HELLENISM OF KEATS

“But though Keats sees the Greek world from afar, he sees it truly.” – Sidney Colvin

Hellas is the name for ancient Greece. Hellenism refers to the character, culture, and literature of ancient
Greece. The Hellenism of Keats refers to his love of culture, literature, and character of ancient Greece.

The Greek Spirit in Keats’ Poetry: Shelley expressed the opinion that “Keats was a Greek.” The
Greek spirit came to Keats through literature, through sculpture, and through an innate tendency. It is
under Hellenic influence as a rule that he gives of his best.

Keats’ Inborn, Temperamental “Greekness”: The “Greekness” of Keats mind is to be seen in his love
of beauty. To him, the expression of beauty is the ideal of all art. It is for him the fullest development of
all that goes to make up human perfection.

His Personification of the Forces of Nature: Keats is a Greek in his manner of personifying the forces
of Nature. His “Autumn” is a divinity in human shape. The world of Greek paganism lives again in his
verse with all its frank sensuousness and joy of life and with all its mysticism. Keats looks back and
lives again in the time:

“When holy were the haunted forest boughs,

Holy the air, the water, and the fire.” (Ode to Psyche)

Keats’ Love of Hellenic Life Expressed through His Odes: Keats expressed the Hellenic spirit in both
“Ode to Psyche” and “Ode
“Ode on a Grecian Urn”. Keats imbibed the spirit of classical learning and
sculpture to such an extent that he could present the Greek way of life in his “Ode on a Grecian Urn” in
the true Greek way:

“What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?”

The love-theme of Cupid and Psyche had a great fascination for Keats. The goddess was never
worshipped. He will worship her and make a proper temple for her.

“Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane

In some untrodden region of my mind.”

Affinity with the Greek Way of Life: Keats showed an affinity with the Greek way of life. “Ode “Ode on a
Grecian Urn” has its main theme, not the sensuous beauty of the figures on his imaginary Greek urn,
but response to the imaginative pictures that these artistic representations arouse. The urn represents
specific acts of particular individuals: the “mad pursuit” of maidens, the “struggle to escape”, the
warm music of love, the “wild ecstasy” of excited wooing by impassioned youths, and so on.

Keats is a Conjurer of Greek Sights: In the “Ode

“Ode to a Nightingale”, the ‘darkling’ has become a
“light-winged Dryad of the trees”, “the warm South” has become “the blushful Hippocrene”, and there
is Bacchus in his chariot drawn by leopards. The moon appears with the Greek splendor.

“And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays.”

In his “Ode
“Ode on a Grecian Urn”, he has created a happy picture of Greek culture, religion, art, and
sculpture. The “Ode
“Ode to Autumn” is considered a perfect poem of Keats as it has classical perfection.
Keats is a lover of Beauty in the true Greek sense.

Conclusion: Greek myths, and to a smaller extent, Greek art and literature provide either his main
themes or numerous allusions. Keats’ boyish enthusiasm had been nourished by his Elizabethan reading,
by Leigh Hunt, by Wordsworth, and by Elgin Marbles also known as Parthenon Marbles (a collection
of marble sculptures, made mostly by Greek sculptor Phidias and his assistants).
Keats derived his knowledge of the Greek classics from translations and reference books like
Chapman’s translation of Homer, and John Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary (Bibliotheca
(Bibliotheca Classica).
Classica).

KEATS AS A POET OF BEAUTY AND SENSUOUSNESS

“O for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts.”

--- John Keats

The term “sensuousness” in poetry implies that poetry implies that poetry is devoted mainly to the task
of making a strong appeal to our eyes by presenting beautiful and colourful word-pictures, to our ears by
its metrical music and musical sounds, to our nose by arousing our sense of smell, and so on.
S E N S U O U S N E S S I S T H E P A R A M O U N T Q U A L I T Y O F K E A T S ’ P O E TI C A L G E N I U S . Keats
believed in sensations. Keats finds beauty everywhere and in every object. He sees beautiful objects, and
presents them in such a way that a word-picture emerges before our mind’s eye.
The odes, which represent the highest poetic achievements of Keats, are replete with sensuous
pictures. The “Ode to Psyche” contains a lovely picture of Cupid and Psyche lying in an embrace in the
deep grass, in the midst of flowers of varied colours:

Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers fragrant-eyed,

 Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian.”

The lovers lie with lips that touch not but which have not at the same time bidden farewell. Beauty of
Psyche is compared with Venus and Vesper. Venus and Vesper are themselves described in sensuous
phrases: “Phoebe’s sapphire region’d star”, and Vesper “amorous glow-worm of the sky.” One of
the most exquisitely sensuous pictures comes at the end where we see a bright torch burning in the
casement to make love to Psyche:

“A bright torch, and a casement open at night,

To let the warm Love in!”

In the “Ode on Melancholy” again, we have several sensuous pictures. There is the rain falling
from a cloud above and reviving the drooping flowers below, and covering the green hill in an “April
shroud”. There is the morning rose; there are the colours produced by the sunlight playing on wet sand.
The “Ode on a Grecian Urn” contains a series of sensuous pictures --- passionate men and gods
chasing reluctant maidens, the flute-players playing their ecstatic music, the fair youth trying to kiss his
beloved, etc.
The “Ode to a Nightingale” is one of the finest examples of Keats’ rich sensuousness. The lines
in which the poet expresses of passionate desire for some provencal song or the red wine from the
fountain of the Muses appeal to both our senses of smell and taste:

“O, for a draught of vintage.”

Similarly, the beaker full of sparkling, blushful Hippocrene is highly pleasing. Then there is the
magnificent picture of the moon shining in the sky and surrounded by stars. All this is a delight for our
senses.
In the “Ode to Autumn”,
Autumn”, the bounty of the season has been described with all its sensuous
appeal. The whole landscape is made to appear fresh and scented. E A C H L I N E I S L I K E TH E B R A N C H O F
A F R U I T T R E E L A D E N W I T H F R U I T T O TH E B R E A K I N G P OI N T . All these appeal to our senses of taste
and smell.
Thus, we note that Keats’ poetry appeals to all the five senses.

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KEATS AS A WRITER OF ODES

Keats’ five great odes, from “Psyche” to “Autumn, have long enjoyed such a widespread reputation that
the moment we hear the word “ode”, we are inevitably reminded of Keats’ achievements in this branch
of poetry.
“In them, for the first time, Keats finds his own manner.” – H. W. Garrod

“The great Odes have for long been placed at the centre of the English Romantic achievement.”
-- Stuart M. Sperry
H. W. Garrod tells us that the ode developed in Keats, not from the ode or hymn of 18th century, but
from a species which the 18th century despised, namely, the sonnet. Each stanza of the odes consists of
the first half of the octave of a Shakespearean sonnet, followed by a Petrarchan sestet. Furthermore, the
odes, taken together, are a sequence in the nature of a sonnet-sequence. These odes are interlinked by
their themes and their moods.
Keats’ odes deal with the favorite themes in his Romanticism --- the sculpture beauty and grace
of a Greek urn, the charming myths of Hellas, the changing seasons and joys of the earth, the painful
craving of the soul to find a beauty which endures, the fascination of death, and the bitter-sweet
voluptuousness with which the poet meditates upon it.
The tone is smooth. Each epithet is the extraordinarily rich in suggestion. Each image opens up
to our view a far-reaching perception. The language sparkles with all the gems of speech. The rhythms
are perfectly adapted to the supreme unity of impression.
Through all the great odes of Keats is heard a note of solemnity depending now and then to
poignant suffering. Through all runs also the same haunting sense of unreality. Indolence is better than
ambition. The Nightingale’s song is an illusion, and an illusion, which soon fades, cares and griefs. The
world’s truest sadness dwells with beauty and joy.
There is no refuge but in art, the serene, the immortal, and the unchangeable --- the temple of
thought which the poet builds for himself in the “Ode to Psyche”,
Psyche”, or the marble world which lives on
the carved shapes of a Grecian Urn.Urn. This spirit of sadness strikes the keynote of his odes.
The Odes are dramatic in the sense that they arise from certain basic conflicts such as those
between joy and suffering, transitoriness and permanence, the actual and the ideal, life, and death. There
is also the problem of Keats trying to escape into the ideal world of beauty, the world of poesy and of
art, but being prevented from doing so by a haunting awareness of the realities of life.

E S S E N C E O F H I S I ND I V I D U A L O D E S

1. “Ode to Psyche” is the most architectural of his odes.

2. “Ode on a Grecian Urn” contains one of Keats’ most famous line: “Beauty is Truth, Truth
Beauty.”

3. “Ode to a Nightingale” is a remarkable for its note of reflection and meditation. It shows the
splendor of Keats’ imagination on its purely romantic side. The central idea here is the contrast
of Joy and Beauty, and apparent permanence of the nightingale’s song with the sorrows of
human life and the transitoriness of beauty and love in the human world.

4. The “Ode on Melancholy” tells us that true melancholy is to be found not in the sad and ugly
things of life, but in the beauty and delights of the world.
 5. “To Autumn” is, by general agreement, flawless in structure, texture, and rhythm. It is purely
impersonal, objective description.

6. Keats shows a rare originality in his use of the language:

“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter: therefore, yet soft pipes, play on.” (Ode on a Gracian Urn)

“Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,

Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.” (Ode on Melancholy)

The odes of Keats are replete with wisdom and feeling.

KEATS’S IMAGERY/PICTORIAL QUALITY

Keats is one of the greatest word-painters in English poetry. The most beautiful thing about his art of
expression is his art of presenting pictures. We can clearly see the pictures of what he talks about. The
pictures are vivid, graphic, colourful, and faithful. An extra element of romance and wonder is added to
every picture.
Keats had the eye of an artist. He observed objects of beauty with a keen delight and presented
them the way an artist would do. He did it in words as painters do it in colours. The most important
aspect of his pictorial quality is the sensuous appeal of his pictures. Above all, it is the visual
presentation, which captures our attention. For example, the sights clearly come to our mind when we
read the “Ode on a Grecian Urn”.
In the “Ode to Autumn”,
Autumn”, Autumn has been represented in the concrete forms of a reaper,
winnower, gleaner, etc. the Ode on a Grecian Urn contains a series of vivid vignettes like a flute-player
playing ecstatic music, the fair youth trying to kiss his beloved, the happy branches of the trees, the
townspeople going to a place of worship in order to offer a sacrifice with a mysterious priest to lead
them, the little town which always remain desolate. Here, it is the visual presentation which captures our
attention.

“Fair youth, beneath the tress, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare:
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss…”
All the pictures presented on the Grecian Urn are visibly projected own the minds of readers.
While giving us the pictures of inanimate objects, Keats often invests them with life and with the
power to feel, see, and think so to make his pictures more vivid. He tells of dead and senseless things in
terms of life, movement, and feeling.
In the “Ode to Psyche”,
Psyche”, again, we have several concrete and sensuous pictures. There is the
lovely picture of Cupid and Psyche lying in an embrace in the deep grass.

“Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers fragrant-eyed,

Blue, silver-white, and budden Tyrian.”

The most popular picture is there in the “Ode to Nightingale” in the darkness of the dense forest
the poet listens to the song of the bird and smells a variety of flowers:

“I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows….”

One great quality of the pictorial presentation of Keats is the art of making the abstract concrete. In
“Ode to Psyche”,
Psyche”, we note that the poet would like to made a temple for the worship of Psyche “in some
untrodden region of mind.”
In the “Ode to Melancholy”,
Melancholy”, the abstract concepts of Melancholy, Beauty, and Joy are presented
in the most concrete form. About Melancholy, Keats says:

“She dwells with Beauty – Beauty that must die.”

The abstract concept of Autumn has been presented in the form of concrete picture in a variety of ways.
For example,

“Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind.”

The music of Autumn has been made concrete in the third stanza where the “barred clouds” touch the
“the stubble-plains with rosy hue.”
I T I S B Y T H E P R I C I S I O N O F H I S SE N S U O U S I M A G E R Y - - - B R I G H T A N D C LE A R , Y E T R I C H ,
L I K E T H E F I G U R E S I N A P AI N T E D M I S S A L - - - T H A T H E C O M M A N D S T H A T H E W A N T S .

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RECURRENT THEMES AND MOTIFS / HIS ODES AS A SEQUENCE/ INTER-
RELATIONSHIP OF MOOD

In 1819, John Keats composed six Odes, which are among his most famous and well-regarded poems.
Keats wrote the first five poems, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”,
Urn”, “Ode on Indolence”,
Indolence”, “Ode to Melancholy”,
Melancholy”,
“Ode to Psyche” in quick succession during the spring, and he composed “To Autumn” in September.
While the exact order in which Keats wrote the Odes in unknown, some critics contend that they form a
thematic whole if arranged in sequence.
The odes yield a very interesting study if they are read one after the other. There is an element of
unity. The basic theme underlying all these Odes is that they deal with the fundamental human condition
of finding a solace from the naked and harsh realities of life. The solace can be found in the objects and
beauties of nature, in the world of art, in the world of imagination and in a wish of death; but, with Keats
the solace is always temporary in character, and a final comeback into the world of realities is very
essential.
In “Ode to a Nightingale”,
Nightingale”, we find that Keats has been deeply grieved by the mental strains of
humanity at large. Some are suffering from palsy, the others are dying young. Everyone has one
problem or the other so much so that “men sit and hear each other groan.” The world has become a place
“where but to think is to be full of sorrow”. To find relief, Keats wants to fly far away into the world of
the Nightingale who, “among the leaves has never known”, how world of reality. The natural beauty of
the world of Nightingale subdues Keats’s mental strain, to a large extent. The happy lot of the
Nightingale also produces a death wish in Keats, and he put it very clearly ---

“Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain.’

But finally, Keats comes back into the world of reality with the sound of just one word, “Forlorn!”,
“Forlorn!”, a
word that reminds him of the human lot.
The “Ode to a Nightingale” will be read with added interest if we keep in mind the condition of
the poet at the time when it was composed. Of his two younger brothers to whom he was deeply
attached, George had migrated to America, and Tom died of consumption towards the close of 1818.
This was a serious blow to Keats whose own disease had come to the surface during his tour of
Scotland, a few months before. In the third stanza, the poet refers to his brother’s death and possibly also
to his own near-death condition in the line --- “where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin and dies.”
The poet’s heartache is caused by his perception of the contrast between the transitoriness of life and the
eternity of the Nightingale’s song.
The “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is also an expression of the same sad reflection. Here the contrast
is between the transitoriness of human joys and the eternity of art. The scenes depicted on the urn have
been immortalized by art, and will not know life’s vicissitudes and decay. This “cold pastoral” teaches,
and will continue to teach generations yet unborn the lesson that,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”

The “Ode on Melancholy” is of the same order as the two noticed above, born of the same mood of
tender sadness. The poet feels that there is a blight upon everything that is lovely and joyful -- the
morning rose, the rainbow, the “peerless eyes” of one’s sweetheart --- and every “aching Pleasure nigh”
turns to poison. We have beauty and joy as a source of pain because both beauty and joy have only a
fleeting value. The hand of Joy is “ever at his lips/Bidding adieu”, and beauty is a thing “that must die”.
In “Ode to Autumn”,
Autumn”, the opening stanza tells us about the sun at its height of maturity prepared
“to load and bless/With fruit the vines.” But as the poem progresses, the day starts dawning and towards
the close of the poem we have “the soft dying day.” This coincides with the passage of seasons. In the
beginning, we have the season of “mellow fruitfulness”, but soon the warm days are over, and winter is
about to set in. the poet asks, “Where are the Songs of Spring?” Thus, the hidden meaning in the poem
is that human life is always so prone to the vicissitudes.
vicissitudes.
Thus, we have seen that there is an undercurrent of a common subject and mood in the Odes of
John Keats.

*MEDIEVALISM IN JOHN KEATS*

Medievalism refers to a revival of interest in the Middle Ages. It is a time between the fall of the
Roman Empire, on the other hand, and the Renaissance, on the other.
The Romantic poets did not like reality, and they did not want to live in the work-a-day world of
reality. Keats found relief in the past --- to the ancient Greece, sometimes he travelled into the Middle
Ages --- the times of romance, chivalry, fancy, lords and ladies. Keats pays his tribute to the Middle
Ages in “The Eve of St. Agnes”, “The Eve of St. Mark”, “Isabella”, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, etc.
In the “Ode to a Nightingale”,
Nightingale”, while the imagination of the poet revels in the ideal world of the
Nightingale, it throws itself back to the medieval past where again the Nightingale had sung its
enchanting song:

“The same that oft-times hath

Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas and fairy lands forlorn.”

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 WAS KEATS AN ESCAPIST?

An escapist fights shy of the harsh realities of life, its problems, its misery and suffering, and
flies to an imaginary world. In fact, the glorification of imagination was the credo of Romanticism. By
their plastic imagination, the Romantics created a world of their own. They escaped to the world of
Nature, to the Middle Ages, to the ancient Greeks, and also to a future Utopia.
Keats is regarded the greatest escapist, as Keats tried to create an ideal world, unaffected by the
social influence of his age.
age. Keats wished for a life of “sensations rather than of thoughts”, and reveled
in the sensual pleasures, sights and scenes of Nature, medieval and Greek way of life, and physical
beauty.
beauty.
Of all the Romantic poets, Keats was the only true aesthetic because he believed that the truth of
imagination was the only truth, and that truth and beauty are one. Keats hated didacticism in poetry.
“We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us,” he wrote.
A cursory study of his life and poems will indicate that he had to be an escapist.
escapist. There were
plenty of personal factors to make Keats an escapist. Hia mother died soon of consumption. The fatal
disease was in the family. Keats’s younger brother, Tom, breathed his last in his arms. He too was a
victim of consumption. His other brother George left for America along with his wife. Such a person
could naturally escape into a dream-world. He had qualified as an apothecary, but he left the profession.
He took to poetry. His poems also reveal a steak of escapism.
escapism.
However, a close study of his poems and letters will show that he tried to escape into the dream-
world of beauty but he could not. The day he enters “the realm of gold,” he unconsciously entered the
world of human suffering and agonies --- the strife of human heart. And this is not escapism.
The French Revolution, and all that went with it, did not appeal to him. It was a time when the
whole of Europe was shaken by the ideas of the revolution, but these ideas find no expression in his
poetry. Stoppard Brooke pointed out:

“The ideas that awake the youthful passion of Wordsworth, of Coleridge,

that stirred the wrath of Scott, that worked like yeast on Byron, that Shelley
made into a prophecy of the future, were ignored and unrepresented by Keats.
In Keats the ideas of the Revolution have disappeared. He had no vital
interest in anything but beauty.”

It does not mean that he was not acquainted with human suffering.
suffering. Here is a picture of the poor wounded
mankind:

“The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin and dies.”
The poet tries to escape into the happy world of the nightingale, first through wine and then through the
power of imagination. He knows he cannot escape:
escape:

“Forlorn! The very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self.”

H E E S C A P E D I N T O T H E W O R L D O F B E A U T Y A N D H E D I S C O V E R E D T H AT I T W A S T H E T RU T H
ALSO. The principle of beauty in all things --- this is the basic concern of Keats in life and letters. He
found beauty in the works of art and architecture, in nature, in the face of a woman, in sorrow and
suffering because he could see Beauty operating everywhere.
everywhere.

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty --- that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
(Last lines of ‘The Grecian Urn’)

Keats’s idea of beauty is a very comprehensive one. It goes beyond the sensuous apprehension of reality.
It becomes intellectual and spiritual. Keats accepts life as it is. He affirms that though the forms of
beauty are fleeting, the principle of beauty that binds the universe is eternal.
Keats attached equal importance to fair and foul, to laughter and tears.
tears. In one of his letters, he
wrote that he has not tasted any unalloyed pleasure. Where can we find Beauty? Where can one find
Melancholy? They are found together.

“She dwells with Beauty --- beauty that must die;

And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu.”

Keats has a manliness about him. He never recoils fully from the onslaughts of life. He realized
that E S C A P E I S N O T P O S S I B L E . L I F E A S A W H O L E I S T O B E A P P R E C I A T E D .

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SHELLEY AS A LYRICAL POET

 As a lyric poet, Shelley is among the very greatest. His songs are pure inspiration --- things of
lightness, melody, and grace. With such work, says Hudson, to analyze is futile, to praise is superfluous.
Shelley is an intense lyricist as Alexander Pope is an intense satirist. He converts forms as diverse as
drama, prose-essay, romance, satire, etc. into lyrics. He transformed of all experience, natural and
literary, into the condition of lyric.

Whatever the voice which speaks to us in his poems, Shelley has the gift of lending it the
sweetest and the most liquid harmonies. Shelley’s lyricism, says Cazamian, is incomparable. Truly,
never was the soul of a poet so spontaneously lyrical. Everything with Shelley is the occasion for a
musical stir. His lyrics represent the highest achievement of romantic poetry.

T H E M O S T S T R I K I N G Q U A L I T Y O F S H E L L E Y ’ S L Y R I C I S M I S I T S S P O N T A E N E I T Y . His
lyrics are pure effusions, and they come directly from his heart. Here is an example of spontaneous
writing:

“Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know…”

Shelley’s lyrics usually express an intensity of feeling, or a deep passion. There is a note of desire and
longing too in most of his lyrics. His desire is like the desire of the moth for the star. No wonder,
therefore, that A N O T E O F S A D N E S S RUNS THROUGH MOST OF HIS LYRICS. In the poem “To a
Skylark”,
Skylark”, we have the following stanza expressive of human sadness:

“We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught:
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”

MANY OF SHELLEY’S LYRICS HAVE AN ABSTRACT QUALITY and some of the best known
are ethereal. “The Ode to the West Wind” illustrates this quality. Such poems seem to justify, to some
extent, Matthew Arnold’s criticism of Shelley as “an ineffectual angel, beating in the void his
luminous wings in vain.”

SHELLEY’S LYRICS ARE HIGHLY EMBELLISHED COMPOSITIONS. They have a glittering

quality because of the ornamental imagery. The most striking example of this quality is “To a Skylark”
in which we have such shining phrases as the following: “a cloud of fire”; “the golden lightening of the
sunken sun”. And here is a glittering picture of the moon (or of Venus):
 “Keen as 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.”

SHELLEY’S LYRICS ARE UNSURPASSINGLY MUSICAL AND SWEET. They all are
masterpieces. Here is another aspect of his lyricism, however. He has his weaker moments. These are
the “Stanzas Written in Dejection” which express the poet’s feeling of frustration and despondency. The
poet complains that he has neither hope nor health nor peace nor fame nor power. He expresses a wish to
die:

“I could lie down like a tired child,

And weep away the life of care.”

This pessimism has a depressing and enervating effect on the reader too. Even Shelley’s great
masterpiece “Ode to the West Wind” is marred by this sentimentality and morbidity. He addresses the
West Wind in the following manner:

“Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!”

These lines show a complete abandonment of self on the part of the poet. We have here the forlorn wail
of the poet. There is A LOT OF SELF-PITY in Shelley’s poetry. Modern critics complain about his
excessive display of emotion. The poem “When the Lamp is Shattered” (The Flight of Love) has been
subjected by many critics like F. R. Leavis and Allen Tate to an extended destructive analysis (even
though A. Pottle has defended it). Another critic calls this poem “trite and trivial”. T H U S, W E S E E
THAT SHELLEY IS A WRITER OF SUPERB LYRICS, AND THAT HE SUFFERS FROM
IMPERFECTIONS AND FAULTS TOO.
To sum up, Shelley has been universally accepted as one of the supreme lyrical geniuses in
English poetry. S H E L L E Y C O M B I N E S H I S P A S S I O N A N D S I M P L I C I T Y W I T H T H E Q U A L I T Y O F
MUSIC, AND THE ART OF COMBINING THE OUTWARD RHYTHM OF THE VERSE WITH AN INNER
RHYTHM OF THOUGHT AND IMAGERY.
I N S H E L L E Y, I T B U R N S S L O W L Y F O R A T IM E , T H E N F L A R E S T O H E A V E N I N A R U S H O F
F L A M E , T H E N S I N K S A N D D I E S A S S W I F T L Y A S I T F L A M E D. I T I S A S M O M E N T A R Y A S A
M E T E O R I N H I M , A N D I T S S U B S T A N C E I S V A P O R I Z E D B Y I T S O W N H E A T.

SHELLEY AS A POET OF NATURE

 “Shelley is one with the romantic temper of his age in ascribing to
Nature a spiritual quality and significance and in regarding man’s
life as dynamic and progressive. But he goes beyond romanticism in
his idea of a vigorous dynamic life of Nature.”
--- J A Symonds

O NE O F TH E MO ST IMPO RT ANT TH E MES IN S HE L LE Y’S PO E T RY IS HIS APPRE CIAT IO N

AND L O VE O F NAT URE . Shelley believes in the healing influence of Nature on the heart.
Shelley loved the indefinite and the changeful in Nature. This enabled him to describe better
than any other English poet the scenery of the clouds and the sky whose appearance
undergoes a constant change. The “Ode to the West Wind” and “To a Skylark” are an abiding
monument to Shelley’s passion for the sky. “I take great delight in watching the changes
of the atmosphere” , he said.
S HE L LE Y’S L O VE FO R TH E INDE FINIT E AND CH ANG E FUL AS PE CTS O F NAT URE
finds a vivid expression in the first three stanzas of the “Ode to the West” is depicted as
driving the dead leaves before it and scattering the living seeds. The second stanza contains a
picture of the cloudscape, with the West Wind carrying “loose clouds” on its surface, and
with the “locks of the approaching storm” spread upon it. In the thirds stanza the West Wind
is described as awakening the Mediterranean from his sleep, and making its force felt by the
sea-plants at the bottom of the Atlantic. Thus the first three stanzas contain the effects of the
West Wind on land, sky, and sea, through leaves, clouds, and waves. The settings of the first
three stanzas -– give equal emphasis to the three states of matter ---solid, gaseous and
liquid. Furthermore, each of the four seasons get its appointed place, and there is a a full
range of colours --- red, yellow, blue, black, grey, etc. we have an abundance of pictures of
the landscape, skyscape, and sea-scape and, they are remarkable for their vividness and
scientific realism. This S CIE NT IFIC APPRO ACH T O NAT URE DIS T ING UIS H ES S HE L LE Y
FRO M MO ST O TH E R PO ET S .
FOR HIM THE NATURAL OBJECTS AND FORCES RETAIN THEIR TRUE CHARACTER, EVEN
W H E N H E P E R S O N I F I E S T H E M . The West Wind remains a wind, the Mediterranean remains an
ocean, and the Cloud remains a cloud. In the poem addressed to the skylark we have a
number of pictures of the aery regions. The skylark flies higher and higher from the earth:

“ The blue deep thou wingest

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.”

The skylark “floats and runs and in the golden lightening of the sunken sun over which
clouds are brightening.” The pale, purple evening melts around the skylark’s flight. The
music of the skylark is keen like the arrows of “that silver sphere whose intense lamp
narrows in the white dawn clear.” The earth and air are filled with the skylark’s voice.
Another aspect of Shelley’s treatment of Nature is HIS MYT H -MAK ING PO WE R which
runs counter to his pantheism. Pantheism implies an inter-linking of all the objects of Nature
through the perception of a divine spirit passing through them all, while Shelley’s myth-
making means that he gives to each separate objects of Nature a distinct individuality of its
own. IN H IS MO S T FAMO US POE MS , H E T RE AT S TH E O BJE CT S AND FO RCE S O F
NAT URE AS DIS T INCT AND DIS T ING ISH AB L E ENT IT IE S . HE G IVES E ACH O F T HE M AN
INDE PE NDE NT L IFE AND PE RS O NAL IT Y .
Almost all the poems of Shelley abound in pictures of Nature, some of which are
remarkable for their vividness and sensuousness. In “To a Skylark”, we have such pictures
as the golden lightening of the sunken sun, an unseen star in the broad daylight, a golden
glow-worm in a dell of dew, a rose covered by its own green leaves, the sound of vernal
showers on the twinkling grass, etc. S HE L LE Y’S NAT URE - DE S CRIPT IO NS ARE
G E NE RALL Y EL AB O RAT E AND DE T AILE D .

PESSIMISM AND OPTIMISM IN SHELLEY’S POETRY

“Shelley is either in despair or in ecstasy.” Elucidate.

(a) ATTITUDE TOWARDS LIFE:

LIFE:
Shelley’s attitude towards life is on the one hand immensely pessimistic, and, on the other,
extremely optimistic. He is pessimistic about the present, and bears optimistic hopes for the future.
Contemplation of the corruption, tyranny and social problems of the present fills him with despondency.
But he believes in the imminent dawning of a new era --- a golden millennium --- when all evils will
disappear giving place to a reign of love, beauty, and happiness. He is hypersensitive by nature –
reacting to all kinds of sentiments and passion with an extreme intensity of feeling. He is a man of many
moods. His poems, depending on the moods, are E I T H E R E X P R E S S I O N S O F E B U L L I E N T
ECSTASY OR REVELATIONS OF AN EXTREME DESPAIR .

(b) A FEW POEMS OF DESPAIR:

“STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION NEAR NAPLES” illustrates a mood of extreme despair on the
part of Shelley. The poem was composed at a time when the poet had already faced a series of personal
misfortunes and was left extremely lonely and sad. HE HAD THE FEELING THAT HE WAS ONE “WHOM
NOT.” The happy surroundings of the BAY OF NAPLES are contrasted with his personal
MEN LOVE NOT.”
agonies making them sharper and more poignant.

“Alas! I have not hope nor health…”

The poem, “WHEN THE LAMP IS SHATTERED” is another example of a mood of despair. This
poem deals with the transience of love. When a lamp is shattered, its light dies. When a cloud is
dissolved, the rainbow fades away. When a flute is broken, its musical notes are lost. When love is lost,
the heart can only sing sad songs. The human heart is incapable of serving as a permanent home for
love. The feeling of pessimism receives great emphasis in the following lines:
 O Love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home, and your bier?”

The lines quoted below remind us of the poet’s sufferings:

“Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!”
(Ode to the West Wind)

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY also in an expression of the poet’s melancholy. The poet is
depressed because this Intellectual Beauty which gives joy to human hearts comes so rarely. He gets into
a state of despair when he speaks of this world as a “dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate.” Fear
and death and birth cast a deep gloom on the daylight of this earth. The poet’s sadness deepens because
“no voice from some sublime world” has ever supplied satisfactorily answers to the questions that rise
in the human mind.”Doubt,
mind.”Doubt, chance and mutability” are other reasons for the poet’s pessimism.
pessimism.
Another significant poem, but not prescribed in our study, “ADO NIS ”, originates from Shelley’s
intense feeling of sadness at the premature death of a fellow poet, John Keats.

(c) A FEW POEMS OF JOY:

Most of Shelley’s poems are sad in tone and as such he is regarded as “the singer of endless
sorrows”. But this is not true of all his poems. Whenever he writes of the future of mankind, he turns
ecstatically optimistic.
In “Ode to the West Wind”,
Wind”, the poet begins his invocation in a buoyant mood. He looks upon the
Wind as the destroyer of the present order an founder of a new one. In the course of the poem, the tone
turns pessimistic. But the subsequent thought of future turns his melancholy into exwstatic rapture, and
he ends the poem with one of the most optimistic and memorable prophecies about the future of
mankind:

“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

The “Ode to a Skylark” describes the raptures joy of a bird. Shelley idealizes the music of the
Skylark, and would like to know the inspiration behind the bird’s singing of such melodious and joyous
notes. In all Shelley’s lyrical poetry, there are no other lines so highly expressive of the mood of ecstasy
as this poem about the Skylark.

(d) CONCLUSION: We can trace both intense despair and bright optimism in Shelley’s poetry.
The growth of these two opposing views can be traced as more or less separate
developments. He recognizes misery and happiness as two aspects of human life.
 SHELLEY: A PROPHET AND A REFORMER

“If Byron is a greater interpreter of revolutionary iconoclasm,

Shelley, on the contrary, is a great revolutionary idealist…he
is fond of painting a golden age of human happiness. Shelley
was a reformer as well as a poet. He was a great inheritor and
exponent of the ideas of the French Revolution.”
--- Oliver Elton

Shelley is one of the subtlest and profoundest thinkers among English poets. The poems of Shelley are
well described by Robert Browning as,

“a sublime fragmentary essay towards a presentation of the correspondency

of…the natural to the spiritual, and of the actual to the ideal.”

Before he was a poet, he was a prophet and his poetry is largely the medium of his prophetic message.
He was a reformer.
He hated and condemned the tyranny of State, Religion and Society, which stand in the path of a
heavenly bliss. The calamities he refers to are not natural calamities, but man-made calamities. They are
aspirations of man for power that pollute the whole nation like a “devastating pestilence.” Therefore,
he longs for a golden age that is free from such calamities yet immune to pain and death. He sings in the
ODE TO THE WEST WIND:

“Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth,
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind.”

He dramatized the defeat of evil by the spirit of life. He prophesizes that once human goodness is aware
of love and touched by it, marveled things may happen.
Shelley is a poetic angel who says that what is important is “hope”. We should not lose our hope
at any time, for destruction is to regeneration, night is to day, unhappiness is to happiness, slavery is to
freedom, end is to beginning as he points out,

“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

So the Golden Age, in Shelley’s view, lies not in the past but in the future.
Shelley’s devotion to liberty made him a violent reformer. Seeking to overthrow our present
institutions and to hurry the millennium out of its slow walk into a gallop, to renovate the world, to bring
about utopia --- this was his constant aim.
 Shelley was much influenced by Godwin’s revolutionary theories. William Godwin deplored the
marriage laws and customs of his day and advocated “free love”. Shelley showed his belief in these
revolutionary theories by eloping with Godwin’s daughter, Mary.
The other great intellectual influence in Shelley’s life was that of Plato.
Plato. Plato’s teachings that the
entire universe is the self-evaluation of an absolute intelligence, is seen reflected in Shelley’s poetry.
Similarly, Shelley’s idea ‘Intellectual Beauty’ is the same as Plato’s “philosophy of beauty”. To
Shelley, when Intellectual Beauty departs, this world becomes a “dim vast veil of tears vacant and
desolate”.
desolate”. On the other hand, if human heart becomes its temple, then man would become “immortal
and potent”.
potent”. Thus, Platonism was a treasure-house from which he borrowed valuable ideas.
Rousseau too has influenced Shelley much, for Harold Bloom believes,

“Without Rousseau, Shelley would not have written the

‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’…Rousseau was the prophet
of natural man, and the celebrator of the state of nature.”

Rousseau’s ideas are vividly seen in Shelley’s ODE TO THE WES T WIND .
Thus, Shelley was a true revolutionary, perpetually at war with the present world, a martyr and
exile, fighting and crying defiance to the end.

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SYMBOLISM IN SHELLEY’S POETRY

In a broad sense, a symbol denotes an image used to signify an idea. Shelley, endowed with tremendous
imagination and a deep insight into natural things, finds symbols to express his ideas. That is why, there
is plenty of symbolism in his poetry. More often, this symbolism is vague and therefore somewhat
perplexing; but in some cases, Shelley achieves conspicuous success in his use of symbols.
The “Ode to the West Wind”,
Wind”, remarkable for its Nature-imagery, is replete with symbolical
meanings:

(a) He sees the West Wind as A S YMB OL O F DE ST RUCT IO N AND PRE S E RVAT IO N . The
West Wind destroys the dead leaves and preserves the living seeds. Shelley considers it the
destroyer of the old order, and the preserver of the new. Therefore, the West Wind becomes a
symbol of mutability, which destroys yet recreates all things, while the leaves and seeds
symbolize for Shelley all things, material and spiritual, that are ruled by change.

(b) Shelley regards the West Wind as A S YMB OL O F MO URNING . The sound of the West Wind
passing through the forest is melancholy. Hence, the West Wind is called a “dirge of the dying
year.”

(c) The West Wind is A S YMB OL O F S HE L LE Y’S O WN PE RS O NAL IT Y . As a boy, he

possessed the same qualities that the West Wind possesses. He was tameless, swift, proud, wild
and uncontrollable like the West Wind. This affinity encourages the poet to appeal to the West
 Wind for help. Thus, the West Wind is also A SYMB O L AND REL IE F TO H IM IN HIS
DIS T RES S .

(d) The West Wind is regarded as A S YMB OL O F T HE PO WE RFUL INFL UE NCE S AND
FO RCE S that will bring about the Golden Age of humanity. The poet expresses the faith that “If
Winter comes, Spring cannot be far behind.” In the last stanza, as in the first, the West Wind
appears as A S YMB OL O F RE VO L UT IO NARY CH ANG E that will lead to a “new birth” and
will regenerate the “unawakened earth”.

Next, the skylark serves as an excellent symbol which Shelley develops on one of his most celebrated
poems. T HE SK Y L A R K I S A SY M B O L O F M AT CH L E SS PE RF E CT IO N . In addition, since
perfection is something difficult to define, the nature of the skylark too is something mysterious and
elusive. It is for this reason that Shelley has to employ a series of similes in order to build up a
satisfactorily image of the skylark. “What thou art we know not”,
not”, says Shelley.
Therefore, he proceeds to think of comparisons through which the nature of the skylark can be
apprehended. “What is most like thee?” The skylark is compared to a poet “hidden in the light of
thought”,
thought”, “a high-born maiden in a palace tower”, “a glow-worm golden in a dell of dew”, dew”, “a rose
embowered in its own green leaves.”
By means of these glittering similes, Shelley creates an entity symbolizing the indefinable
perfection which he seeks. However, the skylark symbolizes something else also. IT S YMB OL IZE S
T HE PO E TIC SPIRIT which sings songs “unbidden” and with “an unpremeditated art”, “till the world
is wrought to sympathy with hopes and fears it headed not.”
Finally, it must be admitted that DE SP IT E T H E IR VAG UE NE SS , MO ST O F H IS SY M B O L S
H AVE A CH C H A R M OF T H E I R OW N , AND ARE G E NE RAL L Y ACCE P T E D AS E VIDE N C E OF
S H E L L E Y ’ S G R E A T I M A G I N A T I V E GE NIUS .

STANAZAS WRITTEN IN
DEJECTION NEAR NAPLES

This poem expresses a mood of the deepest melancholy, describes the scene of the Bay of
Naples, and contrasts the beauty of natural scenery with Shelley’s own gloom and despondency. When
this poem was written, Shelley had lost the guardianship of his children by his first wife, and he had
even lost the goodwill of his friends and relations. A sensitive nature like his was bound to be deeply
hurt by these developments.
The poem does not make a reference to the events which darkened his life. The events are kept in
the background and the resulting sadness only is described, along with the background of natural
scenery. Shelley has also left a prose description of the day which he spent in a boat sailing on the Bay
of Naples. He was greatly struck by the beauty of the natural scene which, in one way, increased it by
contrast. The poem marks the nadir of “the winter of his discontent.”
 The poet tells us that the sun was warm and the sky was clear. The waves were dancing fast and
bright. Blue isles and snowy mountains were bathed in the transparent light of the sun. The earth around
was damp and a light breeze was blowing around the buds which had not blossomed into flowers. The
faint sounds of the winds, birds, and waves, as also the subdued noises from Naples did not interfere
with the effect of solitude. They are like many voices conveying the same feeling of happiness.
The poet can see the bottom of the sea because the water is clear and transparent. The green and
purple weeds growing at the bottom of the sea are visible to the poet. He also watches the movement is
compared by him to the shore. This movement is compared by him to the light of stars falling upon the
earth in showers. The poet, sitting alone on the sandy sea-shore, compares the bright light of the midday
sun falling on the waves to flashes of lightening. He also hears the sweet sounds produced by the
rhythmical movememt of the waves. The beauty of natural scenery produces a peculiar thrill in his heart,
and he wishes that someone else could also share this sensation.
The poet complains that he has neither hope, nor health, nor peace of mind, nor the contentment
and spiritual glory which a sage attains through meditation, nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Other people possess these blessings in plenty. They are fortunate and they live their life cheerfully and
happily, and they consider life to be a pleasure. However, the poet has not been kindly treated by fate.
His life is like a bitter cup the contents of which he must swallow.
The mood of despondency and despair expressed in the preceding stanza deepens here. The poet
finds his heart to be absolutely devoid of hope. The feeling of melancholy in his heart is not intense or
tormenting but soft and subdued like the movement of winds and waves in the Bay of Naples. But he is
so dejected that he could lie down like a tired child and spend the remaining years of his existence
shedding tears. His life in the past has been full of anxieties, and it seems to him that the years to come
will bring no change in the pattern of his life. He wants to shed tears till death comes to him silently and
invisibly just as sleep comes to a man quietly and softly. When he is dying, the poet will feel his body
become cold in the warm air, and he will hear the sounds of the sea-waves for the last time. The waves
produce the same sound repeatedly, and therefore, monotonously. At last, his brain will cease to
function, and he will depart from this world.
Some people might feel grieved by the poet’s death just as the poet would feel grieved at the
passing of that sweet day. The poet says that his heart has grown old prematurely and is lost to him.
Because of his mood of despair, which is untimely, he is insulting the sweetness of the day. He feels that
he is a man for whom people feel no love. The day is beautiful and sunlight is glorious in its purity.
When this day ends, it will leave a sweet memory behind. It is only when people love something that
they remember it after it has ceased to exist. As he is not loved by people, he will not be remembered by
them, but this beautiful day will certainly be remembered.

***********************************************************************************

SUM AND SUBSTANCE OF THE ODE TO THE WEST WIND

 The poem was written in 1819, and published in 1820 along with Shelley’s musical drama,
“Prometheus Unbound”.
Unbound”. As Shelley tells us in a note, this poem was conceived, and chiefly written, in
a wood round the Arno, near Florence (Italy). He wrote it on a day when the stormy wind was collecting
the vapours that send the autumnal rains.
It is one of Shelley’s greatest poems. It has been called a “matchless ode”. But it is not easy to
understand because of similes and metaphors which follow one another with an astounding quickness.
In the course of the poem, Shelley passes from a magnificent realization of Nature’s storm and
peace to equally great self-description. Finally, he mingles Nature and himself together in order to sing
of the Golden Age of humanity.
In Stanza 1,1, the poet addresses the West Wind as if it were a living personality who can hear
him. He also personifies Autumn and describes the West Wind as the “breath” of Autumn. The Wind is
invisible but its power over the dead leaves can clearly be seen. When it blows, its force drives the
withered leaves in the same way as the approach of a wizard drives away ghosts.
The dead leaves are described as yellow, black, pale, and red. There are heaps and heaps of them,
and they all seem to be afflicted with some disease.
The West Wind conveys the winged seeds to their dark beds under the earth where they will
remain lying throughout the winter, lifeless, and unable to rise. Each seed will lie underground like a
dead man in his grave. It will be so till the Spring comes, with its light breezes and blue skies, and blows
its trumpet to awaken the sleeping earth. The idea here is that with the coming of Spring, Nature wakes
to a new life.
Then the poet employs another metaphor. Just as a shepherd takes his flock of sheep to the fields
to feed them, so the Spring drives the buds out of the seeds, in which they were shut, into the open air.
The valleys and the hills are thus filed with buds and flowers of different colours and smells. The wild
West Wind is blowing everywhere. Addressing it as a destroyer (of dead leaves) and a preserver (of
living seeds), the poet calls upon it to listen to him.
In Stanza 2,2, we are to imagine here that there is a vast tree whose roots are in the ocean and
whose branches go up high into the sky. From the branches of this tree fall loose clouds on the surface
of the West Wind just as rotten leaves from a tree fall on the ground. These clouds fall when there is
tumult in the high sly, that is, when stormy conditions develop in the sky. These clouds are the
messengers of rain and lightening.
The picture of the clouds is followed by the picture of an approaching storm. The hair of the
storm covers the surface of the West Wind all the way from the horizon to the highest point in the sky.
The hair of the storm spread in this way is just like the disordered hair of some wild, intoxicated female
followers of the god of wine, Bacchus.
The West Wind is like a funeral song being sung over the death of the year. A huge tomb will be
erected over the earth, and it will serve as the dome of that tomb. From the solid-seeming vapours of
clouds will be the vault (arched roof) of the tomb. From the solid-seeming vapours of clouds in the sky
will fall rain, lightening and hailstones. The poet once again calls upon the West Wind to listen to him.
The poet says, in Stanza 3,3, that the West Wind has, by its violence and fury, disturbed the
Mediterranean in his sleep. During the summer, Mediterranean had been soothed by the pleasant sound
of the bright rivers which fell into its waters and had gone to sleep near an island made of lava in
Baiae’s Bay (near Naples).
In its sleep, the Mediterranean had been seeing dreams of old palaces and towers slightly
trembling in the bright and clear light of the ocean where moss and flowers of such sweetness grow that
the very thought of them would make us feel drowsy.
 When the West Wind blows on the Atlantic, its water is thrown into a state of agitation. Bfore
the West Wind blew, the surface of the Atlantic was level but now it would seem as if the Atlantic has
cut a path on its surface for the West Wind to pass over it. (Waves
(Waves rise to one side and waves rise to the
other side. Between them, hollows are produced.)
produced.)
The plants, growing at the bottom of the ocean, are wet but they have no sap in them. When the
West Wind begins to blow on the Atlantic, these plants become aware of its arrival and they begin to
tremble with fear and, in this state of fear, they shed their leaves.
Then, in Stanza 4, 4, the poet establishes a connection between himself and the West Wind. He
wishes that he were a leaf, a cloud, or wave of the ocean so that the West Wind could carry him on its
wings. He feels a keen desire to taste the fierce strength of the West Wind. The West Wind is
uncontrollable and enjoys unlimited freedom. The poet too has a sense of freedom, though he is not as
free as the West Wind. The poet recalls his boyhood when he could surpass the West Wind in speed and
when he could easily accompany it in its upward flight.
If he had still that energy and vitality which he possessed as a boy, he would not have felt the
need of seeking the help of the West Wind in his present distress. Now he has lost his youthful vigour,
and so he appeals to the West Wind to lift him as a leaf, a cloud, or a wave, because he has greatly
suffered in life and now he feels oppressed by the sorrows and miseries of life.
In Stanza 5,5, the poet appeals to the West Wind to treat him as its lyre as it treats the forest. True
that he too is passing through the autumn of his life, just as the forest is passing through its autumn. The
poet says that all his hopes and joys are one, and that his life has become grey, dull, and barren.
When the West Wind strikes the strings of these two lyres (the forest and the poet), it will
produce melancholy or sad sounds because both the forest and the poet, being in the autumn of their
lives, will respond gloomily to the West Wind. Although these sounds will be sad, they will certainly be
sweet. (Sad
(Sad songs are always sweet as Shelley tells us also in his poem, “To a Skylark”.)
Skylark”.)
Shelley appeals to the West Wind to become his spirit because there is much in common
between them. He seeks a union with the fierce spirit of the West Wind. He asks the West Wind to drive
or scatter his dead thoughts over the universe so that they may stimulate the forces of progress and bring
about a new era in human history.
Just as the ashes and sparks fly in all directions from a hearth where the fire has not yet
completely gone out, similarly the poet wants his words to be scattered far and wide by the force of the
West Wind. He wishes the West Wind to act as his mouthpiece for the utterance of his prophecy
regarding the arrival of the Golden Age on earth. Just as winter is surely followed in natural course by
spring, similarly this era of misery and sorrow will surely be followed by an era of perfect happiness,
live, and beauty.

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