Explain the Platonic conception of the two worlds.
What does skeptical idealism involve?
"Mutability" (1816)
762:
Explain the comparison of people to clouds in 1-4.
Explain the comparison of people to lyres in 5-8.
Explain the final message of the poem.
PBS, "To Wordsworth" (1816) 763:
How does this poem compare to WW's "London 1802" (see
page 390) ? Why might Shelley have made connections to that
poem?
Explain: "These common woes I feel. One loss is mine/Which
thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore" (5-6)
Explain: "Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did
shine/On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar" (7-8).
What is Shelley's main message in this poem?
Other Discussion Questions:
WW, "London 1802" (1802)
How do the sentiments found in this poem (and in
Shelley's "To Wordsworth") compare with those in Byron's
Dedication to Don Juan, stanzas 10 and 11?
What is the main point of this poem?
390:
What is a fen?
Explain the description of wealth in lines 4-6.
What would Milton's return accomplish, according to WW?
Part Two: "Ozymandias" (1817)
786-87:
Who is Ozymandias?
How is irony employed in this poem?
Explain the position of the artist in this poem.
"To a Sky-Lark" (1820) 845:
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" (872)?
845-46:
Explain the comparisons to the poet (36-40), maiden
(41-45), glow-worm (46-50), and rose (51-55).
847:
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" 876).
Explain lines 101-105.
Part Three(Other
Works to Consider) "Ode to the West Wind" (1820) 802:
What is the significance of the West Wind?
What is the significance of the colors of the leaves
blown by the wind (4)?
What is the significance of the reference to Siva and
Vishnu?
802-3:
In what ways are clouds like leaves (15-23)?
803:
How are waves like clouds and leaves (35-40)?
804:
Explain lines 53-54.
"Defence of Poetry" (1821)
How does this piece compare with Wordsworth's Preface to
Lyrical Ballads?
867:
Explain the image of the Aeolian lyre.
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, esp. pg. 523).
868:
Explain: "The savage is to ages what the child is to
years" (868). How does this compare to Wordsworth's
discussion of "low and rustic life" (339)?
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" (868).
869:
How, according to Shelley, is the language of poets
metaphorical?
Explain: "[L]anguage itself is poetry" (869).
How, according to Shelley, is a poet both a
legislator and a prophet?
Explain: "A poet participates in the eternal, the
infinite, and the one" (869). (See also Coleridge's
conception of "the infinite I AM"
(523)).
870:
Explain: "Language is arbitrarily produced by the
imagination, and has relation to thoughts alone" (870).
872:
Explain: "A Poet is a nightingale who sits in
darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sound"
(872).
873:
Explain: Poetry "awakes and enlarges the mind itself by
rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended
combinations of thought" (873). (See also Coleridge's
discussion of the plan for Lyrical
Ballads on 524.)
Explain: "The great instrument of moral good is the
imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting
upon the cause" (873).
875:
Explain: "We want the poetry of life" (875).
Explain: "Poetry "is at the same time the root and
blossom of all other systems of thought" (875).
876:
Explain the image of the fading coal. (See also
Coleridge's discussion of "Kubla Khan" on 491).
Explain: "Poetry is the record of the best and
happiest moments of the happiest and best minds" (876). (See
also 877).
877:
Explain: "Poetry turns all things to loveliness"
(877).
Explain: "All things exist as they are
perceived: at least in relation to the percipient"
(877).
878:
What, according to Shelley, is the difference
between poetry and logic?
How does Shelley's description of the poet here compare
with Wordsworth's on page 344?
879:
Explain: Poets "are the hierophants of an
unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors of the gigantic shadows
which futurity casts upon the present" (879).
Explain: "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of
the world" (879).
(Other Works to Consider: Page #s refer to
earlier edition):
"The Mask of Anarchy" (1819)
In what ways is this a revolutionary poem? In what ways
is it not?
791:
Explain the irony in lines 34-37.
792:
Why do the multitude adore anarchy (41)?
794:
Explain the imagery in lines 118-25.
Explain the lion imagery in 151-55.
795:
What is Shelley's definition of slavery (160-96)?
796-97:
What is Shelley's definition of freedom
(213-65)?
796:
Explain lines 230-33.
797:
Explain lines 250-53.
798-99:
Describe Shelley's final call to "action" (295-351).
