda Das and Subramanya Bharathy . Karl Marx, Henry Stephens Salt, and [authorm:Bertrand Russell] also admired him. Famous for his association with his contemporaries Lord Byron, he also married Mary Shelley, novelist.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
May 10, 2021
As Percy Shelley’s body was being cremated on a beach in Tuscany, his friend, Edward Trelawny, noticing that the poet’s heart was not catching fire, reached his hand into the funeral pyre, snatched up the unburned organ, and delivered it to Mrs. Mary Shelley, Percy’s wife.
Reputation – 4/5
Today Percy Shelley’s literary reputation is only slightly below his wife’s. Given his views on the equality of the sexes, that is probably not something that would have bothered him.
For about a century after his death in 1822, Percy Shelley was either ignored or given the whitewash treatment. His detractors considered him a confused and unclear infidel and his admirers considered him a harmless angel who wrote pretty lyrics. Both of them were wrong.
True, Shelley was a lyric poet of unmatched grace, but he was also an atheist, a polyamorist, and a political radical when all of those titles where much more dangerous than trendy. In the first decades of the 19th Century, Percy Shelley was not the sort of man you’d want your daughter to meet.
Point – 5/5
He was a child of 18th Century rationalism, and he believed fully in the rights of man AND woman, in the progress of science, and in the “Necessity of Atheism” – he was expelled from school for writing an essay with that very title. The expulsion seemed not to concern him, and he went on full speed ahead, writing, traveling, always seeking, until he died by drowning one month before his 30th birthday. “I always go on until I am stopped,” Shelley once wrote, “and I never am stopped.”
Noted biographer, Richard Holmes, subtitled his biography on Shelley “The Pursuit.” It is an apt description of Shelley’s life and art. Everything Shelley wrote gives the impression of impassioned exploration.
Percy Shelley was more deeply interested in science than any other poet of his generation. He was known to have carried out ill-advised chemical experiments and collected curiosities for poetic description. And indeed, when he writes about chameleons changing color or the casting of metal, he writes with an exactness and rationality that sometimes struggles to fit into poetry. Poetry is by nature irrational, so when Shelley does fail, it is usually because he is trying to fit an overly skeptical or overly rational sentiment into verse. The fact that he almost never fails is a tribute to his poetic sensibility.
When, in A Potrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce wanted to illustrate in Stephen Dedalus’ awakening of that poetic frame of mind between the personal and the eternal he used Shelley’s fragment To the Moon:
”Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?”
It’s a perfectly fitting reflection. The fragment’s poetic value is at once periodically contemplative, universally comprehensible, and eminently lyrical. These are lines that we all might quote to ourselves upon seeing that lamp of borrowed light, our moon, hanging in the sky on a thoughtful night stroll. They are memorable, brief, beautiful.
But in spite of Shelley’s preternatural gift for lyrical poetry – in my opinion he is the greatest lyric poet in English – he seems not to have taken his shorter works very seriously. He spent most of his time writing long philosophical poems that no one reads today. Poems like Queen Mab, The Revolt of Islam, and Prometheus Unbound are not bad – they are merely too complicated and require too much sustained concentration to read for pleasure.
Perhaps Shelley’s clearest claim to greatness is that none of his poetry can be called bad. The worst that you can say against it is that it is sometimes difficult. But now compare Shelley’s record of good vs. bad poetry to those of his contemporaries. Wordsworth wrote nothing but bad poetry for the last 40 years of his life. Byron wrote plenty of bad poetry and got rich off of it. And Keats, in boyish ambition, wrote two exceedingly bad epic poems that were ripped apart by everyone the very second they were published.
Percy Shelley wrote no bad poetry. And the best of his lyric poetry is unquestionably great. His Ozymandias is probably the most famous sonnet in English that wasn’t written by Shakespeare – and consider its timelessness! It has that universal and eternal quality that would make it a perfect poem in any language or in any century. It could have been found chiseled on an Ancient Greek grave or calligraphed on a Medieval Arabic scroll. Its effect would be the same.
Recommendation – 5/5
I think there is something for everyone in Shelley. In these hundred or so pages there are musical lyrics like The Cloud, polished pieces like Adonais, and vehement attacks against injustice like The Mask of Anarchy. There is even one of Shelley’s shorter philosophical expositions in Epipsychidion. His longer philosophical works are not included in this selection.
For those familiar with Romantic poets, Shelley strikes a chord somewhere between Byron and Keats. He is always tiptoeing the line between nihilism and mawkishness. He never collapses fully into that state of sappiness occasionally present in Keats, but he also avoids the detached inhumanity of Byron.
Personal – 5/5
In my personal estimation, Shelley is greater than both Keats and Byron. He has more substance than Keats and more honesty than Byron.
Shelley is always fully sincere. When he writes:
“I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!
I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine – have I not kept the vow?”
Who can deny him? He set his life to the pursuit of his ideals. He seems to have profoundly believed that a man must live by his convictions, or at least put them to test in the real world. There is something of the experimental scientist in this use of life. He made many mistakes and suffered much along the way, but the miracle is that his sincerity, tempered with the serious sense of literary duty, converted the ore of that chaotic struggle into the eternal gold of poetry.
In A Potrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce wrote that, in repeating Shelley’s poetry to himself, a young Stephen Dedalus felt
“Its alternation of sad human ineffectiveness with vast inhuman cycles of activity chilled him and he forgot his own human and ineffectual grieving.”
That is the whole point of poetry, right? To listen to someone express a feeling that we can’t quite put into words ourselves. And then, in contemplating the poet’s expression, to recognize the original feeling sublimated into something more than a moment of personal elation or despair.
Shelley’s poetry has always given me that gift. In several of the most difficult moments of my own life I have recited his Stanzas Written in Dejection and lost myself and my sorrows in the beauty and solemnity of his expression:
”Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,
And walked with inward glory crowned—
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround—
Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;—
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.
Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony.
Some might lament that I were cold,
As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan;
They might lament—for I am one
Whom men love not,—and yet regret,
Unlike this day, which, when the sun
Shall on its stainless glory set,
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.”
Reputation – 4/5
Today Percy Shelley’s literary reputation is only slightly below his wife’s. Given his views on the equality of the sexes, that is probably not something that would have bothered him.
For about a century after his death in 1822, Percy Shelley was either ignored or given the whitewash treatment. His detractors considered him a confused and unclear infidel and his admirers considered him a harmless angel who wrote pretty lyrics. Both of them were wrong.
True, Shelley was a lyric poet of unmatched grace, but he was also an atheist, a polyamorist, and a political radical when all of those titles where much more dangerous than trendy. In the first decades of the 19th Century, Percy Shelley was not the sort of man you’d want your daughter to meet.
Point – 5/5
He was a child of 18th Century rationalism, and he believed fully in the rights of man AND woman, in the progress of science, and in the “Necessity of Atheism” – he was expelled from school for writing an essay with that very title. The expulsion seemed not to concern him, and he went on full speed ahead, writing, traveling, always seeking, until he died by drowning one month before his 30th birthday. “I always go on until I am stopped,” Shelley once wrote, “and I never am stopped.”
Noted biographer, Richard Holmes, subtitled his biography on Shelley “The Pursuit.” It is an apt description of Shelley’s life and art. Everything Shelley wrote gives the impression of impassioned exploration.
Percy Shelley was more deeply interested in science than any other poet of his generation. He was known to have carried out ill-advised chemical experiments and collected curiosities for poetic description. And indeed, when he writes about chameleons changing color or the casting of metal, he writes with an exactness and rationality that sometimes struggles to fit into poetry. Poetry is by nature irrational, so when Shelley does fail, it is usually because he is trying to fit an overly skeptical or overly rational sentiment into verse. The fact that he almost never fails is a tribute to his poetic sensibility.
When, in A Potrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce wanted to illustrate in Stephen Dedalus’ awakening of that poetic frame of mind between the personal and the eternal he used Shelley’s fragment To the Moon:
”Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?”
It’s a perfectly fitting reflection. The fragment’s poetic value is at once periodically contemplative, universally comprehensible, and eminently lyrical. These are lines that we all might quote to ourselves upon seeing that lamp of borrowed light, our moon, hanging in the sky on a thoughtful night stroll. They are memorable, brief, beautiful.
But in spite of Shelley’s preternatural gift for lyrical poetry – in my opinion he is the greatest lyric poet in English – he seems not to have taken his shorter works very seriously. He spent most of his time writing long philosophical poems that no one reads today. Poems like Queen Mab, The Revolt of Islam, and Prometheus Unbound are not bad – they are merely too complicated and require too much sustained concentration to read for pleasure.
Perhaps Shelley’s clearest claim to greatness is that none of his poetry can be called bad. The worst that you can say against it is that it is sometimes difficult. But now compare Shelley’s record of good vs. bad poetry to those of his contemporaries. Wordsworth wrote nothing but bad poetry for the last 40 years of his life. Byron wrote plenty of bad poetry and got rich off of it. And Keats, in boyish ambition, wrote two exceedingly bad epic poems that were ripped apart by everyone the very second they were published.
Percy Shelley wrote no bad poetry. And the best of his lyric poetry is unquestionably great. His Ozymandias is probably the most famous sonnet in English that wasn’t written by Shakespeare – and consider its timelessness! It has that universal and eternal quality that would make it a perfect poem in any language or in any century. It could have been found chiseled on an Ancient Greek grave or calligraphed on a Medieval Arabic scroll. Its effect would be the same.
Recommendation – 5/5
I think there is something for everyone in Shelley. In these hundred or so pages there are musical lyrics like The Cloud, polished pieces like Adonais, and vehement attacks against injustice like The Mask of Anarchy. There is even one of Shelley’s shorter philosophical expositions in Epipsychidion. His longer philosophical works are not included in this selection.
For those familiar with Romantic poets, Shelley strikes a chord somewhere between Byron and Keats. He is always tiptoeing the line between nihilism and mawkishness. He never collapses fully into that state of sappiness occasionally present in Keats, but he also avoids the detached inhumanity of Byron.
Personal – 5/5
In my personal estimation, Shelley is greater than both Keats and Byron. He has more substance than Keats and more honesty than Byron.
Shelley is always fully sincere. When he writes:
“I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!
I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine – have I not kept the vow?”
Who can deny him? He set his life to the pursuit of his ideals. He seems to have profoundly believed that a man must live by his convictions, or at least put them to test in the real world. There is something of the experimental scientist in this use of life. He made many mistakes and suffered much along the way, but the miracle is that his sincerity, tempered with the serious sense of literary duty, converted the ore of that chaotic struggle into the eternal gold of poetry.
In A Potrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce wrote that, in repeating Shelley’s poetry to himself, a young Stephen Dedalus felt
“Its alternation of sad human ineffectiveness with vast inhuman cycles of activity chilled him and he forgot his own human and ineffectual grieving.”
That is the whole point of poetry, right? To listen to someone express a feeling that we can’t quite put into words ourselves. And then, in contemplating the poet’s expression, to recognize the original feeling sublimated into something more than a moment of personal elation or despair.
Shelley’s poetry has always given me that gift. In several of the most difficult moments of my own life I have recited his Stanzas Written in Dejection and lost myself and my sorrows in the beauty and solemnity of his expression:
”Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,
And walked with inward glory crowned—
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround—
Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;—
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.
Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony.
Some might lament that I were cold,
As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan;
They might lament—for I am one
Whom men love not,—and yet regret,
Unlike this day, which, when the sun
Shall on its stainless glory set,
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.”
Read
July 10, 2016I can't really rate this work, as it can be briefly summarised as "not my cup of tea, but I found the odd biscuit crumb that my taste buds enjoyed".
It contains Percy Shelleys best known poems, political as well as love poems and exultation about nature, arranged by the year they were written. There is no commentary on the poems, this really is a light pocket edition for those who want the poems themselves and nothing more. There's also an alphabetical list at the end with the first line of each poem, to help you find the poem you're looking for even if the title escapes you.
Now for the personal anecdote and the biscuit crumbs I enjoyed:
I couldn't understand why we have a book of poems. It's been there for as long as I can recall, but I was sure I didn't buy it, not even for uni. Did we find it somewhere, abandoned? Why do we have it? Did we get it out of curiosity because we like Mary Shelly and are intrigued by the whole circle surrounding Lord Byron? So I asked my partner, and he admitted to actually buying it because of a woman he was pursuing before he met me. She was heavily left-wing and had been raving about Percy Shelley's political poems. So he bought the book, but found he was utterly unable to get through it. He was amazed that I had the fortitude to read every single poem in it just for a bingo square (yes, I read it for "Classics Bingo").
Turns out I did enjoy the political poems. Mainly because they address historical events, like the Manchester strike where a lot of workers were killed when the military was called in. In "The Mask of Anarchy" Shelley urges the people to never give up but to offer peaceful resistance:
LXXXV
'With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise,
Look upon them as they slay
Till their rage has died away.
...
LXXXVIII
'And the bold, true warriors
Who have hugged Danger in wars
Will turn to those who will be free,
Ashamed of such base company.
I googled and read, and came to appreciate the skill with which Shelley did things like create a deliberately flawed sonnet, "England in 1819" to mirror the flaws he saw in England. I enjoyed his defence of polyamory in "Epipsychidion",
"True love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away."
...
"If you divide suffering and dross, you may
Diminish till it is consumed away;
If you divide pleasure and love and thought,
Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not
How much, while any yet remains unshared,
Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared:"
and how he managed to basically write highbrow erotica in that same poem
(no, I'm not giving you the sublime and dirty talk. you'll have to struggle through the 600+ lines long poem yourself to get to the good stuff)
There's also a poem he writes to a friend, "Letter to Maria Gisborne", reminiscing about when they last saw each other, describing his surroundings, wondering what she sees out her window in London, and concluding with the promises of what they will do and talk about if she comes to visit again. How much better isn't a letter like that compared to getting an SMS saying, "Hi, how's London? Miss U. Come see us again in the autumn?"
But the nature poetry killed me. My mind glazed over. Same with his eulogy for Keats. I read and googled, and have come to understand that this was masterfully done, but it still gave me nothing but intense boredom and a headache. It's a personal flaw, I know. But there you have it.
It contains Percy Shelleys best known poems, political as well as love poems and exultation about nature, arranged by the year they were written. There is no commentary on the poems, this really is a light pocket edition for those who want the poems themselves and nothing more. There's also an alphabetical list at the end with the first line of each poem, to help you find the poem you're looking for even if the title escapes you.
Now for the personal anecdote and the biscuit crumbs I enjoyed:
I couldn't understand why we have a book of poems. It's been there for as long as I can recall, but I was sure I didn't buy it, not even for uni. Did we find it somewhere, abandoned? Why do we have it? Did we get it out of curiosity because we like Mary Shelly and are intrigued by the whole circle surrounding Lord Byron? So I asked my partner, and he admitted to actually buying it because of a woman he was pursuing before he met me. She was heavily left-wing and had been raving about Percy Shelley's political poems. So he bought the book, but found he was utterly unable to get through it. He was amazed that I had the fortitude to read every single poem in it just for a bingo square (yes, I read it for "Classics Bingo").
Turns out I did enjoy the political poems. Mainly because they address historical events, like the Manchester strike where a lot of workers were killed when the military was called in. In "The Mask of Anarchy" Shelley urges the people to never give up but to offer peaceful resistance:
LXXXV
'With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise,
Look upon them as they slay
Till their rage has died away.
...
LXXXVIII
'And the bold, true warriors
Who have hugged Danger in wars
Will turn to those who will be free,
Ashamed of such base company.
I googled and read, and came to appreciate the skill with which Shelley did things like create a deliberately flawed sonnet, "England in 1819" to mirror the flaws he saw in England. I enjoyed his defence of polyamory in "Epipsychidion",
"True love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away."
...
"If you divide suffering and dross, you may
Diminish till it is consumed away;
If you divide pleasure and love and thought,
Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not
How much, while any yet remains unshared,
Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared:"
and how he managed to basically write highbrow erotica in that same poem
(no, I'm not giving you the sublime and dirty talk. you'll have to struggle through the 600+ lines long poem yourself to get to the good stuff)
There's also a poem he writes to a friend, "Letter to Maria Gisborne", reminiscing about when they last saw each other, describing his surroundings, wondering what she sees out her window in London, and concluding with the promises of what they will do and talk about if she comes to visit again. How much better isn't a letter like that compared to getting an SMS saying, "Hi, how's London? Miss U. Come see us again in the autumn?"
But the nature poetry killed me. My mind glazed over. Same with his eulogy for Keats. I read and googled, and have come to understand that this was masterfully done, but it still gave me nothing but intense boredom and a headache. It's a personal flaw, I know. But there you have it.
February 9, 2018
Shelley is a master of imagery and reinterpreting classical mythology and Shakespeare (toward the end there is a poem inspired by The Tempest) although sometimes his simple rhythm and rhyme schemes seem forced, especially using words that end in y to sound any way a y might sound, even if it's not standard pronunciation. I think this was considered "poetic" in the 1810s-20s, but it just sounds forced. Some of the poems are long, impassioned narratives, but nothing as memorable as his wife's novels. Still, a work I'll return to and get more out of. The works here deserve more than the cursory reading and review I've given or will be giving them here, and I'm glad to have a copy for further reference.
June 19, 2024
Pretty good intro to Shelley. A few poems have really stuck with me particularly this one:
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
But leechlike to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field;
An army, whom liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
But leechlike to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field;
An army, whom liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.
Read
August 16, 2020 Rough wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm, whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main, --
Wail, for the world's wrong!
I really like Shelley's poetry. He has a certain rhythm in his poetry that is really easy to fall into and that is very emotional. The words he chooses really speak to me as well. However I feel like reading it this time, I didn't experience his writing as I could have done, and I do want to go back to the poems and read them over and over again until I have gotten as much out of it as I can. Even though I really liked his poetry, he is not a new favourite, at least not this far. There were quite a few too many long poems for my taste, and I can take poems that are a few pages long but when it comes up to almost 20 pages without any real plot it gets a little difficult for me to get attached to the poems. However some of the long poems were also my favorites. I really liked (at least the first half) Epipsychidion, Adonais, Hellas and a Dirge. Granted these are the ones in the second half of the volumes and the ones that I remember best. I am quite excited to continue reading his work though.
the world is weary of the past,
Oh, might it die or rest at last!
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm, whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main, --
Wail, for the world's wrong!
I really like Shelley's poetry. He has a certain rhythm in his poetry that is really easy to fall into and that is very emotional. The words he chooses really speak to me as well. However I feel like reading it this time, I didn't experience his writing as I could have done, and I do want to go back to the poems and read them over and over again until I have gotten as much out of it as I can. Even though I really liked his poetry, he is not a new favourite, at least not this far. There were quite a few too many long poems for my taste, and I can take poems that are a few pages long but when it comes up to almost 20 pages without any real plot it gets a little difficult for me to get attached to the poems. However some of the long poems were also my favorites. I really liked (at least the first half) Epipsychidion, Adonais, Hellas and a Dirge. Granted these are the ones in the second half of the volumes and the ones that I remember best. I am quite excited to continue reading his work though.
the world is weary of the past,
Oh, might it die or rest at last!
April 16, 2024
Selected Poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley is a fun collection of Shelley’s exotic poems. The poems range from seventeen pages or ninety stanzas of confusing storylines, to eight line poems. The book doesn’t have any overarching theme or story and is simply a Romanticism period poet’s poems.
I’m going to say it upright, this book was really confusing. Shelley has a wacky way of writing his stories and I was not expecting such long poems, but I pushed through. Shelley’s poem writing style is actually very similar to mine which made for a pretty interesting read, but also just even more confusing. I didn’t like the long poems, but I feel like if he shortened some and made them a series, then I feel they could have been better. I did think that Shelley’s points of view were pretty fun, albeit confusing, and I figured that he was gay, which turned out to be true. Anyways, I think that this is a fun collection of poems and would be a better experience if you’re reading them casually, so if you like some interesting viewpoints and stories, I would recommend you pick this book up.
I’m going to say it upright, this book was really confusing. Shelley has a wacky way of writing his stories and I was not expecting such long poems, but I pushed through. Shelley’s poem writing style is actually very similar to mine which made for a pretty interesting read, but also just even more confusing. I didn’t like the long poems, but I feel like if he shortened some and made them a series, then I feel they could have been better. I did think that Shelley’s points of view were pretty fun, albeit confusing, and I figured that he was gay, which turned out to be true. Anyways, I think that this is a fun collection of poems and would be a better experience if you’re reading them casually, so if you like some interesting viewpoints and stories, I would recommend you pick this book up.
April 16, 2025
The Selected Poems of Shelly collection was alright. I did not like all of their work, in fact, in my opinion, I'd say it's mostly filler of boring writings. Despite the book being a little over one hundred pages, it feels very lengthy, which is due to the mentioned "filler" writings. However, I will cut some slack for my rating; there were some nice poems in there, such as "Stanzas" on page fifteen. I would not recommend this book, as there is a handful of entertaining poems, but the boring far outweighs the fun. The book does not have a plot, so I will not try to go over any. I would rate the book a five or a four out of ten. Unless you must do research, do not read this collection, as its boredom nearly killed me.
April 30, 2020
I did not like this book, it was very hard to read it. The many poems and the old language made it really hard for me to understand what it was exactly that was being talked about. Even though it did take some time reading, I would not say that it was worth it. I had to look up many key words in order to understand the poems, and was still confused most of the time. The few poems I did understand were a nice read, but there were not very many of those.
I would recommend this book for someone who understands poetry, as well as old English.
I would recommend this book for someone who understands poetry, as well as old English.
August 17, 2023
Having read Percy's short poetry in the past, and having learned more about Mary in recent years, I wanted to revisit the man's work, including the long-form, which Mary favored. My personal winner is Queen Mab, a fairy tale and political commentary I hold dear. The mini biography in this edition was also helpful, and context was provided there and prior to each work. There is much to be enjoyed and pondered from his immortal words.
February 13, 2018
Occasionally verbose but ultimately coherent, beautiful, and deep. Disagree with his politics, but like his writing.
Though Mary trumps every time.
Epiphany of the most minor sort: Reading philosophy, I’ve realized I’m a Rationalist; reading poetry, I’ve realized I’m a Romantic.
December 6, 2023
I am a real fan of Shelley and the other "Romantic Poets" Initially he was considered an average poet but following his death his wife Mary spent a large amount of time advertising her late husband work at which point he wbecame recognised as the true poet he was.
An excellent collection
An excellent collection
December 27, 2020
I truly believe that you cannot go wrong with a bit of Shelley :)
August 8, 2021
{1.5/5 Stars}
DNF at 75%
DNF at 75%
December 17, 2023
Honestly, theres some bangers but it’s really repetitive. And what’s the obsession with the word azure?
August 16, 2024
I love Shelley
November 21, 2015
Primarily a young man's poet, but he works for old men as well. And I deliberately, not intending an sexism, wrote man rather than person.
I gathered some fragments:
Whether the Lady’s gentle mind,
No longer with the form combined
Which scattered love—as stars do light
Found sadness where it left delight,
I dare not guess, but in this life
Of error, ignorance, and strife--
Where nothing is—but all things seem.
And we the shadows of the dream
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity.
Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart?
No more let life divide what death can join together.
Away, away from men and towns
To the wild wood and the downs,
To silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music
I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless. As we wish our souls to be.
On Venice
I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark
How from their many isles, in evening’s gleam,
Its temples and its palaces did seem
Like fabrics of enchantment piled to Heaven
I gathered some fragments:
Whether the Lady’s gentle mind,
No longer with the form combined
Which scattered love—as stars do light
Found sadness where it left delight,
I dare not guess, but in this life
Of error, ignorance, and strife--
Where nothing is—but all things seem.
And we the shadows of the dream
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity.
Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart?
No more let life divide what death can join together.
Away, away from men and towns
To the wild wood and the downs,
To silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music
I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless. As we wish our souls to be.
On Venice
I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark
How from their many isles, in evening’s gleam,
Its temples and its palaces did seem
Like fabrics of enchantment piled to Heaven
February 7, 2017
Shelley is not my cup of tea. He might have been when I was 16; now, I find him to be rather on the melodramatic side. Things are transcendently beautiful or heart wrenchingly terrible, and there are no in-betweens. There were certainly good lines in his poems, and entire poems I enjoyed, but there are enough overly loquacious and mediocre 12 page poems in here that my overwhelming feelings on the volume were on the "please shut up" side.
So, not my cup of tea. If he's yours, I'm happy for you; I'm just not that into it.
So, not my cup of tea. If he's yours, I'm happy for you; I'm just not that into it.
March 8, 2015
What much is there to say than the poems are amazing I love Shelly so I love this collection of his poems , and that's it really . The long thing that let it down was the cover but it was only 99p so I don't mind .
March 10, 2010
Melodrama-rama aside, it's nice.
June 28, 2011
A nice, slim introduction to Shelley and, by extension, to Romanticism. I would recommend it--Oh! to whom?
Read
April 13, 2022reread for work
January 28, 2008
a little too "Romantic"
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