Percy Shelley, Robert Burns and William Blake Poem Analysis Examples Essay

Percy Shelley, Robert fire and William Blake Poem Analysis Examples - Essay ExamplePercy Shelley, Robert Burns and William Blake who were contemporaries, were part of the glorious age of romanticism in English poetry. The three men, coming from very different backgrounds, however divided the common trait of non conformism, and shared a deep interest in the revolutions that rocked the political and social traditions of the time. Shelley was the son of a country squire, while Blake was the son of a draper. Burns, a Scotsman also cognise as the pastoral poet, was the son of tenant farmers. Shelley was expelled from school because of his atheist views, while people went so far as to consider Blake mad because of his stalk views. The radical political views held by Burns were shared by both Blake and Shelley, and all three did not conform to the existing norms of a steady married carriage and a conventional family. any of them had at one time or another in their lives, a run in with the established church of the time. All this is reflected in their work but in different ways. The beauty of their poetry hides behind it the anger of the poet at a world that is at odds with the noble creation. Shelleys Ode to the westernmost Wind is an example of the terza rima that Dante used in his Divine Comedy. Each part of the Ode consists of four stanzas of three linages each, ending with a two line couplet. In each of the three lines of each stanza, the first line hoarfrosts with the third and the word at end of the middle line is used as the rhyme for the first and third lines of the next stanza. The beauty of nature is shown in both its gentle and violent forms as Shelley calls the West Wind the preserver and destroyer (Shelley, Ode to the West Wind) showing it sweeping away the dead leaves of the autumn and carrying the seeds that will herald the birth of new foliage in the Spring. Shelley cleverly uses both simple similes as come up as complicated metaphors in the poem as he meditates on the beauty of nature in her gentle form as well as in her fury. Consider how deftly he uses the simile to compare seeds that have been blown by a wild wind, to corpses that lie in their sculpt waiting for the same winds gentler form to awaken them to a new birth, and when he says The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave until, Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her clarion oer the dreaming earth, (Shelley, Ode to the West Wind) This stark scene of death is over again contrasted with the riotous colors and scents of spring in his very next line Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)With living hues and odours (Shelley, Ode to the West Wind) picture nature in her varied moods. He seeks solace in his need from the same wind as A heavy weight of hours has chained and bandy-legged One too like thee tameless, and swift, and proud. and requests the wind to lift his spirits and give him renewed strength t o face his woes, As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud(Shelley, Ode to the West Wind) William Blake too uses similes and metaphors for comparison, but the etchings that accompany his