Percy Bysshe Shelley

All I can say is that Shelley had an interesting and orthodox life especially for living in the 1800s. When they said he was "One of the most radically visionary of the Romantics" (pg. 391) they sure did mean that in all aspects of his life. I didn't know people eloped back in those days since their lives were so traditional so to read that Shelley "convinced her (Harriet) to elope with him in August 1811" (pg. 392) was a surprise. Also reading that he and Mary experimented with an open relationship for awhile was mind-blowing. It is clear to me that his life had an impact on his poetry and I say that in a good way.

When it comes to his poetry, I'm not going to lie, I really just didn't get any of it. I read each of them twice on diffferent days hoping to let it sink in a little better so that I could really analyze them but that clearly didn't work. Poetry isn't one of my best friends by any means but his stuff just flew right over my head. I'll say his poem "To a Sky-Lark" might be the only one I somewhat grasped, I think. I might be going completely left field on this but in my head I understood this poem to be about wanting to find happiness and freedom from dispair. After reading about his life in the introduction one finds out that he suffered a great deal of loss in his lifetime. He divorced one wife, tired in some way of another, and fell for yet aother married woman. During the midst of all his female hopping he suffered the loss of 3 children. This poem seems to reflect his grief in some way especially at the end of the poem, "Teach me half the gladness that thy brain must know" (pg. 404).

I think I read "Ozymandias" about 3 times and I still can't comprehend it. I get that the poem is talking about a statue of Ramses II and unfortunately that's all I was able to understand. The underlying meaning of the poem isn't jumping out at me and I really wish it would.