Showing results for "Shelley" in Poetry

Like his great contemporaries, John Keats and Lord Byron, Shelley suffered an untimely death, but still managed to stun the world with a wide-ranging body of work, including poetry, drama, and criticism. His poetry is that of a young man, a lover of nature and fiercely critical of institutionalized corruption, and virtuosic in his use of language and imagery.

This meditation on artistic creativity was written during the latter months of 1815, during a sojourn on the border of Windsor Forest. Critics have concurred in the opinion that the anonymous hero of the poem is Shelley himself, who feared that he too would become an "inheritor of unfulfilled renown". Today, the poem is considered to be the first major work of Shelley's maturity.

The vast varieties of flowers that exist provide an exceptional burst of vivid and subtle shades of colours, inspiring a smooth transition from petal to paper for so many of our greatest poets including Wordsworth, Tennyson, Burns, Swinburne and Coleridge....

This poetic exploration of the subject of love was composed in Italy 1821, and published anonymously, as the poet wished its circulation to be restricted to the "esoteric few." The title means "concerning or about a little soul", the subject, in this case, being Shelley's inamorata of the time, Countess Teresa (designated "Emily" in the poem) Viviani, a young woman who was immured in the Convent of Saint Anna by her father. Shelley had had a number of contacts with her by letter and in person.