Jon Kerr, Tuesday Verse, Shelley's Poetry
Graham Henderson
PB Shelley, “To S and C” (1819-20)

In 1820, Shelley began toying with the idea of publishing (as he put it) “a little volume of popular songs wholly political & destined to awaken & direct the imagination of the reformers.” As with other poems to be included in this collection, “To S. and C.” confronts some of the major events of the day with a bouncy, catchy rhythm, and it offers instruction through a collection of straightforward but powerful similes. Such a style of writing seems to affirm the view that England’s common people, and not just educated elites, have a part to play in the country’s reform movements.

PB Shelley, “To S and C” (1819-20)
Tuesday Verse, Shelley's Poetry, Shelley
Graham Henderson
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Men of England”

In Europe’s revolutionary era, the contest over hearts and minds was fought across many cultural arenas. We get a sense of this in “Men of England,” a poem written in the style of the popular songs that, in the England of Shelley’s day, would have been the stuff of riotous sing-alongs in pubs, fairs, and other centres of public life.

Tuesday Verse, Love's Philosophy, Jon Kerr
Graham Henderson
Percy Shelley, “Love’s Philosophy”

A cheeky seduction poem, “Love’s Philosophy” gives us a speaker who attempts to use his arts to capture the heart (and perhaps more) of a love interest: “look around at the world,” he says to his unnamed lover. “Everywhere, you see things coming together, unifying in matter and spirit. Isn’t it a crime against our nature not to do the same?” 
However, the poem doesn’t just showcase Shelley’s playful side. It demonstrates the immense influence that all things natural had on many writers of this time.

Percy Shelley, “Love’s Philosophy”
Jon Kerr, Tuesday Verse, Frankenstein
Graham Henderson
PB Shelley, Preface to Frankenstein

The Preface to Frankenstein—written by Percy, oddly enough—brings us back to the now legendary moment of inspiration that gave us Mary Shelley’s famous novel: vacationing at Lake Geneva with a circle of friends and fellow writers, the Shelleys are confined indoors due to inclement weather. Reading German horror stories by candlelight, the crew eventually settles on a competition proposed by Lord Byron. The competition is simple: who can write the best horror story? In the months and years ahead, Byron and Percy—the two literary heavyweights of the party—lose interest and take up other projects; Mary, meanwhile, sets to work on what will become Frankenstein, one of the most celebrated English novels of all time.

PB Shelley, Preface to Frankenstein
Jon Kerr, Tuesday Verse, Shelley's Poetry
Graham Henderson
P.B. Shelley, “To the Lord Chancellor”

As American’s go to the polls today in a series of epochal mid-term elections, Shelley’s To the Lord Chancellor seems a more than appropriate choice for our Tuesday Verse selection. As Timothy Webb once noted, politics was perhaps the consuming passion of Shelley’s life. On the 6 November 1819, right around the time he might have been writing this poem, Shelley wrote to his friends the Gisbornes saying, “I have deserted the odorous gardens of literature to journey across the great sandy desert of Politics; not, you may imagine, without the hope of finding some enchanted paradise.” Shelley was what was known as a perfectibilist, someone who believed in the perfectibility of humans. He even developed a sophisticated political and social theory to compliment this belief. This does NOT mean Shelley was a utopian - he emphatically was not. But he did believe in the gradual evolution of the human species toward something like perfection.

P.B. Shelley, “To the Lord Chancellor”

Ode to Liberty

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P.B. Shelley, “Ode to Liberty” (1820)

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Jean-Pierre Houël, Prise de la Bastille (1789)

Jean-Pierre Houël, Prise de la Bastille (1789)

“Come thou [Liberty], but lead out of the inmost cave
Of man's deep spirit, as the morning-star
Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,
Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car
Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame;
Comes she not, and come ye not,
Rulers of eternal thought,
To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill-apportioned lot?
Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame
Of what has been, the Hope of what will be?
O Liberty! if such could be thy name
Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee:
If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought
By blood or tears, have not the wise and free
Wept tears, and blood like tears?” (Lines 256-270)

Written in 1820, Shelley’s poem celebrates Liberty, a personified force that, after centuries of slumber, seems to be on the verge of reawakening at long last. While 1819 was a terrible year for reformers across Europe, 1820 brought new optimism: revolutions in Spain, Portugal, and Italy prompts Shelley to imagine the spread of Liberty further, across the world and into countries still under the yoke of tyranny. For Shelley, however, Liberty is not only a matter of representative government, fair pay, and impartial legal systems; it is also a state of mind. Beginning with a cave metaphor that might make us think of Plato’s famous allegory, Shelley imagines Liberty, leading the human spirit out of the shadows and into the light of wisdom, love, and hope—the qualities linked to human perseverance in the quest toward happiness.

But is the spread of freedom inevitable, according to Shelley’s poem? Think of how often Shelley gives us his picture of Liberty—what it is, when it appears—through questions: “Comes she not…?” While anticipated by Shelley, Liberty’s triumph is far from certain. After all, in the view of history presented in the poem, Liberty appears at several epochs—in classical Greece, the Roman Republic, and Saxon England—only to disappear once more. Written at a moment of tremendous upheaval in European history, Shelley’s poem captures the optimism that he and his fellow reformers experienced, but he never shies away from the vulnerability of it all. As his poem explores the struggle for freedom throughout history, it seems to be telling us that if the triumph of Liberty is not simply inevitable, the ongoing struggle to achieve and defend it becomes all the more important.

 

 

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