Shelley: Selected Poetry

Note: I made some immature Mormon angry because of my negative reviews of books that attempted to prove the Book of Mormon, and that person has been slamming my reviews almost as fast as they are posted. I must have really burned him or her because I've deleted this review and re-posted it and within an hour, I had a "not helpful" vote. Give me a break. That person's faith must be very fragile, indeed. Oh, well. I'm trying to be "helpful," so your "helpful" votes are appreciated. Thanks, and I hope you find some enjoyable lines (below). Thanks. This collection has many of the poems we all love. It's not an exhaustive collection, but it's worth buying for Quigly's introductory essay, and as she said, "Shelley lives on outside his verse, and continues still to attract or repel, as he did when he was alive." How true. In "Astor; or the Spirit of Solitude," Shelley left a perfect, though probably unintended,description of himself. "The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful, The child of grace and genius." And of our place in history, it gives us pause to read Shelley's "Ozymandias." I met a traveler from an antique land Who said; Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the and, Half sunk, a shattered visages lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare That lone and level sands stretch far away. And I must quote a few lines from the "Skylark." Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it, Purest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.... What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. Also, check out the engravings opposite some of Shelley's poems in "A Celebration of Humanism and Freethought," by David Allen Williams. I've scanned two pages (in my picture section), and I would highly recommend this book to any poetry lover. It's full of rare engravings opposite selections of poetry and verse. A lost classic worth checking out (below). A Celebration of Humanism and Freethought A Celebration of Humanism and Freethought

Shelly was a master at combining images and creating a world that was uniquley his own. The problem is, that world seemed to consist mainly of foggy sea shores at sunrise and forest cathedrals. While there is nothing wrong with visiting such a world, there is very little reason to stay there. Shelly's lyrics are uneven, sometimes resorting to rhymes that make me cringe. His strength is iambic prose. Even this suffers from what appears to be a limited vocabulary which para doxically inclused eccentric spellings like "aery". Having said all that, I must admit that I am in sypmpathy with Shelly. He dwells in a solitary world of fairy beauty that is the spiritual home of every soul in search of Truth. This goes a long way toward forgiving his somewhat middle ground talent. "Queen Mab" and "Alastor" are the best peoms in this collection. Most of the other seem to be either comments or footnotes to these. They encompass Shelly's strange universe beautifully. "Alastor" is the strongest in terms of imagery reflecting isolation and the hard choice to foresake worldy pleasure to find a higher truth. All sorts of moonlit coves lie just past the crashing waves of the main stream. One only wishes that Shelly could see the beauty he was leaving was a part of what he sought. I recomment this edition, and the critical essay at its beginning, as a starting point for study of Shelly and his work.

I very much enjoyed this collection. It introduced me to the poignant poetry of one of the greatest English Romantic writers. Shelly is a poet you will most likely be required to read at some point in your life. If not, you would be doing a serious diservice to yourself to not seek to indulge in his writings by your own accord. "Song to the Men of England" is perhaps my favourite Shelly poem, despite the fact that it illustrates the utter hypocrisy of English aristocrats. This collection is bound beautifully, and includes all of the poems Shelly was famous for. It is priced reasonably, so there should therefore be no reason for you not to pick it up!