# Percy Bysse Shelley



## distressed_romeo (Feb 19, 2007)

What does everyone think of him, as I'm doing a module on him this year, and currently battling through the first of the essays...

To be perfectly honest, the only thing his poetry and prose has made me think so far is 'overrated'; most of his ideas don't come across as having been particularly well thought out, and often seem pretentious and overambitious. Plus, he himself seems to have been a bit of an idiot; remember the story about him trying to 'share' his wife with one of his friends, and not understanding why she had a problem with this?

Thoughts?


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## The Dark Wolf (Feb 19, 2007)

He wrote one of my favorite poems ever - 'The Call to Freedom'

_From the workhouse and the prison
Where pale as corpses newly risen,
Women, children, young and old
Groan for pain, and weep for cold -

From the haunts of daily life
Where is waged the daily strife
With common wants and common cares
Which sows the human heart with tares -

Lastly from the palaces
Where the murmur of distress
Echoes, like the distant sound
Of a wind alive around

Those prison halls of wealth and fashion
Where some few feel such compassion
For those who groan, and toil, and wail
As must make their brethren pale -

Ye who suffer woes untold,
Or to feel, or to be behold
Your lost country bought and sold
With a price of blood and gold -

Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God has made ye, free -

And these words shall then become
Like Oppression's thunder doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again - again - again

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few. _


I'm for anything that is generally in support of populist movements for peace, liberty, and democracy. 'The Mask of Anarchy' and 'The Call to Freedom' were pretty influential as works of art for an often-oppressed citizenry. 


'Ozymandius' is such a classic.


I'll admit I'm not too familiar with Shelley's works beyond these three poems. But these three... genius, IMO.


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