Shelley's Love Poems Written in Italy

Abstract

Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure all spirits on which it falls open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its delight. When we read Shelly's poetry the pleasure of reading deepens. His first collected edition of poems was not published until 1839, and the collection was prefaced by Mrs. Shelley. Mary said in her preface: No poet was ever warmed by a more genuine and unforced insipation. His extreme sensibility gave the intensity of passion to his intellectual pursuit and rendered his mind keenly alive to every preception of out ward object, as well as to his internal sensation. In my thesis I have dealt with his lyrical love poems. He is a "skylark" or "sweet" lamenting nightingale". In his defence of poetry he wrote: "a poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and signs to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds". And this was just what he was doing often. His gift was that of a lyric poet. Even his longer poems are mostly lyrics though their purpose was motivated by his ideas and beliefs. To Shelley the woman is not an object in herself but a symbol, a symbol of that eternal beautiful and good, toward which he is straining and hoping ever to find it in the real world about him Shelley's love poems are intensity and fire. Shelley had width as well as intensity, not only of subject but of style. As Thompson described him,he was an eternal child who believed in love. "To live, as if to love and live were one, he searched his love". He is "the Light of Life" and "Child of light: and The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful The child of grace and genius To all readers Shelley will remain "the consumate inventor oflyric harmonics".