SHELLEY’S IDEALISM

. Shelley’s idealism falls under three subheadings Revolutionary, religious and Erotic.

(i) Revolutionary Idealis : His revolutionary idealism is mainly due to the French Revolution. Through his Queen Mab, The Revolt of Islam, and Prometheus Unbound he inspired people to revolt against tyranny by scorning at the tyranny of state, church and society and hoping for a golden age which too is not immune from pain or death. His political idealism makes him a prophet.

(ii) Religious idealism : Though Shelly was rebel, he wasn’t an atheist. He believed in the super power of God, and he imagined ode as Supreme ‘Thought’ and infinite Love. His Platonic conception of Love was the base of his metaphysical idealism. He believed in the faith of one mind, one power and one all-pervasive spirit.

(iii) Erotic idealism: Just as he is a revolutionist and a pantheist, so also he is a theologist. He believed in the abstract quality of love and beauty-love as infinite and beauty as intellectual. lie celebrates love as a creator and preserver in his Symposium, and beauty as Supreme Spirit with which man becomes immortal in his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.

Melancholy. Though Shelley was a man of hope and expectation and spiritualistic about the future of mankind, yet he represents himself in his poems as a man of ill luck, subject to evil and suffering. He expresses this in his Ode to the West Wind:

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud.
I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bound
one too like thee.

He experienced these sufferings because being a man of Imagination, he was easily disappointed by any obstacle which stood in his way of a golden age. Again he always imagined himself as the target of critics and common people. So in Adonais, he explains his state as “a phantom among men, and a lonely man companionless.”

Poetic Style. and Music. Shelley’s poetic style is also romantic. The series of gorgeous similes in The Skylark show the romantic exuberance of Shelley. He never uses any ornamental word and every word fits in its place and carries its own weight. They express the diverse feelings of the poet with the notes of music which appeal to every human being’s ears.

Conclusion. In brief we can say every bit of Shelley’s poetry is romantic— in temper and style. Whether they are short or long, whether they are lyrical or odes, with Shelley’s element of imagination they rise to an expectation which is far beyond our reach. No wonder Shelley is heralded as the best Romantic poet of his age.