Shelley’s Lyricism: Shelley is one of the greatest lyric poets in English Literature. “His lyrics are the crown of his work. By his lyrics, above all, will he live. “They represent the highest achievement of the Romantic Movement. The Ode to The West Wind and The Hymn to the Spirit of Nature are examples of his incomparable lyricism. His lyrics are highly spontaneous (written without any apparent effort). They are marked by an ethereal quality: Ode to the West Wind, for example, is just wind and cloud and emotion. Then again his lyrics express an intensity of feeling or a deep passion. Sometimes, indeed, he loses control over himself and is completely carried away by his emotion as here: “0 lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!” Most of his lyrics, too, contain a note of yearning, desire and despair:

and

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

Oh cease, must hate and death return?

Above all, his lyrics are exquisitely musical. He lends to his lyrics “the sweetest and most liquid harmonies.” The Ode to the West Wind is nearer to music than any other poem in English literature. Shelley is, indeed, a master of rhythm, harmony and melody. Other lyrics remarkable for their beauty and music are Ode to a Skylark, The Cloud, The Indian Serenade, To the Night, and 0 World! 0 Time.
Shelley’s genius was fundamentally lyrical. Matthew Arnold speaks of his “lyric cry.” “There are two sides of Shelley’s lyric inspiration: (i) The personal lyrics which include those poems of ethereal loveliness, The Cloud, The Skylark, Stanzas Written in Dejection near Naples, The Human to Intellectual Beauty, The Ode to the West Wind; and the longer poems, which are entirely lyrical in impulse and character like Adonais, where he most definitely challenges comparison with the greatest singers of all time.

(2) On the humanitarian side, the record is given in such works as Queen Mab, The Revolt of Islam and Prometheus Unbound, which fulfill his enthusiasm for liberty, his love of man, and his passion for reforming the world.

The change of passion, which we note as we pass from the personal to the humanitarian poetry, is very significant. The personal poetry is often profoundly melancholy, but the melancholy disappears the moment Shelley ceases to think of his own little life and assumes the role of a leader of men and prophet of the Golden Age to come. His own attitude towards the political movement is definite. But it is well to lay stress upon the fact that alone among the English poets of the time he continued to preach the gospel of revolutionary faith and hope.