15. Shelley’s conception and treatment of Nature. Like all Romantic poets Shelley had a new attitude towards Nature. Shelley’s reading of Nature was transcendental, which to some readers may be vague and misty. But vague it assuredly is not, since Shelley’s philosophy of Nature is perfectly clear and consistent, and in his finest lyrics, such as The Cloud and The West Wind, there is a logical power development, and when the poet is so disposed, a scientific accuracy, that is too often overlooked by the slovenly reader.”
Shelley’s love of Nature was ardent. He conceived of Nature like Wordsworth as a conscious spirit, a living and breathing presence pervading the whole universe. But the spirit which informs Shelley’s Nature is ‘love. His nature poems revel his love of that which is indefinite and changeful. His soul seems to have been naturally attracted to the phenomena of the clouds and the sky. Their shifting colours, their changefulness, their dissolving views, he can best present in Lines of superb imaginative beauty and enchanting melody. Another notable feature of Shelley’s nature description is that he had the power of conceiving the life of separate things in nature with astonishing individuality. He had a great mythological faculty. In this respect he resembles the ancient Greek. But Shelley’s conceptions of the life of these Natural things are less human than even the Homeric Greek or early Indian poets would have made them Shelley!s spirits of earth moon are utterly apart from our would of thought and our life. “The same observation is true if we take a poem on a living thing in Nature like To a Skylark into which human sentiment is introduced. It is the archetype of the lark we seem to listen to and yet we cannot conceive it. The subjective element too is sufficiently present in Shelley’s description of nature. Sometimes he makes nature the mere image ol his own feelings, the creature of his mood.”
“As a poet of nature,” says Stopford A. Brooke, “Shelley had the same idea as Wordsworth, that nature was alive : but while Wordsworth made the active principle which filled and made nature to be Thought, Shelley made it Love. The Natural world was dear then to his soul as well as a to his eye, but he loved best its indefinite aspects. He wants the closeness of grasp of nature which Wordsworth and Keats had, but he had the power in a far greater degree than they of describing the cloud-scenery of the sky, the doings of the great sea, and vast realms of landscape, He is in this as well as in his eye for subtle colour, the Turner of Poetry.”
To Shelley Nature conveyed an impression of something deeper than mere sensuous beauty. Nature is to him, as to Wordsworth, the incarnation of an eternal spirit. His descriptions of sunset, dawn, cloud, and storm are very picturesque. But Shelley is hardly so close an observer of Nature as Wordsworth While Wordsworth spiritualizes the results of his observations, Shelley rather etherealizes his impressions. But at times, in hours of inspiration, Shelley rose to the position of a mystic; the finest example is towards the close of Adonais Stanza XLII:
He is made one with Nature: there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night’s sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Spreading itself where’er that Power may move
Which has withdrawn his being to its own;
Which wields the world with never-wearied love;
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. Again he says in the Alastor:
Earth, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood!
Over and above, Shelley, like Tennyson, has a tendency to weave scientific facts of Nature into the texture of his poems. The Cloud is a brilliant example The following lines are specimens:
I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the sky:
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores,
I change, but I cannot die.
“Almost the whole of Alastor is occupied with descriptions of wild and marvellous scenery-mostly amongst mountains and rivers. Shelley’s descriptions are rarely mere adornments—never when lii is writing well; they are in a sense dramatic. They contribute something essential to the subject matter of the poem. But Nature brings no peace to him, as she does to Wordsworth. The bright skies, blue isles, and snowy mountains (e.g., in the Stanzas Written in Dejection) but remind him that he has neither hope nor health, nor peace within, nor calm around.
Sometimes Shelley conceives of Nature as a purely elemental force, with which human thought or human association has nothing to do. The Cloud is notably such an example. Sometimes he makes Nature blend with his anguish of soul, and Nature is in fact a reflection of his own self in such a case. Grand descriptions of nature are abundant in Shelley’s poetry. Mont Blanc illustrates Shelley’s description of the sublime beauty and majesty of the mountains scenery. Alastor, The Sensitive Plan, Stanzas Written in Dejection Near Naples, Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills, also contain many superb passages of nature description. To Shelley, as to Wordsworth, everything in Nature is full of life and movement. His nature-descriptions reveal his conception of life, motion, and splendour in Nature. The senses of colour, musical sound, light and smell are predominant in Shelley’s nature-poetry. The following lines illustrate these qualities:—
Yellow, and black and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes!
(Ode to the West Wind)
Blue isles and snowy mountains were
The purple noon’s transparent might.
(Stanzas written in Dejection)
And the hyacinth purple and white and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odour within the sense.
(The Sensitive Plant)
and fill
With living hues and ordours plain and hill
(Ode to the West Wind)
Shelley’s weaving of scientific truths into his poetry may be illustrated from The Cloud and Ode to the West Wind arid To A Skylark. The following lines also illustrate this.
When the cloud is scattered, The rainbow’s glory is shed
(When the lamp is shattered)
Keen are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. (To a Skylark)
The influence of natural scenery on the mind of the poet is also revealed in his poems. Beautiful natural scenery soothes the agitated mind of the poet. (See Stanza W of the Stanzas Written in Dejection Near Naples.)
