Written in 1819 during a turbulent time in English history – the Peterloo Massacre, which Percy Shelley (1792-1822) also wrote about in his poem ‘The Mask of Anarchy’, deeply affected the poet – ‘Ode to the West Wind’ is one of Shelley’s best-known poems. The west wind is the wind […]
Tag: Percy Shelley
‘To a Skylark’: A Poem by Percy Shelley
‘To a Skylark’ is one of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s best-loved poems. Shelley completed it in June 1820; the inspiration was an evening walk he had taken with his wife, Mary, in Livorno, in north-west Italy. Mary later described the circumstances that gave rise to the poem: ‘It was on a […]
A Short Analysis of Percy Shelley’s ‘Stanzas Written in Dejection, Near Naples’
On Shelley’s melancholic but beautiful poem ‘Stanzas Written in Dejection, Near Naples’ is one of Shelley’s finest poems, and, in many ways, one of his most emblematic Romantic poems, given its depiction of individual feeling against the backdrop of the natural world – here, the shores of the sea at […]