Here is a quote from the part of the essay not included in
the anthology version:
All high poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn,
which contained all oaks potentially. Veil after veil may be
undrawn, and the inmost naked beauty of the meaning never
exposed. A great poem is a fountain forever overflowing with
the waters of wisdom and delight; and after one person and
one age has exhausted all its divine effluence which their
peculiar relations enable them to share, another and yet
another succeeds, and new relations are ever developed, the
source of an unforeseen and an unconceived delight.
Discussion Questions: Part One (See Part Two ) "Defence of Poetry" (1821)
How does this piece compare with
Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads?
420-21:
What, according to Shelley, is the
difference between imagination and reason? (You
may wish to compare Coleridge's discussion of the imagination
and the fancy in Biographia Literaria:
The imagination, then, I consider as either primary, or
secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living
Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a
repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation
in the infinite I AM. The secondary Imagination I consider to
be as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious
will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of
its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of
its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to
recreate; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet
still at all events it struggles to idealize and unify. It is
essential vital, even as all objects (as objects) are
essentially fixed and dead.
FANCY, on the other contrary, has no other counters to play
with, but fixities and definites. The fancy is indeed no other
than a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time and
space; while it is blended with, and modified by that
empirical phenomenon of the will, with which we express the
word than CHOICE. But equally with the ordinary memory the
Fancy must receive all its materials from the law of
association. (Roberts ed., pp. 205-206)
421:
Explain the image of the Aeolian lyre.
423:
Explain: "A poet participates in the eternal, the
infinite, and the one" (423). (See also Coleridge's
conception of "the infinite I AM"
above.)
426:
Explain the role of the sympathetic imagination (see fn 2).
428:
Explain: "We have more moral, political, and
historical wisdom, than we know how to reduce into practice"
(428).
429:
Explain the image of the fading
coal. (See also Coleridge's discussion of "Kubla Khan" on
258).
Explain: "Poetry is the record of the best and
happiest moments of the happiest and best minds" (429).
430:
Explain: "All things exist as
they are perceived: at least in relation to the
percipient" (430). How does this perspective compare with
that found in Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey"?
432:
Explain: "Poets are the
unacknowledged legislators of the world" (432).
Other Discussion Questions: 388:
Why was Shelley expelled from Oxford in 1810?
Describe Shelley's philosophical perspective.
420:
What was Shelley's inspiration for composing his "Defence
of Poetry"?
421:
Explain: "The savage is to ages what the child is
to years" (421). How does this compare to Wordsworth's
discussion of "low and rustic life" (146)?
Explain: "Men, even in the infancy of society,
observe a certain order in their words and actions distinct
from that of the objects and the impressions represented by
them, all expressions being subject to the laws of that from
which it proceeds" (421).
422:
How, according to Shelley, is the language of poets
metaphorical?
Explain: "Language itself is poetry" (422).
423:
How, according to Shelley, is a poet both a
legislator and a prophet?
Explain: "Language is arbitrarily produced by the
imagination, and has relation to thoughts alone" (423).
424:
Explain: "A poem is the
very image of life expressed in eternal truth" (424).
425:
Explain: "Poetry is a
mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted" (425).
Explain: "A Poet is a nightingale who sits in
darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet
sounds" (425).
426:
Explain: "The great instrument of moral good is the
imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting
upon the cause" (426).
Explain: Poetry "awakes and enlarges the mind itself by
rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended
combinations of thought" (426).
(See also 422, as well as Coleridge's discussion of the plan
for Lyrical Ballads
in Biographia Literaria.)
428:
Explain: "We want the poetry of life" (428).
When, according to Shelley, is poetry most needed?
Explain: Poetry "is at once the centre and
circumference of knowledge" (428).
Explain: Poetry "is at the same time the root and
blossom of all other systems of thought" (428).
430:
Explain: "Poetry turns all things to loveliness"
(430).
431:
How does Shelley's description of the poet here compare
with Wordsworth's on page 151?
432:
Explain: Poets "are the hierophants of an
unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors of the gigantic shadows
which futurity casts upon the present" (432).
Part Two: Discussion Questions: "England in 1819" (1819)
What exactly was the Peterloo
Massacre?
398:
Explain the leech imagery in lines 4-6.
What book is "sealed" (11)?
Explain lines 13-14.
"Ode to the West Wind" (1820) 398:
What is the significance of the
West Wind?
What is the significance of the
colors of the leaves blown by the wind (4)?
399:
What is the significance of the
reference to Siva and Vishnu?
In what ways are clouds like leaves (15-23)?
399-400:
How are waves like clouds and leaves (35-40)?
400:
Explain lines 53-54. Does PBS really identify himself with
Jesus, as some critics suggest? Explain.
Other Discussion Questions: "To a Sky-Lark" (1820) 403:
What is the significance of the sky-lark being unseen
(20)?
Explain lines 31-35.
How does the discussion in lines 36-40 compare to Shelley's
discussion of the poet in his "Defence" (445)?
Explain the comparisons to the poet (36-40), maiden
(41-45), glow-worm (46-50), and rose (51-55).
405:
Explain "Our sweetest songs are those that tell of
saddest thought" (90). Compare with "Poetry is the record of
the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds"
("Defence of Poetry" 429).
